Crys Odenkirk

Photoshop Challenge: Character Portraits in a Movie Style

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Crys

My husband Tony is a budding new designer, and we’ve recently instituted “Photoshop Challenge Days” between us. It’s a great way to practice our skills and do something fun together at the same time.

Monday’s challenge was “Pick a movie poster and do portraits in that style.” We both play Star Wars: The Old Republic so we decided to use our characters (and those of our guildmates) as subjects of the challenge.

We both (independently) chose Mafia movies. What can I say? It’s appropriate to the characters. He picked The Godfather (you can see his challenge work here); I went with first Goodfellas and then, since that’s actually an ensemble poster rather than individual, Scarface:

Continue reading →

Reference examples of Greek handwriting

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Crys

I’ve been doing transcription work on Ancient Lives, which “is a collaboration between a diverse collection of Oxford Papyrologists and Researchers, The Imaging Papyri Project, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project, the Egypt Exploration Society and” several other institutions (I assume the list changes or may be added to, given the way they’re listed). They’ve set up a brilliant plan where they’re crowdsourcing transcription and measurement of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. You register on the site and get access to high-quality images of the papyri, on which you can mark up letters and dimensions, which then go into their program collectively. Transcription by consensus! Fantastic! Continue reading →

“Love and Light” Knotwork – update 7

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Crys

Here’s a preview of how the knotwork will look, as I have it in my head now. Subject to change, of course:

With guides:

and without:

full-size detail:

“Love and Light” Knotwork – update 6

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Crys

The final step of preparation is making sure that it’s one line. Sometimes I skip this or intentionally use multiple ribbons, but given the theme of this piece I thought it most appropriate to adhere to the tradition of the single unbroken line.

I start in a corner and on its own layer, draw along the ribbon to see just how much of of it is already in the first ribbon:

There’s still a pretty substantial part open and the knot is rotationally symmetrical at this point so I consider two different colored ribbons instead of one. After all, that’s still in keeping with the theme of “Love.” So I start at the next corner to see what falls into the second ribbon: Continue reading →

“Love and Light” Knotwork – update 5

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Crys

Finished working out the subdivided lines:

The next step then is to start inking in the final knot lines themselves. I think I will stick with my usual hand-drawn approach to the lines instead of creating vector lines. I think it lends a different character to the piece. If I do that, I can use this subdivision working layer to start from, and just clean up some of the overlaps and joints on what I’ve already done.