Bats in the belfry

Posted January 9th, 2010 by Kimberly Dowd

The work situation is lightning up a bit. We’re not publishing as many special sections anymore (a good call, imo) so there are fewer campaigns for me to schedule and that gives me more time to do better work on the rest of the things I have to do. Like making banner ads.

While I don’t have any formal background in banner ad design, it’s been part of my job for the last 10 years. I’d like to think I’ve improved greatly over that time.

Yesteday I got a request to build six (!) banners for a local fuel company. One of the banners is to “have a fuel truck pulling or towing a metal tank or container” across it. I couldn’t find any stock images of a fuel truck, so I decided to create one in Photoshop instead.

If this truck could be ANY cuter, Hello Kitty would be driving it. I deleted the logo because the customer hasn’t seen it yet.

Every Friday night, WM and I watch Lar deSouza (artist for “Least I Could Do” and “Looking For Group“) draw live on uStream. And I swear up and down watching him use Photoshop every week has made such a difference in how I use Photoshop in my daily work!

Something I’ve learned: Use highlights and gradients to create roundness and shadows to create depth. I can’t just tack a wheel on top of a truck, because the wheel actually resides inside a wheel well. That simple smudged “shadow” on the ground puts the truck on the ground instead of floating in mid air.

***

Dream: There is a bat in the apartment. It hides in closets and tries to pluck out my eyes. Nobody will help us get rid of the bat, as it is part of a big MTV Punked-type reality show that’s filming my abject terror.

Today’s weight: 177.8
Weight change: -2.6

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