h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is cool

You took the words right out of my mouth. I love how the sail looks! Nice job Mustapha!

Thanks, guys!

Would've been a damn sight easier if I'd had a scanner to copy my original thumbnail sketches, but I guess there's somethig to be said for doing things the hard way.

How did you do the Float?

Hehehe! I like this one! Who is judging the floats btw?
shazzPRME

I used Corel Presentations, which is really more suited to designing letters and CVs. But I could use the basic drawing tools to get the general lines in place, and then do some patterned fills. Eg, the body of the boat was drawn as one big shape, which was then filled with a wood-texture fill. Then I just added a few thick lines to make it look individual planks overlapping. The bow piece the front smiley sits was a separate shape. Any minor imperfections or adjustments (like my self-portrait) could be tinkered with in Bitmap mode.

The smilies on the side were a happy accident while trying to make the front one. I'd drawn a basic smiley, combined the objects into one, then added a fill - the result being a smiley with a big open mouth. The smiley figurehead was just a filled circle with the mouth and eyes added on after. Presentations has a few neat tricks including a Quick3D, which enabled me to spin the smilies around as they are.

So really, the whole thing was put together like a collage, you just have to keep track of what goes on top of what.

Agh, that is very clever! I'm still trying to fiure out Painter Classic, that's why Asteroid Lil had to do my Float *^_^*

Well, she didn't -have- to, but she was very kind because she did do it. I am grateful

Shazz, there's no actuall competition... that'll be something for me to keep in mind for next year, but if we turned this into an art contest, some clubs would be at disadvantages, and everyone would be clamboring for asteroid lil (the aroma cafe, crater labs inc, dangermouse) and ddombrow (Spacecenter and ACEs) to do their floats for them. This way it's much more relaxed -- but if people want competition, next april is only a year away!

Less than, in fact!

Which is probably why my brain's been ticking over with ideas for next year's float

When you think, it's five months to my birthday...and seven months ago today, I registered with h2g2!

I'll have to stop thinking, then