Fringe

Target

Triumph

Dexter

Dravid

Rahul Dravid ,one of the best #3 batsman in World Cricket retired on 9th March 2012. A true Gentleman of the game, was one of the pillars of the Indian Middle Order. He was The CRISIS MAN be it Test Cricket or One Day Internationals.This Ambigram is tribute to his 16 year illustrious career.
Salaam Dravid!!!

Gamer

Insanity

Master Shifu

Pensive

Magic

Antique

Photography

Sachin

The man who is removing atheists since 1989..

The GOD himself..

Belated Happy Birthday..

Legion

A new Ambigram

King

All my recent post have been on Facebook. I will try to post all my designs here. Thanks everybody for taking keen interest in my blog and designs.

Throttle

The last post has been a total success. John Langdon, Co-inventor of the concept of ambigrams, the man who drew ambigrams for the famous novel 'Angels and Demons', Man behind 'Illuminati', commented on my previous blog. These images inspired me to dive into the world of ambigrams . It was truly an honor.

These comments made me create ambigrams with more vigour and enthusiasm. Now-a-days i am always on the lookout of words that are probable ambigrams. So you guys may see many more ambigrams coming your way.

Today's word is 'Throttle'. I had thought of this word a long time back. I had also created a hand made sketch of the word. But back then i had little knowledge of scanning and editing my ambigrams. So the Ambigram never got created. Yesterday as i was just thinking of words, the word Throttle crawled in my mind and i started drawing right at that moment.

The design circled mainly on the same path as the previous thought process. If you see at the word 'tt' make a 'h' and 'r' can easily made to look as 't'. 'o' being an natural just fitted in all the words. The challenge here was 'T' and 'E'. It was a bit difficult for me to fit these two words. I made a lot of combinations. But then finally narrowed it down the following design which looks pretty much attractive and readable. I made the 'o' look a bit different the original ones and thought of connecting it with 't' which was good. I scanned the image,painted it paint and then traced it in inkscape. This was quite easy because editing the traced image in inkscape is a tedious job. So this was quite easy and quick.

The next job was the colour thing. I wanted to make it look like a fiery word. It was not easy to put fire inside the word, so just put red and yellow colours at the end of the design. These colours complement the words meaning.

Its very important that you people keep on commenting on my blogs. They are very important for me. The legibility and the readability can be tested when many people try to comprehend the word.

So please keep commenting and checking out my blog.

Wizard

Harry Potter mania is gripping the whole world and i am not left out of that.This because of the epic finale that realised last Friday. J.K.Rowling has put a lot of effort in writing all these books and they are truly awesome. The suspense and the gripping story is so awesome that you just cant put down the book. Hats off to her.

So to add to this Potter mania i wanted to do an ambigram. Harry,Ron, Hermoine would be my probable candidates but I wanted it to stand out. Then I thought of the wizard and here i am with my design. I had thought of this word long back but for some reason i was not able to make it happen. Everything has a time and the time for 'Wizard' is now.

Let me run through the design process of this ambigram. 'D' and 'i' and make a 'w'. But the catch here is that it should not look like and 'm', it should look like 'rD'. So the work was cut out for me. No ready made fonts were useful. But yesterday as i was in the midst of all my office work it struck me. These days i carry my drawing book with me to the office. The 'r' and 'D' were perfectly fitted. It was the turn of 'iza'. Now here z is a natural ambigram so it would be ideal if we keep its design as it is. But somehow 'i' and 'a' were not fitting well. So why no combine 'i' and 'z' to make it an 'A'. This way preserving the 'z'.

Attractiveness was one of the most important factor of this design. The style must be consistent with the word. So i need to draw really curvy stuff and make it an medieval look. I think i have fairly achieved it. Next was the wand thing which made it look more attractive and meaning full. I drew the design traced it and converted it using the combination of GIMP and Inkscape. Fine tools. I browsed through the net and thought of putting sparks at the end of the wand. So thats that..

Let me tell you my friends, if you want to be a perfectionist you have to practice. The old saying is truly correct 'Practice makes man Perfect'

Comments are eagerly eagerly awaited

Clayton - My Fellow Ambigramist

I have been itching to post a ambigram since a very long time. But apperently for some reason i was not able to post it. I have successfully created my first hand drawn, scanned and edited ambigram. People who are in my facebook friend list have seen the ambigram and have appreciated it. It is satisfactory to read positive feedback about my designs.Since then i have always craved for creating the hand drawn ambigrams instead of using inkscape and illustrator to draw it from the scratch. I use the tools for editing and adding some effects. The editing is a long process and i am getting a taste of it slowly.

Today i have come up with a ambigram of my ambigram mate 'Clayton'. I met Clayton on facebook and was instantly a fan of his designs. This guy is a creative genius. He has not only got custom ambigrams but also some ring designs of the words. Mind you creating ambigram rings is not easy and this guy creates them with awesome clarity and fascinating designs. We been friends since then and have been sharing a lot of stuff about ambigrams and art. It feels good to discuss about ambigram with a fellow artist.You can go through the following site to view his designs http://www.customambigrams.com/

The design took very less time to evolve. It took not more than 20 mins to complete the ambigram. The 'c' and 'l' can be connected to create a 'n' . 'o' can be transformed into an 'a' very easily. Now the 'y' can be made look as a 't' by writing the 't' in a cursive format and inverting it. The design was clear and concise. I had created this on a paper so the next task was to scan it and edit it. The editing part took a very long time. I made a lot of changes to the design. Every single time i was not satisfied with the design. But finally after a long time I was able to complete it and put in the front of you. Finally today it was ready to upload.

Thanks to blogger,inkscape and illustrator. Wonderful tools.

Eagerly awaiting your comments.

Spots

Evolution and innovation are the key to success and progress. These two things are interlinked. Evolution comes with innovation and innovation come with evolution. Evolution is in connection with human kind since a very long time. We have been evolved from a very less thought power to the human beings with the best brains that you will ever find. These brains help in innovation and new ideas. So in a way as i said they are interlinked with each other.

The whole point of writing about evolution and innovation is that my designs have been evolved thought innovation. If you compare my previous designs to the ones that i create now, they have evolved over the period of time. They have been more polished and finished. As a part of innovation i have come with the 'theme based ambigrams', which were really different that those contempory ambigrams. This all has happened over a period of time. I have experienced both evolution and innovation through my designs and i am sure you might have experienced it too.

Today i would like to present in front of you a very different ambigram, spots. I was making an ambigram of the word 'sports', I had just finished the design and 'spots' clicked me. I decided to post this ambigram before i would publish sports. I had a clear and concise design in my mind right from the start.

If you look at the design it is pretty much simple. 's' and 's' are natural ambigrams. 'o' clubbed with 't' makes an inverted 'p'. So in a way it is natural ambigram. I did not invest much time in creating the final draft of the design.The alignment of the words is so crisp that the ambigram looks really nice.

The next which i did to add flavour to this design is i added effects. Viewers wouldn't have seen these effects before in my designs. Recently i have started using 'Adobe illustrator'. The tool is really great. It gives you more options to make the design attractive. I used the 'grains' effect to add those grains which look more like spots.I am yet to explore the complete functionality of the tool. I would really like to use the tool to the fullest.

So the effect helped me to present the word with a meaning, The spots in the design help in explaining the word. So it more or less like a theme based ambigram. I was very happy with the final outcome of the ambigram. My whole effort is to make the ambigram readable and attractive. Readability will improve with practice and experience. Tools like Adobe Illustrator help the designer add this facet to the design.

I would like to specially thank the Adobe team in making such a powerful tool. Thanks again.

Please post your replies and suggestions in the comments tab. Your feedback would be appreciated.

Mumbai

Nikita Prokhorov is an avid artist and an ambigramist. He was the person who was instrumental in letting me know about the tool inkscape . He has come up with a great site called http://www.ambigram.com/ . It is a very good platform for people who have artistic interests and are ready to jump into the world of ambigrams. It is an ambigram devoted site.

He is currently hositing ambigram challenges. So what is a challenge? A theme is announced on the website and depending on the theme the person has to come up with his own ambigram design. There was a particular challenge in which you had to submit an ambigram of a city you love the most. The Challenge deadline was already over, but to test my skills and creativity I thought of making an ambigram of the word ‘Mumbai’.

Why Mumbai?? Because Mumbai is the city which never sleeps, millions of people shift to Mumbai to try their luck. Personally I love Mumbai for its night life, marine drive, trains, cricket, fast paced life, unlimited eating joints, the monsoon, Posh localities diversity, the never say die attitude and millions of opportunities the city offers. So I thought of dedicating an ambigram for this amazing city.

I was just wondering from where to start. So I just wrote ‘mumbai’ the calligraphy pen on the pseudo drawing board provided by inkscape. Looking at the words the concept just flowed from the brain to the computer. This is a classic ambigram which has a lot of natural ambigramatic letters in it. ‘mumbai’, the ‘a’ and ‘i’ align themselves so well that when inverted they make a perfect ‘m’. The inkscape calligraphy pen was helping me in getting the results which I wanted. With some efforts I was able to complete the ‘a’,’I’ and ‘m’. The middle ‘m’ can be directly made an ambigram. I used the stroke of ‘I’ to make the ‘m’. 3 similar strokes of ‘I’ made a perfect ‘m’ which would look the same when viewed upside down.

The next challenge was the ‘u’ and ‘b’ transformation. This part of the ambigram took a long time to evolve. The absence of a stroke on top of ‘u’ was making it look as ‘h’ rather than ‘b’ when viewed upside down. I wanted to make the letter look same as the other letters in the word. I didn’t want to risk the readability of the ambigram. So it was very important the design should be complete in every sense. After a long time of doodling, changes, adjustments and some final touches the ambigram was finally complete. The satisfaction after the completion was just awesome.

Please post your comments and reviews. This will make me introspect and create better designs in the future. Thanks again to Inkscape and Blogger.