A week of Colmanhandoko

WOOTS it feels great to be back again! I've been working for an advertising company based in Jakarta for the past week and it's been a really tough few days. Yep that's right, Colmanhandoko is the creative company responsible behind some of Axis GSM's TV commercial airing in Indonesia's TV stations. They have great ideas, but sometimes audience can't help but take on the impression that they are trying too hard to be creative.

On a more important note, I was tasked to do a smorgasbord of full color illustrations for a client that is rumored to be a milk factory in Russia. Yes, it was one of those dafaq moments. Dragons, Rapunzel, Nutcracker, and all the other fairy tales to persuade the market to buy milk. They'll either break it so bad or make it real good. Regardless of the outcome, I wasn't going to waste any of this opportunity. I jumped into my work station and started the color fiesta. Here are the results done over the week.

Day 1: Dragon, Knight and the Damsel. The first illustration that I did for the project. Receive many amendments and changes especially with regards to the background from my digital painting shifu and head of the project, Henryca Citra (the guy is godly let me tell you). It feels great to be doing pure digital painting after so long. But it's even better to receive feedbacks subliminally telling how shit I am. Not to mention the various improvements and design-principle advice gathered from people who are already experienced in the field. It's still a long way to go.

Day 2-3: Wolf and the Phoenix. Pissed by how bad I performed at the first one, I decided to invest more time to do the details and carefully planning the negative space and color composition. Proud of it because all those times came into fruition (at least now). The most important thing of day 2 is how I extensively used reference pictures instead of just cooking up color composition in my mind. I took inspiration from a screenshot of Snow white and the Huntsman and the coloration fits this forestry setting perfectly. Long story short I add a bit of highlights here and there and BAM! second one DONE.

Day 4-5: The Nutcracker. No, seriously, it really cracked my nuts doing this. Christmas is around the corner but it was getting so tiring on the 4th day and I can significantly felt my speed dropping. Honestly not much improvement from the previous one but I can tell you the initial color scheme is so different from the final product because I had to come up with a few drafts before getting a right sense of it. Thanks again Shifu Henryca Citra for the valuable feedbacks! :D

Day 5-7: The Kiss. It was the most torturous of all the paintings. The reference picture is made very clear by the head of project and so I do not have control over the color schemes and other technical aspect. Basically I just had to repaint everything into a higher resolution. Still, looking at the details of the dress, roses, wood planks, and basically all the elements in the foreground and background, you can understand the pain of having to complete such an intricate painting within the industry speed of 3 days. To top that, try staring at people kissing for 3 days straight when you are so forever alone and homesick. Life is good heh. Still, it was all worth it. This painting gets such a good response from the head project he said that it makes others look inconsistent. (HOUYEAH!)

Anyways, that is it for now. I would love to share more about the process of how to make this but those will be in another post. and after I am done with some marketing material for Stereonesia and AIESEC. Huff, holidays gonna be brutal isn't it? I just hope Santa doesn't poop in the chimney.

STEREONESIA 2013

Turns out the grand threadless plan has to be postponed again. I don't know why, but the universe doesn't seem to like me doing t-shirt designs for fun or business purposes. FFFUUUUU... Instead, I was steadily and gradually drawn into a whole new vortex of graphics work full of CMYK vector: Stereonesia 2013.  It's a good challenge after a while, but I still prefer Photoshop over Illustrator, meaning that it takes a lot of time making those smooth lines appear (almost) flawless.

Here comes Stereonesia 2013. A concert by Indonesians for Indonesians stipulated to be held next year somewhere in March. Out of the blue I was suddenly a part of their design team, tasked with the usual poster, cover photo, and illustrations to promote the event. It was fun first, but then the greedy side of me went berserk and I volunteered to be part of the trailer and website development team. Expect a brutal summer holiday, James.

Anyway, I am never a charitable person (at least I always have an ulterior motive, like every vegan and  insurance company) but Stereonesia is projected to rock NSW upside down left to right and even diagonally with the array of Indonesian artists that's gonna come. Yes, that's not because I am part of the organizing team. Definitely not. heh. But honestly, it's a good time to jam around and relish the Indonesian culture and music and all other Indonesian bla blas! So there we go, it's still 4 months to go but expect the spectrum of symphony to rock your world! See you in Stereonesia 2013! 

P.S. ( I should be getting paid for doing such a good ads for them ahem!)