The Sun and The Beach and The Wind in My Hair

We just arrived in Newport Beach, California and, as always, it is beautiful here! It's sunny and 76 degrees (which seriously beats the 100 degree yuckiness we left behind in Scottsdale) and I can't wait to hit the beach tomorrow! For those of you who don't know, every year my family takes a trip out to our timeshare at the Marriott Newport Coast Villas and we get to spend a week together on vacation. Sometimes we bring friends along, often we have other relatives stop in for a few days, and we all relax and enjoy the waning days of summer.

So, this morning all five of us set off in two fully packed cars, and with a relatively short and easy five hour drive we made it to our home for the next week. As usual, upon unpacking, we all immediately grabbed our computers because what is a vacation without technology? My parents snagged the only two plugs on the balcony (as you can see above), so I'm stuck inside writing from the couch where there is a beautiful view of the outstretching ocean.

I've recently begun brewing up a new idea for a story, and I'm hoping that this R & R week will help me bring all of the big pieces together and maybe I can even get to writing some of it soon! I'm not going to give too many details since it's just in the budding stages, but it's a children's picture book story, probably aimed at kids 4-6ish, and it's about reaching new heights. The idea came to me first visually, which was interesting because I've never really considered how I'd approach my writing... as a writer or as an illustrator. When writing papers, I often think about outlines and plot and structure and then bulk out my argument/point/thesis from there, but as an illustrator I think of visual characteristics and settings, what does the character look like? How will his appearance change as the story progresse?... I can see the story growing before I know the whys and whos and what ifs. It's very interesting to analyze how it all develops inside my head!

In other big news, I just finished designing my very first iPhone app icon! It's for a program called iServe that will be a tip tracker for people in the restaurant industry to keep track of their earnings on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. I was pretty timid when I was approaching this project because making something for iPhone just seemed so HUGE, I guess because of the amount of people it can potentially reach. I fettered for a while, unsure if or how I should move forward with my main idea, and then finally I took the plunge!... kind of... I was worried about creating the images in my own illustrative style because my pen and ink style doesn't really seem to fit the iPhone aestheic, so I took what I considered the "safe" route and created the images in illustrator, allowing me to use effects like gradients and sharp, straight edges and lines. I'm actually very pleased with the final products, and so was the guy who hired me, so that was a really rewarding conclusion.

Here's the main app icon that will represent iServe.

And here are the three small icons that will serve as the functioning buttons for the app: Settings, Charts, and New.

I'll let you all know when the app is available for purchase so that everyone can buy it and make me super rich and famous! (Just kidding about the rich part... I don't get any kind of royalties for the artwork).

I'll try to keep updating with wonderful Cali news! Yay vacation!