Artwork

The Duck

This design was done for Russell Smith, a prolific programmer and computer support technician at the University Of East Anglia. The main site design consists only of a side bar, but includes an illustration of his rubber duck (used to talk through problems when programming).

Taking a photo of Russell's duck I traced the main outline then went about gradually filling in each piece of detail. By tracing around the entire outline first any details that are on the edge of the duck could use a modified version of the original outline e.g. the black part on the flames. I found that by not making the edges sharp, but using a 5 pixel feather, the final outcome was softer and look much better than any other attempts made previously.

Once I was completely happy with the final duck a hat was draw for the duck, by the use of another photo to enable the correct dimensions of the hat to be drawn correctly. Once done the hat and the duck were placed together to produce the final picture. Russell's site can be found at www.rasmithuk.org.uk where I'm sure the full sized versions of the duck are hidden somewhere.

Russells Duck Development

The Duck Invasion

Ever since doing the drawing of Russell's duck when ever I have been lost for something to do i have played around with it and made other ducks of different colours and markings on them. I currently have a collection of approximately ten different ducks but I'm sure there will be many more on their way. Some of these ducks have been done in with Russell's prospective software development company, others with friends in mind. From left to right the ducks are named "Oli Duck" and "Label Duck". Oli duck was commissioned for a lovely ex work colleague at Televirtual (Oli Wennell) whose favourite colour and number are red and 42 (the answer to life universe and everything). The other (Label Duck) was done for a friend who has a tendency to label everything, after starting out as an experiment in trying to create and iridescent coloured duck.

Oli Duck and Label Duck

Another Success

I have been at it again and tracing another picture, this time however it is a camera (just so happens to be of one that I could only dream of having but never mind). I created this camera picture because Russ had been writing a peice of software that could be used by people with digital cameras (recovers deleted photos from the flash card) and required a camera for an icon at some point. Hopefully this camera will be of use to him at some point, keep an eye out for additions to his software website (Binary Duck Software).

The original reference photo is on the left with the completely hand drawn version on the right. All created within Macromedia Fireworks, although it did take 1.5 days to complete and some detail has been omitted e.g. the two cross head screws on the front and the groves on some of the dials.

Camera Creation