Recent Work: Silverback / journal / hicksdesign

28/02/08

Recent Work: Silverback

This is an icon I created for a mysterious app called Silverback being developed by Clearleft. While I can’t go into what it’s all about just yet, I wanted to post the final icon, along with the sketches that led up to it.

After Andy had the great idea for the concept, I started some basic doodles:

doodles

Then onto the the first proper sketches, scanned in, and given a ‘colour underlay’ in Photoshop:

silverback

Then direction changed to a less realistic gorilla, which progressed into the final icon. Here are those stages as an animated gif, from sketch to basic vector shapes, to final icon making the lab coat longer on the gorilla’s body:

Silverback process

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Comments are now closed, but you can still have a jolly time reading what others have left:

Brad C said 313 days ago:

Absolutely great illustration (and site too, love the use of pngs). Thanks for sharing the step by step of the illustration, really helpful to see the process.

Edward said 313 days ago:

Wonderful. Thanks for sharing!

Andy said 313 days ago:

I think it’s one of the tastiest bits of logo work I’ve seen in a while.

Also, how the hell do you remember to save a copy of the midway stages? I never think to stop and do that when I’m working, especially on arty things…

Andy said 313 days ago:

Is that a moleskine pad that you do your sketching in?

José Carlos said 313 days ago:

That’s a fine looking gorilla Mr. Hicks. Congratulations and thanks for sharing the creative process.

Tobias Batt said 313 days ago:

Very inspiring, love all the detail and hard work that went into it.

Jon Hicks said 313 days ago:

@Andy – because the client likes to see it!

@otherandy – yes, its the ‘reporter’ style sketchbook that opens landscape.

Michaël Villar said 313 days ago:

Seen the website weeks ago. Like it!

Wonderful job ;)

Blaze said 313 days ago:

Very very cool! Nice work indeed.

#10

lewro said 313 days ago:

Very inspiring work. I spotted that same of the shapes have be removed in the latest frame but they are actually present on the final version. Thanks very much for sharing.

#11

Mat said 313 days ago:

Oh, stop it Jon. You make the rest of us look like novices.

#12

Dan Sauvé said 313 days ago:

Oh, so it’s a lab coat! I thought it was just a shirt. With this new knowledge I totally know what the app does… :)

Seriously though, thanks for the post. I’d like to see more like this—the animated GIF is great!

#13

Matt said 313 days ago:

Great stuff! Could you please explain what you mean by a “colour underlay”?

#14

A Fan said 313 days ago:

Love the image. The smile sort of reminded me of the Amazon swoosh – only backwards.

#15

Meagan Fisher said 313 days ago:

This is great, thanks so much for showing us this. The icon totally rocks.

#16

William Wilkinson said 313 days ago:

Looks great!

#17

Nick Whitmoyer said 313 days ago:

Nice work Jon! And for the 404 you might consider a peel with no banana :P

#18

Guillermo Esteves said 313 days ago:

Between this and Paul Annett’s PNG cleverness, I can’t wait to see the rest of the Silverback app.

#19

Dan Benjamin said 313 days ago:

I simply love it. To be honest, the icon sets the bar pretty high for the app!

#20

Adrian said 313 days ago:

Really, really nice. Great job.

#21

Hamish M said 313 days ago:

I think you did a really fantastic job Jon. Thanks for sharing this.

Out of curiosity, will the choice of a Gorilla make more sense once Silverback is released? I mean, I imagine there’s some meaning behind it, right? (Or perhaps you guys just like Gorillas, hehe)

#22

Jon Hicks said 313 days ago:

@Matt – What I mean is that I take the scanned sketch into photoshop, set that layer to ‘mutliply’ so that the white becomes transparent, and then add colour to the layers underneath. This means that the sketch lines are always on top

@Hamish – yes, it will! What it is, and what it’s wearing is very key to what it does!

#23

Matt Wilcox said 313 days ago:

Very interesting Jon, the logo is beautiful, but I’m especially intrigued to see the process. Thanks for sharing.

#24

Paul Lloyd said 313 days ago:

I love it! I’m particularly enjoying the small details, such as the lab coats buttons close to popping off! Maybe his coat shrunk in the wash prior to this picture ;-)

#25

Jan Quickels said 313 days ago:

Fantastic work, well done!

Awesome to see the way from sketch to final version—nice animation.

#26

Jorge Quinteros said 313 days ago:

Very nice process. It’s now a fact that every great designer utilized a Moleskine.

#27

Yannic Walter said 313 days ago:

Very nice work.
I haveone question though: Why is there a skateboard between those sketches in the moleskine? : >

#28

Rune Sandberg said 312 days ago:

Absolutely fabulous!

#29

Josh Walsh said 312 days ago:

Simply amazing. Thanks for sharing the process.

#30

Dominic Shiells said 312 days ago:

cool icon!!

#31

Paul Groves said 312 days ago:

Super

Great to see that top end dudes like yourself getting even better.

Has got rather large moobs though!

#32

Benjamin Wiederkehr said 312 days ago:

Excellent work! I wonder if you did have any influences on the final design of the Splashpage (from Silverback) by Paul Annett?

#33

Jon Hicks said 312 days ago:

@Benjamin – No, that was all Paul’s work!

It’s an important point to make, that it matters not one jot what you use to sketch in. For years I despised Moleskines for being ‘too nice to use’, but my wife bought me a plain reporter style notebook (http://www.moleskineus.com/reporter-pocket-plain.html ) which I can fit horizontally between me and the keyboard. I love it, but any old piece of paper will do.

#34

Owen McGauley said 311 days ago:

Thanks for giving us an insight into the creative process Jon. It is a very cool logo indeed. While I’m commenting I might as well add that I love the podcast also.

Keep up the good work.

#35

Shane said 311 days ago:

Fantastic stuff – and we’re all dying to see what it’s all about :)

#36

Jono said 311 days ago:

Simply stunning work!

#37

Huck said 310 days ago:

Hahaha, that skateboard is the eyes, silly! :D

#38

Tom Watson said 310 days ago:

Beautiful as usual Jon, although I was sort of hoping you’d spill the beans on what the application actually does!

#39

George Coghill said 310 days ago:

Nice stuff, always enjoy seeing the unsung sketches that live in the shadow of the final artwork.

#40

Monkey Botherer said 309 days ago:

I kinda saw a giant monkey cock pointing up until I realised it was his hind leg… Bottom right of image, directly in line with the pens in his coat.

But that’s almost certainly just me.

#41

arp said 309 days ago:

Great Icon. I especially like the purple usage…it’ll stick out amongst other apps.

I agree with Paul Groves (#31) on the ‘rather large moobs’ comment though. Silverbacks seem to have more flat pectoral muscles like a human male (than large rounded features of a female).