I’ve done a lot of illustration in the past. That got put aside when I was hired as in-house designer at Thompson Publishing. I’ve been meaning to dig through my files and add more work to the website, but suddenly have been more busy. Folders of my work have been sitting on the drawing table, waiting. Today all my jobs are in waiting mode so I had a moment to upload some illustration to the portfolio page of the website. Here’s one I’ll post here.

I was working for Legal Times newspaper in Washington, DC, pasting up their advertising section, when they needed an illustrator for this new series.

Illustration for Legal Times newspaper

That’s it. Done. Never to return. The special $500 website deal has been taken!
But don’t despair! There’s a new deal. You can get a 3-page website, designed, worked out, uploaded to a web host, by Yellow Dot Designs, for $700!

The new deal is: a 3-page website for $700.

Call me today at 703 328-8046, before it goes!

You can see the golfball animated ad, up and in motion on the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce’s website:

www.alexchamber.com

Animated features include zooming in from the side,  a spin, size change, translucence, and rotation.

Here is the new animated golf ball ad. Too bad it doesn’t show up in here and you have to click on the link. When you click on the link below, it opens the animation in your web browser. Unfortunately way too big, so it will look pixelated. If you size your browser window down, it will look better.

Golf-ball-ad

The July newsletter is done and it looks great! It was printed full color by AlphaGraphics in Alexandria. See Jay – they have pretty good capabilities. If you want one,  send me an email, ellen@yellowdotdesigns.com with your address and I’ll mail you one. If you want the email version, send me your email address.

So for our Summer trip, we just went to San Diego for great fireworks, and on to Portland, Oregon, where apparently everyone is a grungy hippy, and has tattoos on their arms. We discovered Voodoo Donuts there, with all the super cool flavors. Which was pretty good, except for the attitude of the guy, who was not having a good day. Also, freshness on the doughnuts was spotty. I think they need better freshness control.

Visited their Science museum, which has a great display about Indians and early maps of the US. And saw the great lightrail system, which was great, except for the many smelly, cursing, alcoholic drifters who frequented it.

I created this illustration for the July newsletter (which should be out soon). I decided to save each version as I worked on it, to  make an animation of its evolution. I started out with an ink drawing and added color with computer tools. Let ’s see if I can get it posted here… Well apparently it only shows the link. So, you can click on this link, or, it’s also posted on the front page of this Yellow Dot Designs website. (See link to right) The inspiration for this came from the closing movie graphics from “Sherlock Holmes”. Some movies have really great animated graphics at the credits or at the beginning of movies.

Sunglasses-Illustration

I am working on 2 illustrations… of my face…

Well, one is a trial animation, to see what sort of expressions I can make my face do, based on a series of photographs. When I have something good, I’ll post it.

The second is a drawing combined with computer tools, for the July newsletter. This one will be animated too, showing the progression of the illustration. At least that’s the plan. Got inspired by the graphics at the end of the movie ‘Sherlock Holmes.’

Interesting! 47 people have visited this blog, so far! I put out the message on facebook and linked in, so they may have come from there. But only a few commented.  Shows that if you put info out there, there will be eyeballs. Especially if you let people know about it.

So, the latest thing is that I’m working on is an animation of my face! Andrew wouldn’t let me use his, so I’m stuck with mine. I could probably use a celebrity, but seems so cliche’d.  I’ve cut my face up into different segments, and will pull them around and see what kind of funny faces I can make me make!

Other latest thing, well the city of Alexandria is in the midst of its grand new “waterfront plan”.  So all the various groups are having their say. There are a lot of derelict warehouses south of King st, and parking lots, so there’s a massive plan afoot to renew and improve.  We in the Archeology Commission are asking that the city make sure that history is represented. Which is a very difficult thing to do, and my guess is, it will come down to the architects, eventually. What I’m saying is that we don’t need more pseudo-historic, forced brick facades. Modern is OK, and can make the old stand out to its benefit. The problem with making something LOOK old, is then you can’t tell the old from the new. Also, there are so many wonderful materials out there, we should allow professional trained architects make a few decisions themselves, for once, whether it should be brick, glass, granite or whatever.

The website for my networking group is up! It’s at www.otacnetworking.com. Very excited. Solution Works, LLC, or Michael, who is also in the group, is hosting the site and providing the functionality. Michael is our IT specialist. When we  have our event/party later in the year, he’ll be able to have an online sign-up  sheet. 
The OTAC logo was also created by Yellow Dot Designs. If you click on the image, it’ll actually take you to the website.



It turns out, one way to add a blog to your site is to have it actually as a separate web page, as this one is. It’s been designed and formatted by someone at Wordpress, and I can do some tweaking of the way it looks, but it’s limited. I’ve set this one up so that it opens in its own window. That way the Yellow Dot website still stays open on your computer. Also, there’s a link back to the Yellow Dot site, that I put in the sidebar of this blog page – or at least it’s supposed to be there!