Project F.E.A.R.

Blood tutorial:

I couldn't find the exact link, but I remember reading dozens of different guides before I found the method I used.

I'm definitely no Photoshop expert, but from memory, here are the steps:

1. Select a Scatter pattern from the Brushes box - you can experiment with randomness, size etc if you want
2. Choose a shade of red, and spray your canvass
3. Make a copy of that layer, and select "Multiply" from the Layer Options dropdown - this exaggerates any overlaps for the highlights
4. Apply a Bevel & Emboss on the top layer. Again, you can experiment with the settings, but I used the following:

Inner Bevel
Depth = 221%
Size = 7px
Soften = 0px
Shading Angle = 90
Altitute = 84

This broadly follows the tutorial I found (which I still can't remember), but once you are familiar with the technique, you can tweak it to suit your own needs.

Hope that helps

 

First of all apologies to Pope et all if my coments came across overly hostile. A hot friday afternoon and a passion for bit can trigger strange reactions.. Plus Da Dego said most of what i was trying to get across much more eloquently.

I dont think the majority of the comments on this project have been bitchy or elitist. I, for example, would never make fun of a new modder making their first steps into modding. Everyone starts some where. I for example are by no means a great modder, i'm not very good with my hands and none of my mods are very original but i'm happy. I dont put them up on the front page of the worlds biggest modding site though. if i did i'm sure there would be lots of comments and head scratching as to why it up was up there when the forums are full of better mods.

Bit-tech is so popular that it has its own brand now. If its a bit endorsed case mod we are expecting something a bit more than a case wrap. I'm sure even the most ardent bit fans would consider the F.E.A.R. case one of the weakest cases featured in a Bit article. The H&D 2 cases are great examples of simple mods well executed.

Using dutchcedars hot rod analogy, if you commissioned a hot rod from one of the great hot rod builders you would be a bit dissapointed if you got a car with a sticker on it.

 

not if he told me he didnt have time for anything other than a sticker on the fender, and only charged me $1

*shrugs* i dont want to start another flame war, i just wanted to point that out. everyone seems to have forgotten, the company actually agreed to this, so they are happy with it. is there any other metric for a mods success?

anyhows, im off to photoshop and see if i can make some blood gunge type stuff

thanks for the heads up The_Pope

 

Pope, thanks for the tut! That really was a nice effect you made. And by the way, I'm really quite impressed at your own tactfulness about all the criticism. Thanks for listening, I hope you're not taking it personally.

<final rant>
I'm just going to throw out here that my posts were not an attempt at bitchiness or to downplay Geoff's mod, since some people seem to have read them differently. It's just a matter of the front page of one of the world's top modding sites and the title/intent of the author. I already proposed several ideas that would have satisfied my issues (including retitling to a "how-to" or a "here's what we've done with $60 and a weekend..." or just moving the article to the project logs), and I believe I said them in a fairly un-bitchy manner. Other people bring up worthiness, which I believe has also been stated ad nauseam that this is not a knock on the mod, in multiple posts by multiple "bitchers" including myself.

So please, if these portions of the conversation continue, I think I can speak for most of us who said anything that we'd appreciate it if our words were not twisted into 'elitism' and proclamations of whether this is a mod or not. The thread is meant to DISCUSS THE ARTICLE, meaning opinions may vary and may not be always "Oooh, this r0x0r! U pwn!!!11!!!" (or whatever). If you disagree, that's fine. Speak your piece but please don't warp our statements so you can preach about 'every mod being worthy.' Because frankly, I've made some shitty mods, and so have some other people here, and we know it, and we may put it in the logs to say "hey, here's what we're doing..." (sometimes followed by "HELP!") but we don't want it on the front page, because that's where the greatest of the great go when it's a project log (instead of a how-to or review or just a story, and this could have been any of the three).

And you're right, there has been a bit of increased tension in the threads. Probably since there's been actual news coverage and actual articles again and things that we could discuss. See above that discussion doesn't always mean nodding in agreement. As for the project logs, yeah, I have seen what you're talking about, and that I can't disagree with much. But notice you don't see the people with ~1,000 posts doing the complaining of idea-stealing and unoriginality (they're usually the ones applauding the effort and offering helpful suggestions), and the people complaining here are mostly at that relative level. Not meaning to stereotype the new blood, just trying to point out that we haven't TURNED elitist, maybe we're just attracting a lot of new snobbery for some reason...this may be tainting your view of what is being said here as "Oh, another @$$ who decided things were all his idea and not worthy and whatever." Case modding is taking off worldwide all of a sudden, and unfortunately there are idiots in every profession. Just the other day I saw some guy who I NEVER would have thought to be into computers at all (or even know how to use one), in with his skinny little "I'm too cute for my high school" girlfriend, real jock type-a dude...the type who would have given me a swirlie in my day...buying an acrylic case with lights and stuff, talking about how cool he'd look to his boys on the team with his "blingin'" case...it's getting to be a strange world. Bit-tech is the wellspring for some of the greatest mods, so no doubt we'll attract an unhealthy share of them.

@ invalid, sorry about that. I read so many things that tip-toed around that statement that I didn't think anyone directly said it...was just an oversight. Peace?
</final rant>

EDIT: Looking back on the post count, are some of these correct?! Baboon I KNOW has been around since ages old...did some of our accounts get reset in the move? I've seen this on other people's names, too... I'm so confused!

 

he he Da dego.

I've been a member for a while and i think i lurked in the forums for nearly a year before i actually joined, just so i could ask macroman a question. I very rarely post in threads. I answer some questions in the extreme cooling section, comment on mods i like in the project logs and here in the discussions when i have a point of view i think should be heard.

 

Sorry to interrupt the dabate of what-this-means-for-bit-tech.
I think the idea was very good and the result was very good.
If I was fiendishly fan'atized by the game (it looks promising yes but still aren't that enthusiastic about it yet) I wouldn't mind winning a case like that. It's a pretty decent case (from what I've read) with a special look so I think it's well worth the effort!

One amusing thing though about the article was the 'gallery' . Anyone else noticed the nice greasy fingerprints on few of the shots? =]
Not a big deal but when shooting glossy surfaces, wiping them beforehand wouldn't be a bad move.

Thx for the article!

(edit: bad english)

 

Thanks Sathy - those "greasy" fingerprints are just *normal* fingerprints - the CaseSkin material is pretty sensitive to that kind of stuff, and my flash picked it up. Unfortunately, because of my deadline, the final photos were taken just minutes before I had to leave for the post office to send the case off to the magazine, so I didn't get a chance to reshoot that shot.

I know the prints are there, but I decided to leave that photo in the article

Da Dego - no, I'm not taking any of this personally. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and expressing those opinions is *exactly* what the "Discuss this article" feature is for; indeed, what this very forum is about.

Sure, it's disappointing that some of you didn't like it, but as I have said, you are quite correct in saying it's not as l33t as some of our other mods. Even so, I certainly appreciated the people who *did* like it. And we worked through our misunderstanding about whether a full site article equates to a statement that this mod represents the pinnacle of modding (clearly not in this case)

I'm chewing through the Project Logs to find some "more worthy" projects for site articles: I'm still happy to take nominations! We recognise the site has lacked top quality modding content for a number of months now, through a combination of work, illness, new site design and other factors. But we're working on it: all our in-house guys are working on at least one project, and guys like Piloux are too. And, as I mentioned, we're looking for tomorrow's superstars from within the community.

I'm far more excited about the mods in waiting than the semantics of this project. Can we forget it and move on?

 

Personally I was excited to read about this project. Seeing the blood graphics gave me some good ideas, esp since I can use PS and having a skin is an option for the artistic inept people like myself. It's a nice little article showing how a caseskin can really add to a lower budget mod.

 

Not to side with the people thinking this is a horrible mod, because for what it is (a mod pretty much slapped together with much care in very little time for a customer) it is pretty awesome, but I have noticed bit-tech attempting to appeal to a broader target audience, and it is working.

A little while ago (maybe a year or two or so) being linked on Slashdot was a pretty big thing, now it just kind of happens (and the servers don't die, which is new and exciting!). You guys do things like reviewing alienware machines, which I doubt you would have even considered a couple years ago. You added an apple section in an attempt to appeal to that group of viewers, redesigned your site to look more trendish...

You really have increased the number of viewers visiting your site, but in doing so you have lost a lot of what made bit-tech bit-tech (imo of course). I personally have stopped visiting multiple times a day, and to be frank it is unusual for me to visit multiple times a week (or month for that matter), whatever draw was there for me has now disappeared.

This is not a complaint, attack, or a show of disrespect towards the people that make bit-tech what it is, just an observation of a nobody forum member who misses the "old bit-tech."

And that's all I have to say about that (extra kudos if you spot the movie refrence!)

 

congratulations, you're banned!

 

Hi dude,

As the architect of most of these changes, I think I should step in here

You're absolutely right - we have been making a huge effort to expand our appeal and expand the reader base of the site. So far, it seems to be working - since the new design came online, we've broken the record for unique readers visiting the site in successive months (for the record: 390,000 in May, 425,000 in June, and more than that even halfway through this month). From this point of view, our experiment has been a rip-roaring success.

We're trying to create a site that appeals to the enthusiast, and provides almost everything they could want, from the latest hardware reviews (which, as I'm sure you've noticed, are better than ever) to the latest gaming news and features, to industry interviews and news, to great mods.

It's on this latter that we have so far fallen down. We had the wooden iPod earlier this month - the coverage of that went stratospheric (indeed, we were on CNN and FHM.com) bu we realise that, to the hardcore bit-tech readers who are well familiar with Zap's efforts, it wasn't the mind-blowing stuff that you'd expect, perhaps.

We ARE aware of this situation. We ARE aware that guys like you are feeling a bit miffed because we've changed, and we ARE aware that this FEAR article wasn't of the modding standard that you've all come to expect. We can't change this now: it's done. What we can tell you is that we're working incredibly hard in the bakground to bring you what you really, really crave. I've said it before and I've said it again - if you could see what Macro and Eddie are working on right now, you would absolutely pee your pants. But what they're doing will be months before it gets on the site, and we're frantically trying to work out what we can do in the meantime to keep you guys happy.

Yo-Duh, you're not a nobody forum member - you've been around foreeever, and it's great that you're still here. If you have some suggestions as to what we can do to keep people like you happy, PLEASE post them in the feedback forum - we're dying to hear them. Right now we're making huge strides in one direction, and we don't want to leave people behind - we want to bring them with us. So if you can solve, or contribute to solving the problem as you see it, there would be free drinks all round

This is Dr William Harris. I'm listening.

(spot the TV reference )

 

Hmmm...YoDuh, I'm tossing you a PM. No use clogging up the forums.

Nice reply, Wil. I'll be with YoDuh in the feedback forums, hopefully we can all work out some useful suggestions. Because this has been bugging me, too, but I haven't been able to put my fingers on how to help.

And you're not a doctor, you're a lawyer.
<insert bad lawyer joke here from another TV show of your choosing>