Daniel Crosier, Illustrator/Comic Book Artist, Thoth Engine Productions joins hosts Scott Sheppard and Gene Gable to explain his background, work, and some tips about how he created a popular wood burned comic book series “Bartholomew of the Scissors“. This unique illustrative style and technique has opened doors to many collaborative opportunities for Daniel and his work combines his original creative visions and topic ideas based on direction from art directors and comic writers.
Daniel describes his approach to this technique which involve starting with a basic piece of pine wood and simple pencil outlines. He started his first project with a basic $20 woodburning tool kit but soon found he preferred to use a basic pen tip, replicating traditional mediums, rather than use a series of specialized burning tip shapes. 
He explains basic trial and error have allowed him to explore various effects and often builds upon the natural grains and imperfections of the wood piece to expand the final illustration.
Once the designs and art pieces are burned onto the wood, Daniel then scans the pieces at 300dpi for finishing and layout for print. Daniel has many other projects and pieces in the works but much of his woodburning techniques lends itself well to a dark, horror inspired creative theme perfect for the underground world of comics.
To see more of Daniel’s work, visit his site at: http://www.thothengine.net or find him on Deviant Art at: http://danielcrosier.deviantart.com/. You can also connect to Daniel on MySpace or Facebook.
Design News of the Week with Jay Nelson
Jay starts the year with a preview of the exciting design oriented conferences and events for 2009. Highlights include Macworld, Graphics of the Americas, Web Directions North & South, Photoshop World Conference and workshop events, Print Oasis, and many others.
Jay maintains a special industry calendar with more details, dates, locations, and links at: http://www.design-tools.com/events/
For more on Jay Nelson and his Design Tools topics visit: http://www.design-tools.com
Bert’s work focuses on his fine art and also commercial work. He walks us through his creative process that often still begins as a sketch in his journal or a photograph. He explains that every element in his fine art pieces are done by hand with a stylus using a photograph as a guide, having completely adopted the digital canvas as his pallette. His commercial work, which is often more time sensitive, may begin as a scan or a trace and is then translated into vector art elements in Adobe Illustrator before finishing the pieces with Adobe Photoshop. His approach is to make the digital medium completely transparent, although his finished work may look like a photograph they are entirely digitally rendered – including the shadow highlights and details. Bert explains that throughout the process he will use the photographs as a guide and visual reference.
Bert also shares his experiences in learning how to use the Wacom tablet and stylus instead of a pencil or brush. He feels that with the introduction of their Cintiq tablet, many of the issues in the early versions have allowed him to gain a more natural technique. He also discusses his studio setup and how he has been able to adjust his environment to get the most out of his digital canvas. Overall, Bert prefers to hone his digital skills by completely relying on the application to replicate. He will incorporate outside elements and scans when time is a factor in his projects. He is known for his ability to replicate 2D and 3D objects within the application, creating his illusions almost from scratch vs. relying on the automatic extrusion and other tools built into the Adobe Suite.
