Seeing the Future: A guide to visual communication

I am almost a month late in posting this, but it's too good not to mention - Howtoons and Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam have teamed up to create a drawing and ideation guide that teachs how to get big ideas down on paper. In 20 pages, it covers how to make up shapes, proportion, perspective and even a bit of art history; everything beatifully illustrated and put together in a fun and interesting way.



The whole guide is free and availabe to view online or download.

www.howtoons.com

Superman Challenge

Last week Warren Ellis tried something a little different on the REMAKE/REMODEL challenge on the Whitechapel forum. The idea was:

" You are an artist/designer. You have to put together the cover for a comic called SUPERMAN. It is issue 1 of this book.  You have been told that Superman is a man who dresses predominantly in a shade of blue, and wears a red S symbol. You know nothing else about the character. The cover must include a logo and the text THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE DARING EXPLOITS OF THE ONE AND ONLY SUPERMAN. It's up to you what kind of company you're at. What kind of comics you make. How you translate that description of Superman. What era you're in. Who you are, even. Go nuts with it."

How awesome is that for a challenge? Here's a small sample of some of the incredible artwork the thread generated.






Covers above by Alberto J. Silva, Bryant paul Johnson, David Bednarski, Tom Muller, Thomas Perkins, Gaston, Chris G. Team Mummy, Anthony Brennan, Mike Rooth, Paul Milligan, Jorell and Dean Trippe.

See the whole thread here.

Now there's a new challenge up and this time it's for 2000AD. The idea is the same - you've been given a brief to design the cover for an anthology you know very little about and it's up to you to interpet the idea. I think there will be some great stuff coming out of this one too.