Hot Ghetto Mess is one of my favorite guilty pleasures websites. When I saw this one picture of this large woman dropping it like it's hot in a thong (or what I'm assuming is a thong), I knew a design was born. I wonder if HGM needs a designer….

Dimensions: 513 x 540
File Size: 174 KB
Elapsed Time: 1 hour 10 min.

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Look at that lineup; I wish this was a real CD! I always like making CD covers…it's something about the square palette that's inspiring. This was actually a pretty basic image to make. Strokes, layer styles and gradients.

Dimensions: 500×500
File Size: 64 KB
Elapsed Time: 20 min.

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King's famous Engrish winning quote. The latter of that saying? "I desire a real challenge!" This is a big image, so make sure to download it to see it close-up. Now that I look at this…I think it might've looked better without the clouds. Damn…now I want to play King of Fighters!

Dimensions: 3200×2000
File Size: 577 KB
Elapsed Time: 20-30 min.

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Illustrator CS2 has some very interesting new features…one of which is the 3D Transform Effect (popular in Photoshop 6 and 7 and now gone from CS and CS2). Basically, you make a path, rotate it on either its X-, Y- or Z-axis, adjust lighting and voila…a 3D render. The fact that it generates this off of an arbitrary path is great. Imagine if you could actually put in quadratic equations and graph conic solids! Shit, I could've so used this in college.

Limited edition BGB vase, anyone?

Dimensions: 462×462
File Size: 19 KB
Elapsed Time: 10 min.

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Another Illustrator CS2 venture — it looks much better at high resolution, but it's not too shabby at this size either. Command of the pen tool makes nice kitschy designs like this possible, not to mention a pinch of imagination. Hell, I think I'm all caught up now.

Dimensions: 458×423
File Size: 27 KB
Elapsed Time: 15 min.