Pink Laughter Designs Blog

This was created in Ilustrator CS3. I decided to create a cute little panda bear holding his beloved stalk of bamboo while he gazes upon the viewer with a curious expression but sweet expression.

This illustration would be very ideal in a recreational room or a quirkily-themed bathroom as decor on the wall.

Twilight Cafe is a menu and restaurant concept that was inspired by futuristic themes and motifs of the 50s as well as stylizations from the cartoon The Jetsons. Boomerang shapes, things relating to outer space, colors blue, pink, red and green, the future, exploration and modernism were heavy themes that shaped the design output during the 50s and the early part of the 60s. I decided to first create a menu design using these ideas. I wanted the menu to be playful, intriguing, reflective of the look and feel I was going for and interactive to some degree. The prices and selections of the menu items had to represent the time period and style. Prices were of course going to be much lower. For example, a burger might be 50 cents or a sundae might be a nickel rather than what the prices are today. A restaurant such as this would offer traditional American foods that would fit into the theme.

I discovered during my research that it was common for many restaurants during the 50s to offer juices and fruit selections as appetizers. Today these items are normally sold as side orders or placed within the beverage or dessert menu so it would look rather unusual to see juices offered as starters now. These two pieces are vector illustrations and were created entirely in Illustrator. I also created a tangible copy of the menu. I printed out the layout for the menu, had it assembled, laminated and presented as a real menu that a restaurant would actually use.

As with all of my other business and advertisement concepts, this one is themed very specifically. If money were no issue, I’d definitely establish a club called Club Worship in a hot spot or location. The flyer presents Worship as a themed night for a fictitious club called Club Panorama but Club Worship would be an offshoot of that club…so it would be an addition to that franchise.

Club Worship would be based on a solar theme. The club’s interior would be a mix of oranges, yellows and orange-reds, but mostly the latter two hues. The walls would be glazed to give a candy-like appearance and there would be lots of sun motifs and decorative references about the entire interior space. The club’s style would be lush, warm, sophisticated, inviting, and hip with a very intoxicating setting.

The club would showcase bands, spoken word poetry, storytelling nights and eccentric but funny stand-up comics. Bar would be full while featuring an assortment of special house cocktail drinks and there would be a kitchen serving tasty and decadent foods at the honey-colored cushioned tables and chair sets made with blond wood arranged around the various floor sections in different lounge areas (including the sun deck and patio spots).

This flyer is a fictitious advertisement for this club concept created in illustrator and taken into Photoshop for depth. The female character is dazed and possessed by the glowing and dazzling lights around her and especially above her head.

Originally the design for this piece was for a class project in a design advertisement and marketing class that I was taking. The objective was to come up with a word and associate and image with it to not only create a statement but to also highlight another word within the original word. I chose the word worship…focused on HIP in worship and decided that the female character that I’d illustrate around the word selection would be designed right within the word “hip” around her hip area.

The implication was of a woman obsessed with being beautiful, being hip, “in”, “popular” and accepted. Her eyes were to be glazed over, completely showing white, and she’d be looking upward in a complete haze totally worshiping the idea of beauty and fame…the limelight (represented by the sun)…all the while holding a sweet lollipop which represents innocence, yearning and craving.

This was created in Flash. Last year around mid-summer, I began working in Flash for illustrative pieces. This was a different process because I primarily use Illustrator (in accompaniment with Photoshop) to create most of my pieces.

Flash has its advantages as an illustrative tool because if you are setting up art work or art assets for Flash animations for games, characterization and shorts, the native files are smaller and remain vectorized rather than larger imported bitmap images.

The objective was to create a Halloween themed scene. The first thing I thought about was a nocturnal haunted house illustration but I wanted the house to look spooky in a quirky, off-beat and playful manner. I also thought about making the house look like gnomes or pygmy-sized being lived in it…hence the proportion of the fencing and tree around the house and the size of the house are off-kilter.

(Remember to Click on Images to Enlarge)

The Land of Xroi is a game concept…as well as a story idea. I am going to develop it further in the future along with all of my other game ideas. The game is kind of difficult to describe because the static view is so abstract. It would incorporate some functions of a pinball, time management and arcade game.

The object of the game would be for the guided rabbit-looking character with a face-eater belly to traverse through landscapes picking up and eating as many egg orbs as possible without getting deterred by random taunting and trickster-like creatures and objects in the game that would try to block him and/or take away the egg orbs before he reaches them. The more egg orbs collected, the higher the score and the more special abilities the character can unlock to help him in his quest.

The music of the game would be as quirky as the graphics and background images. Think Katamari Damacy in some respects.

As a veteran gamer since the inception of Atari 2600 and the mid-life of Intellivision, I am passionate about anything involving game design and gameplay. I’d love to develop one of my game concepts into blueprint prototype stage and perhaps after researching on protecting my work, network with various developers to see if I can spark a deal. That’s definitely on my list of to-do’s. I am interested in games for the casual games market as well as for consoles and handhelds.

This design will be also refined as I think of more ideas. It was developed in Illustrator and then taken into Photoshop. However I enjoy using feathering in Illustrator for creating the look of painteresque highlights and shadows on objects and scenes. I find that with this feature, you can do work that looks as if it was either created in Photoshop or involved using gradient meshes in Illustrator (without using gradients).