In a flash it was gone

We're currently having a class on Flash at school. Today was the second day of the course, and... well.


Behold, the first Flash-animation I ever made. (CLICK HERE)

Don't be too hard on me - I actually did have a tablet, but no drivers, so it behaved like any mouse would. The assignment was, in all simplicity, to make an animation with several animated objects in it. This baby was slapped together in about two hours, during which I spent too much time going: "Oh, so that's how I should have done it in the first place. Another quarter of an hour down the drain!"

Tastes like winter

Not exactly on thursday, this post, pardon me for the delay.

On to the packages!
The assignment was to design a box for pastilles by the name Routa. Routa is a finnish word for frost, the kind that freezes the ground. All we had to work with was the name, some compulsory information that the package must hold, the manufacturer should be Fazer (and thus their logo should be included) and that the box itself should be the size of a Fazer Salmiakki -box. What kind of pastilles the package would hold - that was for us to decide.


(Sorry for the crappy quality of the picture - I took it with my cellphone.)
Here is my take on Routa. I was quite sure that the first impression for most people would be that these pastilles should be cough drops, as many such pastilles in Finland, at least, are given a very breezy image for their throat and voice clearing qualities. I wanted them to be something different - I associated Routa with certain clarity and intensity of the flavour, and most of all, Finland. So I chose very finnish flavours - blueberry, cranberry and cloudberry - and tried to keep the breeze and snowstorms to the minimum, without forgetting the origins of the name.

I also wanted to keep the packaging quite simple, with few colours and few elements. The logo itself was fun to design, and I think I succeeded in keeping it simple, yet including the qualities of the name. With the intense and sort of delicious, bright colouring on the berries I wanted to bring out the intense, sweet and delicious taste of the pastilles.

I got very good feedback on this and feel quite happy with the outcome, myself. :)

Oh, and on a sidenote - we also had to construct the packages ourselves. I bought a box of Fazer Salmiakki -pastilles and tore it apart, measured it, then proceeded to draw it in Illustrator. Then after a couple of tries on the constructing part I added the layout on the construction, then printed it on carton and cut it out and constructed the boxes using a utility knife, ruler, an ordinary blunt knife (the kind of utensil you use for eating, this time for creasing), and two-sided sticky tape. One of the criteria when assessing our packages was that the box should be well-constructed - it should open, close and stand upright without toppling over or leaning to side or anything.

The course was fun and I'm hoping we get to design more packaging at school in the future :D


As an added bonus - a friend of mine is going to Japan as an exchange student for a year, so our class prepared a little booklet for her to remember us while she's there. It included problems and things to do, such as crosswords and sudokus, as well as poems and, naturally, drawings. This was a page I did for the booklet - it actually doesn't look that much like the Iriomote cat, but it's the thought that counts, eh? On the other side was a short description of the species.

Judge the book by the cover - I do

Oh my, I haven't updated in ages. I've been meaning to, several times, in fact, but I've been busy with numerous projects...

As I have already mentioned in my personal blog, me and a student colleague of mine are working on the visuals for a fashion show. It's a show organized by our school's fashion design students, and linked to a bigger event. Very interesting, but challenging and time-consuming as well.

My class is also working on the illustrations and all sorts of amusing problems and assignments for a magazine directed to children. This is, for our part, nearly done.

Also I'm having a course on package design, and have been, for the past few days, designing a series of packages for candy drops which, for the purpose of the assignment, go by the name Routa. I actually just finished the layouts and shall print and construct the packages tomorrow - however, I'm not posting them here just yet, the deadline is on thursday so I'll post them here then ;)

I've been so excited about graphic design lately, and really thought that I'm just where I'm supposed to be! We made a few visits to printing offices and editorial offices last week, and I couldn't have been happier. I was on the verge of mental orgasm when I saw all the cool stuff you can do to your work when printing - oh the metallic shine and reliefs and glitters!

Speaking of mental orgasms, I don't know how I've never found it before, but anyone interested in packaging design - or graphic design in general - should definitely check out The Dieline. I've been crying tears of joy and swimming in pools of inspiration for the past week, spending my free moments geeking over the innovative and cool designs presented there.

And now, for something else than orgasms entirely - my schoolwork.


The assignment was to redesign the cover of S. H. Steinberg's 500 years of printing. Sadly I didn't use as much time on this as I should have, but I sort of like the clean-cut feel of it anyway.


Here we were to choose a book the cover of which we disliked, and redesign it. I hate the cover of the copy I have, so here's my take on Anne Rice's The Interview with the Vampire. I've always hated Claudia with a passion, though.


Aaand here's a close-up of the illustration. Sorry for the ugly watermarks, I'm that paranoid. I would have liked to work on this more, but didn't have the time for it. I actually made this with vectors at first, then realized that I can't get the look I want with them (d'uh) and so I went and digitally painted over it.

That's all I can show for now, I'm afraid. I'll come back on thursday with some candy boxes!

...well alright, have this work-in-progress-chihuahua-on-acid.

Well, who died and left YOU god, Mr. Claus?!

Oh wow it's Christmas soon! :D I've had so much on my mind lately that I haven't really fully realized it until quite recently. Luckily I have all my Christmas shopping done for this year, and so, with a purse that is remarkably lighter than it was until last week but a mind that's quite content, I ready myself for holidays. Today was the last day of school - I actually had an appointment with the doctor this morning, and by the time I arrived at school, our teacher was just wishing us all a very merry Christmas!

Still a lot to do before I can really kick back though - we ought to clean the kitchen cupboards and our fridge, though otherwise the apartment has been cleaned and we can leave it for Christmas so that it's nice to come back to... We also have a chunk of gingerbread cookie dough still unbaked in the fridge :)

Plus, the day after tomorrow my roommate celebrates her engagement at her fiancé's folks, and so me and my other roomie (we'll be maids of honour in the wedding!) head for Kauhajoki at 7:45 in the morning... and come back the same day. It takes roughly three hours by train from Tikkurila to Seinäjoki, and an hour by car to Kauhajoki from there. My folks will be picking me up from Koivukylä so I don't have to take the bus to Vihti after that, but still, we won't be at Vihti before midnight. And at the start of the week I'll have a couple of days of work and I'll have to do some Christmas cleaning and possibly baking at my parents'..! But it's all worth it, I'm so happy it's holidays at last.

The header is, by the way, from the great song Surabaya-Santa from Jason Robert Brown's musical Songs for a New World.

Now for some visuals ;)


Schoolwork - a typography poster presenting three typefaces. We had a number of quotes to pick from, I liked that one.


Magazine layout for a spread consisting of Bradbury Thompson's poem and a short text about him.


A tiny painting of two foxcubs I did sometime during the summer, I only found it when visiting my folks a couple of weeks back.

Merry, snowy and in all ways lovely Christmas to you all! ♥

Photography helps people to see.

I'm way too tired to write anything of real importance right now. But hey, I've practically got a day off from school tomorrow! Lllove it. I'm so going to sleep late.

We've been having a class on photography for the past week. It's like plunging into an endlessly deep abyss of cold water for me - a week ago I knew practically NOTHING about cameras. Sure I've played around with them before, but they were never this good or full of technical things that I should know before I start shooting..! I'm such a novice, but enjoying the camera and discovering new things. These photographs are nothing special, just experimenting, but I thought I'd show them anyway :)












I don't know if Tuppo was too delighted that I kept taking shots of him, but at least he didn't seem to mind too much. He's probably the easiest animal to photograph I know, yet I can't seem to get decent shots of him. My fail, there.

I should retouch a typography poster tomorrow, maybe I'll post it here along with some sketches once I get it done :)

We, therefore, need as many typefaces as we have voices.

So this is what came of the brochure that I made for school - one sheet printed on both sides, six pages when folded. Ignore the gray block on the first side, it had my name there in 6pt but due to some sort of brainfart on InDesign's part, it now is a... block. Of gray.



I got commended on this, then totally blew the test - ah well. We'll see if I passed. Some sketches later, perhaps.

"Typography makes language visible."

I've been struggling with a class on typography recently. I've been learning to tell typefaces apart (with no mentionable success) and I'm currently working on a brochure-ish thingie, from which the screenshot above. Deadline would be the day after tomorrow, as would be the exam for the course. I'm screwed, but ah, well.

Lately I've had so much on my mind! My social life is both great and a mess, school takes my time as do all sorts of other activities - I simply don't have the time nor inspiration for much. I did do this speedpaintish thing for Paper: Blank the other day, though. On the subject "Autumn."

Great deal of great things

All my babble of how I'm going to get a grip with drawing was obviously for nothing, so as you can see I'm postponing the start of my picture-a-day-project for now. I've had so much on my mind lately, that... it's really no excuse, I'll try to better myself. :I

For the past week and a half we've been doing some life drawing at school, we've had this really nice indian man posing for us :) My teacher was obsessed with drawing itself rather than drawing the model, which was actually very interesting and inspiring. He challenged us to do work that actually looks like it was done by individuals with different personalities, rather than just transferring the subject to the paper as it is. Currently all my more finished work is with the teacher since he'll need to grade it, but have some one minute croquis while you're here, though they aren't, surprisingly, that interesting. I have probably over a hundred of sketches like these in my sketchbook right now.


Otherwise I haven't drawn very much at all... But have this half-assed sketch of a pup :)

Heading for the countryside!

Just thought I'd let you know that I'm heading for my parents' place today! My summerjob starts next wednesday, and it's relatively close to where my folks live, so I'll be staying with them for a couple of months. I won't have a scanner or a tablet there, but I'll be coming to Vantaa every now and then, so that I can post you some sketches :)

Wow it's hot and sunny here! Have a great summer!

It comes to this...

Howevermuch I used time and effort to create a fancypants sketchblog for lasitettu.net, it seems it wasn't meant to be, since eventually one does get fed up with 30 comments of spam per post per day. So I thought, why not try Blogspot, as many of my friends have found it to work well.

So, without further ado, lets get down to business. A few sketches from monday and tuesday - I was supervising the entrance exams to the graphic design line in my school, and spent the six hours a day reading Harry Potters (for the umpteenth time), joking with my friend (with subdued voices, naturally) and drawing.

I've been quite taken with bears after studying them a bit for the Piglet Brave illustration.

This is... uh... the God of Morning Breath?

And this goes straight to the WTF -department.

It's an ostrich! Lady! I actually like this so much I might remake this into something I put more effort into.

And now for something completely different. These aren't actually so much sketches, these are parts of my Piglet Brave -illustration. Since most of the spreads had only one chapter of text but some had two, I needed something to make up for the space that was left when there was less text. Here be couple of those space-fillers.

Page 2. The cat and the rooster were about to build a house right under the tall birch tree, where this owl lived.

Apparently, I won't add more, since Blogspot won't let me :C I'll give you anuther one of these later.