IMAGE 1: "A Music Critic Takes The Plunge"

Original post: http://www.b3ta.com/board/2500666

My first posted attempt at an animation (the first actual attempt was a very simple woo that has as yet not been posted), "A Music Critic Takes The Plunge" is entirely that - done for the National Suicide Week competition. Made entirely out of images gained from GIS, although you wouldn't know it.

After this, Pop Idol got slightly more scabrously critiqued by Rob Manuel's "Pop Idle" animation, which has since unfortunately been taken down for legal reasons. Pity.

IMAGE 2: " I know this is probably late for the bandwagon, and might offend a lot of people... "

[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.]

Original post: http://www.b3ta.com/board/2524507

This took forever to create. It was done entirely in Photoshop, at a very high resolution, using no original Sun material whatsoever - I really should have done it in vector software, and I didn't learn for the next one either - and getting the fonts right was an absolute pain. So, the masthead is a simple Arial Black Italic with tracking -75, the 'THE' has tracking 0, and the headline font is Twentieth Century Condensed Bold, tracking and size whatever's appropriate.

Historical placing: this was created after I was completely sick and tired of Soham stories some days after the verdict, and more specifically as a riposte to the Sun's "Hang My Son" front page. (And then on the day I put this up, they didn't actually have Soham on the fp... bah.) There's a lot of subtle stuff in this 'shop, all of which are highly offensive if you don't read them in the right sarcastic tone; note what's happening to Huntley in bg, the fake Sky advert (serves them right for charging £18/mo for what I get on Telewest for £8), and the Page 3 girl description.

And no apologies to Richard Littlejohn, either.

IMAGE 3: "First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin..."

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Original post: http://www.b3ta.com/board/2638244

The title of this post is a Leonard Cohen reference.

Basically, I thought the Sun's campaign against Clare Short - which included pasting her face onto a Page 3 model - supposedly over her own anti-Page 3 views, was entirely off the mark, especially as she said she wasn't going to reintroduce her Private Member's Bill anyway. This angered me enough to get out my old Photoshop template and work out the fonts for the story, which is readable if you load the big image (should have rendered before resizing down.) The story itself isn't written all that well, because it was written in five minutes, but the intent is fairly clear.

For this image, I got blogged by Tim (a.k.a. 'Manic') over at Bloggerheads, which was very welcome indeed. Note also the injoke reference to the previous Scum photoshop in the small story box, which I actually think I may have spent more time on than the main section. Oh well, maybe if it angers me again...

IMAGE 4: "If only Malcolm McLaren had been a jazz fan... "

Original post: http://www.b3ta.com/board/2723373

The "disappointing tribute bands" competition - which was won by a wonderful entry going by the name of "Ban Jovi", so I'm not bitter - provided my greatest burst of creativity. Sadly, this entry was replied to by approximately no-one, which I thought at the time was a criminal shame - I spent so much time 'shopping the microphone out of the picture that I thought I deserved something... I even got the a in the right position (it's a widened Arial Narrow). Oh well, at least the next entry turned out OK...

IMAGE 5: "This might well come under "lame", and has probably been done by someone else."

Original post: http://www.b3ta.com/board/2747401

Well, actually it isn't lame, and it wasn't done by anyone else, so I guess I was just in a depressive mood at the time (probably set on by no-one noticing the Sax Pistols post.) The simplest ideas are always the best, after all.

I've no idea how I came up with it - it may have been on a boring bus journey - but it is a lovely piece of Photoshopping. Again, a la the Scum images, everything was generated inside Photoshop; the logo was created using an AC/DC-alike font from one of the free font repositories, and styled after the original Back In Black cover. The subjoke is that this is one of those CDs that supermarkets sell but can't quite seem to shift, no matter what the price is.

Had a lot of fun punning on AC/DC song titles, though, and that's all that matters.

IMAGE 6: " I actually started working on this before the post (some way) below... "

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Original post: http://www.b3ta.com/board/3592616

...which was a parody of an old lady singing "Stairlift to Heaven".

Very peripherally related to the competition I entered it in - "Alternative Funerals" - but I think it fits. Unfortunately, like Image 4, it's a no-reply wonder locked in between two popular posts. Still, at least that drove me on to get the idea for...

IMAGE 7: "Because easyJet are funny."

Original post: http://www.b3ta.com/board/3602907

Inspired peripherally by an article on MediaGuardian about how easyGroup's ubiquitious orange corporate colour hadn't been registered as a trademark until relatively recently. It also pointed out exactly which colour it was - Pantone 021. Photoshop has a Pantone-based colour-picker...

Hence this image, fitting in with the theme "Alternative Funerals", and easyGroup's standard whimsical (and orange) advertising. And this one got replies - woo!

(Note to Stelios' lawyers, if they ever find out: this image is intended as parody and not meant to imply that easyGroup are doing anything bad at all, and is not intended to wreck the 'easy' trademark or Pantone 021 orange colour or whatever. Thanks for reading!)

IMAGE 8: "All together now... we're on the..."

Original post: http://www.b3ta.com/board/3801317

I actually did this before the competition came along ("What a big difference a tiny spelling mistake can make"): something being 'Hull-worthy' is standard b3tan lingo, and this image was created in order to woo any image of an offensive (yet funny) nature.

This image was made out of the following seven component parts:

1. AC/DC "Highway To Hell" cover
2. Google Image Search on 'hull'
3. Adobe Photoshop CS, and its lovely brightness filters and clone tool
4. UK numberplate fonts
5. Er...
6. ...that's it.

(Apologies to Private Eye.)

Random images from my collection:

My as yet unposted woo, and a long image that I've posted a couple of times in response to unqualified liking from other b3tans.

The woo was my first animation, and is still actually quite nice.

The latter is a gigantic pun. Can you spot it?