I still look back at the first one and like it.. it's so simple, but thats a nice font, and it works. The second one wasn't so bad, except that it was blurry and rather flat. Both version 2 and version 3 incorporate the "infinite" idea in different ways, also. 2 has an infinite spiral, whereas 3 just has a seemingly endless pit.. or something to that effect.
The problem that plagued this graphic for a few years was that I kept making it VERY hard to read. Stupid.. I don't know what I was thinking.. But I made sure to fix that on version 3.
I'm not sure why, but I started going with this green theme and then just ran with it. Hard to madke a "bodygaurd" logo without actually having some person in there.. So I just went for something that looked cool. Which is what alot of these were!
These all have good and bad points. first one is good, but too simple. The second is good.. but a little hard to read, and too dark, I think. I needed black to have those glowing balls show up the best, though. And then the 3rd is good with mood and color.. but the "Healing Light" is a bit hard to read. Ah well!
Some of my great works right here. The first is obviously simple, no big deal. Good font though. The Second isn't that great, but it was good for it's time (just starting PS). And some ideas from it were used again. Like blending "of the" into the sky. And mixing "sun" into the sun. on the 3rd version, I actually made that sun myself. Out of a circle and glow.. And made MOST of the sky on the 3rd one. But mixed in some real clouds to make it better. There is an insane amount of effects too, on "magicians". Which you don't even see! Twirls, different lights, those colored dots of course, different colored glows behind the text, and tons of mixed motion and radial blurs. I especially like this for the color composition.
This was a good series because Each version had good ideas that were used again. The bright glowing "i"s were kept from the first version. The second version included some blue background and silver top text with gold bottom text, as well as a sword. Those were also kept, and so you get the final product of those two! The only big difference is that the sword doesn't make the "P" this time. But I think it works better, compositionally.
This division has ALWAYS given me problems with getting a graphic.. Except for the first version. That was easy.. "Special? Gold!" But the next years were much harder. Version 2 is good in concept, but executed poorly. All the "X"s around the picture are meant to be gun crosshairs, for assassins. And the swords are more or less, daggers. For Ninja's and assassins. But blah. And then theres the 3rd version.. Which is just.. it's pointless! It looks OKAY, but it hardly has ANYTHING to do with the division. I couldn't think of anything.. >.<
This division was added later, and because of that, doesn't have a simple text version. So basically we're starting on version 2 here, in relation to the rest. I actually really like the first version, other than the fact it's blurry. And I made all the fire for it from scratch. Whereas on the second one, I used a filter from eye candy 3.0 to do it. Both "Force" words didn't use any special filter though, just generic photoshop mixing. LOTS of it.
Another later added division. And another example ofa good concpt executed poorly for the 1st version. It gets hard to read, and the E and L don't look a DAMN thing like fire. Nor does the E and the M look like clouds.. It was just a failure as far as I'm concerned. But I learned from that and made a MUCH better pic for version two. Like the mage pic, this is one of my favorites. Also like the mage pic, there is a LOT of things going on here. This time, it's just easier to see.
*None of these enlarge. they are as big as you see here*
Around the middle of 2004, the guild combined Elementals, Dragons, and Special Forces, into one division. This was to try and bulk them up, as the dragons and elementals were always low on members. But long after that, I finally got this graphic done. So it basically represents 3 divisions in one shot. There is alot of hidden imagery on this one.. Can you see them all? ^_-
