Overall I am very happy with it. I’ve also begun to put my portfolio back online. I developed a new Expression Engine backend driving all the thumbnails and imagery. It’s still a bit more manual than I’d like but I’m pretty happy for the most part. My next step is to get a few more sites up along with some of my print, illustration and identity work. After that I plan on moving on to my logo. The fleur-de-lis will stick around but I’ve got some ideas for some interesting twist on it.

Let me know if you find any bugs. I’m also very open to suggestions and criticism.

Sam and I have a thing for underwater creatures. First it was the Enterprise Octopus. Then it was Norman Naysayer. Now we unveil Mr. ROI himself, Ricky Revenue. Sam had this idea for a new character. Someone who’s eye is always on the numbers. He won’t approve something unless the ROI can be proven. To him it’s all about metrics and analytics. He loves Excel.

With that in mind and the undersea theme as my guide it wasn’t long before the good old angler fish came to mind. At first we we were thinking of someone with a sort of glazed, zombie like stare. All he can see is this glowing orb of money in front of his eyes. After some consideration it dawned on us that this person isn’t just a corporate zombie. He’s someone who legitimately has financial concerns about the business. You just have to get him on your side.

Drawing Ricky took about 2 hours in Photoshop once the initial sketch and direction had been decided on. This was my first time drawing at 300 dpi. The brushes are nowhere near as forgiving. You can see that it took me a while to get warmed up. Overall I’m pretty happy with how he turned out. I’m working on my line weights and smoothness. I like a bit of wave to my line but I’d like to be a lot smoother. I need to start forcing myself to use my whole arm for the movement rather than just my wrist.

Be sure to check the Vimeo page so you can see it in higher res, “HD”. Also be sure to check out Sam’s more in-depth explanation.

Tonight we had our first Refresh Portland event. It’s a monthly meetup and presentation where we bring designers and others interested in design together. We hope to teach them something they didn’t know and give them something to use in the real world. We packed the house with somewhere between 50-60 people. We just barely had enough chairs for the space that Jive graciously lended to us.

First off, Tyler’s presentation was awesome. I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting Tyler before and I was honestly a little nervous about someone I didn’t know doing the first presentation. Humongous props to Tyler for putting all my fears to ease and more. He kept things simple, relevant and to the point. The key message I brought home was to remember to, “Stop designing websites and start designing experiences.”

Of course we’re still working out the kinks. The elevator broke down. We almost didn’t get ustream working. I accidentally stole John’s Refresh introduction. In general I felt like we were running around like chickens with our heads cutoff. It was a great time and I look forward to improving it. Next time I hope to get free access to the elevator and side door for everyone during the Refresh time. I’ll also try and do a better job greeting people and making them feel welcome.

I’m really thankful for the support of everyone who came. I can’t wait to convert more visitors to presenters in the future. Someone in our audience has something really interesting to say that I know we’ll all want to hear.

You can catch the recording here. Ignore the first 4 minutes of my nervous rambling and just jump to Tyler being a badass.

I should also thank the team for helping set this all up. Thanks John, Carlos, Josh, and Bram!

Those words struck fear into my heart. Sam was supposed to be on a plane halfway around the world. He wasn’t supposed to be sending me new things to do. Plus I was pretty sure that he didn’t even know how to work a fax machine. With him it’s iPhone or nothing. Here is what he sent me. It’s a little blurry but trust me, you wouldn’t be able to make it out even if it weren’t.

A bit later he attempted to explain his latest wild idea. The Enterprise Octopus had reared it’s head once again. It has done so several times. This time a new illustration was needed.

“I need you to draw the anatomy of the enterprise octopus with a bunch of people inside and you are on top with Doppler for a head. The tentacles are grabbing all this stuff. Then I need you to draw the octopus as bowl, upside down, with a man drowning in paperwork.”

Did I mention he was insane?

Fortunately at the time I had David Carroll working for me and he took the first stab at it. That’s what a good minion is for after all. David’s idea was to make Octi into a sort of enterprise machine, with its eyeballs and mouths on hinges with people popping out to say hi. It was a very creative idea and I really think he did a great job on it. I added a little cherry on top, translating Doppler into Radar and making it a man’s head. as well as a few touches like the rubber grommets. I also really dug all the rivets David added and how precise the seams were.

David also drew the safe and the screen by hand. The truck comes from a Yellow Icon icon pack.

Of course Sam had asked for two drawings, so I took a stab at the back. The idea was an enterprise that had collapsed under its own weight. The standard array of office apps aren’t getting the job done and pure chaos reins supreme. I went with the idea that the tentacles were literally crushing people, perhaps having been chopped off in places. People are trying to work with files but have no idea what to do or can’t work with them. Others have given up. Oh and Sam wanted a man with a bag over his head representing the employee, lost in a sea of files and confusion.

Here are the steps I took in creating it. If you’d like to see these in full res you can check out my Skitch account. I worked in chunks, sending progressive updates to Sam to be sure I was on the right path. That way if something was wrong he could stop me early and set me back on the right direction. Sam and I work best like this, especially for complex designs or illustrations and allows for a lot of feedback throughout the entire process.

As you can see, the first stab at the piles of paper looked a bit like rice. I ended up biting the bullet and drawing 10-15 unique pieces of paper and then cloning them all over the pile. I then unified them by giving them a universal light sorce.

You can also see where our styles diverge a bit. I used a more traditional illustration method, painting the scene with a Wacom pen and tablet. David used vectors and a much more controlled and precise style. His people are a bit stiffer, like what you’d see on a bathroom door. Mine are pudgier, luke plastic bags filled with blue jello. Neither way is right or wrong and I really liked seeing our different interpretations of the same subject.

David had given us a great start but Sam was a bit concerned that the Enterprise Octopus was looking too machine like. He wanted something a bit more organic. I went back and retouched it, removing many of the machine bits. To give the COLORS acronym a bit more contrast I added a wavy blue banner. This helped the words stand out a bit more.

To see them at full size and to get a bit more context check out Sam’s blog post explaining this madness. It goes into a lot of depth explaining what each represents and is a fascinating analysis of how enterprises work.