Okay, I’ve been kind of busy in the last couple of months, so I haven’t had enough time or energy to devote to my sale. An interesting thing happened the other day, though, that got me thinking about it again; I came across this:

Now, for those who remember the original sale, this was the logo I put up for sale:

The thing about that original art (which is still attached to the full sheet, for those who want the full set) is that I did ink that logo directly over the original pencils. However, it was a light trace job meant strictly to make the scan go in cleaner. What I discovered after I’d been playing with the image in Photoshop for a bit was that:

a) I needed to separate a few of the letters that had originally been overlapping, for better arrangement;

b) I needed my ‘i’ dots redrawn as cherries, which I had up to that point been using the CGI cherry (which I actually recoloured for the brochure I was doing, because the cherry he’d coloured didn’t look 3D enough for my purposes) created by my friend and colleague Rodney Brazeau for the client’s company logo, but which I was feeling artist’s guilt over, so I decided to render my own for the logo, as I hadn’t planned on sharing the proceeds with Rod (of which there were none; as mentioned before, I was never actually paid for this logo, or any of the logos I created for the brochure. Mark milked me good on that gig. Never again);

and c) I really didn’t like how my line weights felt, and I wasn’t enjoying the feel of the weights I was creating in Photoshop, either. So I printed off a blue line version of what I’d scanned–twice, mirrored horizontally on the same page, actually–and started re-inking the logo, this time focusing on getting a nice healthy line weight that I could easily colour over later with my ‘Disney Lines’ and make the logo really look slick.

Remember, my vectoring skills were still virtually nil at that time, so any of the tricks I would use now were not available to me. Redrawing was the fastest, surest way to do it.

There was a fourth problem I’d forgotten, as well: My ‘s’ wasn’t working. I had to redraw the ess to get the separation I wanted, but I didn’t want to simply ‘draw through’ to get the full version of the ess I had, because I didn’t want the length of the tail from the ‘u’ to be stretched too far and create too much negative space between the letters. So I redesigned the ess to be a bit more like the first or second versions of the ess I’d drawn in the abandoned versions of the logo. I couldn’t do a direct swap, because the original versions were drawn and weighted differently. A new, shorter, fatter loop that didn’t disappear behind the ewe was needed.

THE DEAL

So the ess you see at the end of the first logo you see in this entry is actually the only physical drawing of the ess that you see in the final version of the logo. It looks pretty sharp, with the smooth line art that has all the proper line weights and very little correction pen fluid. It’s printed on a fairly heavy print paper (24lb or possibly 28lb bond white) which has held up pretty nicely, despite being packed away with a lot of unnecessary reference materials, in a folder in a banker box in my closet for the past eight years.

So I’m adding the final inked logo page to the set. The price of the entire logo set–which still hasn’t been vectored, BTW–was originally set at $200 CAD (minus any shipping and packaging costs). If you wanted me to design you a new logo using the same lettering style, I offered to do so for an additional $100 CAD, while the offer lasted. I’m kind of  busy right now, but I might be able to squeeze in a new logo if you contact me and convince me it’s for a good cause. I’m gonna let these prices stand for a little bit longer. Christmas is coming, so I can’t keep playing cheap forever.

If the logo hasn’t sold by the end of September, I’m gonna complete the letter set and use it in one of my current comics projects, and remove these logos from the sale until such a time as the original art is in demand, if ever.

So there you have it. The CvS Art Sale is back on, but I’ll probably set up an eBay page as well in a week or two, so don’t hesitate to contact me ASAP if you’re interested, because otherwise, I’m auctioning it off for whatever the market will bear.

I’d greatly appreciate it if you could do me a big favour and pimp this post around a bit if you don’t think you can afford such a piece. I could even throw in a little something if you help me get a sale. Perhaps a mark-up?

Lee.