zesticle.com

Last night we had some pretty crazy storm clouds rolling thru the area, but they started clearing out at around 7:30, which is about the time the sun is really starting to go down and look colorful. I went outside right around this time to run to the store and noticed how cool the sky looked and how weird everything else looked because of it; the whole world seemed to be bathed in this orange-ish light. It was very cool.

My first reaction was to go grab the camera and take some pictures, but I remembered that Sarah had taken it with her that day to take some pictures of her friend Jason before he left for Iraq. Fortunately, she took some pictures herself while she was downtown. I can send bigger copies if anyone would like one (these could make cool desktop pictures). Enjoy.

Doesn’t the downtown skyline look fake in this picture?

I don’t think any of these do it any justice, but it’s better than nothing.

Over the past couple of years, I have managed to learn to use Macromedia Fireworks at what would probably be considered a moderate level. Mostly I make signature banners for people to use at the various message boards that I visit online, so I thought I would post a sampling of some of the things I’ve made so that A) people can see them and potentially B) somehow, someway, a person in the Indianapolis area who needs to hire someone to do web graphics will see them and offer me a job. Feedback is appreciated.

This one was actually an avatar I made for myself. All I did was find an animation of the evil monkey from Family Guy, put the name in the corner, and replace the background color from yellow to white in both frames of the animation.

This is a sig banner I made for FanHome (sports forums). I was pretty happy with the way this one turned out with the animation.

This is another banner I made for someone at PacersDigest. I didn’t make the Pacers logo or the pics of the players (obviously) but I did make everything else.

Shortly after I registered at PacersDigest, they had a contest to design a new logo. This is what I submitted, and I won the contest. They have since tweaked this design, but I thought it was pretty cool.

I made this one for the guy who runs PD. He requested a banner that featured Alyson Hannigan, Jermaine O’Neal, Rick Carlisle, and Serenity, which is the spaceship that is in this animation. This was the best way I could think of to combine these things together and not have it look completely ridiculous.

This is one I made for myself. I just think it looks cool, and I like the quote I have in there. The two images are from the website of the Hitman: Contracts game. The bald guy is Agent 47, the main character from that game.

Another banner I did for someone at PacersDigest. He wanted something that had the Colts logo on one end and the Pacers logo on the other. I like the blending on this one, but didn’t like the text, but he thought it was fine the way it was, so I didn’t change it.

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So there you go. I know they’re not professional quality or anything, but I was happy with the way just about all of those turned out. My goal is to start learning Photoshop so I can do this kind of stuff in that program, if for no other reason than the fact that it looks better on a resume.