» OFFF Remix , January 8th, 2006

This past May I was asked to produce some artwork for the OFFF.ws festival in Barcelona, Spain. I thought I would try to show some of the process of how some of the elements got created for the artwork.

Some of my favorite books are on maps and geography. The following map assets are actually from old Civil War maps. “Historical Maps of Civil War Battlefields” by Michael Sharpe and “The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War” by U.S. War Dept., Major George B. Davis, Leslie J. Perry, Joseph W. Kirkley, Calvin D. Cowles (Compiler).

I would simply run through the pages and draw forms and shapes from rivers, roads, marches, bunkers, fields, brush, forts, fences, etc.

OFFF remix
OFFF remix
OFFF remix

Then I would take all of these separate Illustrator files and compile them into 1 single master file.

OFFF remix

Then using a limited palette of colors placed into an array - I could program a system to color, scale, rotate and position individual assets based on some basic rule sets.

OFFF remix

Then after several random rips… I spend days moving, deleting, adding, and reworking some of the random compositions to keep the balance and flow of the assets into something that my eyes and brain accept as a harmonious vibration.

OFFF remix
OFFF remix

In the end, this whole process might only make up a small portion of the imagery used in the final artwork. Yet when you’re sitting on thousands upon thousands of Illustrator files with this process applied to them, a final process of remixing and collaging several files together to make the final composition for me is exciting.

OFFF remix

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9 Responses to “ OFFF Remix ”
  1. Max said, on March 5th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    I especially enjoy the preliminary black and white “sketches”. Gorgeous.

  2. David said, on November 23rd, 2006 at 4:35 pm

    This is outstanding! I like the process of you making these awesome animations. It’s like combination of technology plus artistry. It’s nice to see how you did it, although kinda complex. But very fullfilling right? Keep up the good job!

  3. Joshua Davis said, on November 12th, 2006 at 10:05 pm

    hey phil - jump into “May 11, 2006 - OFFF Showroom” and scroll down to a comment where I post a sample file for anybody to check out.

  4. Phil said, on November 12th, 2006 at 7:55 pm

    How complex are your rules in Flash? What is the process in flash? Ive been making some random dupMC with alphas etc and have always been curious? Im guessing you prob already know about the alpha script you can ad in Illustrator?

  5. James Eilers said, on October 23rd, 2006 at 7:37 am

    Thanks, thats what I figured you did, but I just wanted to check to see if you had figured out another way.

  6. Joshua Davis said, on October 23rd, 2006 at 7:25 am

    thanks Olivier.

    James… PDF Postscript doesn’t understand Alpha or gradients. so they are applied manually within illustrator.

    Alpha’s no problem because you can use “Select”, “Same” fill color, stroke color, stroke weight, etc. to find vectors and apply alpha to several blocks. Which I do quite often with my Black Strokes - I also use this trick to bring my hairlines which get ripped to .24 stroke in Illustrator to bump up to a stroke of 1 for better printing.

    Gradients (circle glows) I just manually add to the artwork using circles with gradient opacity masks.

  7. Olivier said, on October 23rd, 2006 at 2:01 am

    I think they are added later on in illustrator as the print to file trick does not support alpha channels which is a real shame…

  8. James Eilers said, on October 22nd, 2006 at 2:01 pm

    It’s great to see your creative process and how you develope your compositions. One question though, how do you deal with gradients? I’ve noticed that when you export the vecotors using Save as PDF postscript that the alpha values are not carried over.

  9. Olivier said, on October 22nd, 2006 at 12:24 pm

    O U T S T A N D I N G :)