I recently created a logo for The Blog, done in the style of the GTAV game logo (Grand Theft Auto Five Title Logo, seen Left). I had a lot of fun figuring out how to imitate the look of it and wanted to share a bit of how I did it, in case others want to give it a try too, or just to enjoy the 'Behind The Scenes' story of things... Originally I was creating this to be used on Headers for posts here at The Blog (since I was playing GTAV lately), but I also put it on a Wallpaper posted at The Blog's Flickr page - but then decided that from now on, I will not put 'my logo' on Wallpapers that I want to share with everyone, I will just use whatever game logo the game is at the time, reserving 'my logos' mainly for use here [I was feeling bad for 'forcing them onto others' if I were to put them on Wallpaper for sharing with everyone...]
Just below this paragraph then, is The Blog logo, re-done in the style of the game logo from the game GTAV (Grand Theft Auto Five)... Created entirely in Corel's Paint Shop Pro, I first had to find a font for the lettering. I found a few of them (Pricedown is one, GTArussian is another, the name of the last one escapes me at the moment). I typed out each word separately, so that I could place them really close together (like the GTAV logo has for its' words), overlapping some of the 'tails' of the text (which was fine, for me). The "B" behind the ribbon was something else... Baskerville, that's it.
My version of The Blog logo, done in the style of the GTAV game title logo
(Click to see Full Size)
The ribbon was its' own element, blanked out (white with no text), placed on top of the "B", which itself was made in layers of outlines and a Gradient, using the original game title logo ("GTAV") as the source for the green shades (clicking with 'the dropper' on the far sides of the green area in the "V" in the GTAV logo). The spiral design was found online by an anonymous maker [let me know if it is you, I'll give you Credit!], which I had to colourize and then placed in a way that was similar to the GTAV logo, on a layer below the text "B" vectors, so that it 'shows through' within the "B" area.
The text on the ribbon was made with a font that escapes me at the moment, but the colouring for it was hard to figure out, as it looks like it is directional (as though a light were casting highlights from one direction). I figured out to use the Bevel effect in the Layer Styles of Paint Shop Pro, to emulate a light source coming from the bottom-left, for the text 'The Blog'. It turned out great for imitating the lighting on the text 'Five' in the GTAV game title logo ribbon! The hardest part was getting it to 'curve'. I don't know how to create a line and make the Text follow the line yet, so I simply used the Mesh Warp function, to 'move it around' manually and get it to seem at least a bit like it is curved.
A few layers of black and grey for 'outlining' the text and entire composition (made by 'expanding' the selected text and then Filling with Black or Grey, moving the white text in front of it each time) and it was complete...
I'll mainly be using it in Headers and Screenshots in posts almost exclusively here, at The Blog. I just thought that some might like to hear a bit of 'Behind The Scenes' or 'Commentary' about it - hey, there are a lot of people that (like me) watch Commentaries! Haha
I hope you enjoyed my little Share and Tell - and if you play GTA Online - See You In The Game!
Original GTAV game logo design by Rockstar, Take-Two Interactive [Personal Note/Declaration: I am not associated with, nor do I receive anything in any manner or form, for mentioning Corel or Paint Shop Pro. I am merely an enthusiastic user of the program (I have played with it off and on since it was owned by JASC). For fairness and completivity, I shall mention another great graphic editing program, The Gimp (now just called GIMP?) - which is Open Source and entirely Free - all of the steps above can also be performed with this free program]
I just wanted to share a little 'intro' I made for the OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) project:
Feel free to Download and use this logo for anything you desire (following any rules set by The Open Broadcaster Software Project). Once I figure out how to offer a high-quality download link more directly, I will put it right here!
[The above video clip contains only Royalty-Free and First-Hand-created content and is Distributed here via the Creative Commons Attribution License (any use, even commercial, with attribution listed); the Logo/Intro itself is 12s00f long, so trim off my identifier after that point, to use it for anything you wish]
I recently Downloaded OBS to try recording with it again - I tried OBS only for a very short time a few years ago, barely touching it; but recently thought about it again and gave it a go and see how it works for recording gameplay (what I mean herein, is Offline ("Non-Streaming") Locally-Recorded gameplay clips)... And I love it! Although it has to be 'set up' somewhat before easy operation, after that, it seems to be able to produce great quality with little impact on performance. I was just using the 'default' x264 (H.264/AVC MPEG-4 Part 10) codec that seems built-in to the program, utilizing my own x264 settings that I found worked well for local recording with x264 over the past few years (found in previous articles here at the blog - just Search for "x264" on the right side there). I look forward to trying a GPU-Accelerated codec in the future, in OBS (I am not a Programmer, otherwise I would like to contribute towards this, as well).
[I plan on doing a 'TestRun™' article on OBS here in the future; but fitting with this blog, it would be more concerned with showing others how to use OBS to record gameplay locally on their system (just like using Bandicam or MSI Afterburner) and what kind of results to expect from it - for now, enjoy this little logo...]
Behind The Scenes - The Creation Of The Above Thingamajig
Creating this Logo/Ident for OBS was an idea I had, because although I had seen a couple of past Submissions of Logos for OBS on their Official Forum, there was no "cinematic-style" logos done that I could see, so far - ones that could be presented in a Professional Setting, perhaps at the beginning of a Streaming Event that was utilizing OBS. This is more what I was 'going for' here - something that looked "professional" and then on top of that, I personally wanted it to be "Cinematic"...
I used programs I had purchased in the past few years, for the logo (mainly Corel's VideoStudio Prox8 and CyberLink's PowerDirector 12 Ultra Edition), along with some Open Source Software for tweaking the various elements, such as The GIMP (Graphical Image Manipulation Program [although I think they just call it "GIMP" now]) and Inkscape, Audacity (an Audio Editor) and FontForge.
It was a lot harder than I thought it would be, to create an 'only twelve second long' production... I knew what I wanted in my head [the way it looks in the end, thankfully]; but what I wanted specifically couldn't be done, with any of the Software that I had available. So, when a situation like that arrives, I like to "forge my own trail" and figure out how to make it happen, despite not being able to do so easily, with the Tools at hand.
What I mean for instance, is the black OBS 'disc' that comes in from the lower-left. It seems like that would be easy to do perhaps, and at first I avoided Blender because I thought I could just use PowerDirector to have a "circle" of some Font (Wingdings or Webdings, etc) and apply the Logo to the Font face and manipulate it there – which seemed really easy in my head, five minutes work maybe.... The problem was, PowerDirector wouldn't apply the image properly onto the front face of a Font 'circle' character - it was always offset oddly. I even tried applying the Logo to a circle character in VideoStudio's NewBlueTitler, but it did the same thing - the logo got applied all 'wonky'. I surmised it was the Font itself that was offset oddly for what I wanted to do (it's dimensions/metrics) and so, after searching through a ton of Fonts to find a 'simple circle', it turned out I couldn't find one and had to create a font from scratch and create a circle character inside that font, to do what I wanted...
[I realized I could have just created a circle and manipulated it in Blender, but I liked the Automation of Font manipulation that was offered in the NewBlue Titler add-ins that came with a couple of the video editing applications I purchased (VideoStudio Pro and PowerDirector) - I thought it would be easier...at first]
So, I created a Font and drew out a circle. I saved the one-character Font and installed the Font into Windows and then tried applying the OBS logo 'disc' once again to the front facing of the circle – it worked! The thing is, the font came out looking 'blocky', the circle didn't have a nice roundness to it - it was more like an octagon. I figured it was the resolution of the Font being displayed, but that was something couldn't really be adjusted, so I went back into the Font itself and added nodes for the circle character I created… painstakingly making it more complex and 'round', by altering each node one-by-one, lining them up into a circle shape, until eventually, I had a better 'circle' to use. Then, going back into NewBlue Titler, I set up the Font, applied the facing of the logo and it matched up enough - and looked like a 'circle' enough - to start manipulating it how I wanted…
A 'flipping coin until it sits flat' type of movement, although more 'monolithic' in style, is what I wanted for the OBS 'disc' - and that animation was actually built into the NewBlue Titler Add-on in VideoStudio Pro, it was really close to what I was thinking. Great. I then wanted the Text that you see on the right side, desiring to emulate logos I had seen at the OBS Project website (the “Powered By...” ones). I settled on a Franklin-Gothic-styled font that was Royalty-Free [I do not know the Font that was actually used in the “Powered By...” logos at the Forum I saw in the past – in fact, I can't find them there anymore either].
The “space-y” background I wanted was a free one included in PowerDirector, but I tweaked the particle generators (more particles and added custom types) and changed all of the colours and levels to how I wanted [“space travel but classy” if that makes any sense lol] - I thought it would give a sense of 'going out there to everyone' that was befitting OBS. I brought down the Saturation a lot, to make it match the feel of the two-tone OBS logo and also not take away too much from the logo/text reveal... [I might share an early “daily” I had, where there was waaay too much Glare and Flares going on haha].
The right-side text was finished in VideoStudio, where the NewBlue Titler there allowed me to give it a nice Chrome finish (there is even a Chrome style Preset in there). The animation was also from the same NewBlueTitler there, tweaked slightly. [I had tried to get the Chrome style I wanted in GIMP and Inkscape, but couldn't get what I was looking for in those, for the moment, despite having used them in the past for similar 'chrome'-desired projects]. After all that, only a bit of lining things up, a bit of tweaking here and there, and it was almost done! All it needed now was an inspiring Backing Track…
Both video editing suites (VideoStudio Pro and PowerDirector) included an 'automated music generator' type of module within them [what a great thing, coming from always having to create my own Backing Tracks in the Old Days] and I found what I wanted in PowerDirector's version (even though Corel's offers more Tracks to choose from). Royalty-Free for Any Use, I tailored it down to a crisp, "majestic-yet-hopefully-still-'classy'-and-also-cinematic" 12 seconds, which was what my animation seemed to be settling on. A few more tweaks and timing line-ups later and what you see above is the final result... Slash-Whew!
I have my little Identifier/Disclaimer at the end, but just cut if off by Trimming the clip to 12seconds00Frames and use it however you desire. Enjoy it! And please feel free to let me know what you all think of it and if there are any Suggestions to further tailor it for The OBS Project (and public) usage.
Thanks to all the contributors of The OBS Project for your hard work and inspiration for this logo, my own Personal Project. I hope everyone can eventually enjoy and use this logo as they desire.
