New SouthernGFX Ident logo

I settled on my ident design. A big thanks to Wayne Robson, Glenn McGuire and Oran parker who gave me either inspiration for this little project or design ideas. I decided on the compass point idea for a number of reasons:


1. It's very simple and as a stand alone shape it can mean lots of different things.
2. The link to a compass point (pointing south) is a reference to my name. It doesn't look so much like a compass point in it's final form that it becomes cliched (Like a rip off of the Safari logo for example).
3. The shape has ended up looking like an alien (sort of) which gives me the link back to my work
4. I tried the shape out on a card, pin badge and as a web icon and it seemed to work well in all formats.


I'm not overly worried about colors at this stage. One of my first design sheets focused on getting the colors right before the shape. I realized that the color should be secondary to the symbol and that I may be changing the color to suit the medium anyway eg. black and white on cards, greenish tint to suit the website etc.

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First CGTweetup in Circo in Liverpool last night.

Last night was the first CGTweetup held in Circo
in the Albert Dock in Liverpool. I had a great evening and met some awesome talent including the Lee Carter (2000AD fame) and the amazing Raul Ovejero
There were plenty of 3D/2D new comers and plenty of up-coming talent. I'd like to feel that no one was left out. One of the highlights for me was Lee talking through some of his concept and comic work and explaining a little bit about his work flow. Thanks to the guys who sent in introduction videos which provided a little light entertainment at the start of the evening. If you couldn't make it or were a bit unsure if the venue was right for you then let me re-assure you that everyone was made welcome and I'm sure as the event grows that will be an on going theme, making people welcome!. I saw some great portfolios and some amazing websites on screen at the end of the night.

Ideas for the next event include having a drawing wall set up to get some of the 2D/concept and comic talent going art-crazy actually at the event. How cool would it be to win that piece of wall at the end of the night! We raffled off a Ballistic publishing book, `Character Painting 2` at the end of the evening and hopefully next time we can get a few more sponsors signing up. All in all a great night!

If you think it sounds interesting follow Anthony Filice on twitter or sign up at CGArtistDaily.

Some photos to follow soon I hope!

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Nevercenter Development Update

Jamchild posted an update at the Nevercenter forum today that clears up the future of Silo. There has been lots of negativity on the forum in recent months and I'm sure there will be in the future, at least until there is a new update for Silo. I have copied the update from the forum and included it here:

Hey guys,

Hmm, looks like some communication from me is in order again, sorry if some of you have felt we've been out of touch by delegating our communication duties to David. I think probably the main point I should make to those of you who are interested is that Silo is very much alive, though our communication and development patterns are different than they were a few years ago, and we should probably realign expectations for forum users now that our patterns are decidedly different.

In the past we've aimed for continual Silo development dialog with users, which had its benefits and drawbacks to us as developers, and sometimes we've been good at keeping that up and sometimes we've been bad at it. It can be a lot of work to pacify the vocal minority of Silo users who get worked up about certain things and start worrying that the company doesn't value its users or is dying (neither is true, we love all our users and the company is doing great :]). There have also been both benefits and drawbacks to having everyone know what was coming in the next update to Silo. Now instead of saying "ok, we're going to be really good at posting development updates every week", we'll say instead that sometimes we probably will and sometimes we probably won't.

As a company, Nevercenter continues to grow and develop into the boutique software company we dreamed of from the beginning - a place where we can follow our many interests and allow all of our projects to cross-pollinate and make each other stronger. (For example, we're developing a game engine which relates heavily to Silo and has helped us understand what some of you game artists have been saying all along :]). As we embrace this approach, it means that we no longer devote all our time and energy to the development of Silo -- and we feel like Silo has reached a point of maturity where it doesn't need that. We still have a plan for Silo, and it is still under active development, but you'll probably see that development happen in shorter bursts at key times.

So if you enjoy using Silo, use it and discuss techniques and make suggestions to us and we'll be watching and contributing where we can. There will likely be times when we're very actively involved and releasing quick updates, and times when we're not. Promised updates will come out. Sometimes we'll be letting on what we're working on and sometimes we won't until we're ready to release it. We do read your suggestions and comments, especially the bug reports.

As for me, I'm quite literally off to go do some modeling with Silo, I hope you'll do the same!

Jamchild

The full thread can be found here

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