Corporate Identity Crisis

Sometimes being a graphic designer helps us get through this nonsense. Martin had done it again. After 'Discount Dave's Pets, Pets, Pets', the Pizza company and the pub sign; I was back to designing 'one off' props and company logos. The new set of three scripts were going to need two more corporate identities producing and some product props for the jokes Martin had written.

Martin orders a Miracle off the Internet... or does he?

First up was a tube of 'Magic Hair in a Bottle'. We wanted it to look cheap, so lots of bright colours were in order. I found a small bright blue shampoo bottle that was just the right size and made up a simple label that would be readable when shown on camera. That was pretty straight forward, and it worked really well. Huge shout out to my girlfriend, she hoards (sorry - collects) mini bottles to take on holiday and she had one spare!

Dragons Den would be soooo proud.

Slightly more difficult were two sets of logos for Episode 5. First up was a design for a new set up company Mike and JP had started. This company was for selling sombreros to donkeys that would be called 'Ass Hats'. It would have to have a donkey on it and again, bright colours would be helpful to add to the silliness. I don't like just searching the internet and cobbling together graphics from other peoples illustrations, I was determined to draw the donkey myself so I knew it would be an original logo. My drawing skills are not that well used these days! It took a lot of sketching are re-sketching to get it anywhere near looking like a donkey. Thankfully putting a hat on him took the stress of trying to get his head looking right!

Coming soon to a Supermarket near You...

Later on in the same scripted episode, Martin has another company name checked. They are a butchers that Chris wants to advertise at our gigs. This fictional company is an appetising enterprise called 'McEntrails - The Creative Butcher'. What Martin was after for this scene was a few menus to have the band look at while Chris explains the beef. Again, Martin had the idea that he wanted a picture of an actual heart to be in the logo. I stuck with a one colour logo to keep it simple, and dropped it onto a slim menu littered with awful - I mean offal, pictures to make it look like a price list. To give them a nice finish I decided to laminate them to look 'wipe clean'. Personally I wouldn't want to eat anything from the menu, it makes me feel a little queazy just thinking about it...

All meat, a real treat... possibly.

If you do want to invest, email us. I mean, who wouldn't want to!!

How could we know it would become so topical as we were filming! (insert your own Horse meat gag!) but not donkey.

We need to go to the Pub!

The Local Pub gets a well needed make over

Out of the sets I had to build to film in, the one that was a touch 'throw away', ironically was the pub. It was only supposed to be a small filler location in the first episode, because we couldn't fit everyone into the flat at once. As Martin and I continued to write, the pub became a more popular place to add secondary story lines. Playing the pub games in Episode 2 was the most screen time we had spent in any one location up to that point.

Very cheap pub, and we don't mean the beer...

As we made our way through recording the next three installments, it became obvious that the set was going to need a drastic over haul. Newer set builds had started to show it up! 'John's Shed' had raised the bar somewhat and re-dressing the kitchen tiles only made the pub look more drab and lazy.

John's Shed, the place to be - but no Beers mate...

Martin wanted to have more scenes set in the local bar as well (seeing as it's where the actual band spent most of their time!) and I wanted to shoot a music video in there too at some point. It was decided, the Boar & Hare would have a makeover. I wanted to make it nice and light so the puppets would stand out. It would need to be a bland and possibly an unpopular, gastro-theme type pub fit out. Perhaps it could spark up debate within a future episode?!

Gastro-tastic wallpaper!

While I was out having a pint and shopping in Norwich, I came across a great piece of cheap fabric in a haberdashery that would make a great wall covering. It was a pale beige with slightly darker stripes.

If only real decorating was this simple!

I sketched out what walls I would need for filming and bought some MDF panels along with a piece of frame edging to use as a dado rail. I re-printed out the old  'Roast Dinner' and 'Quiz Night' posters. These I mounted in cheap supermarket picture frames so they would look like permanent fixtures.
I also decided to add our very own brand of that well known English Pub snack, The Pork Scratching! Seeing as the pub is called the Boar & Hare, I made them Boar Scratchings - it seemed only fitting.

It's a good start, Pork Scratching anyone?!

It's not quite finished yet. I think I may add another wall and the trusty dartboard will make a return, along with the cheesy horse brasses I had from before! I really, really fancy a pint now though....

Monster Much?

Wilko, purple monster.

Along with the foam headed band replica puppets, I also have a collection of furry monsters I created from the basic sock puppet pattern I downloaded from ProjectPuppet.com. Not only is it fun to build the furry monsters but they also make pretty good presents for people. Unfortunately the two puppets I made for my family have been 'borrowed' back by me, and are living in my front room again.
The possibilities for these simple sock puppets are endless, the crazier the fabric the more fun they look. My very first hand puppet was made from an off cut of purple fuzzy fabric I got from a bargain bin in an upholstery shop. I wanted to build my very own Muppet, I suppose a little in the style of Elmo from Sesame Street. Having found some discarded ping pong balls I set to work on my monster. After sewing part of him to my jeans by mistake and a few early finger burns from my glue gun; he came

Annie-bomnible. Girly monster! :D

Orange-Satch-squash

out pretty well for a first effort. In those early days, I was interested in trying out all my ideas in a simple fashion to see if any of it worked at all. My first music video is a very straight forward affair. Set to an original song we recorded way back in the mid/late 1990's (how long ago!?) I used this opportunity to see if I could get green screening to work, as I was the only one puppeteering, and there were three characters. The results were sort of successful in the fact that it did work - not massively exciting, but it worked. Once I had a small

Quick Weevil music video, puppets on a simple set.

handle on iMovie, I began playing around with effects. I took my purple monster (Wilko - named after Wilko Johnson, who we had seen at a gig in Norwich. Not that they look alike, I just wanted to use the name!) and combined two of my favourite things - Muppets and Ghostbusters. I made the puppet a uniform and a Proton Pack to see if I could use after effects to make him fire it. The job took AGES! (watch it here)

Wilko, Ghostbusting with the best!

It was quite a pain staking process. Although the end results looked nice, it had become far more complex than I wanted. This test footage of me playing with 'Special Effects' only proved to harden my resolve that I would want to do everything as 'live' as possible. If I was having to rely on my ability to add huge special effects to get my puppet videos to work, they would NEVER get finished! Low-fi was definitely my future...

A slight new puppet deviation...

String, buttons and blue foam

For those of you who don't know, I'm a graphic designer in my everyday life - this puppet stuff is a hobby we try and fit in around working and gigging with the band. Currently I work as part of a marketing team for a mattress selling company based in Norwich. One morning we needed to come up with a simple Youtube video to be used as part of an internet campaign that could be done in-house and turned around fairly quickly.

How does he smell joke.. etc.

The company had an already existing mascot that I thought would be fairly easily made into a simple hand puppet. (Any excuse to try making up another puppet design). I suggested it, and in my lunch hour I made my way to a local furnishing shop and bought some blue foam, some buttons and a few sheets of felt. That evening I quickly made a character mascot puppet to use in a fairly simple commercial that we had sketched out, and were confident we could shoot it within the confines of the small back room space we had available.

Super cheesy!

The next morning I printed out some cartoon skyline buildings and a few of the key company messages to appear on screen. The idea was to have the puppet fly over the buildings, with key messages coming past like clouds as he races to deliver to the customers. This would be set over the already pre-existing, radio advert. It took three of us to shoot it in the end. One person to work the puppet, one to fly the clouds and a third to pull the skyline backwards to make it look like he was flying! Have a look at the finished video here.

Micheal Bay style budget filming... or maybe not!

It was a lot of fun for a morning, and it worked well enough for us to make the video and upload it to the business Youtube account. I took some photos of the puppet to keep on file, and then realised that I could use the puppet design some more for promotional point of sale posters. I posed the puppet in a few different angles and converted the images into cartoon outlines. These are now being used instore and on the side of one of the shops. What began as a throw away idea, bloomed into a popular key message campaign that decorated all the stores for a few months!

Getting a lot of use from our new puppet. Checkout in store now! haha

All good fun, and a lot less irritating without the music! 

Next week, we return to the Booze Boys... and some unsettling props for the new episodes.

See you then!