Back during Comic Con in July, I was approached about creating a logo for my roommate/friend’s new Twitch Streaming venture: Cockeyed Gaming. I almost forgot about it for a bit, but eventually I got around reeled back in, so the creating began! Here’s the small story of how it all came together.
Why is it called Cockeyed Gaming?
Quite simply, it’s because the two streamers in question went to Ohio State University, and University of South Carolina, who are the Buckeyes and Gamecocks, respectively.
Buckeyes + Gamecocks = Cockeyed
So using that at a leaping off point, here are a few things that I researched/took into consideration:
- Utilizing the Mascots
- Both have the color Red as a school color
- Including PC gaming
Putting Together Ideas
After quickly doodling some ideas in my notebook I ambitiously tried to sketch out my ideas on my Samsung Tablet, but then quickly realized this wasn’t the think tank for me.
Instead, I took it to the desktop and worked out a lot of my ideas in Adobe Illustrator.
The process that ended up working the best for me was just grabbing a bunch of imagery from both the Buckeyes and the Gamecocks and just throwing them together on canvases in Illustrator. I think it worked the best because I was able to spread a lot of the ideas out in one file. Adobe Illustrator is also one of my favorite programs to use, so just being comfortable with it really helped to let my creative juices flow, and runneth over.
The Game Winner
The one composition that stole the show was this one:
What I personally liked about it is that I was able to combine the look of both a Buckeye, as well as a chicken to create this little character with the gaming headset. I even used buckeyes as his eyes! The font for the channel name was also fun and really worked with the gamecock foot. The font to me felt like a good mix of movement and a sprinkle of rage. Isn’t that what gaming is all about?
First Emote Learning Experiences
When I was approached about creating an emote, I literally had to google it. (n00b) Here are a couple pointers that I learned from my creation of a Twitch Emote:
- My thick line art works well with imagery that has to be read on a small scale.
- Even implied cursing gets censored.
After getting my original raging Cocky rejected, I had to work with Crunk to get things approved. What Twitch likes to do is give vague enough feedback to let you know your emote got rejected, so you’re left guessing. As it turns out, even though our little Cocky didn’t actually have any swear words, just the implied symbols were enough to get it to bounce back. I’m hoping the removal of the text does not take away from the feelings that he has deep inside him.
Follow and Support Cockeyed Gaming
Now that you’ve finished reading about my creative journey with my friends at Cockeyed Gaming, all that there’s left to do is have you follow them! Get connected at the following links:
Twitch
Twitter
Instagram
Kelli Urabe 