Concept Logos

These are the concept sketches that I made by hand which I will use from here on out to create the logos. They will act as the base for the logos and subsequent forms.

Fenix

This was the idea for the phoenix logo which would be combined with the text of the company name. Below is a sketch of the feather for the second version idea, where instead of the company name the feather is superimposed on the phoenix instead.

Mer

The Mer logo idea was drawn in the same style as Suijin and Sunanoo but with more of an emphasis on resembling submarine life or creatures.

Suijin

Suijin and Mer are somewhat similar, but with Suijin I tried to place more focus on implying the idea of the sea rather than a creature living in the sea (which was more of the approach with Mer). This is represented in the image as the tall standing hair (meant to imply wind or rising currents) and the 'tail' ending in three clouds meant to imply waves and sea foam.

Sunanoo

Sunanoo followed along the same style as Mer and Suijin but with the flowing motion I tried to make her imply wind and hence storms more than water.

Agrona

In the shield drawn with a cross I tried to a mixture of shapes, crosses, diamonds and circles to give a medieval feel.

Valkyria

The idea with the helmet was to try and make an image which looked like it had a lot of fine detail yet still remained quite basic. The sharp edges ended up giving the image a very metallic look.

Photoshop Practice 2

Today I completed the Firefish Photoshop tutorial. These are some of the tools I learned as well as the finished product.

After I had made some smoke wisps coming off the fish's tail the same way I'd made the flicks of fire, I wanted to add some "smoky stars". I Googled a four point star and opened this in Photoshop. By selecting the star, I then defined it as a custom brush to use on my fish.

Back in the firefish file, I was able to select the newly defined brush from the brushes menu. I made this large and then used it stamp some stars around the smoke wisps.

I wanted some stars to be a bit tilted, so I went and changed the angle of the brush to 45 degrees. I made some more stamps with the tilted brush.

The tutorial wanted a picture of the earth to be inserted behind the fish, but I felt my wispy fish would benefit more from a moon. So I found a picture of the moon on Google, saved the file, then added the new picture as a layer by dragging into the fish file.

The full moon picture didn't quite fit, so I added a layer mask and hid parts of it until there was a crescent with a splattering of small stars left around it.

Next, I added a shadow to the fish. Using the pen tool I drew a solid wobbly shape to act as a shadow. Then, I added a motion blur from the filter menu.

I applied the blur twice. The first time for the x axis and the second for the y axis to create a nice, all round blurriness.

After everything was complete, I made all layers visible and merged them together to the final product.

I exported the file as a JPEG and this is how the picture turned out.

Photoshop Practice 1

Today I progressed through the Firefish Photoshop tutorial. Some of the tools used were documented with screen grabs.

The first tool was layering. In the right-hand side are the layers of the fish. The body, the eye and the lashes are each on their own layers.

 

While working around to find how to use the gradient tool, I incidentally found out how to fill a work path with text instead, using the text tool.

 

 

Each of the licks of flame on the bottom of the fish were made by first creating work paths which are then manipulated before being filled with gradient. At this stage the first work path has been made with the pen tool.

 At this point a tendril path has been drawn and is being manipulated. This is being done by manipulating the anchor points.

 After the path has been completed until it looks flowing, it is selected before the gradient can be applied.

 Since only one colour was chosen, the gradient painted only one colour fading into transparent. The gradient tool has been used to create the lower flames which fade closer to the body. These layers were then merged into one, which was duplicated and flipped to create the fire tendrils above the fish. The same method was used to create tendrils from the centre of the fish.

 With the tail of the fish, I wanted to create a bunch of yellow flicks. Instead of drawing each flick separately, I drew one using the path and gradient tools. Then I duplicated the layer again and again and moved each one with the Move tool. I merged the layers until I had about 5 separate bunches of flicks. Then I duplicated the "bunch" layers and moved and rotated them slightly to make the bunches thicker.

The last tool used before the end of the session was the addition of layer masks to control some of the fading.