Project F.E.A.R.

Vivendi requested an all-black case, with some tasteful splatterings of blood, if there can ever be such a thing. Unfortunately, my Photoshop skills are usually limited to Crop and Lasso tools, essentially the manipulation and combining of existing digital assets, as opposed to the black art of conjouring pixels out of thin air.

With our Chris, our resident Photoshop Jedi Master, out of action dealing with the fruits of his procreation, I hit Google in search of tutorials for the creation of Digital Blood. Luckily, I found several subscription-free websites happy to share their recipe for pixellated O-Negative.

The brief for the bezel was less-is-more: just the F.E.A.R. logo and some blood. Here are two of the designs:


The first design (left) I produced was made using a clever combination of spray-can scattered brush (in red, naturally) and the Bevel and Emboss layer properties, which provides the glossy shine; a really visceral result. Indeed, I was told it looked 'a bit like brain matter' by Vivendi PR. I would have used the word 'juicy' myself, but it wasn't the effect they were after.

The second approach (right) was to use a custom Brush in Photoshop, specially designed to produce a blood splatter. These are freely available if you Google for them, and though they are essentially 'flat', I was able to apply the highlights I learned from the first design to give it a bit more depth. After several cycles of 'a bit more. No wait, that's too much', we settled on this as the final Bezel design.


CaseSkins are designed to be printed as a single sheet, wrapping up one side, over the top, and down the other side. With both side panels completed (see next page), I pushed the boundaries of taste by suggesting this design for the top panel:


Unfortunately, and perhaps quite rightly, it was decided to leave the top panel blank to retain focus on the main branding of the side panels. But I wanted to share this image with you just to demonstrate the possibilities of congealed, digital blood.