About the new logo....

Wallpapers that remind me of yore...

Alright, I'm not sure what Yore is, but if you were wondering about the new logo, it's part of one of my new wallpapers. I took to making wallpapers out of old video games years ago, and I get asked about them frequently. If you're curious about what I do, read on...










First of all, this post is only for you if you actually care about making wallpapers like these. If you're the type of person that just right clicks some hot chick in Internet Explorer and picks 'set as wallpaper', this probably isn't for you. The same goes if you only use pictures from your cellphone.

With that said, these wallpapers are simply sprites with a little design thrown in.

For the Mario papers, I like GSA and VGMaps, but there are quite a few sites out there. And don't think for a second that you're limited to Mario, you can hit up everything from Bad Dudes to Q-Bert to Double Dragon to Zombies At My Neighbors.

There's actually a great source for pre-made retro game wallpapers, Desktop Gaming, which I've been meaning to upload to. (Note: As of this writing, the site was down due to bandwidth issues, so I hope they will come back up soon).

For my needs, I usually just find a level I like, and layer it together, clean up the bottom to fit my task bar, and add a few design elements to make it look good and SHAZAM! I've got a brand new wallpaper. If you've got any experience with photoshop, you'll find it pretty easy to work with.

There are a few things that you need to keep in mind: Technically, any sprite you use is copyrighted material, which means that you shouldn't repost it on the interwebs, even if you modified it for your own wishes. You can try and get around that by posting something like "copyright 1985-2007 © Nintendo" but they can certainly tell you to knock it off. So far, it doesn't seem like many companies are really pounding down the doors to issue cease & desist letters, but you should be aware of. Also, you might find that while perusing sprite, many of them features copyright notices from whoever ripped them. This does not qualify as a legitimate copyright, since you can't copyright copywritten materials without permission (it's like me re-shooting Fight Club with a new cast and claiming it mine. Yes, I hold the copyright on the new material, but not on the original...)

Anyway, that's it for now... but maybe I'll post some more later. Pieces.