Rob Nance: Portfolio - 2D Illustrations

have been working as an illustrator/designer for over 6 years and I have extensive experience creating editorial and technical illustrations, 3D models, and designs for print and web.

Online Resume Links

Downloadable Resumes

word document

pdf document

work experience

Cartoonist

November 2003 to present
Wrote and am in the process of illustrating the first comic in the Misanthropic Tales of Woe and Despair - For Children line of comics. Developed and am in the process of syndicating a cartoon strip, Bucky. Published a full page Bucky strip in the May 5th Seattle Stranger, "Bucky Dies 5 Horrible, Painful, Ugly Deaths".
Freelance Technical Illustrator, ByDesign Legal Graphics
January 2005 to present
Prepared technical illustrations for use as courtroom exhibits in accordance with the strategic requirements of the contracting attorneys.
Pro Bono Illustrator - Birth of a Vegetarian Flash E-card, PETA
July 2004
Illustrated and designed an animated flash e-card for PETA's efforts to increase Vegetarianism. Converted hand drawn animations into vector illustrations in Freehand, and optimized them in Flash.
Freelance Designer - Promotional Brochure, Pixel by Pixel
November 2003
Designed a gatefold promotional brochure for Pixel x Pixel in accordance with their corporate branding, using images supplied by the client.
Character Designer - ArtSource Studios (for Microsoft Press)
April 2003 - October 2003
Designed, developed, and refined a comprehensive cast of characters for use in a grades 3 to 12 academic computer literacy textbook series Global Skills Curriculum. Designed Robots, Mechs, Mobile Suites, Vehicles (land, sea, air and space) and Characters (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, & Super Heroes). Gained experience developing characters/vehicles from sketches to professionally textured, fully articulated 3D models using 3DS Max 5 and 6.
Senior Electronic Artist, Microsoft Press
March 1999 - April 2003

Illustration (2D and 3D)
Created high quality design standardized technical illustrations for over 50 Microsoft Press titles. Worked closely with the project editors, technical editors, copy editors and desktop publishers to resolve all technical and stylistic ambiguities. Used 3D Studio Max, Photoshop , Freehand, Illustrator, and a wide variety of traditional media to create figurative illustrations that visually expressed the abstract content of the book. Many of books required the creation of a series of illustrations for each Part of the book to establish a continuous narrative that paralleled the development of the contents of the book.

Design
Designed large format posters (11"x17" to 5'x9') for company wide meetings and initiatives. Worked closely with the Marketing Department to redesign and templatize all MSPress companion CD labels to enhance branding consistency and to streamline the production process. Designed 256 color multiple resolution icons anddesigned the User Interface for multiple custom Visual Basic applications that I wrote.
Pre-Press
Dealt extensively prepress issues for 1 color, 2 color, and 4 color books including trapping, overprinting, font issues (i.e. creating custom fonts or graphics of single glyphs for Unicode font characters from Open Type fonts, postscript font errors, etc), imposition for special addendums to the books (i.e. tip-ins, gatefolds, tear outs, quick reference cards, posters, etc), generating and troubleshooting postscript from Acrobat, Pagemaker, FrameMaker, Freehand, and Illustrator, and troubleshooting any and all graphics problems (including manual review of post script code).
Automation / Programming
Worked extensively on the automation of common repetitive tasks. Used Photoshop and Illustrator actions for the batch processing of images and illustrations. Created custom scripts using Freehand 8 scripting (Java based), PageMaker scripting (proprietary scripting language) and Microsoft Visual Test (pseudo VB code) for the the procedural batch processing of files in an error trapped manner, and to streamline the workflow between multiple applications. Created custom applications using Visual Basic 6. and VB .NET that included references to the Illustrator 10, Microsoft Visio 2002, and the Extensis Portfolio 5 type libraries to allow for hosted OLE automation within my custom applications. Developed Art Monkey to automatically generate finished Illustrator illustrations, grayscale EPSs for print, and 4 color JPGs for e-book use based on positional and relational data captured from the author supplied Visio original drawings. Created a floating palette application ,AI Buddy, that programmatically provided the production speeding functionality that was missing from Illustrator (such as true alignment to center, align to point, etc).. Developed "G.O.R.T.", an application independent macro recorder/player that recorded Key strokes and Mouse Events, and played them back to any open window.
Designer / Illustrator, The Pants : Eponymous EP (CD)
November 2001 - January 2002 Designed the logo, and designed and illustrated the CD booklet, jewel case back, and CD label for the band The Pants' CD, "The Pants : Eponymous EP". Accomplished the illustrations using Acrylic, colored pencil, and Photoshop post processing.
Designer / Illustrator, "Seeman, Deine Heimat Ist Das Meer" promotional materials
October 1998 - March 1999 Designed and illustrated the promotional materials for the independent film "Seeman, Deine Heimat Ist Das Meer". These included the RSVP invitation to the private screening, 3 separate Poster designs, a bumper sticker, and the movie box packaging.
Electronic Artist - ArtSource Inc. (for Microsoft Press)
October 1998 - March 1999 This was the contracting portion of my employment for Microsoft Press before I was hired on full time, the job duties were essentially the same.