Quick Draw 17
Nov 29th, 2011 | By Nikita | Category: Feature, Quick DrawFor this Quick Draw, we present to you another holiday-themed word. If you cannot avoid the cliche, embrace it! So, for the rest of the year, most of the Quick Draws (and the final end of the year challenge) will be holiday themed. The participants for today’s Quick Draw are both familiar to our wonderful audience & ambigram community. So, read on, take a look at the ambigram solution, and feel free to discuss, as well as post your own take on the current Quick Draw! [NOTE: All designs are copyrighted by the respective artists. We have permission to post them here, but you must get permission from the artist for any other use of their design, or to post them elsewhere.]
Johan Skylling
Hi fellow ambigramists! I’m very happy to do a quick draw again. Wow this was a tough one. Had a hard time just reading the word(s). I didn’t understood what I read at first – NAUGHTYORNICE. I thought it was some kind of extinct animal or something!
Pic 1
This was the first scetch i did. I had a hard time squeezing in the O in this solution.
Pic 2
This was the first scetch i did. I had a hard time squeezing in the O in this solution.
Pic 2
I tried to do something with the first scetch for a while before I decided that it didn’t work at all and I went back to square one. I got an idea that if I combined C and E to create the N the rest would flow better and I think it did. All of a sudden the rest of the letter weren’t that hard and I think it turned out much more natural and easier to read.
Pic 3
Pic 3
Next step was to make it appealing to the eye and polish the lines.
Pic 4
This is the final version. I couldn’t resist to work on it a bit in Photoshop and add some colours.
Nikita Prokhorov
Dear Ambigram.com readers, forgive me, for I have sinned! Initially when the word for the Quick Draw was selected, I wanted to make it a 3-way challenge and would sneak in my ambigram at the end after the other two participants. However, the 2nd artist wasn’t able to participate at last minute due to other obligations & responsibilities. So, it ended up being a 1-on-1 challenge after all! I will say that my ambigram was finished several hours after the initial Quick Draw email with the word was sent out and my work was not influenced by the other artist’s submission.
This was the initial set of sketches that I quickly created to see how well the phrase would work. It did not take many sketches to work out the basic structure as you can see. And please ignore the other miscellaneous ambigram attempts on the page, as I was sketching several ambigrams at once. There were two challenges that I faced. One was whether to use all lowercase or uppercase, and the other was whether to use the uppercase R or a lowercase ‘r’ to work with all the other characters.The r/R dilemma proved to be the most challenging one, as in the sketches you almost see an uppercase R and then only half a character; that’s why I decided to use the lowercase ‘r’ instead of the uppercase. This problem I believe was solved successfully in the final ambigram. The only lowercase rule I broke was with the O/G flip, as a lowercase ‘g’ would not have worked as well.
After the initial exploration revealed that the phrase would work well, I attempted to produce a more refined sketch.
With the final vector solution, I adjusted the kerning between the TYOR and added several different elements to reflect the holiday nature of this ambigram, as well as the naughty/nice concept, represented by the halo and the devil tail. All in all, a fun challenge!
Dear Johan, beautiful job and solution! It was fun to see your ambigram and to observe the similarities, as well as the differences.
We will have one more Quick Draw before the end of the year…get ready participants! And of course, email me if you would like to participate in the final Quick Draw of the year!
beautiful works both
Pulling out the big guns for this one! Nice work gentlemen!
Thanks everytwo! Thanks Nikita!!!
Mean it, thanks a bunch!
Any comments? …no?
Nikita,
I think that your other participant found out that Johan Skylling was going to be in this Quick Draw and decided to disappear!
You know, I really can’t blame him / her. I would have done the exact same thing!
When I saw who was in this challenge, I started to cringe. Uh oh, Nikita. This is going to be brutal. Our very own beloved Content Director going up against against Sky-hook J-Bird all alone.
I closed my eyes for a moment.
Then I saw your design. Damn! You pulled it out, dawg. You’re in the right room.
It certainly wasn’t an easy word combination (Nikita – go easier on yourself !), and it certainly wasn’t an easy competition. But excellent designs from both of you. Congrats!
I liked Nikita’s work little more than Johan’s and for the 1st time I liked someone else’s work more than Johan’s!!!
Well done Nikita. I think you should participate in ACACs. Doesn’t matter if you are a judge as well.
The difference between Nikita’s work and Johan’s work is the letter ‘N’. I think lower case N worked better
But, Johan’s lettering style and photoshop effects are always treat to the eyes…
as there was a small discussion between me, Johan and Nikita about mixing uppercase and lowercase letters in an ambigram (which I do most of the time), I thought of giving a try to all lowercase solution to the above phrase.
Here is my solution: (‘nice’ is not so nice in my ambigram. Will rework on it some other time)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharathkumark/6444963433/in/photostream
Hello all,
@Nikita: I like your solution more than Johan’s. I would choose the second ambigram (the one with the evil tail and the halo). I think these two elements level up the whole ambigram! Maybe that’s the reason I like yours more. Well done.
@Johan: If there was a rule about using capital Ns, then I cannot imagine a better solution than yours. But, why following this approach when lower-case ‘n’s are more handy? MAybe you tried to stretch your capabilities. Hehe,
Furthemore, as in all the work I’ve seen from you (I’ve only seen 3-4 ambigrams), you rock at elements! This one is simple and direct. Good job. Do you have a personal webpage I can see your work?
You can see my approach to these words here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/v_stergioudis/6461223279/in/photostream
I was truly inspired by Bastian Pinnenberg’s work for this one.
I hope you like it.
Vasileios Stergioudis
@Vasileios Stergioudis: Good one dude. You have come up with an ISS (irregularly structured symbiotogram).
Just went back to the thread where this was discussed and I had created PAI/Pinnenberg ambigram!!
Here is the thread for those who are interested to go through once again
http://www.ambigram.com/qd-round-5
Thanks Sharath,
ISS reminds me of the first series of “Pro evolution soccer”, the one which we were playing in Playstation.
Vasileios Stergioudis
Wow, good work..
I like AU-rN at Johan Skylling
Its already December 21st in India…. I am waiting for the results of the holiday challenge…