Idag har jag fått hjälp av kusin Zeke. Han hjälpte mig att köra iväg tre kassar med reklam och tre kassar med tomflaskor till sopstationen vid Coop Forum. Efter detta åkte vi in till city där jag handlade lite på systemet.

Här nedan en liten lista på det som jag har och ska handla.

3 lådor öl – klart
1 bag in box med rött – klart
1 styck Guinness på burk – klart
Plastbestick – klart
Papptallrikar – ska köpas i morgon fredag
Engångsbägare – ska köpas i morgon fredag
Tårta – ska hämtas i morgon fredag

I morgon kväll kommer min syster fru Valröss hem till mig och ska göra två stycken smörgåstårtor som jag ska bjuda släkt och vänner på under lördagen. Tidigare under kvällen när jag pratade med henne sa hon att om hon inte får tag på färska räkor blir det frysta som jag ska skala då hon fixar tårtorna. Tack för den, men det gör jag så gärna då syrran är så snäll och fixar maten. Syrran kommer även ta med sig en kaffebryggare på lördag då det enda jag äger att göra mitt kaffe är en liten pressbryggare.

Idag när jag satt och letade låtar på Spotify försökte jag hitta Groove Armada med Get Down (Henrik B remix), men den fanns inte där tyvärr. Jag tog och Googlade på Henrik B och hittade videon till hans sköna låt Klyftamon. Då Henrik B är en gammal vän till mig tänkte jag spela upp denna låt här på min blogg. Varsågoda!

Jag har fortfarande inte lyckats klura ut hur jag ska vektorisera mina banor i Illustrator under dagen, så i morgon ska jag höra av mig till chefen och be om lite hjälp. Jag ger mig inte då jag ska lära mig och klara av detta.

Det var allt för mig idag. I morgon är det äntligen fredag.

Cheers!

Ibland är jag som sådan att jag är helt hundra på att jag kommer klara av vissa saker galant. Yeah right, men skam den som ger sig. Som jag skrev igår hade jag fått två bilder av min chef som jag skulle göra banor runt om som ankarpunkter och därefter vektorisera bilderna. Piece of cake my ass!! Att göra banor runt objektet är inga problem, men sen att hitta funktionen för att först spara banan och sedan vektorisera objektet var en helt annan femma. I över åtta timmar har jag idag letat efter bra tutorials för Illustrator på Google och Youtube, men inte hittat någon som på ett bra och enkelt sätt beskriver hur jag ska gå tillväga. Men som sagt… Jag ger inte upp. I morgon fortsätter jag och då ska jag fan i mig lära mig hur man gör. Denna gången ska envisheten segra!

Ikväll var jag på ICA Maxi och handlade lite. Bland annat en tavelram till Minnes- och Hyllningstelegrammet jag fick av AIK till min 40-årsdag. När jag skulle betala mina varor stod hon där. Den blonda, trevliga och snygga kassörskan som jag inte sett på ett tag. Hon är alltid glad och pratsam, men glad ska man vara i det yrket tycker jag och till viss del pratsam. Hmm… Om jag skulle ta och tjata lite mer med henne nästa gång jag träffar på henne på Maxi. Ja, ja… Vi får se hur det kan bli med den saken. Jag ska ju dit på fredag igen och hämta en tårta. Jag måste även dra till Rusta för att köpa lite engångsartiklar (tallrikar, bestick och muggar) inför lördagen då resten av min familj och mina närmaste vänner kommer för att fira mig. Då blir det lite party!!

Yes! Snart så! I Augusti 2010 kommer Mummel slå upp portarna igen. Mummel brann ju som bekant ned den 28 december 2008, men nu håller man som bäst på och bygger upp hela kvarteret och tydligen så ska kvarteret i grunden se ut som det gjorde förut. Den enda hyresgästen som är klar i dagsläget är Mummel, så i augusti när Mummel slår upp portarna igen kommer kusin Zeke och jag sitta där och njuta av varsin iskall Guinness tappad från fat och lyssna på skön musik, förhoppningsvis underbar house.

Det var vad jag hade idag.

Skål!

Adobe Illustrator CS3 has built in so many tools so that you don’t have to waste time trying to create your own techniques anymore.  One of the ones I love is the built in gradients.  If you have a vector art image that you pull in to Adobe Illustrator simply click on the image.  Go to Window, Swatch libraries, and choose gradients.  There are a bunch to choose from so I would start with “Earthtones.”

While the image is highlighted simply click on one of the gradients and viola! You have a great gradient for your image.  If you want to change the direction the gradient is moving in, then choose the Gradient tool from the tool bar and drag your mouse from any direction on the image after you have picked a gradient and you’ll be able to have a more precise design.

Also, if you want to change more specifications of the gradient, then go to Window, appearance, and you can change each individual attribute of the gradient.

Yippee! I am leaving it here. I have added a few touches with some basic Photoshop techniques. The soft shadow to give the cut out effect is created using good old Gaussian Blur on a solid copy of the whole figure dropped behind the main character.

I also couldn’t resist adding some soft shadow to his wonderful hair. The thing is with me, I could go on and on making changes, but what I tend to do is pretend I am on a deadline. This is a good exercise for illustrators as it keeps your brain active and able to make decisions about the direction of a piece as you work on it and within the time limit.

Including all the commentary on this process, this work has taken me about 8 hours.

I hope you like the finished result. I would love to hear your comments and if you are a budding illustrator with any questions on my process and own experience, please drop me a question in the comment section and I will be happy to reply.

Right! I think I am happy with the colour palette. I was tempted to leave the background in monochrome (all comments welcome of course!) but I am in a happy mood and thought let’s go for all colour everywhere. However, I have kept to a limited palette. This is really important in my opinion, when creating characters using a vector program like Adobe Illustrator. The strong, flat colours that this program is so good at producing gives a certain look….a bit like the certain look you get in CGI cartoons: no matter who is making em, Disney or Pixar or Dreamworks, they all have a certain quality about them that is defined by the technology being used as the tool. I find if you put too many “flavours” in the mix you lose the strength that is inherent in vector illustrations.

Right, now for some finishing touches and cropping in Photoshop…..

I like the pink for the face and hands as it contrasts in a nicely mad way with the lurid green of “serum X5″ which our man is quaffing.

I have also changed the colour of the outlines to a very dark grape. I like the way it lifts the image and gives it a bit of madness while still providing the punchiness of black, but with a richer colour effect.

I am fairly happy with the test tube and contents too and have made the bubbles change colour as their background colour changes, so they remain visible.

His hair – I had thought of adding some texture by painting in Painter or Photoshop, but having added the grape outline I am beginning to think it works as is – simple and wacky. I may do a second version with the textures just to see…

First colour try outs on the face and coat….

Well, I am pretty much done with the main design now. Its time to start thinking about COLOURS!!

Now that I have a fairly decent grey range throughout the image, I can start thinking usefully about the levels of tonal contrast I want in my image. The tones at this stage in the image don’t need to be perfect, but just give a good idea of where to explore in the colour range.

I have added more details in the background and also some lighting effect using a transparent overlay  in front of all the background objects but not the figure, who stands out nicely.

I have also added another little character who is looking on in dismay as our mad prof drinks his potion!

Aaaah….I love doing the liney bits! Once you have the basics – lights, darks and of course the main shapes of the drawing rendered effectively, putting in the keylines just makes the character spring to life! Its the fun part and aside from messing with the soft shading in Photoshop or the colours and texture, for me its the most satisfying bit. The for me is to keep the line economic and SIMPLE! Don’t go crazy and let the basic drawing you started with do the work. A bad drawing bring a design to its knees no matter how much “fuss” you add to hide the problems.

Now I have added more shadows and started to really give some depth and substance to the figure. The transparency setting in Adobe Illustrator is really useful for this when you want to render one area of shade over another, as in the left side of his jacket collar casting shade over his shirt. Here I used one dark shape with a lower opacity setting to allow the other shades beneath to show through, giving the illusion of depth and solidity.

To create effective vector drawings, it is so important to create a feeling of “rightness” in the chiaroscuro – the interplay between light and dark in an image or object. I think this no matter how simple your final design might be: your drawing ability – your ability to “see” forms as light reveals them to you – is crucial in the decision making process; whether you decide to leave shadows out altogether even….everything is a creative, productive decision (or should be).

Notice at this stage I am leaving his hair flat – I am thinking of building some texture later into that wig!

I have also placed the basic background shapes of a cupboard and a blackboard behind him. These are going to stay simple but need to be here to give context to our character.

Nu har jag äntligen kommit igång med att jobba. Jag började min praktik igår på samma reklambyrå som jag praktiserade på i somras. Mitt första jobb är att med hjälp av Adobe Illustrator vektorisera två bilder genom att göra banor så att det blir ankarpunkter runt om. Då jag inte jobbat med Illustrator förut så är det lite jobbigt i början, men det är tur att youtube finns där man kan hitta det mesta. Det ska bli skoj att lära mig hur man vektoriserar bilder då jag kan använda mig av detta när jag gör webbsidor och logotyper.

Jag har även varit ute och fotat lite idag runt om i stan. Ett par bra bilder blev det kan jag säga. Under min fotosession stannade jag till vid en tobaksaffär för att köpa cigg. Väl där inne frågade jag om de hade Corner och fick nej till svar. Frågade även om de hade Level eller LM och då kläcker pajasen bakom disken ur sig att du kan inte handla lågpriscigg med kort. Varför frågade jag och hörde inte något av gubbens mumlande så jag slog till på en gammal hederlig Marlboro istället. Tar inte vissa kiosker extra i kortavgifter när man köper cigg, får man tydligen inte handla lågpriscigg hos vissa andra med kontokort. Jävla pajasar!!!

Det var allt jag hade för denna dagen. Nu ska jag softa i min lilla soffa.

Adios!

It all started almost a year ago when Andrea and I were deciding what we wanted to do with our wedding invitations.  We talked about it quite a bit, and came to the conclusion that we would design our own from scratch, then have them professionaly printed.  The one thing Andrea wanted the most was a monogram with our initials on it.  She is definitely more creative than I am, but I am also a bit better with computers than she is.  So, we decided that I would be doing the monogram (with her careful eye of attention always over my shoulder!).

I am no professional graphic designer, nor anywhere close to it.  However, I have dabbled around with computer graphic design before, and enjoy it some too.  I think that the first draft of our monogram came out to meet the eye of my super-observant “quality assurance officer” (Andrea) just before the end of January.  Overall, she liked the general idea of it, but it still needed a lot of work, she thought.  Back to the designing board I went.  Over the next month, that process repeated itself multiple times.  With each time, though, I was getting closer.  The normal response was. “Ohhh, I like it…but what about this?”  I am thinking to myself,  “C’mon, it’s just a silly monogram!”  One obstacle later on in the process is where the three letters: D, S, and A intersect in the middle.  As I saw it, we had two options: a funny looking polygon at that point, or just a blend of all the letters together–which didn’t look that great either.  One night I was dilly-dallying with a school paper and accidentally typed a heart with the “Wingdings 2″ font.  Eureka!  I threw that in at the intersection point, Andrea liked it, and that was that.

Finally, sometime in late February of 2009, the stamp of approval was applied.  It was a go!  I finished up the rest of the invitation and sent it to the printer, Vistaprint (which I would highly recommend).  The invitaions came back just how we wanted them.

Andrea ended up liking the monogram so much that she thought it would somehow make a great wedding cake topper.  We thought of several ways to accomplish that, and eventually gave up.  Just in time, though, she had a superb idea that she mentioned to her dad, Mr. Leslie.  Maybe he could cut it out of some kind of metal and shine it up.  She declared to him that that would be his wedding present for us if he could do it.  For the next few weeks, Mr. Leslie spent time on our cake-topper.  Tin snips and a die-grinder were his main tools.  I came into the workshop a few days before it was finished and saw it.  It was perfect!  He had taken a brass door kicker and cut our monogram out of it using a blown-up cutout we had given him.  On the day before the wedding, he finished polishing it up, and gave it to our cake designer.  From there, she set it on the cake perfectly.

Also as a wedding present, my Uncle Keith and Aunt Theresa etched our invitation into a glass photo frame using the invitation we had sent them.

Moving to Pennsylvania, the monogram was packed away in a box until we moved out of the church Prophet’s Chamber and into our home in early August.  Soon after we moved in Andrea got to work on it again.  She surprised me one day with the finished product.  It was mounted in a frame, and she wrote our names at the bottom, saying, “The Dustin Speckhals Family–Established May 22, 2009.”  And there it hangs in our living room…

Coming sometime between Thanksgiving Day and Saturday: another redesigned blog banner with a Christmas theme!

I have made some changes to the tonal values and am at the moment thinking white coat with some very light blue shadowing, but that could change.

The nice thing about working in grey tones to begin with is that you get a good sense of the contrast values that you need between colours in the palette you eventually go with.

The black outline just gives the figure such a nice punch out of the composition that I know at this point I am going to keep it. The feel I want is mainly flat colour and a quick render is what I am after in this one. When I leave the outline off its usually because I want to deepen textures and give the shapes themselves a more “3d” look with soft shadows and textures created in Photoshop and sometimes Corel Painter. I find that if you try to do both a strong outline and work more into the substance of the shapes, the two conflict and the image looks ugly and overdone.

Now I have all the main areas covered and have even added the dark areas of his coat. Working with a vector program is an easy way to make adjustments on the fly and if you compare this stage with the sketch below you will see that I have brought his shoulders up inside the coat and his neck is now alot shorter. The reason for this is the drawing doesn’t make enough anatomical sense to get away with – for me anyhow. In the sketch there is nothing filling that lab coat at the shoulders and although I like the exaggerated feel of this – a thin guy being swamped by a big lab coat – I have toned that down a bit, but plan on keeping much of the same feel.

This reminds me how important drawing is to me. I have found often that a final rendered piece can be brought down by an elelment in the drawing that is not resolved – whether that be a difficult pose or some foreshortening…..it is ALWAYS worth spending time on the initial working drawings of your design. A bit of patience and perhaps some pain makes the final result MUCH easier to achieve once you reach the software stage – in my experience of vector drawing anyhow.

Heres the first stage in Adobe Illustrator – the simple bit (its all pretty simple really) – getting the main shapes down and arranging the main layers of the artwork. Using these bottom layers I can generate other shapes by “cutting” from them, as well as using them to generate black or dark outlines for the character and objects in the image, if it works out they need em.

Paul Andrew от noupe.com е събрал ръководства за създаване на 40 различни текстови ефекта в Illustrator. Те могат да ви послужат във всякакви ситуации. По-горе можете да видите един от ефектите, който не е сред най-изисканите, но безусловно привлича внимание. Създаването на всеки ефект е обяснено стъпка по стъпка, така че няма начин да се затрудните при възпроизвеждането им.

“Коя от програмите е по-добра за обработка на текст, Photoshop или Illustrator?

Няма еднозначен отговор на този въпрос. Ясно е, обаче че Illustrator, който се използва предимно за създаване на векторни изображения осигурява на потребителите повече точност, контрол и прецизност. Разбира се, всичко зависи от ръката, която държи мишката. Следователно, ако търсите начин за лесно манипулиране на текст, Photoshop е вашият избор. Ако целта ви е да създадете красиво и оригинално типографско изкуство, трябва да използвате Illustrator.

Тази колекция от ръководства за Illustrator с повече от 40 текстови, или ако предпочитате, типографски ефекта, може да ви помогне да научите нови техники за работа и да увеличите типографския си репертоар.

Разбира се, както знае всеки добър дизайнер, познаването само на едно графично приложение, намалява възможностите за творчество. За да избегнем този момент, сме добавили някои ръководства, които изискват познания за Photoshop и дори някои 3D приложения, за да стане текстът ви още по – внушителен.”

Цъкнете върху изображението или тук, за да видите списък с всички ръководства.

С пожелание за повече внушителни проекти и спокоен вторник в разгара на календарната кампания,

Мартин

Two very different styles of business cards for the Extreme Painter designed by Laura Stafford in Adobe Illustrator.

Business Card: Extreme Painter by Laura Stafford

Business Card: Extreme Painter by Laura Stafford

The creative team at StockLayouts posted new Holiday & Christmas Greeting Cards.

StockLayouts template designs, for creating print marketing materials are available for purchase and download online and are fully customizable in a choice of file formats including QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word and Apple iWork Pages. Created with high-quality output in mind, the template designs are easy to edit, and suitable for printing in-house on a color printer or on an offset press. The do-it-yourself marketing templates help users promote their business and look more professional with high-impact designs!

I suddenly had the urge to draw waves, then a boat.

I should look into purchasing a book on colour.

The creative team at StockLayouts posted a new business template set for a Ski & Snowboard Instructor. The business set is comprised of a brochure, postcard, poster, stationery and flyer & ads.

StockLayouts template designs, for creating print marketing materials are available for purchase and download online and are fully customizable in a choice of file formats including QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word and Apple iWork Pages. Created with high-quality output in mind, the template designs are easy to edit, and suitable for printing in-house on a color printer or on an offset press. The do-it-yourself marketing templates help users promote their business and look more professional with high-impact designs!

In this Adobe Illustrator video tutorial you will learn that how to make a watch in Adobe Illustrator and then import it into Adobe Flash to animate this clock and using action script inside of Adobe Flash. So let’s see the video and learn that how to make the animated clock using adobe illustrator and flash.

In this Adobe Illustrator video tutorial you will learn that how to make the 3d or three dimensional shapes or objects using shape tool inside of Adobe Illustrator. So let’s see the video and learn that how to make the 3D objects using Adobe Illustrator.

Article by: Renaldo Creative

Site: http://raindropgraphx.com

Linux is an amazing operation system. But most people think the design career is over, when they switch to Linux. Most designer use Corel and Adobe software. Below you will find good Alternative for Linux.

01. Photoshop | Gimp
02. Illustrator | Inkscape
03. InDesign Scribus
04. Dreamweaver | NVU
05. Internet Explorer | Firefox
06. Microsoft Office | Open Office
07. Quick Book | GNU Cash
08. Winrar | Pea Zip
09. Win Zip | 7 Zip
10. Flash | Flash4Linux

Note a lot of Windows programs can be run on Linux with third party software.

Wine Hq http://winehq.com
Codeweaver http://www.codeweavers.com
Virtual Box http://virtualbox.org
Win4lin http://win4lin.com

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