Dusty Ghost Blog

Just for fun, and the fact I wanted to practice with Adobe Illustrator a bit, I created this website design.

I created all the images used on the site. I didn’t take the picture of the workman, but I did edit it to fit into the square tile theme of the site.

Please note this for a fictional company I made up!

Click Image to View

This company is not actually live yet, but they gave me permission to post this logo here.

Hi all! Sorry for the delay since my last post. As you could see from my last post I’ve had a fair bit to deal with and have taken a longish break from any hobbies, business, ventures and such.

However, recently I have started to get the busy momentum going again!

So, what have I been up to?….. man…. where to start….

Although I said I was taking a break, I still seem to have found time to get into all sorts of mini projects along the way.

Just posted a new set of images in the Photo Editing section. A colleague of mine at work had an old family photo, and for what ever reason, he wanted me to remove one of the people from it and have me re-print it for him.

So that’s what I did:

Before (Click to View)

After (Click to View)

Ok, so this was a little creepy, removing someone from history…. lets just hope I haven’t stopped someone from being born now! :S But, this was also a great test of my skills, having to reconstruct things from the background where the man used to be. My colleague is happy with it though, so I guess I am too.

One thing that I am badly missing at the moment is ZBrush! I still have not had a chance to mess with it, even though we are now on V3.5R3!

But, with God’s blessing, I hope that will change very soon.

I have a couple of other projects I am working on at the moment too. Including:
A new site to help players of Pen and Paper Table Top Role Playing Games…. more on that later!
A small 3D printed money making idea with a friend of mine…. more on that later!
A 3D printing job for a space ship model…more on that later!
A possible 3D job on a music video…. more on that later… if it happens…;)

Not to mention the fact that I am still trying to fit all of this around 1 full time job, 1 part time job, and a VERY active family life! LOL!

So as you can see, I am still VERY busy! Hopefully some order will come to my life and I can get back on track with my various ideas and schemes!

Laters for now,

Mark

My children’s dance school teacher has been in dire need of a website for a while now, so we came to an agreement and I created this website for her.

Click to view

It was a challenging website, as it needed to have a number of pictures edited to fit the colour scheme of the website. Also their needed to be an editable private area for her students to log into to get information, whilst still keeping some of that information hidden from the general public.

There is also a promotional video there created by Greensleeves Films. Greensleeves is a very professional company who I enjoyed working with.

Julie is very happy with the site, and I hope it will be really useful for her, her teachers and her students.

A looooooong time ago, in a galaxy far far away….. well… actually it was a long time ago, but not too far from where I live….

So I’m working on a REALLY cool project for my friend Ben. He’s designed his own Star Trek  ship …. a long time ago ….(he REALLY loves Star Trek BTW!) and we both thought it would be cool to make a 3D model of it. Actually Ben had made it in clay once…. but it melted…. at least that’s how it looks.

Anyway, so I started working on the ship in Blender and it’s going well so far (more pictures to come on this later), and then I discovered…. SHAPEWAYS.COM!!!!

I kid you not this is the single most exciting thing I’ve encountered since ZBrush and Blender!!!

Imagine not just creating your models, but actually having a plastic version of them sat on your desk!!

Now I know 3D printing has been around forever, but it’s never been cheap! Well, Shapeways.com seems to be working hard to bring the costs down as much as possible for its customers.

So we want to make Ben’s 3D ship become a real thing you can hold by actually 3D printing it into a plastic 3D model!! Cool!

We had to make a few tests first, so I uploaded my DG Mascot model (the one you see in the background of this site) and requested a print to see how detailed it is.

Check this out:

Click to view

How cool is that!! As you can see the detailing is actually VERY good! So good you can still see some of the edges on the polygons, though that’s mostly down to me rushing the model for the 3D print and is something I will avoid in future.

So we learnt a few lessons and are really happy with the print.

BTW, this model is 6cm high and hollow (hollowing out drops the price dramatically BTW). It cost just under $27, which exchanged to around £15 for me in the UK. Cool!

So, I now have Dusty sat on my desk, looking at me! Bless!

For the pub games company Sovereign Games I created a number of new logos.

This is the only one I have permission to show right now, but there will be more when they have finished re-branding and updating their website.

I was contacted a while ago by my brother asking if I could create a website for his boss.

My brother works at a wonderful place in Norwood Green (near Halifax in the UK) called The Old White Beare .

My brother actually works there as a Sous Chef, and the whole place is REALLY nice, with both excellent food, excellent wines and just generally a great place to go. And best of all it’s high quality food at a VERY reasonable price!

Honestly I’m not just saying this because my brohter works there, it really is a great place to go out.

I made a site for my Mother, now I make one for my Father! It’s only fair!

TheStrategicOption.com is a re-design of my Dad’s website for his consultancy company.

Actually for anyone looking for a business strategist for small or large co-orporations, from all around the world, my father Andrew Johnson has several decades of experience.

The site really is just a quicky, but it looks allot better than his old one.

It’s also the first one I used Spry code on… not that you probably  care… but I thought I’d mention it.

Check it out.

So after a looooong Christmas break, I have been working on a new site for my mother.

CraftyCruising.com is a new site for my mother. She specialises in paper craft and now teaches it on cruise ships!

On the site are many images from her recent cruise classes, and plenty of pictures from her own personal collection of work.

I’ve had real fun making this one, as it’s the first site I have got the chance to use the amazing CS4 with. My only issue is that I didn’t get to create any flash on this one, but i have plenty of time to get a nice Flash presentation on there later on.

This is something I meant to post a while ago and totally forgot.

I designed a book cover for one of my favourite clients, my father!

The book is called Under Latin Skies and tells the story of my father and mother’s wild dream of renovating a house in rural Spain.

Having been there when allot of it happened I can tell you it was one of the most daring and exciting things my parents have done, and is a story worth reading about. Click HERE to view the books listing.