articles on
80's Logo Collection
If you like retro logos with light effects that screen the 80's you going to love this post. It's an overview of some of the 80's inspired logos done by Italian designers Alessandro Strickner and Overglow. Enjoy! For more from Alessandro Strickner visit behance.net/strickner & for more from Overglow visit behance.net/overglow.
80's Style Logos by SuperStupidBros
It's not a mystery that for us here at Abduzeedo, the 80's are a huge deal. We love it and we will always be inspired by its shocking colors and metallic textures. 80's bands would be so proud of us. While visiting Behance, I ran into the amazing work of a Design studio called SuperStupidBros. They made some really good looking, 80's style logos. These are very sweet, and if you share the love for the 80's with us, you'll enjoy these. For more of these, you may visit their portfolio. Cheers! ;)
Really cool 80's 8-bit inspired Flash games
As you may already know, we here at Abduzeedo are big fans of everything 80's. Of course one big part of that are video games. Those old 8-bit games might not have the amazing graphics modern games have but our nostalgia for them keeps them alive in many ways. Pixel Art has become a growing phenomena on the net and Flash has allowed people to continue making new games in that 8-bit Nintendo/Sega style. Here are some examples of some amazing Flash-based 8-bit style video games. The following 2 games are by designer/illustrator Manning Krull, check out his tutorial on how to do a simple 8-bit pixel art character walking animation. Toxic Sonic Zombie Massacre (click on link to play, for some reason it doesn't load when embedded) Curses! (only a 1 level demo but still fun to play) The following game was made to promote the movie The Watchmen. It's based on the Minutemen group of characters from the comic. It was a really clever promotional tool since the movie takes place in the 80's. You can play the game here: www.minutemenarcade.com This game is super fast but a lot of fun. You run around as Jesus performing as many miracles as you can in 10 seconds. Run Jesus Run! Finally, we can't forget one aspect that makes these video games great, their music. 8-bit music, or Chiptunes, have also become a huge phenomenon on the internet. For you game developer & pixel artists, Boing Boing is hosting a contest where you can develop a simple game utilizing some free chiptune songs they made available. Just thought I'd quickly mention it just in case anyone was interested: link UPDATE:: Thanks to "Tze" in the comments for informing me about 2 other 8-bit games that definitely need to be included in this post. One-Button-Bob is my favorite so far. You just click the mouse button to make the character do a different activity in each section. Small Worlds One Button Bob And also here's a great Chiptunes song by Tettix that I just can't stop listening to:
Artist Envy: Kilian Eng
A few weeks ago in one of our Daily Inspirations posts I saw these illustrations that immediately caught my attention and ever since then I've been obsessed with this artist. He's a Swedish artist named Kilian Eng. He illustrates, animates, and creates music. His style is very 80's, dark, neon, and scf-fi/fantasy inspired. It reminds me of a mix between the Another World video game, Tron, and 80's cartoons like Heavy Metal, Robotech, Silverhawks and Thundercats. There's something more to his illustrations that captivate me. They evoke some kind of emotion in me which I partly attribute to nostalgia, but they are also calming and seductive. He's definitely an inspiration to me. Kilian Eng's Blog: http://dwdesignsmusicdelivery.blogspot.com/ Here are some examples of his amazing animations and illustrations: An attempt at nuclear physics (Swedish with English Sub) from DW DW on Vimeo. Parallels Raised By Wolves Remix By Kilian Eng DW Design from DW DW on Vimeo. More videos on his Vimeo Page
Reader Tutorial: Arcadia 80's VHS Style
Last week we posted a really cool article called Back to the 80's with some beautiful illustrations inspired by the 80's. We love the 80's especially that look and feel of the old VHS movies that we used to watch so many times. Because of that we have a super cool Photoshop tutorial showing you how to create a VHS image style. Step 1 Open up Photoshop and create a new Document at your desired size in RGB-Color. Fill the Background of the image with a very dark grey (#141414 in my example). Step 2 Take some cool Retro-Font (Robo-Font) and write something in white. Now duplicate the text layer layer three times and rasterize all text layers. Step 3 Take the first copy layer and press Command (MAC)/ Control (PC) L (Strg-L or go to Image>Adjustments>Levels). Take the Red Channel and set the Output Level to 0. As well as the Green Channel. Press Ok. This layer must now be blue, because it's the only color with output. Now take the next copy layer and do the same for the channels Red and Blue. After this the last thing to do is to copy the layer for the channels Green and Blue. Now you should have three layers in the colors blue, green and red. (Yes I know, this could also be done with the normal text color, but I want to show you a way where you can use this on any type of material, also images) Step 4 Set the white layer to the top and select the Blend Mode "Overlay". For the copied layers select the Blend Mode "Exclusion". Now take the copied layers and set them a little bit apart from the original location. Take the copied layer and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Set it on 2px for the amount. Do this to all copied layers. Step 5 Take the TV-Scanlines and set it on top. Set the Blend Mode to "Overlay" and the Opacity to 15%. Now create a new layer and go to Edit>Fill. Take 50% Grey. Then go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Take an amount of 16%, Gaussian and uncheck "Monochromatic". Set the layer just over the Background. Step 6 Write "START" on it and apply the "Outer Glow" Effect on this layer Step 7 Now lets do this Error-Scan lines. Create a new layer and select a little Stripe with the Marquee-Tool (M). Go to Edit>Fill with 50% Grey. Then go to Filter>Noise>Add noise 20% but _Monochromatic_. Press Ok then go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and set this on 2px. After that, set the Blend Mode of this layer to "Hard Light". Now Copy this layer and resize it a bit smaller. Do this a few times until you have enough error lines. Step 8 Now comes the tricky part. First of all take all the "Arcadia"-layers and Press Command (MAC)/ Control (PC) M to Merge the layers together. Then take the Marquee-Tool (M) and select about the half of the Arcadia-Text. Then press right-mouse and "New layer via Cut". Now you should have two Arcadia-layer. One for the Top and the other for the bottom of the Text. Select the bottom one and go to Filter>Distort>Shear and take the following Options. Maybe you have to tweak a little bit until you have the right bend. Step 9 Take the Line-Tool and draw a horizontal 1px line in grey and set it on Blend Mode "Lighten". Set the two Arcadia-layers to 89% Opacity and you're finished. Conclusion Download the Photoshop File Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial About the Author Andreas Fuchs owns a little agency in Germany. He does Web design, Print design, Branding & Interface design. Find out more at http://www.brain-space.de
Back to the 80's
Pepe Cardoso will bring us back to the 80's with some amazing digital illustrations that bring the feel and the style of the good old 80's. He's work is totally amazing and the style is just timeless. Enjoy! For more visit Pepe Cardoso gallery
Super Cool 80's T-Shirt Designs
Abduzeedo is moved by 80's inspiration. We've seen many cool designs lately... also, there's the music, there are the movies (Tron!! Awesome), and we couldn't just forget tees featuring 80's themes. These are really fun, and just remind us of the coolest decade ever. All these were found at a cool tee store called 80's Tees, which has got tons of sweet stuff for all kinds of geeks. Seriously, this store is like the 80's geek heaven. We totally recommend you to pay them a visit! I hope you enjoy our selection! ;)
Abduzeedo 80's Party
Friday we'll be celebrating Abduzeedo's 2nd birthday. We are really happy with the tremendous growth we had during this year. And to begin the celebration works, how about a 80's party?? Heck, yeah. Enjoy these, people! ;)
Robots Rock!
I ♥ robots! I hope you do too because I have three robot-related things to tell you about. First, an awesome CG short film. Second, a look at the new Transformers 2 posters. Finally, some info on the upcoming Voltron movie. Update (8/24/08): - Apparently the Transformers 2 posters are fake. Sorry about that! Oh well, they are still really cool! - Not too long after posting this Design Boom posted an awesome blog entry about female robots. Check it out. 1. World War World War is a short film about two 1940s era vehicles that transform into robots and battle. It takes place 100 years after WWII, Hiroshima, Japan 2045 A.D. It was made by Vincent Chai, a recent graduate of the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. What's even more amazing was that he only used off-the-shelf softwares like Maya, Photoshop, and After Effects. This stuff looks like it was made in a professional CG studio! It's a great example that you don't need a huge budget to create stunning visual effects. Go to his website to watch the complete short film (it also has an HD version) and check out the making of the film as well. Here are some screen grabs: 2. Transformers 2 Posters Two new posters for the upcoming Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen have been released and here's a glimpse. I really enjoyed the first movie so I'm excited that they are making a sequal. 3. Voltron the live action movie I've heard rumors that someone wanted to make a live-action version of Voltron. Well apparently it's no longer a rumor. With the success of Tranformers, studios are jumping on the 80's cartoons-with-Robots bandwagon. What's next? A Go-Bots movies? Robotech? I used to love Voltron so I'm definitely interested. Plus I read they are supposed to use a similar type of style/effects that they used in the movie 300. Read more about this at this i09 blog entry. Here's a blog following the progress of the film: http://voltron-2008.blogspot.com/ and for your nostalgia, here are 2 clips from the 80's Voltron cartoons: The Classic intro to the series: Voltron animated movie (part 1 of 5):
The Ultimate 80's Inspiration
We love the 80's. Music, tv shows, movies, clothing, everything gets us all nostalgic. But we can revive the 80's everyday by using it as reference. The 80's were a decade of overflows of colors and style. Citric colors, big glasses and those long Nike shoes. Lots of kicking butt bands like A-ha, Oingo Boingo, Erasure, Depeche Mode making kicking butt video clips, wearing kicking butt clothes and being kicking butt cool. Yeah. We love the 80's, and know, let's get inspired by it! ;D (A few little times I actually thank God for not living on the 80's...) Author: Paulo Antunes | If you want to write an article and have it published here send it via email to abduzeedo[at]abduzeedo.com