New Logo for Stern Rake Studio

(The image I settled on--for now)

I have two announcements.

First, I purchased a couple of domain names, "Stern Rake Studio dot Com" and "Stern Rake Studio dot Net" through 1 & 1.  It will be a while for the Stern Rake Studio website to be up & running.  I'll have to construct it, or more than likely, have someone help me build it.

While I'm happy with my purchase, I'll probably end up contacting 1 & 1's customer service.  In my zeal to obtain the domain name, I didn't proofread my purchase as thoroughly as I should have.  The "dot com" domain will be listed as "stern-rake-studio,"  while the "dot net" domain will be "sternrakestudio."

I'd like the dot com to be all one word, like the dot net one is.  I decided to purchase the dot net in addition to the dot com, to thwart anyone else from using the Stern Rake Studio name and possibly confusing any viewers.

Of course, 1 & 1, along with every other domain company attempts to get customers to monopolize every possible permutation of their chosen domain name as possible.  I figured grabbing the dot net name would be enough.  I don't feel the need to corner the Stern Rake Studio market.

At least not yet.

The second announcement is that I've changed the logo to Stern Rake Studio.

Since I'll have a bona fide website (eventually), I thought I should have my own logo instead of hijacking one off the internet, even if the image is public domain.

I staged a hypothetical fight between HMS Orpheus and the Carmagnole, from my Sails of Glory collection, and took over 185 pictures using my old Panasonic Lumix and my new Nikon CoolPix cameras.  The reason I snapped so many pictures is because it was a partly cloudy day and I made several setting changes on my camera, along with turning interior lights on and off.

After deleting all the blurry images, I played around with the color and lighting on each photo using the Windows Paint program and Paint.Net.  Then I used Paint.Net's ink sketch program to make it look like I drew the images.

I wanted to use this image...

...of HMS Orpheus conducting a stern rake maneuver against Carmagnole with "guns blasing," thanks to the Windows Paint program.  Unfortunately, when I uploaded this on to Blogger, the only image I got was of Carmagnole's bowsprit and foremast.

Here's another image I would have liked to use:

I even took "reverse image" photos, but none of them came out as well as I wanted.  The Carmagnole's hull was too dark in all of them, which made it hard to spot the ship's gun ports.

I also took pictures using a grey cotton ball to represent Orpheus' cannon belching smoke.  I would have used the Windows Paint program to make the image more "realistic," but I didn't like the way the cotton ball obscured the details of HMS Orpheus.

For now, I've settled on the current header picture for this blog.  I plan on coming up with a better image--hopefully sooner, rather than later.

In the meantime, among the various photos I do like, I made images with "Stern Rake Studio" imprinted on them using various fonts.  These will be used as logos for future webcomics and YouTube videos.

I'm sure I'll be making more improvements in the future.