If you want to come along to check it out tomorrow (April 4th), it’s all happening at the Coronet Theatre in Elephant & Castle from 7:30pm to midnight. Tickets are around a tenner from Amiando (for 10% off, use this code: DWDK707N), or about £15 on the door. I could do with a cheering section, so come on down!

© Rob Barrett Design.

While browsing the beer aisle in the supermarché here in the French Alps on Monday, on my first skiing trip, I received a phone call from Lizzie at Germination, the company behind the London version of the event.

“Good news — you’re in!” A great way to start my holiday off, knowing that I’d be one of the eight starting competitors in the showdown on April 4th. Plus the prizes are something to look forward to… My poor Wacom pen is gaffa-taped together now, so the replacement tablet and pen’s going to be very welcome.

If you’re around in London that weekend, come on down to Elephant & Castle and support me and the other guys (but cheer louder for me!).

For those of you interested, here’s my process for getting ready for the tryout…

Initial Sketch (24/02/2009)

I received an email last Tuesday night letting me know that I’d been accepted for a trial to enter Cut&Paste, and that I was to come up with a 15-minute design on the theme “Bliss”, with an optional challenge that it should be a t-shirt design.

Out came the notepad straight away, and after a brief brainstorm, I came up with this, which is a kind of ‘blissful unawareness’. The guy’s strolling through some post-apocalyptic landscape while listening to music, which transports him away into his own mental paradise.

Practice #1: 15 mins (24/02/2009)

This dreadful first attempt is a clear indicator that I had no idea just how much can be achieved in 15 minutes if you don’t panic and rush…

Practice #2: ~30 mins (24/02/2009)

Whereas this one’s an example of what can happen when you get carried away and decide to ignore the timer. Actually, it was a case of taking the image as far as I would have liked it, and seeing how long that took.

Practice #3: 21 mins (25/02/2009)

Refining the previous image, trying to find ways to cut some minutes off my time. It’s getting there…

Practice #4: 15 mins (27/02/2009)

The next couple were strict 15 minute tests with my decent design, trying to get as much done as possible while still furthering the illustration.

Practice #5: 15 mins (27/02/2009)

Practice #6: 15 mins (28/02/2009)

My final practice, finished about 10 minutes before I had to leave my flat for the real trial… I realised that I could save myself an easy minute or two by drawing the smoke with my Wacom instead of a series of ellipses — believe me, over 15 minutes, a one minute time-saving is a massive advantage!

Trial Entry: 15 mins (28/02/2009)

And finally, the final submitted image. I’m mostly happy with how it turned out, but there’s a few things I would have liked to have done a little differently. Unfortunately, the trial took place on a Mac — currently as a PC user, the keyboard layout and the terrible default Mac mouse got me pretty stressed out, which means I didn’t get to intersect the man’s shirt, nor did I have time to clip the background to a t-shirt shape. In fact, with 20 seconds remaining, I went to crop the image and couldn’t find the icon in the CS4 toolbar, so my final submitted image was actually about 10,000 pixels square. Oops.

© Rob Barrett Design.

For those of you who don’t know what Cut & Paste is, it’s a design competition taking place in 16 cities across the world in which 2D, 3D and Motion designers battle it out in 15 minute create-from-scratch rounds in front of judges and a crowd of fans and well-wishers. Over a few stages, the contestants eventually get whittled down to one grand winner (for each category), who — along with receiving some sweet prizes — gets a place to compete against the other 15 winners in a global final in New York.

So, I’ve been given the theme for Saturday’s audition, I’m coming up with ideas, and I’m having a go at some speed sessions in Illustrator. I’m down to 30 minutes to get from blank page to presentable design, so I’ve just got 3½ days to knock 10 minutes off my time now…

© Rob Barrett Design.