The Personal Blog of Chris Spooner » Design

New Stickers Courtesy of MOO

Chris Spooner — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:57:51 +0000

The friendly folks from online printing company MOO kindly sorted me out a couple of sticker packs along with their generous giveaway for my Blog.SpoonGraphics Access All Areas members. I chose to have my cool vector character (originally designed by the talented @BehindCadi) made up as a set to give out along with my little MOO cards at events. I also created a little badge design for my fiancee Laura’s driving school business that she can give out to her newly qualified drivers.

My Tron Legacy Fan Poster – Behind the Scenes

Chris Spooner — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:46:43 +0000

Since following James White’s awesome Tron inspired artworks I’d been itching to have a go at playing around with some cool techno lighting effects myself. After a long journey of ups and downs I finally polished off the last few pixels of my own Tron Legacy fan poster design. Here’s a brief look behind the scenes of its creation along with a little background story to go with it.

Last weekend I re-watched the original Tron (1982) movie in preparation for the release of Tron Legacy, which gave me my initial ideas for the design I wanted to create. The next day I went on an adventure through various stock photo websites to find the resources I needed. After a few hours I’d mocked up the design I had in mind, but it just wasn’t working – I ended up scrapping the whole idea and dumping it in my ‘Unused’ folder.
A couple of days later we went to see Tron Legacy at the cinema. The movie was filled with all kinds of awesome and it reignited my inspiration. I got home that night buzzing to continue on with my design while the excitement was fresh and ended up reworking my design right into the night with the Daft Punk Tron Legacy soundtrack on repeat.
I got straight back onto the design the next day and worked on it non-stop until it was done. I’m pretty happy and proud of the outcome, especially considering I scrapped the idea halfway through. This final image is exactly how I hoped my original idea would turn out.

Step by step

I’m no digital painter or a 3D whizz, so Photo Manipulation would have to be my chosen method for creating my Tron design. The idea all along was to create a games program type figure using a mix of styles between the old Tron and new Tron – The old Tron outfits were skin tight with little armour plates here and there, the new outfits are much more techy with more armour plating, honeycomb fabric and cool illuminations. Body armour used in MX, BMX and Mountain Biking is a good mix of the two and would be my best option. Some Snowboarding helmet designs also look like modern day variants of the original Tron helmets.
I scoured the stock photo websites for motorcycle clothing, helmets and extreme sports protection, but these subjects aren’t too popular. Before packing in altogether I did a quick Google Images search and found some great high res product shots that worked perfectly together. Obviously Google Images isn’t the place to find any resources for your designs because we don’t have the rights to use them, but seeing as this design is just a non-commercial personal project to fulfill my creative needs I thought I’d be naughty and pinch a couple of product shots!
I did however manage to find a suitable shot of a guy in the correct pose over at ThinkStock, which was also my destination for all other image resources. All the images were quickly hashed together to form a basic mockup.

The next stage was to convert the design from an obvious mix of snowboarding and biking gear into a futuristic Tron inspired outfit. Photoshop was used to draw and paint in the various elements such as the Identity Disc and helmet visor. Spray paint brushes, Inner/Outer Glows and the all important Color Dodge blending mode all came in handy to create bright light flares.

A range of patterns including tessellating honeycomb shapes, a Tron inspired ‘grid’ and a couple of tiny pixel patterns were created in Illustrator, then imported into Photoshop to help add clever details.

Lots of lighting effect layers developed the bright neons and lens flares then everything was finished of with some colour casts and the all important High Pass filter to really sharpen it all up.

The final poster design

Brief movie review

Awesome! The effects were amazing and the story was great. I was glad I re-watched the original a couple of days earlier as there’s some clever lines pulled from the 1982 movie. What was especially great is that two of the main actors from the 1982 movie also played the same parts in this 2010 sequel. The digital effects to turn back the years on Jeff Bridges’ Clu character were amazing.
This, combined with a brilliant sound track, fab artistic direction and some hot chicks made it everything you would wish for in a movie.

The only negative for me was we decided to see it in 3D. I don’t know whether it was my eyes, the quality of the glasses or some kind of screening error but throughout the movie I was seeing things with double vision, especially towards the edges of the screens – Exactly like what you see when you remove the glasses. We made sure we sat exactly in the centre of the theatre, this particular screen was quite small so we were at the back. Maybe our position was the cause?
This double vision pissed me off so much I even stole Laura’s glasses halfway through to see if hers were different! I have plans to see it again, unfortunately I’ll have to travel to a different cinema as they’re only showing the 3D version at our local venue.

My New Business Cards

Chris Spooner — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 10:59:02 +0000

After attending multiple design events with no business cards whatsoever, I thought it was about time to get myself some fresh designs printed up. I always joke with people at conferences how after writing all these ‘design a print-ready business card‘ tutorials I really should have some myself, especially since I have about 5 potential print ready files just saved on my hard drive. Thanks to the awesome printing company Moo I finally have a series of cute MiniCards to give out in 2011.

As you can see from the photos I’ve gone for a super minimal approach regarding contact details, with the cards being more as a fun giveaway rather than for business purposes. For me, Twitter is the best way to keep in touch with people I’ve met at design events, and should a project opportunity arise in the future a DM or @reply is all it takes to get the ball rolling.

Thanks to Moo’s awesome Printfinity technology I was also able to customise the cards, splitting the pack of 100 into 4 different designs each with a different ‘Hello’ message – All of which are things I’m likely to say as an ice-breaker in real life!

The quality of the Moo cards is top notch so I’d definitely recommend them to anyone looking for a fresh set of cards. Their MiniCards in particular are super cute and a conversation starter itself due to their unusual size.

For anyone interested in the step by step process of how this design was created, check out my tutorial on Blog.SpoonGraphics:

Hopefully I’ll see many of you at an event in 2011 to give one out in person.

The Threadless Book: A Bucket Load of Inspiration

Chris Spooner — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:29:20 +0000

Thanks to Clive from Harris and Wilson I recently got my hands on a freshly baked copy of the Threadless Book. Chances are if you’re a designer you will have heard of Threadless – The community t-shirt design site that is home to millions of awesome designs and illustrations. The Threadless book honours their 10th Anniversary and showcases 400 of their best designs on a year-by-year basis.

I’d definitely recommend getting your hands on a copy. It’s packed full of top quality artwork that inspires you to get creative with your own illustrations and design work. I’ve yet to give it a full cover to cover read through, but it has already given me that boost of creativity when I’m suffering from a case of designer’s block. Here’s a few snaps:

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The Many Faces of the Vivid Ways Logo

Chris Spooner — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:59:40 +0000

Long time readers of my SpoonGraphics blog may remember the project where I designed a unique logo for Vivid Ways, then write out the ‘making of‘ as a blog post. Since the design was finished in 2009 I’ve received numerous emails from my readers who took the time to let me know when they had spotted a rip of the design.
Recently I’ve started taking screenshots to create a little hall of shame, so here goes with the first 5! It’s a shame I didn’t think to take a copy of some of the earlier rips.

They say Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but some of these examples simply take the piss!

My original Vivid Ways logo

Check out the making of post over at Blog.SpoonGraphics, and be sure to head over to VividWays.com to read Scott’s awesome blog about colorful living.

A few rips…

ChrisSpooner.com Gets a Snazzy New Look

Building a Website – Time Lapse Video

Chris Spooner — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:53:59 +0000

I decided to record my process of building a XHTML/CSS webpage from a PSD concept, then put it together as a quick time lapse video. The video compresses approx three hours of work into 6:40mins and is complete with funky background music!

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See My Face in This Month’s .NET Mag!

Chris Spooner — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:44:51 +0000

I had the pleasure of participating in the website build-off for this month’s NET magazine. The topic of the design was kids’ websites, and my design features the cute furry monster characters recently seen on Blog.SpoonGraphics.

The issue also showcases a great design by the guys from AgencyNet and a fab concept by Pete White. Check out issue 193 for the full article!

I might use my design to create a tutorial on Line25 or Blog.SpoonGraphics once the issue has gone off sale – What do you think?

Photoshop Tip: Change Blending Mode Easily on Mac

Chris Spooner — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:57:53 +0000

I recently stumbled across a handy Photoshop shortcut for us Mac users. What has always bugged me is how it’s impossible to toggle through the layer blending modes with the mouse scrollwheel, like you can in Windows. Fear not! Simply hit SHIFT and the + or - keys to toggle back and forward quickly and easily. Here’s a mini screencast explaining the process:

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