Who: Luke Choice

What: Design and Illustration

Where: https://www.behance.net/velvetspectrum

Behance member since: 2010

The kaleidoscopic imagery you see in Luke Choice’s Visions series is the result of pure experimentation—the Australian designer’s preferred way to create.

“I rarely over-conceptualize my art,” he says. “I like to react to the design process as I move through it. I get a lot of enjoyment from creating, and sometimes it pays not to overthink.”

The blinking eyes in Visions spoke to Choice of a psychedelic nature; he thinks of them as portals into the imagination.

The artist likes to revisit previous experiments and see how he can evolve them further—and that’s what led to this project. It began with some explorations with X-Particles (a particle-simulation and -rendering plugin for Cinema 4D); Choice then brought the results into Adobe After Effects to see what more he could do with them. 

Each of the blinking eyes took three to four hours to complete.

“I generate the animated graphics in Cinema 4D, using X-Particles. Then I transfer them to After Effects and apply the CC Kaleida effect. It takes multiple revisions to get the positioning of the particles right,” he explains. “In order to have the animations load automatically when viewed on Behance and my website, I created the blinking eyes in Adobe Photoshop and exported them as GIFs.” 

ROOTS IN ILLUSTRATION

Choice started out as an illustrator before moving to 3D. “I think that my original passion for illustration has led me to explore different aesthetics than traditional 3D artists,” he says. “My work has a core focus on allowing color to tell the story in a surreal and tactile world.”

He loved drawing comics as a child, but his design career really started, he says, when he began creating 21st birthday invitations for friends.   

TYPES OF TYPE

“Type is my biggest passion and where a lot of my techniques are tested out,” the artist explains. His Types of Type project is a collection of those random experimentations.

These experiments are from a series of typographic illustrations that Choice created in 2015 and 2016.

“Whenever I tackle a type piece, I consider the sentiment behind the message and try to come at it in a way that can be both complementary and contradictory,” he says. “For example, the Piña Coladas type piece has a lighthearted message, so I chose a big, bold typeface, which I balanced out with the playful color palette.”

In contrast, the concept of Brooklyn led Choice down a path inspired more by graffiti and street art, so that type reflects more of a sense of grit and a fluid type movement.

FAVORITE DESIGN TOOLS

After viewing these samples of his work, Choice’s favorite tools will come as no surprise.

“Photoshop has been the constant through my career, and for 3D work I use Cinema 4D,” he says.

Fans often ask about his brush script technique—which you can see in Types of Type and other projects. “I tell people to check out the Smudge tool in Photoshop,” he says.

FOCUS ON WHAT YOU LIKE

An important lesson Choice has learned over the years is to do what he enjoys.

“There’s a lot of value in making art for your own pleasure,” he says. “I feel like my work improved a lot once I stopped looking at what everyone else was doing and focused instead on what I wanted to make.”

With that in mind, there may be some furniture in his future.

“I’d love to move into furniture design,” he says. “I’m always thinking about design in a 3D space, and I have a real yearning to create something tangible, away from the digital world.”  

Choice spent the past five years in New York City, working for Vault49. He has recently moved to Nashville to focus on Velvet Spectrum, his own creative home, full time.

Check out more of Choice’s work on his Behance page.

 

January 18, 2017