The Song Fight Bulletin Board

man, i just have to say how much i love the 'i thought i loved you' picture.
the box of tissues and the empty pint of ice cream... and then all the subtle little details.. "songfight's finest" is a nice touch..

yes, i was about to post a similar thing. nice cover, tawny, it's very clever!
-bill

Plat wrote:Absolutely great "nearly burned the house down" graphic this week. Excellent work, Bort. Is that stock art or a gas stove near you?

I set up that entire photo shoot in my kitchen. Cleaning the stove off took longer than taking the photo, but building that paper house took some time. I added the smoke in after, because I wasn't going to nearly burn down my own house in order to get the photo. I took a couple photos and composited it togther for safety reasons. I took a shot of the Stove going full high heat burners, then I turned them off, placed my paper house then turned them on to the Lowest burn to get the lighting right. Of course I added the text later, and while going through my fonts I found that this font, gave the image an old style rap/hip hop album feeling to me. So I went for it.

Overall my wife appriecated me cleaning the stove off and not actually burning down our house, or the paper one for that matter.

Tawny
I like the "I thought I loved you" cover concept. I guess I'm just not keen on the overall layout. Maybe it is just the purple tissue box dominates the left side too much for me. How was this overall created? Drawn then scanned? All done digital? a mix of both? I like the light washy lines you got working on the table and tissue box. - Great concept.

Marcus:
Love the cover man, but is that a bread stick or a gondola pole in his hand?

pain == bread in frenchy talk.
-bill

thx for the kind words folks!

I was going to sit out this week but sketched something last minute. Bortwein, I scanned it in and colorized it in Photoshop. First time I've ever done that so it turned out all right. With some more forethought I would have moved the spoon in and cropped more off the right. That probably would have helped the balance issue.

Marcus: Nice job pulling off something last minute, too! I like the simple composition and it's funny as well. (I didn't realize that was bread at first, either!)

Bortwein: I love the little house and the concept. Seeing your original submission in the archive, I like this one more. Font choice didn't really fit for me at first (maybe it was just loudness and cramming) but it does work for the rap feeling you were going for. Good work. 8)

I think Bortwein is the winner this week because he gets extra points for cleaning the stove.

Tawny wrote: I was going to sit out this week but sketched something last minute. Bortwein, I scanned it in and colorized it in Photoshop. First time I've ever done that so it turned out all right. With some more forethought I would have moved the spoon in and cropped more off the right. That probably would have helped the balance issue.

I'm glad you didn't sit out this week. It's a great cover. Honestly I think the balance is there, but the color pulls my eye over. You did a great job of coloring it. Are you using photoshop or another paint type program. Your technique on the tissue box and table is very good. Not to mention the spoon, which is good too. Did you redraw the B&J logo, or cut and paste that one from somewhere?

The little touches you added to the whole cover is very well done.

I was just playing with Photoshop brushes for the watercolor effect. I'll get more experimental if I do a line art again. I drew the lines for the B&J logo and tried to match the typography the best I could with the fonts I have.

Thanks so much for your comments and suggestions.

I haven't drawn for a long while (I know I can do better than this) and the feedback has been very helpful.

I love what you do when you use Illustrator and I wish I had that at home so I could play with that. I relearned Macromedia Freehand at work this past 9-10 months and that has been a lot of fun.

toodles!

Bort, which one are you doing this week? I might put something together for black (shaving) if you're doing orange. Or vice-versa.

c hack wrote:Bort, which one are you doing this week? I might put something together for black (shaving) if you're doing orange. Or vice-versa.

I'm doing orange, but I believe that Tawny has Black already. Fightmasters approached us earlier about the colors before this week.

Doesn't hurt to do one anyway and submit it, now with the Art Index we can all see all the art submitted.

Tawny wrote:Marcus: Nice job pulling off something last minute, too! I like the simple composition and it's funny as well. (I didn't realize that was bread at first, either!)

thank you.

bortwein wrote:Marcus:
Love the cover man, but is that a bread stick or a gondola pole in his hand?

bread, yeah. I took two semesters of French in high school, and as it happened each semester was at a different school (I moved at the end of the first semester--which is what led to me attending college at age 16, in part). In the latter (and better) class, there was a poster of a fellow on his bike with a big ol' long piece of bread like the piece I drew. While we were learning terms for food, we learned "le pain," a false cognate, meaning "bread." The book detailed how the French love bread, and that there's lots of bakeries in France, and Wonder bread is, yknow, a four-letter word to a lot of folks. It's telling that (a) I took French a while ago and (b) that I didn't keep up with French since as I should've that I initially remembered "ami" as not "friend" but "love" (which would've been 'Bonjour, Mon Amour' or 'Bonjour, M'amour' for a love that's feminine) and so I thought I should draw an archetypical Frenchman with a piece of bread, saying "Hello, bread... hello, my love." But since the title is "Hello, My Friend" it came out as being "Hello, bread... hello, friend." Which is as good, I guess.

I drew more than that, but that's what I cropped the picture to be at 400x400. In the full-size version (not saved) it's more apparent that his hat is a beret, and the bread goes down further, and he has another arm. I looked through my font collection but when I came across the one I used, a font like used in comics, I decided that it would work about the best. I drew it in Macromedia Flash MX 2004, 'cause I don't have Freehand or Illustrator but I like the tools Macromedia offers for drawing. I spent much less time than Bort or Tawny did, I'm sure, but...

Both Brandon and Tawny did great art this week, too. I think any shortcomings in the drawing that you or Bort saw, Tawny, will be overcome with your continued work doin' covers. It looks great, but in a month they'll look even better. The compositing is pretty transparent for "House," but I didn't notice the smoke until you pointed it out. Clever design, even with an unpainted house, but I don't think the hip-hop font carries the message as strongly as all that.

bortwein wrote:I'm doing orange, but I believe that Tawny has Black already. Fightmasters approached us earlier about the colors before this week.

Oh, is Tawny on full-time now? With Green?

bortwein wrote:I'm doing orange, but I believe that Tawny has Black already. Fightmasters approached us earlier about the colors before this week. Doesn't hurt to do one anyway and submit it, now with the Art Index we can all see all the art submitted.

Spud asked me to do Black but I agree with Bort, the more the merrier.

c hack wrote:Oh, is Tawny on full-time now? With Green?

Nah I'm not a full-timer. Just a gal with some time on her hands. And I like being free to choose which color each week at this point.

In the future, I'll declare the color I'm going to work on (not to discourage competition at all but to let others know that the other color is open as far as I know.)

Tawny wrote:Spud asked me to do Black but I agree with Bort, the more the merrier.

Cool. I had the notion to do one for black, but if you've got it covered, I prolly won't. Unless I can't fight the urge to procrastinate doing anything useful, of course.

I hope to be submitting cover art sometime soon, (perhaps after the black and orange fight.) I don't feel fit to do any reviews or anything just wanted to say the green cover just blew my mind. Awesome work!

Ikari wrote:I hope to be submitting cover art sometime soon, (perhaps after the black and orange fight.) I don't feel fit to do any reviews or anything just wanted to say the green cover just blew my mind. Awesome work!

Thanks! From one somewhat newbie to another, welcome to the fold, Ikari!

Tawny wrote:From one somewhat newbie to another, welcome to the fold, Ikari!

haha. ikari is not a somewhat newbie... but we're glad to have her back.

mkilly wrote:haha. ikari is not a somewhat newbie... but we're glad to have her back.

Oops. Sorry Ikara. Awesome art from the past. Welcome back.

tawny, Thats a Greate cover you did for shaving in the dark...
really captures a presence of mystery and horror, could of done better with the fonts tho, i think. either way really like the photo, and the overall presence.

dre wrote:tawny, Thats a Greate cover you did for shaving in the dark...
really captures a presence of mystery and horror, could of done better with the fonts tho, i think. either way really like the photo, and the overall presence.

Thanks for the input. I kinda agree about the fonts, too. I've done better.

well, i liked the "shaving in the dark" artwork before (actually i liked both of them, as i've mentioned to both artists personally), but man, now that i see it presented on the "licorice fight" page, it looks awesome!

the zen thang on the "half a stone" artwork is very visually appealing. one of the prettier covers we've had at sf.
good work, bort.
-bill

i think the giant "do not push" button encapsulates the title so perfectly!
we've had some pretty amazing artwork a lot of times, but as cover art relating to the title, this is about as good as we could ask for. WTG bortwein.