My Fave 5 of 2010

Sermon branding has to be the favorite part of what I do here at PVC.   I love the whole process from sitting in sermon planning meetings to designing concepts and then seeing all the pieces come together at the end. These my top five favorite sermon series graphics of 2010.  

Regeneration: Was the first series of 2010.  

Perspectives of Jesus: This was a fun one to design.  The series was based on the different images and how they represented Christ.  You can check out some of the original images I used to create the graphic here.  

Going Places:  I'm always up for the challenge of pulling off faux 3D using Illustrator and photoshop. 

Faith & Luck:  This was my favorite of the year.  I love how the branding extended beyond print and ended up with a pretty crazy stage set.  You can check out that set here.  

Contagious Christianity:  I really like the simplicity of the look for this series.  Check out the sermon bumper my brother Oz created for it here.  

Fun with 1080 X 4748 pixels

On December 5th we opened our new auditorium at PVC.  We went from a dual screen setup to one triple wide screen.  The screen physically measures out to 11ft x 50ft.  

Our setup gives us flexibility to project different sources to the canvas.  This could be anything from full graphic or video, and even picture in picture. This gives us the ability to go from a center video over a graphic to a full screen lyrics over motion video to speaking IMAG over graphics with side notes.  Though I've only work with these dimensions for a couple of weeks I can't help but think of the possibilities with working with such a unique space.   

This image with the strings was live IMAG with a transparent PNG file on a top layer, to give the illusion the live video was blending into the sky.  

Below are a few examples of the graphics built out for the screen and some photos of them projected in service.  

I'm blessed to work with a talented team who is passionate about what they do.  It takes alot more then graphics to pull a service off, everything from lighting, staging, song selection, video production, and live IMAG goes into planning each service.  Which makes for some intense discussions through out the week. We have one goal and that's to create a distraction free environment where believers and non believers can come in worship and receive life through God's word.  

Be sure to check Mankin Media, they are the company that helped create and deploy the system we are using.  

Axis' Guardrail Set Design

A couple of months back I met with our high school ministry team. regarding their new series that was coming up, "Guardrails."  Artwork wise the concept was pretty simple.  In order to take it up a level we decided to carry the look across the stage wall.  We wanted students to feel they were looking across a canyon as they entered the room. 

Once the right image was chosen, I sized it up to the proportions of the walls.  I cut out the projector screen and used that as a presentation graphic.  We printed out wallpaper like strips of the image, using our 41in plotter. 

The high school staff did a great job putting up the wall graphic and constructing the guardrails, which was constructed using pvc pipe which was spray painted metallic silver. 

I love being able to see ideas being executed.

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Faith & Luck Series

Summer has started and have to admit I really had some fun with the design of this series.  From art, stage, to atmosphere around the building.  I believe this has to be one of the best series we've launched coming from the production team.  I'm blessed to work along side some talented individuals that help make this all happen.  Below is a  break down of some of the key elements.  

THE ART

Once we decided on a carnival theme I new where I wanted to go with the artwork. The reasoning behind going with the carnival theme was that the sermon content was going to be pretty heavy and wanted the brand to give it a lighter feel to balance it all out.  I drew inspiration from some old circus posters I found online.  Below are some rough sketches I started with.   

One extra element we did for this series is that I designed some posters that were posted all over the building to promote the new series.  This was something we hadn't done in a while. It helped create some buzz leading up to the start of the series.  

Here's a timelapse video of the making of faith & luck art.

THE WORSHIP GUIDE

We like changing up our worship guide layout.  I came up with a long double sided guide.  The finish size came out to 4.5x10.25.  In order to use something with this length we ended up printing on cardstock to give it some stability.  You can download a sample of our guide here.  

THE INTRO VIDEO

Oz, my brother who also works here, animated the artwork to make a pretty sweet sermon bumper.  This was played right before the speaker went up.    

THE STAGE

The stage was a huge team effort to pull off.  We were blessed to have a professional carpenter come in and volunteer his time to build the framing system for the center piece.  We used our large format plotter to print off patterns that we glued down to the frame.  Jorge, our stage design guru, really made it pop by adding textures and lighting.  We also created a center logo piece, that gave a nice background during speaking IMAG.  

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The Family Works Series Design

We just started a new series this past weekend titled "THE FAMILY WORKS".  We wanted something fresh and fun that would carry over 8 weeks.  

A few days before going to print we had a change of direction along with a new series title.  The whole process was stretching but also came with a great sense of accomplishment when finished.  

I have to give some props to the team members here at PVC  that helped me push through the design. I love that these guys aren't impressed with my bag of tricks but can tell it like it is.  

I'm sure it would have been easier to create this using some sort of 3D software but I can't use what I don't have.  I created the basic shapes in Illustrator and apply the 3D bevel effect. After bringing the pieces into photoshop I adjusted colors, and added textures.  I also used some blurring effects to give it some depth.   

One of the things we like to do every quarter is switch up the worship guide layout.  This is a pretty basic layout nothing fancy just cut to bleed and folded in half.  The simplicity of the layout helped give more real estate for body copy.  I was able to bump up our normal body text up one point.  (very exciting stuff, well at least for those with reading glasses)

The production team came up with a sick stage design.  Thank God for volunteers, air guns & spandex.  They were able to transform the stage in 2 days.  They built a 14ft x 7ft screen for the middle and mounted a old projector to splash stills and video.  

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Tools Of The Trade!

I'm a strong believer that tools shouldn't make or break a project.  But having them sure helps.  I've been asked several times what we use to produce our printed pieces here at PVC.  These tools have helped saved time and money and are a vital part of our production.  

HP DesignJet z2100:

This bad boy is our large format printer! It prints 41 inch wide by up too 150 ft long.  We use this primarily for stage set backdrops.  We occasionally use it for large posters and displays as well.  You can easily pay $7sq.ft. at our local printing shop.  Having this in-house has brought the cost down to about $1sq.ft 

Xerox Docucolor 252

This machine is a little less then a year old.  We use this primarily for color printing of  posters, worship guides, hand outs, books and so on.  Before we got this printer it would take half a day to print our worship guides for the weekends.  Now we can get them all printed in about a hour or less.  It has a high capacity feed for large print up too 13x19 paper.  It also has a booklet finisher.  Only cons is that it's loud and hot.  We use to have it in our office and would have to have the AC pumping non stop.  

Industria 480E Paper Cutter

The newest addition to the family.  Producing anything with a bleed use to be a nightmare.  We had to take stuff to a print shop and have it cut.  After having several deadlines not met and time when the cuts were wrong we decided on getting our own machine.  After months of researching I found this cutter and it was the best product for the price.  It' cuts our 17 in. paper in 2 in. stacks.  It's a very easy to use machine.  Now we're able to turn around jobs more quickly with options of using bleed cuts.  I LOVE THIS THING!!!

Martin Yale 959 Auto Folder

Not the most glamorous of the bunch but it's another time saver.  When I got here they use to fold all worship guides by hand.  They also did perforation by hand as well.  This particular folder does double folds, perforation and even scoring.  This one is a tricky beast.  You have to look at it just right or it might jam.  But it does make it life easier.  

These are some of the tools we are using here if you have any question feel free to ask.  

Our Poor Stage In A Year

ANother year has flown by here at PVC and another is in full swing!  I just wanted to give some props to the stage crew that has been involved in stage production over the last year!  It's been a fun ride.  Here are some pics of how our stage has changed through the year.  Enjoy, and if you want take take a peek at the current set be sure to go on over to mitchisms.com.

 

Bring On The FooFooness

This week we finished off our "Church I See" series.  Which means a new set design this week.  Big props to Cierra for leading on this set and making it happen.  We kept the basic lighting frame and brought some old fabric we had used last year for Christmas.  Check out my flick photo-stream for more shots.  

Latest Stage Project

I love sketch-up!  I used it last night and in a matter of a couple of hours got the final approval on this project I'm working on.   It's for a youth convention at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, right off the San Antonio River Walk. This convention brings in about 6,000 - 8,000 students.   It's in a 270ft x 390ft Hall with 35ft ceiling and six large pillars.  This place definitely has it challenges but we've come up with a good solution so the audience can at least see good IMAG from all areas of the building.  We went with using  pvc pipe as the main backdrop, going to be doing lighting and video on it.  Side screens are going to be 25ft x 30ft.  We have a pretty cool circular truss with going to be loaded with LED light for fill light.  I'm excited to see the final project once its all set and done.  I'll be posting finish pics when I go the event.  Here is a short video run through of it.  

Convention Layout from Joe Cavazos on Vimeo.

From Sketch-up Too Sunday!

This post is part of Creative Chaos on Ragamuffinsoul.com

Yesterday we started a new series and along with that came a new set design.  The team really pulled through to make this happen and such a short turn-around.  I was really excited we stepped it up from our napkin drawings (sorry Jorge) and started using the google sketch-up application.  It's basically a very user friendly 3d sketch application.  Building our stage took a little while, but we now have a template to work with. for the future.  This really help to address issues before we even stepped foot on the stage.  

But enough of me talking check out the photos down below.  Let me know if you have any problems with the slideshow, this is the first time using slideshow app.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.