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Welcome back to Friday Flash Back! If this is your first time seeing these, don't worry this is only week 2, so feel free to look back to last week and see where we left off. 

I chose to skip a couple designs as many of my earliest creations were around the same premise with little deviation, and over time you will see that too as those operator icons took over my free time complete.
 
<center>**Introduction**</center>

As I said in last weeks installment, I had just met this group of people and turned out to really like them, and they are now some of the closest friends I have. Anyway, I noticed one of them had a YouTube channel and kind of posted there, he later told me that this was his big goal in life and years later is still trying to make that a reality. I decided to try and see what I could make for him. 

If you are familiar with Adobe Photoshop then you know that one can go online and download certain brushes that create something, like clouds or stars for example, so that it reduces how much work you have to do or just as additions to the work. I had found a brush for old ships, and that worked perfectly as he was named NorseMasterToki and is absolutely fascinated with the Norse times and Vikings. 

That right there was all the inspiration I needed and about the only creativity I had to make something for him. 

![BrennaCompetition.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/iikrypticsii/243WPNfCmCHoDdyYbuRCmwf5dErvQw2XCJJUoPRe9dsJPRxj4ypHsqRK4jmoewjAaX2Qk)

To begin, I had taken the ship which was all white and added as much color and detail as possible, even to the wooden parts all being covered over with wood texture. Unlike last week, I really was impressed with myself and still kind of am happy with how this came out. This definitely brings back nostalgia of the good days, no work, staying up late at night and hurrying last second to do homework from hanging out with friends. 

Secondly, I worked on the water as it would be the foundation of how I am going to get everything to coincide together. We can all see my skill in my early days particularly with the water, it looks like hot garbage no matter what perspective, but I am improving. Slowly but surely. 

Gradients have always been my friend, even from a younger age I've found myself choosing some good color combinations that just work.(opinionated) And I think that's what happened with the sky in this, it could definitely use some waves and deviation instead of being completely linear but all in all not bad. 

Lastly, I just needed to spruce some things up, add some more detail so the whole picture has some substance. Just like the ship, the anchor, chains, fish, birds and rocks, etc. were all brushes. I know, its terrible, where is the creativity? But just stick with me here, I know a ton of this was taken from free brushes but I really worked hard to make this look decent... All of the things listed came up with white initially, but I added as much detail as possible under the water to make it look atmospheric. 

<center>**Conclusion**</center>

Overall, I probably spent around 6-8 hours give or take from scratch. In the end, my friend loved it and the design became his YouTube banner for the longest time, until I chose again to spruce it up with something better and more modern.  I would say for a long time this was one of my favorite designs made because it took way more effort and design choices than ones previous. However, another design that to this day shocks my skills of looking at things and remaking it still contends with this, as they both came around the same time. 

Make sure to stay tuned for next weeks Flash Back Friday as it will be ***Flashy!***
And thank you for taking the time to read this!

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