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Read about my latest knife (my birthday knife!), Red Alpha, at ShinyDangerousThings. I really wish this one was real.

This has to be both the shortest and longest it's ever taken me to design a knife. One morning I woke up very early because of a particularly freaky dream and couldn't fall back asleep. I was about to start actually counting sheep (a sign that I'm desperate) when The Blacklist popped into my head. It was Halloween and I'd been watching this favorite new show for less than two weeks, after having put it off, and thinking about James Spader's incredibly powerful performance non-stop. Suddenly, in those dark hours of the morning I started wondering what a knife representing the show would look like.

I haven't done a lot of TV series knives (only Fringe, Almost Human, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) because it takes quite a while to come up with something. I need to know more about them, and I have to get the details right. But with The Blacklist, something so new I shouldn't have had any ideas, I immediately thought of one with a split blade and tentatively named it "Duality" for Reddington's duplicitous nature of playing all sides and for his life before and after, the father and the criminal, the gentle and vulnerable alongside the cold and calculating. Maybe I really woke up so that I could create this.

I designed the shape of the knife after watching just six episodes, but I needed more than that. With the seventh, "Frederick Barnes," a man that Red could identify with because he was prepared to "burn the world down" to save someone he loved, I was able to add the quote I had been waiting for: "Every cause has more than one effect." That is Red in the simplest of terms. Something terrible was done to him and he will stop at nothing to remedy that. Those little conversations with Elizabeth reveal so much about the core of his character in sympathizing with those driven to extremes. This wisdom of experience permeates the most rewarding moments.

A few minutes later in this episode, the remnants of Red's past haunted an empty home. That gave me the height chart and took my breath away in one of the most subtly devastating scenes in any series. It was a privilege to watch Spader work, dropping the wall he'd put around this character. Previously, Red's loss had been hinted at with things like his abhorence of those who would hurt children, a picture stolen from a madman's album, and a parable of a man who lost everything and went out of his mind told with barely restrained animal rage. This episode gave us a better, bitter view into this tortured soul.

Then "General Ludd" gave me the ViCAP number, which was a piece of the puzzle Red received in "Wujing" and the last piece I needed for the knife. I knew the number was going to be important, because the writers know where this story is going. But I never imagined it was the kind of important that would take Red by surprise, a look of recognition coming across his face.

It took me quite a while longer to figure out what should be on the handle. The name changed to "Red" since it was all about the main character. The quotes followed suit: words that he didn't say replaced with those that he did. Still, I toyed with renaming it to "Smooth Criminal" for a little while. Red is certainly smooth, but rather than emphasize the criminal part of him, a necessity borne of his devastation it seems, I wanted to try depicting that devastation that made him. It's more about the man and his pain than what he became. Therefore, the name "Red" remains.

My original idea was for a pattern of bubbles, because Red's daughter was playing with them. It wouldn't have worked at all. Too colorful, too cheerful. That can work for the impact of contrast, as in the scene the idea came from, Red smiling at the memory of his daughter and then being shaken by it, the experience of loss written across his face. It wouldn't have the same kind of impact here, so I went with something simpler. The color red is, of course, both for Reddington's nickname and the wreckage he's left in his wake, especially recently in "The Good Samaritan." And the black "smoke" is for the mystery that surrounds him.

The three "accents" (don't know what else to call them) between the spine and the blade were the original idea I had to represent the last age seen on Red's daughter's height chart, but I thought that was too abstract, so I decided on using the actual chart. I think age 2 had a star by it, but now I'm not sure anymore. I saw it the first time on a big TV. Now I'm always looking at it on my iPad. I can never get the exact moment or get it clear enough. I'll remove that if I find out otherwise. Please excuse the wobbliness of the quote spiral. Unfortunately, my drawing apps have basic geometric forms only, no spirals. Ooh, I would LOVE a little Spirograph function. Rewatching "The Good Samaritan" right now while finishing up, trying to get the spiral right enough without messing up the words. This is the episode with Red's killing spree, scored by "The Man Comes Around." Fantastic moments.

Alrighty, if you got through all that, congratulations! No, you didn't win a prize. I don't have anything to give. But you do have my thanks. And just in case you were wondering, I don't make real weapons. The only time I ever shaped a piece of metal was in 8th grade woodshop as part of a pencil/pad holder to hang by the phone, which I still have, by the way. My goal in life is to make my own knives, though, even if it's just to decorate my room.

If you'd like to see the original drawing or any others I've done, please visit ShinyDangerousThings.

Say hello to North Star and Reassemble, which is my Phil Coulson tribute. How could I not draw a knife for him? I hope I'll be inspired again when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. reveals what the meaning is of Tahiti being a magical place. I have a feeling a lot of Coulson/Clark Gregg fans are going to be crying over it. I took time to write a little about each of these, so please follow the links for more and for larger images.

Fast forward a decade and I'm still in the same boat. Or, more accurately, still on the same couch cushion. Oh, wait, we got a new couch. Never mind. Anyway, one of my first loves was art, so I was hoping that what design skills I possessed would be enough for contests with itty bitty prizes, but there are so many talented and down on their luck designers that it's just not worth the enormous effort. Too many people and too few projects to go around. Most people I've seen have won just a few projects out of dozens upon dozens of contests, and they have skills. It's quite discouraging and definitely an indication that these sites are only good for the contest holder. Often there is a very short time to research all about the business, product, and industry and then to start designing or coming up with fitting names. Contest holders often add notes to their brief based on what logos they've seen from designers or they suddenly realize that they don't like the words you're using. I understand that, but they can do it as often as they want until we are exhausted, fed up, and tapped out. There should be a limit. 

Most logo galleries I've seen are open for everyone to see, so derivatives of original entries can win because they spruced up another designer's work, which is just copyright infringement. I've seen it happen a number of times, and I've only been doing this for a month. Contests can be extended apparently a number of times. There was one from February that was still open last week with over 1,000 entries! If they still aren't happy then they will never be. And so many contests aren't guaranteed, meaning they can just walk away after hundreds of designers spent hundreds of hours for zero dollars. We would all make more running a lemonade stand on a quiet street in the middle of winter. These sites should be more of a marketplace for affordable work, where companies get a good deal, where designers aren't thought of as beggars, and where newbies can show their best work and have a chance of getting a sale. As it is, 99Designs has a marketplace for unused work, but you have to have won a contest. Why would that be a requirement? Maybe to keep low quality work out, but things can be quite subjective, and designers who have never won may have never won not because their work is bad, but just because it didn't match the company vision. 

Speaking about not matching the company vision, here's one that was rejected without even getting rated. I loved the winning entry, but this wasn't too shabby either.

The naming projects, though, are fun. I've been coming up with company and product names for 15 years. I write them down for later and buy a domain once in a while. I already have dozens upon dozens of new, unused names that either weren't chosen or I didn't enter. I'll keep those for possible future use in my domain side project. The good thing is all naming projects are private galleries. Annoyingly, though, a project that I know had at least five hours to go, and which I had a good name for after doing a bunch of research, was awarded early. Also, I was spending time on a logo yesterday that still had 20 days to go and the project just disappeared...or so I thought. Now I have just teo hours to finish it. Not going to happen. So beware of sudden project closings and drastic deadline changes.

If you're new to all this and are determined to be a logo designer, no matter what route you take, the best tips I've found so far are from Creative Bloq (The Ultimate Guide to Logo Design: 50 Pro Tips), Design Shack (10 Tips for Desiging Logos That Don't Suck), Logo Designer Blog, and Logo Design Love, which is also a book, Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities, that I plan on buying.

Good luck on your own journey. Don't get addicted to those crowd sourcing spec work contest sites. Try places like Stock Logos, Brand Crowd (a contest site with a marketplace for unused logos), iStockPhoto, and Microlancer to sell unused logos. For other vector art, try Vector Stock, Graphic River, and Shutterstock. As with anythng, please do your own due diligence. I have not signed up with any of these other sites. And if you get sucked into contests, expect to come away only with some experience and a lot of frustration. You may be desperate, like me, but crowdSpring, 99Designs, and others will just make you more so. You'll have sleepless nights trying to make the deadline on your fifth idea after your first four were rejected without reason and your "reputation" has suddenly plummeted into the red.

If you find yourself designing a lot of letters along with your logos that don't get used, you might be interested in type design. I have been for a long time, and I'm finally leaning something about it from Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, Briem.net, and I Love Typography. Complete fonts can be licensed to foundries like Linotype and MyFonts.com.

As for me, what I'm going to do is not delete my accounts...yet. I'll use projects as exercises and only enter those that would be worth the time. This eliminates the stress of extraordinarily tight deadlines and of being judged harshly without even a fair critique of the work. Wow. I haven't felt so free in a long time. So happy I wised up early. Now I can really get to work...or take a nap. Either way is good for me.

Deadlines, deadlines everywhere. I already had one daily from my job. Then I imposed them on myself for things like timely, and quite untimely, thoughts on series episodes in the form of this blog. I added designing weapons at some point last year. I had been drawing them since '99, but only relatively recently started turning them into vectors. I have three other blogs to update, which I have been neglecting, though I have dozens upon dozens of unfinished posts and keep jotting down ideas. I am also waiting to take the test for Leapforce; need a few extra bucks in my pocket. And a couple weeks ago I signed up for both crowdSPRING and 99Designs to enter design and company/product naming projects. Certainly won't get rich that way competing against so many others and in such a short timeframe, but it's fun and at least I end up with logos and names I can possibly sell or use at some point. It also certainly helps with improving my skills and proves to myself that I can come up with and complete a concept in a very short timeframe. Here's one I liked from my first small batch. Not currently for sale anywhere, if you wondered. I'm going to play around with it. 

I also want to start drawing again, like I did when I was in high school. Wonder how I'll fit that in. In the meantime, below is the lastest weapon I meant to post, and Talon and Stalker are two others that I missed. Following this at some point should be my thoughts on Warm Bodies, which I should have finished two weeks ago.

Still, I've always wanted to get back to the ships, but there was just too much to do. A couple weeks ago I finished my second knife for Almost Human and decided to take a break from the digital art. That lasted a whole day. So I went in a different direction instead, and here it is. Why Heartbreaker? Well, the wings make an accidental heart at the rear of the ship and Iron Man 3 is still on my mind.

Original: January 10, 2007

From two of the creative minds behind Fringe, JJ Abrams and Joel Wyman (JWFRINGE, JHWYMAN), comes the next great sci-fi drama, Human. According to Joel, I know to think of it as Blade Runner if Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer were police officers and partners. So is it man and machine, man versus machine, man in the machine, or machine in the man? What happens when our creations become self aware? Could an android feel more, be more human than his human partner, know people better than his partner knows himself? Here's hoping Human will "Blur" these lines, questioning what it is to be human and if our creations could become so like us that they essentially are us...or something like that. 

The new blog Human Meanings, by @AimeeInChains (of Fringenuity fame), tells me that one officer staunchly believes that the human cop, John Kennex (Karl Urban), is to be blamed for the deaths of other officers, and that Dorian (Michael Ealy), the android partner, is unwanted. I wonder if that's because John lost his previous partner or if it's just a resistance to change. Maybe it's a fear or loathing of that technology. It seems he was seriously injured. Maybe he's part mechanical due to the injury and has a complicated relationship with it, being sustained and fixed by tech but hating that he has to be.

It's not a new concept for sure, but what is? I'm sure with Joel Wyman at the helm it will delve deeper than usual, veer off in breathtaking directions, and give us characters to care about. Many aspects of what it means to be human will be explored. Of course I haven't the slightest idea what shape the story will ultimately take, but there are so many intriguing possibilities. I hope the show will last and give me actual inspiration for another design out of a love for it and not just a theory. 

Okay, I think you've had enough of me yakking away. You came for the knife, which I named Blur. (Now I'm thinking of Lrrr from Futurama.) I wanted to go with Shade, but that doesn't really have anything to do woth what I so far know about Human. This is what I designed having little information and having seen only a few pictures . (And I thought my Fringe tribute knife was difficult.) Just as a little explanation, though not sure you need it if you read the above, the shape of this came about after a lot of trial and error. As a comparison, the Fringe knife formed naturally from elements of the show and, even though it was more complicated, overall the Human knife was more difficult. It was ridiculous how often I erased unpleasant lines.

The three V's in the center are what I could make out from set pictures. It seems to be the police logo. I chose to color the lines a red as a running theme here of humanity. Flowing from the logo is a curved line that intertwines red and blue, with blue representing the coldness of machines. This was changed from the original, where I had wrapped red around the line. It looked odd when I finished it. The word "Machine" has "Man" in it, so I colored that red, also, following the man in the machine idea. And then you've got "Human [2013]." Pretty obvious what that means. 

Finally, that heart in the background was a complete accident. I wasn't even going to bother with a background anyway since I had already spent so much time on the knife anyway. It was a bit off, so I fixed a line, but otherwise it wasn't changed much. Had to keep this happy accident because you can't have a Joel Wyman story without a little (or a lot of) heart.

Original: March 25, 2013. For more designs, please visit Shiny Dangerous Things.

Here you can see ghosts of the mess I made while trying to figure this one out. The unfinished drawing on the right is from a set picture of the Quick Volt sign.

Ooh, how annoying. There wasn't supposed to a background. Didn't have time for one and didn't want it to be another gradient. Otherwise, I would have matched the grey on this site. Maybe I'll fix it, but I have a lot to do right now.

My newest. I originally had the name Vengeance on it, but there was no time to finish before tomorrow's deadline. I don't know when the voting ends, but the contest is over on November 21, 2012.

The name of the weapon is actually "Resistance," but forgiveness and hope are two themes used beautifully in Fringe. I've wanted to make a tribute of some sort for a while, and since edged weapons are basically the only things I've drawn in the last ten years it had to be a knife. I became obsessed with them at some point and they took over a lot of my free time.

I haven't designed a new weapon in a while. I've been busy with converting my existing ones into nice digital versions, but I dropped everything for this. I wanted something that exemplified Fringe, so when I saw the dandelion in Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11 (episode links lead to spoiler-filled synopses), I knew I had to use that with the tulip from White Tulip. Then I needed some other touches, but it was so hard to keep it simple with so much material. I eventually may design some more.

So, for those who haven't seen the Fringe, or fans who are confused, what does everything mean? Without spoiling too much, I'll start with the handle and work my way up. The handle is reminiscent of the beacon, with it's blue, glowing groove, specifically the one in A Short Story About Love that delivered an important message. The smooth gradient didn't survive upload to Photobucket, though. How annoying.

The white tulip is a symbol of forgiveness. I knew from the start I had to incorporate it into the design and it had to be the way it appeared in the show, though the stem was elongated somewhat to fit the handle. That little tulip is such an important part that the audience at this year's Comic-Con held up printouts of it to show their love and appreciation.

The flower then flows into a heart. If I was allowed only one word to describe Fringe it would be that one. There is an abundance of it, more than any show I've seen, maybe with the exception of Doctor Who. But I now think of Fringe more than any other. Because I'm afraid of how it might end, yes, but also because the performances, especially by John Noble (@johnnob58004412), are overflowing with heart and talent.

The yellow dots above and below the heart go along with the glyphs to make different letters, one at any corner of a leaf, apple, flower, frog, seahorse, butterfly, hand, or face of smoke. I didn't incorporate glyphs, because it would have been just too busy.

Continuing the flow, because Fringe flows wonderfully from beginning to end, next we have the word "Resistance," which is what the characters are now...and really have always been. This is also a Muse song with the lyrics, "Love is our resistance." Love is what almost destroyed the world and love is what has kept these people together through everything. And for some reason, Muse songs keep naming my blades.

Finally, the word ends in another flower - really a dandelion seed - a highly emotional symbol that Fringe fans will never forget for the perfectly done last minutes of the final season premiere. I wanted to use an actual dandelion, but it wasn't going to look right. The whispy white seed looked better and it was in the beginning of the same episode.

The blue blade is for the blue opening titles in the main "blue universe." The word is red for the "red universe" opening titles we started getting in season 3, which is a very important thread in the show.

Okay, just a few more things. I promise. I wasn't going to use any actual glyphs, but then I realized I could shape the blade to look like a leaf. Hopefully, it came out leaf-like.

Finally, part of the spine is amber. At least, that's what I'm calling it. Similar coloring. Couldn't have a Fringe tribute knife without amber; it's played a big part. But inside that amber are the words "heed," "obey," and "serve." It's where those words and the Observers (except for August and September) deserve to be, stuck in amber forever. Not because they are preserved, but because they will never hurt anyone again.

Alright, that's one down. Can't believe I finished it so quickly. Now I have another Thank You to prepare, though I can do that closer to the end date, and my Neverending Fringe Post. Don't think I'll ever finish that. Aaahhh, time for lunch.

Related Posts // Please see the slightly altered version of this for the Twitter events #TurningPoint and #ShowNoMercy.