Trying to find a rhyme

Hello,

Once again things have gotten busy and I find myself realizing time has flown by, I ask myself what now? Do I play catch up and write up or just go with the flow, well I chose go with the flow. I recently found myself making a huge overhaul to my site OneBlueBird and where do I begin to talk about that, well its fully coded by me not the best code but it works. The current plan is to finish the site by adding some more exciting elements like a series of animated transitions for moving from section to section. I have also been exploring Augmented realty for the site, those details will have to wait as I don't want to ruin the surprise. Other than those elements the site is pretty close to complete.
Work wise I have been busy with the release of all 5 episodes of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse. Besides that we have also announced at work our partnership with Universal Studios and we are doing Back To The Future and Jurassic Park so that has made things very busy and exciting at work.
Being in San Francisco has put a lot of things in perspective both personally and professionally. Design and interactive design is so much apart of my life and my love at the moment. I get moments of pure excitement when I have an idea for an exciting app or interactive motion design. (Speaking of animation and motion design I have been story boarding a lot lately for site designs and some cool ui ideas at work.)
Besides the excitement I get from design, I have felt a part of my career and my true love of illustration kicking back into full affect with a project I did for The Devil's Playhouse poster series. The posters are fun from the illustration to the full design layout of the typography. The beauty of illustration for me is the prefect harmony between design and illustration, when all the right elements come together from concept and subject matter.
My next post will be the complete collection of The Devil's Playhouse posters I had the pleasure of creating. Till then enjoy the post and the art I created for my website.

Here is to a rhyme to live by.

-Enjoy

California life

California oh California,

This is an open letter to the life I have started in California specifically San Rafael just outside San Fran. My new career at Telltale Games as their Art Director is going amazing so far I have been handed a great marketing / web group to push in the right direction and my hopes to step up the design look and feel of the company and products. Lots of potential for me to play and invent some great work. Life in California has been really interesting and growing on us. I think this area is full of great things to enjoy but we just need the weather to clear up, as most might know winter in the San Fran area= Grey and cloudy or better described as FOG. I am sure it will get better and the exploration of California can begin. Things on our list of must sees is the beach, red wood forests, shopping/food areas in the heart of San Fran and lastly some fun hiking.

Other then the above mentions of growth, learning and new beginnings, life is grand. Started working out regularly and drawing more. These past 4-5 months have been stressful and a wall for me in terms of creativity but I feel the energy coming back and I am going to start to get lots of content being pumped out and on this site as well as every other place I live on in the "inter-web."

Well I think that is enough social words for today here is to a lot more and I hope to keep feeling this motivated and ready to communicate my work and passions.

Have a wonderful day,
Stephen

I am Back!!

Dear Readers,

I know I know... I am a broken record, but seriously I have a good reason for my lack of posts and disappearance for the past few months. You might ask, "so whats up and where have you been or what have you been up to" and the answer is a lot and now I am ready to share a list of them with you all.

First off the big one was that I got MARRIED :-) in October and little to say that was my life for September through the middle of October. After the Honeymoon I got several amazing job offers and had to do a lot flying from MN to San Francisco for a few weeks. I accepted a great Art Director position for a talented and great Gaming Studio called Telltale Games. I am sure some of you have heard of them, as they are responsible for such great episodic games as Sam & Max and of course their big hit at the moment is the newly redone Lucas Art's Classic Tales of Monkey Island! With that being said I am excited to add my mind and talents to the mix at Telltale.

Well if you have been following my blog over the past years you all might be saying WOW what happened to my Senior position at Ham and the answer is I decided to leave Ham. They were running into several issues that I will not go into too much detail about but they had to lay off several people/friends, as well as cut everyone's salaries and so on. I loved the work I did there a lot but I had a really hard time with that and seeing what was happening to the people I cared about and seeing the economic downward spiral happening there, SOOOOO I took a fulltime contract position with a gaming company called Electrotank as there Senior UI Designer/ 2d Artist. I got to work on some really cool work and will share it down the road once I can, the only thing I can say about it is "ubi" hehe

Now that I am married, moved/settling into California life while starting a seriously cool career path I think it's time to get back to the web and get my word out again.

I hope people will read this once I get back into the swing of things and please post comments or ask me anything you would like and if I can answer them I will.

As an end note I am going to be posting all of our cool wedding stuff I made for the big day.

Take it easy and here is to the future and happiness for both my personal life and career!

Thanks for reading and enjoying my works.

-Stephen

Sketches and trip stuff!

Hello,

I have been running around catching up on some major work since my trip to Boston. The trip to Boston was mainly fun because of the ride there with Amanda, we had a ball rocking out while on our 26+ hour straight drive to the hotel we stayed at in Boston.

It was a tiring/challenging trip seeing family plus trying to enjoy ourselves and eat and drink some good New England food. My niece was cute but really over the top with her bossy "no" action the whole time we were there, it was hard to get her to socialize with me, Amanda or anyone and even giving me her uncle a hug was like a battle. But I love her and we had our few precious moments!!

There were several highlights to the trip which I will post below for you all to see. Once we got back it was time to work late nights and catch up on several large projects (mainly games) that had to get wrapped up and kicked off. Since I posted last there have been two games that have launched and a couple of other projects that I started and I'm currently finishing up. I will save those projects for another post later. So please check back I am trying to keep to my promise of updating as much as possible. haha so we will see!! Below are several sketches in my favorite style I am developing lately for both my redesign to my current site and also some fun family style imagery.

Hope you all enjoy and please keep me on my toes and ask for more work it will help motivate me to keep this beast alive.

-Stephen

Enjoying the best Guinness I have ever had ummm..... that was a great Irish bar in Boston.

Hanging out with the dead people in Salem Mass. that be witch country.

This had to be the best moment I had with my niece Bella. We did some doodling together.

This was one of the highlights of the trip for me and Amanda, Hanging out with my BEST MAN Amiel!! Watch out folks he has got some insane skills and is going to be releasing his beautiful art on the world.

This is a sketch for the up and coming redesign to onebluebird.com

Some doodles of the fun hanging elements in the site that will be animated.

My hope is to turn this into my music/sound on and off controller for my site redesign.

Just a fun sketch of what I think my mom looked like young and holding me for the first time haha. Not sure what the crown is about but I have been putting that in all my pieces lately.

Winter time is almost over and I thought I would post this playful image of Amanda and her process in building the greatest snowman ever!! (totally thinking about turning this into a poster or postcard)

Back from Boston

Hello,

Well we made it back from Boston in one piece. It was a fun drive there with lots of stops and visiting with Family and friends. I got to see my main man/Best man which was great. Took lots of pictures which I will post as soon as I can get them off the camera. Got to see my niece for the first time and let me just say it was interesting to see how she didn't like people and it took forever for her to warm up to anyone even her uncle. But hey I got to draw with her and give her a stuffed horse to hug. Other then that the trip was very tiring and as they say "I need a vacation from my vacation". I thought for today I would just post a few recent sketches that I doodled. Keep a look out for pictures, details about the visit and also a huge amount of sketches I want to post.

-enjoy

Here is a sketch I did while sitting in meetings and thought about kids, Mario Brothers (my version looks like an angry hitler) and questioning designer:
Here is a sketch I made in my new travel sketchbook. I hope to start filling this one up soon:

Illustration application

Hello all,

Tomorrow I am off for a week to the East coast to visit Boston, Rhode Island and some other places in between. Before I leave here is some really fun products and illustrations I got to make for HAM's Holiday 2009 gift.

Sign and numbered posters:

Deck of playing cards (HAM's take on its own designer, Creative director and Art Director world influenced deck of cards):

Part4: What have I been up to?

Hi,

How are you all? I hope amazing. I'm currently working on a game for "Spam" the food lol. Its different but cool, lots of weird animations. This post will be the last post about "What I have been up to?" and I'm going to post the interactive things I designed and had fun with this past year. Something to keep a look out for is going to be future posts about illustration, random sketches and design work. In the meantime here are some samples of a few of my favorite interactive concepts.

Oh before I forget I am going out of town next week to Boston for the whole week and will return on Tuesday the 27th. I am going to try and post some photos from the trip and my sweet little niece.

Thanks for listening and enjoy:

Interactive piece designed for the political season. With this piece you could pick a candidate then mix and match pieces from speeches they have given then send that mixed message to friends or post it.

This next project was to design an interactive valentines song/message maker that could be both a love song or a hate you for dumping me type of song. The general concept was the more positive messaging you select the more over the top the set design and characters would get with lovey stuff and the same goes for someone selecting hateful messaging.

New Pieces!!

Hi everyone,
Just enjoying the summer we went to Ely, MN and relaxed. I caught two big walleye which I am going to post. Well I am back in my studio and thought I would post the two finished pieces from the last post.
-enjoy

HOW Design Conference (PART 2)

Hey everyone,
Here is the second part of the HOW Design Conference trip. The most amazing part of this trip was the day me, Penelope, and Josh and got a personal tour from Ty (Huge thanks to him for hanging out with us) of Cartoon Network. He is a Designer there and over all nice guy. So we got to go walk through most of the Studios. We got to see animation areas, Web development/ animation group, Design group and finally got to met the illustrators that worked there. I was just blown away by the cool environment and nice people there. Ty also gave us tons of free stuff (Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends- MY FAV.) Well after the tour, Ty asked if I would draw/tag their stairwell. I thought I went to haven haha. So I did a piece with my bluebird flying from the bottom of the stairs to the top. Truly I can now cross off one of my to do things before I die.
Well Once that day was over my head was spinning. The Conference closed at the Atlanta Aquarium (the nations largest). They had whale sharks there!! So that was an amazing way to end the trip. Now I am home back to work, I have a book, two websites and another illo for the UTNE Reader to get done.
-enjoy

HOW Design Conference (PART 1)

Hey everyone,
I am back from Atalanta from the conference. It was an amazing trip not only did I meet lots of people but people I knew. Thanks to everyone for stopping by the booth. The other artists that were there from Scott Hull was Penelope, Josh, Mike and Von. I realized how much I enjoyed networking and marketing on this trip. Seeing people come up to me and really want to know what I do is something that showed me how much I love this field. It was also a feeling of growth for me. To have a booth and hand out t-shirts, stickers and buttons was a ball. So here is a photo bump from the Conference. The images show our booth, people stenciling at our booth, the city of Atlanta, Gary Baseman giving a talk and then a drawing he did on our panels (which was cool to meet him as well). Oh and I will be posting a PART 2, so check back for that,
-enjoy