Touch, Modeling Clay Style

This is a short stop motion video exploring one of the five senses. Do I seem violent? I blame my brothers.

Writer's Block, A Tale of Frustration

This is a short stop-motion piece I did sophomore year before entering the Communication Design program. Therefore, forgive my use of Papyrus. I knew not what I was doing (Avatar has no excuse though). The visuals were created with an eraser board and markers, images of which I then dumped into Flash.

Flash, how you frustrate me

(The blog is a little out of sequence. This was completed after the stop-motion pieces. I have yet to master the other uses of Flash) Here's my first pass at a title sequence for the fictional show "Noble Pursuit". According to the blurb we had to design around, this guy fights in the Seven Years War, becomes a spy and a con-man, works his way up and marries "Lady Avarice", and then his so-called happy life falls apart. I have focused on the spy/con-man phase of his life and depicted it through numerous hats/disguises. It didn't really turn out how I wanted it to, and looks a little inconsistent and cobbled together. My first idea had to be scrapped because I just didn't have enough time/knowledge of Flash yet. Hopefully I can revise it once Monday is over. I'll keep you posted.

Fun with Letraset

So my professor, John Hendrix, bought a bunch of old rub-on transfer lettering at an estate sale and brought it in for us to play with. Best. Class. Ever. The textures you can get with this stuff is amazing and so random that you could never duplicate it on the computer. Look at the image just above this text. I was so annoyed when the V wouldn't come off of the sheet, but now I love the ghostly effect it created. Here's a combo composition completed in Photoshop:

Technology, it needs me

(title taken from The Whigs song "Technology")

Here's another illustration I did for Stud Life to accompany an article about the constant pressure to always be reachable by phone, text, email, etc. You can't get a moment's peace anymore! I heartily agreed with this editorial, and it seems especially relevant in this new world of networking I'm venturing into. Phone, text, email, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Behance, other email, blog, face-to-face communication, notes, carrier pigeons--it's exhausting! Anyhoo, enjoy:

Merry Melodies

This is something I did a while ago, but it still makes me giggle. I wasn't sure if I should put it in my portfolio, but I wanted to at least put it on here. So feast your eyes upon my line of Christmas-themed bathroom products!

From the top: hand towel, soap dish, rinse cup, wash rag, and toothbrush holder.

There's a lake of stew, and of whiskey too, and you can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe...

Here's a look into a few revisions I did on a CD packaging project. The goal was to make a package for a single of Harry McClintock's Big Rock Candy Mountains. The song is based in the legends of hobos riding the tracks and is really quite amusing. I don't know about you, but I'd love to go where "they hung the jerk that invented work", right after sampling those lemonade springs and the delicacies mentioned in the title of this post.

At first, I had it in a horrible plastic jewel case that just didn't fit the rest of the project at all, and I won't even show you the embarrassing thing. Then I moved onto this:

I liked the design, but it was a little too flimsy, so I got some thicker paper and unleashed my newly acquired bookbinding knowledge to create this nifty paper wrapper:

To see the whole shebang, check out my portfolio on Behance at:

http://www.behance.net/KateOberg.

College Dems, So Classy

Illustration for the College Democrats' T-shirts. They clearly have serious business to attend to.

The Heifer and the Ox Illustrations

For my Word and Image class, we had to choose one of Aesop's fables and do a series of three illustrations based on that theme. I chose the Heifer and the Ox:

 "A HEIFER saw an Ox hard at work harnessed to a plow, and tormented him with reflections on his unhappy fate in being compelled to labor.  Shortly afterwards, at the harvest festival, the owner released the Ox from his yoke, but bound the Heifer with cords and led him away to the altar to be slain in honor of the occasion.  The Ox saw what was being done, and said with a smile to the Heifer:  "For this you were allowed to live in idleness, because you were presently to be sacrificed.

I have included both some early sketches and color/media studies along with the final pieces. These were created by layering pastel drawings, a technique suggested to me in order to maintain crisp, graphic shapes in this medium.

A recent illustration for Student Life

This was for an article in defense of not liking dogs.

First Batch of Doodles

These are sketches I did over winter break at a great little venue called the Riverfront Cultural Society in New Haven, Missouri. Most of them are from the Maple Jam Band concert, but a few are from open mic night. Between the musicians and the dancers, there was a whole lotta shakin' goin' on.