DesignBrawl is the weblog of A. Craig Williams. It gets less coherent every day.

SickManSick by Rich Sheehan

Posted: May 24th, 2010 | Author: craig | Filed under: Design, Illustration, Inspiration | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Really well done.

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Iron Man II by Tyler Stout

Posted: April 30th, 2010 | Author: craig | Filed under: Illustration, Inspiration | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

I swear I’m not trying to turn DB into a showcase for Tyler Stout’s work only, but it’s hard not to highlight it when it’s this good.


Vector Building in Orange by Andrei Marius

Posted: April 9th, 2010 | Author: craig | Filed under: Design, Illustration, Inspiration | Tags: , , , , , , | No Comments »

Having spent about 5 years drawing homes & buildings in Illustrator in Los Angeles, I’m always excited to find someone doing it in an interesting way. I really like the orange treatment Andrei Marius gave this illustration over on VectorTuts.

It reminded me of a poster I started working on a few months ago but keep deciding that I don’t like. I’ve included a snippet of that after the break. Surely with a buildup like that, how can you resist?

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Olga Feldman

Posted: February 12th, 2010 | Author: craig | Filed under: Illustration, Inspiration | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

Super.


Sanjuro/Yojimbo

Posted: February 9th, 2010 | Author: craig | Filed under: Design, Illustration, Inspiration | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

I came across these covers for two of Akira Kurosawa’s best flicks the other day while looking for another one of his films on Netflix. Love them.

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Adobe Illustrator: Fading Out Shadows

Posted: October 23rd, 2009 | Author: craig | Filed under: Design, Illustration, Tutorial | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Here’s a quick tutorial where I run through using the opacity mask in Illustrator to create transparent shadows that fade out to nothing. I can remember when I first started drawing in Illustrator it took longer than I care to admit before I realized that a gradient didn’t have to have two colors (ok, it does but it doesn’t have to appear that way).


Martin Ansin’s Phantom of the Opera

Posted: October 19th, 2009 | Author: craig | Filed under: Design, Illustration, Inspiration | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Here’s a beautifully rendered poster for the Phantom of the Opera at the Alamo Drafthouse by Martin Ansin.759221255436155

Details after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »


The Orange Chair

Posted: October 2nd, 2009 | Author: craig | Filed under: Design, Freebie, Illustration | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

I’m not sure what I was planning to do with this drawing. I’m pretty sure I was just drawing it for a screencast that I ended up not using. Anyway, I’m giving away the .ai file in the hopes that somebody has a use for it.

orangechairHere’s a link to the .ai file.


Quick Color Matching in Illustrator

Posted: September 25th, 2009 | Author: craig | Filed under: Design | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Here’s a really quick way to match a color to an external source (like a paint chip). I used to have to do this a lot when I was doing architectural renderings that were then printed to a large-format Epson 9600.


Striped Dress Vector

Posted: September 24th, 2009 | Author: craig | Filed under: Design, Freebie, Illustration | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Here’s an illustration done in Adobe Illustrator that I ended up not being able to use. All of the texture and ruffles are done using the stripes, not with a gradient mesh.

striped-dress

You can download the .ai file here. Enjoy.