BACK FROM THE DEAD

So I’ve been inactive on here for the past couple of months. Not anymore

So what have I been doing recently? Well…

• I had to make a Behance account for college use to which I eventually poured my time onto.
• The Behance account was used to blog my progress for making a kinetic text animation.
• I made a couple of flash animations.
• Designed the UI for a colour picker site for a college project.
• Had to pour some time into my photograpy.

So as one would expect, I would post my creations on this post…. except for the flash animations and photography. You would have to visit my Weebly site for the flash animations which is…

http://markluna.weebly.com/flash-animations.html

For the photography, my flickr account,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/92934487@N06/

And here are the rest of what I have done while I was away:

I’ve been trying to be productive so this summer I have quiet the number of projects; these include:

• 90 Day Drawing Challenge
• Web Programming
• AS3 Programming
• Pixel Art Mastery

And also a working project I’m very proud of….

So that’s it really. I’m Back.

Hiatus From Posting

I haven’t posted anything since the end of January. My bad, I’ve been swamped with other priorities of late.

But recently, as part of college work, among my fellow peers, we were told to blog our progress into our college project on the site recommended to us which was ‘Behance’.

This college work was for our CGI module and the project is animating a kinetic text on After Effects. I just posted my first “project” on it so check out my post on Behance – http://www.behance.net/gallery/CGI-Kinetic-Text-Project-Opening-Post/7523985

At the moment, I am considering moving my posts onto Behance altogether. OR. I only blog on behance about college work and leave my hobby stuff on here.. Decisions decisions.

But check out my profile on Behance anyway..

http://www.behance.net/MarkLuna

‘Human After All’ – Art Development #GGJ2013 #TeamHumanAfterAll

Over the weekend (January, 25 – 27), me and three of my friends took part in an event called ‘Global Games Jam 2013′. So the event goes as; we are all given a theme. And we can take that theme as a guide into developing a concept for our game(s). Games will be presented, and the best ones (17) were to be developed. Whose game is picked to be developed becomes the leader and will have to “hire” people to work. Before I blabber on, our theme was ‘heartbeat’. I had three game concepts: a 2D platformer inspired by ‘Mirror’s Edge’; a top-down game inspired by the movie ‘Crank’; and a puzzle game containing layers of a heart and eventually simulating a hearts processes.

Article written about us on the college website! HERE!!

From all the presentations, I wanted to work on a game called ‘Human After All’ due to its awesome concept. It’s a side-scroller which shares a similarity to ‘Super Meat Boy’ but with different mechanics. It also has a sweet story to it.

My priorities as the artist were as, to design:

Characters

• “Roborto” – Main Character
• NPC – Normal Person
• NPC – Fat Person
• NPC – Woman
• NPC – Soldier

Stage

• Tiles
• Background
• Foreground

Obstacle

- *Designs were stopped as the story of the game were changed*
• Trash Can
• Street Lights
• Park Bench

So these were my concept art for some of the designs..

I then had to design the environment. These were what I came up with:

Then I did the menu screen. I didn’t like the used design. But I cam up with something weird. But hey, I can re do on Photoshop.

Here’s the link to ‘Human After All’ on the Global Games Jam 2013. And the gameplay of it…

EP Cover: “Electric Pulse”

This my first post of 2013, oh so speshul.

I was asked asked to design a cover for my friend, D-FYN’s EP titled “Electric Pulse”. So this is my reflection on achieving the final design. First off, knowing myself, my initial problem was going to be setting up the typeface and static. The main point of the cover was going to be a dark blue heart all static-y listening to Dre Beats headphones, so that itself for me was going to be handy enough. My first task was to figure out how I was going to layout the actual heart with the headphones. So did a few line drawings of a hear and headphones and to see what it would look like.

After sorting that out, in a matter of minutes or even seconds; I moved onto working on the font. That wasn’t so fun. Needless to say, in the end, I decided to use one of the fonts I already had on my laptop I got for free called ‘Minecrafter 2.0′ (yes I know, I used a minecraft font for a hip hop album). I gave it a glowing effect just to go with the electric theme of the brief.

I had two initial designs for the heart and the headphones. The first with the headphones just in the middle of the heart. But after receiving some feedback, I decided to go for the second design, which was to have the headphones alongside the atrium of the heart. Getting the static effect on the heart was tricky. Originally I thought I had the gist of it, turns out its harder than it seems. Again, needless to say, I downloaded lightning preset brushes to get the effect I so desired. Of course giving it a glowing effect.

It took me at least over a week to finish this design. I am still an amateur designer and should seriously use Illustrator for making vector designs, but for now I’m going to stick with my guns and opt for Photoshop making these raster images.

So this is what I have come up with as my final design.

Rejected Designs: Basketball Logo

Something has been bothering for a while now. Something that everyday I would check my email or facebook about. Recently, I was asked to design the logo for a college basketball team. Seeing as I am who I am, the profit aspect of my business ‘per se’  bemoans me. I get over enthusiastic about designing too much, too often sometimes. So anyway yeah, I finished a couple of designs. As they are…

Not that I’m asking for any sympathy or anything but; are these designs crap? I’m really curious. And yes I know, one or two of them is actually quite crap , but hey..

C’est la vie.

IT CARLOW BASKETBALL DESIGN ITERATIONS

I was asked to design a logo … or was it a t shirt design.. for IT Carlow’s basketball team. These were my designs.

 

Logo Variations For The CRAIC Society

The mini story of how CRAIC was born.

Last year, I was part of a somewhat gaming society in college. The branch of the society I was part of was pretty much neglected by the main branch. After disputes over the summer about new plans for the gaming society, me and a couple friends decided not to go back. As a result, last month, we decided to make a new college society; our own society. We called it, ‘Clonmel Recreational Activities and Informational Society’ or abbreviated to CRAIC. Craic in which is an Irish term for having fun. See what we did there…

As a committee member of this society it is my job to design the graphics for the society. I’m basically the ‘graphics guy’. As being the “graphics guy”, I had to design a logo for the society. This right here was my initial design after which we picked a final iteration. Apparently one of these designs look “nazi-ish” but hey, to each his own.

Wanna Know How I Got These Scars?

‘The Joker’ has recently become one of my favourite villains of all time. I recently read ‘The Killing Joke’ and saw some awesome art on it. So as an ode to the Joker, I decided to re-do two of the images on the comic.

Both of these took me AGES to finish so you bastards better like it!  Both were originally illustrated by Brian Bolland.

“My father was a drinker and a fiend. And one night, he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn’t like that. Not. One. Bit. So, me watching, he takes the knife to her laughing while he does it. He turns to me and he says, “why so serious”. He comes at me with the knife, “why so serious!?” Sticks the blade in my mouth, “let’s put a smile on that face”. And… why so serious.” 

My favourite ‘scars’ story.

Weak Attempt at Redemption

I’ve been on and off with this whole digital art thing for a while now. Lately I’ve been trying to get back into that creative mindset. I recently sat a repeat exam for college; that one exam determines whether I progress further into 2nd year, repeat the entire first year, come back in the 2nd semester to repeat that one subject or drop out.  Needless to say I had to rid my head of worries. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now so the image below is a “cartoonized” image of my main character on DC Universe Online, BanditKidKing. The original image was quite pixelated so I apologize if this looks crap.

QUICK UPDATE! *12-8-2012*

It is literally 01:37 am and I’m about to go to bed. But before I do so..

It’s been literally 2 months since my last post. I’ll start posting again when college starts. Which is coming soon. Just a little reminder that I’m not going to let this blog go inactive.

And I literally just finished this piece.. another Inbox! Apl & Sark.. enjoy.