Shazambry!

Defender of truth, justice & righteousness! Say what you like about Perak. At least some humour came out of it. Hopefully the good Datuk Seri can laugh at it too. *ulp!*

Incidentally, I've been neglecting this blog a little bit. Hopefully this kick starts some momentum again. :P

Designed in a Heartbeat

Ok. I was just trying to be clever with the title. This job was in no way designed in a heartbeat, cos I'm a slow poke when it comes to actually designing anything. Anyway, the job is pro-bono, for my church to promote our Christmas Musical at DUMC this year.

The event is Heartbeat, a musical put together by Punctuation Ministries (of which, I am a part). The group basically puts together 3 shows a year for the public - one for Christmas, one for Easter and one more, just for the fun of it, in August. Essentially, the productions that we do, are really so that folks have another excuse to come to church (in case you can't find one! Haha!)


After a round of disastrous designs, I finally managed this. Since the musical would be an ethnic interpretation of familiar Christmas carols, I decided on a simple image of a globe on a Christmas bauble. To drive the message home, I added the tag "A World Music Experience". I like the clean look, and yet on the other hand, the retro-disco feel of the version on the left is also quite funky, though looking at it now, the little "pulse" thing that runs across the design is a bit overkill.


view it big here

This is the final postcard for the event. The team picked white. If the event is somewhat familiar, it's a sort of sequel to another Christmas musical we did a few years back. I suggested a Christmas concert with an asian feel. Imagine listening to your favourite carols accompanied by the angklong, the rebana, the kompang, and such! We even gave that one a more Asian title - Puji Nusantara. :) This time around, the music is more "global".


These are tickets for the 3 nights we're playing. I color-coded these so the guys selling the tickets won't have a hard time distinguishing them. Oh btw, I know the title design with a heart is a little cliched, but it was all I could think of at the time. Heh. And yeah, if this interests you at all, do call 03 7958 7388. Priority will be given to folks who don't go to church much. :)

Make a Quickie Iron Man Mask!

I promised my four-year-old I'd make him an Iron Man mask. And I thought to myself, wouldn't it be cool if I made him the whole damn helmet? I could sculp it out of foam or some other kiddie-safe material. But before I could even plot out the sliding faceplate and lighted eyes, the deadline was up.

Deadlines are always up with four-year-olds. I swear he takes after his mother. Too bad he never developed Daddy's taste for procrastination.



And so, I present to you, Iron Man Mask MkI. I found a large image online (hurray for Google Images), printed it out, pasted it onto a hard cardboard, cut it out and affixed an elastic band to it. Also folded in parts of the forehead and cheeks according to the grooves to give it a little shape, and voila! Iron Man!



This should keep Jesse occupied long enough for me to work on MkII. :) I'd love to make one like this guy here but I think it may be a little too ambitious for me. We'll see...

Switch: Secrets of the Temple

Once in awhile, I land a project that I would do for love. As opposed to money. (Less money, not NO money... in case some of my clients stumble upon this. Hahaha!)

Switch: Secrets of the Temple is a boardgame that's taken some 2 years to finally go into production. I was involved quite early on since one of the developers of the game is my cousin, Dean. Yes, nepotism is alive and well. Sue me.


a visual of the box

The cover art was done by Milx, who also designed a few of the characters in the game. There are other characters and other designers involved - namely Remy "Eisu" Mokhtar, Alan Quah. The title design is by Teng, my colleague. I designed the box.


a page from the rulebook

The gameboard was illustrated by Erwin Jaabar. The current size of the board is about 20" x 26". The early prototypes were almost twice the size, until it dawned upon the creators that most folks don't have tables big enough to accommodate our game. Hahaha. Click here for a bigger picture.


another page from the rulebook

The game cards were partly illustrated by May Lew, who also colored Remy's characters and monsters for the cards. I did the rulebook design. Dean and I sat in my office one Friday evening and continued work till Saturday afternoon to get the damn rulebook to the printer. Unfortunately, we had been burning the midnight oil over the last couple of weeks and nobody could function well with so little sleep, and the bloody rulebook got sent back for revision of all those mistakes we made. If the game makes it, this first edition will be a collector's items with all the typos and other mistakes! Go big.


the flyer we did for Spiel08

Anyway, the game premieres at Spiel 08 in Essen Germany. It's a pretty big deal for us, since Spiel happens to be one of the biggest Game Board trade shows on the planet. People say that if a board game is destined to succeed, Spiel will be the place to do it. Also, Spiel has an annual award thing to give accolades to the best game, best design, best whatever, etc. And like the geeks we are, we fantasise about actually winning something. And despite Switch's quickly-dissipating budget, a lot of folks chipped in here and there to help bring Switch to Germany, and then to glory. Hey, this is about national pride. And scoring one for the home team. So yeah, no pressure there, whatsoever. Heh.

In any case, the job is done and delivered. And as I blog this, a couple hundred boxes of Switch: Secrets of the Temple are making its way to Dean's house where friends and family await to assemble and pack the game. The people involve other than myself and my collegues at Mantra are the artists I mentioned, other artists who drew sketches for us - Ageha, Kok Man, Takara. Also Uncle and Hafiz from Comics Corner SS17, and the fellas who hang out there, testing and refining the game. Our childhood buddy, Jimmy Boyle who actually wrote a score for the game. (Imagine that - a musical score for a board game. Hah!) There's also Steven the printer, who's also doing this out of love. And then there are the two clingy freaks - Ming and Fabian who hang around making lots of noise. (Take that, bitches! Hahahah!)

So yeah. Wish us luck. Also help us decide what color buntings look best. See picture below? Should we do White? Or Black? Or both? (No you can't say neither, dammit!)


click here for a bigger view

Spiel 08 starts Thursday. Doubt if I'll sleep well till then. Meanwhile, more details of the game at www.outplaygames.com. Dean leaves for Germany on Monday with Hafiz, while I shall sit at home twiddling my thumbs.

Bastards.

It's Alive!!!

I've been thinking about doing this for awhile now and lo and behold, it is done. Goofy Pills is sort of a project blog for me, or more accurately a blog on little creative projects I'm working on - home improvement, pro bono design work, fun projects, hobbies (mine, of course)... that kind of stuff. A chicken soup of creative projects for the soul, if you will.

Oh, by the way, I was previously using this URL for more gossipy stuff, but I suppose that just died a natural death, which is probably a good thing. Heh.

Anyway, enjoy your stay here. Oh yeah, one more thing: