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MUNI Flash Interactive Animation

Follow this link: http://megaswf.com/serve/85372/ to view my flash animation of my MUNI poster. It's interactive! Hope it works and enjoy!

New Self-Portrait (in progress #2)

Bay Area Architecture Sketch 7

Here is another Bay Area Architecture quick sketch of a home in the California Ranch House style.

The image(s) above are copyright of Steven W. Howard 2012 / 2019.  If you wish to repost this image to another site please contact me first.

Bay Area Architecture Sketch 6

Here is another sketch as the semester is coming soon to a close... along with my time here at AAU. Come December 18th this year I will be graduated from AAU! Anyway, here is a quick sketch of a very pretty storybook style home from 1921.

The image(s) above are copyright of Steven W. Howard 2012 / 2019.  If you wish to repost this image to another site please contact me first.

New Self-Portrait (in progress)

Here is an in-progress from a few weeks ago of a portrait I decided to start up in Adobe Illustrator. I tend to use a self portrait to explore what I can do in a certain medium or style. Also, it's always fun to do another one when appearances change. Anyway, here is the photoshop sketch I quickly did one night. Hopefully someday this will get finished in Illustrator. I've started it, but with job hunts, finals, and a collaboration I'm doing with another student it doesn't look like it will be finished anytime soon. Just thought I'd post something up tonight. Enjoy!

Bay Area Architecture Sketches 5

n my Bay Area Architecture online class we haven't done as much sketching lately, but here are the last two that I did. Hopefully next week there'll be some more sketching. I miss it.

The image(s) above are copyright of Steven W. Howard 2012 / 2019.  If you wish to repost this image to another site please contact me first.

Helldiver Fixed

Fixed this in class today. Changed up a few things based on other illustrators' suggestions. Critique is very helpful as this is sooooo much better now than it was previously.

Smart Phone MUNI Poster

Finally got this thing done! Simple idea- complex illustration to show it. I recently had to replace my old Samson Juke phone and had to switch to a smart phone- the Samson Fascinate. Although I do not yet use the phone to figure out the next MUNI or BART time, if ever I needed to, what I illustrated is completely possible. With SF's (although outdated) easily accessible transportation lines and today's 3G tech anyone can quickly find the next available line and its times. So if you're in the Bay Area and thinking of getting a smart phone, here is an illustrated incentive for you to get one. All of this project was completed in Adobe Illustrator CS4 and CS5.

Cable Car Illustration

BART Illustration

Another Preview of the Muni Illustration

Here is another piece of my upcoming Smartphone/Muni poster infographic. In class today I was able to get the man done with a very befitting SF Giants coat. GO GIANTS! Never been that much into baseball, but the city's enthusiasm is contagious... and we won the World Series! Anyway, this project should be finished by next Monday or so. As long as this cold doesn't slow me down. Halloween probably aided to getting the cold. But, that's life, and now back to work, work, work....

Muni N Judah Illustration

38 Geary Bus Muni

F Castro Street Car Illustration

P-51 Mustang Complete

Well, here it is! Post #100.... or so my dashboard says, while my actual blog says in the archive 93 or so. Needless to say technology confuses me sometimes.

Bay Area Architecture Sketch 4

The image(s) above are copyright of Steven W. Howard 2012 / 2019.  If you wish to repost this image to another site please contact me first.

Bay Area Architecture Sketch 3

The image(s) above are copyright of Steven W. Howard 2012 / 2019.  If you wish to repost this image to another site please contact me first.

Bay Area Architecture Sketch 2

The image(s) above are copyright of Steven W. Howard 2012 / 2019.  If you wish to repost this image to another site please contact me first.

Bay Area Architecture Sketch 1

As I've needed some liberal arts units to finish up at AAU, I decided to take A Survey of Bay Area Architecture. I find it hilarious that I'm required to draw in a liberal arts class. Each of these sketches are really loose and quickly done. I decided I'd put up what I've done so far as I am eager to fill up posts to get to the 100th post for this blog! :D I have a week to finish the P-51 Mustang (if I can manage it) and that should lay claim to number 100. So in the meantime... hear are some sketchy space fillers. Enjoy.

The image(s) above are copyright of Steven W. Howard 2012 / 2019.  If you wish to repost this image to another site please contact me first.

P-51 Mustang Cutaway Color Rough

Here is the in-progress of the Mustang. I didn't have time to start it up in Illustrator yet because of the Helldiver infographic (which will have some redo- namely the ships at the bottom), but will start this week. Here is the color rough for the poster.

Helldiver Infographic Complete

This was entirely done in Adobe Illustrator and took quite a long time! The most troublesome thing was the explosion and I've still yet to figure that out, but otherwise here is my intense work on the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver 'Dive Boming' infographic. It's my first official addition to the reboot of my portfolio.

P-51 Mustang Cutaway Preliminary Sketches (part 2)

Here are the other two sketches for the P-51 Mustang cut-away. In progress images should be up in a week or two.

P-51 Mustang Cutaway Preliminary Sketches (part 1)

Here are 2 of 4 sketches I am doing for a proposed future cutaway poster illustration of the WWII North American P-51 Mustang. I decided to go with the Mustang over civilian modern aircraft as I have limited access to reference to produce a cutaway of a modern aircraft.

When sketching things like these I now work digitally using photo reference (whether mine- or in this case the internet) and after drawing perspective lines, some of those lines can easily be erased and when finished with the sketch I will project the image I based it on for the angle and see if all the proportions match. If some don't (which at times does happen), I will erase the wrong lines and match them up. I don't trace (I believe it to be cheap and a cheat), but I do use images in post as corrective tools as such things as a plane need accuracy even in the sketch phase. Hence why I now find digital sketching extremely efficient in concerning technical illustration. The trickiest part besides setting up the accurate perspective is also the fact that the inner workings are rarely in a similar angle to what I'm working with. For instance, the top view I based the inner workings on a cutaway scale model picture that was closer to the bottom sketch. In a day or so I should have the other two sketches up and on Tuesday decide which one to go with.

Helldiver Infographic (In-Progress)

My last and final semester has finally kicked off and I am doing a nice overhaul to the ol' portfolio. Though I am not technically in the class yet, here is an in progress of an infographic I am working on of the Helldiver dive bomber from WWII done in Adobe Illustrator in Tom Elsworth's class. This is the small far right corner showing the bomber before it does its dive bomb run on a Japanese battleship. Should have the rest of the surrounding illustration finished in a week... hopefully.

Trying out new techniques

After looking at some different tutorials, I'd thought I'd try out some of the techniques and experiment a bit as well. I'm not used to using Photoshop this way, but it will be handy for future technical illustrations (even though this isn't one). And if some think this is an awful design for a cell phone... I agree! It was more about the study so the design kind of suffered.

3:30 am

Below are some sketches from a newer sketchbook- which is now home to my 'Resolved' list, a list of resolutions that are a reminder and helpful tool to keep my life focused on Christ. So here are the pages surrounding those resolutions. Nothing much in particular, but just felt like posting something before the Fall semester starts.

Just decided since I found myself up at 3:30am as of now, that I'd post some of the starts to my sketchbook, all of which were done during unfortunate conditions of either strong icy winds of the Warf or in a car, or in an airplane with the passenger reclining into me enough that even my overhead light can't light what I'm drawing. The speedform-esc drawings are always a lot of fun to do and genrally don't take much thought to draw. The last one was on that flight (of which many prayers were made to keep my temper in check with the passenger in front of me) and was an inspired design of the cabin- hence why it looks weird. Why do I try drawing in odd circumstances? I ask a similar question as to why I'm up so late right now... time to sleep.

Industrial Design Drawing 3 Finals

Here is the final for the class (terrible photo). Not entirely satisfied with this product, however, pretty pleased with the fact that it is near impossible to tell what I cut and pasted from my pre-final sketches. This is supposed to be a 'hemispherical touch screen mouse,' use by 3D modelers to have an interactive touchscreen surface to move virtual objects around with a real 3D interface.

Above and below are some robotic animals. If I had more time I would have made at least 25 or more! These things are just way too much fun to do. They are generally done over an overlay of a hardshelled creature and then it is turned into some stellar vehicle whether it be an Giant Isopod hovercraft jet thing or a 'leaping' coconut crab personal transport... you know, because it would be awesome to own one! :P

This last page just shows my pre-final page layout as well as more robotic creatures.

Overall, it was a pretty amazing class. A whole lot of work in a short amount of time, but definitely worth taking. I'd recommend this to any concept artist who is into designing techs of any sort. Well, now time to catch up on some sleep and back to working hard on some more design and illustrating. Zzzzzzz........

ID3 Final Progress Sneak Peak

Here is a sneak peak from my final. I took a photo of this so that I could print it out to draw over a copy to get an idea of parts to be shown in the exploded view. This was done using Prismacolor Markers, Verathin, and Color Pencil plus a mesh texture to draw over. I'll see what my instructor has to say and if anything needs to be changed for the Final. There are several parts to this assignment so more to come soon!

Updated ID3 Work

Finally able to take some time to post these up. This a compilation of the past few classes. Above are the 4 exploded views of a Kensington mouse that I had to do in two days. Being sick on one day I ended up jamming 3 of these in a day. If given more time with better health I could have gotten a better result.

These above were an assignment for trying out some Canson toned paper. The fourth page on black and on gray was whatever we wanted to do so I did a jockey riding a robo racing greyhound! I particularly like this sketch.

Above was an experiment with reflective surfaces hence our class having to go back to cubic forms. The helicopter was a Scott Robertson mastercopy to learn how he draws and the two jets to the side are speed forms based off of an F22. So much fun drawing things like the speed forms!

Above was an assigment of speed forms (things that look fast while standing still). Granted, not all of mine look super speedy, but like my instructor said, they do have character. And as an illustrator I believe that to be just as equally important. These were a lot of fun to make.

Lastly are some experiments with pastel and webril pads to create chrome. We had to make flashlights and thermoses. Number 6 of the flashlights kind of looks torch-like to me. Gotta watch where you point your 'torch.' Oh British jokes... Anyway, hope you like it. More to come (working on my final right now- three parts)...