The adrenaline rush from a good scare is short-lived,
but much sought after, as the myriad of thrill rides
and horror flicks suggests. Incorporate chilling colors
into your project palette to get your audience to
keep buying tickets and buying into your designs.
And listen to your inner devil like Stefan G.
Bucher: “I often have a sort of fiendish theme in
my life; the illustrations are merely the tip of the
iceberg.” Bucher—illustrator, designer and owner
of 344design— pens the regular column “Ink &
Circumstance” for STEP inside design magazine. You
can view his wicked creations (example below) via
video feed at DailyMonster.com.
Bucher says selecting colors for an illustration is
“like an equation with several unknowns. I start with
a few wild color guesses and then balance the other
colors around them. It’s a combination of instinct
and careful adjustment. Sometimes I’ll throw a wild
Hue/Saturation curve over the final result to see if I
missed something interesting—if I stayed too safe.”
Starting with a pen and ink illustration, Bucher
scans his art and adds color in Photoshop. “My illustrations
tend to give shape to the voices in my head,”
he says, “which may well turn out to be transmissions
from the home world. It would explain a lot.”
Describing his style as “gratuitously intricate and
shamelessly frivolous,” Bucher admits the work of
other artists inspires him more than anything. “I love
seeing artists use colors in counterintuitive combinations.
I also love pulling colors from fashion. When I
use color, I try to think of it as clothing the piece.”
“The two most important pieces of advice I can
give anyone,” says Bucher, “are ‘make yourself useful’
and ‘don’t be boring.’ If you look at your work—and
your work habits—from the perspective of usefulness
and interest, you’ll always have work.”
Scary stuff
Make time for some
fiendish font fun with
Flames (heinous) and
Zreaks NFI (shocking)
at www.fontface.com. Induce fear with Smack (rotten) and Spooky (villainous) at
www.fonts.com.
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Fear the Grim Reaper
Don’t kill a project
with a boring color
palette. Image
22174799, Brand X
Pictures, www.jupiterimages.com (Free
image at www.dynamicgraphics.com/downloads.)
|
Feeling lucky?
Walking under ladders,
breaking mirrors
and black cats are all
harbingers of ill fortune.
Halloween lore,
true, but what’s more
fiendish than a holiday
meant for the wicked?
Image 23105823,
Nonstock, www.jupiterimages.com.
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PALETTE: Fiendish
PALETTE: Combinations
