Chrystal Martin

Carmeggedon 2012 Visual Effects Shot

2011-07-28T11:26:00.001-07:00

Visual effects composited in Adobe After Effects.

Northridge Quake Title Design

2011-06-24T17:37:00.000-07:00

Title design in After Effects (useable for video and Flash), using particles and compositing with Action Essentials 2.

Flaming Sword effect from Scott Pilgrim

2011-06-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

Test shot to create a similar effect to the flaming sword from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, quickly shot on an iPhone 3GS. Composite done in After Effects.

E3 2011!

2011-06-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

Got to attend E3 this year and made a video compilation of my visit. Definitely going to have to go again next year!

Zomtourage

2011-05-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

Zomtourage was a Four Square mini game launched in October 2010, which was a parody of having an entourage. I designed the parody logo and the instructional e-mail that went out to select participants at launch.

Sushi Flash Ad

2011-05-17T00:24:00.001-07:00

Food Photography

2011-05-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

Future Foundation Poster

2011-02-10T15:16:00.001-08:00

Fantasy Magazine Spread

2011-02-07T17:55:00.001-08:00

6-page spread layout for a magazine editorial.

Gift Certificate Design

2011-02-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

Gift certificates designed as faux currency for Santa Barbara.

S.O.N.G.S. Shirt Illustration

2011-01-29T15:55:00.000-08:00

The workers for the steam generator change-out at San Onofre wanted a shirt to commemorate working on this site, and requested the illustration below.

Byte Bakery Presents

2011-01-24T14:21:00.000-08:00

Glowing Particle Trail Intro.

First Encounters Title

2011-01-19T13:02:00.000-08:00

Animated in After Effects.

Outspoken Media Album cover

2011-01-11T17:18:00.000-08:00

Local band logo design and album cover.

8-Bit Scott Pilgrim Intro

2011-01-03T16:13:00.000-08:00

Created in After Effects.

Little Earthquakes Short

2010-10-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

An animated short of "Little Earthquakes".

Luis Barragan Poster

2010-10-04T13:53:00.000-07:00

Poster design for an architectural retrospective, followed by concept sketches.

Heschel West Girls and Juniors Tee

2010-09-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

Girls t-shirt design for Heschel West.

Oak Hills Navy Tee

2010-09-09T12:12:00.000-07:00

Alternate shirt offered by Oak Hills for girls. Navy Active Apparel tee, 2-color discharge ink design.

The Monarchs

2010-09-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

A Juniors design for the Monarchs. Short run print.

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OHES Has Heart

2010-09-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

A juniors/girls design for Oak Hills Elementary School. This also went on tank tops.

Seamless Textile Pattern - Interior lining for Hoodie

2010-08-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

A cutesy seamless skull pattern for the lining of a rocker girl's charcoal hoodie.

West Creek Academy T-shirt

2010-07-29T14:09:00.001-07:00

A new academy asked for a crest design that represented their focus on education, music, and theatre.

Line art samples for line sheets

2010-06-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

Team Slub Hoodie

2010-06-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

VIP - Very Involved Parents

2010-05-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

This was a design made for the trade show circuit for members of the PTA. The "Very Involved Parent" shirt was a giveaway promotional item.

Kicking for the Cure shirts

2010-03-02T12:10:00.000-08:00

I had a chance to work with Stevenson Fitness on their Kicking for the Cure charity event. I designed the apparel and some of the flyers for the launch.

Game art

2010-02-21T12:59:00.000-08:00

Illustration rough. Line art in Illustrator, colored in Photoshop.

Unity Graphic Tee

2010-02-03T13:21:00.000-08:00

Every year, Oaks Christian High School has a t-shirt with a certain theme made for Black History Month. I got the chance to design the 2010 shirt following the theme of unity.

Meadows Ladies Shirt

2010-01-22T15:39:00.000-08:00

A girls/ladies design for Meadows Elementary.

Medea Creek Graphic Tee

2009-11-04T15:08:00.000-08:00

Screen printed project for Medea Creek.

Tesoro Tigers T-shirt

2009-10-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

Fashion-forward fundraising shirt with an off-the-collar print.

Sumac 3/4 Sleeve Baseball Tee

2009-05-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

This design was made for a digital print on a District Threads tee for staff and parents of Sumac Elementary. This design was so popular that it was also used on fitted ladies t-shirts and unisex t-shirts.

Tee designs for the 2009 Dole Great Race of Agoura Hills

2009-04-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

I recently worked on all of the designs for the Dole Great Race of Agoura Hills 2009 run. All the performance shirts worn by the various race participants, all the tees in the store, and the volunteer t-shirts and hoodies were handled by my company. These were some of the top selling tees in the retail store.

And here's the production proofs of all the designs and garments made for the event.

Stevenson Ranch Tee

2009-04-05T22:16:00.001-07:00

Another vintage t-shirt design, this time for Stevenson Ranch. The tee design is distressed and aged on a navy unisex and women's shirt. Simple with a wide appeal.

OPHS Tee

2009-04-05T22:07:00.000-07:00

Quick turnaround job for a short run of shirts. We had to go with clip art for this job, but we were lucky to find a perfect image. We added some typography and vintage distressing. The design wraps around the side of the tee.

Peace To All apparel

2009-03-31T23:55:00.001-07:00

A hand designed piece I did that will hopefully spawn a Peace To All apparel line. This will be a limited print for customers at our trade show. Vintage print with a soft hand feel.

Inspired by Sepideh logos

2009-03-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

Done for Inspired By Sepideh for her growing business brand. She chose one of these to become her new logo. The concept she wanted was a heart with an opening at the bottom with a sun shining out, with lavendaer and gold for colors. The idea was a logo that carried her message of leaving an opening in your heart for hope. These were my pitches for that idea.

Quick Sketches with Charcoal and Conte

2009-01-27T12:01:00.000-08:00

I regularly sit in on modelling classes to help keep my illustration skills honed. I try not to post these too much, but here is a sampling of my more traditional art styles.

Fashion Illustration - Girl in a Hoodie

2008-12-29T18:58:00.000-08:00

Concept fashion sketch for some new distressed hoodies we're hoping to get manufactured. May be digitally colored later with one of my designs on the sleeve.

Post-Election Promotional Sale E-mail

2008-11-07T16:06:00.001-08:00

A new e-newsletter for a promotional sale:

El Morro Tee

2008-09-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

A t-shirt design for an elementary school' new spirit wear line:

Oak Park High Eagles

2008-08-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

This proposal for Oak Park High School's spirit wear line up just got approved, but with a slightly different placement for the art. Originally it was meant to go up to the neck line and run over on the sleeve a bit, as shown below.

Vector Illustration - Skull

2008-08-09T21:50:00.001-07:00

This is the result of a test with some new Adobe Illustrator brushes, from a tutorial found on vectortuts.com. The brushes are fantastic, giving a traditional inked feel. I'll be using these a lot more in the future.

Main Tank Shirt Design

2008-07-20T12:19:00.001-07:00

A freelance t-shirt design project:

Apparel Flyer

2008-04-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

This flyer was designed for an apparel company attending an upcoming convention, aimed at spirit wear for schools. The shirt designs had to be digitally placed on all the blank apparel, since the company did not have a photographer shoot their product line. Working with their art director, I handled the photoshop work, vector art, and layout.

PTA E-mail Invitation

2008-04-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

An HTML e-mail invitation sent out to convention attendees.

Lexus Certified Pre-Owned Project

2008-02-03T15:36:00.000-08:00

I was lucky to be involved in a project for Lexus to create a flash-driven microsite explaining their certified pre-owned vehicle program. The site has since been taken down.

On this project, I worked as a production artist with a programmer and an art director. Some of the work I did included tightening the microsite's Flash animations and transitions, syncing the audio, and adding in navigation features.

Fun-Raising School Gear E-mail

2008-01-30T14:49:00.001-08:00

Fun-Raising School Gear is planning on sending an e-mail to all of its past clients, showcasing the designs available for graduation apparel this year. Their style is grungy, distressed, vintage clothing for kids, so the newsletter follows that style. This was designed with e-mail clients in mind, so the width is a small 480 pixels to account for any clients running their monitors at 800 x 600.

Spec designs for Atomic Youth Logo

2008-01-05T10:01:00.000-08:00

Atomic Youth is an upcoming brand of blank apparel. An associate of mine is co-owner of this line, and she's in need of a logo to brand her new business. She wanted a retro look of the 1950's atomic age, citing "The Jetsons" as inspiration. After being inspired by the Art Deco world in Bioshock, I designed some logo concepts for Atomic Youth.

Self-Portrait for the New Year!

2008-01-02T22:39:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. I know I did! I made out like a bandit, with an iPhone and fancy espresso machine to help me work.

To celebrate the New Year, I painted a new self-portrait in Photoshop to replace my old Simpsonized avatar.

Here is the iPhone Wallpaper version:

The power of a Mac, in the palm of my hand!

2007-12-05T16:08:00.000-08:00

I recovered this old illustration from when the Mac Mini was announced. Who recognizes that quote? Although now, the illustration could be used in reference to the iPhone, or the rumored Newton.

Fun-Raising School Gear Business Card Design

2007-11-27T11:19:00.000-08:00

Fun-Raising School Gear is a fashion start-up company reviewing their previous business card design. There may be a new logo design in the works, and the project hasn't hit my desk yet. I did a quick comp with what source files I had on hand, and feel it's already an improvement over the old card.

Spark33 Banner is Live!

2007-11-15T11:04:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to report that the final banner for Spark33 has gone live! You can view it now until January 1st, when the sale ends. There is also a matching postcard that I will post later. As you can see, the copy has changed, and the design with it. I still like the direction of my original concepts for the card, but I really love how the end product turned out.

Here's how it appears on the Spark33 website:

And here's the full bleed postcard:

Byte Bakery Business card

2007-10-29T11:02:00.001-07:00

A new logo and a new business card design for Byte Bakery! Some people had trouble understanding the previous design, so the concept was changed a little. Now here's one side of the business cards, featuring the new logo, printed on 15pt cardstock, rounded corners, and a satin matte finish that just makes the cards feel nice.

Comps for Company Mascot

2007-10-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

These are some quick initial sketches for a mascot for a company that specializes in cooling systems for computers. They requested a child-like thermometer cartoon character for their mascot as part of their rebranding initiative. The rebranding project was halted early in the process, and the character was never fully rendered.

Painting with Photoshop

2007-10-27T10:56:00.001-07:00

I tried a tutorial to experiment with digital painting and custom brushes in photoshop, and I'm rather happy with the results. I'm used to painting with oil paints rather than with digital programs, but I was pleasantly surprised at how similar the two are when you use a Wacom Tablet.

I can't find the link for the tutorial, but when I do, I'll be sure to post it. It's definitely a great tutorial for traditional artists trying to move towards digital artwork.

So, you want to be a hero?

2007-08-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

Another avatar done for a dear friend. Something for their blog and website. He and I are both big fans of the old "Quest for Glory" games. In this avatar, I drew him with the signature red cloak that the hero from QFG wears. Just a simple pencil sketch done in a sitting at Starbucks really, but then I scanned it, opened up a trial version of OpenCanvas and slapped some color and mood onto it with my tablet. I never used OpenCanvas before, but I'm loving it. I'm definitely buying this program for my arsenal of illustration tools. The cool thing? You can save an "Event File" that plays back a video of everything you did to make the painting.

Here is the icon-sized version and the full-sized original illustration.

Illustration of a shady girl

2007-08-15T20:44:00.000-07:00

I'd hate to cross a person like her. I can definitely see this illustration on a Moo card. Done in Photoshop CS2 with an Intuos Wacom Tablet.

Logo Design: Byte Bakery

2007-06-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

Overview: Byte Bakery is a small web and design studio in need of a logo. The motto is creative services as fresh as baked bread! I hoped to keep the logo fresh as well. This is one of the comps, the idea being a "3D pixel" transformed into an oven. Nothing beats that first waft of fresh baked bread from the oven!

Simplified Map/Directions

2007-06-05T09:13:00.000-07:00

Overview: Strategic Home Loans needed a map to help people find their office. It's hidden away down a street with a dead end, by a freeway, on the second floor in the rear of the building. The company wanted a simple, easy to read map to post to their website and send out in e-mails. No clutter like with Mapquest maps. And it had to read well if it was printed in black and white as well as color, so values were important.

Magazine advertisement for Mortgage company

2007-06-05T09:05:00.001-07:00

Overview: This advertisement was to be placed in a local, free health magazine available at grocery stores, gyms, Jamba Juice, and other local establishments in a high income area. The ad had to have a health-related tone to be acceptable to the publication and was designed for a 1/3rd column space.

Annual Review Postcard for Mortgage Company

2007-06-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

Overview: The company wanted a faster, cheaper way to notify clients that it was time to review their loan. Originally, they would send a lengthy letter in an envelope out to announce that they would call to see if they had any financing needs. The open rate for the letters were low, so when clients received their annual review call, they were not expecting it.

For their small budget, I proposed a 4"x6" postcard would be a better way of announcing their call. The message is viewable as soon as the client looks at it. There's no risk of the client dumping it as spam without them glancing at it. The response rate has improved, and preparing the mailing is much more time efficient now.

School Newsletter Ad

2007-06-04T17:09:00.001-07:00

Overview: Strategic Home Loan sponsored a safety program at the local elementary school. In exchange for financing their system, Strategic was offered free advertising space in the school newsletter. The newsletter was distributed as a PDF, so the ad could be in full color, but it was surrounded by all the other ad sponsors. To make it stick out from the rest, I went with bold colors. However, I feel the add suffered from having too much information in the small amount of ad space we were given, but I couldn't get the information cut approved.

Flash: CD Application

2007-06-04T17:04:00.000-07:00

Overview: Strategic Home Loans is gradually moving towards a paperless office. When they've finally finished the loan process with the client, they were sending a packet of papers 50 pages thick for the client's records! I was asked to find a way to create a CD that would provide those documents in PDF form so the client could reprint any documents as needed.

The stipulations were that this couldn't be a website on CD, each agent was to have their own customized version, and the client had to be able to get it to run without knowing much about computers and without having to download any players to make the application run. In addition, it had to be programmed such that anyone could make changes without knowing or having Flash. This was a bit of a challenge. I knew nothing about creating CD applications! But I knew Flash, so that's what I worked with.

I designed interface in Flash and made some buttons and graphics using Photoshop. The buttons open the PDFs with the matching names in the local folder (example: The "Your Appraisal" button opened appraisal.pdf, so you just drop the client's file in the folder and rename it to match the file for the button.) The text area was linked to an external .txt file that could be customized by anyone, and includes the agent's signature at the bottom. It wouldn't work without Adobe Acrobat, so I included a link at the bottom.

After that, I published it as a .exe file, wrote a basic autorun code, and there you have it! Just customize the letter and PDF names and drop all the files on a CD. The clients just had to put the disk in their computer and the program would start up.

I originally did a comp that I thought was more aesthetically pleasing, but it was rejected before I tightened it up, hence the iStockphoto watermark, lack of buttons, and need for alignment adjustments. I kept a screenshot of it because I liked where it was going, but it still needed a lot of work.

Bookmark Design

2007-06-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

No real overview for this one. This is just one of those projects I whipped up for fun during my time as an in-house designer at Strategic Home Loans. While trying to come up with promotional materials aside from the usual notepads with agent photos and names, I made a simple bookmark with mortgage definitions frequently asked by first-time homebuyers. It follows the black, white, and red company colors. But it was one of those projects that got put on the back burner. I still have a few I printed on hard cardstock that I use for my own books.

Illustration: Blog Avatars

2007-05-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

Overview: A dear friend who is a pro at code wrangling coded up his own blog without the help of Wordpress, Blogger, or the likes. He requested a set of cartoon-style avatars for himself and I, and stipulated he wanted a cel-shaded look for the characters. Much like LiveJournal, he set up a system of emoticons so that depending on the mood selected when writing the post, a different avatar would display to identify the poster.

My friend was very happy with the emoticon avatars I made of him:

Where as I felt the need for a larger range of emoticons to convey my particular feelings for any one subject:

And for special holiday occasions, there were these:

Logo Design: Landscape United Nature Artists

2007-05-24T15:09:00.000-07:00

Overview: The founders of Landscape United Nature Artists, or "LUNA", had come up with a paper design for the logo of their association. As a friend, they came to me to take it from paper to computer and vectorize it for their use on websites, print advertisements, and anything else. But they also asked for some variations of their design and to follow a "moon" related theme.

Here are their top two picks: