I was asked to create an alternate version of the "Pals" tee for the Ballard Beer Company with simplified text framed by hop vines. This is the result ...
I was afforded the opportunity to create an illustration for a client who has a penchant for octopi and squid. Ultimately, this illustration will be painted on a tile backsplash in her kitchen.
Final conceptual rendering
I plotted the illustration using a photo of the space. Ideally, I would have liked to get exact measurements but I knew going in that adjustments will need to be made on-the-fly to accommodate the space, size (dimensions) of the tile, and things like the electrical outlet. None of these things affect the basic concept.
Pencil sketch
Turns out I did a pretty good job measuring. Very little adjustment will need to be made to the illustration to accommodate the space.
Proof-of-concept Photoshop composite
Next steps will be selecting tile, researching paints, how-to-paint-on-tile techniques, and how to fire and/or seal the final painting.
I'll be posting more about this project as it progresses.
Newly finished tee shirt design for the Ballard Beer Company. The shirt will feature a reversed version of this illustration.
Process
As with most of my work, I sketched out the primary art by hand then scanned the image. The final line work was done on an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil. I wound up exporting multiple PSDs for various elements of the final illustration and compositing those elements in Photoshop. Final tweaks, including additional line work, were completed using a Wacom tablet in Photoshop.
Selected pages from the second whitepaper OddBurton designed and illustrated for F5Labs Threat Analysis Reports: The Hunt for IoT: The Networks Building Death Star-Sized Botnets from IoT Minions.
Published by F5Labs. Authored by Sara Boddy and Justin Shattuck.
How was the artwork created?
I created numerous very rough pencil sketches to work out the initial layout of all the objects within the iceberg. Once I had the arrangement I composed in my headspace worked out, the final flat-color painting was created entirely in Procreate on the iPad Pro using an Apple Pencil. I drew the house and the top of the iceberg separately, then composited the bottom of the iceberg and the top in Photoshop. The final artistic touches including the iceberg planing, shading, some of the smaller objects like the narwhal and seagulls, and the text were added in Photoshop.
The artwork for this heavily illustrated report entitled: Using F5Labs Application Threat Intelligence was drawn entirely on an iPad Pro and colorized in Photoshop.
Published by F5Labs. Authored by Ray Pompon and Sara Boddy.
Worth noting that the concept for this piece is a visual representation of the Four Domains of Warfare as established by the Department of Defense: Land, sea, air, and space. In 1995, a fifth dimension was added: Cyber space (denoted by connected dots).
How was the artwork created?
Nearly all of my work begins with a pencil. This piece was no exception. I drew a very rough sketch to layout all of the objects in the landscape, took a photo, and imported the sketch into the Procreate app on the iPad. All of the line work was drawn using an Apple pencil in Procreate. The line drawing was exported as a PSD and imported into Photoshop to add color.
Selected pages from F5Labs 2016 TLS Telemetry Report.
Published by F5Labs. Authored by David Holmes.
How was the artwork created?
The cover illustration started as a pencil sketch which was photographed using an iPhone, then pulled into Adobe Illustrator for reference. The entire finished piece was rendered in Illustrator. The sweeping dot stream was created line by line, converted to outlines, then placed, duplicated or deleted by hand to achieve the "data" look. Yes, I went cross-eyed.
DDoS's Newest Minions: IoT Devices represents the first quarterly white paper that I designed and illustrated for F5Labs Threat Analysis Reports. You can view or download the full document here.
All told, this project required approximately 150 hours to complete the visual presentation including all illustrations and graphic design.
Published by F5Labs. Authored by Justin Shattuck and Sara Boddy.
For comparison, I've included a selection of corresponding pages from the original report below.
How was the artwork created?
The cover illustration was drawn and inked entirely by hand. The final rendering was scanned, then imported into Photoshop to clean up the line work and add color.
Last August, I was approached by a long-time friend, Justin Shattuck, about a potential opportunity with a local web security firm to illustrate and design a quarterly report published by F5Labs that utilized data aggregated by an analysis tool he developed called Loryka. The product of this tool is a highly detailed report and he wanted to add an illustrated flair to what was a very plain document ... Hence, a late night phone call to tell me that he'd passed my name along to the VP of F5Labs. Turns out that the VP had already seen my work at the Ballard Beer Co. and admonished Justin to "get [me] in here tomorrow!"
Given the fact that design is severely lacking across the web security industry as a whole and that the current benchmark produced by a competing firm was, shall we say, uninspiring, I knew immediately this was a golden opportunity to significantly raise the bar. There are few things I enjoy more than a challenge and concocting visual representations of an obtuse topic ranks among the most challenging tasks that I've been faced with up to this point in my career.
My task, as I chose to frame it, was to establish a new benchmark for design in the web security industry.
I was given mostly free reign to follow my creative instincts within the confines of their brand identity. The initial design was unceremoniously scrapped and I started fresh with the intention of using custom art to help convey the abstract themes of each report through editorial illustrations, vignettes, updated graphs and charts, and vastly improved content layout.
Due to my work on the first Threat Analysis Report, I was given the opportunity to design two additional reports as well. Thus far, I've completed four whitepapers that average twenty-five pages in length. Every single visual aspect of each report from design to the artwork to the graphs and charts have been completely re envisioned by OddBurton. I'm damned proud of the work and thrilled to be working with the stellar team at F5.
Click on the covers below to view selected design and illustration samples from each report:
Special thanks to Justin Shattuck and Sara Boddy for patiently describing the security landscape and suggesting potential concepts, Debbie Walkowski for her editing, and Preston Hogue for giving me a chance.
I have a keen interest in politics and education. When my good friend and enthusiastic political activist, John Culver, asked me if I'd be interested in contributing to his latest get out the vote project: Vote, And, I jumped at the chance to help out.
Web site design
Icon set
I just finished another cool project for the Ballard Beer Company. This 24 x 36 inch poster will grace the front window of the shop. Stop by and have a drink.
Final illustration
Pencil sketch
Final line drawing
Hand drawn logo text
My good friend Mike Boyink asked me to help him improve a design concept for a DitchingSuburbia.com teeshirt. Here's what I came up with ...
Because it's time to stop being a suburban sheep ...
Nearly seven years ago, Mike and his family made a radical decision. They sold their house, uprooted their lives, bought an RV, and started traveling full time. They've never looked back except to wave goodbye in the rear view mirror. If you've ever thought about ditching suburbia yourself, I'd highly recommend reading his blog. He and his family have a lot to teach you about how to make it work.
