Artwork for The Vault

Good news!

Yes, I did notice that many ideas on the Vault of Ideas sound like gibberrish without pictures. I've decided to tackle this at last. 

I have many drawings on paper but they need some polishing before placing them on the Website. I cannot afford to get professional help on this, I'm afraid. I have some experience with artsy software, but It is really demanding for me. I spend more time learning how to do things than actually doing them.

So I'll be doing everything old-fashion way on paper and pencil. Hopefully it will add a more authentic flare to the thing.  

There were many law classes in this semester where I've improved my drawing crafts, if you know what I mean. 

It will be a challenge for me. I'm not well, artistically gifted 😅. 

It might take a while, but we will get the Vault to be pretty neat.

Stay with us, and stay safe! 

Cheers. 

Diego Alves

I won't bother much about the order I'm doing the illustrations, just to avoid the hassle. In theory I should do first the ones that are most cryptic, but heh. 

So, I'll leave a comment section here should you be interest in an illustration in particular, so I can move that to the top of the priority list.

A progress report!

[10/07/2022 ~7:00PM GMT-3] I Found out that using an effect called "Stample" really produces beautiful images from phone scans. Just takes some simple parameter tunings. I'm using Adobe's Illustrator and a scanner called Simple Scanner on Android phone. It is neat, both great pieces of software there. Digital art is a whole new world for me.

[10/07/2022 ~22:00PM GMT-3] I finally agreed with myself to a format for the drawings. I'll try to keep them standard. 

[10/07/2022 22:25PM GMT-3] I uncovered a great drawing I did a few months back for Idea #009, the replicant probe idea. It is large, however, thinking about the best way to place it.  

[15/07/2022 21:20 GMT-3] I was having a really nasty problem where vertical moving black and white bands appeared on the photos. A few Google clicks revealed this is actually due to an interaction with the phone camera and light bulbs that work @60Hz. Mind-blowing. An example of biased environment. It seems to be a common problem in photography. Somehow, the phone App Simple Scanner disables the mechanism that compensate for this when taking photos. The solution to this is to actually not take photos with the App as I was doing, but with the native cell phone App instead.

We've got some extra work to redo the early attempt; well, rolling sleeves.

[27/07/2022 00:52AM GMT-3] Work was proceeding steadily for the past weeks. I'm actually with a terrible work load in college this end of semester, so work on the illustrations will be slowed. I honestly want to dedicate enough time for each one of them, redo them as many times as necessary, this sort of thing. Sometimes the drawing is not bad, but Illustrator can't quite process it right. I've improved the way I hold a light source close to paper for cell photos. It is really not a studio. 

[12/08/2022 21:07 GMT-3] Got some more illustrations done, after the end of a gruesome semester in college. I just need to remember to write cursive writing a little bigger, so it is readable after Illustrator effects. The good news is that, with vacations on the way, there will be plenty of time for The Vault, yay!

[08/04/2023 02:02 GMT-3] I just finished 14 illustrations. Yay!

[17/04/2023 19:08 GMT-3] We illustrated over half of the ideas. I feel like right now the gains start to get marginal and the illustrations more difficult. After all, one of the goals of illustrating the Vault so that the reader doesn't encounter text all the time, and this has been achieved. I still feel like we should illlustrate in full the first 1-10 ideas (it is a common page to users) as well as each first idea in a batch.

BANNER IMAGE CREDITS: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team. The image has been cropped and resized.

Want to know more about this image? Follow this external link.