Killer Illustrations by Steve Spatucci

Vect-o-Grunge Illustrations.

The vector portraits were created in the defunct Adobe (formerly Macromedia) program Freehand, then brought into Photoshop, where a grunge layer was added. This was a “just for me” experiment – at first, I included some round shapes (eyes and nose ring in the Lisbeth Salander piece), but because every other shape was straight, the few round elements stood out. So, I changed them. I kept the colors limited and all the shapes symmetrical. The texture gave the images more depth, giving them the illusion of a handmade look. Perhaps this style will work its way into a client project sometime in the future.

See more Vect-o-Grunge illustrations

Stunning cover art to my band’s new CD/digital album.

The first sketch had three adults sitting around the campfire, but our singer/songwriter/guitarist suggested changing them to kids – which made sense, given the “family theme” of most of the songs. Initially, I’d planned to use a brush-tip pen to ink the sketch, but after doing a color test of the rough image, I liked the loose look of the pencil work. So, I traced a new version, cleaned up the lines a bit, and colored that digitally in Photoshop, using a Wacom Intuous tablet. I kept the colors to a limited palette, to give the piece a cohesive look.

 

 

Me Make Monster App

Me Make Monster is a web app that lets kids create a custom monster, then print it on a t-shirt, mug, bag, or other products. I developed the app in Flash as a test integration with Zazzle’s API. Once the user finishes their creation, the vector elements become rasterized at a high resolution, saved on the server, and are then handed over to Zazzle’s site where they can be applied to any of the dozens of products Zazzle offers. Since the site launched in 2009, hundreds of thousands of monsters have been created.

Visit www.memakemonster.com

 

 

To see more of Steve’s awesome work, please visit: www.stevespatucci.com