What a wonderful and creative year it has been here in the first official year of the H.MacDo Studio. I will be off and running in 2011, booming with great new projects ahead. But for now, it is time to settle down with family and loved ones to celebrate Christmas and welcome the New year in. Here's wishing every one a very Merry Christmas, good health and happiness for 2011!Merry Chirstmas from the H.MacDo Studio!!
What a wonderful and creative year it has been here in the first official year of the H.MacDo Studio. I will be off and running in 2011, booming with great new projects ahead. But for now, it is time to settle down with family and loved ones to celebrate Christmas and welcome the New year in. Here's wishing every one a very Merry Christmas, good health and happiness for 2011!
Catch Him If You Can! He's the Gingerbread Man...
What a better way to spend the chilly winter weekends here in New York this holiday season. We've already received our first snow! Just finished creating handmade holiday cards for all my family, friends and loved ones this year. BUT...there are a few left over and now available in my H.MacDo Paper Craft Etsy shop! Perhaps just in the nick of time? Catch him if you can!
Make Your Own Gingerbread Man: They Draw & Cook Holiday recipe series
click to enlarge
They Draw and Cook has been cooking up some new holiday inspired recipes this month and here is some new artwork that I submitted to the site recently.
Each day in December, They Draw and Cook together with the Food Network is featuring 10 artists per day and their holiday inspired recipes on their web site: www.theydrawandcook.com
Hark the Herald
Found myself with some delicious little free time on this rainy afternoon and looking at the date, officially cued Pandora with my favorite holiday musical selections (Billie Holiday "holiday" & Vince Guaraldi Trio) while collecting supplies for this year's Christmas crafty treats! Oh, what I have in store for my dearest friends and family! I'm very excited about some of the creative projects I've been working on this season and looking forward to sharing them in the weeks to come. Happy Holidays are here!
Happy Thanksgiving!
They Draw and Cook
New works for Fall 2010 solo exhibition @ Verlaine, nyc
h.macdo on: ArtSlant.com
Exciting news! Over the past few months, I have been working on a new body of large-scale illustrations that will be showing at Verlaine on the Lower East Side this coming month of November... I just ordered my postcards...more details and photos to follow!
Flora & Romantic Country
The Summer of love continued this week as I got into the full swing of a lovely wedding illustration project. Beginning to lay down some paint to further define a few areas as I go. I have a 25inx35in piece of Archer's watercolor paper stretched out over a huge piece of wood so that I can paint in peace with out having to worry about buckling and warping. I also love to work with a set of water soluble colored-pencils.
Flowers and romantic country music have been the driving inspiration for me this week. Yes, country music. While I was home visiting my family in Virginia this past weekend, I grabbed a few of my Dad's albums and to my great surprise can not get enough of a Alison Krauss & Union Station album called, New Favorite. Just plain gorgeous blend of country, folk and bluegrass, putting me in the right mind-set for creating this whimsical out-doorsy lake scene. And then... hey, look the H. MacDo Studio finally got some strawberries this week too!
Summer of Love 2010: A Wedding Illustration
The summer of love is in full effect! Preliminary sketches for a new illustration have begun.
This poster sized illustration is a personal commission for a good friend's wedding taking place in their favorite summer retreat of Lake George, NY, later this month.
Local animation for Chicago @ OpenChime.com
Summer 2010 has been a creative and productive time for the H.MacDo Studio and I am proud to announce a brand new animated spot just completed for the launch of OpenChime.com.
Working directly with the client, the 45 second script was written and edited by the fine folks at OpenChime and then designed, illustrated and animated by me in the H.MacDo Studio using hand-drawn elements and frame-by-frame animation in Flash and AfterEffects.
OpenChime.com is a new local business directory for the Chicago area. If you live in Chicago, OpenChime connects you to local services such as wedding photographers, catering, moving services and the like. You simply tell them what you need and when you need it, OpenChime quickly collects provider's information and quotes based on your request and your appointment is just a click away! OpenChime is only available in Chicago at this time, but if it catches on, could be offered in more locations in the near future. Go to the site and let them know you want OpenChime in your city!!
Also, check out the link Chime for Charity, and learn about how OpenChime is also offering a way for local charitable organizations to run fundraisers through the OpenChime network.
Preliminary sketches for OpenChime
OpenChime rough storyboard thumbnailsFor the love of WordPress!
I'm probably a little late to the party on this one, but look out blogspot...I just fell in love with WordPress! A few months back Genevieve Gorder of the HGTV series Design Star and Dear Genevieve contacted me about creating a unique travel site for her own design firm GG Studio. Ever the progressive media talent, Genevieve was searching for a way to reach and interact with her audience through other mediums in addition to television. Along came WordPress. From a web design and developer prospective Wordpress gave us every thing we needed. A snap to install, it allows for the flexibility and full control over design and layout with all the ability to build a dynamic site that will let visitors share and interact with Gen in a way that she could not do through television alone. What I enjoy about Wordpress is that you can customize every little thing. You can choose a theme that some one else has already developed or if you're more comfortable with CSS and PHP (as I am) you can build your very own theme from scratch based on the whims of your client. Then, you create your pages and "widget ready" areas allowing dynamic buttons (widgets) and plugins, to further increase functionality to the site. Now my client has a brand new web site that not only looks exactly the way she wants but will never stay static as one pretty page. It is now a vehicle, a fully functional tool that she can use to express herself, hear from her audience and continue to build relationships with on a new level.
This month Genevieve and her awesome assistant designer Jessica are traveling to Norway to explore the roots of her family heritage and gather new design inspiration. To read more go to: www.genevievegorderhome.com
Set me freelance.com logo development continued...
This is the final logo design on the Coming Soon page. We ultimately agreed that the characters should look a little more universal and office friendly. Right now the site is going to be developed for the New York City freelance network, but eventually will be used for other cities as well and we didn't want to pigeon-hole our look to New York alone. Coming soon setmefreelance.com is set to launch in the coming months!
click to enlarge imagesWhile designing the initial logo for setmefreelance.com, there was a lot of fun to be had with the supporting creative elements during which the logo went through a couple phases. We all put our heads together to try and develop a group of characters that would best represent the freelance professional and it brought around a good conversation... How should these ruffian creative types look? The first visual that popped into my head was the image of every day young people I used to see on the NY subway system in the early mornings commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The hipsters! Oh what fun I had drawing up this cast of characters and we laughed and laughed. Then they were like, no but seriously... how should they look?
click to enlarge imagesSet me Free!
This is the beginning launch of a brand new web development and creative branding project I have been working on for quite a few weeks and excited to share with you now. Coming soon setmefreelance.com, a concept created by Ali Mansfield and Brad Yankus will be a social networking site designed to help freelance artists and creative professionals stay in touch with employers and entertainment producers in the NYC area. Working closely with a great set of talented people, I wanted to start building some hype around their idea by designing a unique and young graphics package advertising setmefreelance.com as the go-to place "where creative professionals connect".
oooooo eeeeee... what's up with that?
Working like crazy these past few weeks and haven't been posting much here as a result. Not to worry though, I've got some fun stuff coming up! Thought I'd post a sneak peek into one of the next projects about to launch this Spring. What the devil is this gonna be? It looks very mysterious indeed...
In other news, I've begun working on a new project with Interior Designer, Genevieve Gorder of the HGTV's series Dear Genevieve.
"Fresh Delivery" for Plumtv.com
So this has been a really great week here at the H.macdo Studio. I've just completed a new spring promo for Plumtv.com in NYC. This was an incredibly fun project and client to work with. I'm happy to see it come into full fruition as Spring is certainly in full bloom this week! Stay tuned as I am excited to be working on several really cool new projects and commissions for later this Spring and Summer.
H.macdo Animation & Illustration Studio presents a brand new Spring 2010 motion graphics promo spot for client: Plumtv.com in New York City. All design elements, artwork, original concept development and animation created by H.macdo Animation & Illustration Studio for Plumtv.com. Original logo created by Plumtv.com
Tools used: Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, AfterEffects and Flash.
Music credit: audio track is "Fresh Delivery" off the Plumtv audiosocket library. The authors are Captain Planet off the Bastard Jazz Sync Disc 2.
Plumtv
Here are some AfterEffect stills from the Plum spot I have been working on this week. Not going to post animation just yet as I am working with the client now to wrap final details and notes. I'm also trying to find the appropriate music today. I want some thing electronica with a world beat vibe and some thing that I won't have copyright issues with. It's a tough one. It's truly shaping up nicely. I can't wait to share!
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