Week 25 complete! (Or, ‘Alas, poor Yorrick. I knew him, Horatio.’

Well, week 25 is done – and I cheated, a bit.

I’m a day late (but it’s still on the long weekend, so I’m saying it qualifies) and this week’s project is actual paying work.

These are all first drafts, with no feedback (beyond the initial brief) so it I’m allowing it.

Last week, I was approached by an event company that runs corporate team-building events, and was presented with an incredible opportunity: to create caricatures of characters from Hamlet, caricatures featuring an expression that captures the essence of the character. These caricatures would then be placed on cards which would be randomly passed out to the people in the workshop, who in turn would act out a scene from Hamlet.

The first challenge, of course, would be to capture the essential emotion of each character – the company gave me my starting point by defining the characteristics I was to evoke.

The second challenge proved to be a daunting one: Hamlet’s characteristics. Hamlet is the most complex character in the play – at the start of the play, he is genuinely melancholy, the middle of the play he is shifts between depression and rage… *and* feigns happiness/insanity/etc. So, I had to capture these characteristics on a single card – and I am quite pleased with my solution, which I feel is very elegant: as these are cards to be randomly handed out, why not style them as actual playing cards? Therefore, I can represent the depression and the rage of Hamlet on one card, without looking contrived.

Lastly, I wanted to keep the connection to the source material, so I created a colour palette based on colours Renaissance painters would use (yellow ochre, burnt sienna, etc).

Thrift, thrift, Horatio; the spoils of the payment does warmly satisfy the hunger of the project.

The astute observer might notice that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are coloured in the exact same colour palette. This is by design: the two characters are almost interchangeable in their behaviour, which is one of the themes explored in the play and film ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ (I highly recommend the film if you havent seen it, Richard Dreyfuss, Tim Roth and Gary Oldman – you cant go wrong!) where many of the characters confuse Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves! – I thought it would be clever to evoke this ambiguity by using the same colour palette for both of them.

Cbag out – to sleep; perchance to dream; aye, there’s the rub.

Week 24 complete! (Or ‘Form follows function.’)

Well, this week’s project wont be interesting to many of you. However, if you play Blood Bowl, you will find this piece to be the knees of the bees indeed!

This week is a design exercise, and the exercise was to re-design the Blood Bowl team roster to make it more user friendly. I realize most people use those new-fangled spreadsheet programs, but us luddites actually prefer the tactile nature of hand-written sheets, and the simple charm of napkin math. This week’s project is intended for us.

One of the issues I had with the existing design was that alot of the space was poorly used – the old design (which I do not have copyright of, so will not post) allowed a ton of room for categories which were more-or-less ‘yes/no’ areas, while other areas were woefully small (I’m looking at you, Skill column).

Also, the process for calculating team value involves alot of addition of multiple lines, but the categories which changed the least, had the most entries (player cost). To further confuse matters, a new variable was added in recent rules revisions (Player Value) which changes periodically, but the real-world implementation is different than the game designers envisioned: they envision adding the Player Value modifier to the cost of the player, then totalling the revised player costs… how people actually do it is to total the player cost (which hardly ever changes once set), then total the Player Value Mods (much smaller numbers), then add those 2 values together; my new design takes this into account and adds a line at the bottom for ‘Player Cost’ (conveniently labelled column A) plus Player Value Modifier (labelled column B), giving a total.

Lastly, I’ve noticed even veteran Blood Bowl players refer to the rulebook when it came to player advancement. Player advancement amounted to consulting 3 different tables, on 2 different pages. I felt this information could very easily be gathered, and turned into 4 simple line entries in a separate section on their own.

Without further adieu!

Mmmmmm - tabley!

And a PDF for anyone who wants a high-res version:

XTBBF Team Roster PDF

Function determining form is the essence of good design.

(For all the non-Blood Bowlers reading this, dont be shocked by all the abbreviations – those are standard in the game, and would be readily understood by the players. )

Cbag out!

Week 23 done! (Or ‘A little too much MSG’)

I present, week 23!

This week is an exploration of Corel Painter once again, this time their pencil crayon hard media tools.

Cbag out!

Week 22 done! (Or, ‘Phoning it in has never looked so good.’)

Well, I’ve been caught up with so many other things this week, I didnt make any time for my project. Most of all, I’ve been busting my butt trying to get caught up on all my painting. I made a comment to the girlfriend last night that I cant stand having something sitting around unfinished – I find incomplete projects to be a very weighty mental burden, so weighty that it impedes my ability to properly focus on other tasks.

Which means, here it is, Sunday afternoon, 2:30pm and I’m faced with the task of a project, and only a couple hours to do it in. And my mind is a complete blank.

o.O

One of the projects I have on the go is a logo design for an upcoming Blood Bowl tournament. Now, technically, this design is for a client, so they are entitled to provide direction, which goes against the paradigm of my weekly project *but* he was so happy with the first draft I submitted that there wont be any changes. Considering that the only direction I was provided was a rough linear I feel that this piece falls into a grey area and as such, qualifies as my project for this week.

My blog, my rules.

Shiney!

To quote my client:

“I must say that you really captured what I saw in my mind’s eye and it’s a testament to your artistic talent that you took my MS Paint drawing and really turned it into Blingtoof.”

Hopefully he wont mind me quoting him, or revealing the WIP.

That’s it for this week, Cbag out!

Week 21 finished! (or, ‘Seuss Trek’)

As several people know, I’m writing and illustrating a children’s book – so this week I felt like channelling a bit of Seuss.

Spock I Am Not

And, of course I had to write a little Seuss inspired poem to go along with it.

Blood Bowl Blizter

As I have mentioned in recent weeks, I am playing Blood Bowl again. One of my friends is in the process of redesigning the website for our league – I approached him and offered to do some artwork for the site, so we dont have to worry about any silly copyright laws or anything like that.

Drop you like a Bag O'Wheat

Week 20 done! (Or, ‘Cbag smartened up’)

I learned my lesson from last week… I was doing a few more abstract explorations this week and decided to hold onto them until today to post.

Cbag out!