Tron Legacy Parody Cover

Posted on January 8, 2012 by mspinka

I had the idea to do a parody of Tron Legacy for a Facebook cover.  The grid was made with a grid brush, then added perspective and adjusted vertical sizing.  The city line is just 1, 2, or 3 pixel dots across a horizontal line, cyan and white with added glow.

For the clouds, I used the inverted color of cyan, then added a new layer, and rendered clouds.  I then inverted it to bring back the cyan on a black background.  From there, I adjusted the perspective to add depth, and a bit of whispy-ness.  The type was made using an eps file I found on the web, that was built to match the official movie logo font crr-ntn, which Disney owns, and is not available for sale or download.  I don’t have the actual font used in the movies, and brought each letter in from the eps file.  Then added the glow.  The legacy type is Helvetica Neue.

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Cern 2012 Poster

Posted on December 5, 2011 by mspinka
Minimalist poster design inspired by CERN.  12 x 36.  Type is Lubalin Graph.  As far as concept again, not trying to lay claims of inventiveness, but wanted to capture that minimal reinvented retro pastel style of gradient use, and simple geometry.

 

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FREE XML Music Playist Builder

Posted on December 3, 2011 by mspinka

This is something I made for when you need to create an xml playlist for use with web MP3 flash playlists, JW player, etc.  Whenever I need to put together a playlist from scratch, I really get annoyed editing a playlist in Dreamweaver, or a text edit program.  I figured there has to be an easier playlist builder on the web, and there are a ton of XML builders, and software people want to sell, but I could not find one for a simple flash MP3 playlist.  So I built one with Excel.

Consider this my first Microsoft related contribution to the web.  Free for the taking.  This is a great tool for those who just want to quickly type in the artist name, album, file name, and boom, there you have it.  This is great for bands, record labels, bloggers, or any website featuring playlist media.  Enjoy.

Instructions here are simple.  It’s an Excel file with 3 tabs.  The first is “Data Entry”.  Type in the blue areas.   Title, website, and your file directory on your server with your mp3 files.  Using this requires that you have a basic knowledge of xml, and playlist building.  Please do not contact me with questions on how to build xml files, but feel free of course if you find any bugs, errors, or general thoughts to improve on this concept.

 

Step two, go to the second tab, titled “Copy This Code Save as XML” and copy the highlighted blue cells.  Paste it in to a text edit program, and save it as an xml file.  Place the xml file on your server like you would any other playlist.  Voila.  Easy breezy.  There are 20 lines for 20 tracks.  If your playlist is less than 20, just remove those lines once you pasted it in your text file.

xml playlist builder screenshot two

 

 

You can help yourself to the file here:

http://www.circuittostereo.com/free/xmlbuilder.xlsx

http://www.circuittostereo.com/free/xmlbuilder.xls

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#bluenote #albumcover #Philly # philadelphia # brannan

Posted on November 6, 2011 by mspinka

Blue Note recreation parody ‘Big” Spinky Patton

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Fairmount Park Fall 2011 – Instagrams

Posted on November 6, 2011 by mspinka

Three photos from Fairmount park run through Instagram; taken earlier today.  Actually shot with my Cannon dSLR, w/Tamron 17-35mm  and then run through instagram.  Some may call that cheating since they’re not taken with the iphone, but I don’t own an iphone, it’s an ipod touch, and the camera on it is shit.  Deal.

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Carolann at Fairmount

Posted on November 5, 2011 by mspinka

2006 photo of Carolann at Fairmount park. Edited with photoshop then through instagram. Was made into a canvas.


- Posted from iPodTouch

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Test photo

Posted on November 5, 2011 by mspinka

Test post of album cover.


- Posted from iPhone.

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New Poster “1976″

Posted on August 28, 2011 by mspinka

The “1976″ poster. 12″ x 36″.  I came up with the idea to do a 1970′s themed poster built around this cool edit I did with the typeface Avant Garde’s numerals for 1976,  Done in Illustrator, I angled, spaced, and corrected the numeric angles to build the logo, and then I wanted to do some sort of colorful psychedelic mirror image, much like the old TV and movie effects of the 70′s, a-la 2001 Space Odyssey, and Doctor Who theme song TV intro.  I came across an old file of a bay sunset I  took, and the color profile seemed to fit.

I’ve always been a fan of the Avant Garde typeface, and I paired the type with Bauhaus for the written year at the bottom.  I realize this numeral type design has been done before, but I like the style. The copyright is Akzidenz Grotesk Extended, which is becoming a staple as far as my type use is concerned. The purple at the top is actually a gradient layer set to hard light over the backdrop, to give the color a lead-in to the other contrasting colors in the image.

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Halt Citizen! A Study With Woodies.

Posted on August 14, 2011 by mspinka

Halt Citizen! © 2010 Michael Spinka Photograh






































Woodies” painted silver/chrome standing on a white posterboard with another white posterboard in the background. 2 light sources. Photo was then given a double exposure through photoshop with another grainy uninteresting image of electrical lines. Merged and blended to give the appearance that the background was included when the photo was taken. The chrome woodies are a staple in my music studio and stand guard over my speaker monitors. Photo taken in 2005, edited in 2010.

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Artwork for “Building A Better Robot” Comp.

Posted on July 17, 2011 by mspinka

In 2008, Electronic Eel Records released the “Building A Better Robot” compilation, featuring indie electronic music artists from around the world.  And for anyone interested, its still available, and it’s always been free.  Go Here to download.  I did the artwork for the album, and the inspiration behind it was the theme of robot building, since much of the music on the album is of a mechanical electronic nature.  I came across a great book cover called “intermediate Robot Building”, by David Cook and the cover art had such an awesome vibe to it, I decided to parody it.

This album cover was actually the first graphic design parody I did, and since then, more and more, I find myself intrigued in design parodies.  It has to do with paying a homage to the original designer of whatever piece I am working with, and acts as a learning experience getting into the head of a design, or designer I really admire.  Since I have no formal design training, my parodies in a way act as my education in design.  A good example of that is this early work, which at the time I had little to no understanding of typography, and used Arial as the type, and if I were to go back over it, I’d correctly match what is clearly Avenir in the title of the book design I parodied.

The amazing robot in the album cover is from Bennett Robot Works.  I was looking for a cool style vintage/retro robot, and found this guy on the web.  he makes the most amazing robots out of found objects.  His website is absolutely worth a few minutes of your time to check out.

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