CHEER FOR GRUBBY AT MLG!
(Click to download 16:10 desktop wallpaper)
The Elite Grubby Guard took a lot of perseverance, but after loosing the master file two times, and recovering from compressed demo images, I was able to finally complete a working version. This is an overlay image for the ‘out of game’ segments I created for twitch.tv streamer Grubby.
The illustration itself went through some serious overhauls, but eventually coming to a point when I needed to hit a deadline I stopped refining and started finishing. What I like most about the project was my stronger line work, and my first time use of Photoshop CS 5’s (3d?) paint brush tools. I can’t stand the preview window that pops up, but love the tools.
Though hurried, I enjoyed the work on the ‘blinking’ effect as well. It was excited to try to creatively and quickly come up with an effect that would be passable as the blink/warping in of the stalker. This was also a little bit of a desperation move for deadline crunching.
As I stated I lost the master file twice, and had to recover from .jpg screen shots. This means I lost half of my originals resolution, added compression distortion, and a loss of all workable layers. Some of the aspects of the blink effect were designed to cover up some of the loss in layer illustration, and to integrate the resolution/compression noise into something that might feel almost purposeful.
The work definitely is a testimony to keeping a cloud project folder. Despite having multiples backups, including cloud, I was blissfully working out of the sync folder. Be advised, its not a good idea! I prefer Dropbox while I work on all my work. It includes version control, which is a LIFE saver. Have you ever resized or flattened your file for export of a demo draft, to later find out you forgot to undo and now you are looking a flattened image of your hours of work? Dropbox has you covered, just recover a previously saved version, and you are ready to roll. No this is not an ad for dropbox, but it is a suggestion to any one working on digital files to consider a cloud storage service with version control.
Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think of the Stalker concept or the overlay in general. What would you have done differently? Is it an interesting concept? I think it would be awesome if players could have signature units that had slight texture or model alterations (like the Collector’s addition Thor). This would be possible with the inclusion of 3ds Max plug ins for the galaxy editor, due to roll out in the next expansion.
Do you need an overlay for your media project? Feel free to contact me and perhaps we can work something out! Joshua.keyes@gmail.com
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