Wings Over the Pyre

02:16 am

Art. Its in the eye of the beholder, or so I'm told.

Me, I have about as much capacity for "art" as I do for the rest of your human emotional gamut. That is to say, almost none. But I do have an affinity for the craftsman-like creation of illusion, for the trompe l'oliel that makes you stop and consider whether you're seeing things aright.

Like, for example, my recent tinkering with the artificial "model-izing" of landscapes and urban areas. My tinkering with the Vatican was actually really nice, with maybe just a hint too much blur, but it ended up really looking model-like. The landscape on the left? Not so successful. Blowing out the colours by tinkering the RGB curve is absolutely successful, its the lens blur that's far less so. Problematic, in my view. I think I need to find a way to get the lens gradient just a bit nicer, maybe a bit tighter.

On the other hand, there's the piece of artificial graffiti on the right there. The colours meld well, I scrubbed off the texture at good places so it looks worn and aged, and the brick texture comes through very nicely. I'm quite pleased with it, in fact.

Art. I'm no artist. I'm just a developing craftsman.

Oh, yes ... and then there's this:

Current Mood: creative

05:29 am - The Pope Loves Us

Bet you didn't know that the Pope was in on Horde Night. Yes, indeed, and as a reward for providing him such great pleasure every Monday night, he presented me with this scale model of the Vatican with the Horde Night logo painted carefully in the middle of the turnabout by brilliantly careful Italian craftsmen, who even went so far as to put little model people around atop it.

Well, OK, admittedly, this is the real Vatican, with the Horde Night logo painted in the middle of the street. No, really! Real Vatican, real logo!

Makes a fun background, too.

Current Mood: creative

04:31 pm - Warcraft Wall-Mart

Whoot! We now have a neatly trimmed World of Warcraft Horde Night logo with a perfect 1600x1200 wallpaper form.

Yes, yes, I know I'm obsessive.

Current Mood: nerdy

07:43 am - Its Been a Long Time Coming

I'll bet you didn't know Monday Horde Night had been going on for easily over thirty years, long pre-dating World of Warcraft itself, did you? And yet, here we have photographic proof, with logos painted on old brick and wood slat walls clearly showing their age.

No, seriously, go ahead and open up the full-sized image and enjoy the madness of its disgustingly high resolution. Make it your wallpaper, I know I am!

See, this is what happens when you turn me loose with Photoshop CS2, a pile of tutorials, and a subscription to Layers magazine. I start getting creative, and when I get creative, people's brains start turning to mush and they boggle at what madness must've inhabited my mind to drive me to such insanity.

(Well, OK, really I just wanted to tinker with the new Vanishing Point filter and try my hand at some of the weathering effects you can end up with if you don't mind doing some artful layer masking and fiddling with transparency and the like. And, yes, I know its not a perfect screen resolution fit for wallpapers, but I'll do that after I get a few hours of sleep.

I'll bet you were expecting another Capes post. Fooled you.)

Current Mood: creative

03:08 am - Take the World Over

What can I say? They were daft enough to put a vanishing point mapping system into Photoshop CS2, and I'm daft enough to use Google Earth a lot. Thus, we get me putting together this sort of thing.

Crude, but it has potential.

Current Mood: creative

09:26 pm - For the Horde!

I did warn you folks I was putting together resources for the Horde Night website. Tonight, it was an excuse to tinker around with the site logo, mainly so that I could be disturbingly surrealist with getting the exact fonts and border components right.

There's much to be said for recognizing that you don't have a single tiny bit of skill with graphic design and/or art. It frees you from thinking anything you produce can be more than an amusing pastiche, and lets you focus on the real issues, like:

• Why does the Blizzard WoW website kit link blow up from the top visible link to it, but actually get fetched from a lower, more concealed link?
• Who was the bright light that decided that the Warcraft fade font look should be accomplished with layer effects? Thus necessitating each bit be on its own layer for ongoing larger areas?
• Why is sizing the canvas for a given thing such a pain?

Ah well. At least its working, which is better than I can say about most things.

Current Mood: accomplished

08:45 am - Horde Night Personnel

Reminder: I'm attempting to assemble a web site devoted to discussing the horror that is the Horde Night team.

Minimum suggested submission for inclusion:

• A screen shot of the Character Selection screen after login. (Don't worry about trimming it down; I need it in the highest res you have available.)
• A short background precis for the character.
• Character role.
• Any further screen shots of the character hanging about with the other Horde Night folk, killing things, what have you.

Current Mood: sleepy