I like the style, the colors, and the balancing.

I would make the bottom serif of the "C" totally straight (not leaning a bit forward), and make the tail of the first "R" longer. Plus maybe adjust for weight, if you have time: the larger the letter the more slimming it needs - or vice versa.

And there's a bit of wobbliness in some outlines, like the inside bottom-right of the "S", the body-shadow relationship in the "C", etc.

hhp

Sean -- nice start ... just a few things ...
might be more subjective than anything.

* the C seems a tad too big/heavy
* the leaf on the tip of the S gets obscured
when you stroke it ... could it be bigger?
* actually, the O looks a little big, too.

bj

The shadow's distribution seems odd to me.
It's too dark on the middle ('rrale'). Both beginning and ending letters need a little more shadowing (especially the 'C').
Overall, I think it looks nice, but I wonder if the flourish in 'S' isn't too detailed.

<font class="dontLookLikeCrap">Thanks for the critique. I think all your comments are right on. I'll be making those changes. Extra sets of eyes are great!

And there's a bit of wobbliness in some outlines, like the inside bottom-right of the "S"

"S"s are so hard for me to draw! They take me forever and I never get them quite right. Any suggestions to help me work through this in general?

Thanks a bunch for the help!

S.</font>

Looks great, almost like a magazine masthead.

Something that has helped me with drawing an S is (this may be really obvious) starting with facing bezier handles being the same length. Does that make sense? This makes for a smooth starting curve--then I noodle with the node positions and fine-tune the handle lengths.

This helped me, but someone more experienced may have better advice.

-Addison

> "S"s are so hard for me to draw! They take me forever and I never get them quite right.

In 1979, Don Knuth wrote an article in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society in which he described the computer typesetting system that he was in the process of developing:

---

quote:

The most difficult symbol by far, at least for me, was the letter S; in fact I spent three days and nights without sleep, trying to make the S look right, before I got it. At one point I even felt it would be easier to rewrite all my books without using any S's! After the first day of discouraging trials, I showed the meager results I had to my wife, and she said "Why don't you make it S-shaped?".

---

Robin,

That is a great quote.

I'll have to confess that the flourish on the "S" is a result of getting overly frustrated with how it was going. I thought I could just make it something other than an "S". Funny.

S.