Having been adding more web components to my site, I thought it would would a good idea to add a landing page to jason dwyer.ca. It made sense, since it's my main web focus, featuring my illustration, and it's the most likely domain to pop up on a search engine. Now a new visitor will be able to choose right off the bat between the design, illustration and blog portals, instead of having to find the links in contact sections. Hopefully it will enhance the user experience, and get a little a little cross-traffic happening. Eventually I'll just redesign everything in some nice fluid css, but until then...

Every year The New Yorker runs a contest for cartoonists around the world to submit their own version of the iconic Eustace Tilley character. Always entertaining, some of the submissions take full advantage of the wide open ended rules, and draw up some very creative stuff. Basically, as long as there is a character of some sort in a side profile, looking at something, it fits within the boundaries.

I decided to do a take on the old flying aces, with their distinctive goggles and leather bomber coats. Something about the New Yorker just reminds me of the days when intrepid adventurers would take on the world. Working on Eustace was a fun little break and allowed me to work on a subject matter I normally wouldn't have.

In honour of the upcoming big day of February 14th love, I thought I'd share a recent drawing of young Hollywood heartbreak at its best. Taylor Lautner and Taylor Swift dated for all of a few months before calling it quits. Was it the pressures of fame and being an "it" couple, or the frustration of never knowing exactly which one of them was being referred to when screaming fans yelled "Taylor!". Only time will tell.

Perfect people are always tough to do portraits of, without there being much to exaggerate, except their perfecteness. So that's what I did here, with perfect white teeth and sparkling eyes, along with a warm colour scheme, to add to the romance.

I finally finished up a panorama of the PCH, taken from a great lookout a little ways out from San Francisco. I'd been chipping away at it for a while and was really craving to see it complete. I've included the before and after images, to show what I was working with. I find Photoshop and other programs never really give a decent piece together on any automated settings, so I set all the photos out and line them up as best I can, peeking with transparency. In this case, I used at least 6 photos, to make it a nice long stretch.

In theory, for panoramas, all the photos should be taken on a manual exposure so the colour and especially the sky will always look the same in each frame. I just fired off some quick photos in sequence, and brought on the extra work...but I guess I enjoy the challenge. After layering things together I synched up the colour as best I could. The most time consuming part was filling in all the missing areas and correcting all of the bad overlaps. I find the key to adding in new chunks is just copying and pasting in chunks from other parts and then using clone and paint to blend it in. Just using the clone tool doesn't work for large areas and creates too much blur. Once everything was patched, I droppped in another whole sky to try and smooth it out, and then merged and adjusted the colour for the whole photo.