Oh it’s almost time for this..
The code that generates this hot mess of a picure
When people say “only 2 sleeps” – does it count if both days add up to one night’s worth?
Tag Archives: beer
Fired up for TNP
I was pretty surprised that someone took interest in this old* thing – first published on BrewDog’s Equity for Punks forums back in the days we fanboi’d fairly hard. The concept of the pic occurred to me during the first AGM; personally frustrated that the first TNP penguin could do with more of a ‘hardcore’ look/attitude.
Though I dislike smoking I am not against lighters (hey, I did Scouts – they’re pretty handy things) but I can’t help feel a little chuffed thinking that someone out there (probably in the US) is taking this little dude out, with a story to tell about one particularly tasty beer.
Hope you like your lighter Randy – perhaps some day in the future we would find ourselves at the Aberdeen BrewDog bar (it was the first one after all) and talk beer over TNP 😉
* This old thing? Jeez, it’s been only (less than) 3 years ago!
Randy’s lighter
@Irr_Orbit GET /pintofbeer HTTP/1.1 Host: The Local Pub Accept-Encoding: cask/*,keg/*
“Can I get a pint of beer.” You can have, but you can’t get.
IMBC: It. Was. So. Awwwwwwwesome.
After a hectic Letchworth festival this year, I felt noticeably less nonchalant after it had finished. Leading up to IMBC I was utterly exhausted (volunteering *again*?!), and to be honest I didn’t get terribly excited until we got to the venue for set-up. Hard not (HardKnott??) to be excited after setting up in such a lovely building.. I’ve even made a splash page of it – a panorama before a near-full day behind the keg bar (bath?).
Quite an assortment of people, from almost all aspects of the (dare I say ‘craft’) beer ecosystem: the beer aficionados, the brewers, the beer suppliers stretching to those interested in what they ingest: the foodies, the coffee geeks, the purveyors quality food. I struggle to think of any faces that left lacking a smile, a healthy liver, and a shortage of memorable moments. It was the Woodstock of the Beer Renaissance.
Though there was no resolution on the definition of ‘craft beer’ the general consensus was that it was the people, not just the beer, that really impressed the most. Perhaps it’s reflected in the beer: a more honest, take-it-or-leave-it attitude. It’s a personal, complicated journey of mapping your own tastes on which you can find like-minded company from brew to end product.
Though the video is short, there was a definite theme built-in right after someone had the idea to send in the ‘juice..
Our take on the Independent Manchester Beer Festival
Huh, by strange coincidence there’s this beer festival that’s coming up very very soon…
Preview of something to come
Update (20120914): From hitting publish I’d guess 1-3 hours to find it
Oh hey, a preview
A beery concept: Brewdog T-series
Tactical Nuclear Penguin - original poster concept
A year or two ago, there was a spark of inspiration (might of been around the AGM) which fruited a certain penguin suited with a helmet and a nuclear/beer backpack. Perhaps it was a case of “I can do better than that” regarding the TNP T-shirt offering at the time, or from the growing love of BrewDog beers in general. A very good chance of it may of been Yvan’s comment from the AGM that all the pumpclips were the same shape – though good marketing for being consistent, it did not allow individual character for each beer to distinguish itself. Well, whatever motivation that was, the challenge was accepted.
The Penguin
TNP Helmet Version 2
Now in the more recent past, Yvan pointed out that BrewDog announced another competition to feature a fan’s artwork; naturally he had remembered the first version of the TNP poster/clip I created. One prerequisites were “as long as the BrewDog logo is featured”; which gave me the opportunity to redo a detail that bothered me since I finished the first version in the past: his helmet. I found it too simple, and recall the design process that I would like to have included both the BrewDog logo and the nuclear symbol but I didn’t have an idea how. With the time to think afresh and a quick Google for hardhats, I quickly drew version 2 of the helmet. With some liberal application of GIMP, the new version was created.
Tactical Nuclear Penguin - Version 2
The Blonde
As previously mentioned, there were the lingering thoughts about the other beers BrewDog do and we love. And by the OCD inspired mantra “gotta catch ’em all” I needed to try the other concept that was in the old todos – Trashy Blonde. In my sketchbook I do have the first concept but I dismissed it for being overly sexual. This time I was determined to show the ‘Blonde in a different light – and thankfully I had something in mind: I had remembered a particular vintage bookcover which features on a wine bottle depicting a ‘trailer trash’ girl (Edit: it’s Loren Beauchamp’s “Sin on Wheels”) and this thought chained into carhops. ’cause, you know, got to pay the rent..
Trashy Blonde - sketch
Trashy Blonde - final sketch
Trashy Blonde - line cleaning progress
I’ll spare you, dear reader, of the cleanup process. With a short period of time and a more detailed drawing I didn’t bother with a ‘vectorized’ cleanup. But in the end, I needed to get my concept completed enough – a ditzy (but adorably cute) trailer-trash carhop Blonde:
Trashy Blonde - completed
The Star
Tokyo* - final, but rough, sketch. Note the dark tones: that's lots of erasing and hard lines there
I think I have a slight case of OCD. After the ‘blonde and before I found T-shirt templates I was contemplating the next beer. Yvan can testify, and probably laugh, at the excruciatingly frustrating time I had getting something acceptable for the next concept. I did accept the challenge here as a learning curve, and boy did I get it: firstly I am out of practise with figure drawing, and secondly a mecha[1] artist I am not. With that as a clue, it is evident I settled with the Tokyo*.
[Footnote 1]: Mecha refers to the comic book and animation genre heavily featuring robots, which is very popular in Japan. Transformers, though American, was initially designed in Japan – as toys without a backstory before Hasbro hired writers to create one.
In the end, though acceptable I find the pose too static. I did reference Barbarella for the pose and gun, but it lacks movement and an air of ‘life’ like the other two. But perhaps this is the one I revisit next time; I feel inspirationally drained!
Tokyo* - completed
T-Beers for a T-shirt contest
Here are the completed concepts as ‘posters’. For a peek at the shirt designs go to my other site.
Tactical Nuclear Penguin
Trashy Blonde
Tokyo*
T-series: Pose like a team, 'cos this shit got copy-pasta'd!
Note on the title: pun semi-intended! Couldn’t help myself!
Last year for the Letchworth beer festival we got the idea that we should try using some Google-fu into it and derived a map of the breweries featured in a simple mashup. I started off with addresses of the breweries from Quaff Ale then searched with their postcode (to a similar effect, getlatlon but plugging in all of the datapoints.)
Initially it was fine for the test cases but as there are restrictions on the number of geo location queries on Google maps and the asynchronous nature of the plotting we needed to obtain the equivalent lat/lon. At this point, the reigns were added to Yvan and he refined the map in such a way that it even generated a boosted brewery ‘bubble’ that listed the beers the brewery would be on offer. And custom pull-out markers to make the points easier to read.
Now it’s time for the Hitchin 2012 fest, and I thought it was a rather simple matter of taking the old code and switching the values.. Actually, this is almost correct but the tedium in obtaining addresses: how I forgot how long this took! Then the matter of adjusting the markers..
Restored the entry Beery Cooking – Xiao Long Bao from the ‘net. Yay, unintentional redundancy!