It’s been a while since I’ve shared something that took me more than a few minutes to create, so here’s this:

I haven’t worked in Adobe Illustrator in several years. Mostly because I don’t like it. I don’t like it because I’m not good at it, so today I decided that I was going to start getting better at Adobe Illustrator, using CS5. The character created is a result of a tutorial that I followed online thanks to Smashing (link available in the “pants” of the video). The opening of the video is simply me revealing the parts of the layers that make up the character.

After finishing the Illustrator portion of this guy, I imported the .ai file into Adobe After Effects CS5, another program I’m learning on my own. The character was animated using the new Puppet Pin Tool, then exported to .mov. I apparently didn’t so something right, as the background didn’t export as transparent. Luckily it was solid black, so I just used Final Cut Pro’s Chroma Key Tool to fix that problem, and layered the character over a video I took in December ’09 of me driving home from work down Kingston Pike.

Music is “Untitled(Intro)” by Kill The Ghoul. Oh you know.

Enjoy today’s haiku:

It’s feeling real nice
To be creative again
Don’t stop tomorrow*

*please?