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The Early Days
The Early Days, as the mystic title might suggest, were my very first endeavors into the world of digital design. I saw other people's designs and was impressed by what I saw. Being consistent with my individualistic drive, I set out to make my very own designs.
One of the biggest motivations came from forums and message boards. It is largely custom to have a personal avatar (a small 50x50px image placed below your name) and a signature (another image somewhere in the range of 100x500 pixels that adorns the bottom of your post) for your forum account. The avatar and signature should usually match and loosely represent some aspect of you yourself, or your personal alias. In bigger forums, they become very important because a person can quickly identify the poster by his or her signature. Plus, they tend to become competitions, where the better designed signatures draw awe and respect (a virtual artistic pissing match, if you will). I got into the game and started designing my own signatures.
I also wanted to create desktop backgrounds. They offer a big canvas to work on which is perfect for experimentation of graphic effects. They are also a more personal design and don't have to be designed for anyone in particular. The desktops were inroads to using complicated effects on smaller scales with more purpose and grace that would be manifested later on.
So, the baby steps emerged and work began with some sub-par Microsoft design program before finally settling in with Adobe's Photoshop, the standard program for digital designing. The work of this time period essentially represents a period of trial and error and experimenting. The resulting output was a start, but there was more to come.
BK Signature-P
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Date: c. 1999 |
Category: Signature |
Target: Personal |
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Click to view/hide explanation
This was one of my first signatures made on ye old Microsoft Something-Or-Other. The basic design scheme was text within two lines on an abstract background. The overall look isn't awful, but it lacked a definite sense of polish. More of a refined look is needed on the text. If the text were changed and improved on, this would be a decent piece.
This was most likely the only time I used purple as such a dominant color, ever.
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BK Signature-W
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Date: c. 1999 |
Category: Signature |
Target: Personal |
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Click to view/hide explanation
This design was essentially a sequel to the BK Sig-P. I was looking for two things in this design: (a) a metallic look and (b) a 3d aspect to these metallic bars. The initial concept was that the two bars would resemble intercrossing steel beams, but the result was not such. Using some shadowing and gradients, they appeared off the background and sort of 3d, but they lacked texture.
The type lacks a sense of refined design and I'm really not sure where this purple came from. Either my monitor was wrong in its color display (likely) or I had some sort of fixation on purple at the time. Nonetheless it wasn't terrible, but the design is not balanced. The lower bar should be a background element and the typeface (BlackKnight) should be dominant. Instead, the bar and the type compete with eachother because of their equal size.
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Coffee Free Zone
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Date: c. 1999 |
Category: Desktop |
Target: Humor |
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Click to view/hide explanation
The above image really was never a serious attempt at a magnificant artistic design, but rather it was to poke-fun at my dad. It's been included just for the sake of the story behind it.
My dad had purchased a brand-new laptop years back. He enjoyed its speed and novelty for a few days before it befell an unfortunate accident. Using the computer during the morning as per usual, he had the laptop next to a cup of coffee. As you would guess, the coffee spilled onto the laptop, completely damaging it beyond repair. He got a new laptop to replace it some days later, and I put this picture on his desktop to make sure he knew that indeed, the laptop was a coffee free zone.
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Planet/Moon
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Date: c. 2000 |
Category: Desktop |
Target: Personal |
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Click to view/hide explanation
This was a desktop of pure experiment in Photoshop's rendering tool. The goal was to create a planet and an orbiting moon with an eclipsed star in the background shedding light onto the planet. Using the render tool, I created two wireframe spheres. However, they didn't look like planets so I added a texture of clouds over the wireframe to give some sense of atmosphere. Some wireframe still showed but I moved on. I used a lense flare behind a blockish looking circle to create the star-blast and then used the lighting tool to show the planet being lit by the star. (Notice the moon is not lit up.) Lastly, to give some extra effect I used the outerglow blend to give some light-shadowing on the planets.
What I ended up with was an interesting but unconvincing rendition of two solar objects. The texture on the eclipsing moon is poor and the wireframe planets are a bit simple. However, the idea of this was to see if I could use Photoshop to create two 3D planets, and I did: experiment succesful.
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Zoom Desktop
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Date: c. 2000 |
Category: Desktop |
Target: Personal |
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Click to view/hide explanation
This was yet another FX experiment in Photoshop. The driving motivation was to create a blurring-tunnel-effect resembling the bluring lights you see when going extremely fast, much like the hyperspace scenes shown in the American cinema classic: Spaceballs.
What came out was pretty much what I wanted. Using some zoom filters and a little bit of lighting, I got an explosion of terrific torqouise bursting out from the center of the screen. Boom.
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Blue Swirl
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Date: c. 2001 |
Category: Desktop |
Target: Personal |
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Click to view/hide explanation
If I can recall correctly (50%) this desktop design came a fair odd days after the previous designs. Whenever it came from, this wonderful sphere combined three of my most favorite things: blue, white, and space. For some reason I've always had fun with creating planets on Photoshop (see the main logo) and this was a fun little project. I figured I would ditch the terrestrial planets that I had created before, and go with an all gas giant planet. The result was this mass above you that I dubiously named "Blue Swirl" because it is...a blue swirl. And of course no planet can be without some sort of celestial backdrop, so I used a simple lens flare to create it's star. Lens flares are quite a useful tool for space designs.
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Lightning
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Date: c. 2000 |
Category: Desktop |
Target: Personal |
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Click to view/hide explanation
So much for chronological order, as I'm pretty sure this desktop sprouted out a few designs prior to the former, but that's just all kicks and lollypops really. The point of this is about the design right? Of course! And by now you've probably guessed that this was just another experimental design. (You'd know if you had read the last line of the intro). I came into this picture with a vision (like most pictures) and executed. I wanted lightning, blue lightning of course. I set out, I clicked, I undid, I redid, and eventually I saved, emerging with the above strike of lightning. As far as effects go, it's a pretty nice looking doo-hicky of thunderous proportions. The making was quite simple, just take some clouds, apply a difference cloud filter, adjust the levels, and repeat, add a hue colormask, and you've got your own Desktop o'lightning.
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BlackKnight-G
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Date: c. 2000 |
Category: Avatar |
Target: Personal |
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Click to view/hide explanation
This isn't exactly the most beautiful nor entertaining work I've set out to do, but it's again (like many things in this section) a start. The goal was to create the illusion of the BlackKnight image falling into a haze of confusion. And, since whenever there seems to be confusion, there is gray, it seemed like a perfect choice. The font choice didn't exactly portray the confusion theme and it was too straight lined to be visually seen. It probably saw at least a few weeks of shelf life, then it was back to work.
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JA-Avatar
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Date: c. 2001 |
Category: Avatar |
Target: Personal |
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Click to view/hide explanation
This wasn't so much as an avatar but more like a logo attempt for my budding company jonair, which you'll see develop in other sections. I wanted a compact letter version for jonair that could be an easy fit for an avatar. Apparantly my creativity was off and all I could come up with was a joined circle and letters. Maybe the design wasn't flawed but the execution of colors and lines was. Jonair was better than this.
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BlackKnight-Card
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Date: c. 2002 |
Category: Signature |
Target: Personal |
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Click to view/hide explanation
Okay, so you're now likely going to yourself What the fuck!? Card Nazi, is he crazy? I may be a little (hah) eccentric but there was actually a reason for this design. It was firstly made for a joke but because it is one of my first uses of picture collaging it deserves a place on here.
The joke was for a message board member who didn't always agree with the rules or abide by them on the message board. I issued him cautions (or cards) for his behavior. He didn't quite like it and so I came up with this to jokingly respond. For all of its crazyness the background is very effective at portraying the yellow/red card idea of the signature. Unfortunately, the type wasn't quite up to what it should have been.
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RA Banner
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Date: c. 2000 |
Category: Banner |
Target: Gaming |
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Click to view/hide explanation
This was another webpage banner for yet another reincarnation of RA. I was testing out some use of gridding and dripping text (what else for Assassins right?) but it didn't really make the mark. The text sure drips though, and that box it is in sure is embossed to a spiffy shine. Unfortunately, this one tallies up to design inexperience and lack of a good idea.
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RA Banner-Crosshair
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Date: c. 2002 |
Category: Splash Image |
Target: Gaming |
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Click to view/hide explanation
This was a splash image for guess what, another RA page. This design had potential and all in all doesn't look afully sore on the eyes. It doesn't look awfully great on the eyes but there was potential in this idea. The lighting behind the crosshairs was a good idea but it was a simple lense flare and wasn't all that visually stimulating. The text was okay but lacked in placement. I'd say if were retouched today this would make a nice stable splash image.
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MOA Banner
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Date: c. 2002 |
Category: Banner |
Target: Gaming |
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Click to view/hide explanation
So here we go with an offshoot of RA, MOA. The letter-soup isn't all that important. What is is that this is another banner for yet another clan site. For a lucky endevour in Microsoft Whatever-It-Was this turned out to be a very interesting design, especially if my original intent was to do something snow covered and wintery. I can't honestly say that was the intent. It was probably more along the lines of "make it look cool." (and blue of course) I wish I could go back and get the texture because it was a very neat background, almost like a topographical map. The fading scanlines and text weren't too bad and all in all this was a neat little banner for that time. The webpage it went on didn't quite parallel its quality though.
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SS Banner
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Date: c. 2002 |
Category: Banner |
Target: Gaming |
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Click to view/hide explanation
Now of all my original banners and webpages the SS site was most definitely my favorite. It was a simple, clean design well trophied by this banner. Get rid of the tags around the 'Silent Slayers' and you have a pretty neat visual design. The font, texture, and faded opacity text really made an interesting blend of looks. It's very calm yet loud, while being very easy on the eyes.
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CG Banner
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Date: c. 2003 |
Category: Banner |
Target: Gaming |
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Click to view/hide explanation
Moving on with banners for webpages that have long bit the dust is the CG banner. Perhaps at once crazed instance in my mind I thought this design looked alright but it just looks bad. CG.com was a site surrounding one of our old gaming servers. It never really launched (for good reasons) and this banner was replaced and well forgotten.
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CG Splash/Logo
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Date: c. 2003 |
Category: Logo |
Target: Website |
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Click to view/hide explanation
If there was any bright spot to come out of the CG failutre was this simple yet effective logo. For every logo I create I like to make a full text version then a smaller more condensed version using either the symbols or initials of the full text. Thus Clangamer became CG (ingenius huh?) and the logo was born. This logo was perfect for other instances as its square dimensions could easily be resized to smaller designs as needed. It's no skyscraper but its not a vacant lot either. It's somewhere in the middle, providing a nice build up to the next stage in my design.
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