Tony’s Illustration Technique!

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Some people around the office have asked me about how I make illustrations. I figured I’d break down my technique and show you all how you can go from a simple idea on a napkin, to a full-colored piece! One of my latest works will serve as an example. Everyone, meet Fuzzy Ferndale the dog!

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Yeah, I don’t pick the best names. But he was first conceived as a fuzzy Dr. Seuss-esque character on a napkin at a Denny’s. If I still had the napkin, you’d see it here. But I opened up photoshop and went to work with my drawing tablet. I sketched out several head shapes.

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Smiles, weird smiles, and even weirder beaks galore. I usually fill the digital canvas with a color to keep me in the mood to draw out the entire character. That’s why the background is a warm yellow. Even with all the awesome tryout sketches, I ultimately decided to go with something entirely different—a dog making a funny face. I started to sketch that out.

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Then I went in with a blue color for a more thorough sketch. Traditionally, blue is used for sketches because when photocopied, the blue wouldn’t show up. The final dark lines would be inked on top of the blue lines and when scanned, yields a beautiful result. Even though this is photoshop, I still use the blue method.

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I go in once more with more detail.

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Then I add the final lines. It looks great if I do say so myself!

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Now let’s add color for fun. I’d like to do a watercolor pattern. And voila! It’s complete! Here’s a little video compilation of the process.

I hope you learned a bit, and use this method to make some awesome illustrations of your own! Try it out, and post it as a comment under this blog!

Visual Data Infographics

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What does your business do? Why does the customer need it? Do they know that yet? Most importantly: Does your product/service need a simple, sharable, and visually awesome explanation? That’s where we come in, with infographics!

 

Infographics are used frequently all over the net. You’ve seen at least one. You can’t log into the internet without stepping across one. Maybe it was the awesome Batman one that was passed around twitter and Facebook for a couple of years now. That’s because it’s a great way to show data. It presents information in a beautiful, but purposeful and simple way. It serves two purposes—looks good and tricks you into learning. Those kind of go hand-in-hand.

 

Here’s an example of one of the many infographics we’ve produced for our clients.

There are four ingredients that make up any successful infographic. These are Data, Design, Why, and Shareability. If it’s missing one of these elements, it won’t reach much of any audience. Think of it as a table… a table of info. If you remove a leg, you’re not gonna have an amazing table. Each aspect is essential. So don’t go without these four things:

 

Data:

It’s he backbone of the infographic. The entire reason you need one created is so you can display your data in an easy and simple way. You want everyone to understand. Data without the rest of the elements is boring, and flat out invisible to everyone. Gather your findings and be ready to have them represented in a beautiful fashion!

 

Why:

Well, you’ve got your data all ready to be shared, but what for? Say you’re looking to educate people on your product or service. You’d state a problem, and the purpose of the infographic is to explain how and why your business is the solution. Here’s where you make yourself important; here’s where you deliver your message.

 

Design:

Here’s where you take your what and why from above and make sense of it. Design puts everything in order and educates the viewer. Several points are to be touched upon: the information must be displayed clean and simple, it must look great so as to encourage reading, and there must be purpose to it. Meaning, you display your info in a fun, simple and creative manner that shows you know what you’re talking about. Bring eyes to your data.

 

Shareability:

Okay, your infographic is almost complete! What’s left to do is load it up with links to you and your social media outlets. You must let the viewer know where this image is coming from. Which brings us to a big decision: where do you put it? Of course you’re going to put it on your twitter and facebook, but where else? SEO will help, and as long as this is floating around the internet, it’ll grab eyes and bring attention to your business. So proper placement is key. Besides creating the infographic for you, we here at MOS are also able to put it in the right places.

 

Get a hold of us, and let’s visualize your data together!

-The MOS Creative Team

Check out our other Tumblr!

Throwback Thursday: North Point Builders!

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Hello everyone! This Throwback Thursday, we want to show you a site we’ve created for North Point Builders.

We’ve come up with a slanted theme that’s prevalent throughout each page of the site.

Every aspect falls into this style.

Not only were we focused on keeping the same feel, but we also had fun with it. The navigation bar shows this.

Even the dropdown menus followed this slanted style

Notice how the Portfolio page keeps this up

We even implemented a map to show locations that this company has done work.

Like what you see? We here at MOS Creative can create an awesome site for you too. Ya’know, just ask!

-The MOS Creative Team

PS: check out our Tumblr!

Motion Graphics: Melding Graphic Design with Animation!

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Animation, it makes your marketing seem alive, vibrant and vivacious! There are many kinds and styles of animation ranging from stop-motion to cgi. But motion graphics convey a certain feeling. They’re as quick and informational as they are beautifully designed and animated.

Motion graphics are a great way to advertise yourself because of the simplistic, often minimalistic visuals. Here’s an example of our work that we’ve done:

Don’t forget to participate in the contest mentioned in the video! You’ve seen this style of animation everywhere; Motion Graphic is used frequently to this date. Most commercials, online tutorials, website ads, and more utilize this method. One of the best things about this style is it’s relatively quick to make, especially compared to a fully animated cartoon. With that being said, remember our animation post from before? With youtube being the 3rd most popular site on the web, it’s a good idea to get something on it to spread the word about your product/service/company! 200 million potential eyes on you? Sounds like a deal to me!

Remember, animation is able to do whatever you want, and is 100% editable. Motion graphics is no different! So perfecting an animated video for you is just one of the many things we at MOS Creative are proud to do for you. We’re graphic designers and animators. We see a production from conception to completion, all in-house! Pretty versatile if you ask me! Give us a shout and see what we’re about.

Let’s captivate your audience together. We want to help you stand OUT! (We’re awesome at it!)

Here’s 3 quick reasons why Motion Graphics might be perfect for you and your business:

1. Quicker turnaround than most methods of animation.
We can and want to do a Disney-esque animation for you! But you may not want to wait that long for a final product. We understand, you’ve got weeks, not years. Well, motion graphics doesn’t need to take so long to create! We can have a beautiful finished product to you, lickety-split!

2. It conveys your message in a simple, user-friendly manner.
One of the most useful aspects of Motion Graphics is the fact that it lays out everything in a visually-stimulating manner, while keeping it simple. It’s usually accompanied with a voiceover to help convey your message. Though just because most motion graphics are often minimalist, it doesn’t mean we can’t get crazy with it. Animation is limitless, and we LOVE challenges!

3. Infographics, the still version of Motion Graphics.
Infographics are a great way to explain yourself. They’re all the rage these days, and motion graphics are very similar! Essentially, motion graphics are the moving version of infographics! Both are visually enthralling, but Motion Graphics gives us a little bit of awesome added to the mix. Contact us for both!

Our jam is that we love helping you stand out. That’s just what we do, and we’re happy to do it for you. Get a hold of us and let’s see how we can set your motion graphics into… motion.

-The MOS Creative team.

 

PS: Check out our blog! Also, sorry for saying “jam”. It was dorky, but needed to be done. 

Why I Actually Loved My Summer Internship

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Last week, I asked Tony, our animator, if I could “get him coffee or anything” because he looked tired. When he refused, I stood on my chair and yelled:

“Hello? I’m the intern here! I haven’t done any intern-ly tasks all Summer. Where are the papers I should be filing? Why don’t I know your coffee preferences by now!?”

Ok, so I didn’t really stand on my chair, but did I realize that I’ve been interning here for 3 months now, and never had that “internship experience” that my friends complained about. I was immediately treated like a team member, never called an intern, and honestly, I forgot that I wasn’t on staff. I jumped right into projects that went directly to clients, and was never given busy work. Continue reading →

Responsive Web Design for Beginners

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Responsive Web Design ExampleAs web technology continues to evolve, so does the platform that we interact with it on. Now-a-days, clients want their websites to be compatible with a variety of devices, including iPhones, iPads, Kindles, HD TVs, desktop computers – you name it. And in five years, who knows how many more of these gadgets will be out there?

When a person visits a website from any one of these devices, they expect it to be easy to navigate and formatted in a way that makes sense. If not, they probably won’t waste their time on it scrolling around and will find another option. Losing website viewers (and potential customers!) for a reason as simple as this is a HUGE mistake for web developers. Yet at the same time, designing an entirely new website to specifically fit each device would take up an impractically large amount of your time. Trust us, we know how precious time is in the web design industry!

Don’t worry, there is a solution to this problem, and it’s called responsive web design. Responsive web design is the concept that a website’s design should adapt to fit the size and shape of the screen that it’s being viewed from. For example, when a person switches from viewing a site on their laptop to their iPhone, the site will automatically recognize this change in device and respond to the new preferences.

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What it takes to be Steve Jobs

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“Why join the navy when you can be a pirate?” Wiser words never uttered by a man more influential and responsible for single-handedly transforming the computing and mobile landscape.

Steve Jobs told us to be crazy. He told us he wanted to put a ding in the universe. He didn’t put a ding, but he sure left an Apple.

A single glance at the non-stop media coverage, and you’d think America’s greatest superhero finally befell to his kryptonite. #SteveJobs, #iSad and #ThankYouSteve rotate Twitter’s trending topics, and pictures of our generation’s Thomas Edison continue to flood Facebook’s news feeds.

But in no jest, he was a hero to millions, probably billions, of people he never met. He changed the way we think about and interact with the world. Every time you have to ask your kid a computer question, remember, he’s the reason.

Continue reading →