Mantis: Attack!

[morsla]

I spent today mediating a truce between Photoshop, my PC and my scanner, in order to work on a logo for my business. After a bit of digital finger-painting with a fresh tube of purple pixels, I have a new logo captured in the form of a journal icon. I hope it looks okay... it was a good excuse to find out how to colour in pencil sketches. The original version is a bit plain without any text, so I made a skyline to put behind it.

Pre-school level photoshop notes: (mostly for my benefit, in case I try something similar in future). One day I'll figure out what the other eight million buttons do...

Pencil sketch: scan, desaturate to remove colour, clean up with brightness/contrast and a white brush. Take a thin black brush and fix up any mistakes.

Colour: Select all the non-picture bits, invert the selection, make a new layer and fill it with purple. Dodge and Burn to add highlighting and shading where needed, drag the outline layer above the colour, and set the layer to Multiply so the white disappears.

Background: Draw some buildings with the Polygonal Lasso tool, fill the selection with a brown gradient. Invert the selection, make a new layer for the sky, and fill it with a red-brown gradient. Dodge and Burn cloud patterns into both layers, and hit the skyline with a few Gaussian Blur filters until it fades into the smog.


On an entirely different note, this (in my wholely biased opinion) could be the Best Game Ever, if Octopus ever release it. 'It Came From Hollywood' lets people play giant monsters destroying major American cities, using a DDR dance pad to stomp on fleeing civilians and topple landmarks... and yes, you can play a giant praying mantis :)

Comments

[umbra-mentis.livejournal.com]

That's a wholly adorable logo - I hereby give it my stamp of approval. Uh-oh, I think I squished some Yanks :)

[kashiichan.livejournal.com]

So pretty. I love the shade of purple that you've chosen.

...I want to play that game.

[kitling.livejournal.com]

That's lovely

I'm in awe of your digital fu :)

I started paiting with oil paints on canvas for the first time on Monday - I think I'm hooked.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

My 'digitial fu' is more 'digital hackwork' unfortunately... I'm still intimidated by just how many unused options are hiding in photoshop, and I'm two editions behind the current release ;)

Oil paints are addictive... I haven't played with them for years though, as I preferred using acrylics for the faster drying time. Oils give you much more control over colour blending, though, and they also let you build richer tones with glazes of colour.

[rendragon.livejournal.com]

Very funky logo! Lurve the purple and the skyline...I thought you'd used a photo until I read your post.

The game sounds sooo cool. I have my DDR pad - now to convince Octopus to release it. Perhaps a few strategic *stomps* will do the trick? =P

[damien6.livejournal.com]

How odd, I was talking about making that game just the other day.

Except in that version people would get into a furry suit and then rampage around a model city.

I figured that wasn't going to happen, so I would have settled for a computer game, but the dance pad, that is the best of both worlds.
How cool.

One awesome thing about the internet, is when you think of an awesome thing, half the time you don't have to make it, just find it somewhere out there.

I wish their lizard monster was more Godzilla like. And they had something resembling King Kong. And a giant squid. And Tokyo!
All of these things are absolutely essential for a satisfying monster game.


Maybe I should see if someone has gone and made the other computer game I've been meaning to make, where people play a lab rat escaping from a science lab. Freeing other lab creatures along the way, fighting the scientists, and using the chemicals, laser guns, mutagenic material, and other miscallenous sciency material along the way. (It's an interdisciplinary lab. Of evil.) They'd have to figure out what works and what doesn't, how to complete various inventions, or combine them with other inventions.
And there'd be mutants, and glowing green bunnies and other fun stuff. Zombies, maybe.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Clearly, there's room for a sequel where the monsters destroy Tokyo :) As it is, the two designers have been tinkering with the game for years now... I think that trying to accurately model the recogniseable bits of the cities may have been too much.

It does suggest a good add-on for Google Earth, though... once the program moves into full 3D, they should expand into deformable structures and change the "eye in the sky" viewpoint to a marauding monster.

[damien6.livejournal.com]

Also, very cute evil mantis.