Regular collaborator John (he of Final Boss Fight) is always expanding his media network; the latest from his team is Nerd Night, a tabletop gaming podcast. Like comics are so much more than Superman, tabletop games are way more than Cluedo.
‘Nerd’ always makes me think of Homer shouting it in The Simpsons. Me and many of my friends are nerds, it’s fine. I’ve lived with several people who play tabletop games / card games / pen-and-paper RPGs, and they’ll often get a set out whenever groups come to visit – Last time it was a few rounds of the interesting but unpronouncable Hnefatafl, then watching them conquer Europe’s rail network in Ticket to Ride.
You may have seen that Youtube had a redesign: They call it One Channel, and it provides a more unified experience across a few different platforms. One consequence of this is that whether your YouTube channel is on a computer, phone or television, it uses different parts of one large backdrop.
Here’s the template people have to work with.
I don’t really use my YouTube account for projects any more, as i’ve sidled away from video and 3D animation projects (the ancient ones are still there and on Vimeo). John and the Final Boss Fight team do though…
Also, a friend got married last weekend – the same one that received the social butterfly, if you’re keeping track of such things.
The card I handed to the groom at their reception sports a cheery watercolour of the newlyweds in Scott’s style. I haven’t used watercolours in a long time, so it worked out nicely for a “first go”!
Groom, if you have lost the card, I will tell Liam Neeson that you took his daughter.
Scott’s gonna have a table at the Thought Bubble comics convention next week: I’ll get him to sign my copy of his new Great Showdowns book, and maybe get to show him the above!
So, “expansion”? Regular client and friend Final Boss Fight – The video game news site has grown into a whole network! I didn’t brand A to Play (playthrough videos), and Pixel Gaiden (editorials) was straight-foward, but AutoFire (news feed) had a little journey. Observe:
The joypad buttons say “FBFN”, as in “Final Boss Fight Network”.
The top one was pretty unintelligible at small sizes, while the second one (originally with a red backing) looked like it should be hung outside a fire station. To give each site different colours, blue and purple came into play. Then it moved into the same frame-size as the main site and editorial logos, and finally, by request, pixelated to match the existing hub logo.
A bunch of other assets were cooked up too – a couple of CRT TVs, favicons, and a few pics to replace the stock ones on the network hub, including a quick shot of my games shelf and a Store image.
Pixel Gaiden is a Phoenix Down quill and Minecraft paper, by the way.
There’s one more logo, but the site’s not live yet so it’s still under wraps. It’s not pixular, I promise.
Random ending: I updated the mobile phone icon on my Contact page, because I haven’t used a phone with those things called “buttons” since 2010. The old one was a Nokia 3110c – It’s now an Orange San Francisco II.
This month, the time rolled around again to get my eyes tested, find out how short-sighted I am now, and consequently purchase a new pair of glasses. There were a few days of mis-judging distances and staring at the rims, but now they’re being cool. This was a big enough change to do an update of my self-portrait, which was last altered in 2010 (when I previously bought new eyewear). Behold!
One of the places this guy lives is up in my site header, giving you a bit of a DreamWorks Face every time you come here. Here’s a comparison with the previous version:
Sadly, I had to delete some hair. Still being a little generous here.
I’ll have to update the photo on my Contact page too, as it’s showing it’s age (ironically by not showing mine).
So, around confronting my own mortality (well, inching closer to 30), more contributions are underway for friend and regular subject Final Boss Fight. In their 48th podcast, they discussed how Super Mario Bros. has such a bonkers premise. They started throwing words together to highlight this: What about a monobrowed pig with laser eye powers, saving his friends (magically transformed into Bonsai trees) from an evil Architect?
Hey look, it’s come to life as boxart!
I had a Master System myself. Pro Wrestling, Olympic Gold, Rampage… ah, memories.
Try as I might, it still looks better than the official cover Alex Kidd in Miracle World had. If you click the above image it’ll take you to the DeviantArt page, where you can download it in various wallpaper sizes (with an FBF logo replacing Sega’s).
To keep to the rule of three, I have one or two sketches that could expand into a project. Tease!
Final thought: I live in the UK, and it’s a Bank Holiday (3-day) weekend. Of course, after a working week of clear skies, it’s rained every day.
Hi. So, how are you keeping? Around exchanging time for money, i’ve been doing these odds and ends.
One picture, based on a scene from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was mothballed in 2009 after reasonable progress but unsatisfactory results. Now it’s being reworked – The characters have been re-drawn, while the background and border are next. Quick preview:
A Hungry Hungry Hippogriff.
I also have a new typography piece based on Minecraft, uploaded to DeviantArt here. A black background looks fine but boring, whereas dark green makes it all a bit muddy. It currently lives in anticipation of a better solution being cooked up.
An ongoing thing has been the branding for games-and-comics news site Final Boss Fight. It turns out i’ve mentioned this before, but now the site’s running properly and i’ve made additional images. I even helped out with the camera work / logistics at the Manchester MCM Expo, which was nice.
The earlier examples have at last been added to the Illustrations page, along with a pic from my Puffin Digital Prize entry (see this post).
The Indie image is based on Commander Video, fact fans.
The second tick-over is again Minecraft-related (play it, it’s fun): A texture pack.
The textures default at 16×16, so it teaches pixel art & “economising” at the best of times. In addition, the pack i’ve been updating is in the style of the original Game Boy handheld: This means working in 4 colours. Some of the textures are taken from Game Boy games – some are modified from the defaults – some are completely new. Anywho, it is called CraftBoy, and this is where it lives.
This is the default texture pack…
…and this is what CraftBoy does.
Finally, this site’s seen a slight header update, code fixes and item shuffling, as always.
Logopolis was taken. So was Logopalooza. Besides, I think you need more than three to use those terms. Onwards!
Over the Single Positive Integer Increment of Gregorian Calendar Occasion (New Year’s) the University of Bradford Students’ Union ran a contest to redesign their “Friday Night Disco” logo. Since for the last couple of years they’ve been using this…
Old & Busted.
…I thought it couldn’t hurt to enter. Equal parts crafting and waiting later, I won! This is what they’ll use now:
New Hotness.
I was generally thinking of glow-sticks and star wands.
They were so eager to get going that the image was put to use a few hours after the contest deadline! My reward is free entry into any of their events (including the FND of course) for the rest of the academic year – something to bear in mind when passing through the city. The slight profile rise and achievement feel grand.
Part two of two: My associate Filmstock is part of a brand new collaborative that blog about video gaming (they met working at GAME). Final Boss Fight is being knocked into shape, and as some retro identity imagery was requested, I once again sallied in!
Website logo (left) – Podcast logo (right)
Mmm, pixels.
Oh yes, there’s an accompanying podcast too. I like the name. The podcast logo needs a little re-jigging to meet Apple standards, but the current one can be used on Filmstock’s site just fine.
I’ve that many logos to show off now, they may need to break off into their own portfolio page (or some lessers need culling).
Part three of …two. A little tinkering means I can give blog images captions now. A nice feature to have. I might go retcon some into older posts. Tata.
