Fan Art/Tutorial Project

I'd been toying with the idea of making some fan art for a particular Xbox 360 game that me and my gamer friend really like. So I decided to make a fan art poster for the game. The game is called Portal 2. This poster quotes a line from a song included at the end of the game with the name of the fictional scientific organisation, Aperture Science.
I used some stock images for the gritty paper background and images from the game to create this, I also used a free font called Kremlin.
Most of the creation was basic layers and a little bit of other stuff.
For this project I learned how to render and manipulate clouds to create a dirty poster effect (I also used this to enhance the effect of the Zoloft Face Facts poster).
This was originally a project to a tutorial which I followed and then added extra stuff to.

Sin City - Portal spoof/crossover

I felt like creating something that was a spoof of something in the style of something else.

So I went about selecting two things of moderate importance to me (I didn't want to do a big project of huge proportions). At first I was going to do a constructivist propaganda poster for The Lord of the Rings but then I decided that I couldn't find enough quality images to use online, so I thought I might crossover Portal and Sin City (because GLaDOS is a massive gangster, and totally belongs in Sin City).

So I found a high resolution picture of GLaDOS, desaturated it, messed around with the levels in Photoshop, added some motion blurred monochrome white noise for rain effects (a couple of times with different blending options for different layers of rain).
Cut and replaced some colours from the original picture for a touch of Tarantino red.

And finally added a relevant Sin City quote.
This is the final:

This is a previous version that I think is more aesthetically pleasing however it does not fit with the darker Sin-City-esque styling that I wanted for the final.

Spoof Poster

So I was walking along the other day, and I see an Ecstasy, Face Facts poster at a bus stop. It tells me that my Ecstasy is made using drain cleaner, battery acid and even hair bleach! Sacrebleu! I didn't think that my dealer was trying to kill me!
Then I thought, what about pharma companies? They have almost always been shown to be more insidious than street drug dealers in their tactics to gain and keep customers, do they even use the same chemicals to produce their drugs?
The answer I (eventually) found was yes, in fact, they do.
While pharmaceutical companies are less than likely about to post recipes on how to cook up Zoloft or Paxil at home, I found a short article on decreasing the ecological impact of manufacturing the drug Zoloft (Sertraline), which listed a number of chemicals required for the creation of this drug. These were namely HCl (or hydrochloric acid), NaOH (lye), Titanium Tetrachloride (a volatile metal Halide) and Palladium.
"NaOH is used in drain cleaner!" I shouted. "HCl is an acid that is incredibly toxic and used as a household cleaner! Isn't Titanium a heavy metal?"
So I made this poster, and I'll probably make more
I have tried to replicate the original Ecstasy. Face Facts poster as closely as possible with a few minor tweaks so I can't get into too much trouble.

edit: 

I modified this to look a bit more gritty and so that the catch stands out a bit more. I just added a couple of layers of green and blue around the edges and a layer of light blue fog to burn.

New Track!

So this track isn't actually new, its actually from a long time ago. This track was from me wanting to create a track using entirely guitar sounds. They have all been recorded onto a computer and then sequenced.
This is also the first time I'm going to try and embed the player.
Rumpolacktra

Fire!

So heres some more fire pics that I haven't posted yet. These aren't as good quality as some that have already been posted but they are still worthy of mention.

More Bed photos

So, after a little hiatus again here comes more info about the bed.
After cutting out of the joints, bolting wood together and final assembly I came to the conclusion that the bed was much too high to actually be of any practical use to anyone. So I cut about a foot off each leg.
I also began work on the aesthetic value of the bed adding various elements to increase it.

Measuring out joints to be cut

Finished half joint to be assembled

Another finished Joint

Markings for joint to be cut

How the joint will be assembled once cut

Joint just after it has been cut but wood hasn't been removed

Removing wood from joint

Legs/uprights in their finished state

Platform/base (also in its finished state)

Complete! (with no aesthetic additions)

One of the additions I have made

Remix of an album cover

A while ago I decided to remake a Crystal Method album cover and this was what I came up with after about 20 minutes in the GIMP, with no training and lots of sleep deprivation.

Edit:
I have decided to add to this as I realised no-one would be able to tell what album it was or by whom.

Edit:
I decided that an album cover isn't much without some bangin' (excuse my french) artwork on the CD. So here's a bit of that to go with my bit of this.

Bed pictures

This construction is as yet aesthetically incomplete, however, as it evolves I will upload more pictures.
This project began as a necessity as my living situations changed in such a way that I needed my own bed, I wanted something large enough that I wouldn't feel displaced, going from sleeping almost exclusively in double beds, however it needed to be small enough that it would accommodate our already space starved apartment. It needed to be strong enough to support more than 2 people at once, infrequently, so that we could use it as a second lounge part time.
I remembered the bed I had as a child (A bunk bed, with the bottom bunk largely unoccupied) and thought: "There's no reason we cant have it above our current lounge, it would probably serve us better."
I went searching through furniture stores searching for a large loft bed, to no avail. All the stores seem to only have single loft beds, or double beds with a single bunk above.
Online I found a few however they were all way out of a students price range (and some unable to be shipped to "the land down under")
So I decided that it couldn't be that hard to build a bed and started thinking about plans. I looked online for plans (again, found some, no king singles), and went right ahead and used my own anyway.
I drew up basic necessities for it, (approx 106cm x 203cm), a tray not slats for extra support, leg lengths (I originally went with 180cm which turned out to be too tall), support for the tray, and which joins to use where.
The basic raw materials list I came up with was this:
1x 12mm * 2400mm * 1200mm Plywood (tray and gussets)
2x 42mm * 66mm * 1030mm DAR Pine (rails)
4x 42mm * 66mm * 1070mm DAR Pine (ends, inner supports)
4x 42mm * 66mm * 1800mm DAR Pine (uprights)
16x 70mm * 8mm stainless steel bolts and nuts (joining the ends with the rails, joining the gussets to the rails and ends)
30x 35mm * 2mm wood screws (screwing the plywood tray to the support frame, joining the gussets to the uprights)
1x bottle of AquaAdhere (for gluing the non removable joins)

A picture of the uprights, rails, end and inner supports, all cut to length.

More pictures will follow next post.

New Banner!

So the pics for the bed have gone on hold for the next few minutes so I could put my love of celtic knotwork on the web. For all to see!
The new banner for this site has been designed by me. Its based on a number of different celtic knots and was created through my wanting to learn how to draw them, learning to do so, deciding that a computer has a much steadier hand than I do, and then designing the whole thing digitally.
I have a number of different versions other than the one used in the banner but I'll only post the version most relevant to its evolution to final form. The evolution in concept was from 2 axis reflection symmetry with a tribal tattoo style towards rotation symmetry, knot styled.
Maybe one day soon I'll actually tie this knot (unlikely however).

Final form

Earlier form, with no overlaps

Edit:
I also changed to a nicer (ish) font and did some stylizing to using gradients so it would stand out.