As we're getting ready to re-launch the blog/magazine, there's quite a few fun things that I have to accomplish before we "go to press". And one of those few fun things is making brand-new art and icons for the not-so-brand-new site.
Many of you probably don't know this, but all of the art that's featured on The Solitary Life/Everything Skateboarding is either entirely hand-drawn... or, created on my laptop, pixel by pixel, using an old Windows "paint" program.
In the case of hand-drawn artwork, I first draw the art on copy paper, using various Sharpie permanent markers. Then, I use an old point-and-shoot camera to take a photo of the artwork.
Here's the hand-drawn version of our new "footer" logo (ie, the little logos that define the end of every Everything Skateboarding artice). Get a load of that ten-year-old laptop in the upper right hand corner. Yup, that's us, alright. Only the "latest and greatest" for our people...!
Once I have the photo, I save it on my laptop as a monochrome bitmap paintfile, which seperates it into stark black and white. Curiously, newer versions of paint don't seem to have this feature. Which is why we still love running Windows 98 over here in the Everything Skateboarding dinosaur cave.
Here's the same photo, after we save it in the "Dino-Tron 1990", an Apple IIe that was built in 1986. Okay, you caught me- I'm totally kidding. Wait... make that, "half kidding".
Once saved as a monochrome, we save it again as a 24-bit color file. This is where we invert the colors (another feature that's curiously missing from newer paint versions...), and make the drawing our trademark black-and-yellow. Lastly, we save it once again, this time as a .jpg photo file. So that we can upload it quickly, since larger files only serve to confuse and confound our geezer computers over here.
Yes, it's an incredibly huge pain in the ass. On the other hand, I've gotta admit that I do love the results. It's kinda funny, because it's starting to sound like the daily struggle of an average skateboarder, isn't it...? Learning tricks, slamming a few times, and then finally making it...? That's precisely why it's so fun, guys! It's fun, because it's hard.
We (I) get my ass made fun of every single day by the rest of the staff, my friends, and my family, for using such a long, tedious, and convoluted process to create what amounts to pretty shitty drawings for this site. But the thing is, all of these "technologies" are readily available to any kid with a nonexistent budget. Or, in my case: Any old, fat geezer on a nonexistent budget. But more importantly, it's a great life lesson on using what you've got readily accessible, at hand... even if it's not very much at all... and utilizing it in the most effective manner possible, to create something far better than you could have ever imagined.
The final, large-size logo. Complete with our other "trademark", the "Condensed-as-hell Arial font", just before it's scaled down to "mini logo" proportions.
And, where'd I learn this resourcefulness from, you ask...? Skateboarding. Of course...
And here it is, the footer we've all been waiting for. See ya tomorrow...!
Copyright 2011 Everything Skateboarding Magazine
