Designs for my local smash scene

Competetive Smash

Around one and a half year ago i started playing Super Smash Bros. Melee. A game series i've played casually from time to time, until i realized there was competetive scene. Super Smash Bros is platform fighting game series featuring Nintendo characters battling each other in a king of the hill type of style. Now 15 years later and the competitive scene for Super Smash Bros Melee is still alive and i've become part of my local scene. Because of my passion for the game and community i've become responsible as a designer and TO in my community. So i've done some design work our organisation Smash Rogaland.

The Logo

 

When i joined the local scene i wasn't too happy with the current designs, so i came with some suggestions for visual improvements. The logo that was being used was good, but had poor craftmanship. The logo is a combination of the official smash logo by Nintendo and the shield symbol for the region "Rogaland" in Norway. It's a visual representation of "Smash Rogaland" which is the name our our organisation. The logo and symbol have a great recognition factor, so the combination of the two creates a powerfull logo. I didn't need to fix a lot, but i gave the logo the proper region symbol color, aligned the smash symbol with the original one and made it more crispy overall. Since i made it with vectors in illustrator we can change the size to anything now.

Brand Identity

At the same time i had a brand identity in mind. Using the skye blue color of the region symbol as main color and keeping the color palette monotone so that it stays simple.

Smash as a game series also has a very busy visual identity since it's a clash of different characters with different colors and themes. I thought simple colors such as skye blue, blue and white is a good idea then. So that the design attract attention from the visuals of the game.

Facebook Page

I also designed a facebook page for our organisation. One problem i have with facebook is that already has it's own color scheme, but the color scheme was already skyblue/blue it didn't turn into a visual mess. As for the banner i used recognizeable silhouttes from the Smash series, to avoid visual mess of colors. Again i like things simple and clean.

https://www.facebook.com/smashrogaland/

Core Identity

I wasn't fully certain how i wanted the banner to be like. I considered having people from our local scene represented instead of having the game characters on. It's like a question of what the scene is all about "the game or the players". In truth it's both, but it's difficult to combine the two visually. I valued game over players in this case. The bottom tells a much better story though and is easier to relate to.

The game?

or

 

The players?

Stream

Stream overlay for Melee gameplay.

Stream overlay for Smash 4 gameplay.

Stream scene used for breaks before stream, between sets, games and after stream.

Stream scene to show both player cameras immediately before a set starts.

I also made a design for our streaming channels on twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/smashrogaland and https://www.twitch.tv/smashrogaland2. I took most of my inspiration from Genesis 4, Beast 7 and Eclipse 3 as they had a minimalistic style that i liked. I think that what makes a stream design good is having an overlay that compliments what game that's currently on the stream and so it shouldn't detract focus from the gameplay. Which is why i think minimalistic approach is good, with no excessive information or attention seeking visuals. The idea of having moving animations tickled my fancy, but i think they were slightly distracting if they moved too fast or had significant details.

Here you can also see a player vs. player presentation demo that i made for the stream. I made it so that it's suitable as a presentation before a match and as a youtube thumbnail.

Poster

As for the events i also spent some time working on a poster. I wanted something with simple color contrast, eye catching contrasts and a visually structured heirarchy. I had a lot of difficulty picking the proper fonts. I still think i could improve a lot in this area.

Facebook banner(s)

 

I also tried to keep the facebook event visually consistent with the poster, but it didn't look very nice so i had i decided to change it. I was kind of stressed out since i was also the person organising the event. We had about 60 entrants and around 80 visitors that day, so i'm happy it turned out great. The stream didn't go so well since we have nobody to run. Even though we doublechecked that everything worked with the stream a few days earlier, shit always happens to the technical stuff.

Subsequent tournaments

Moving forward from our "big smash event" i decided to standardize the event banner for our future tournaments. So that the smaller tournaments that we run every friday are called "RogaSmash #Number" and have the samme event image every time. While calling the greater tournaments "MetroSmash" as a homage to the local that we use and people who support us with prizes. To help differentiate between locals and regionals.

These banners were designed to both work in the cropped version as well as when you search for events in search tab on facebook.


So this is all the work that i've done for my scene. I got a bit exhausted from both organising and designing during the big tournament event. The scene is back to lowkey friday tournaments again until i decide it's time that we want another big event.

Business Card

I made this a while ago, but i figured it was worth posting because of my experience with a print business. Because i was quite happy with how my design turned out, but when i got it printed the colors looked dead.

I contacted Kopi Anstalten because they were the cheapest. However when i asked them about file and color formats they didn't seem to have a clue. I asked if it was okay that my file had "Prophoto" colors, which if you don't know have the greatest color space. Underneath is an example that illustrates the obvious benefit of using this color setting. The problem with this format though is that it doesn't always convert properly unless you know your way around it, which is obviously what happend during the printing process.

sRGB is the default format internet images, Adobe is used in a lot of cameras. While Prophoto is more rare.

The photo is a bit crap, but as you can see the colors are pretty dead (even though i highlighted this image..). So i guess moral of the story, be more sceptical about who you turn to for print services. Check if the understand the different color settings and file formats, because it should be given knowledge within that particular industry.

Fox wants you for Smash

Super Smash Bros.

Here's a new artwork that i made for a regional organization called Smash Rogaland. It's for a game that play called Super Smash Bros. Melee. It's a competetive fighting game of "king of the hill", where the goal is to hit your opponent off-stage 4 times. Despite being a 15 year old game it's still really popular, in fact it's been growing exponentially just these last few years. During this growth the character Fox has become somewhat of a notorious frontfigure for this scene. Since he's the best character in the game and is played the most. He's the epitomization of what this game is about all about: Speed, depth and big plays. Hence why i decided to illustrate only him for this poster.

Poster for Smash Rogaland

The poster itself is a parody on the Uncle Sam poster from 1917. Uncle Sam is a famous icon for being a manifistation of american patriotism. So i made a parody based on Smash in order to recruit new players to our community.

By the way, but if you're interested in the game i highly recommend watching the "The Smash Brothers" documentary. It's just really good.

Løvebrøl

Click to view in glorious high resolution.

Fictionial Project

So here's a new thing that i've been working on.

This is a poster for a fictional rock festival, set in autumn somewhere in who knows where. With genres like rock, punk, surfrock, post-hardcore and noise. Basicly some of my favourite contemporary genres and artists. I sorta doubt that this kind of festival would be any successfull in Norway though since our "taste" in music is incredibly boring and conservative. We aren't exactly known for pushing boundaries and innovating music here, compared to the americans at least. So while these artists are pretty big in the US, they probably wouldn't do so well here in Norway.

Title

Since this is rock festival set in autumn, i decided that i needed to find and combine a nice mix of elements. First i needed a great name. I picked "Løvebrøl" (Lionroar in english) because it's combination of certain keywords. The first being being "løv" which is a fallen leaf, which fits in with the autumn aspect. Add an "e" and you get "løve" which is a lion in norwegian, i just figured a lion is a great mascot to work with. The next part is "brøl" which means roar, an aspect that fits the music theme of rock/punk. The last keyword in is of course "øl" which means beer, a pretty central aspect for every festival.

The Art

For the art i wanted something really striking and colorfull. I set on using an "autumn" based color scheme. Which fits the bill with the maple leaves and lion. For the most part i used a very painterly approach, applying brush strokes very directly (as opposed to layering), using the hidden power of grey to blend in as many different hues as i possibly could. Since the lion felt a bit generic by itself i added the hair braids and the lollipop to give the it more personality.

Fanzine

A festival wouldn't be complete without a fanzine. So i started working on a couple of cutesy spot illustrations to accompany topics like drinking, dressing for the weather, how to stay warm, entertainment and music.

Lion doing cute lion things.

These are still just sketches though, i don't really intend on completing them because completing my portfolio has a higher priority at the moment.

Sport illustrations.

Here are some fresh spot illustrations that i made with a sports theme in Illustrator. I made these for the purpose of having something to show that would be viable for a product. The idea is that these illustrations could be used on print or on a website. The process of making these were fairly simple. I picked a source image and traced over with organic lines, forming movement and a nice pattern. It's a bit of an experimental style that i've been working out. Before finishing i applied texture where neccessary. To avoid the "plastic" feel that often comes with drawings done in illustrator.

Hair drawing

I made a new drawing today, focusing on hair first and foremost.

Experimenting with stippling

Hello, i've been trying out something new lately. It seems like stippling has been kind of trending in social media lately, so i felt like jumping on the bandwagon. Stippling is for those who don't know, a series of "dots" used to create a depth through lightning/shadows. For example higher density of dots is used to create shadows. It's often confused with pointilism, which is almost the same, but tries to blend the dots by so that they don't become noticeable.


Stippling example of dark to light.

 But i wanted to do my own take on it because i feel like stippling creates rather static images. As simple dots do not convey motion or add particular depth to the image. As such they often result in flat images. So instead of using a mechanical marker i tried using a brush marker. Which i use to make small teardrops in different size and length. Which gives off a more organic and dynamic expression. On a technical level it resembles cross-hatching a lot because i draw organized lines of brush marks that curves around the shape.

#1 Attempt

So this is from a photo i've taken from the church in Kristiansand. I thought the silhouette would make an interesting subject. But the first attempt is always doomed to be a failure. I learned that organized brush marks look better than randomly placed ones and that it's better to use many small brush marks rather than big ones.

#2

 For this picture i wanted to draw an androgynous face with strong and unique features. However the face turned out really askewed since i didn't use reference. (Note: always use reference!). As you can see i never finished it. The hair and concaveness of the cheeks turned out really nice though.

#3

While i'm pretty happy with the brushwork this time, the design is just so boring. I really can't help myself against my super-critical mindset. I feel like i need to practise design.

Practise Design
So uhh yeah i guess i'm gonna pursue this stippling a little further since it's pretty fun, but i'm gonna practise design as well. I think i could do well if i studied illustrations by Esra Røise. Since she's pretty good at design. So i'll use her for inspiration and see if i can learn anything from studying her pictures.

Source: http://www.esraroise.com/portfolio/selected-works/stopitrightnow-pt-2/285/

I think her design is pretty strong in terms of framing, style and purposely leaving artistic "mistakes". So i'm gonna try and pick up on those aspects.

Update:

So i did a few studies on works by Esra Røise and got back to drawing. I've picked up a couple of tricks, such as intentionally leaving out areas that simply vanish. A trademark is that she often doesn't render the second eye, leaving a blank iris. Everything else is simplified. Another interesting thing about her illustrations is that her "inner frame" is almost always the same, great space on the bottom and tight on the top. Usually with a white/grey border tone that's difficult to discern from each other.

Source: http://www.esraroise.com/portfolio/selected-works/shakeshakeshake/449/

Generally speaking i think "less is more" applies to her illustrations. So i tried a more minimalistic approach, with only details left on the important areas such as the eyes, nose and lips.

So i got a little critique from /ic/ drawing board and it seems like my drawing suffered from readability. So i unified and removed several elements to make it more simple. I feel more confident about the newer version.

Seasons

This is something new that i've made. A series of 4 pictures based on the different seasons. The goal was to give off a certain mood through using colors and personification.

Summer

I tried to imagine the funniest shorts for a summer theme.

Fall

This was the first one i did, it's rather simplistic compared to the other season.

Winter

This is the one that i was most happy with because the colors, texture and persona just hit all the right spots.

Spring

I really struggled with my approach on spring, trying out different clothes and colors. In the end i sort of went with a flower girl persona. I added the freckles and straw hat for extra flavour.

Studies

I did some studies a while back because i felt that i needed some practise with specific subjects. Here are some of the more "finished" studies. One of the things that i tried to practise was abstracting, color guessing and finding the appropriate brushes.

Knight Armor

On this study i learned a lot about how armor tends to reflects it's surroundings.  While the study is pretty accurate to the original. I also learned that i need to practise making clean design, because the brush work is an absolute mess.

Charlotte Gainsburg

I picked Charlotte Gainsburg as a subject because i like her look and her studio photographies are pretty neat. I tried a bunch of different brushes for this study to experiment with. It's not accurate to the original and i did have to fill in some gaps myself. As the reference photo only filled what is shown within this white frame of this picture.

Lady Agnew of Lochnaw

This is a study based on the picture of Lady Agnew by John Singer Sargent. He's a pretty popular artist when it comes to studies, a lot of Disney artists usually do studies from him. His paintings usually have a very simple background and more detail in areas of importance such as the face. Creating a visual hierarchy that leads the viewer around the painting in an expert way. What's really amazing about this painting though is how effortlessly painted it looks, as if John Singer only pulled a handfull of strokes to complete it. Not to mention how he handled the dress transparency.

 I learned a lot of things from this study, one of the really net tidbits that i learned from color guessing/checking is that the dress is actually red, not blue, but it appears that way because of color temperature. I never finished this study though as it was pretty boring and i felt like i was learning less and less as time went on.

Metroid Fusion Fanart

Metroid Fusion Fanart, Digital

This is something relatively new that i've made. It's a fanart piece based on the game Metroid Fusion released for the gameboy advance in 2002. The game itself is very cartoony and colorfull so it was a bit of a challenge to translate the style into realism. While it's a game intended for children or teens, it's a pretty dark game. With some really horrifying enemies and because of that i wanted my art to kind of reflect the tense nature of the game. Here's an example from a boss battle in the game.

The fact starts to melt as you peel off the layers.