Honest Ape Productions Presents: Zoo Fling 3D

I'm currently in a class called IM 313: Intermediate Interactive Media Authoring, which as it turns out is a big fancy way of describing a class that goes through the complete process of creating, designing, developing, and promoting a video game. There were three local "topics" to randomly chose from which required various levels of involvement or thematic punch. My group, upon naming ourselves Honest Ape Productions, received on a slip of paper the simple words Peoria Zoo. 


I took charge of the 2D art of the game, creating a GUI, menu screens, buttons, etc., in Photoshop that were given to our programmer. I also created our app icon, and dabbled in some sound effects.

The real brunt of the work actually came from creating the website, which I designed off of a free template and made various modifications. I learned a few new things for this, including some basic Java editing for the dynamic slider on the home page. I also used anchor tags for the first time, to link to sections on the page (so I only had to create 4 pages instead of 7.) I did all the artwork for the site, and wrote all the copy besides a few programming paragraphs and bios. I'm very happy with the website, and if you want to learn more about the game and the art for it, check it out!

http://honestapeproductions.com

Nic Cage As Everyone

*Modified Photo

I have several thoughts on the acting caliber of Mr. Nic Cage...but won't go into them. I was bored and happened to do one of my favorite activities: face-swapping. Nic Cage as a (female) body builder. This one took a record 8-minutes!

Click Here for more info on the meme.
Click Here to see the original picture.

Offerbug.com

It's been a while since I've updated the blog, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy - the folks over at PulseTV.com asked me to design and develop their latest deal of the day website - Offerbug.com. I was part of the creative process from the beginning, forming the logo and solidifying a suitable tagline "We take the "bite" out of retail!"

The logo went through several changes, and that cute little bug initially started out as a bee - but it turns out there was already a similar mascot for a different deal of the day site. So I created this hybrid-beetle-thing and selected the color scheme of black and green.

I eventually created a Photoshop mockup of the page layout, playing off the established color scheme and strove for a minimalist site, since there really is not too much going on besides product description. The mockup was then sent to the developers and coders over at PulseTV, and they reproduced the look as faithfully as possible while we collaborated on updates, and necessary graphic work.

Check out the site here http://offerbug.com

Wes Anderson Desktop Wallpaper

I remember the first time I watched Bottle Rocket. My roommate said it was one of his favorite movies, and even though I had things to work on, I figured I'd at least sit down and do things on my laptop. Within a half hour, I had shut my laptop and focused solely on this movie - it was just too funny, quirky, and engrossing. I wasn't a huge fan of Owen Wilson at the time (Shanghai Noon?) and I had only seen Luke Wilson in Old School. But the movie was awesome, and introduced me to the world of Wes Anderson.

In this world, there are often stupid, yet life-affirming characters who desperately combat all kinds of psychology-fueled defense mechanisms and depression. In this world, comedy comes from normal people doing slightly abnormal things, and being gosh-darned proud of it. In this world, people wear shorts. After watching one, I had to finish, and watched the rest - Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited. I decided to make a sweet desktop wallpaper with a collage of his films just for fun. They're all there - Bill Murray, the Wilsons, Gene Hackman, Adrian Brody, and the rest of the bunch. I made this before Fantastic Mr. Fox came out, but I probably wouldn't have included the puppetry anyway.

I really tried playing with the flow of the images, and even made Jeff Goldblum wrap his arm around Owen Wilson just for the heck of it.

Trigun/Hellsing Guitar

Before I get too carried away here, it should be said that the guitars below are NOT actually real guitars, they are merely Photoshopped mockups that I did for fun one day. I snapped a picture of my sweet red/black electro-acoustic (3/4 scale) and thought about what I would do to modify it. I made these in 2009.

That first picture is of the original guitar (strings

removed of course) And next is the Trigun version I did. The black and red scheme made me think of the overall imagery of the series, so I thought it was a natural choice. The Trigun guitar was made with various images grabbed from the web, and the "bullet holes" were also just grabbed online, probably from those window decals for your car. I also decided if I were to do this, I would spray paint the inside black to make it extra cool.

After making the Trigun one, I instantly thought of making a Hellsing guitar, since I just got into the series around this time, and thought Alucard (it's Dracula backwards!) was pretty badass, and deserved his own guitar. I used mostly the Multiply layer effect, though some were Darken. I also Colorized a few, to make sure that it was completely monochromatic with red and black. I thought about adding bullet holes as well, but it would have been too busy. I also added the magic pentagram thingy from the show in the sound hole.

I'm not exactly sure how I would go about doing this in real life...perhaps create some transparent .pngs onto sticker paper and then apply some kind of gloss to the whole thing.

Kurt Cobain Tribute Poem

It's been a while since I last posted, I chalk that up to enjoying my last winter break. Can ya believe adults with careers don't have winter breaks!? I didn't quite grasp that til now...but I felt like I haven't been as creative (outside a few freelance posters and banner ads) as I usually am without professorial encouragement - so I decided to make a little art piece out of one of my poems.

I never would have thought it would work out as well as it did, but I took a creative writing course last semester just for fun, and it specialized in poetry (I found out a week before class started). I wasn't disappointed or anything, I figured I could get by. The class was taught by Illinois Poet Laureate, Kevin Stein, and was one of the best courses I've taken at Bradley. We were constantly creating and critiquing, and the class fostered a community of poets eager to help each other improve.

The poem itself is my personal favorite that I have written in my beginning life as a poet. I was almost afraid to write a poem about Kurt Cobain, since I didn't want to let myself down in failing to convey the right mood. I also just wanted it to be good - Nirvana changed my life in many ways, and I wanted to do both Kurt and the band the artistic justice they deserve.

I hunted around morguefile.com to find some photos with a Creative Commons license, and simply typed in "seattle." I sifted through dozens and on one of the last pages was this bench that I used. If I'm not mistaken there are a few benches in Seattle that serve as tribute locations for Cobain, and this one had a perfect close up that demonstrated the reverence, hero worship, sadness, and celebration of one person. Thanks to Kristine Kisky for the photo and making it available!

I lowered the saturation of the whole thing, to make it mostly black and white, til the flower colors were the only bits of color. I shrunk it a bit and added a black Inner Glow to the whole frame, as well as added some gradient layer masking to make the image fade on the sides a bit more. I toyed with the idea of adding all kinds of images of cardigans, torn jeans, and maybe a Fender Jagstang - but I thought it was better with this simple display. I chose a Courier-type font (American Typewriter) because it, presents the poem in a straight-forward way (thanks for articulating that for me Lauren!) Cursive-fonts made it seem too girly/sentimental, and that's not what I was going for.

I plan on submitting this poem, among others, to some journals and things eventually. A few of them are begging for artistic accompaniments, so I may do that!

Nirvana Desktop Wallpaper

Due to the popularity of the White Stripes wallpaper, I thought I'd upload the Nirvana Wallpaper I made a few years ago (2007). It was one of the first projects I did with Photoshop on my first-ever Mac, so I was just gettin the hang of it, and using layer effects for the first time. There are plenty of GLARING errors (at least to me) and things I'd like to improve upon one day. I'd also like to resize it a bit better. But for now, I'm just gonna upload it. Obviously focused primarily on Kurt Cobain, but Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl are there too...

A-Phlatt's Mixtape

While working at 747 Productions for my internship, Andre "A-Phlatt" Russel asked if I would be willing to design him an album cover for his upcoming mixtape - Mr. Feature Vol. I, The Double Disc Edition. I said sure, and came up with three variations before settling on this one. The design process was completed within 3 days.

The original image of A-Phlatt himself was not the best quality photo - colors were bland and the image was pretty blurry. After isolating him from the background, I converted it to a black and white image. I applied a light "Dark Strokes" filter in Photoshop to him, which provides a nice high-contrast smoothness without making it any blurrier. I used a gradient overlay to get that blue-pinkish purple color for A-Phlatt, and created a different gradient for the blues in the background. After looking at Lil Wayne's Carter IV album, we decided to use a fancier font (Snell Roundhand) for A-Phlatt's name to contrast with the grungy and bold type everywhere else (Impact font with some grunge brushes overlaid on top).

The city was created with merging several shapes of city skylines together, and is no city in particular as far as I know. I then added the splatter shapes below and merged the two and added a yellow stroke around everything to really make it pop. Using a few other brushes, I added the greens and yellow-red flourishes all around for a more soulful touch, like it is surrounding A-Phlatt (who looks pretty imposing over the city skyline). Overall I think it encompasses classiness and boldness at the same time. That QMG logo is semi-transparent, and is positioned to be kinda at the heart of the city, without interfering with it. I also created matching promotional flyers for the release - which is coming up on December 17th! Check out "She Betty Boopin'" below. (My flyer is at the beginning and end of the slideshow!) The song is pretty damn catchy...

White Stripes Wallpaper

To commemorate the return of Conan O'Brien and the appearance of Jack White on the new TBS show, I decided to get artsy-fartsy and make a desktop wallpaper. (By the way, if you havent seen the rockabilly performance that Conan and Jack did, look it up - it's pretty cool).

The main idea for the poster came from a poem I've been working on - it's still in the works, but the title is "Jack and Meg". The poem is a descriptive journey through the world that the White Stripes have created and their roles as children wandering and battling with Meg's wooden sticks and Jack's plastic guitar. (It definitely sounds better in the poem). I decided to focus on the ideals of the White Stripes, from the earlier days of Elephant and White Blood Cells, and kind of ignored the more experimental styles of Get Behind Me Satan. The duo themselves went back to their older style for tours promoting Icky Thump, so a few images are from that era as well.

I hunted around for some rolling grassy hills and found a great one with a beaten grass path right in the middle. I colorized it red, and then duplicated the hills with a different layer effect to create some of the highlights in the grass. For the white path, I just cut out that part, made it black and white, and messed with contrast/brightness. I took out some trees I didn't like, and removed the sky - since I would be creating my own. I messed with the Render Clouds filter and placed it over a pure red background and a very light vector starburst shape. I placed a peppermint candy "sun" right in the middle of the starburst, and added some inside and outside glow effects.

The skyline features a few larger than life images of Jack and Meg, and I messed with a few layer effects to get them to look how I wanted. Found a cool picture of an African elephant since they have bigger ears and are overall cooler than Indian elephants (no offense). I messed with positioning and gaussian blur to create a sense of perspective, and had a little Jack White leading the elephants with guitar in hand, like a Pachedermal Pied Piper. I wanted more images of the group, so I took the cover of Elephant, and had them sitting in the tall grass, with Jack looking straight up at the peppermint sun. The lightning effects were added to give it a little more "color" (white isnt a color, but I just wanted more white).

After creating the initial wallpaper, I realized the aspect ratio and sizing was a little off, so I also made a more horizontally-friendly version using the clone tool to "stretch" out the landscape, and added more lightning (below). It was a lot of fun to do, but it makes me miss the White Stripes...obviously love all of Jack's other endeavors, but there's something really special about Jack and Meg together.

747 Productions Logo

It was a bit of a daunting task: I had only been working at my internship for a few weeks when they asked if I could redesign the logo. I admit, I knew that it needed some serious work the first time I saw it, but I never really thought I was gonna do anything with it. Here's the original stacked up against mine:

The most glaring problem of the original logo was that the design couldn't exist anywhere but a white background. If you wanted to slap it on a poster or something, it would have to include an ugly white rectangle behind it to make it stand out. The easiest way to fix this was to put the contents into a shape so that it at least has some kind of unique form.

I wanted to keep the same basic color scheme, since it had to fit with the same website. I messed with the spacing in "747" to make it fit better in the circle, and wanted it to have that cool shiny web 2.0 button look. So I messed with these layer effects: Gradient Fill, Inner Shadow, Inner Glow, and Bevel/Emboss. I left the main text pretty much as is for it's simple elegance (the font is Monotype Corsiva). I gave the whole shape a slight gray to light-gray gradient, and a light blue outline to tie the colors together.

Eiffel Tower Power Lines

I always had this grand idea of taking power lines and super imposing the Eiffel Tower in place of each regular thingy. It just kinda reminded me of it - the metal structures holding up each line were just stripped-down, less Parisian version of the Tower itself.

It was done a few summers ago - before I fully refined all my Photoshop techniques. I wish I could say I took the original photograph, but it was actually the second image I found on Google (hope no one minds...) But I mostly used the Clone Tool to paint the sky over the original structures. I then placed a high-contrast image of the Eiffel Tower in each spot where it belongs. I shrunk and lowered the opacity for those that were further away to enhance the illusion of perspective. I also increased the contrast to get a slightly more dramatic sunset. It was just for fun, and was my desktop background for a while.

Silent K Records: The Blanks

This is the second full assignment we had gotten in my web design class, and we were asked to create a one page press release. It had to be some kind of music release - so we needed images for a parent company or record company, and another image to put in the article, like a CD cover. So I (of course) used my Silent K Bunny, and stuck with a red/black color scheme.

I found a nice picture of a black and red Gibson SG, and threw some downloaded paint brush effects on top of it to serve as a giant (web-optimized) image for the background. The rest of the design was positioned to that one background image.

I created the album cover by taking a high resolution image of a Hulk action figure and applied a "Cut Out" filter in Photoshop. I then turned it red and messed with the Saturation and Contrast filters. The hardest part actually came from cropping the image of the hulk on the CD cover. Depending on how close it was cropped, it would have completely different looks and feels to the design, and I wasn't quite sure what I wanted. I asked for opinions, and narrowed it down to two choices, and wound up solving the problem by using them both! One extreme close up for a CD cover, and one cropped out a little further to be used for the DVD cover. I threw a glow effect on them and saved the .png so I could position it anywhere on the site.

The copy is all original content and contains a bunch of little "inside jokes" of my favorite musicians, directors, actors, and things from my personal interests. The band name itself - The Blanks was a two-man-band I had in high school. (The logo was also very similar, but I recreated it for this project). It a fun project, and I think this was the project that cemented Trebuchet as my favorite typeface (you are reading with it now in fact!)

Check out the fake site here (hosted on my website) Here.

Dee-Xign-A-Day Blog/Face Morph

For my web design class, we had to create a non-functional Blog-like space. I remember that it was just one of those days where a bunch of projects were intersecting, and I had to crank this one out in a few hours. I really liked the header, even though it was pretty simple - just a half-tone effect of red and black, and a cool font (Cooper!) in front of a simple bullseye shape.

We needed to come up with something clever to denote it as a design blog, and you know how those clever designers love spelling things differently, so I chose to spell it "De-Xign".

I divided up everything which was pretty monocromatic with blacks and grays, with red borders. It was right after this project that my teacher told me I needed to experiment outside of red and black... lol. But on to more interesting things: the face morph. The story on the site is true, so I'll just repaste most of it here. You can see it hosted on my site Here.

One night, I was working on some video stuff. I revisited an old project (Out of Batteries) to change a few title sequences and alter the credits a bit, but the process was basically done. Anyone who has ever worked with video editing knows that the last part of completing a project sucks - cause that means you have to spend a bunch of time rendering (especially if you are working in HD). To kill some time, I surfed Facebook, stumbled upon this picture of my friends, and decided to alter it.

It took about ten minutes and the process went very smoothly. First I Lasso'd the guy's face, Refined the Edge and copied it over the girl's face. With the Hue/Saturation tool, it was easy to get the correct skin tone, altering mainly the Saturation and Brightness.

After that, just took the Eraser tool and made sure the edge was highly feathered and I was done. It's real easy (especially if the copied face is right in the picture), and usually has a good effect for humor...plus it's fun to do and to kill time with.

There ya have it, perhaps one of my best face morphs.

Silent K Logo

I designed my first logo in my sophomore year of high school. Back then, I didn't even know Photoshop existed - so I naturally used whatever was on the old family Dell. I taught myself how to use Microsoft Picture It! 2000 and was pleasantly surprised years later to see many features integrated into Photoshop.

The idea was to use the logo for my garage band, Critter Jones (no, we weren't any good). I was getting into The White Stripes and punk art, so I was interested in high-contrast minimalistic designs. I wanted to play off the idea of a "critter" and for whatever reason a bunny popped into mind. I grabbed a guitar shape from google, because I still cannot for the life of me draw one freehand. (It's the curves! Screw up one side, and the whole thing is ruined!) I drew the bunny using a pen tool.

I had grand visions of the logo being used on buttons, round stickers, and painted on the bass drum. None of that happened, but I still wound up encircling the design with red - just in case merchandising would actually happen.

I actually thought it would be really cool and punk-rock to put an "x" in the eye to show that the rabbit was dead or a zombie or something. I started messing with the filters and one of them simplified the "x" into a soft circle. I printed out a sheet of paper with several variations in color and shape, and asked for opinions. I don't even think I went with the number one choice, but I picked the one that I use now.

I have been redesigning it on and off for a few years with a few touch ups. I simply call it "the Silent K Bunny". Once in a while there is some descriptive text saying it's a "Silent K Production" or something like that, but I happen to like the mystery of the logo - a textless bunny playing guitar.

Blue Orchid Typography Project

In my typography class, we were tasked with creating an artistic representation of a phrase, song lyrics, poetry, or dialogue. I chose to pick a song that was just begging to be made into some kind of project - "Blue Orchid" by the White Stripes. I was listening to the song a lot at the time, and it just sounded like something I could work with.

Jack White's high-pitched, forceful voice required a fluid, even slightly feminine typeface - I found a graffiti-esque font, by the name of Farfel ICG Felt Tip. Since White's delivery of the lyrics emphasize each syllable, I off-set each syllable and placed it in a vertical hierarchy - as if written on a musical staff - to mimic the changes in pitch. Some of the words had a certain accusatory "bite" so a grungier, bolder font is positioned behind the main script when necessary. Meg White's steady drumbeat is represented by the ever-present lyrics in the background, that have a much more rigid grid system than the main text. Those are a dark grey, which only pops out against the black a little bit, so as not to overpower the piece.

The paint splatters represent the blaring guitar riff, that come and go. I would have liked a brighter more electric blue, but It would have looked funky next to the blue "blood" dripping from the orchid. To create the effect, I made a very dark gradient of blue and used Liquify to pull down various parts on top of the flower. I then used Bloat to create more realistic "drops" on the flower. I added the white splatter to emphasize the end of the song a bit, and to make the blue stand out, otherwise it would get lost in the black. The picture I had didn't contain a stem on the orchid, so I had to make one up with some filters and shapes...It's the only part I kinda regret, but no one takes pictures of flower's stems on the internet it seems...

Check out their official video:

Poster: Shut It Down Sunday

Another project I had to do for my internship at 747 Productions was a poster for another event at Shots Pub N' Club - called Shut It Down Sunday. It is a contest for aspiring artists, where you pay an entry fee then get to sing, or rap, or whatever and the winner gets some cash and free recording time at our studio.

This poster was pretty simple, I just happened to have a bunch of really cool shapes to work with. I kept the format and fonts similar to the first poster I did. After laying down all the text I would need, I started making the composition which was basically a rowdy crowd leading up to the city of "Peoria". The skyline isnt quite the same...but I think it's at least obvious enough to be a city. I had a rapper outline and stuck him on the right, as if he were the special guest performer (Gutta ENT). I threw in barbed wire shapes at the top just to tie the piece together more using more white images. I dont know what made me chose orange for a color, but it goes nice with the black (even if it may be a little Halloween-y). I'm particularly fond of the contrast that the "IT" has in the middle of the title. Breaks it up nicely I think.

Poster: 2nd 2 None Sunday

The first thing I was asked to do for my new internship at 747 Productions was something I was very familiar with - making a poster for an event. I was given a list of info to include (the most I've ever had to work with) and was told to make it sexy and classy. It was a "ladies night" type of poster, so it had to appeal to Peorian females.

The first thing I did was to get all the text on there to get a basic hierarchy going. (This is how I start most posters). I made sure to stick with only three fonts - otherwise I feel it breaks the unity, and looks cluttered. I needed a woman, and I wish I remembered the search term I used in Google...but it was something probably like "sexy lady"... but I cut her out of the original image and feathered the edges after using the Quick Selection tool. I added a layer mask and used a gradient to gradually make the picture fade at the bottom and sides.

For the background, I chose a gradient that was a little feminine, but wasn't hot pink or lime green. To create the vector "starburst", I used a technique that I learned from the internet ages ago. First create and define a pattern with 2 differently-colored vertical stripes (like white and black). Then fill a layer with the pattern you created - duplicate that layer and merge the two to create a single raster image on a layer. Then go to Distort>Polar Coordinates and use the "rectangular to polar" option. There ya have it! I then enlarged, positioned and messed with the layer blending options to get the effect I wanted. I had some grungey brushes that I used on the corners, and added a "sponge" filter tothe background to create some gritty texture. After all that, I added a paint splatter shape that I found on the internet. I threw in a variation of my logo - this one has a semi-transparent "SK" which of course, stands for "Silent K".