ChasingLilly.net

My best bud Will McCarry is just now releasing his long-awaited debut solo album, In Flight. He’s been working on it for quite a while, and it really shows. It’s an awesome selection of songs, and you should all definitely pick it up. Yours truly even makes an appearance on at least one song. Right now the only way to get the whole album is from him, though I’m working with him on a way to put it up online for free. Maybe I’ll even host it here on ChasingLilly.net! You can, however, check out some of the songs at either his Facebook Fan Page or his Myspace. And while you’re over on Facebook, be sure to become a fan!

In preparation for the album, our quite good friends Mel Kobran and Nathaniel Tonelli worked on an album cover for the CD. You can see the finished back cover/cover (respectively) for the album below. They did a really great job, and Mel did a great job putting it all together in Photoshop. All the elements are real, from the hand drawn planes to the coffee stain (which is actually an orange juice stain, but who needs to know?). As always, click to enlarge and by doing so, enjoy.

While they worked on the cover, I simultaneously worked on designing the inside of the album booklet. I finally finished yesterday at 4 AM, and figured I could share a few of the pages with you. But I won’t share them all, some surprises should be left for when you get your hands on a copy of the album!

In Flight booklet pages 1 & 2

In Flight booklet pages 5 & 6

I think it turned out quite well, but then again I am a bit biased. So far the response has been positive, though, so that’s a good sign. Regardless it was a lot of fun branching out into the design of album art. The awesome photos from the booklet were taken by Mel as well. She’s a photography major at VCU, so go over to her flickr or some place and support her. Another friend of mine, Billy Bacci, is also releasing an album soon (he claims next week) and has asked me to do something for him. I can smell another late-night-team-album-art-creating venture coming! Where’s my album? It’s coming…

So go pick up a copy of In Flight from Will, and I’ll keep everyone else updated on where they can download a copy of the album on the interwebz. Soon, very soon. In fact by tomorrow. No joke. I know, it’s crazy how much I’m suddenly blogging. And yes, I realize I’m just having a conversation with myself at the computer.



Happy Trails,
Sam.

I’ve been sick as of late, and (in my free time from watching Arrested Development) have renewed my love for digital design. So I’ve been spending a lot more time in Photoshop and After Effects designing stuff for really any reason at all. I’m still working on effects for our National Treasure spoof.

I’ve started making some pretty cool outer space graphics for our epic travel to the moon in the trailer. That’s right, we go to the moon searching for the next National Treasure. Right now I’m making a street-level zoom-out into space and some clips going towards the moon. All in After Effects, which can be a little hard as AE isn’t a 3D program. However, it’s far better than the alternative for me, which would involve animating in Blender or my not-working 3ds Max. I think I would rather jump off a cliff than bother with the terrible virtual cameras there. Though I should probably learn… Ah well, it’s forcing me to be more creative in AE, which is also helpful. I’ll add some vids of what I’m doing with that soon.

I’m also working on a graduation “gift” thingy in Photoshop. I’ll post it when it’s done as well. However at the moment every attempt I’ve made has failed. When there’s new info, I’ll update. Well those are my thoughts for today, hopefully next time I write I won’t be sick and at 2:14 AM.

Happy Trails and Namaste,

Sam.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I was going to make a new homepage for chasinglilly.net, mainly because the one right now sucks. I want to make a simple yet elegant single page with large links to the blog, the band page, my twitter, and my facebook. I also want the page to include a feed of my latest tweets as well as a listing/summary of the few latest blog posts. Oh yeah, and I also want the background picture to either change every few seconds, or else change every time the page loads.

For a beginner in web design, a CSS template like that is pretty tricky. So far I’m working on the basic page look in Photoshop. It’s not finished yet, but in the screen shots below you can see the sort of look and feel I’m going for. The multiple shots show examples of different backgrounds the site would have. Obviously I want the backgrounds to look epic, and I’m going to make them all pictures I’ve taken (or else taken of me). (click pics to enlarge)

At the same time, I don’t want to look all cocky and have huge pictures of me show up every time someone loads the page, so I’m really trying to mix them up. Except for the third one, which was too cool-looking to leave out. So that’s it so far, I haven’t even gotten to the coding yet. Any thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? I’m trying to learn on the fly, and this is really a great way to figure this stuff out. Mo’ stuff ta come.



Happy Trails,

Sam.



P.S. – Keyboard Cat is awesome