Cakeria logo design concepts

       Last week I competed for the position at Clearhead media. One part of the hiring process was developing a logo and motion graphics. Nevertheless in this blog post I will speak just about the logo concept designs. (there are 3)

The brief is about a local cake shop ‘cakeria’ who are looking for a full rebrand. They want something vibrant and modern.

Out of the box design for description read bellow.

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Lennons logo concepts

      Recently I had to develop a few concepts of the logo for law firm called lennons. Those are first quick concepts without any wider input.

Bio-Fresh brochure and photo retouching

       In my previous blog I explained my collaboration with Charlie&Leo STUDIOS to work, design and develop new marketing materials for UK’s organic beauty products manufacturer and distributor, Bio-Pharma.

       They are launching new range of naturally organic hair and skin care products called Bio-Fresh to the market and I have been asked to design (among other design elements) new brochure to promote new products and engage consumers in this highly competitive market.

First I revamped the logo of Bio-Fresh to fit the design mindset of the project and brochure.

Front and the back of the brochure:

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Bio-Fresh product labels and website banners

       Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to work, design and develop new marketing materials for UK’s organic beauty products manufacturer and distributor, Bio-Pharma.

       They are launching new range of naturally organic hair and skin care products called Bio-Fresh to the market. With huge collaboration with Charlie&Leo STUDIOS we have created designs for new product labels, web-site materials and brochure to engage consumers in this highly competitive market.

In this blog I will discuss the creative design and creation of product labels and website banners.

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Writer's Attic – 3D visualisation

       Last week while I was finishing last touches on charlie&leo STUDIOS website I’ve decided, that in my spare time I should go back to 3D art and visualisations. Forasmuch I desire to work around 3D graphics and last few months I spent most of my time around developing websites I felt I should practice my visualisation skills a bit, so here are some shots I come up with.

I was looking for some old classy feel in a hot summer attic with touch of elegance. Afterwards I decided I will call it Writer's Attic. So here they are:

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charlie&leo STUDIOS website – officially online

      I’d like to proudly announce that the work on charlie&leo STUDIOS official website is finished and as promised feel free to check it out here.

charlie&leo STUDIOS website

       Since last week I am building an official website for a new marketing and design company called charlie&leo STUDIOS. It is a voluntary job; nevertheless I found this project very interesting. Website is under development and once it is ready or more likely when I get a permission to publish it I will be able to show more. (It will be much sooner that the timer indicates.)

For now you can check out the front page at www.charlieandleo.com .

Follow me - Static Custom Social Link Box

Hi folks

 “Follow me - Static Custom Social Link Box” with Smooth Jquery Hover Effect for blogger, is another cool widget I made, when I needed a dock from where you can quickly and easily redirect to any of my social profiles and my personal website. I was inspired by classic twitter static badge that is commonly seen on sides of some blogs. However, I added a function when you hover your mouse over the badge a box will uncover a fancy menu.

Note:
Installation and customization of this widget is a bit more difficult than my previous one because it requires some editing, but don’t worry guys if you have some question feel free to contact me. I planning to create a more customizable version of this widget, where you will be able to custom make your own widget through generator, but for now we use this plain method.

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Vertical menu for Page List and Link List at Blogger.

Hi bloggy readers.

       Adding the Vertical Menu in blog could be very important thing to do in order to make it easier for visitors to find any important page that relates to your blog. I decided to create a stylish menu for myself, however after all I decided to share it with all of you. This menu is CSS coded and includes the same style for “Page List” widget and “Link List” widget within Blooger.

It is the same menu as you can see in my right side panel and it is very easy to install to your blog. If you are using vertical menu just click on the “+add to blogger icon”, which opens “Add Page Element” page. Leave the Title empty and click on Add Widget. It is recommended, but not necessary to move the “HTML/JavaScript” to the bottom and click save button. That’s it; you can now enjoy your new vertical menu.

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My Hard drive: problem and solution

       Recently my SEAGATE'S Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive with all my data and work failed which caused me an enormous headache, since most of my crucial files were not backed up.

Description of the problem:
“A new self-bricking feature apparently resides in faulty firmware microcode which will rear its ugly head sometime at boot detection. Essentially the drive will be working as normal for a while, then - out of the blue - it'll brick itself to death. The next time you reboot your computer the drive will simply lock itself up as a failsafe and won't be detected by the BIOS. In other words, there's power, spin-up, but no detection to enable booting.”

       After a huge research, how I could get my data back I came across THIS tech forum thread which is explaining the problem and offers a fairly extreme and dangerous solution to fixing this particular firmware bug.

An FT232BM/BL adapter: a device which helps to fix LBA or BSY error on Seagate Barracuda.

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Personal Website Redesign

       In November I created my personal website, mainly to showcase my portfolio.  While I was looking for a good provider I ran across wix.com. At the time they were offering flash based websites for anyone without any Macromedia flash skills. Whit one year hosting special offer I decided to give it a try.

       I was very pleased with the freedom of the editor they offered, however this system has some downsides as well. For example, if you put many items on the site (pictures, effects, animations, etc...) it could decrease loading times rapidly and most importantly you don’t have access to the root folder uploaded files.

Due to loading times I was forced to utilize my design a bit and make some changes.

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E-Commerence website design

        Back in the days I used to create and experiment with webpage designs. I even went further, to actually develop some websites, mostly for my personal use or to experiment with source codes. It was a very accommodating experience which widened my knowledge in graphic design and nevertheless I could utilize some of my coding skills.

       Few weeks ago I was asked if I would be able to develop and create e-commerence website. At first the task seemed difficult, because I was never dealing with actual e-shop sites before. The biggest concern I had with actual transaction systems and security of the site, however after reading and researching some articles and available options on the internet I thrown myself in.

First I must say I had big freedom regarding design and development process. Only conditions I had were that it must be:

• simple
• easy to use
• Warehouse type – My client was very specific about this point, forasmuch as at start the website should work as local store and then later it should contain thousands of items. Sort of a transformation from local to wide online warehouse.

There is the latest update of the site: 

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Video Editing, Rotoscoping freelancing

       Last week I was fortunate to work on an advertising video for Designer Parfums Ltd, more precisely video editing and enhancing.  A presentational spot of one perfume brand was given to me and my main task was to remove some old texts sentences and some object artefacts from original footage and replace them with new ones, thus creating up to date marketing shot without the need to produce new ad, which would be very costly.

First, I had to cut out the parts that had to be changed, than rotoscope out the correspondent pixels and afterwards fill the blank spots. After that procedure I had to prepare new objects, text and animate them so the change should be unrecognisable.

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Interior Design Visualisations

       I was asked for help by one of Interior Design student from University of Bedfordshire, Lucia Poliovkova. She was working on her final year project (Old club called Hat Factory renewal) and I was helping her with 3D visualizations and tutoring 3D Studio Max. It was valuable experience for me to collaborate on architecture design projects.
Final Presentation Boards

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CETL Project

       I was very lucky to have a chance to design the artwork for The Bridges CETL (Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning); one of 74 student development programs that were funded across the UK, where I worked for a few months as a Graphics Designer. It focused on Personal Development Planning (PDP) and employability especially for students.  It was a valuable experience and I learned a lot. The main aim was to develop final visual theme that would fit the agenda of The Bridges CETL.

Work involved:

Designing the theme for the key elements (Curriculum, SOAR, Realistic learning, Employability), website assets and posters creation

Helping develop final visual theme that fit with agenda

Arranging final prints

Finished work placed onto walls. The actual wall onset works were done by external company.

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Fine Art Drawings

     In my spare time I used to hand draw and improving my fine art skills. I love to draw during cold winter nights.  It feels nice to have a break from a computer screen from time to time and experiment just with pencil and paper. However, I planning to utilize my new Wacom tablet soon and create some interesting digital art.

Above are some of my first portraits. On the left I was trying to make younger version of Natalie Portman. Right one should be Ellen Page.

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New facial animation technology with Speech Graphics and SSSS

       Last week was very exciting regarding some new technological advancements in games art and in 3D  area overall, that I decided to write a wrap up of my favorites ones. 

       Jorge Jimenez, a real-time graphics programmer, has released a mind-blowing video that showcases the latest and final advances on real-time skin rendering (Separable Subsurface Scattering), which enable to quickly render skin in just two post-processing passes. What's really important here is that everything you are about to see is written from scratch using DirectX 10 and rendered in real-time, from the skin to the film grain.

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Logo Contest

       The new logo contest for GuildWars2guru.com fan site launched last week and I decided to join the competition. I prepared four concepts, although I wish I would have more time to actually work on them more. Nevertheless there are my entries.

With first two I was playing around with font graphics.

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Self-presentational Poster

       First few weeks at university we had to express ourselves to present us in more artistic manner. For that occasion I prepared this interactive poster. I tried to connect digital art with physical to create a hypothetical link between them. Additionally, we had to express our main skills, think about future path, our inspirations and skills.

       Most of the pictures within poster are from my own works. As address my inspiration I chose 2 pictures made by 3d animation Tyson Ibele.

Interactive parts include rotational wheel in the middle, pulley on the left and slide shutter on the bottom.

SOPA strike

       To support worldwide move against Internet censorship act all my pages www.marekslovak.com and soon my blogs are joining the web protest against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity on Internet, because the US senate is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet.

       Do not get me wrong, I'm all against the piracy, however those legislations are more violating personal privacy rights, free speech and freedom of us all than they would help to resolve piracy problem.
Nevertheless those legislations are aimed for US government and people they will highly influence the web all over the world. In another words, initialization of those acts would have a global influence.

To learn more about those legislations check out below links.

Read more for SOPA at:

  > Stop Online Piracy Act at Wiki
  > sopastrike.com/strike
  > sopastrike.com

Easy to understand YouTube presentation by Total Halibut (The UK's #1 variety gaming commentator) from cynicalbrit.com

  >  WTF is SOPA ? aka The American Government trying to ruin the internet by Total Halibut

Update: Final Masters Project and New Year sunrise

        With a successful end of year 2010 I'm looking forward what exciting challenges a new year 2011 will bring along. It was a couple of weeks since my last post, due to what I deeply apologize. 

First of all, let me give you an idea and a brief explanation about events in last few months.

       After successfully graduated from university at end of September I quickly moved to developing my personal website. From choosing a provider, experimenting with different web packages and designs I have developed my personal online portfolio which could be viewed at www.marekslovak.com. The development and functionality of the website took a bit more time as planned.  So feel free to check it out and if you have any question or would like to address some critical commentary please do so and I will be very happy to respond them all.

      After few weeks I have finished the final design and realized that my showcase works should be remade to higher resolution since most of them were in small definition (320p), therefore I started working on my old projects , setting up new cameras, rendering and compositing so they would fit to new standards. 

Additionally I updated some animations which did not go to my end year project and made a show reel for my professional presentation.

Showreel 2011

Showreel for end of 2010 and 2011. All the assets except music were made by me in spare time and throughout university.

3D/Vfx by: Marek Slovak
Music: Ulrich Schnauss : On my own

Showreel Breakdown: dl.dropbox.com/u/3475312/Showreel%20Breakdown.pdf

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Final Masters Project

       Allow me to present you my final year masters project, which took me whole summer to accomplish from scratch to finish. Mostly I was concentrating on destruction of hard materials such as metal or concrete. For that purpose I made my project development blog where you are able to see the whole process documented with obstacles I was facing with over 30 entries dedicated just to this project.

Project summary:
       The project is a short animation called “Connected Mistake”, which emphasise the dangers that could occur during reckless driving. It is in 60second and 30second format to fit the typical advert placement for television. Stylized semi-realistic look and non-linear time progression through storyline should stand out from the awareness film-add pool and transfer the consciousness message as for mature so for immature audience. The film explores the conversion of happiness to misfortune with colour mood change, where a small carelessness caused by cell phone manipulation during driving in sub-urban environment could lead to tragedy. Animation starting with disrupted storyline with nonlinear time progression first showing the outcome of the disaster.  Time is dramatically slowed down to emphasise the details of the crash. Timeline is swapping between backward slow motion time progression and normal forward time evolution. Film should point out the mobile devices manipulation and dangers involved while driving.  It is placed in semi-urbanized environment in European lifestyle to attract the wide range audience of cities and suburbs, mostly situated in affected areas where the risks involving driving are high.

Final Animation (60sec version):

Music is called End Of Era and its used with permission from http://stockmusicboutique.com Tutors: Martin Bowman, Neil Gallagher, Ian Willcock, Alan Peacock, Ivan Phillips Thanks to: all my friends and family for support Software used: Autodesk 3D Studio Max, Headus UV layout, Foundry's Mari, Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects

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Interactive 3D PDF

       A few weeks before summer and before we started developing our final year project we had to make a proposal for our projects. Those proposals were under codename “25 Word Game” and the idea was that we should explain our projects in 25 words as best as we can. The rule was to use exactly 25 words, not more or less.

       For that reason I prepared interactive 3D animation in PDF format, so anyone could open it and play with it. The animation is set in loop and the user is able to change camera angles (interact with camera as desired), rendering techniques, colour pallet, backgrounds and play with features.

Controls are shown in bellow picture, so try it yourself, experiment and have fun.

Screenshots from application:

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Logo Design

Fresh Brain:
       While at university I have been asked by my friend to create a logo and concepts for one of their group project called Fresh Brain. I came up with the design of a bulb as a symbol of new ideas which could be associated with the way how literary fresh brain works and brain. I prepared 26 pictures for them and at the end they were very happy with the outcomes and as a result they've decided to use all of them. On the other hand, I was very happy that I could help.

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3D OpenGL Particle Emitter

       Even though I love 3D animation and modelling I used to attend programming courses during my high school which I further advanced thanks to my undergraduate degree where I became familiar with OpenGL. As a 3rd part of my undergraduate final year project I made small particle emitter software.

You can download it and try it by yourself.

      The idea behind this program was to implement visual effects for games and interactive software where the render time must by accurate to the real world time. Most common effects such as fire, snow, waterfall, or explosions are made with C++ and OpenGL libraries. To show the interactivity and real time rendering, user is able to select from visual effects presets and control them with keyboard and mouse.

       The interface used for coding is Code::Blocks freeware. It is a good, easy to understand and easy to set up interface. It is a cross-platform IDE built and it is designed to be extensible and configurable. MinGW compiler is used as a flexible and robust compiler capable compiles all C++ files and has included OpenGL libraries. Big advantage is that it is familiar with Code::Blocks so it automatically setup itself.