Zophar's Domain
Completed on January 17, 1999

I think this was the first freelance graphic I ever did. The way it went, I believe, is that I was shooting my mouth off one day about how the logo Zophar hadup on his site pretty much sucked, and suddenly I found myself indirectly offering to do better.

It turned out pretty good, I thought. I drew the D first, by peicing together bits of other letterings I'd done while in Japan.

The Z's shape, however, took some more effort. I was stumped, having gone though numerous trials before I resolved to just put on some thumping bass music and let the beat take my pencil wherever it went. And after a minute or two, there my Z was. Only a tweak or two would be necessary before I would start coloring it.

It stayed up as the title logo on Zophar's Domain for about nine months. Zophar contacted me after that time had passed, offering to let me redo the logo and possibly the entire site, but I declined.

See, there's some drama here which I suppose I should hit on first, which will really explain why I declined. I originally had this web board called the "romhack board", which was pretty much the center of the early translation scene. It was great to have all of the scene's big players centralized on my site, but like all good things, it came to an end.

The guy who hosted my web page went out of business, and my page (as well as the board) was offline for a few months. During that time, Zophar asked me if he could relocate my board onto his site for the time being, and when I eventually would find new web hosting, I would have the board moved back to my site. I reluctantly agreed.

As time went on, Zophar saw how popular the board was, and decided to slowly absorb it into Zophar's Domain. He changed the board around bit by bit until it really didn't resemble my original board at all. Needless to say, it was pointless to ask him for it back when I eventually found new web hosting (parodius.com), and as I expected, he refused to let me have it back.

So from then on I was kind of on this anti-Zophar thing, which brings this whole story back to when he asked me to redo the logo and website for him. I was so insulted - I guess he felt it would be so much of an honor to redesign the great Zophar's Domain that I would forget all about how he completely fucked me!

So, when he asked, I didn't just refuse - I really tore into him. I think I still have the IRC log saved. I posted it up on my website and publicized it all around when it happened. Since there were a good number of anti-Zophar people besides me who ate this kind of thing up, life was good. Anyhow, yeah, here's the link.

So after that whole incident, Zophar picked his pride up off the floor and calmly approached other people to redo the logo. He hasn't had a good one since, in my opinion. And when swampgas took over the site, well damn, that place just went from bad to worse. But I digress...