moore-reel.com » Creative Expressions

Ambigram: Esther/Bud

jess — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:03:32 +0000

Esther and Bud are Walt’s wonderful parents. The ambigram above was composed November/December 2008 as part of their Christmas gift.

New Theme, yay!

jess — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:10:35 +0000

For the one or two people who were still bothering to check this blog, thanks for your dedication and I’m sorry I haven’t had anything new for you for a few months now. Summer’s kept me pretty busy with classes, work, and planning a move. I’ll try to be more diligent at posting stuff now, especially now that …

*drumroll please*

… I have a new theme! A big thank-you to my sweetie Walt, who took the time to create a beautiful design for this blog, after I lost my motivation to.

*big hugs for Walt — I love you honey!*

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Easter… Super Mario Style!

jess — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 03:14:07 +0000

Check out our uber-geeky Easter egg creations:

The first one. The theme exploded from here.

Walter… always trying to “1-up” me!

Turn an Egg Shell into a Koopa Shell in 3 easy steps.

GOOMBA!

It all started with Walter drawing a smiley face on an egg that had been dyed yellow. He then remarked that the eyes he drew sort of resembled those of one of the Mario characters, maybe Toad or somebody.

Of course, that was all it took for me to try to turn an egg into a Super Mario character.

I started with using a rubber band around the egg to mark the “dividing line” between red and white. Then I dripped candle wax on the shell to create the “spots” on the mushroom. The egg was then half-dunked in red dye until the desired color was obtained. Once dry, the wax was scraped off and the face was drawn on.

After doing three more eggs of various characters, we cheated a bit and “touched up” the white areas with Wite-Out before their photo session.

Walter/Jessica Ambigram

jess — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:11:57 +0000

My first ambigram, and my first attempt at re-creating it in Illustrator. I first tried my hand at ambigrams with our names a few months ago on a note card. That design was a little different than this one. Walter had scanned that original design into his computer and “outlined” the design with vectors in Illustrator, and it looked pretty good, but I wasn’t satisfied with the way the LT/SS looked. I’ve puzzled over it since then in my head, trying to come up with a decent workable solution.

I recently tweaked the design a bit on a notecard, and then used the “calligraphy brush” tool in Illustrator to try to recreate it in digital format. (Much easier than trying to scan it in and trace, especially since I never really do a “refined” sketch on paper… I’m not that good of an artist!)

I’m still not super happy with the LT-to-SS conversion. I fear the “T” might look more like an “L” than an “S” when it’s inverted, and I’m also worried that the entire “ss” design might not be very legible. Comments & ideas are appreciated!

Edit: Here’s the original sketched/scanned/traced design from a few months ago, for comparison: