Everything started back in 2019, probably the period where I've played Counter-Strike: Global Offensive the most. I used to play everyday, for multiple dozens of hours every week. I wasn't even that good, I've never managed to get out of Gold Nova, except when I recently started to create multiple accounts to check if I was stuck in an excessively low rank, so eventually I placed myself in Master Guardian and stopped playing in the last months.
Anyway, back in the day, I preferred TeamSpeak 3 to Discord, since it was quick to switch between rooms, a little hard to understand at first, but it felt like a home, compared to the newer, flashier Discord, which reminded me of Skype. Inside the TS3 server I used to go, there was a small and comfy community of friends, that even if I knew just a few in real life, I played countless CS:GO matches with. By playing with those fellas, a name slowly took form, it still wasn't that important though, we went along the lines of "539 gang", and to this day... I honestly still don't know what that number meant.
We made a Telegram group, to talk to each other without having the hassle to log onto TS3 and chat while we weren't home. In not much, the group changed nome to "Hoes Mad Official Group" and after a few days, it was made public, posted on our Instagram profiles to invite people, and enlarged the size of the community in a week or so.
As the community became a solid group of friends who shared memes, played games and trash talked against each other just for fun (and trust me, it was lots of fun), we needed a logo, a group profile picture. Something great that would have made us laugh and think about the entire group everytime we'd look at it.
I took this responsability and started working on it. I had a few ideas, one thing I enjoyed a lot back in 2018 were sbubbys, which are altered versions of popular logos, made mostly for comical purpose. I've done a few through the course of years, but even if a lot of crap got posted inside the subreddit, I never posted mines on it and kept them for myself, probably thinking that they weren't good enough.
You have no idea how much I love this rhythm game, it plays smoothly, the styles used for every version are incredible, and of course, the music is awesome.
Before July 2019, I've played SDVX for a few months, and I still haven't stopped playing it, it's the game that slowly made me better at any other music game, like Arcaea or IIDX.
By the way, excluding the enormous technicality required to master the hardest charts, SDVX always got my attention because of how good the interface looks, including the flashy logos that have been created for it.
Getting over the fact that I had to study for my exams, I spent around 6 to 7 hours working on the logo and listening to my friend Pietro's feedback (I might show the chat logs too once I recover them lol).
For the first time in a while, I was very, VERY satisfied about something that I've done. And I'm glad the guys liked it as much as I did.
I'll be honest, I haven't played many Final Fantasy games, I just know the stories of the many installments that have been made, without going too much in-depth, and how good the soundtrack is, how solid it's been for all these years. Nobuo Uematsu truly is a great composer.
Though, for what I've played, (3, 6, 7, 9, fxxk you 13 and fXXk you 15 you really suck), I consider it a really good series of games. So... why shouldn't I play a little on its amazing logo design, used for almost any FF game?
So I did. The figure used behind the title, is a water-gun that me and my friend "Fra" found while browsing on Amazon back in the latest months of 2019. We really liked it because of the spanish captions mixed with chinese gibberish that were written under the images. Unfortunately, we obviously couldn't understand the latter one.
I am aware of the fact that there are some imperfections, but this was kinda rushed. Also, back in 2019 I didn't know about the rounding options for text in PS, so many of the projects I worked on looked way more pixelated that they should've been.
So I made it once again, but with the skills I've acquired with time! Does it still suck? Yes, it does! Though you can see it on both white and dark surfaces now without looking like hot garbage!
Oh, did you notice a "II"? Yeah, the group owner, removed, deleted, annihilated the group, so we created it once again, this was done a few days before the end of August.
It's not that the first logo wasn't appreciated by others, but we simply didn't use the Final Fantasy one. I totally didn't fall in love with Beastars, though the week before I made the logo, I watched it and kinda enjoyed, I still haven't watched the second season though...
It was a cool show overall, and it had a pretty normal logo. But to satisfy the desire of one of my friends, "Giustino", which I played some ITG with in the past, I tried to recreate the logo with different words.
It's not one of my favourites but damn, it turned out pretty well! To create it, I've only used some of the letters that were in the original logo, mirroring them, putting them together... then I copied the B's color, and voilà!
Yeah, there are no references nor indications that this was made for the second group, lol.
I'm not a huge Call of Duty fan, I think I have a decent KDR only on the latest Modern Warfare, and it's not even a series I grew with, since I mostly played Nintendo games when I was younger.
But man, Black Ops 2 was NUTS. My classmates played it, and sometimes I played too when I had the chance, even if I sucked, a lot. A couple years later, during my first years of secondary school, I bought it on the WiiU, and experienced what has been the childhood of many kids before me. The game had some flaws, and there were no DLCs on the WiiU version, but that's not going to stop me from saying how great that game is. The Campaign is great, I played it more than once, and the Multiplayer... man, it felt really polished.
Guess what, I made one of the logos, taking inspiration from the BO2 game cover. And I even put my face in it!
Before the first wave of the pandemic was over, I started playing Dark Souls 3, the game was gifted to me by Fra, it's one of his favourite games, and it's cool hearing talk about the lore, or just watching him play, since he's really good at it.
I still haven't finished the game, mostly because I started playing IIDX in June 2020, taking a break from SDVX as well, since I wanted to try beatmania for literally years.
I wish I could play the other Souls too, even Bloodborne, now that my dad owns a PS4.
Too bad we're reaching the end of the group's lifespan. Its death was caused by the uncontrollable autism from the current owner, which slowly destroyed the group with his retarded attitude, but it wasn't entirely his fault.
Anyway, I wanted to make another Hoes Mad logo, and there's not much to say about this one. My love for DDR and dance games is immeasurable, if I recall correctly, DDR Extreme was the first videogame I've ever played, back in 2005 or 2006 when my family took me to Cervia, and back in those days, DDR was very popular. I don't remember much, but the detail I remember the most was the big purple number that kept track of the combo. I just really liked numbers and maths when I was just a kid.
I want the arcades to open again, I haven't played a song since October...
After it got wrecked again, a desperate attempt to recreate the group for the second time was made.
This time I was aiming for something ridicolous, something I completely hated, mostly to mock the owner of the group that decided me to remove me from the admins and added many dudes that never, literally never wrote a single message in the old group.
This genuinely sucks, I made it in 5 minutes.
Man, I really miss the last year. And the group. Everything was so much better.