Pedal Artwork

[Higgie]

Hi there, my name is James and I am a Bass Player from London, England!

I've been bitten by the DIY Bug! So far I've built 2 pedals (A BYOC Blues Breaker clone, and a GGG MXR Micro Amp clone) and some Bass Pre-Amps. I've just bought some PCBs from MadBean, so will hopefully have some more builds under my belt pretty soon. This is a great site, and an awesome community!

I've been dabbling with Photoshop on and off for the past few years, so now that I've gotten into the DIY scene, I thought I'd start to design some artwork for the pedals I will be building. I used the drilling templates in MadBean's project PDFs to get the right dimensions and layouts, so everything should be pretty accurate.

Here's what I have so far:

The AVADA KEDAVRA (Aristocrat)
Being a massive Harry Potter fan, I thought having a dual channel OD named after the killing curse seemed quite fitting. An 'Avada' channel for some crunch, and the 'Kedavra' channel that just blows you away! Voldemort obviously had to be on there too!


The CENTAUR (Sunking)
I wanted my Klon to look as mean as it sounded, and this Centaur means business! I found the pic online and just KNEW it had to go on my pedal


The ZOMBII FUZZ (Zombii)
I loved the name given to the project, so I decided to go for a Zombie themed pedal. I fell in love with the font as soon as I saw it, and using Photoshops layer effects managed to give it a texture and a blood-red drop shadow to make it a bit more creepy. I think it turned out rather well!


I basically just wanted some feedback and criticisms about the artwork, and to see which method would be easiest/produce the best results, when applying these designs to the pedals.

Cheers guys

James

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

  WOW.....

[dwstanford]

Hey man, welcome to the forum.  Ive had good luck with waterside decals which may work well with this kind of stuff, but there are many methods to choose from.  If you do use decals, you should use white instead of clear and laser would probably yield better results than inkjet with all the black areas.  There are a few tutorials in the member projects and tutorials section that focus on different methods.  You may find them useful.  Juansolo has an interesting style that may work well.

[Higgie]

WOW.....

Wow in a good way, I hope...?

And dwstanford:
Yeah I was particularly looking at juansolo's method, as that seemed to have great results with some proper images rather than just colours or paintjobs. My printer decided to die a little while ago so I gotta save for a new one. It'll be a while before these get done, I'm guessing!

[Higgie]

Anyone else wanna chuck their 2 cents in?

[night-B]

I love your graphics! Hours of work for sure...

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

Yes in a very good way! The whole decal thing is something I've always marveled at, not sure why. I too hope to get it down one day..

[Higgie]

Thanks for the positive comments guys! If anyone wants a design for their pedal(s) I'd be happy to PS them up a decal!

And with regards to the time, it takes about an hour per design to get the proper design down, with orientation and everything, then the finishing touches with the fonts and stuff takes usually another 20-30 minutes, so not TOO bad

[Higgie]

My Aristocrat, Sunking, and Zombii boards turned up, so these shall be getting built ASAP. Just need someone with a printer to help me out. My Sabre tooth board turned up also, and I'm in the process of designing the artwork for it. Maybe an X-men inspired pedal? Unless anyone wants to suggest another name/theme for it? Bear in mind it's a Bass fuzz

[Smeero]

i'D SUGGEST SOMETHING WITH A SABRETOOTH SKULL, THEY LOOK BADASS .


at least show some fangs:

[Smeero]

here's a 125B decal

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

That looks really cool Smeero! I might have to use that for one of my mammoth elephant builds 

[Higgie]

Thanks! Yes I too had the skull idea, and was experimenting with implementing that, although it certainly didn't look as good as yours! And I agree, it would definitely have to have shown the fangs if I did go with that theme. I love the 125B decal you made, but I was going to keep the original horizontal 1590B enclosure of the original, otherwise I would have used yours!

I settled on a play off of the original, and took the Genus name of "Mammuthus" for the name of my pedal. I went for a very basic, minimalistic design, with a hairy looking font. The Mammoth image is a cave drawing I came across on Wikipedia while looking for inspiration for the artwork.

The Woolly Mammuthus:

[JeffdaMaori]

You guys are sparking of each other....!
Great stuff!!!

[Smeero]

That looks really cool Smeero! I might have to use that for one of my mammoth elephant builds 

Here it is without labels so you can do whatever you want with it, (also centered the LED in the eye socket)