New Watermark

You may have noticed the watermark on my Boba Fett image. This is of course not a new addition to my art itself, but just a way to protect my work here on the 'nets.

Here's a better look:
I had a little help when I was designing it this afternoon. Apparently Moleskines are tasty.



Happy Caturday!

What if he doesn't survive? He's worth a lot to me.

My homage to The Empire Strikes Back is done.
As with Lord Vader, Boba here is created with every bit of dialogue from The Empire Strikes Back, plus the opening scroll.

I thought this would be easier than the first since Boba's helmet is mostly large, solid shapes, but getting convincing curves out of blocks of text was frustrating. It's still a little sloppier than I'd like around where the dome of the helmet meets the visor.

Much more so than with my Star Wars project, I'm struck by how great the script is. Lots of smiles and fond memories as I went through this one. That Han Solo may be a scruffy-looking nerf herder, but he's charming too, eh?

It may be time for a movie marathon soon.

Apropos of nothing...

So, over the last few days, Kelly and I rewatched the Pirates of the Carribean movies, and it reminded me... As a kid, I'd hear the term "Davy Jones's Locker" ... (Where does a kid hear that? I wasn't big on pirate fiction. Hmmm.) ... and it would always confuse me.

Why is he going to Davy Jones's locker? It doesn't make any sense!!!

Ahhh, to be a kid again.

-S

We meet again at last. The circle is now complete.

After much gnashing of teeth, it's done:

Darth is completely made up with every bit of dialogue from the non-extended edition of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. No omissions, no repeats. No stupid scene with Jabba the Hutt at Mos Eisley. The different shades of black are accomplished with different text size and spacing; it's all just 100% K black.
Part one of my homage to the original Star Wars trilogy is done. I'm eying candidates for my Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi pieces. I'd like each to be an iconic image, and one that's important to the film it represents. Faces (rather than masks like ol' Darth here) aren't likely to turn out. My current candidates:These are, by the way, not simply digital art. I intend to print and frame these as 10x10s. I may even consider putting them up on Etsy...

One last thought, if you're not familiar with shirt.woot, well, now you are. Some real gems there, and they have their own typographical nod to the Star Wars universe. I give you, the @-@ (non-geeks, my apologies. You won't get it. So... this one is a visual joke that should be on everyone's level.)

And with that, the weekend is nearly over. So, an early happy Monday to everyone. Here's to a productive, creative week!

I Find Your Lack of Faith... Disturbing.

Hey, welcome back... or... hello, for the very first time!

As long as I've already gone on and on and on about what amused me in my childhood, I might just dip into that well one more time. It's relevant, I promise.
I'm a 30-something (well, not quite -something yet, thank you very much) male geek, so naturally one of the key components of my childhood was Lucas's Star Wars trilogy. (That's right, I said trilogy. As in three movies. As in there were not three more, and they did not drop the ewoks off at the pool all over my childhood, got it?) I have such weird specific memories of the flicks from when I was a little kid. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's charred corpses were really disturbing. Han getting frozen in Carbonite was confusing. And even then, yeah, I wasn't too sure about the Ewoks' contribution to the overall Star Wars oeuvre. But overall, man, I just got lost in those movies, and I wore the hell out of the VHS tapes that my parents had recorded the films on, off of HBO.
All this comes back to me lately as I mutter obscenities under my breath at the sides of Darth Vader's helmet.

The current project is an offshoot of something I've done before, typographical art created with memorable quotes from some of my favorite movies (one movie to a piece, natch.) Today's work-in process looks like this:
If what I'm doing here isn't immediately apparent, here's a closeup of old Sithy's chrome-dome:
That is the dialogue from Episode IV: A New Hope. Well, a portion of it. It'll fit. It'll all fit. I'll force it if I have to.

Here's the part that made me stop for tonight:



Those raggedy-ass edges just won't do, but damn if I'm not going cross-eyed fixing the spacing line-by-line, word-by-word. We'll get there folks, but ol' Skahfee can't take any more for the night.

Inception tomorrow, Zuma beach on Sunday, and plenty of productivity in-between! Happy weekend, everyone!

Cheers,
S

Messieurs et mesdames, Bienvenue au cirque du Skahfee!

(with apologies to Mister Jingles.)

Hello, all. It's been a while since I've had a blog, but lately I've felt the tug, and I've been embarking on a new journey that I thought bore some documenting to random strangers (and maybe a few friends).

Since I can remember, I've had a lot of creative ambitions. I mean, a lot. I made stop-motion movies with my dad's camcorder when I was in grade school, and I was in choir in high school, and did some theatre all the way up past college. I struggle with writing all the time, I've taught myself to design websites, and I've even dabbled a bit with computer game design over the years.

Lately, I've been thinking about one old creative desire that's remained unrequited for most of my life. There was a long time when I was a kid, beginning in grade school up through Junior High, when I was really, really into art. Drawing, specifically. I had a manila folder when I was a kid, just jammed full of drawings I'd scribbled on computer paper with bic pens. A pen and a piece of paper was almost as good as a toy box to me for a while, I remember drawing out epic fantasy battles that would put Tolkien to shame.

It continued through Junior High, when I got my hands on How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way (And after like ten seconds of searching Google, Here it is! Dang, do we live in the future or what?), and decided that I was going to draw a comic book. I can't even tell you how much of American History I completely missed scribbling in notebooks and referring to my dog-eared reference and hanging on Stan the Man's every word (all written before I was even born).

I even did a year of art class in my freshman year of high school, but something changed in my creative leanings and I soon dropped it for choir. After that, drawing and art were delegated to random dabblings and scribbles.

I've felt the tug again lately, though (as well as in a million other creative directions). I have dozens of little projects on the backburner, and I'll document some of my progress here for anyone who's interested to read it (or you know, to amuse myself, as I am wont to do.)

A side note, you're visiting me today on skahfeestudios.blogspot.com. My old blog, skahfee.blogspot.com is abandoned and was snatched up almost immediately by a spambot. I've informed the good folks at Blogger, but... well, you know how it goes.

I'll see you around the corner. Till then.

Cheers!
S