Feb 15th 2008Lightning Strike, Outer Banks, 2005
This photo was taken a few summers ago at the Outer Banks in late July. My family and I go on vacation every year there and we were given this awesome lightning storm. It was shot with my low-end Canon digital camera with a 15 second time exposure.
Here are more photos from the same storm.
filed under:photography
Feb 8th 2008new profile pic
So I designed this to be my new profile picture for my ever-expanding collection of social networking websites. I hand drew a picture from a photo and messed around in Photoshop. I’m not the best at Photoshop, so I’d really like some honest constructive criticism. Hit me up with a comment with what you think of it. Thanks
filed under:design
Feb 1st 2008The Odd Ballroom
The Odd Ballroom, a 3D short film created by my friend Andrew Sloan, is in its (almost) final form. This incredible 3D film took 7 James Madison University animation students two years’ spare time to complete. The story revolves around a janitor at a failing freak show and his longing to be in the limelight. Its a spectacular story reinforced by amazing animation.
I was brought onto the project to do all the sound for the film. I spent the next few months (in the midst of graduating college, finding a job, starting a job, and doing other freelance work) arranging and manipulating sound effects in Pro Tools. I feel bad for taking such a long time to complete the foley, but I feel even worse about not being able to make original music for the film in the time frame I was given. Maybe someday…
This project was a very positive experience all around and my respect for 3D animators and audio technicians grew immensely. Do yourself a favor and watch the film.
filed under:music
Jan 22nd 2008Arby’s Petting Zoo, a Simply Delicious Way to Spend Your Saturday
This is a photo taken in my home town of Oil City, PA about a year ago. It speaks volumes.
filed under:humor
Jan 17th 2008Monopoly Template for Photoshop
Christmas time was fast approaching and the idea popped into my head to create a custom Monopoly game for my family. I remember seeing something for a “Make Your Own Opoly” game, but when i checked it out, I found out it’s whack. It only has 9 spaces per side instead of the official Monopoly’s 10, you have to print it out on your home computer, and just lacks the overall look and feel of the original game.
So began my quest to find a Monopoly template for Photoshop , something that I could just open up on in Photoshop, swap out the default titles with my own, and if I wanted to, redesign any element of the board. I can’t say I searched the 4 corners of the globe for a proper template, so the best I came up with was something that someone threw together quickly in a forum somewhere.
It was a good start, but the creator was rushing to do it quickly and overlooked a few things. So I took it into Photoshop, simplified a lot of the structure, and designed the board to mirror the original Monopoly design. I set the file at CMYK/300dpi and set the dimensions at 20in x 20in, the actual Monopoly board dimensions. However, Christmas time was fast approaching, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time to labor over every detail.
That being said, there are a few shortcomings with my template, but all of them can be fixed quickly. Here’s a quick list of them.
- No Mr. Moneybags. He wasn’t relevant to my project so he was left out.
- Didn’t have time to illustrate Luxury Tax, Guy in Jail, amongst other things.
- A lot of the dimensions are eyed-up and not necessarily exact measurements
- All the icons (electric company, trains, go, free parking, etc…) were drawn quite poorly in Photoshop. If I had more time, I would have properly illustrated them in a fancy program called Illustrator.
- The typefaces aren’t exactly proper, especially on the property cards. The main typeface is Kabel, which you have to pay for, so I used knockoff fonts that are similar, but not the original.
- The colors aren’t exactly correct, so you’d have to twiddle with them
All these shortcomings aside, the Monopoly template is pretty strong. Hopefully somebody else can take it to the next level! Leave a comment if you have any questions.
filed under:design
Dec 10th 2007Cake and Brazilian Girls (with Tuba??) - Sewell, New Jersey
Well, I still haven’t decided what I’m going to use this blog for yet, so I’ll throw this question out there just to see if anyone knows the answer. Where was Brazilian Girls bass player on Sat, Dec 8 at Cake’s Unlimited Sunshine Festival at the Commerce Bank Arts Center in Sewell, NJ? Why was he replaced with a tuba player instead?
I ask this because Brazilian Girls’ bass player, Jesse Murphy, is the strongest asset to the Brazilian Girls. He is extremely talented, and while the tuba was interesting, it wasn’t as punchy as an electric bass, and also was distracting from the rest of the show. Certain songs, such as “Corner Store,” lent themselves nicely to the tuba, but other songs have awesome bass runs on the studio disks that I would have loved to hear in person.
Write a comment if you know what the deal is with Brazilian Girls’ bass player issue.
filed under:music
