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blawgorama
I made something really fun today for a friend in Nagasaki, Japan, who's an even bigger Star Wars geek than I am. :)
My inner dork was overwhelmed with joy making this. Death Stars? Burning X-Wings? Dudes in bad-ass, skull-faced helmets with laser guns and junk? The 8-yr-old in me was loving it. (If you've read my rant on my ridiculous exploits for Make-A-Wish, you know what kind of deep-seated, childhood nerd-dom I'm talkin' about.)
The digital matte painting in the background was made using images of Star Wars model kits, stock photos of aircraft wreckage, buidling demolition, and news stills from Afghanistan. I chopped up all kinds of images of rubble and salvage-yard WWII bombers, threw them all over the place, added a toy X-Wing, digitally weathered it, and then brushed in all the fire and smoke effects. I felt like a jerk for using such morbid source material in a goofy science-fiction graphic... but ya' gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.
All the stormtroopers in the comp are live human beings-- not screen-grabs from the movies. Members of a Star Wars fan organization called the "501st Legion" were nice enough to donate images of themselves wearing armor they built themselves. How awesome is that?!?
Our website at work needed something new, so I added these graphics this week. The top image illustrates a product we offer that handles trafficking for synched-audio banner advertisements, and the bottom one represents the reach of streaming radio.
The finished product.
Ironically, all the "paint splatters" were masked off and sprayed using a stencil. You can see my boss, Zack, in the bottom left corner, barely conscious from the paint fumes, but still making sales calls. Then again, the guy trained for chemical warfare in the Marine Corps, so there you go.
A couple more shots of the completed painting. The lettering is still a little too "handmade" for my tastes, but all in all, I'm really proud of how it turned out. Neither mural would've come out half as nice without the help of my pal, Craig Patterson-- the dude is insanely good at everything he does, including mural painting, apparently. Thanks, Craig!
More progress...
The koi fish, after some touch-ups on the details.
Craig works diligently , while I demonstrate the linguistic wit of an 8 year old.
Completely high on spray paint fumes, Craig and I start peeling off masking tape.
More peeling, accompanied by some extremely flattering mouth-breathing.
Lettering revealed -- they came out kinda sloppy, so we'll have to clean those up tomorrow. Then it oughtta be wrapped up.
Started painting the second mural at work yesterday -- this time, it's
a small koi on my CEO's office door. It's going about a hundred times
faster than the last one, which kinda surprised me. I guess I'm getting the hang of it. Here's how it looks so far.
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