This picture was part of a brainstorm for a possible YouTube series of videos, a machinima “busting” myths about the gameplay of Team Fortress 2.

This image was developed in GIMP.  The character poses were set up in Valve’s Model Viewer, then put into the composition.  The metal plate is many layers of grunge and gradients smooshed into each other.  The background is a dynamic shot of 2FORT from Team Fortress 2.

Here’s two logo concepts developed for AllTech Computer Services, and it’s parent corporation USS ENTERPRISES LLC.  The corporation was named after the aircraft carrier, and therefore a silhouette of the namesake was included.  AllTech’s logo, the stylized hash sign (#) was designed to be easily visible, easy to cut into vinyl for decals, easy to be embossed into foil stickers for computer cases, and call to mind the command prompt for UNIX administrators with Superuser powers known as “root”.

Here’s a project from my Graphics Design 101 days:  a cover completely done by hand for a video game named “Bob Team.”  Yes, a bit of a Janglish title, but it was part of the joke.  Built over a span of about two days, including thumbnail and layout time.  One of these days I might actually make this game for real…

Here’s a quick piece of “Industrial Design” developed to advertise an EDGEGAMERS ORGANIZATION Team Fortress 2 clan event staring the TF2 map “Turbine.”  The picture was taken ingame, and then the rest of the design was developed in GIMP.

Nikola Tesla is one of those Geniuses that touch our every day life, but are rarely known.  Everyone knows Alexander Gram Bell, the Wright Brothers, and George Washington Carver.  But Tesla’s interests touched almost everything.

This piece is a joint effort between myself and Alan Brown of HG80 Design.  It’s a tribute to the genius of Nikola Tesla and Alexander Gram Bell, and how they’ve touched our lives with their insights into phenomena that lead to revelations in communication.  (Can you think of a more rambling pretentious sentence to describe this work?)

The quote (by Tesla) in yellow reads “Like a flash of lightning, and in an instant the truth was revealed.”

Alas, the original was destroyed;  this is a scan of the output printed with a Roland banner printer or heavyweight banner material.

I couldn’t wait for the Scout Update… the Sandman was what cought my attention, and I just couldn’t wait to give it a try.

So I did what any red-blooded computer programmer gamer graphic designer would do… I made a leekspin parody video, available above.

Enjoy.

A celebration of Friday with a videogame flair.

Back at one of my old jobs, the awesome boss (That’s you, Steven!) let me slack off during slow friday mornings by making a video game themed Friday sign to post in my office’s window.

The entire archive of “Friday Signs,” including explanatory text, and print ready PDF files, can be found here:  http://friday.autodmc.org .  Take a gander, print ‘em out, hang ‘em up, and celebrate the best day of the week other than Saturday and Sunday!

The EDGEGAMERS ORGANIZATION clan has a forum as their CMS.  Every member has a “Signature” area… and for a while it was fashionable to have a custom-made image reflecting your personality.  Here are a few of the “Sig images” I’ve developed for myself and for other clan members.

“Sigs” usually follow the format of some kind of joke caption, a picture, the name of the member, followed by an “action phrase”… for example:  “=(eGO)= eachdraidh[S|R] eats fresh.”

All images were composed in GIMP.

Custom art with various text bits that all make sense in the clan, I swear.

The Heavy Weapons Guy in Team Fortress 2 has a “weapon” known as the Sandvich.  This Sandvich gives you health, and a member wanted a sig based on the popular Five Dollar Footlong advertising campaign by Subway.  The game graphics pose was developed in Valve’s Model Viewer.

Nero wanted a sig but wasn’t sure what he wanted.  What is Nero known for?  A Garry’s Mod whiz in the clan named Mr. Algebra developed the background image, and the rest of the composition was developed by myself.

“Crit” stands for “Critical Hit”… but sounds like the word $#!+, leading to the caption above.  The image is taken from a frame of the “Meet the Soldier” video from Valve software.

The “Pyro” character from Team Fortress 2 carries a flamethrower, pictured above.  With infinite cheek, Valve made an “advertisement” for personal flamethrowers… perfect for home barbeques!  I used the image to produce the sig above for a clan member.  The joke comes from the term “Spy Checking,” a procedure where a Pyro uses his flamethrower to light up cloaked enemy spies before they can destroy Engineer buildables.

This tableau was developed by Mr. Algebra.  The requirement was to make something “funny” with Engineers, Pyros, and Spies.  So we’ve got a multitasking spy, a confused Engineer, and a Pyro who can’t be heard through his muffling facemask.

These buttons were developed to identify the various sections of a Star Trek themed informational wiki.  The buttons were to be simple to visually identify quickly:

In order, the buttons were for:  Characters, Locations, Officers, Sciences, Species, Vessels and Bases, Technology, Wiki Tutorials.

Gamium.org is a game review website that attempts to review the “fun factor” of games, movies, snacks, etc.

The first beta version of the site used a really generic logo as we had not really sat down to decide of a serious logo.  This is the brainstorming sheet developed once we’d decided that we wanted to go with a “Periodic Table of the Elements” concept… the next part was to decide on the font for the “Element Name.”  Interestingly… EVERYONE liked the “12 Ton Goldfish” concept, and from there the final version of the logo was developed.

The logo concept names were taken straight from the names of the font that the “Ga” element was written in.  The fonts were all developed by Blambot; the “comic lettering” styles of their fonts had the “personality” we were looking for for the element symbol.  The rest of the logo was to be plain and square… very periodic table.  But the symbol was to be dynamic.