I'm taking an art class this semester to satisfy a general ed requirement, and our first assignment was to "create a flower" using any materials of our choice and I, being the Trek geek that I am, immediately began sketching my conception of what a Vulcan flower might look like. Later, I really got into the project and decided to create an LCARS-style background to go with it.
I then printed this on glossy photo-paper and pasted my cut-out hand-drawn artwork on top of it. It looks fairly cool, but unfortunately my scanner doesn't capture it that well. Oh well, I think you get the idea...
By the way, I nicked some of the basic LCARS shapes from this guy's site, but drastically altered their configuration and placement, etc. Enjoy.
-MMoM Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
nOt bad but it would be much nicer if you had not cut the flower out: a white square background would have allowed you to easily Photoshop in a suitable red Vulcan sky as background.
Also, I'd limit the LCARS colors to orange and purple for that TNG look.
Good to see you're getting into it though! If you used wax-based color pencils there, you can get some great blendiing effects with a clear marker (abailable in any art store for blending). It will look much more like a photo if you use the blending marker.
Show us more. Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
I would have used plain white paper too! And would have been nice if the LCARS used the real LCARS font... what ever it's called... compacta Lt BT isn't it?
BUT having said that - it's a good drawing and it even looks... VULCAN. I like the little library bit on the bottom right with other enteries before and after your flower! Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
The real LCARS font is Swiss 911 Ultra Compressed BT, which is what that is.
Posted by Wes (Member # 212) on :
No dice Topher -- the real LCARS font (from Okuda himself) is the Compacta family - specifically Compacta Lt AT with +20 point tracking or so.
Swiss 911 Ultra Compressed BT is a cheap/free font found online and commonly misused for LCARS graphics. Compacta is a professional font, ranging $150-$250 for a unlimited use license. Most amateur graphic artists go for Swiss 911 UC for this reason.
Posted by machf (Member # 1233) on :
As a friend once explained to me, there is a range of "professional" -or rather, "commercial"- fonts for which you have to pay, but you could do an exact copy, letter by letter, publish it under a different name and make it freely available, and it would be perfectly legal. But of course, since "commercial" fonts are listed in catalogs and all, the pros will go for them when they have to do their job, instead of some obscure "my ultra cool looking font for lettering starship hulls" or somesuch...
Posted by Mr. B (Member # 1492) on :
I'm the owner and operator of "this guy's site" and I must say I'm more than somewhat pissed off that my work has been stolen...again and used with neither permission nor credit. Lazy-asses like you, monkey, do a great disservice to people like myself who go to great arduous effort to try and make something special, only to have it ripped off by someone who calls it their own. It sucks even more for people like myself who aren't remarkably skilled. The graphics you lifted were created by me from scratch with an embarrassing number of hours of work in Microsoft Paint. People like you are the reason I just have a picture of that website online and not the whole site up for public viewing. Oh well, at the very least I can say you didn't rip the site whole and publish it. This is just some pithy school project� and you were good enough to acknowledge yor theft. Even so, I hope you will take the effort to do your own work in the future, or at least ask permission to borrow others. Had I been aware of this ahead of time I would have had no problem supplying my artwork for this limited purpose.
Regards,
Mr. B, mildly-pissed webmaster of tagclan.com
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Y'know, I'm not going to find fault with your displeasure, and I will say that if I offended you I am sorry. (Because as a general rule I don't take any satisfaction in offending people.)
However, I must take this opportunity to defend myself as well. In the first place, I am not a "lazy ass" and I too spent many hours putting that together, and I don't particularly appreciate you referring to something that I had a lot of fun doing very carefully as "pithy." It's certainly no more so than a menu on a website. A FEW of the basic shapes and the color scheme came from your sample---the rest was created by me in imitation of it---and all of it was chopped up and reassembled and added to, and as a whole is very distinct from and shares very little in common with what you did.
Furthermore, it's not as if you didn't essentially copy LCARS stuff from the show (the original work of Okuda, et al) yourself. What exactly are you claiming as your personal work? A bar with a curved end? Some rectangular blocks arranged in a column? I didn't use your design format and I didn't use your style, and quite frankly the only element that's even recognizable as something akin yours is the framing around the main body of text, and if you'll bother to look closely, you'll see that even that is not the same. (True, I used your numbers. But I can't seriously believe you'd be overly uset about that.)
To top it all off, I credited you. Both here and on the little write-up I submitted to my teacher along with the artwork. Did I put your name on the piece itself? Of course not, I didn't put mine either. And you said it yourself, I did not (and have no intention of doing so) publish this or make profit from it of any sort.
Suffice it to say that while I understand your point and apologize for causing you such anguish, I maintain that I have been perfectly honest throughout the entire process, and feel no guilt about it whatsoever. I think you're blowing the whole thing massively out of proportion. Haven't you ever heard the adage "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"? Of all the LCARS stuff out there on the net (and believe me, there is a LOT...I know, having looked through most of it while preparing for this project) I picked yours to emulate, because I liked it and felt it was the most appropriate.
Excuuuuuuuuuuse me.
-MMoM Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
Sigh.
I'm not going to lock this thread yet.
But keep it civil.
That is all.
For now.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I'm pissed at both Mr.B and MiM....
I already copyrighted colored blocks on a black background with inserted illustrations as my own private doamain. Plus, "lazy ass" is the express trademark of the La-Z-boy recliner company of america.
I hereby issue you both Cease and Desist orders for all future artwork and useage of the name "lazy ass".
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
quote:Originally posted by Wes: No dice Topher -- the real LCARS font (from Okuda himself) is the Compacta family - specifically Compacta Lt AT with +20 point tracking or so.
Swiss 911 Ultra Compressed BT is a cheap/free font found online and commonly misused for LCARS graphics. Compacta is a professional font, ranging $150-$250 for a unlimited use license. Most amateur graphic artists go for Swiss 911 UC for this reason.
Nyah! Topher! Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
I like the little library bit on the bottom right with other enteries before and after your flower! ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)