DEAD MAN'S SHOES
Years ago received a phone call from one of my customers that at that time was working on a film distribution company.
He told me that they were putting together an art show with 12 artists doing posters of the movies they were distributing at that time.
He then said that one of them fell through and they needed a replacement asap!
He knew that l like to do things aside from strictly tattooing so he asked me if l would be up for it
l asked which movies were still available,and he said that l could maybe do 4 Lions( l hadn't seen the movie so l was a bit reluctant on doing a poster for a movie that l didn't even know if l would like) so l told him to give me the list of available movies and l would choose.
Then l saw that "Dead man's shoes' was still up for grabs...oh my!!
for anyone that hasn't seen it do yourself a favour and reach out for it..it's a really really good revenge movie by Shane Meadows,director of 'This is England'
l actually think it's his first movie..
Anyway,l jumped for it!
The bad news was that since they were pretty much wrapping pre-production of the show l literally didn't have any time to create the art for it..only one day.
so l started thinking and l went for it!
l did the sketch by hand and the fonts too, then l inked everything and scan it to the laptop, then l colour it with photoshop.
lt was a simple design but with a powerful message, l usually fill up my drawing a lot but since l didn't have any time l went for something simple and strong.
Turns out that they loved it!!
l went to the opening reception and the piece was favourite for some people..l got very happy that even tho l did't have all the time that l would want l managed to deliver.
after few days my customer sent me this photo of Paddy Considine (the main actor of the film) in front of my piece, apparently he also really liked it and the company gave him a print of it, they also made another one for me that he actually signed!
l have it hung on my shop wall
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have a good night everyone
Allan
I love this kind of stories! You know, about job well done despite tight deadline. Over the years I've been in situations like that myself...a fair share of situations. So I can relate to your story!
Keep posting! :)
Thanks man!
tell me some of those stories please! :)
I'm not an artistic type like you, so I am not so good at storytelling. Also my English is a bit rusty. But I'll try... :)
I remember this project... My team was designing a piece of medical equipment, a pretty complex "smart" thing with a couple of microprocessors inside each with its' own firmware. Also we had to develop the drivers and a PC app to control the device and visualize it's output. After initial design stage I was transferred to another project and haven't heard much about that first project for some time...
So, half a year later... It was a wonderful warm summer day, Friday, around 1 PM. I remember myself thinking that I was only a few hours away from the weekend... Boy, was I wrong! :)
Suddenly my boss comes to me telling that project is scheduled to be presented to clients on Monday afternoon, but there are some "minor problems" with it, so current project team asks the senior developer (me) to assist them. I didn't have any urgent work at the moment so I went to them to check on project status, naively expecting to discover some trivial bug that could be fixed in minutes. The reality was much harsher than I expected. First, project manager simply forgot about this project and never checked on it until today (this guy works in this very company to this day, still "manages" some projects). Second, software developer told me that he never learnt the programming languages required to write the app and device firmware, so he asked a junior programmer and an electronics engineer to write "some code" for him in their spare time while he was sitting there for half a year doing nothing (this guy got fired next week). Third, electronics engineer told me that "he is almost certain" device would work, though he never had a chance to really test it due to lack of firmware and app.
It was a complete disaster! I went back to my boss, told him it's impossible to complete this project in mere hours that were left, told him the presentation has to be delayed. You know how it often happens, the bearer of bad news is the one to blame. I was told that no matter what project must be ready by Monday and if it isn't ready then I'm fired and my boss will personally make sure that I never work in any other company again. That's the way to motivate an employee!
So I was left with only choice to complete several-months-worth of work...in a couple of days. For the rest of Friday I was trying to resolve hardware issues working together with the electronics guy. As I suspected device itself didn't work properly. Untested devices never work properly rigth from the start. So two of us spent maybe 10 hours sitting there, pushing bits around, watching them travel through the data bus and all the wiring with the oscilloscope, poking soldering iron into the PCB. At last we managed to get device to work. Sort of kind of. It was not very stable, but it was a start. Late at night I went home taking the device with me, hoping at least to work on software part from the comfort of my home. Not with my luck! :)
I spent the night completely rewriting firmware and the app. Saturday 8 AM - fuse went off. My UPS failed. After restoring the power I realized that data on my HDD were corrupted, I could not even boot up the system. Then I went back to office. Fortunately, I remembered much of the code I wrote last night, so it only took maybe a couple of hours to redo the work. Unfortunately, with more stable software hardware instabilities became even more apparent.
I called electronics engineer and then we spent another two days trying alleviate hardware and software stability issues. I don't remember much about these two days, I cannot even remember whether any of us went home again this weekend or we stayed in office until Monday.
Monday 5 PM - I went to my boss and told him although device is not ready to be shipped it is sort of ready for presentation (with some luck, fingers crossed!). His answer was like this "Good... good... Keep working on it guys. Presentation's got delayed, have I forgotten to tell you?"
At this moment I felt lightheaded as if I was going to faint. I silently went out his office and headed home. As soon as I reached home I collapsed with sudden fever. Fever lasted for five days and ended as abruptly as it started.
When I came back to work next week I never asked about that damn delayed presentation, so to this day I do not even know if there was a presentation...
I worked for this company for another year. My wife was pregnant with our daughter at the time, so it was not a good time to stay out of job. Next year a colleague of mine offered me a much better job in his company, so I went for it. That's the whole story :)
Wow man... sorry to hear that you did all that work for nothing! bosses can be such assholes sometimes...,but man, you got a story to tell and gotta be proud that you did all that work in no time! have great day ,man and thanks for sharing your story!
:)
No worries, it happened looooong ago, back in 2004 :)
Thanks for the upvote by the way!