Layer Tennis

October 24, 2007 12:47 PM

Layer Tennis. Head-to-head graphic artist competition!
posted by GuyZero (19 comments total)

i wanted to get excited, but after 5 minutes i couldn;t find anything to look at.
posted by Frasermoo at 12:54 PM on October 24, 2007

Yeah, it took me a while. Find a "View the Match" link then click on the numbers in the now-former-header bar in the bottom-right of said bar. You'll go through each of the "volleys".
posted by GuyZero at 12:55 PM on October 24, 2007

so far, there's only one tennis match that's happened, and it starts here. It's not bad, I just think it's funny how often one or the other will just completely obliterate the layer's beneath and start relatively fresh. Designers are vain folk.
posted by shmegegge at 12:57 PM on October 24, 2007

I don't understand, can they completely change the image in a volley? That seems to defeat the purpose.

And besides, layers are for hacks. All the cool designers do everything in curves.
posted by Pastabagel at 1:00 PM on October 24, 2007

I was wrong about how many matches have happened. there are, in fact, others. also, apparently each new layer needs to bear some resemblance to the one below, though not necessarily graphically.
posted by shmegegge at 1:08 PM on October 24, 2007

Previously on mefi projects.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:15 PM on October 24, 2007

There's been about three or four matches already, and they've been great. A new one hits every Friday.
posted by mathowie at 1:39 PM on October 24, 2007

Four live matches on Fridays have been played so far.

One, Two, Three and Four. Another is scheduled for this Friday at gmt-6.
posted by coudal at 1:41 PM on October 24, 2007

Brian Taylor takes on Jason Santa Maria with play-by-play commentary by Matthew Baldwin this week. Should be a good one. Later matches will be played in Illustrator, Flash and with video.
posted by coudal at 1:44 PM on October 24, 2007

I was going to post this earlier in the week, but I had the same complaint as Pastabagel. I liked this volley, but these two seem to take broad liberties with the given layers.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 2:30 PM on October 24, 2007

What the--? Why does the image take the place and position of the title banner? I'm no fancy-schmancy "designer," but I'm pretty certain that CONTENT DOES NOT GO THERE!
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:42 PM on October 24, 2007

these are great fun. the commentary makes it for me.

my daughter mentioned these to me the other day. she (13 yrs old) keeps asking me "how do i learn to do that?" but I can't answer her. I just tell her to keep exploring/living in photoshop and her stuff will get better. i damn sure know you can't learn it in a book. can you?
posted by jmccw at 2:52 PM on October 24, 2007

I liked Photoshop Tennis and this new take on it, but I do agree that the design of the new site is strange. Only reason I can see for doing it this way is to make it easier to keep the image on top of the content as you work through the volleys. It's still kind of dumb to make the content and navigation that non-obvious though.
posted by caution live frogs at 3:22 PM on October 24, 2007

I thought this said "lawyer tennis" and I was visualizing a McEnroe-esque argument on every serve and volley.

Imagine my disappointment.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:34 PM on October 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

Have to plug the necessary shout out for Sito.org's Panic which was doing things like "Photoshop Tennis" back in 1994, *before* there was even a www. Back in tha day it was all done with ftp and irc.

Of course the surrealists were doing this shit 80 years ago with their exquisite corpses.
posted by jeremias at 5:11 PM on October 24, 2007

i damn sure know you can't learn it in a book. can you?
You damn sure can!

Go to Barnes & Noble and browse the Photoshop section. The only book I can recommend you get her (and please please do) is Professional Photoshop so that she can learn how to actually color correct and not just mess with brightness/contrast.
posted by Brainy at 8:15 PM on October 24, 2007

Sure, you can learn the program in a book. It is the creative process that people typically learn by doing. These sorts of projects are largely about semiotics, "the study of signs and symbols, what they mean and how they are used." [source]

David Carson's Visible Signs discusses semiotics in a graphic design perspective and begins to explain the process of moving from an idea to communication of it.

As always, practice makes perfect; 100 Binary opposites is a project I did in the "Graphic Design Processes" class. Though it was tedious, everybody in the class was truly transformed by it.
posted by parhamr at 9:52 PM on October 24, 2007

FWIW, the Match Preview and coin flip for tomorrow's live match have just been posted.
posted by coudal at 12:39 PM on October 25, 2007

100 Binary opposites link is (barely) NSFW. Personally I didn't feel it didn't have too many interesting enteries, either. Interesting concept, though.
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 1:59 PM on October 25, 2007