14 Mar
   Filed Under: Drawing, Personal   

In the category of ‘mobile computing that never made it’ and ‘things the iPad utterly killed’, the UMPC is (was?) a term for very small PCs that can do everything your average laptop or desktop can, but in a small form factor. Since PC makers figured the small size and ‘cutting edge’ technologies they put in them (200+ DPI screens, fingerprint readers, 3G) demanded a premium, UMPCs were often a $1200+ market, which also explains why they never caught on.

Now that the smoke on the mobile computing battlefield has cleared, though, one can pick through the remnants and find a good deal on what is interesting technology. It’s easy to be discouraged by all the lemons and genuinely weird micro-PCs, but I’ve also found a little gem in there. And that bulky, funny looking gem is the Vaio UX.

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22 Sep
   Filed Under: Commercial Work, Drawing   

It’s no secret to my Twitter followers that I’ve been very involved in games for the last few years, and I’m happy to announce that a part of my working time goes to UI and concept design for a game company. Apart from a lot of fancy interfaces (yay, holograms) I’ve been doing environments for an upcoming science fiction game, and I’m very excited with one I’ve come up with and was allowed to share: the Captive Planet.

captiveplanet

The Captive Planet is a planet rich in natural resources, a valuable asset in any star system that’s just begging to have its riches extracted. Appearance-wise, it’s somewhat similar to Mars, but with its denser atmosphere and extremely hot temperatures, that’s about the only similarity they have. It’s mined by Hephaestus, a ‘wall’ that spans the entire circumference of the planet, and contracts into itself as it scrapes layer after layer off the surface of the planet, leaving behind little more than dust. Hephaestus is a crawling city, inhabited by miners and their families.

thewall

In the game, the player gets stranded on the Captive Planet at some point and is presented the harsh realities of living in ‘the Wall’ and choices that will determine the future of the planet and its inhabitants. I’m having lots of fun with this assignment, and I hope to keep you guys in the loop with several other very cool environments and designs I’m creating.

02 Aug
   Filed Under: Commercial Work, Drawing   

I did this cover design for Sun Tzu’s ‘the Art of War’ eBook in Classics. It was done quite a while back, when I was just starting to use my Cintiq, but just recently the 1.3 update for Classics hit iPhones and iPods with a the latest bunch of new books.

art-of-war

I’ve never really had the time to spend a week on a painting, so this, too, is one in a series of speed paints. But it was my first actual ‘commercial’ painted work on my tablet. These days, I’m spending a lot more work on design work for games for iPhone and other platforms, and I’ve actually been using my tablet a whole lot. Painting is very different from my usual approach to designing, which involves making vector shape layers for everything. I’m far from actually painting for a living, but I can recommend designers to try doing more ‘free’ artwork design as well every now and then.

Quite a fun departure from my usual work: I’ll be able to show off a lot of cool stuff in September! Also, this month I will resume my regular posting schedule, including releasing a few more wallpapers and icons.

01 Jun
   Filed Under: Announcement, Design, Drawing, Personal Work   

It’s official: I never had as much giggles in an evening designing this poster for Cocoaheads WWDC. Scott asked me if I’d like to speak at the well-known Mac developer event, and I happily obliged. I also did a bit of poster art for the presentation screen and for, well, fun.

cocoaheadswwdc

The lineup of speakers:

It’ll be held Wednesday June 10th, 7-9PM, at the Stockton St. Apple Store in San Francisco.

I’m really looking forward to WWDC this year. Hope to see you all at Cocoaheads or elsewhere during the week!

And yes, those are little Xcode hammers in the smoke.

09 May
   Filed Under: Drawing, Personal Work   

As I mentioned in my Pokémon brands post, sometimes the strangest ideas hit you, and given their perceived coolness, they stick in your mental lists of weird things you should indulge in as a designer. Ever since I got my Airport Express and took it out of the box, I thought it resembled a robot head. A cyclops robot head, perhaps, but a robot head nevertheless. After that, I couldn’t stop thinking of the ways my hardware tools could come to life in robot form. I did a few speedpaints to see how that would look.

airpot

I know, I know, I totally promised to update weekly or at least biweekly on my tablet progress, but life’s not always easy that way. Right now, I’ll try to do something monthly, because it’s a lot of fun to do.

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17 Feb
   Filed Under: Drawing, Personal Work   

As promised in my last post, I’m reporting on my progress of picking up drawing and painting again with a Wacom Cintiq. A selection of speedpaints this week, with a lot of landscape exercises and one teaser of my first real client ‘painting’ work!

I haven’t really settled on a format for these weekly updates yet, so please do leave feedback on what I should and shouldn’t post. I’ve excluded most of my sketches and doodles. Techniques from painters or wanna-be-painters are of course, also welcome. For these speedpaints, no reference of any sort was used, except for the Portal speedpaint.

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