I did say when I renewed Everything Louder's domain name that the site would exist at least for another year, well that wasn't strictly true because on 27th November, Everything Louder became The Iconic Meat Loaf. For the past few weeks I have been thinking about the name Everything Louder and realised that it was probably better suited to a website about audio or video files rather than silent images but I had no idea on what to call it.
I discussed the situation with Sukie, who joined the team a few months ago and after I gave her an idea of the sort of thing I wanted from the name, she came up with the suggestion of 'The Iconic Meat Loaf'. I went away and thought about it and the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was perfect.
Of course a new name deserves a new look and whilst I liked Everything Louder's red and black layout, I had been told that light text on dark backgrounds is harder to read. The colour scheme was fairly easy to put together but the graphics was another story. It was a nightmare to find a modern picture of Meat Loaf to use. The one I ended up using wasn't perfect because of the file size but it was the one most suited to the site name.

A few weeks on from the rebranding, I've reflected on what tis has brought the site. Most notably is the Celebrity Site Of The Day Award, which we won on December 9th. We won this award six months ago as Everything Louder but to recieve it again is a huge honour. There's the likes on Facebook plus inclreased hits to the website. All of these things have reinforced the idea that I did the right thing in opting to rename the site.

For months I have been looking at what various artists offer on their VIP ticket packages and whether I consider them to be worth the money. Personally I don't think the ones that charge in the region of £200 for a seat, programme and a dinner with the other VIP guests is worth the money. I'm going to talk in particular about the Meet and Greet Ticket packages which give fans the opportunity to meet their favourite artists. Normally these packages include a premium seat in the first few rows plus merchandise. The cheapest I have seen these packages for is £218. Considering their price, are these tickets really worth it? Some may argue that artist should be willing to give something back to their fans and do them for nothing, others may say that it's just a way of getting more money out of gullible fans who believe it is worth the money. On the flip side of this there are people who think that if an artist means a lot to you and you can afford it then why shouldn't you fulfil your dream in meeting them? I attended a Meet and Greet in 2010 and I believe it was worth the money. Meat Loaf is an entertainer who I have admired for years and I'd always thought it would be brilliant to meet a celebrity I'd admired for that long so when the Meet and Greet tickets came up I had no hesitation in purchasing the package. It cost £200 but the memories I got from that evening were priceless. Meat Loaf was a pleasant man and gave each person there some time to chat to him. I think it was well worth the money I paid and I'd do it again without question. There has been occasions when I have read accounts of Meet and Greets with other artists that haven't been such positive experiences and that is when the worth of these packages need to be questioned. Who wants to pay that kind of money to discover that the artist you have idolised and dreamt of meeting is actually a bit of an idiot who doesn't seem to care about giving their fans a brilliant experience. Thankfully Meat Loaf is not like that and I've never read any reports of a fan being disappointed over their meeting with him. I have on occasions read about negative parts of a Meet and Greet but they have been with the venue staff or some other aspect out of Meat's control.

I'm going to make an exception to my normal stance of remaining fairly anonymous and actually post the picture that was taken at my meet and greet. It's not the greatest of photos because I was extremely nervous but here it is anyway:

I was thinking the other day that I'd have loved the promotion we could have got from having Meat Loaf share something on our site and since he's occasionally shared reviews that fans have written, including linking to their websites, I'm thinking we're in the wrong business. We don't need to be wasting our time with all these silly images when we could have used the time for something else. Then I look once again in the cover of Hell in A Handbasket and I see a photograph of Meat and I'm sat there thinking that it would be perfect to use in a graphic so yesterday I set to work at turning this photo into a desktop. The first idea got scrapped as it just didn't work and I was just playing with the different blending modes and there it was, the idea that would become the finished product. Skip past a few more experimenting with other layers and the text and we have something that is worthy of sharing on the site. I was looking at exactly why Everything Louder is about images rather than words. We're better at it.
I got the reinforcement of this when I shared the desktop and got positive feedback from other fans, who are the people that Everything Louder exists for.

I may have mentioned on occasion, a certain piece of artwork on Everything Louder's website that was liked by a certain Mr Loaf and those who may have read the blog or a few of the other Meat Loaf sites may remember that Meat Loaf asked if he could use the artwork in the booklet.

Well that was something like six months ago and today, when the Australian release went on sale, I actually found out whether this artwork was used and if it was used, how it was used. The original artwork was cropped down to remove the text and the blue colour was changed to a sepia toning to go with the colour scheme of the page it was included on. The credit is apparantely given under my real name and not under Everything Louder's name as I'd have preferred, after all, just think of the promotion the site would get from it. It doesn't matter in the long run and it really is an honour for the artwork to be published and I simply am grateful to Meat Loaf and to the other fans for their kind words and compliments.

To celebrate this, look out for a new desktop within the next few days.

I saw a comment on a photo shared within a Facebook group the other day asking why the artist's watermark had been removed from the image and someone responds saying that watermarks are useless and if you don't want others to use your graphics then don't upload them because this is the internet. 
As Everything Louder is a website that marks all the images uploaded, you can be sure that I have an opinion on this. 
I don't mind people using the graphics or even sharing them on sites like Facebook as long as the watermark stays intact. That watermark is not only a way of advertising the site but it's a way of ensuring that the credit for the artwork doesn't go to someone who doesn't deserve it. I'm not to fussed over the credit on screencaps (although I welcome it) but to deliberately go and edit out a watermark on an artistic image that someone else has spent time and effort on is wrong. I can see why people like Getty Images place their watermarks right in the centre of the images if that is the way some people think and it's making me rethink the placement of Everything Louder's credit on desktops.

This blog has been quiet lately but that doesn't necessarily mean that things have been quiet for Everything Louder. Since I last posted, I've actually finished screencapping the MSO DVD. I was a little bit sad when I'd reached the end as it is such a fantastic DVD. The fact that I say it's finished of course doesn't mean that there will never be any new screencaps posted from that DVD because if I find any that are worthy of going in the galleries whilst I'm watching the DVD then I will post them.

We've also got a couple of new graphics, including a new desktop. I ended up making three different versions of the desktop but two of them got scrapped as it was felt that they were a bit too feminine. The icon set that was recentely uploaded is one that has taken several months to get finished, simply because there wasn't the time to sit and sort through the screencaps to find ones that you could put a quote with. In addition to this I also created a promo video for Everything Louder and added a forum to the site.

So looking forward to the future, we've got a few things planned but can't say when they'll be done by. There's a Celebrity Apprentice graphics set in progress and an MSO icon set and there may be a new and very special desktop coming soon but whether that goes ahead or not, only time will tell.

That's all I'm saying for now.

The work of The Painted Turtle is truly extraordinary, as are the achievements of the children who attend their innovative all year round camp, and this was the charity Meat Loaf took to his heart when he agreed to appear in Celebrity Apprentice USA 2011.

This is the first in a range of wristbands being sold by http://www.loafdomturtle.net/ to raise funds for The Painted Turtle, and bears the legendary line Meat Loaf uses to close every concert ..

DON'T YOU EVER STOP ROCKING!!!

It's glow in the dark finish glow makes this perfect for concerts too. It beats wearing glow sticks and the money you spend will help a fantastic charity! Make sure next time Meat tours in your area you are are wearing these!

Want one of these cool wristbands? You can get your own for just $5 plus P&P at Loafdom for The Turtle and if you've got loads of friends who would like one too, you can order 10 and they'll send them out postage free.

I've not uploded many screencaps to Everything Louder lately because I've been busy working on the Loafdom for The Turtle project but I've finally had a little bit of time to do some.
I started off with moving some of the albums around into more sensible categories and then began on screencapping the DVD that came with the Welcome To The Neighbourhood Collectors Edition and I was hoping to get some nice pictures from the videos but the quality wasn't as good as I'd have liked them to be. I know I've always got Photoshop to edit them but there's limits to what that can do for an image that is poor quality to begin with.

Not long after I'd done the screencaps from WTTN, I upgraded Power DVD and I was surprised in the difference on some of the caps I managed to get and I got some lovely ones from MSO, which on the earlier version were grainy at times. 

I wasn't happy with the header on the site since I thought it was a bit plain so I decided to change it. However, these things are easier said than done sometimes, particularly as I can be my own worst critic. I saw a beautiful brush set by one of my favourite artists which I knew would be perfect (If you have Photoshop it's well worth checking out her work. You can find it at DeviantArt). I also saw some photos of Meat I liked on a celebrity images site.
This site was advertising web use for $10 which I thought was pretty reasonable so I made up a mock up of a new header using the previews. I was really happy with how it looked and was ready to go ahead and purchase the three images I wanted to use but then I read the T&C's and discover that I can't edit them so I email one of the account managers explaining how I wanted to use them and it was going to end up costing me $50 per image instead. There was no way I was going to pay $150 to make a website header so it was back to the drawing board. I played around with a few other photos and found a few I liked by a fellow fan who I had met at Meat's Birmingham concert. She was happy for me to use the photos so that was a relief. Whilst I was waiting to hear back from the other photographer I was originally planning on using, I found another fan's pictures from the same concert and some of them were very good. He very kindly gave me permission to use one of his photo and the header is now finished.
I'm really happy with the current header for the site and have gradually changed all the associated branding on Facebook and Twitter to match.

A few weeks ago and just out of curiosity, I looked up how much it would cost to jion the fanclub of a group I liked when I was about 11 and what you got for your money. For this group it cost $40 a year and for your money you got exclusive songs, access to exclusive events, the chance to win Meet and Greets with the band and discounts for the online stores. Pretty straightforward fanclub stuff really but the range of prices offered by other acts varies so much with the most expensive of these fan club packages being at $159 per year.
This has got me thinking more about the purpose of fanclubs and whether they are just a way of exploiting the loyaly of fans.
The fans are what makes an artist successful, they're the ones that buy the albums when they first come out, they're the ones that buy the concert tickets. Isn't that enough? Why do they have to be charged even more to get 'exclusive' content that could easily be offered for free? What about those fans who have been loyal to an artist but cannot afford the membership charges? They would be the ones who were losing out.
On the flip side of the coin, you could argue that you get for what you pay for and why should you get something for nothing? Surely it's enough that the artist releases new albums and goes on tour? You buy your ticket, you see the concert? The concert is your reward for the money you spend on the ticket.
Meat Loaf doesn't have an official fanclub anymore and I think it is a shame that he doesn't have one anymore as I'd have loved to have seen it offer some of the things I have read about from other artists. At the moment we pay nothing so in the theory of getting what you pay for, we should expect nothing other than what would normally be expected out of an artist.

As I said in a previous post, Everything Louder recieved the Celebrity Site of The Day award on 8th June and I looked at some of the other recipients of the award. Some of the other sites were really pretty so that got me thinking about how I can improve Everything Louder. As much as I wanted a pretty site at the time, it wasn't going to work for the subject matter so I experimented a bit and came up with a new idea.

With the old layout, it was only the galleries that got updated regularly and there was no news or anything like that on the site. A lot of these other sites had news and after trying to find ways to encorporate it into the current site layout, I decided to try another system altogether. I decided to experiment with Worpress which was used on a lot of the other fansites and came up with a layout which I put out to a few friends to evaluate. Overall the response was good and so on Monday, the new layout was launched on the domain. It was easier to transfer it over than I thought it would be and the beauty of this system is that I don't have to be tied to the one computer to do site updates.

I hope you all like the new layout.

It seems that things for Everything Louder are looking up because not only has one of the individual pieces of artwork got recognition, the whole site has, in the form of 'Celebrity Site of The Day'.

I submitted the site to Celebrity Site of The Day, mainly to get it listed on their site. I certainly wasn't expecting it to ever be named Celebrity Site of The Day since the requirements for that title were that the site must have something special, for example a good layout, good design, excellent graphics or lots of information to become Celebrity Site of the Day. I guess I'm still my own worst critic because today, after less than a week 'Everything Louder is Celebrity Site of The Day'.

For today, Everything Louder's link will be on the homepage of 'Celebrity Site of The Day' and it will be listed in the winner's archive. Hopefully it'll generate more hits for the site.

I mentioned in a previous post that a piece of artwork got recognition and said that elaborate more in another post and so here I am keeping to my word.
Meat Loaf and three of his Celebrity Apprentice team mates released a single recentely called 'Stand In The Storm' which is available from the US iTunes store. I couldn't purchase this single myself but I saw the artwork that the download came with and didn't think much of it so whilst waiting for a file to download, I decided to make my own. I used the same Celebrity Apprentice promotional shots as a nother fan had in their creation but I went for a different style, using different fonts and layer styles. Once the image was complete, I decided to upload it to various places on the internet because although I didn't have much use for it myself, I thought someone might find a use for it.
I recieved some lovely comments from other fans and a few days after sharing it on MLUKFC. I get several emails and Facebook messages. The first one I read told me to go to MLUKFC. I immediately thought about the things I'd said lately and went to the site. I go to the thread that the message told me to look in and I see that the artwork I shared was quoted by none other than Meat Loaf himself. He said he liked it. I was so amazed to have someone I admire so much recognise my work. I read the rest of his message and he asked if he could use it in the CD booklet. By this time I was speechless, it took me about 10 minutes to be able to type out a reply to him.
I've been teaching myself to make graphics for six years and it's not always been easy. I'd got used to having my creations ignored so to have this kind of recognition was beyond a dream come true.

As yet I don't know anymore information about it but regardless if it does or doesn't get used, it is still a moment I will never forget.

Thank you to everyone who has sent me congratulations and feedback on the artwork.

I was thinking that without doing screencaps of Celebrity Apprentice every week, other things would get done quicker on the site but that's not been the case. The two big tasks that are planned/in progress are still just that. The review of 'In Search of Paradise' was one of the tasks that I was hoping to get finished but I discover that the DVD has a scratch on it and it won't play properly. I buy a replacement but I have to wait almost a week for it to arrive because of the Bank Holiday weekend.
The other task is the Celebrity Apprentice graphics set which is making very slow progress at the moment because of a lack of creative vibes. I've got about three icons so far and I need at least five more before I'll call it a set. I don't know why creativity is so low at the moment because I should be very inspired considering the recognition I got last week for a creation (more about that in another post).

Everything Louder is nearly a year old and when I set the site up I said that the site's future would depend on how successful it has been at its first anniversary. It took a while but it's starting to kick off and I think that more and more people are beginning to realise that the site exists and so today the domain name for Everything Louder was renewed meaning that the site will be around for another year at least.
Again the site will have its future decided on again this time next year, but until then I will endeavour to provide the Meat Loaf community with more screencaps and graphics.

I know that screencapping hasn't finished for Celebrity Apprentice as there's still one episode left but what is next for Everything Louder after this project is finished?
Firstly there is a half written review of the 'In Search of Paradise' documentary waiting to be finished and I imagine that'll be the next priority but since I can't concentrate on writing a review for huge amounts of time it'll be spaced in between screencapping MSO and Three Bats Live. Not only that but there will be a Celebrity Apprentice graphics set available at some point in the not too distant future. Quite what that set will contain is yet to be decided on but most likely it'll be some small icons, larger icons and banners and possibly a couple of desktops too.
Now Everything Louder has started to kick off we're not going anywhere.

The current version of Everything Louder is approaching it's first anniversary and the site has just reached a landmark. The aim of the website is to be the number one source for Meat Loaf screencaps and graphics and whilst that can't actually be measured accurately, the number of images in the gallery can be.
Today Everything Louder celebrated it's 500th upload and that 500th image is a special commemorative desktop.

I would like to thank everyone who has supported Everything Louder this year and I look forward to many more years of providing the Meat Loaf community with screencaps and graphics.

I'm sure anyone reading this blog already knows who made the final two in Celebrity Apprentice so this hopefully shouldn't ruin the surprise. After surviving yet another boardroom and making it to the final four Meat Loaf, along with the other contestants faced an interview with the three previous winners. The panel asked questions on their weaknesses, the things they had to offer the competition as well as the contestant they'd throw under a bus. Whilst I felt that one of the panel seemed to have it in for Meat, I felt he handled it well.
It came to the firings and the first to go was Lil' Jon who was fired because when asked by the panel who he thought should be in the final two he didn't give himself. With Lil' Jon gone Donald Trump went to focus on to Meat Loaf's emotions and although he said that he liked the fact that Meat wears his heart on his sleeve, his emotions weren't always an advantage in the business setting and Meat was fired.
Meat Loaf may not be called a 'winner' in terms of the show but I feel that sometimes that everything particularly if you're not true to yourself. Throughout Celebrity Apprentice Meat has demonstrated that he's a hard worker, is passionate about everything he does and his charity but is also someone that will stand up for himself if needs to be without making any enemies. I have more respect for a person like that than one who wins by backstabbing or cares only about making themselves look good.
Not only that but there are plenty of things that Meat has achieved in his time on Celebrity Apprentice, most notably the $204,580 he raised for The Painted Turtle. He also says that he's learnt so much about himself from doing the show and that too should be considered a victory.

A couple of people I know have asked me about whether Meat Loaf knows about Everything Louder and whether he approves of the artwork. I know the artwork hasn't had his approval and as for his knowledge that the site even exists, I don't know. I've never been contacted about the content and so all I can think is that he might know it exists. I try to ensure that the content of the site portrays him positively but at the end of the day it's a fansite. I created it for his fans.
I have thought about writing to him, telling him the site exists and if there are any issues with the content then I'd gladly take it down or swap it but I've been to scared to do it. After all, it's better to hear nothing than being told negative things from a person you respect so much about a site that you work hard on? If you get that kind of feedback, is it going to affect the future of the site? Some of my friends may know the story of some feedback I recieved a few years ago about a website I used to run. It was abrupt and without any kind of nicety to soften the blow of the errors they pointed out. I fixed the errors but because of the way they had asked me, I never felt the same way about the site again.
I know that Everything Louder is different from this other site simply because of the person it's dedicated to but the feedback may end up coming from an agent, who doesn't appreciate the efforts that fans put into projects like this. For now I think I will just carry on the way I have been and if Meat or his agents/managers have something to say about the site then they can contact me.

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I was adding a new page to Everything Louder and I said I'd elsborate more in another post. As we all know Meat Loaf is a charitable man with a big heart and we also know that he's currently appearing in Celebrity Apprentice to raise money for The Painted Turtle. Somehow in a discussion, the matter of us supporting his charity came up and one of the fans suggested using webspace to promote the book that Team Backbone wrote in Episode 2, that is being sold to raise money for Meat's charity. Everything Louder is a website, I have webspace to spare so why not put some of that webspace to good use and support this fantastic charity by adding just one more page to the site? So that is what I have done and now you can find the links to buy your copy of  'Not So Little Jon' on Everything Louder.
Meat Loaf and his Backbone team mates, John Rich, Lil Jon and Mark McGrath are also planning to release a song together to raise money for their four charities and when that's released the links for that will be added to the page as well.

Every time I go to add a new main page to the site it's the same story. It has to be added to the navigation structure or it'll be a hidden page and that's not really all that helpful if I actually want people to read the page. Adding links to the top navigation bar is reasonably simple as they're just text links but the main navigation bar has image links (I wanted a nice font) so every time I add a page I've got to make a new button. The trouble is I'd never saved an editable file of the menu button and the new button never looks quite like the rest of the set so I've got to remake the whole set. I've lost count of the amount of times I've had to do this so this time I've remembered to do an editable file.
The new page that I'm working on is not strictly a new page, it's reintroducing one of the old ones that was used for the Hang Cool Fan Campaign last year. I'll elaborate more on this in another post.

The Celebrity Apprentice screencaps will be online tomorrow.

I've not made a new desktop in a while and since I found a picture that I really liked I thought it would be a shame not to use it in some kind of desktop. The trouble is that sometimes pictures themselves don't give you much inspiration on how to make them into something more artistic so every so often I'll buy a Photoshop magazine. I never follow the tutorials in them all the way through, since I usually go off and do my own thing but they're a good inspiration. The latest desktop that I have made was inspired by one of these tutorials although if you'd have seen the image that I used as inspiration and the finished product, you'd have a hard job recognising any similarity between the two.

Something I find when reading tutorials for graphics is that they tend to result in a rather feminine looking end product and they usually use a picture of a woman or girl. That's not helpful for me so I had to learn to adapt. Sometimes it may seem that all you'd need to do is swap pink for blue but it's not that simple as tutorials are actually written with a colour scheme in mind and sometimes you've got to change the blending modes because of it. It's why I learnt to use these tutorials as inspiration rather than following them and I hope it's made me a better artist.

In amongst the weekly task of screencapping Celebrity Apprentice, I'm trying to review 'In Search of Paradise' which takes you behind the scenes of the 2007 Tour. This, like the review of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra DVD is not proving to be an easy thing to get started. How do you start off a review in the first place? I explained on the MSO review that I picked that one because Meat Loaf singing with an orchestra seems natural but how do you start off a review of a documentary? Do you tell people you picked it just because people seemd to be talking about it? Yes. That is the reason I picked it and although I found the documentary facinating, there were also some negative feelings that arose the first time I watched the DVD. I'm not going to go into them now, I'll save that for the review but I don't want to write those negatives down in a way that would cause anyone offence.
I think this is one that'll need a lot of thought and I'll probably be asking for a couple of volunteers to cast their eye over it once it's done just to make sure it is presented in the right way.

Apparantely it's the Reality TV Moment of the year and it certainly attracted a lot of attention and it's something that I've been asked about a few times. It's the moment from Episode Five where Meat Loaf loses his cool with Gary Busey.
I think that moment was hyped up before the series aired for the sake of the ratings so prior to this people were already looking forward to it in some kind of wierd way, these are the kind of people that thrive on reading and watching celebrities have 'meltdowns'. They find it funny and sometimes I wonder if it makes them feel better about their own lives.
Following the airing of the episode, the media jumped on the bandwagon. Message boards were full of critical comments about Meat and calling him cruel names. It appeared from the episode that Meat was throwing a tantrum because he couldn't find his paints and this is what the media have focused on. They ignored the fact that there were things that happened behind the scenes that could have influenced it and also the fact that Meat Loaf offered an emotional and heartfelt apology which was accepted by Gary Busey. These people who are calling Meat Loaf an evil man don't know him, they're just judging him by what aired that night or what they've read in the newspaper. We all lose our temper from time to time but how many of us are unlucky enough to have it captured on camera, aired on national prime time television and reported in newspapers in other countries? It doesn't mean he's got Bi-Polar Disorder, it doesn't mean he's a horrible person, it just makes him human.

Meat Loaf is appearing in Celebrity Apprentice at the moment and if Everything Louder is serious about achieving it's goals then it's got to have the best screencaps from each episode. Every week, after the episode has been watched through it gets burned to DVD and the screencapping usually begins on the Tuesday or Wednesday. On a typical episode the amount of screencaps taken and uploaded to the website is between about 20-30 and each of those are resized and marked with the watermark after taking and are then uploaded. When the majority of the files are uploaded, one or two of the screencaps are posted in #TeamLoaf as teasers and a few exclusives are usually posted on the Meat Loaf Fan Page.
The amount of time spent doing this has never been calculated but it can take quite a while, depending on how quickly the file downloads. Normally though, that and the burning to disc will take about five hours. Never has one project taken so much time.

Despite the fact that this is a marathon task every week, it's one that I find enjoyable most of the time and once it's over it will be missed. The positive reactions from other Meat Loaf fans when they see the screencaps is what makes this task seem worthwhile, even when I find it a bit of an effort.

Everything Louder originally had a forum attached to it and it was hoped that some fans would sign up but unfortunately the only people signing up were spammers. The trouble was that there was already well established Meat Loaf forum which a small fansite couldn't compete with and so it was decided that the forum would close.
Was the whole Everything Louder project going to go the same way, particularly with the launch of pages on Facebook which saw far more rapid growth than Everything Louder did?
Rather than trying to beat this growth, Everything Louder offered to go into partnership with one of these pages and I am now pleased to be involved with Meat Loaf Fan Page. I'll be giving the page some Exclusive Screencaps that won't go into the Everything Louder galleries as well as linking to them on the site.

Since this partnership began, Everything Louder is beginning to finally take off and I am excited at the prospect of bringing you lots more screencaps and graphics in the future.

Everything Louder now has it's own blog and whilst it may seem silly as Everything Louder is part of BatAngel, it's because Everything Louder is now the biggest site from BatAngel and the BatAngel blog doesn't need to be flooded with news from Everything Louder.
Everything Louder was first launched in 2010 and prior to it's release several different ideas were attempted but eventually it was decided to make it a website that focuses mainly on images. It was a struggle to get the site known as there were so many other Meat Loaf fansites but thanks to a group of fans on Facebook known as #TeamLoaf, the site's existance is becoming more well known.
Everything Louder aims to be the largest Meat Loaf screencap and graphic archive on the web and with over 350 images in our gallery to date I am hoping this is something that may become a reality.