.The Plain Blog!

Halo Reach: Spartan Warfare

2012-07-20T20:48:00.001+01:00

Just thought I'd make a mashup of Halo and Call of Duty in a game cover, ended up looking pretty good. It seems to be doing awesomely for views and likes on Deviantart, which is a change: http://plainben.deviantart.com/#/d580awi

Well damn, Long time no see.

2012-07-17T23:52:00.001+01:00

Sorry about that, I've been updating on DeviantArt but not on here. I've finished my college course in art and design, here's what's come out of it. Some of the simple quick concept work I did for college, I still maintain I can draw better in pencil.

UNSC vs Galactic Empire

2012-05-07T22:26:00.001+01:00

Well I know I haven't updated much at all lately, I showed you my first tablet paintings from last month. I just finished this today before falling asleep on my desk. It's meant for a Bungie.net art contest which I'm currently a finalist in (and at the moment, in 4th out of the 7 left). Even though I'm not going to win, I've actually really proud of what I've made.

I'm not dead, honest...

2012-04-03T12:54:00.001+01:00

Honestly, I've been checking up on blogs, but I've not since had the urge to post anything of my own lately. Partly due to not actually making that much.

But anyway, I think I might try my hand at speedpainting, for anyone who doesn't know what that is. It's basically painting, but faster. You skip details in a picture and instead try and get all the colours and shapes in so a viewer can still tell what it is. I'm following some people on Blogger that I'm simply envious of.

Here's some stuff I've been doing with my newly-acquired drawing tablet, the first one took a while as I was detailing, the other 2 I completed in under 40 mins each. But that's nothing compared to a lot of people.

Some People Are Geniuses

2012-02-29T17:38:00.002+00:00

Toxel.com published an article in 2010 about unique and creative logo designs, and someone at an online community I visit found it. My god, I have never been so impressed with logos before, I mean just look at that Spartan golf club logo, genius.

I Need A Tablet

2012-02-24T23:34:00.001+00:00

This is the best I could do with a mouse, zoomed in with the brush, smudge and eraser tools. The flames were made in photoshop too, and I'm more impressed with the flames than the actual Demon part of this. One day I'll be good at this...one day.

The stormtrooper was done with picture reference with the MS Paint line tool, did a few fills and used Illustrator to automatically trace it to make the lines smoother. Little photoshop editing on the shading, but not much. Below this is the MS Paint original version, and a random doodle of an idea that I did out of boredom.

In other news...I've lost all motivation to do pretty much anything whatsoever, I've played all my games to death, I'm not distracted so much by anything - yet I cannot summon the willpower to do well...anything.

Oh, and does anyone have any tablet recommendations, preferably low-budget (unless it's really worth the extra money if they are expensive). I've been recommended the Wacom Bamboo Pen, apparently it's great and functional for the price.

May your Jimmies remain unrustled.

Psychadelic

2012-02-19T00:34:00.001+00:00

Turns out, rendering lens flares and blurring them, adding noise and then twirling them makes some pretty cool psychedelic type images. Here's a few tests for now, I know I haven't been updating for a while, Dawn of War and Mass Effect 3 demo took over my life...

Uni: MMU, Lincoln and Hallam

2012-02-13T22:46:00.000+00:00

Well, I'm saying I've got the basic idea of how to work Cinema4D, I am in no way any good at it compared to some of the amazing stuff I've seen though. For now, I'm doing simple text effects and finishing them off in photoshop.

I've applied to do Graphic design at Sheffield Hallam, Manchester Met and Lincoln university, Lincoln got back to me with a conditional offer. I haven't heard a thing from Sheffield yet, no offer or interview organised with them yet.

Manchester Metropolitan sent me a letter the day before yesterday, I've got a week to arrange a portfolio of 10-12 pieces of work with 300 words about myself. I've got to do it on blogger too, aha.
Well I'm getting to work on making some more decent images, I'm in no rush since I have a fair bit of work to show. The things I post on here were made while this blog was up, I never posted anything I made beforehand.

So yeah - this is my first piece specifically for the portfolio. What do you think?
Oh and if any of you guys go to any of those universities, I'd love to know what it's like living there.

I Retouch Myself At Night

2012-02-12T18:45:00.003+00:00

Writing that title I'm already thinking I shouldn't be a comedy writer, ever.

Slow to update this time, sorry about that. I've had other things such as my college work (the research side of things), and the rest of my time went to playing Dawn of War: Soulstorm, I'm addicted to harassing people as the Eldar. It's a really fun RTS, especially if you're a Warhammer 40k fan, but anyway, Photoshop and stuff;

In college there was a photo-shoot setup in one of the rooms. Well, just a large sheet with footprints all over. 2 directional lights pointed at waist level, I could have spent a little time arranging those lights to make a decent photo of myself. But I literally I just saw the set and told Carl to quickly take a handful of photos and do some retouches on them later, as practice.

I'm liking how this turned out. A regular photo, dim with badly placed light - now something that sort of resembles maybe a 'professional' photo... All these images are 1.2 metres tall in actual size. So I could totally have a poster of myself hanging in my room, maybe that's a little too much vanity though. I even managed to clean my shoes in photoshop.

Random Tests 2: Electric Boogaloo

2012-02-07T20:13:00.002+00:00

Silver floating balls, because it's the easiest thing to do on C4D.

Carl/CTJames.Blogspot.com

Title text for Shockgrubz RandoomBlog.

As requested, with purple water backdrop.

Just a 'to see how it looks' thing, with Ihea's brushes.

Simple test with KA05's brushes.

A Plain Plain on The 3rd Plane

2012-02-05T03:45:00.000+00:00

Plain blocky text, would look good with some lights and smoke.

Look at what I did guys, it's the word Plain in 3D, on Cinema4D!
I followed a tutorial (kind of) to get this. C4D is beyond confusing at times but I'm getting a general hang of some basic program features. This image just involved extruding an object and applying textures to it, sticking a wall behind it with a bit of light wasn't too complicated, but I probably spent a good hour or so just looking at what the buttons did.

I think learning a bit of C4D should set me apart from other people who do graphic design stuff. At the very least I'm getting a few fancy shapes to add to my photoshop work.

Tyler, known as Gueberry in some places...

I tried to replicate the results of my Vive La Benjamin piece, with a more difficult picture to work from. This time with an unwilling volunteer, Tyler. Here he is all spraypainted and contrasted. Mixed reactions on this, not as good as the one I did before but Tyler likes it, so it's all good.

Well that's my update for today/tonight, why the hell am I up at nearly 4am on a Sunday.

First Snow of Winter

2012-02-04T18:33:00.000+00:00

Now I know some of you can relate to this picture today. First snow of Winter for a lot of people in the UK today and it's been nicely snowing all day. Hopefully this means no college on Monday, I hate Mondays.

Anyone else getting a bit of snow today?

My Eyes Hurt

2012-02-02T00:49:00.001+00:00

Come to think of it, that moon is damn close to the planet.

Space, it's huge, and inhospitable. It's got planets and nebulae, clouds and flying rocks that will fuck up your shit. But it all looks very pretty in photos and such. On of the great things about Space photoshop works are that they're actually pretty easy to make simply, but takes some advanced skill to make amazing explosive scenes.

One messed up floor.

Unfortunately I'm not at that level, so here's something I made the other day at college. The planet is the floor of the college's workshop distorted into a ball with a bit of colour thrown on. This floor on the right to be exact. One of the tutors seemed impressed, talking about how I was 'making beautiful scenes out of ugly images'.

Anyway...for those who read this, 2 things:
1. General feedback if you feel like it - how would you improve this blog?
2. Should I start taking general requests, such as making you a blog banner or draw something?

It's nearing 1am and I'm sleepy, so I'm off. Thanks for reading my tired little post. Be sure to check out Dreadnaught's Collection of Infographics, some interesting stuff there. I enjoyed reading the Alien contact info especially.

Other Stuff

2012-01-31T20:50:00.000+00:00

Now with more visible E.

The ideas test from the other post has been slightly tweaked, less of the light lines and I've made the middle of the E just slightly more visible, enough for everyone I showed to notice it was an E.

Thanks for reading and commenting, it's much appreciated, for serious :)

BT Broadband

2012-01-30T18:12:00.000+00:00

Get it together BT, I've had speeds beyond slow the last few days. I can't even go on heavier load sites like Facebook because it takes too long to load. 0.12mb/s TOP speed? Really guys?

/vent

Ideas

2012-01-30T17:36:00.001+00:00

3 hours of messing around. Is this even readable?

Ideas, sometimes when I really need one I'm lacking them. Other times I don't have a notepad or anything, and think up all sorts of things. But anyway, here's some 3D text showing ideas, clouds, lights and sparks are often used as representations of thought in cartoons, which I guess is my theme with this. I spent a few hours being all nit-picky with this one. I think it's ended up ok.

In all honesty, it was spontaneous what I came up with just happened to be related to the word itself. I'd put a brain and a few lightbulbs in there, but I'm trying to avoid using other people's images. Finding (decent) royalty-free stock photos is a pain.

Unfinished Kayla

This is Kayla, I'm drawing her in MS Paint and this is what I've got so far. The left side of the red line is drawn from a picture reference, the other side isn't. The photo I'm using is a self-shot taken in a mirror, and I didn't want to draw her holding up a camera so I drew the other half without exact reference, just sort of looking how I did the left side.

This isn't finished yet, but you know I'll update when it's done, and all nice and smoothened out in Illustrator.

And lastly, thanks to all you handsome people following me and commenting. You're the best, really. I've actually spent quite a bit of time reading your blogs, great stuff I have to say :)

Random Tests 1

2012-01-27T21:50:00.000+00:00

3D Text first attempt, currently using this as my Phone's background. Faint use of my workshop floor in the background with a blue overlay, and some basic 3D text in illustrator. Colour added in photoshop, nothing fancy.

Friend's YouTube channel. YouTube.com/user/Gueberry

College boredom.

1. Cloud brushes on black background.
2. Add large text, make it transparent.
3. Edit blending options: Outer glow and inner glow white.
4. Add layer of colour, in colourful gradients.
5. Set layer style to multiply/screen/overlay/what suits.
6. Edit some brightness or contrast if it improves the look.
7. Done