I have recently updated my design for my podcast series. I got the inspiration from a tutorial I seen in Computer Arts magazine issue 199. It was a tutorial for working with the envelope distort feature in Illustrator, which gives a wavy pattern similar to that of a waveform in music.
The inspiration for the text came from Boys Noize Records. I used a chunky, bold font for the typography and created boxes around the font as to create separation from the underlying grid. I added a second colour in an offset pattern to create a sort of illusion that one is higher than the other. Like with record labels, who change their design slightly via the colour or a slight variation of pattern, this can also be applied to this design. Which is what I had in mind when creating it. It can simply change colour and pattern with each podcast.
Recently, I have been fascinated by pixel art in all its forms, from old video games, and Im talkin’ real old, like space invader era. But I recently came across isometric design and pixel art combined and I just fell in love with the beautifully smooth, clean finish the design leaves. It’s basic, but there is something captivating by its simplistic style.
There are many tutorials out there on how to get started, and all you have to do is google “pixel art tutorial” and a plethora of tutorials with show up, but some aren’t that great from my experience searching them, but you really have to read up on isometric properties and how they function together. There is a lot to learn about the style and design, from texturing and dithering, to shawdows and colour theory. Different tutorials have there own methods of creating pixel art, from MS Paint, to Photoshop to dedicated pixel art software. I made this using Photoshop, bring your brush size to 1pt and zoom to about 500-600% and work from there. Also, to make life a lot easier, open 2 windows in Photoshop, one to work on at your zoomed in level and the second at the original zoomed out size, to see the entire work, trust me, its a lot easier.
This is just the first step in designing what I hope to be is a full image of buildings, parking area, trees etc. But one thing I will say, this is a very time consuming art form… But the reward is a gorgeous design full of life and detail.
Another stencil project of mine. I had a lot of fun making the Marilyn Monroe stencil that I decided to give it another go. Only I had no idea what celeb to do next, but I knew that my girlfriends sister liked Bruno Mars, and I knew he had an iconic photo of himself in the suit with the shades in the sun. It was a perfect picture to work with as the sun created a great contrast of white and black.
Like the last one, the process is simple;
Import your image to photoshop and alter the contrast until it is completely black and white and to your liking.
Print the black and white picture off in A4 size.
Buy 2 A1 size card paper. This is where the maths comes in.
Get your ruler, and divide the page into how long and wide you want the stencil to be, in a processing of adding the length and width values in order to enlarge the stencil to your liking.
Trace (Using your eye) the image from the A4 page to the A1 page.
With your Scissors, cut the area that you want to stencil out from the A1, leaving the shape in the A1 so that you can spray it.
Throw out the excess (or keep it so you can make a reverse stencil)
Put the stencil A1 over the other clear A1 that you bought.
Glue down the edges of stenciled A1 to the clear A1, so that no spray “leaks” and causes a blur effect. Use Pritt Stick for this, its weak and you can pull it away very easily without it the 2 A1 pages sticking together.
Spray, using the colour you want.
Peel the front stenciled A1 off the face of the now sprayed back A1 page.
Wait to dry, and wipe the excess/residue paper that has stuck from the front A1 (via the glue) off by using your finger, or what I used, Blu-Tak.
I have been working on this video for about a month. The idea came to me when I discovered a program called GCFScape, which is a piece of software used to extract audio from video games on Steam, the network platform developed by Valve. As you may know, I am an avid gamer, and have clocked up hundreds of hours on Team Fortress 2. So I am completely accustomed to its sound bank.
Through a flash of wisdom I thought of using that particular clip from Universals popular 1987 movie, Predator. I needed a large action scene with different types of guns and a common enemy in order to pull off the skip and achieve the comedy aspect that is present in Team Fortress 2.
The video was extracted from the DVD (Predator) via VLC player, as it has the capability to record video in its original quality. The clip was then transferred into Adobe Premier Pro, in which it was edited and audio added. After completion, the video was transferred into Media Encoder and exported as an MPEG4. I uploaded it onto my Youtube and not my Vimeo, because of the possible copyright issues with using the clip and the audio. Youtube didn’t seem to mind.
The creative process took longer than the editing work itself. I hope people enjoy it, I only created it for my own practice at using and familiarizing myself with Premier Pro. Although I think people who have no knowledge of Team Fortress 2 will fully understand the video. None the less, Enjoy.
My infatuation with Lego continues with this set of Lego, I got this about a month ago from my girlfriend… That’s right, she’s worse. But what can I say, I love them. I shot this set on a really sunny day in my conservatory, It was the first time the sun had come out in months, so I took my opportunity while it was there, (funny how the first thing I thought of when the sun came out, was to shot my latest Lego set).
I love shooting in the conservatory, the lighting is great, the flora make great background noise, for what I’m shooting anyway, and the table out there makes a great smooth (yet rough looking) surface to model the Lego on. Its also the same table I shot my previous Lego set on. Like the last set, there is a story to this one, so sit back, put it on slideshow, and find out what happens in this set.
Initially, like the last set, I wanted to shoot this one at night, using the green lamps again, but just on a whim, I shot them during the day. So the next will have to be shot at night, as I picked up some good tips from my photography lecturer in college. Enjoy these ones, and I’m sure I will have another set soon.
I seem to have an unnatural infatuation with Lego. My mother got this set for me for xmas. I dont know what took me this long to take photo’s of them. Although the set did take me 3 hours to shoot. This set design tells a story, it starts with shots of the unsuspecting business man, and introduces the Alien tripod ship, ending with the suit being captured. It was my first shoot at night, which was quite difficult at first. I shot some images in the evening and the light didn’t suit the lens’ capabilities, and they came out blurry.
I was really determined to get some really sharp images at night, but knowing that the lens wasn’t suited to it, I had to use an artificial lighting set up, I used 2 lights, a desk lamp, and a rounded glass green lamp behind the aliens, which to my surprise provided an amazingly eerie backdrop to the alien photo’s. I was really happy with the overall quality and captured some beautiful photo’s. This is my favourite. See the full set on Flickr (which I also have an infatuation with):
I decided only recently, since my love of Flickr knows no bounds, to make a personalized watermark for my photo’s, just to show a bit of creative flair and profession. I was messing around with a few designs and logo’s, but nothing really seemed to work for me. It had to be something typography, since my love of type also knows no limit.
So here is what I came up with, I love offset features in design, I think they compliment an image really nice. The font I used was “Van Helsing”, a comic book font (which I have tons of), with really sharp corners and bold chunky lettering, I wanted something that portrays my creative personality in my designs, and I think this really endorses that.
As you may or may not know (depending if you follow me on Twitter) I got some Lego for Xmas as a joke from my mother, little did she know the joke was on her, because I Love Lego!! I recently picked up a new set of Lego in mid January, after my Xmas Bonus from work came in of course.
Its the Alien Conquest series – I had an awesome idea for a little stop motion animation, and a small comic strip, making a little story board and recording sounds for it. But that’s for the summer (wink, wink). But until then, enjoy the photos.
As part of a module for college, the class was asked to create an deliver a piece of work that best described your area of expertise. Having so much freedom to complete an assignment baffled me, but then quickly took advantage of the freedom that was offered, I wasn’t going to question it.
I had an idea early on, I had a podcast and blog that I was only kind of starting off, great, it could be a transmedia project, it was for a DJ mix that I made myself and would update it regularly with new mixes and track lists etc. It was only a personal project, but I thought, this is a great opportunity to continue and perhaps take it more seriously.
Creating the podcast was a lengthy and arduous procedure, that involved getting an feed, then creating an RSS for the feed. I got this from googles, Feedburner.com. The how process required about 3 different tutorials and combining them to create the entire podcast and feed (because, typically, they don’t have a clear and simple way to do it all together). I had to connect the feed from Feedburner to the Blog that I uploaded the mix to. But in order to upload the mix to a blog, you need to 1st have the .mp3 file online, so any website that host audio files is fine: Soundowl, ZippyShare or Hulkshare, etc. In order to get the podcast on iTunes, you need to register the feed with apple, this normally takes 3 days so they can confirm the feed is connected and indeed works ok. So after all the hard work, Making the mix, uploading to soundowl, creating the RSS feed, creating the blog for the mix, linking the blog and the feed, requesting apple to host the podcast on iTunes, I finally got a podcast.
This year in my 4th year module, “User Theories”, I have been covering ARG’s or Alternate Reality Games, which are interactive narratives that take place in a real world or online (or both) environment. ARG’s follow a story directed by the developers directly, as opposed to being controlled by A.I.
Participants receive clues through various multimedia platforms, in the form of Audio/Video clips, Codes, Telephone calls etc. and have to piece the clues together in a community effort to progress through the story and complete the game.
I wrote a brief piece summarizing an ARG for the module:
I Love Bees (ILB) is an alternate reality game created in 2004, by 42 Entertainment, in preperation for the release of video games developer, Bungie’s game, Halo 2. The ARG was both an online, and real world experience for users.
ILB was intiated through the Halo 2′s trailer, where users were purposly leaked a subliminal message of a URL to a website (www.ilovebees.com). The users then went to the website and were presented with a hacked appearance of the site, where they found audio and video logs and solved puzzles, which included acquiring co-ordinates and travelling to a public telephone at a specific time where you would give the caller the code, and recieve the next piece of information required to gradually reveal the fictional story.
ILB was a marketing success, involving 500,000 returning to site at a regular basis, with over 3,000,000 visits to the site in total, and was credited as being the first successful ARG surrounding video games. It won numerous awards for its inginuity and interactivity, and sparked the ARG movement in video games.
