Holiday Party Advertisements and Invitations

Hey Guys,

I've been busy doing Blender and GIMP stuff for work again, and I thought I'd share some of my latest works. My unit is going to be having a Holiday Party soon, and I was tasked with making all the advertisements. Our party theme is "casino winter-wonderland". I deleted the day and blurred the address on two of the images, so they'll look a little off.
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We'll be printing out invitations on card-stock, and this was a mockup to show leadership what they would look like.
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The Christmas tree ornaments were borrowed from [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and I used cycles materials from the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] compiled by meta-androcto as the base for most materials.

Here's an up-close view of the first advertisement:
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Aside from the ornament mesh and the GIMP brushes, everything else was hand-made specifically for these projects.

Wow! Nice work. Polish, polish, polish!

Wow #2. Those are definitely very well done. That second one, and the corresponding first card look so professional. That santa hat reminds me of the one that was on the BN logo for a year after Kernon disappeared.

Good to see your work again! It has been a while.

Wow #3

Nice work! I feel like I could reach into the screen and pick things out of that first pic!

Thanks for the comments guys!

I got positive responses from the first ad, mostly people liked the sparkly font. No responses from the second ad, and one negative response from the invitations (they didn't like the mechanical circles in the logo--I get the feeling it's taboo to modify unit logos in that way).

On better news, I am starting a Special Interest Group on base for folks who are interested in Graphic Arts with the only other Blender user I've ever met in real life. I have a funky name picked out too that comes out to a great acronym (military loves acronyms): Graphic Production and Illustration Special-Interest Mentoring Group (g)PRISM. We'll be starting it up in a few months, I'll keep you guys updated on how it goes.

Btw: Nobody mentioned I got the spade wrong on the first image--I figured I'd get a flood of emails from people once I sent the ad out to the unit--either nobody noticed or, more likely, nobody cared.

Man, I truely believe you don't give yourself enough credit! Nice to have a humble attitude, but this is top notch work. Chances are that it was actually "too" professional for the crowd that usually recieves these things. Have some cake! You deserve that much!

BTW, is there any symbolism to the 7 sided iris or just the setting used?

Oh yeah. It's a spade, wrong colour.

I was too busy looking at the shiny stuff to notice

One of the commanders on base received the invitation and asked me to train one of his Airmen how to adapt it for their holiday dinner, so that was pretty cool.

It took a little over an hour but we created a new logo and changed the text around. I'm so used to doing my GIMPing on a tablet that it's surprising how much a mouse can slow you down--I would hate to imagine trying to do GIMP on a laptop just using the trackpad. :S lol

So here I am watching an episode of the TV series Dogfights (aircraft fighting not dogs!). Admiring the CGI used for the mid air combat and looking for tips that I might use later.

This episode is about WW1 and an American pilot called Arthur Raymond Brooks. I noticed there's a logo painted on the side of his bi plane and it strikes me as familiar. Looked it up in case the TV series wasn't accurate...
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Yep, I've definitely seen that before One of your predecessors I presume?

Hey, good eye, Strangebloke!

There are two Smithsonian Air and Space Museums, the main one along the DC Mall, and an overflow near the Airport about 20 miles away... his aircraft is on display in the overflow building. (I hate to admit it, but I haven't visited that one--the Natural History Museum is my favorite, but I'll visit them all before I leave!)

I made a few logos in the old style that you see in that link's picture for clothing items and other such whatnots over the last few months. One had just the main star and the long tail with a big '22' threaded in the tail...it came out pretty nice and is going to be screened on a 'hoodie' sweater, i'll have to post a picture of it when they come in.

XRay, I chose the 7-sided iris setting because I remember reading on either the Nikon or Canon website when I was looking at lenses (and pretending that I own a fancy camera ) that a particular lens had 7 iris blades for "professional looking" bokeh blur things, so I figured I'd copy that to try and make it look like it was taken with a real camera as much as possible.

I see. Very nice indeed. I'll have to go have a look at my wife's new camera! She's going to be my new texture photographer and doesn't even know it yet! Lol!

OK this is quite creepy coincidence now.

I've been to that Smithsonian museum by the airport in 2005 so I've probably already seen that plane. Bearing in mind I'm English and only been abroad a couple of times in my life that is quite a co-incidence. I'll have to dig out my photos and see if I got a picture of it. I seem to remember I was more fixated on the space shuttle and the Hurricane that had finished up a long way from home though.