Miscellaneous Services
In addition to drill design and music arrangements, Nikk Nakks also offers the following services
Music Engraving
Music engraving is essentially the process of entering music into a notation program in order to make it look more professional. Most major publishing companies have several engravers on staff, and hiring one can cost you many thousands of dollars (no, I am not kidding). If you are looking for someone to engrave your handwritten sketch, your arrangements, or indeed, anything you have, email me at the link below and I will provide you with a quote that will likely be 25-40% less than what you would pay one of the "professional" engravers...without ANY quality sacrificed. I've been working with Finale since version 3.0, over twelve years now, and have extensive experience with engraving. Here you will find an image of a handwritten score, and here you will find the finished product after engraving.
Finale and Pyware Tutorial Lessons
Exactly what it says above. Contact me for details.
Recital Poster/Graphic Design
I recently began designing the cover art for my arrangements, and as a by-product I began making concert posters for the ensembles I worked with as a doctoral student at Florida State University. A few people asked me to design their recital posters, so I obliged. If you would like a poster for your recital, or a similar graphic design for book or manuscript covers, posters, album art, etc., no matter where in the country you are, I'm your guy. Email me and we'll discuss what you want. Here are some samples of my work. Obviously, these would look better in full resolution, but I wanted to keep them small so that the page would not take forever to load:
This was one of my first posters...obviously, it is a take-off on the popular Will Ferrell movie, Anchorman. I wasn't using Photoshop at the time, so I didn't know how to fix things like the pixelation problem on the right. This was my last pre-Photoshop poster.
This is one of my earliest efforts on Photoshop, and it was a good lesson for me about how powerful -yet frustrating- Photoshop can be. Superman's uniform took me forever to do, because I literally had to go in and "paint" it on the guy in this picture. I also had to remove the lady's arm and then put it back in so that I could get the "S" on his chest just right. Still, this is one of my favourite posters.
This is one of the first recital posters I created...people started to notice the posters for the ensembles, and eventually someone asked me to do a poster for their senior recital. I like the way this one turned out...nothing too fancy, just some manipulation of colours and a cool neon-like effect on the text.
With this recital poster for my friend Sarah, I began to realise the power of using different fonts. This poster is a takeoff on Led Zeppelin's fourth album, since one of her pieces was called "Black Dog." I was surprised to find a "Led Zeppelin font" online, and I used it to make the poster look very similar to the album cover.
After a few semesters, the Director of Orchestras at FSU noticed my posters, and he commissioned me to create a few for him. This was my first effort...I am pleased with the "al fresco" effect I was able to achieve on this old picture of Red Square in Moscow.
Another favourite of mine, this one was for the New Music Festival held in Tallahassee.
This poster was for the Wind Orchestra's tour and performance at the National CBDNA convention, and featured my friend John Mackey's composition "Turbine."
Another poster for the Symphony Orchestra...I like the colours in this one, as well as the "scandanavian" styled font (used because of Sibelius, a Finnish composer).
Last but not least, the poster from my last performance with the FSU Wind Orchestra. I was fortunate enough to premiere my transcription of New Morning for the World with them as part of my doctoral dissertation.
