Welcome to Gabe’s Imagination, the creative playground for Gabe Shaughnessy. This is where he tests out ideas for web design, as well as posts illustrations, art installations and random thoughts from Twitter. Gabe makes interactive artwork using a combination of physical and digital mediums, ranging from paint to pixels, from wordpress websites to hand-bound books. Augmented Reality is a big part of Gabe’s Interactive Art, because it links the real world to the digital, bounded only by the imagination. To create the links, Gabe uses: Paper, Glue, Linen Thread, Sumi, Guache, Acrylic and Oil, Pencil, Charcoal, Cattle Marker, Pen, Ink, Rolled, Brushed, Dripped and Sprayed Paint, Wood, Metal, Plaster and Plastic, Discarded Scraps and Custom built parts, Canvas, Scrims,Boards, Projectors, Lights, Screens, Gears, Levers, Wheels, Buttons, Knobs, Dials, Fiducials, Infrared Light and OpenCV, MIDI, OSC, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP, Adobe, VDMX, Quartz Composer, Animata, Ableton and Alchemy,……Among other things. To call Gabe Shaughnessy, scroll to the very end of the page/site or click that link!
Interactive Artwork, Web Design and Illustration from Gabe’s Imagination
Web Design Information
The first step in a website is the Client Survey. I’ll use the information you provide here to build the site, starting with an project outline and a style guide. I’ll analyze your needs and decide on an appropriate tool kit to accomplish the project.
Some of the tools I use include Wordpress (for active sites with regular updates), Twitter (for social networking), Flickr (for photographic content), LaLa (for audio content) Google Maps (for geographic content), and YouTube or Vimeo (for video content).
Depending on the scope of the project, the next part of the process can vary quite a bit. For simple, lower-budget sites, I work by myself and use pre-existing templates to create the sites. Even though the templates are pre-made, the graphics and content are always custom tailored for each site, allowing me to create unique, customized sites very quickly.
If a project demands a custom template or more elaborate content, I work with a team of independent creatives. I use Michael Russell at Pivotal Writing to develop SEO web copy and Aaron Rogosin Photography to create compelling images.
Illustration Tools
The process usually begins where every good design does: with a pencil and paper. A pencil lets me think quickly and intuitively, and I don’t have to worry about mistakes or getting the idea too refined.
I’ll do a bunch of quick sketches for each illustration, and after I’ve picked a few that convey the idea with a compelling style, I’ll scan the sketches and bring them into Adobe Photoshop.
I use photoshop to quickly and non-destructively color my illustrations. I use a Wacom Tablet with a pressure sensitive stylus and an infinite number of digital brushes for my coloring work.
Once I have a concept sketch fully colored, I create a full-scale pencil illustration. I then ink the pencil lines in with a nib pen and brushes, using sumi ink at various dilutions.
I scan the inked in illustration and once again bring it into Photoshop to edit and color it. At this point I have a very flexible medium, I can even change the original pen illustration with photoshop.
Art Projects
- Tipper Visuals July 4th 2009 Collaborative Digital Painting with Dan Cohen
- The Mechanical Garden Augmented Mural
- West Meets East Living Mural
- Godzilla Blacklight Live Painting
- The First Living Mural
- Live Painting at Plug4 Burning Man 2008
- Wordfish at the Someday Lounge
- The Watershed Augmented Reality Mural, Symbiosis Gathering 2009