So, earlier I posted on doing some splash pictures (which help discourage piracy and retail via translation credits) for TV-Nihon , a major fansubbing group.  Since then, I've done two more, which I consider even better!  One of these was used for the 10th anniversary series of A Gold Wolf Knight Thing (disclaimer: neither is this the actual name, nor am I actually seeing the show this was used for). It isn't perfect (despite being the latest splash of the four I've done so far, as I was mostly on my laptop with this one I didn't have access to my full range of tools), but I think it still ended up pretty well.  As this was an anniversary series, I decided to use the main armor in its three different major forms throughout the different seasons. This second one was also used for Kamen Rider, although a much darker series (which, unfortunately for me, means several BoBs and GoGs*): Kamen Rider Amazons.  But hey, the main riders looked cool, and the subbers request

For my final project, I was supposed to choose an issue I felt strongly about, use a pantone color for the background, and make a text and image illustration to convey the message.  My choice was police brutality.  Interestingly enough, the challenge seemed not technical but intellectual; the class was teaching me to think differently as a designer, rather than just how to use Illustrator.  It was when my professor mentioned to me that a handcuff silhouette looked like eyes that I seemed to get it more. (Note: the website mentioned is completely fictitious; as of this writing it does not exist.) Apparently one point in this course is a bit of minimalism; there's just enough of the officer to see him, but there isn't any clutter or anything fancy.  I still think detail has its place (I very much prefer the Windows XP/7 visual style over 8 or 10, for instance), but I can certainly see the strength of minimalism here. 

One was fun: I had to write words in a way that demonstrated the definitions of the words themselves. Another assignment was to take a bad poster and redesign it.  I mean really, really bad.  As in, one that lacks any sense of coherence whatsoever.  I decided this one would do nicely. The only trouble was, I had no idea what a Geo-Filter was.  After reading it through I had less of an idea what it was (as opposed to being confused, I'd gotten completely the wrong idea about it).  After a bit of research, a choice from a selection of templates and a few thumbnails on pencil-and-paper (as, in Graphic Design, that was apparently especially important as we think differently that way than how we would with Illustrator), I ended up creating this: Much better!  Apparently, less is more in terms of being eye-catching; my professor asked me to reduce the word count several times, and there's a lot less random junk (such as the emoji and tons of logos) that feel as out-of-pl

So finals happened and things got delayed a bit but I'm back!  Hopefully filming for ABYDOS will return pretty soon (turns out there's a bit more than I'd originally thought we'd need, but it should work pretty well), and I've done a bit more work on some of the effects from what I already have.  But on to more Graphic Design! One fun thing I ended up making was a letterform portrait!  This was quite interesting, particularly because it was made entirely of text (from the Zapfino font), primarily using parentheses, slashes (quite useful, as they're basically just straight lines), and another thing that I have no idea what the name is.  In fact, the original picture I based this on was one of many attempts for a photo resembling a portrait by Picasso . All I ended up doing was taking the photo, making it black & white and increasing the contrast (to see the lines and shapes better), and taking different type/letters and placing them onto the portrait,