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To read more about my beginner adventures with magic cards, please jump here!. PM me if you’d like me to make a how-to on how to make layered, animated magic prints that work using instagram/fb.
Editor’s note: Some of the tech has changed since I first published these series of blogs and so the AR is no longer active. I have removed these from my downloads page.
Sample magic card in action! Check out my TikTok for more vids @jessjchampagne
Being a creative person professionally is an awkward balancing act of wrangling ‘creativity’ and applying the technical skill of putting out into the world the thing that’s in your head, but in a way that people respond to in the way you want them to. What happens to your art once it’s out in the world is a whole other blog post.
In regards to skill, a lot of people think art skill is something you’re born with, but it’s really, really not. So to continue to grow as artists on a technical level, we need to be able to see, accept and decide to work on those elements we still feel awkward about. The part we feel shame about. Ugh. In order words, we need to practice “deliberate practice”. (For a great podcast on this, see my fave episode of Freakonomics: How to Become Great at Just About Anything. )
When it comes to visual art, we all have things we just like to draw, and things we just… happen to ignore conveniently. My love and hate is drawing people. I think this is sort of universally a challenge for a lot of artists because the human brain is so in tune with how people should look and is on high alert for ‘bad people’ (See the Uncanny Valley effect, for an example, look at the people animation in Toy Story 1, or the re-drawing of Sonic the hedgehog to make him more cute and less human like, including removing his human teeth.)
It’s sort of an ironic love and hate because the first type of art I got very good at as a kid was drawing pencil portraits of classmates and family members. I specifically drew girls, boys felt so much harder because boys weren’t as accepting of flattery that hides mistakes.
In my graphic design and illustration work, we are often trying to think of how to best get across information to people in ways that are easy and intuitive for our brains to process. Often information is emotional, rather than analytical. Now, compared to other things, it’s very easy in campaigns to ignore having to illustrate people. But when it keeps coming up as an idea, that’s when you need to realize you are avoiding it and own that facing it head on will make you stronger. So starting in April 2021, that’s what I decided to do. Make room in my practice for practicing people.
Below are some of my results, and an example of a campaign that it eventually got used it, for social media.
As part of an effort to stop the public from flushing disinfectant wipes and other non-poop, pee, blood stuff, I created the concept for a series of ads for the Capital Regional District, along with the CRD Environmental Services department. These ads were shown as movie theatre posters & mirror stickers, traditional ads, web ads and YouTube pre-roll.
The creative inspiration for this ad was to play with the idea that people often like to draw with marker in public toilet stall, so the text here is illustrated in a marker style.
The base image was chosen after looking at hundreds of toilets on stock (I can tell you WAY too much about toilets now! For example, did you know that the curving pipe shape at the side of some toilets make some people uncomfortable?) and then applying the illustrations with Procreate on the iPad with an Apple Pencil. Later, the procreate images were traced in illustrator to turn them into vector images, so that we could work with infinite scalability but still keep that sketchy style.
Awesome actor Sean Tabares gave his voice to the pre-roll! He’s the best. IG @seantabares
I’m grateful the CRD gave me the creative room to play with different media, including this hand-animation using Procreate. This was part of an instagram story.
What it looks like to work in onion layers in Procreate animation mode (below).
Nothing is more cosy and indulgent than a warm bakery and a cinnamon bun!
This map is the final one in my series of Edible Vancouver Island maps. What I love about this end result is how different it is than the others in the series, with a wholesome bakery window, and a miniature version of my doggo Zelda.
AR is a growing technology that piqued my curiosity ofter virtually attending the 2021 Adobe Max conference. Currently there are two main accessible ways to play with AR, one is through the Adobe program Adobe Aero and through Facebook/ instagram with their technology Spark studio.
It was the conference that introduced me to Adobe Aero, my first experiment. I wanted to excite a friend by bringing one of her favourite illustrations of mine (one of Cathedral Grove) to live in her workspace. The results you can see to the side in this TikTok video.
To check out my further experiments with AR, see my Magic Owls post &/or portfolio, which explores AR using Instagram tech.
