CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
Yeah, Pumpkin Soup, what did you expect me to call this entry?
Well, let's not bury the lead. I've been carving pumpkins:
(Click-for-bigger on any of these pics).
It's for a competition on Bowling For Soup's street-team site. Now, me being me, I didn't just carve the pumpkins, I documented the whole project as well. So, this is how I did it...
Step 1: Find the pics you want to use Yeah, if it's all the same with you, I'll skip over the "buy pumpkins" part. You know how to do that already. So, a quick look through my not-inconsiderable assortment of BFS cuttings and CD pics, and I've found four portrait shots that should look good for a hallow'een project.
Step 2: Prep the outlines Using CorelDraw (or Illustrator, if you like), Make a nice vector-version of the faces you want on the pumpkins. Keep in mind, you don't want any "floating" black bits. All of the shadowed/black parts should be joined on to the outside. Obviously, floating white-bits are okay, as they're just holes cut out of the pumpkin.
Step 3: Transfer the outlines to the pumpkin It's 2010. I'm not going to dick around with tracing paper, or drawing-by-eye. For this bit, I've used a digital laser projector, a couple of fineliners and a scalpel* *just to lightly score the pumpkins after drawing on them, so that if the ink rubs off, I'm not totally scuppered.
So yeah, simply acquire a projector for an hour or so, shine the image onto the pumpkins, and get drawing.
Step 4: Carve the pumpkins Okay, I didn't really document this bit that thoroughly, but it's pretty straightforward pumpkin carving (I'd imagine). When you're done, they'll look like this:
Step 5: Pat self on back Yeah, I did. What of it? This is the first time I've ever carved pumpkins, so I think they came out pretty well.
Mind you, given how disgusting it is to put your hand into the wet, slimy, cold innards of a pumpkin and pull out the insides, it's probably going to be the last time I carve one, too.
Happy Hallow'een!
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
Dave said this, and I remembered I'd made this a while ago...
It's shorter than the Yoda version, but much more practical...
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
Hello. Yes, it has been a while. Another self-indulgent post about my graphic-work, so bear with me.
As you've probably gathered, I kinda like Bowling For Soup. If you hadn't worked that out, then it's now out there. In addition to this, I'm a freelance Graphic Designer, with a good friend who runs a promotional printing firm. This means that shortly after I get an idea in my head for a t-shirt, I can actually make that shirt. Still with me? Good.
About three years ago we ran a series of shirts featuring caricatures of 'media-icons'. We called the range Skittlez. That banner at the top of my blog? That's the one I did of me. We produced around 75 different designs in the end (no, really), with faces from TV, movies, music, comics and games. Here are a few...
As well as the catalogued designs, I made a few which either contained so many colour-blocks they were a pain in the arse to print, or bespoke ones which weren't for general production. One of these was submitted, by me, to BFS for their consideration for a t-shirt design.
In the meanwhile, only two were actually produced. One got printed onto a shirt for my better-half, and the other one got sent to the band's office in Flower Mound, Texas:
Although the design was well received, it never made it onto an official shirt (to the best of my knowledge), but I didn't treat it as a big deal. Anyone who's into BFS will know that they have many, many t-shirt designs available at any one time, and they're a strictly limited-run deal, so I imagine the backlog and 'nearly'-list of designs is fairly large. Anyway, like I said, not a big deal. In 2008, I put the Skittlez project to bed and started on the GTA-style artwork that you've been seeing from me lately.
+ + + + +
Fast-forward to October 12th 2010, and I'm watching BFS at Shepherd's Bush Empire, in London. They've got a projected backdrop that plays the promo-videos of their songs if they exist, and a slideshow of pictures and video if they don't. It was during one of the songs without a video that this happened:
Uh-huh. The image was projected in amongst a load of other official shirt designs. In fact, this was the only one of them that I've never seen on an official shirt. This image was only up for about 10 seconds, and the slideshow was shown three times. So that's only 30 seconds out of a 1h15m set that my work was on display.
But it's still 30 seconds more than I was expecting. And it was still projected 30 feet high behind my favourite band to a sold-out house.
The bizarre thing is, I saw BFS only the previous Friday at Exeter Lemon Grove, and for all they had a slideshow then, I didn't notice the artwork. Not sure what that means, or if I'll see it happen again, but it made me smile.
And smiling's what Bowling For Soup are all about. Thanks, fellas.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
I've set a new personal record. I've been to the cinema seven times this week. Once a day for seven days. I've seen seven films. Here are brief reviews of those films. The first one reviewed in 10 words, the second in 20, and so on (because reviewing films in 1-7 words just wasn't going to work).
Sunday 29 August: 1. SALT Ridiculously engaging, instantly forgettable. Theatrically great, but it's nothing new.
Monday 30 August: 2. Scott Pilgrim vs the World Once you adjust to the highly stylized presentation, this film's fantastic. It's got soul, but it's hidden behind the graphics.
Tuesday 31 August: 3. The Expendables When the bullets and knives are flying, it's one of the most loudly entertaining films of the year. When they aren't, it's as formulaic as an episode of The A-Team.
Wednesday 01 September: 4. Piranha 3D Some films are so bad they're good. Piranha goes further, and comes back to awful again. It's trying too hard to be a parody of the genre, and the money's gone on getting big names to phone in their performances.
Thursday 02 September: 5. Avatar - Special Edition, 3D I was initially unimpressed with this in January, as it wasn’t the first time I’d seen the RealD, and I found Sam Worthington to be completely un-engaging. While I connected more this time round, it was already longer than it needed to be, so an extra nine minutes doesn’t help.
Friday 03 September: 6. The Last Exorcism A slow start, a terrifically tense mid-section, and an abrupt, open-ended and frankly anticlimactic conclusion. I’d sat down thinking “yeah, but possessed people aren’t really that scary, are they?”. They’re not. She looks into the camera in a way that non-documentary filmmaking doesn’t allow. The tension doesn’t come from Nell being possessed, it comes from her being a fucking psycho.
Saturday 04 September: 7. Dinner for Schmucks As a Jay Roach directed comedy with Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, you pretty much know what you’re going to get. And you do get what you’d expect, but there’s also a lot of heart in this movie. Rudd and Carell are consistently funny, hapless and sincere in equal measure, with a great supporting cast (even Walliams). It may not be groundbreaking, but most good movies don’t need to be.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, I'm lucky enough to live close to a Cineworld, who operate the Unlimited system. £13.50 a month means I can go as much as I like. That's less than the price of two movie tickets, so it'd be daft for a movie-geek not to.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
