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JJ VanDerGinst, Galaxian Phoenix
8" x 10", Graphic Illustrator, 2025
My first idea of this project was to chose a animal with lots of different colors. I also was gonna do a bird because that's what I've been doing for the past few projects. I originally chose a Eagle but then realized the pictures didn't have much color so I chose a Phoenix bird instead. I've used these cool colors before and I think they go great together. My process of this project was first put the image as a template. Then I used the pen tool to outline the bottom feathers of the bird. I then did the body and lastly did the wings. I also colored as I went. I didn't do it at the end but one I finished one part I decided to color it. A difficulty I encountered during this was sometimes it wouldn't let me paint the individual shapes. What I needed to do was click "merge live paint." After that it went smoothly. If I were to change this I would made the shapes look more like feathers in a way. This art style is a little abstract because it's just putting many shapes together to create the image. I've never done a project using shapes to create a image. I really like how this turned out because the colors really compliment themselves because there are dark parts and there are light parts. All in all, this project has been fun to do because of the shapes and colors.
This is just another polygonal animal that I made because they are fun and cool to make.
I made "Star Wars" as my visual pun. I used a picture of a star and some light sabers to create them having a war. I also used filters on Darth Vader's side to create a different look for the stars.
JJ VanDerGinst, Walt Disney Portrait illustration
8.5" x 11", Graphic Illustrator, 2025
With this project I was tasked on making a famous person turn into a cartoon character. I chose to use Walt Disney as my character. The significance of this piece to me is because I like learning about his history and how he made the company of Disney. My insparation comes from when I visited Disney World. I liked all the stuff there and they had lots of tributes to Walt Disney there as well.
The creative process that it took to create this piece consisted of using multiple layers for the different shading. As well as using lots of colors and shades of that color to achieve darker parts to make it seem more 3D.
I am really drawn to the suit more than anything in this piece. There wasn't many things that created problems in this piece. One problem I did have was some areas it didn't like me trying to fill in a full area like the face or the suit just one color. To overcome this, I had to manually paint those parts. I would've changed lots of things if I started over. For example, the nose looks very much not like a real nose. It looks way to big and very wonky. I would've also changed the hair. That's a part that I rushed to get it finished.
This artwork doesn't really have a specific style to it. It's more of a mix between realism and surreal art. I do like how it really does resemble to actual image that came from the internet. You can see the similarities between them.
Master piece Parody
8.5" x 11", Graphic Photoshop, 2025
We needed to make a parody of a well-known art piece so I chose to do the Mona Lisa. My first idea was to create it into a Disney character. I chose to do Mickey mouse as the character. This is because I got the insparation from when I went to Disney World and Mickey mouse is their mascot of their company.
For my process of making this, I worked from top down. I first started with the ears. Then I worked on the skin color, eyes, mouth, and nose. Once I was finished I worked on the body. I was mostly one color until I got to the gloves and the pants. I mostly used the brush tool and the adjustment brush tool to color.
This project was off to a rough start for me. At first I didn't know where I was going or where I was going to start. After I got all that down it was a pretty easy and simple one. I first looked at inspiration of parodies of the Mona Lisa and I saw what people did and basically took their ideas and made them my own. I wouldn't change much if I started over because it turned out better than I thought it would.
This artwork is more of a surreal art style. This makes it unique because it's apart of disney and lots of my projects have been about Disney. I love that it resembles Mickey Mouse perfectly. You can tell just by looking at it, what it is.
JJ VanDerGinst Double Exposure
8.5" x 11", Graphic Photoshop, 2025
My idea for this was to put a Disney character inside of the Disney castle. I decided to put Mickey Mouse's face inside the castle. This was inspired by many of my other artworks as well as real life experiences.
My process was placing the image of the castle in there and then putting the image of Mickey Mouse's head inside the castle using a layer mask.
At first I knew what my image of project was gonna look like. This turned out just like I had envisioned it. I wouldn't change this if I had restarted. This project was overall good.
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