“I Love You More Than This City” ( Graphic Fan Art Poster )

FINISHED ARTWORK

I really enjoy imagining. Novels are a great place to exercise this passion because it’s all just words, and the imagery is up to you.

AI imagery is really cool because it enables creative people with a vision to execute said vision more quickly. It enables us to act as curators—as Art Directors and Creative Directors—and arrive at a visual solution that we envision in the style we envision.

This piece of artwork was inspired by a quote from a novel that stuck with me:

“I love you more than this city. Don’t die defending it.”
— Xaden Riorson, Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

It was executed with Midjourney and Photoshop, including various Photoshop Effects, many of which are from Studio2AM, one of my favorite places to find the best graphic design assets I’ve come across.

Adobe PS - Copy machine effect

Starting Images (Midjourney x Curated Style)

Creating the characters in the way they exist in my mind’s eye is the most time consuming part. Slowly working out which aspects of them need to be described and how that should be written, what they might wear, finding references of their likeness if they exist—and then the style in which I would like to render them, and the world they inhabit. Then slowly but surely versioning and sculpting things that look right and things that don’t.

Animated x Analog Creative Vignette

Took a few images I had been playing around with, in a style I was and still am exploring, and animated them using Pika Labs. Did some color and film grain and made a little short if you can call it that. The audio is all created using Elevenlabs, which was fun as well to try and retroactively create something that would sync with what it looks like she’s saying there coming out of the Pikalabs animation. I thought it would be really interesting to try and push something that felt animated towards something that might feel a bit more analog. The interplay between those two aesthetics is a fun and different kind of crossover that I don’t see out there too often.

Starting Images (MidJourney + Curated Style)

Illustration

Illustration Studies

We all need to make things with our hands. Two illustration studies of mine from the past few years. The Elsa study is pencil on paper only. The Carmen SanDiego study is multiple hand drawn layers composited together in Photoshop. Pencil and paper, Ink, Colored Pencil— combined.

AI Creative tools will likely supplant most art in the near future, but us humans will continue to make things with our hands—forever and always.

AI Creative is my career, but human created art is my passion. Art will always be an outlet, no matter what may come.

Typographic Studies - Hand Lettering

I am a huge fan of what we call “Calligraffiti” , which is a blend of classical calligraphy with modern graffiti. Probably my favorite of all of these is an artist called Retna. I’ve played around tons of times with trying to decode his letters, create letters in his style, and perhaps play around with my own version of a similar kind of lettering. Below are some explorations in this area. Typography, especially hand lettering of all types, has always been one of my passions.

“Stop Making Stupid People Famous” - in the style of Retna

“Odysseus”

“Per Ardua Ad Astra” - Through Adversity to the Stars // 2 Panel

“Free Thinking // Freedom From Thinking”

“Armed With a Mind”