Though the girl itself is not my illustration (this is actually a free template I found somewhere in the net that didn’t have any depth or color; just solid black lines), so what I did was experiment and see if I can color it using various digital painting manipulation methods, primarily using watercolor and “markers.” For a first try I think I did pretty good. Currently I’m looking around for solid-lines templates for me to practice coloring on, whether using the watercolor method, markers method or maybe both.

After getting used to the methods on manipulating photographs in to (digital) charcoal, I decided to graduate from charcoal in to pastel chalk. Once again, using Adobe Photoshop CS2, I was able to simulate an original photograph in to another work of art. Like the previous photos I used, the background of the photo was also bustling and messy, and with another additional method along with turning the main subjects in to pastel chalk art, I was also able to turn the background (originally black with several different-colored lights all over the place) in to a simulated paper for pastel art, so now it also has some charcoal effect on it along with simulated dust specks.

One of my first attempts at digital painting and photo-manipulation, this is a photo that one of my parents took of me at side-profile. I thought this would be a good start for me to get in to this digital-based traditional art media, such as charcoal, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, etc. As a start, this is a self-portrait in digital charcoal, using Adobe Photoshop CS2.

Just a little skill that I picked up to improve on my graphic and web designing skills in the near future instead of sticking in to one design theme.

I tweaked this illustration from an enlarged dingbat font known as Skipop for another personal hobby project that I’m partnered up with a close friend. The logo is supposed to represent a hybrid creature of a half-bunny and half-panda, or when fused together, a bunnda.

This is actually the first time that I’ve created something that’s modified from a dingbat font or something that’s already existing, but because this is for a personal project, I take full credit on the modifications but I give the creator of the dingbat font full credit for the “original template” in which I modified it as a logo that would identify the personal site project.

A year later from the first Bretzie Fan Get-Together (GTG) Dinner (see tarp design below), the Bretzie Bunnies decided to downgrade a little due to the lack of funds compared to last year’s successful funding. But didn’t stop the fangroup in to making this slightly low-scale get-together dinner party as successful as their first. Once again I was able to give a little contribution by designing the candy wrapper as a souvenir for those who attended. The design of the wrapper is a mix of the elegance of the hundreds-old love tragedy of Romeo & Juliet and the quirky bunny fun of the fangroup’s representation. Actual photo of the candy wrapper available.

Being a Bretzie fan that I am, I even created my own online fan persona only known as BZ-B Ninja. The persona somehow helped me stand out from the others with the emphasis of having numerous skills that I have and can use to contribute to the fan group that none of the others have (I’m not bragging with this one, it’s actually fact). It is also my alias as one of the contributing writers at the Bretzie World official fan site when necessary. I designed this t-shirt with a clip art of a ninja-suited bunny as a personal gift to Bretzie. I had four shirts printed, with two of them belonging to them and the other two signed by them to be sent to me and for a close friend of mine. With this, I used a simple t-shirt template and colored it black and added the necessary elements that make up the final design, both front and back.

I still have yet to receive those shirts, waiting to be shipped from the Philippines to here at the land of the free.

My very first custom theme for this domain. I’ve had the domain and housed some of my work here for about two years now however I still haven’t had the time to figure out how my online portfolio would look. Because of this I’ve heavily relied on premade portfolio-specific templates that WordPress supports because I wanted to run a portfolio site that is automated rather than updating it manually like my old portfolio site under an old childish domain name.

At long last, I finally have my very own custom domain. It’s simple-looking, but with the slight effect of handwriting and hand-drawn. I wanted the portfolio to represent the old days of design where we used to draft our preliminary concepts by using paper and pencil/pen. I do think some designers still use the paper and pencil to draw their drafts. I’m one of those few whenever needed.

To commemorate Bretzie‘s first acting project, a live stage production of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet in the Philippines, the Bretzie Bunnies fan group decided to have a change in their website’s theme. With this I withdrew the design from the fan group’s official color (blue) in to a color scheme appropriate to the famous love tragedy. There were also some changes and additions in terms of content, function and interaction. The flash animation from the first theme (see Bretzie World (v. 1)) was proven problematic to many users that leads to the long loading time of the site as well as the browser crashing, thus prompted me to remove and not consider adding a new simple flash animation on to the theme. Like the previous theme, this is also another voluntary web work.

As a fan of a Filipino showbiz teen pairing, Bretzie (Bret Jackson II and Fretzie Bercede), one of my major contributions to the fangroup (Bretzie Bunnies) was to build and maintain (technically that is) the official fan site. Though this is a fan-made site, it may be considered official because the mentioned showbiz individuals, in addition to their TV Network, ABS-CBN and their agency, Star Magic, do come to this site frequently for its updates, news and other goodies. Though this is voluntary work, this is my first major web design and maintenance work.