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Sunday, February 27, 2011

In The Navy... sing along!

My dad, that is, is in the Navy. He's a part of the cleverly labeled Seabee's (Construction Brigade, C.B.). They've been around since WWII and have the particularly cool slogan, 'We Fight, We Build, Can Do!' I think it's cool, anyhow. My dad asked me to step in and design a logo for the annual gala event, the Seabee Ball. I did a tee-shirt design a few years ago, and was happy to help out again.

I recently learned that Walt 'The Man' Disney himself had designed a number of mascot and logos for the armed forces during WWII, and had a hand in the original Seabee design. I decided to go retro disney with the design, with a shout-out to Steamboat Willy in mind.


After the ball logo made the rounds and got approved, dad asked me to redesign the logo for his personal partition of the navy, NMCB 15. They call themselves the Bat Out Of Hell unit, and that too is a particularly cool title... so I agreed to draw something up.


Like I mentioned, the Seabees are centered on construction and combat. The bee is famous for always having in hand a hammer, a wrench and a gun. I decided to stick to the same type of mood for the Bat piece, crossing a hammer and an M1 Garand (a shout out to the WWII origins) behind the bat. Then I added lots of rope. Every navy logo I could find has lots of rope behind it, I guess as a shout out to the days of sails and boat tethering... or whatever it's called when you tie down a boat.


I scanned the ink drawing into photoshop, and BOOM! Colored the bat. And the other stuff. Looks sharp, no? But! This is supposed to be a bat... OUT OF HELL! This bat seems to be coming... out of a photography studio, or the matrix, or something very, very white. This bat, may even be, dare I say it, a bat out of HEAVEN! Scroll down for hellishness.


Yeah! Now THAT is a bat out of hell! Mwa-ha-ha! Thanks to Spoon Graphics for the free spray-paint photoshop brushes! Those guys do good work.

That's it for me and my government work. To be clear, I'm still a pacifist and don't support war... I just draw stuff for my dad. And I do it for free. Don't judge me!

-Ben

1 comment:

matt said...

BEN!!!! I love this stuff - especially the Walt inspired logo. Looks perfect! Nice work sir.