Last week I posted the Designious 5 Free Vector Pack Giveaway and today I’m happy to announce the winners! There was tons of great comments, but only five were chosen. Look below to see if you are one of the winners! If you are, I will be contacting you shortly. Even if you did not win, check out some of the great Designious Royalty Free Vector Packs!

Winners

• Sarms
• Chris OB
• Aaron Harlow
• Agnieszka
• Ian

Thanks to everyone for contributing in this giveaway & congratulations to winners.

The first time I saw artwork by Aidan Hughes, I was in the local record store (Back when you still purchased CDs) and came across an album by KMFDM. I studied the artwork. I loved the dynamic black, white and red illustrations. It was one of my first inspirations into exploring illustration. Aidan, a experienced illustrator, provided an interview for Vectips with Illustrator, style and industry insights.

About Aidan Hughes

Aidan Hughes is a commercial artist, born in 1956 in Merseyside, England. In the 1980s, Hughes published a pulp-style magazine called BRUTE! which earned him notoriety as well as becoming an occasional pseudonym for Hughes. Aidan Hughes is well known for creating most of the album covers for the industrial band KMFDM. Two of KMFDM’s music videos (”A Drug Against War,” “Son of a Gun”) were animated versions of Hughes’s artwork. His other work has included outdoor murals, including the 75 meter mural in Barga Italy during 2003 which has since been covered over with an earth bank; and a wide variety of CD sleeves, computer games, clothing, furniture, storyboards, logos, tattoos and other multimedia.

Aidan Hughes Around the Web

View Aidan’s art, buy prints, and more.

• Bruteprop.com: Check out some of Aidan’s artwork.
• Wikipedia: Aidan on Wikipedia

Interview

Hey Aidan, thanks for taking the time to provide Vectips with an Interview! To start, could you tell us about your design and illustrating background and what made you become a designer and illustrator?

I’ve no design or graphic training as such, not even art school. My father was a painter and I learned what I know of lighting and perspective from him. He also filled the house with books on architecture, transportation and the human figure which I pored over a a kid. He taught me a lot of tricks. When I first left school, I’d wanted to become a printer, lured by the smell of ink and the big press. But I went into the fashion business for a couple of years before starting to design and illustrate on my own. I started mostly with things like portraits and business cards and then went into self-publishing my own short stories and comics. Since then, I’ve designed CD sleeves, computer games, clothing, furniture and created storyboards, logos and tattoos as well as the art and video stuff.

How has working in the music industry influence you artwork.

No more than any other client who knows what they want. The only ways one client differs from another is the speed with which they pay and/ or get back to you.

Where do you pull inspiration from and why?

Back in the day, it was from TV, magazines, drugs, socializing, listening to people talk, looking at cars and posters and digging other people’s work in the glossies. Now, of course, I get asked to design something specific and I’m on Google Images straight away. I used to have a library, loaded with dusty old art books and movie magazines, which I used for inspiration and research. No longer necessary. Working in advertising helps you think up things quickly and I normally will have three or four rough ideas sketched out for the client by then of the day or sooner, if need be. So I need to know quickly where to go to get the images needed for the job without having to flip through endless hard copy. When I was working for a company in Seattle, I once inked 250 pictures in a week and had to learn to draw using my other hand.

What is your favorite and least favorite thing about the design and illustrating industry?

(Least favorite) The money. It doesn’t seem to have gone up much in the last couple of years and I’m sometimes struggling to get some companies to commit to even those prices. In 1985, I was getting £4-5000 an illustration. Now, I’m getting paid the same to do two or three.

(Favorite) The money. And the chance to have your stuff published in some thick glossy book that smells of ink.

Could you describe your typical workflow for an illustration?

The client normally has a few ideas or specifications that they want included in the illustration so we email each other a few times before I work on a few roughs. These are a mixture of marker sketches and Photoshop filtered backgrounds that I put together and they either pick one or they want to mix elements of each. If the latter, I’ll swap layers, move things around and render a new version. If it’s OK, I consider that a ‘green light’. I then pencil and ink out the different layers, scan the black and white art into Photoshop (I normally only use things like Cut-out and Poster Edges) before vector tracing it in Illustrator. After making a rough trace, I’ll then tweak anchor points and work on it with Brushes to get the corners nice and tight. That’s about it. My stuff is pretty basic so I’ve been using the same techniques for years.

When did you transition into working with Illustrator for some of your pieces? Was it an easy transition?

I remember this guy from the art department watching me work. He asked me why I wasn’t working in Illustrator (this was back in 1995/6 and I hadn’t even got my head around Pshop yet). He explained to me the concept but I still really hadn’t opened it up until years later when I was working on a poster for an exhibition. It was amazing. No more messy pixels! Clean and pure, just like I’d always wanted to work. I even started to dream in vectors and I started to see anchor points on the corners of everything because I was working so much on it. I’d spend hours experimenting with fractal shapes for my cloud formations using the Transform All and Roughen tools. However, some clients complained that my work was getting too clean and minimal, saying my stuff had lost its edge and was looking more and more like logo design. So, I had to balance that with a more illustrative, hand-drawn look, which is what I do now.

What are some of the pros and cons of working in Illustrator for you?

I miss Metacreations Vector Distort. Why did Adobe they buy it and then delete it? Plus, I miss the Graphic Pen feature of Illustrator 8. Outside of that, I love Illustrator. To me, an Illustrator file is more important than a painting. I love its purity and starkness. Painting is messy and uncontrollable. I’m like a big kid with my pen and tablet, especially if its an image using text. I guess the magazine I did years ago, BRUTE!, would have looked a lot different if I’d had Illustrator back then.

What is your favorite Illustrator Tool and why?

That’s a hard one but I’d have to go for Scatter Brush, because I use it for spikes and architectural detailing. When I think of the years I spent drawing every window in a street scene…

What aspects, if any, of your designs and illustrations reflects parts of your personality?

One of the best and worst aspects of my job is that I rarely get asked to do things outside my stylistic range and that freedom enables me to explore the different sides of my personality, such as pictures of the countryside or of animals. The shapes of cars, buildings, weapons and women appeal to me more than hills and valleys (although, intrinsically, they are the same curves). There’s a lot of sexual tension in my work, I’ve been told, but I’m more interested in shapes and how to compose them: the curve of a car bumper or a woman’s hip, the glossy cylindricality of a gun barrel or megaphone, the flare of images in perspective. Cities appeal to me in many ways and the dynamic lines are important to the speed of the image. I have done some work outside of these themes but I rarely stray from what I do best.

What are you favorite sources of inspiration?

Retro-futurist designers like Norman Bel Geddes and Alberto Saint E’lia, Russian Constructivist graphics, Communist propaganda posters of the 20’s, pulp paperback covers from the 1940’s-50’s, movie posters, 1960’s Space Race art from the USSR, the woodcuts of Lynd Ward and Frans Masereel, artists Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby of Marvel Comics fame, Kasimir Malevich, Alexandr Rodchenko, El Lissitsky etc. I also like the pin-ups girls of Elvgren and the paintings of John Martin. However, I would say that I derive 90% of my inspiration from the movies and having the ability to freeze frame certain scenes from a film is very useful indeed in creating my work..

Thanks again for the interview! Is there advice any that you could give for aspiring and professional illustrators and designer?

Get yourself an agent.

Designious is giving five free Vector Packs to five Vectips readers! It is easy to participate and these Vector Packs are essential tools for any designer. Moreover, Designious Royalty Free Vector Packs are full of vector wings, patterns, skulls, scrolls, buildings, florals, halftone elements, grunge elements and more! These are great for designing t-shirts, websites, print collateral and more.

How You Win

All you have to do is leave a comment on how you will use the Vector Pack if you win one! I’ll select the five most creative and compelling comments. Winners will be notified via email, so you MUST enter an email address while commenting.

The contest will run until the end of Monday November 3, 2008 and I will announce the winners on Wednesday November 5, 2008 ( I’m going to wait to announce the winners until after the US presidential elections, because some might be busy voting or watching voting coverage).

What You Will Get

If you win, you can choose one of  the Simple Vector Packs (not the Mega or Giga packs) from Designious.

About Designious

Designious is a design studio that creates great vector illustrations and design elements. All their work is hand draw and most of all is original. Their studio creates designs for web, print and apparel like t-shirt templates. To create their designs, They use professional Wacom Graphic Tablets and Adobe Illustrator. Every piece of work is vectorial.

Chirs Leavens is an amazing vector artist who produces most of his art, from start to finish, in Illustrator CS3. This includes all the fantastic textures and tones in his illustrations. Chris’s art incorporates absurdity, anthropomorphism, and a healthy dose of humor. Chris was kind enough to provide Vectips with an interview with insights on his style, Illustrator, and the design and illustration industry!

About Chris Leavens

Born in Pennsylvania, Chris graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Film and Video. A few months after graduating, Chris moved west to Los Angeles to work on commercials, television, motion pictures, and his directorial debut, I Don’t Know Jack, a feature documentary about Jack Nance, star of David Lynch’s Eraserhead.

Chris decided to take a break from the film biz and began working as an illustrator, graphic designer, and web designer, focusing primarily on educational material for children. This “break” has more than outlived Chris’s Hollywood career and continues to this day.

Chris Leavens Around the Web

View Chris’s art, buy print, and more.

• Chris’s Portfolio: Check out some of Chris’s artwork.
• Uloosen: Chris’s blog.
• Imagekind: Buy print of Chris’s artwork.
• Flickr: Chris’s Flikr account.

Interview

Hey Chris, thanks for taking the time to provide Vectips with an Interview! To start, Could you tell us about your design and illustrating background and what made you become a designer and illustrator?

Thank you for taking the time to interview me!

I don’t come from a conventional artistic background. I didn’t go to art school and quite honestly, if you would have told me fifteen years ago that I’d be working as a designer and illustrator, I don’t think I would have believed you. Art has played a big role in my life, though. I was a consummate doodler throughout my entire educational career, but I never really took my artwork seriously. I guess I just didn’t think I was that good. Then, near the end of college, something strange happened. I took a few art classes and a Photoshop class as electives (I was at Penn State studying film and video) and when my teachers saw my bizarre doodles and sketches, they were impressed. Surprised the heck out me, for sure. I never thought my work would be considered “art,” but my professors literally gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted to do. It boosted my confidence and helped me to realize that my absurd, humorous tendencies were allowed in the world of art.

After college, I moved to Los Angeles to work in the film industry and almost immediately, my minimal Photoshop experience, artistic sensibilities, and computer skills opened doors for me. I worked as a video editor and quickly transitioned into motion graphics and graphic design. Without a doubt, my twisted take on things carried me farther than my technical skills in the beginning. If I could offer one piece of advice to folks looking to work as illustrators or designers, it’s to focus your attention on cultivating your sensibilities, your angle. Too many people spend too much time trying to hone technical skills. Those come with time and experimentation. If you’re inquisitive, you’ll want to see how far you can push the tools you’re using. Your art, your style, they’re driven by your sensibilities, not your technical knowledge.

On your site, you talk about how you used to work in the film industry. What made you break away from the film industry to focus on design and illustrating? How has working in the film industry influenced your designs and illustrations?

Honestly, I just burned out on the film industry. I worked on too many projects that I had little to no interest in. Also, people at the lower levels of the film industry have a bizarre contempt for their audience. It seemed a little too cynical and self-serving to me. I met a lot of great people, had a lot of great opportunities and experiences, but in the end, I don’t think it was for me.

My experience with motion graphics, graphic design, and animation helped me transition into design for print and web. I focused heavily on animation in college and the character-design aspects of that helped quite a bit when I started my current job which involves a lot of illustration for educational materials. I taught myself to use Illustrator as drawing tool for my last TV job, a TBS special called “War Games,” and that, without a doubt, has had a giant influence/impact on what I do.

What is your favorite and least favorite thing about the design and illustrating industry?

My favorite aspect of working in design and illustration is that you get paid to be creative. It’s also really nice to be able to use your job as an opportunity to experiment and hone your skills.

As for my least favorite aspect of working as a graphic designer and illustrator, that’s easy: you’re beholden to someone else’s vision. Before I started working full-time in design/illustration, I would draw and paint my own work quite a bit. Soon after I made the transition, working on other peoples’ projects and dreams became such a draw on my own creativity that I stopped creating my own personal work for nearly seven years. Seven years! Recently, aside from my full-time job, I’ve stopped taking on other peoples’ projects and bringing other peoples’ dreams to life so I could focus on my own artwork and my own aspirations. I’ve actually got to credit my wife, Adriana, for encouraging me to create my own work again. It’s amazing because I had all of this latent creative energy building up over the past seven years and when I started seriously creating my own artwork again about a year ago, it sort of exploded out of my head and I haven’t been able to stop since. It’s great because it’s led to gallery shows and moderately steady sales. People hang my art on their walls now, which is bizarre beyond belief.

Could you describe your typical workflow for an illustration?

I generally start by thinking through my ideas while running or hiking. I run three times a week and it helps me clear my head and focus on my bizarre ideas. Occasionally, I’ll sketch out some ideas with pencil and paper to better realize what I’m trying to create, but usually I go straight to Illustrator and start with the big, blank, white page. I try to have a rough sense of the colors I’m going to use and I draw outline shapes of the objects I intend to put in the frame. Using bright, bold colors, I lay out the composition, playing with placement until I get everything in the frame the way I like it. I use a lot of layers and label them clearly in order to make isolation and detail work easier. After the composition is complete, I add shading and details (faces, windows, items, accessories, etc.), tweak the colors and tone them down a little bit. The final element I add is the texture, mostly because it slows my computer down more than the other elements do. Sometimes the textures I create make my computer virtually unusable, but the end result’s always worthwhile.

Your illustrations contain wonderful textures. Do you create these in Illustrator? If so, do you have specific techniques for creating certain textures?

I create everything — start to finish — in Illustrator. I like retaining the scalability of the vectors and I like the challenge of creating all the elements with vectors and scalable effects.

For the most part, I use custom brushes to create my textures. When I create a brush, I use 100% black and set the mode to “tint.” This allows the brush to employ whatever color you choose for the stroke (as you know already). I feel like this is one of the most overlooked and under-used features in Illustrator. It’s really useful and powerful. I like to create art brushes and stretch the hell out of them — that’s usually how I texturize my skies. For fur, I use triangular art brushes, expand them, and add custom styles (usually gradients with the mode set to multiply) to help them blend into the main object. More recently, I’ve come back to using scatter brushes (something I used to do all the time) to create speckled, stipple-type textures. The great thing about using the scatter brushes is that you can set them up to control the density using a Wacom pad’s pressure sensitivity. I like to set the size, spacing, and scatter in such a way that it intensifies as the pen is pressed harder on the pad.

Why did you choose Illustrator and vector art as a medium?

I was creating a lot of illustrations for work using Illustrator and after a few years, I started to feel like my vector skills were out-pacing my traditional skills. I got to the point where Illustrator felt sort of like a musical instrument that I knew inside out. When I’m drawing and painting traditionally, my hand’s not always as steady as I’d like and I don’t have undo! Also, I love having the ability to work with and change colors at any time without hassle. Color’s really central to my approach, so keeping it mutable is really important to me. I’ve thought about using Photoshop as it’s a bit more akin to traditional drawing and painting, but I hate that it’s not scalable. The scalability and infinite, hassle-free changeability of vector art makes it an easy choice, in my opinion

What is your favorite Illustrator Tool and why?

This is going to sound boring, but it’s true: the pen tool. I use it all the time. I don’t draw much with the pencil or the brush tools. The pen tool lends itself to a clean, precise aesthetic that’s really appealing to me. I’m convinced that a lot of the modernist illustrators of the past, like Jim Flora, would have gone crazy for vector art because it works so well with their aesthetic, approach, and style.

Other tools/features that I use a lot and like quite a bit: select –> same (great for changing colors en masse), clipping masks (I use tons of these to isolate areas and to mask off shading objects), feathering (to soften my shading), and gradients.

I know you didn’t ask, but I’m also going to offer up the features that I rarely or never use as well. One is the gradient mesh. I really, really dislike the way gradient meshes are controlled and altered in Illustrator. They just don’t seem quick or intuitive. Yes, I’ve used gradient meshes and yes, I understand how they work, I just don’t like them and rarely use them. Another feature I practically never use is the Live Trace function. It has its place, but it doesn’t really work with what I do and I feel like a lot of people who work with Illustrator are cheating themselves by using Live Trace as a crutch. Draw with vectors! Set yourselves free!

What is your favorite Illustrator tip, trick, or technique?

I’d say my favorite technique would probably be creating shading using feathered, masked objects. It might seem simple, but I feel like it allows for a lot of flexibility and speed when shading an object. I usually create what I call shade objects on top of my primary objects, set the shade object’s mode to multiply, feather it, and then use a clipping mask to “chop” off the excess. If the shading isn’t intense enough, you can always step into the clipping mask and add more shade objects, layering them to intensify the shading. They’re easy to move, change, and manipulate.

Are you going to upgrade to CS4? Are you excited about any new features of CS4?

I’m definitely going to upgrade to CS4. I’m really excited about the changes to the gradient features — I’m absolutely certain they’ll speed up my workflow. Also, I like the idea of being able to use a blob brush to create my shade objects, especially since you can have them inherit styles from the styles palette. Also, the changes to the appearance palette seem like they’ll really help speed up workflow in a big way.

Since you used to work in the film industry, what film has influenced you artwork the most?

Honestly, I can’t think of a movie that influenced my artwork too much. Two recent movies that had great, inspiring visuals are “Hellboy 2″ and “Speedracer” (totally underrated and misunderstood — very true to the whacked-out spirit of the original cartoon). The cartoon “Samurai Jack” had a huge impact on me and what I do. I like the sans-outline aesthetic and “Samurai Jack’s” use of it really inspired me. I think a lot of the appeal for me lies in the modern illustration influence the show drew on. I grew up looking at and reading those children’s books with that bold aesthetic and it’s super-appealing to me.

What aspects, if any, of your designs and illustrations reflects parts of your personality?

Certainly my absurd sense of humor (not so much reflected in this interview, but trust me, it’s a big, big part of who I am). I’m not really a pretentious or serious person, and I think that’s reflected in my work. I like watching people at art shows looking at my work. Most people get these big smiles on their faces and that’s exactly the reaction I’m looking for. Occasionally some snooty types pass by and sneer, which makes me even happier. One thing that can be somewhat annoying is the ever-present assumption that I use or need to use all varieties of illicit substances to create my artwork. Honest to God, I never touch the stuff. I rarely even drink and I never drink when I’m creating my work. I just have a crazy imagination that would probably make me into a crazy person if I didn’t have some sort of creative outlet.

What are you favorite online sources of inspiration?

I love flickr. It’s a great, supportive community and there are loads of terrific artists who post their work on flickr. I check it multiple times daily and keep in touch with other artists that way.

Other than that, I like to look at websites with my favorite artists’ work on them. I’ve been a fan of Tim Biskup for quite a while and I like to check out his site occasionally for inspiration. Recently, a flickr contact of mine turned me on to Nathan Jurevicius, a vector artist whose work is absolutely incredible. Definitely something anyone interested in vector art should check out.