All hail the new Vectorama: Canadian Edition champion! Steelie’s Beaver!

By Steelie
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Thanks to everyone who sent me their sweet Canadian vectorama! May the best beaver win!

By Steelie

By Mitchell Bartlett

By Jon Lane

By Rebecca Gillis

By August Ekman Öhrn

By Peter Nguyen

Vote for your favourite vectorama in the comments below. You can only choose one! Chomp!

Vectorama is a monthly design/illustration competition on MostlyLisa.com. Last month, the penguin themed illustration competition was so chill, it was ace! Ninja vs Penguin pwnd the other competitors with her uber stealth penguins.

This month’s theme is Canadian Things! Things like: Hockey, maple syrup, Mounties, mountains, moose, beavers, snow plows, ice, and famous Canadian people, like Avril Lavigne. Feel free to exploit any Canadian stereotype you like. I welcome your ridicule.

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Congratulations to our new Champ: Emily Wong of Ninja vs Penguin. Her ninja penguin was certainly a hit. How can you not love a ninja penguin? Impossible I think.

I loved all the entries with all my heart and I’ll give all the designers some link love (right after this stawberry daiquiri) and can’t wait til next month to see what everyone will create. (and I will extend next month’s competition for a few weeks so busy designer peeps can have some time to create uber vectors.

Thanks to everyone that voted. There was some serious smack talking going on… It was a little scary at times, but I guess the pursuit of vector glory brings out all kinds of craziness.

PS. Saw the Mayan Ruins of Chichen Itza yesterday. Was seriously cool. I’ll post some picts later. Right now I’m heading to the beach to do some snorkeling and frolicking in the crystal clear waters. Don’t feel jealous, I’m taking loads of photos and videos so you can all feel like you were here…. but you weren’t so I guess it will still suck for you. I could photoshop you in?

I’ve already received some uber design entries for the First Annual Mostly Lisa Illustrator Vectorama Contest. In fact, I’ve almost snorted milk out of my nose because of one of the entries.

But I have to admit, nothing really holds a candle to my 5 legged spider. Oh he’s cunning that one. Well, he really has to be, with only 5 legs to scuttle aboot.

So get you’re act together! Open Illustrator and get your Adobe-on. You have until Sunday, March 9th at midnight (-8 GMT) to get your entries to me:
mostlylisa *at* gmail *dot* com.

Mostly Lisa’s Illustrator Vectorama Entry Rules:

1. You must use Illustrator (obviously)
2. Your design must not scare small children or warp the minds of impressionable youth
3. You must include some kind of text that encapsulates the meaning of your illustration

The Vector-sized glory and a spot on my advertising gold mine of a sidebar could be yours. It’s only a few clicks away.

Last week RBeezy challenged me to an Illustrator-Off. Being an ultra competitive person and an “expert” at all things Adobe, I am taking up this challenge with a fiery passion that feels like a cross between heartburn and sea sickness. No one said that creativity felt good.

And without further ceremony, I present my entry into the challenge:

I know. It’s powerful. You definitely got your work cut out for you.

If you think you can produce an Illustrator design of great technical merit and expression email a 500×500 (max) JPG it to me: mostlylisa *at* gmail *dot* com. Take that Spam P1r@+z!

I will post your entries on my blog (no matter how feeble I they are) and let my fans vote for the winner of the First Annual Mostly Lisa Illustrator Vectorama. The winner will receive a coveted spot on my sidebar linking their winning design to their website. That advertising will be golden my friend, golden. And if I win, I’ll just put another picture of myself. People seem to like it. Why stop now?

Mostly Lisa’s Illustrator Vectorama Entry Rules:

1. You must use Illustrator (obviously)
2. Your design must not scare small children or warp the minds of impressionable youth
3. You must include some kind of text that encapsulates the meaning of your illustration

Entry deadline is at midnight on Sunday March 9th. Let the challenge begin!

Step 1: Choose a shape.

I like circles. Do you? You probably do cuz most people do. So this is a good tool to start with. It’s kind of tricky to find the circle tool, cuz it’s hiding under the picture of a rectangle, but don’t let that fool you. It is actually there.

Step 2: Pick lively colours for your circles.

There are a lot of colours. Choosing them is hard. So it might take you some time to think of which ones are best for your circles. I was too busy to think so I just chose the first 4 colours in my palette.

Step 3: Make a bunch of circles.

Some big, some medium, some smaller. I liked putting the smallest one on the end, so he felt the most left out.

Step 4: Give your circles personality.

Right now your cartoon characters look like blobby circles. And circles don’t intrinsically have personality, so you have to give them eyes and eyebrows. Do you see how I made the green one look dubious with his monobrow and googly eyes? And the yellow one is obviously fuming mad. It’s cuz he’s being left out, as always. It’s touches like I’m mentioning that really help bring a character to life.

Step 5: Humanize your cartoon circles.

Another trick to make circles appear more like cartoon characters is to give them human features like legs and feet. I used the line tool to make their stick-like legs and then the Direct Selection Tool aka the small arrow tool that bends shapes, to make their misshapen feet. If you don’t know how to use this fancy tool, just click on things until you see some lines and dots and then pull the lines away from the dots. Random movement often creates the best results.

Step 6: Chose a meaningful, yet ambiguous slogan that makes you LOL.

People like meaning to be confusing. And you like them to be confused because at some point in their confusion they will think that you are you are smart and maybe even mysterious.

There you have it, 6 zippety quick steps to create your own mighty fine illustrator cartoon that you can use to impress your mum, grandmother, dog and even your most design savvy facebook friends!!!

I just upgraded the comments section to reflect the uberness of you and your fabu comments. Just because I love you that much. What do you think about the new design? Likey? No likey?

Since being featured on Best Web Gallery last week, I’ve received a whole lotta best CSS gallery l0v3. In appreciation of awarding my blog a spot in their best design galleries, I just wanted to send some link love in their direction.

MostlyLisa.com is featured on Best Web Gallery! Sweeeeeeeeeeet! I have been drooling over the uber sites on Best Web Gallery (my all-time favourite design gallery) for almost a year. In fact, I have a Sunday night tradition where I made a nice pot of tea and set out a huge plate of chocolate covered biscuits and peruse all the newly awarded sites on BWG, FWA and the plethora of CSS galleries I follow.

The real props should go to the award-winning designers of this blog: Coding Monkeys.co.uk.

Next week, I will be heading to Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England, which is quickly becoming my home away from home, to meet up with Tom, Coding Monkey’s Head honcho. After he schools me on the Xbox, flaunts his new MB Air, and we hit up Tescos to grab some Onken and crisps, I will sit down with Tom and ask him a few questions about his successful web design business. Stay tuned for that interview next week!

Jump to some pictures from my last trip to England.