Designokee

While I find this year’s NBA Finals boring, I decided to take a break and do something for Biking, a sport/hobby I’m really into.

Just happened to watch La La Land recently (I know, it’s late) and was blown away by the colors, production and cinematography, as well as the choreography and story. Truly deserving of the awards it garnered last year. 

I decided to create a minimalistic poster tribute of sorts, since I’m doing portraits on a semi-daily basis.

So I joined a contest.

The brief was to design the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) All-Star Weekend logo. Winner gets to go to a provincial All-Star game of his choice, all-expenses paid flight and accommodations plus get to meet the players. Fair enough. Always wanted to kick back and fly to Davao again.

Anyway, last week, they winner they declared turned out to be a fraud, using a prominent e-game event logo for his entry. So it took another couple of days to choose a new winner, which they did, and the logo was well-accepted by the public.

“Solo”

At the beginning of the year, I encountered a news bit from Nike that they had just released their City Edition designs for the NBA. Some designs were hit or miss, but it gave me an idea to highlight some designs with some players to give it some kind of balance.

Coming from a portrait exercise from the previous year, I tried my hand in doing these in color. I envisioned this to be small and caricature-like in nature, but as I progressed, they turned out semi-realistic to my taste and just stuck with it. Sometimes I got really lucky and made it better than I expected.

I’m no hardcore gamer, but I appreciate the character designs that go on one. On a whim, I decided to draw my version of D.Va with a very blunt pencil. Turned out nice.

My mom had been cooking/baking for most of her life, been born under my grandmother who’s also an amazing cook. She fantasized being able to write her experiences down and along the line , be turned into something like a coffeetable book.

So I told her “let’s take it one step at a time” and to start a blog was the easiest thing to do. I took it upon myself to create branding for her new endeavor. I took a look at some of her childhood photos and visualized that the logo should have some of that Little Lulu feel, some classic lines since vintage is in nowadays.

Admittedly, typography is not my strongest suit. An idea just came to mind and I started laying this piece separately between elements and letters. I remember my Letras Y Figuras plate for an Instituto Cervantes contest way back in college and just winged it. 

Last year, I took on an art-related challenge called Inktober. Created by illustrator Jake Parker as a means of putting his inking skills to the test for the whole of October, I took it upon myself to take on the challenge, in hopes of bettering my skills.

Previous to last year, I took the brushpen for granted and used the tool to cover up my mess, hoping to make my works look like it’s been made by Paul Pope.

Lately, an injustice to us bikers-to-work is trending on social media.

An army reservist shot to death a biker out of road rage. Prior to uncovering who the culprit was, a well-known online hub had already spread out wrong info and tagged an innocent man for the murder.

Now the real culprit is on the run with his pregnant wife and three kids, with a dead-or-alive order as well as a 100 Thousand Peso reward for his hide.

The Philippines has not totally embraced biking as an alternative to the traffic problem. Too many unruly motorists.

Mark Vincent Garalde was on his way home and as far as I’ve read, this army reservist going by the name of Vhon Tanto, was already blowing his top due to either this biker blocking his way or the biker hit his car a bit (the CCTV footage did not catch the reason why), so Tanto caught up with him, alighted his vehicle and engaged in fisticuffs with Garalde. Tanto gave up the battle and decided to break from a clincher and go back inside the car. Garalde extended his hand to apologize for the trouble and started to go on his way, walking his bike, as if to assure himself that Tanto would go home first. Then Tanto alighted his car once again, now totting a gun and shot him on the head point blank and double tapping him on the ground. 5 shells were recovered at the scene of the crime.

It hits close to home as I have been biking to work for more than two years straight since my last major biking accident. And I am no stranger to such motoring violence (thankfully, nothing physical).

After having a discussion with my bike group, I was asked to do an artwork to circulate across all bike groups as a sign of unity among us bikers. Thankfully, the designs were well-received and has been passed around as wall posts or temporary profile pictures on social media.

If you’re from the Philippines and feel that justice has to be served, put this on your social media platform.

Post-surgery, everything was an uphill battle. You learn things that should be or not be part of your life any more. Then you overthink, you stress about it, you just want to spend your time in bed, staring at the ceiling.

Thought I should count my blessings and started putting it down on paper.

I wanted someone, something to embody that fight. So I thought of doing a beast with horns, blood, the works. But I want to show this to kids too, so I toned it down.

I came across the idea of it having something to fight against. But I don’t want to use another crab character (analogy for Cancer). So I thought of a cat, since I love cats. Then it dawned on me that they shouldn’t be fighting against each other, but fighting together against the adversary.

So here you go, my own creation: Chemo the Cat and Radio Reindeer, The Radiation Bros, showing everyone how they killed the tumor.