I have been remiss in blogging my exploits as of late, so today I pat my own back not once, but twice. During Week 4 of the Bungie All Stars contest we were tasked with the effort of creating a Halo Reach themed birthday card that Bungie would give out to their employees, the task came with guidelines both strict and vague. Participants were to create a birthday card set to certain dimensions with a limit on file size, with these guides in hand I set out and put nearly three days of on and off work into creating my masterpiece. The idea itself evolved as I worked, but always had the goal in mind of using my newfound expertise with the Adobe Illustrator pen tool. Using this technique I learned in class, I set out creating some of my own imagery with the renders from Bungie’s website as base. What came out of this effort is posted below, and the end result was one I am very proud of. It thrilled me to no end that my image was one of seven chosen as a finalist, what I failed to mention before was that not only would the winners receive the coveted star next to their name in multiplayer lobbies, one of the finalists would be chosen by Bungie’s design department to be the actual birthday card which Bungie employees would be given on their special day as well as an additional un-mentioned prize. While I still am waiting to see if my work made the grade I am proud of the fact that I am one of the seven, even at the going rate of 7 winners per week that leaves only 50 people in the world with these icons next to their names. For anyone not familiar with the typical population of Halo Reach multiplayer, that is thousands if not millions of players who do not have this emblem.
The following week our prompt was to take a screenshot of an Elite with very little guidance as to what else we might capture in the image, sadly mine did not manage to make the weekly update. Bungie All Stars Week 6 saw a prompt that I was not able to complete a work for in time, with week 7 I was determined to get an entry in. This week’s prompt was to take a glamor shot of our own particular spartan model, and with the long coveted Emile helmet I have spent many hours collecting credits to purchase well in hand I set out to take a screenshot that would grab Bungie’s attention once more. I am happy to say that again it worked, I have no way of knowing if my image was chosen as I already have the star emblem, but I was fortunate enough to have my screenshot shown on the update. What is just as interesting is the fact that this week’s contest received the most submissions of any of the challenges yet, netting over 800 submissions with 150 making the initial cut and then the winners chosen from that. So my screenshot managed to wow over at least 700 submissions or more which makes the time I put into the work rewarding.
Trial and Error 