Headshots From The Heart

Who doesn't like playing video games?

Who doesn't like donating to needy and/or sick children?

Who hasn't stayed up all night (at least once) wondering how in this age of computers and horseless transportation that they could save even a moment of their time by combining these two noble ideals into one, beautiful fulfillment?!?!

WELL QUEST NO LONGER!

Headshots From The Heart, the wonderful, twenty-four hour, gruelling butt-numb-a-thon returns this year to help raise money for Child's Play. As with last year's event (where they played through the original), players will play through as much of Borderlands 2 as possible before their eyes start to bleed and fingers grow numb. Every head shot they secure gains them donations, and along the way they will be auctioning off amazing prizes, hosting live interviews, and giving the audience a chance to sit in a rotating chair and try their hands at eliminating the bad guys, one brainpan at a time!

They're still looking for volunteers, looking to fill the LAN party, and looking for general support, so pop on over to the website linked above and see what you can do. It's a good cause, and you know your momma says you should do it too ;)

For the second year running, Intelligent Designs is stepping up as an official sponsor, providing the creative team behind the event as much graphical support as possible. Things like banner ads:

Various logo designs for side projects:

As well as concepts for their achievements! These are super cool: the audience can actually contact the players AS THEY PLAY and pledge money to the cause in exchange for the characters performing and achieving certain goals, such as:

I could go on about how awesome it all is, but you really should check it out for yourself :)

As always, thanks for reading!

Project - Mass Effect Valentines

To wrap up the massive Valentine's Day card rush I had this year, I've been working on a Mass Effect themed card for a client whose boyfriend loves the game franchise.

I was looking for an excuse to try something new with this project (as I normally am with each new venture) and my client was very open to any idea I had. I opted to attempt a coded message style screen, like the old books you used to buy with the special glasses? You know? Yea, you know...

Overall, I'm very happy with this project. I learned a little bit more about 3-dimensionalizing objects and building them out of parts to a new, final project. As this was the first time I tried one of these secret message, I also experimented a lot with the transparencies and realize now that when you create a .pdf, it flattens them :P

Anyway, I hope you enjoy as much as my client! Thanks for reading :)

Blender Update #2

The design is done, and I caught a tutorial on how to turn it into a MagicEye, although that process now is turning a little wonky :P

Thanks for reading!

Blender Update #1

The program is fun. Intuitive, but with a steep learning curve if you want to dive right in. Some wonderful Youtube tutorials help, plus I'm the type of person to just sort of go with it and look up questions when I get stuck :P

10 points to Gryffindor if you can tell what I've spent two days building ;)

Thanks for reading!

Wanna Build And Render A Heart Using Blender...

Watch is spin around in a beautiful oblivion....

I know you now have that song stuck in your head. You're welcome ;)

Something I've wanted to do for a long time now was create 3D models. Just sort of adding it to the laundry list of little niche skills I want to have.

This isn't really coming out of left field either: always wanting to push myself and try something new, I had a brief period there where I wanted to create special occasion cards (as I often do) with Magic Eye. So I went and found the program online that allows you to add the image to it, but you have to have a 3D image to start with. Reason #1.

A little while after that I got it in my head that I could create a cooler looking model for King of Tokyo than the card ones provided out of Sculpty. That was fine and dandy until I become more acquainted with 3D printing. So then I was totally down with that method, but you have to create a 3D model for the program to use. Reason #2.

Oh, and Carla wants to make some keychains :P Reason #3.

Off the hop, it looks like a beast of a program. Not difficult I'm sure if you know what you're doing, but I just sort of dove right in. Now I'm taking a step back and looking at some tutorials. I'll keep you posted ;)

Thanks for reading!

What's Been Up

Greetings and salutations!

So there's been a couple of things happening since February, mostly work related things, a few small projects here and there, the typical ins and outs of running a business.

I had a wonderful odd call from someone randomly asking how much I charge for a logo. After launching into my speech about cost, value, etc. I found out she is from the Ontario Office Works program. lol. That's two people I've directly contacted out of that office now :)

I'm also into consideration for working on a retainer. This is huge for me. It means that I set a price for a certain amount of work over a certain amount of time, and that's my fee. I can make a couple of month's pay at once with this, and it guarantees work. I'll let you know how this goes.

I've been working through some side projects for friends also, cards and shirt designs (check my previous posts). I'll make full posts about the bigger projects when they're finished.

On top of all I'm working on the wedding :) I'm designing the signage and the cards and we're organizing the fun and games. Another post of wedding stuff will follow, as well as invitations and such :)

Thanks for reading!

Contests... For Science!

Good morning all.

I promise to create a legitimate post by the end of the day, but for now the wonderful Lara has pointed me in the direction of this contest. Looks pretty awesome :)

Who knew that being a designer and a nerd would eventually pay off, eh?  I've already posted some of my Portal related work here and here, but this gives me a chance to collect up some of the things I've done in the past :P

As always, I own the designs and the art, but I don't own any of the characters, their images, GlaDOS, the companion cube, and I don't work for Valve.... yet ;)

A Valentine's Day card I made waaaaay back...

 A poster I made for Carla when she was gone to Japan for a year...

A t-shirt I deisgned for my sister who wore it at a con last weekend.

Thanks for reading!