I would like to cover where in the world I get most of these ideas from. All of my ideas come from a sense of, “what if”. I ask my friends, family, and myself, “What if”. What is something original that I can create? One of my favorite “what if” creations is Kirby smoking a cigarette, or its more common name, Middle Aged Kirby.

The idea came from my strange sense of humor surrounding cigarettes. Something about a family friendly character smoking a cigarette never fails to make me laugh. I thought to myself, which character is super cute looking enough to look hilarious when taken out of their element. And then it hit me: Kirby. I sketched a picture of Kirby with a comb over, a blue and yellow striped necktie. Added a cup of coffee in his hand that says, “Mondays”, and a lit cigarette in his mouth. I saw it and said to myself, “That’s funny”. After that, it was off to the races.

                I shared the sketch with all my friends to get their opinions. Basically, seeing if they saw the humor in it as I did. Most of them said that it was funny, but not much of a reaction after that. I thought to myself, “How can I improve upon this?” Then the idea to vectorize it came to mind! I decided to put the sketch in Adobe Illustrator and went to work. I went through a few drafts before setting on the final design that you all see now.

The final vectorized design was finished in roughly two days. I thought that the design looked good, but it could be even better. The next day, I watched a video of a man enhancing his vector art in Photoshop to make it stand out. The next day I decided to do the same thing. I followed along with the processes that he was doing and kept at it. I added some shadow effects to Kirby’s back and the sides of his shoes. Next, I added an orange, yellow kind of light to the tip of the cigarette to give off the image that it was lit. Then I added a soft glow with the same colors on the edge of Kirby’s face and the end of the coffee cup.

After that, I added the smoke from the cigarette using a white motion blur coming off the cigarette and going upward. I thought that was enough, but then I thought, “You know what would be really cool? Particles coming off the cigarette itself!” I had no idea what to do at first, but it came to mind, using an image of space itself! The stars look like flares off the cigarette! So I used a mask with some red and yellow particles to represent the cigarette flares, and the final product turned out beautifully.

                After posting it, the people who said it was good turned into people that said it was amazing! After that project, I developed a passion for adding special effects to give my work a competitive edge. I look forward to whatever projects I plan on making in the future and hopefully I will continue to build upon the skills I have already learned.