Repository
https://github.com/nothingismagick/qcensus2018
Task Request
This task was indirectly given to me by Razvan Stoenescu, who is the owner of the Quasar Framework project. I am the team member who is leading the Art Department at Quasar and am thereby within my rights (and duties) to find my own tasks. I budgeted 4 hours for production, 1 hour for revision and 1 hour for documentation.
Requirements
Make an eye-catching poster image for the @quasarframework #qcensus2018 campaign for Steem and Twitter [edit: just added Medium to that list too] that uses the current Quasar logo, a robot, the #qcensus2018 hashtag and make it look "aged" but "sci-fi". It must be creative-commons licensed, use the font Noto Sans and be a png.
Details
Result
Proof of Authorship
I looked through my robot archive, and was inspired to take one that looked like it was working on a portal - I knew immediately that I would put the quasar logo in the portal. I will probably use the other "zeroids" from the same art asset to make further work. This was my first mockup:
I did some stamping, blurring and added some glow effects (to the console and the portal). I also changed the ratio of the dimensions to make it look better as a final asset.
I placed the Quasar logos and perspective transformed them, using transparency for effect (but also to help with alignment). This is one of the only challenging parts of this project, because doing perspective transformation really requires that you think in three dimensions. I am pretty happy with it (and it was easier and faster than building a 3D model in blender and then mapping it...)
In order to mask the pixelation of the original robot image, I added a parchment layer that I gaussian blurred at 0.2% and used a 50% Hard Light Layer blend effect.
Then I took the ESA image of the quasar, morphed and placed so that it would seem like it was coming out of the portal. I needed to do quite a bit of cleanup, transparency and blending. Ultimately I removed the tail of the quasar, because it was visually hard to read.
After quite a bit of deliberation, I placed the text as you see it here. In case you are wondering, it is three (actually four) different weights of Noto Sans, which is the new font that the Quasar Art Department has decided upon, and this project gave me the opportunity to testdrive it. Of special note is the Q => it is U+03d8 (Greek Letter Archaic Koppa). It had to be stretched and resized to fit.
I noticed that there could be a little more reddish glow behind the robot so I painted it in as a Colour layer, and then I added the Steem logo and the credits.
Asset provenance:
This is the citation I used as a watermark in the file:
Quasar image by ESA / Robot from theoldrobots.com / design and collage by @nothingismagick / CC BY 4.0
Robot Picture
Quote from their page: http://www.theoldrobots.com/disclaimer.html
You cannot use the files for commercial use such as selling, advertising or monetary transactions. These files and pictures are free, you may use them, give them away, you cannot claim ownership restrict or sell them. When used, you must acknowledge from where the files originated.
Because the #qcensus2018 campaign is for a non-profit organisation and is not selling any services or advertising for a product, we feel that this use is acceptable considering it is about bringing the community together.
Steem logo:
duckduckgo.com search: https://preview.tinyurl.com/yb9zfsxq
Twitter logo:
Medium logo:
https://medium.design/logos-and-brand-guidelines-f1a01a733592
Font:
Unmodified Google Noto Sans; font-weights black, condensed, light, available in the repo. It is licensed under SIL.
Quasar Logo:
Quasar project asset, usage requires signed FLA, which I have done and made written confirmation of in the documentary repository.
Quasar burst image:
link
SpaceTelescope is a site run by esa, which is a tax-funded international agency.
https://spacetelescope.org/copyright/
Parchment image:
https://tineye.com/search/87415fa1d41c1b57087bd2a2e55600e2b7e0d72a/?sort=crawl_date&order=asc
Tools used
The final png asset was made start to finish with a licensed version of Affinity Photo 1.6.7 on a Mac and colour-proofed on a iPad Pro 9.7" connected via Duet. The entire file history is included in the larger afphoto file, should you want a playback.
To make the screenshots for this doc, I used the native screen-capture from Mac. (shift-command 4)
Original files
Original artboards can be inspected at
https://github.com/nothingismagick/qcensus2018/tree/master/artboards
Attention: the .psd is merely exported, and the quality is likely to be very shoddy. Complain to Adobe about that. ;)