In 2011, Arrival Oil Tools approached Pulp Studios for some small illustration and branding work. Since then our relationship has blossomed beautifully. Arrival Oil Tools are a graphic designers dream client. They’re bright, organized and are open to most creative approaches. They do not shy away from smart, subtle, iconic branding.
They specialize in the engineering and manufacturing of downhole drilling tools for the oil and gas industry. Which means new tools are being created on a regular basis. This logo study is on our latest and greatest for the, get this, Anvil Hydro-mechanical Drilling Jar.
First let us fill you in with some back-story on what exactly the Anvil Hydro-mechanical Drilling Jar is.
In a nutshell, after they dig the borehole for the pipeline, they feed piping down for...lets say...miles and miles. Over time the piping can become stuck together due to environmental factors. This is when the drilling jar comes in with it’s springs and steel, and it jar’s that baby apart, without any piping having to be removed. It’s really quite amazing once you wrap your mind around what these tools can do… If graphic design doesn’t work out I’m thinking about drillin’ me some oil!
Okay, Round 1 Version 1
Initially, I chose to make the letters in Anvil look squished together. I used the font Impact and thought the treatment turned out nicely. Especially since the client is a big fan of “comic style” fonts, and Impact is a great sister to pair with personality type. After the type treatment, I added a little texture, put it in a circle and placed a pair of faint arrows behind the type to hint the movement of the drilling jar. I usually side with iconic and subtle logos that aren’t trying to show off...but this one was my favorite, I just liked the way it felt.
Version 2
With this version I was, quite literally, just focusing on the fact that I could make the letters look like pipes…seems pretty silly at first, but after I started playing, it had a slight NASA feel and opened up some cozy negative space where I could fit the secondary type. The only thing I knew I would have to change was the weight of “Drilling Jar” due to legibility. But Anvil worked well, so in the good pile it went!
Version 3
On version 3 I kept on looking back to version 1, and wanted to incorporate the textured circle somehow. I made an icon based on the same background in version 1. I didn’t want the icon to be the highlight, but more of an accessory. I stuck with the same rotating arrows, and applied the same texture. This version didn’t give me the same warm fuzzy feeling as version 1, but that was okay because the type was the idea. Since the drilling jar uses a spring as one of it’s main components to jar the pipes apart, I cut a faint spring texture out of the type, and applied an offset graphic style. I think this turned out great. Every spot that was cut out was lined with a faint offset baby blue line that pushed the logo exactly where I wanted it to be. Unfortunately that crazy long secondary type was still left. I knew that with the type on the right I was pushing the overall length, but I wasn’t happy with it on the bottom so I tried my best to make it work.
Versions 1-3 were sent to the client for review and feedback.
Round 2
Number one didn’t make the cut unfortunately, but the client’s feedback helped to steer things in a positive direction. It doesn’t matter how many logos you make, it’s impossible not to have favourites, and to be somewhat disappointed when those little children don’t make their first flight. They loved the spring effect of version 3 and the piping letters of version 2. The icon from version 3 also seemed to impress them, and needed to live somewhere in the logo.
So my soloution was to mix the two separate and different designs into one mega, NASA, spring logo! In the end I had the room I needed to put the secondary type in comfortably. Overall, the project was a blast and I feel we came up with a great solution.
Here is the final design that was approved by Arrival Oil Tools. look for it next time you are jaring some pipe apart!
Hey everyone. I thought it might be fun to post a couple photos of myself doing some crazy experimentation with video for integration into an animation we are working on. The video is of black ink rolling across different surfaces. We are trying to create some short footage we can key in after effects and integrated over existing animation work.
I tried the ink on a piece of cartridge paper first. But need something with less tooth. So I ended up using the backing to our Pulp logo decal.
My inexpensive digital video camera setup to try it out.
In the end the video worked, the keying worked, but the jury is still out on whether it's the right solution to the problem.
The project, an 11 minute motion graphic animation should be completed in the next month or so.
Raise your glasses and toast to turning work into play.
*clink*
Corey
As part of the launch celebration of Pirates Love Daisies, we'd like to share some of the concept art for the game.
After the concept was bounced around, gskinner.com decided on the hilarious daisy loving pirates theme. We were sent into our art cave to start bringing it to life, while they worked on the code and the complex gameplay that make pirates such a rewarding game experience.
Here are the character silhouettes, each character went through at least one round of these to massage out the basic shape…and in turn define the character. These silhouettes were talked about and discussed with gskinner.com and from their feedback and direction we headed back into the studio to create the character drafts, the black and white renderings of the chosen silhouette.
The silhouette is an important element when creating an effective character design, weather it be for comic books, video games or animation. With a game of this type it was imperative that the silhouettes be distinctive and unique. Being small sprites on the screen, and many sharing real estate at the same time (and in close proximity) means that we can't get too complicated, and that each character had to be identifiable immediately. We used simple geometric forms and pushed them, matching the pirates attributes with their physicality, the quick swordsman's physicality immediately gives you a clue as to how he would act in the game, and likewise the cannon operator takes the attributes of his cannon balls.
We wanted to cover as many different body/character types and to eliminate repetition or similarity in form. Variety is good yes? The answer is yes!
Here is where the characters really started to take shape. Refining the silhouettes we created the rendered greyscale treatments of our pirates. At this stage we took the best elements of the silhouettes that were chosen and tweaked and polished them into what ended up being very close to the final designs.
Lastly, we created scaleable vector versions of the characters that had a colour treatment.
Here is the entire lineup. One of the things we really strived for was a variety of shape and form. No two characters should be confused even at a glance or at a distance.
You'll also notice that they aren't coloured with what is called "local Colour" meaning they aren't the colours that you would expect them to be coloured under natural light. We chose a saturated/bright orange hue for the characters. Some early concepts involved different teams of Pirates and we imagined the possibility of several different crews of pirates all in their bright colours, facing off against each other. When the focused narrowed to the "creeps" or sea creatures being the ones stealing the daisies, well we thought that this would help even more to immediately identify your team and push the difference between the pirates and the creeps. The monochromatic palette also allows the characters to be more ethnically ambiguous so that they can be interpreted slightly by the viewer. The dev team at gskinner.com also agreed with the need for sharp contrast between enemies and towers as well as using the monochromatic colour scheme for the players towers.
We're also fans of 1950's animation and illustration that utilizes limited palettes.
We hope you enjoyed a little insight into part of the creation of these characters that are close to our heart.
