Category: sketchbook

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11 Great Children’s Book Titles or Terrible Band Names

If there actually is a child chapter book or band named after any of the following, I stand behind my opinions.

Jason and the Astronauts
Jason and the Astronauts
The Musical Mystery Tour
The Musical Mystery Tour
Carpet Whale
Carpet Whale
Mutually Assured Distraction
Mutually Assured Distraction
Trust This Penguin
Trust This Penguin
Fun Will Be Had!
Fun Will Be Had!
Sister Spat
Sister Spat
Turtle Beach Party
Turtle Beach Party
Shirley Icanne
Shirley Icanne
The Wild Flutes
The Wild Flutes
Watch the Pegasus Poop
Watch the Pegasus Poop
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111 Minute Book Covers: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

Speed composition of a book cover for C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia (if numbered correctly).

Assets are “Tambako the Jaguar’s” CC licensed photograph of a lion from Flickr, and Henningklevjer’s CC licensed cloth weave texture from the Wikimedia Commons. Fonts are Charlemagne and Mona Lisa Solid.

Under 111 minutes? No, but with the template established, the rest of the series should go faster.

Click image for 300dpi.

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Zombeatification

From a picture of my friend Michelle…

Original:
Edited:

Still not as awesome as this image, or this image, but fun.

Lessons learned:

  • I’m trying to teach myself not to just go in and make a mess in Photoshop. You can always get an image done faster by painting and filtering the assets directly, but adjustment layers and smart objects REALLY save grief when you need to go back in and fix things. This composite is almost completely nondestructive.
  • Applying a filter to a smart object creates an editable “smart filter.” I don’t know how I missed this feature. I wish to god I’d noticed it when I did the Ego Likeness flyer for Plague.
  • Also useful in a project currently underway, simulating the look of still film has two parts to it: grain and schmutz.
    • Grain can be created by adding a 50% gray layer, setting its composite mode to Overlay, applying a small amount of noise, and scaling the layer up as desired.
    • Schmutz is small fibres, hair and dust on the negative. This is a little harder. Opaque bits on a clear negative, they appear white when printed. I’d love to find a high-res print of an unexposed frame of film. Then you could just apply it as a layer in Screen mode. I wonder if it’s possible to make a convincing one in Animation:Master with instances and flocking.
  • When you see what happens to people when zombies get them, why are the zombies we see always so intact?
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Building the Shack, Part 12

Ended up spending most of the winter on the walls, working on warm days. Started by cutting and stapling sheet plastic over the frame where the walls would go.

Collected usable scrap lumber from around the property. Angle cut boards on the table saw to 30°. Made perpendicular cuts in the workshop with hand-held circular saw.

Started on the west wall. Didn’t beat the snow. Got most of the west wall nailed into place standing on saw horses. Finished on the extension ladder.

East wall was the most complicated. Hung the entension ladder on the roof peak from the foot of the banking, being careful of the picture window.

Made a platform with the ladder, to get the board above the window nailed into place. Steadied the ladder by running ratcheting straps out from the side windows, and finished the roof peak late one night in February under freezing drizzle.

South wall easier. Stood on the block of styrofoam from the picture window installation to get the top board in place. Worked up from the bottom. Recut the final board a few times.

North wall finished last. Cut the final board trapezoidally by hand.

Finished this afternoon, in sunny 45° spring weather.

Caulking needed in places, but walls are in place.