Courtesy of a link from SA Rocks this afternoon I discovered their latest music video for “Soundtracks and Comebacks”, animated by Mike Scott of Bru and Boegie.

I used to visit Bru and Boegie almost daily and then, all of a sudden, somehow managed to completely forget about the site. After seeing what Mike has been up to animating music videos, winning t-shirt design contests and even developing a new kids show, I am hugely impressed. Great to see him getting recognized and growing from strength to strength. I’ve most certainly bookmarked the site now.

Judge his amazing illustration and animation skills for yourself, all the while listening to pure aural bliss.

For the design, I cut out the composition from it’s original background and carefully drew the soldier’s legs into the image. The end result was a vector sketch filled with a palette of camouflage colours. The wallpaper was available for download.

Over the weekend I was contacted by Michael Yon’s attorney advising me that displaying the photo on my blog, as well as creating an “unauthorized reproduction” of the photo was infringing on the image’s copyright. By placing my own copyright on my design in the form of a website address the design was improper and illegal. Furthermore, I must remove both the photo and my design from my site.

I understand why the copyright has been placed on the photo and how it guards the photo from uses which are inflammatory, political or commercial in nature. I also understand I am guilty of not leaving a reference to Michael Yon’s photo from within the image, only the blog post I display it from. I am not questioning if my design infringes on the copyright. I am just questioning the complexity of the copyright on the photo.

Michael says: “Interest in the war is waning back home, I’m told, which may explain the thinning ranks of reporters over here. Ironically, with fewer reporters here every day, it’s even more critical to keep the few sources of news on the ground working. Please continue to spread the word about my work and please support this site by clicking here.”

In today’s world with social media being such a powerful marketing tool would it not make more sense to change the wording on the design (as I recommended to Mr Yon’s attorney) and use the design to further the viral campaign for Michael Yon’s work.

This to me would be a far better solution with much better rewards for Mr Yon’s courageous work.

Unfortunately I have lost the url of where I found this photo so I cannot reference the photographer. Thanks for the url John.

The photo was taken by Michael Yon, an independent pro-war photographer embedded in Iraq.

The end result

This image has been deleted from the site. The reasoning can be found here.

Download:

• Soldier and baby girl wallpaper (1280 X 1024 pixels)
• Soldier and baby girl wallpaper (1280 X 800 pixels)
• Soldier and baby girl wallpaper (1024 X 768 pixels)

For the geeks out there that want to know how I made this wallpaper: I imported the photo into Adobe Illustrator CS3 and used the trace tool to convert the image into vector paths. I then used the pen tool to perfect the paths and draw the soldier’s legs. I filled the paths with a selection of colours. I then copied my vector image into Adobe Photoshop, applied an outer glow to the image, and dropped a recycled paper image layer on top of the vector image layer. I set the recycled paper layer’s color mode to “Overlay” and voila.

When Nic told me about the SA Rocks Badge Design competition I thought I could use my superman jocks inspiration and design a badge bloggers are proud to “wear” on their site. Proudly telling the world that SA Rocks their underpants! Jon Hicks came up with a similar badge idea for the Britpack, a bunch of UK web designers (and you thought the SA Blogosphere was cliquey!).

The badge design I came up with comes in a very colourful version, and a toned down version. I wasn’t quite sure which one i preferred so I have posted them both. Different strokes for different folks.

Give me your thoughts on the design.

Update:

As requested by Lorissa and Hollywoodgal we now have a “sexy pants” badge!

A special thanks to The Granny Wrangler who sacrificed her friday night with Muppet playing bridge to design some pokerdot pants.

“Herewith a little jpeg simply as a token of TGW’s support for you winning the competition.”