Hahana Beach

I've had this on my blog for a while and I thought with all the recent posts about vector graphics, now would be a good time to share it here.

Hahana Beach is a sports bar and restaurant that hosts professional sand volleyball tournaments. It opened up on Wooster Pike a year ago this week.

Last spring, just months before the big opening, I was invited by Parkey Design to help create a logo that encapsulates what the place is all about: fierce competition and fun under the sun that continues well into the night. Influences ranging from tiki kitsch and South Beach fashion to Melanesian tribal tattoos went into its creation. The fun part was creating a strong sense of personality while limiting myself to basic geometric shapes and a single line weight.

Above is one of my favorite versions that didn't make the final cut. You can find two others on my blog.

I've taken the family to the place a few times, and I highly recommend going on a sultry Saturday evening when you can sometimes play on the courts after your meal.

The menu (which I designed as well) is posted here.

'Whimsy', or, 'Come Ye Unto These Yellow Shores'

Hey, guys,

This is another illustratour piece. I'd like some critique, if you have any. I am going to stop for a minute and finish this when I hear back from some of you and my friend in Connecticut. Impressions? Likes? Dislikes?

I also included some of the sketches/studies I did for this piece.

I'm really happy with how this piece turned out. Making some changes based on the critiques of some of the awesome people from this blog, and from my best friend, Chris, and from my own observations, I was able to come up with a very unified image I can beproud of. I am really happy with the change in the cloud location. The one touching both the boat and the castle. You can see in the first images, that cloud was awkwardly tangent in several places. Just nudging it a little to the right made all the difference in the world and helped to create a convincing sense of 'space' and develops a heirarchy of shape from foreground to background. The changes I made to the ship helped it to become to centre of focus while not coming off too strong, or heavy handed. I made a change I did not post here, where I really cranked up the ship. It was a lot more complicated in design, and a bold blood red. It was very strong and hard to look at. Toning it back down and removing some of the design elements helped a great deal. I hope you guys like this. And feel free to critique away! It's not perfect and I can use the information for later pieces (this one is finished, for now).

'FINAL EPIC TALES' COVER LAYOUT

Here's the final layout for the 'Epic Tales' adventure series, folks. Enjoy :)

Lookout!!! Stock Companies are Accussing Artists About Copyright!!!!

As Visual Ambassador I have to screem ... 

LOOKOUT ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS AND PROTECT YOUR WORK!!!!

Stock companies are having a field day in court!

http://www.jonengle.com/2009/04/accused

14 years ago I was called by a royality stock company (which is still in business) about selling all rights to 20 illustrations by one of my artists for $150.00 each.  The stock company owner (this is not exacuationg) was PISSED at me when I said no way, try $5,000 each.  Four months later I got a fax from a designer in Seattle asking if we did an image for his local paper?  Well, I research the stock companies site to find some copied my artist's work!!  We took it to court only to find out they had the artist, who ripped off my artist, sign an agreement that he was the creator and waved the stock firm of any responsibility.  The artist was just out of school, had no idea this was against the law and had no money.  The stock firm refused to take the work off their site saying it was between our firm and the young artists.  They bought the images from the young artist no us.

We continued going after the stock firm but it was 3 years before the stock firm took the images off their site. Now stock companies are going after artists on "look a like" images!!!  What about these sites on designing logos for $325.00.  I have a great story there as well.  

You must read this blog!!!