AMV Salad 5: Happy Meal (Nekocon 14, here we come!)

[Gaelstrom]

So, I tried to add more stuff to the idea without making it too busy.

When i brought the new sketch to photo shop to resize and add "happy meal" text I went kinda ADD which is why it's colored...

I don't want to add anything that would tread on any copyrights in this (at least not too blatantly)... and I actually think a Pedobear would be more likely to see print than something saying "Smoke". I don't think the emoticon will be tied too closely to the "I'm in Ur Stuff" since its an emoticon and integrated into a pseudo Jolly Rodger.

I think in a final copy the lettuce should fill the background... an explosion of lettuce, if you will.

It's starting to get there. The problem with the green background is it's a bit overpowering and makes it so you can't really see the Geico Money too well. And while we're worried about copyrights, I guess what we can do is try a few things. A badge saying 'SMOKE' was mainly for AMVS2, with that funny running gag. So better yet would probably be that character's face or him in the background saying 'SMOKE' but probably too much trouble.

Actually instead of lettuce in the background, I think the whole box should be right in the middle of a big Caesar salad or something. Maybe even just grab an image to use, or use an image as reference. Sort of to accent the complete dichotomy of the two. The salad and the unhealthy happy meal. Right now the lettuce background is too saturated and makes it difficult to know where to look, even if you did a good job of making the lettuce lines pointing all toward the center.

I'll take a stab at this myself, actually. I'll go with your basic idea and see what I can come up with now that I have a bit of free time. And we may as well just use the real face. It's not like anyone owns it. And if anyone claimed to own it, we could flip them off and laugh.

[Warlike Swans]

I'll take a stab at this myself, actually. I'll go with your basic idea and see what I can come up with now that I have a bit of free time. And we may as well just use the real face. It's not like anyone owns it. And if anyone claimed to own it, we could flip them off and laugh.

Go for it.

On a side note; I initially tried making the into a skull to reinforce the Jolly Rodger... and boy did that look stupid. Glad the "happy meal" looks sufficiently unhealthy without it.

If the smoke face was used it could be the background. At the end of salad 2 there was a Warhol-style shot of him in different tinted tiles (if i recall right.) Could be too busy... but maybe worth toying with.

[Gaelstrom]

Here's something I threw together based on the other concept quickly. I didn't have as much free time as I thought, and Scott e-mailed Deuce and I to remind us to send something. I'll tell him we're working on it of course, but what do you all think. What do you want to do about it?

I personally don't think the idea of salad and happy meal ever worked as a name really, and it's kind of showing up here. Didn't quite fit with the naming pattern anyway. Doesn't matter. Any thoughts? We have until tomorrow, friday at the latest. I'm personally okay with no logo if worse comes to worst, but maybe something more interesting will come up.

[moonbunnychan]

The only thing I'd be worried about is actually having the Geico Money in it, as I'm sure it's a copyrighted thing. Having it in the parody is one thing but having it in every single con book may ruffle the lawyer's feathers. That lawyer is, after all, why the entire trailer category got pulled from the AMV contest a couple year's back for using copyrighted logos.
The box it's self is obviously hand drawn and changed enough to qualify as parody.

Otherwise though I love it.

Also, for me, it'd probably work better to either meet up later on Thursday or another day. I just have a lot going on on Thursday evening till like 9 or so.


And as a thought, since you seem to be fairly close now with the fan parody guy Gaelstrom, any chance he'd do like the AMV contest does and creators get in first. I'd hate to miss it because the room fills to capacity or something.

[Gaelstrom]

We may just want to keep everything but the salad and box out of it I guess. I'm so out of practice with drawing though, and exhausted today, I'll try and fix it up tomorrow. That one is really unfinished and crapped together. Anyway, as always with logos, simpler is better, so no reason to complicate things.

And if you want to meet at 9, I'm fine with that. It may be easier for everyone else too. Do you happen to know what restaurants are open that late? Would the Hard Rock be a 10 PM kinda deal? We may actually get better seating chances in that case as well.

And I thought you already knew. All creators can walk up and say "I'm a creator" and walk in with anyone in their group to sit wherever they want. I did it last year, it's how I got in and got to sit so close. Scott's a fanparody creator himself, he tries everything he can to get creators a pseudo celebrity status ^^

Anyway, HOW DOES EVERYONE FEEL ABOUT 9 PM AT HARD ROCK ON THURSDAY?

[Squancho]

Meetup time is fine for me.

And for those of you who are wondering about the time line regarding the program book image, this from Scott:

Haven't heard back from either one of you regarding the Fan Parody
spread in the program guide. I got logos from pretty much everyone
except you guys! Do you have a logo for AMV Salad 5? Please send me
one ASAP if you can.

It's also best to have transparency behind it, rather than a screen
shot or something on black.

Thanks! Deadline is Thursday night to me, or Friday by 5:00pm to Jeff.

Once again, on a deadline...meh.
But we gotta represent proper, yo!

[Warlike Swans]

Spoiler :

... so the lettuce shouldn't disappear off the edges... dunno if the 'tomatoes' help keep the hypno-geico from blending into the lettuce now... i think that the order of the words should remain " AMV Salad 5/V" not as important if happymeal comes before or after. If Gaelstrom's design if generally preferred maybe the 5 could go in the mouth of the smiley?


I can no longer even recall why i decided i had to modify my image to make "happy meal" into hypno-geico's smile.

Or it we want to simplify more:

Spoiler :

(sorry i didn't clean up the scummy background... doesn't show up over photoshop checkers... also the effect on the "happy meal" font that's in this one but not the other was some save error...)

... obviously the geico could also be removed if we just wanted to simplify further...

[Gaelstrom]

Spoiler :

... so the lettuce shouldn't disappear off the edges... dunno if the 'tomatoes' help keep the hypno-geico from blending into the lettuce now... i think that the order of the words should remain " AMV Salad 5/V" not as important if happymeal comes before or after. If Gaelstrom's design if generally preferred maybe the 5 could go in the mouth of the smiley?


I can no longer even recall why i decided i had to modify my image to make "happy meal" into hypno-geico's smile.

Or it we want to simplify more:

Spoiler :

(sorry i didn't clean up the scummy background... doesn't show up over photoshop checkers... also the effect on the "happy meal" font that's in this one but not the other was some save error...)

... obviously the geico could also be removed if we just wanted to simplify further...

That does look better. Scott actually told me that it'd be better if we had opacity, so it could be placed on something, rather than a box of some sort, so your new design fits better as well. I didn't refine the edges of mine at all because I had to take care of some things and wanted to post before it got too late.

The reason I used the number is because I did the same in the 3D intros for the past two years. So I figured I'd keep the consistency. Plus, your "Salad V' doesn't read as strongly in the black text, it's lost amidst all the color. Your later design is much clearer. The V still feels a bit strange to me. I'm thinking since people will be glancing through the brochure, it'd be prudent to make sure everything reads clearly on a glance for everyone, including those unfamiliar with roman numerals, so I believe the number would be the better choice.

The salad seems to be a problem though. It's rather wide. We haven't been told anything about aspect ratio limitations, so I'd guess you could make it wider and we wouldn't have anything to worry about. If I were to edit mine, I would widen mine to be more like yours so I had more room for a clear 'Salad' like you do.

What do you think about just going simple as you said, just a happy meal and the heads of lettuce with some small salad garnish. Let the Happy Meal and the Salad contrast speak for itself, however ridiculous it might be ^^

I guess I realize now that as much as Geico Money is a representation of some of the best AMVS has to offer, we kinda have to let it go and let 5 be its own thing. No sense trying to force it.

I don't know if I have time to fix mine up tomorrow. I can try, but if I had any suggestion for yours, it'd be to try and make the lines a bit more crisp in the AMV part. One thing you could do which would work is use a font with a wider stroke for the AMV part potentially and make a new layer with it, skew it a bit, and darken it to give the effect you have now while making it look a bit clearer.

For some reason I like the sort of artistic way your green isn't totally following the outlines of the lettuce either. I guess you can widen the pic a bit and go ahead and complete the lettuce. Then make it a PNG with opacity behind, and they can place it in the brochure however they want. Even resize it. I do like the darker green of the geico money though, so instead of removing him alone, I'd suggest more salad in his place with a similar color. The lighter to darker green really does work well.

Those are my suggestions. Maybe a couple crutons lying around or something ^^

Anyway, nice job.

[Warlike Swans]

Well if I'm going to work on a version to actually go in program I'd like to know how big the image should be and what ratio.

(I can't really draw on the computer, so I'd need to go back to sketching)

I guess since this needs to be completed by tomorrow if you can't get an answer from the person in charge of the programs in the next few hours I'll just try to keep it reasonably square.

[Squancho]

I would assume nothing larger than 3"x5".
If the space is smaller they can always resize.
And we have to get this to Scott tonight or Jeff (whoever that is) tomorrow.