Alice and Graphic Designs

I got to see Alice in Wonderland this past weekend with my friend Amanda. We had such a blast! I was leery at first of seeing Alice, as I’m not a huge fan of Tim Burton, but I do adore Johnny Depp. I’m glad I saw the movie, despite my apprehension. It is quite amazing, I thought. The visuals were astonishing and I really liked the plot line. It seemed to me that Alice was not the typical heroine. She’s rather reluctant to be the hero everyone expects. She fights against the expectations of others. In the end, her friends’ lives hang in the balance of her being or not being the expected hero. She fights for her friends. I really liked that idea. It’s a story, not about a reluctant hero, per se, nor about a hero who is all gung-ho to prove themselves. Alice falls somewhere in between the two hero types.

Once again, I’m reluctant to build affiliate stores. Since the Amazon.com retraction of all affiliate programs in Colorado, another of my affiliate merchants has withdrawn their program. The Colorado government is blaming these companies for not keeping their affiliate marketers, but I have to say I can’t blame the merchants in the slightest. This whole ordeal is rather untoward. I don’t know what the Colorado government expected, but there’s no law saying these companies had to keep their affiliates. I do not appreciate the way these companies have dealt with the ordeal, cutting the affiliates off with little or no notice, but I can’t blame them.

Instead of building affiliate stores this past week, I’ve worked on graphics for The Mummy’s Wrap. I’m rather happy with my graphics! I have such a ball designing these little logos. I can sit for hours tweaking lines until it looks just right. So much fun!

I started with a couple of simple designs. The first is a banner I’m hoping to use on my website, whenever I get around to redesigning it. Then there was the tomb wall. There’s a wonderful photograph of one of Nefertari’s tomb walls (Nefertari being the wife of Ramses II, aka Ramses the Great, from the 19th dynasty). It shows her seated, playing a game of senet. I saw that and instantly thought of a way to tweak it. I took out the senet pieces and replaced them with a computer I had designed. I actually designed the computer in Adobe Illustrator. From there I transferred it over to Adobe Photoshop Elements. It took a couple of tries to get the computer just right. I needed enough detail to make it easily recognizable as a computer, but not too detailed or it wouldn’t fit with the rest of the decorations on the tomb wall. I’m rather pleased with the outcome.

I did something similar with a photograph I took in the mortuary temple of Seti I (Ramses II’s father). It is a photo of Thoth and his consort, Seshat. They are portrayed in their scribal roles. They look to be writing the hieroglyphs on the walls. I took out most of the hieroglyphs in front of them and added “The Mummy’s Wrap.” That’s where I started having trouble. I couldn’t get the new lettering to blend in the way I wanted. I wanted the lettering to stand out, but not be too obvious. I think I partially succeeded. I’ll probably revisit this graphic at a later date.

Finally, I got to design a graphic I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while. I had sketched it out originally nearly four months ago. It’s been sitting on my desk waiting for me to get around to actually designing it. This one I designed using only Illustrator. It was fantastic! Not only did I draw the whole thing free-hand on Illustrator, but I got to play with shading the whole thing. I’m not very adept at shading in Illustrator. I much prefer shading by hand using pens and pencils, but I’m making myself learn. I don’t think I did too bad of a job on this little graphic! I can’t help but smile every time I see it. My mom laughed outright when she saw it! I call it the Coppertone Mummy.

What I’ve done with the Coppertone Mummy is created a Cafe Press store. Of course, it’s taking all of my willpower not to go buying just about everything I put in my Cafe Press store! I’m thinking maybe some stickers and a t-shirt…

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

Tags: adobe, affiliate tax, alice in wonderland, amazon.com, colorado affiliate tax, colorado amazon tax, Colorado HB-1193, computer graphics, coppertone mummy, Graphic Design, graphics, illustrator, photoshop, The Mummy's Wrap, tim burton, tim burton's alice in wonderland

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 10:27 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Graphic Design, Internet Business, The Mummy's Wrap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.