Archive for the ‘PhotoShop Tutorials’ category

Cartoon Drawing – from pencils to inks to colours in three paragraphs

May 5th, 2009

Pencils

Drawn on A4 bristol board with a HB pencil. The basic posture and details are sketched out. More time is spent fleshing out the face and hair than any other part.

Inks

Inked with a collection of fine-line pens with varying nibs sizes. Hair tips are extended and the top of the hair tweaked. Attention is paid to the eyes. The intended black area in the mid-rift and thighs are not filled in with black. This is saved for the colouring stage. Inked work is scanned in at 300 dpi (dots per image).

Colours

Depth is added to the hair. Gradients are added to the top of the boots to differentiate the black footwear from the thigh leggings. Subtle streaks are added to the mid-rift and thigh areas to illustrate the clothing is pvc. And that’s it, product complete!

Mini Tip #1 What resolution should I scan my work in as?

July 30th, 2008

For any piece of artwork or imagery, the standard resolution (or DPI – Dots Per Image) for any scanned piece of work is 300 DPI.

This will ensure a good quality print out.

A few helpful forums

July 6th, 2008

Ever needed that little bit of extra help solving a design/implementation problem?

Fear no longer, for here are a few helpful sites for you to get those all important answers you crave.

Kirupa.com

An online Flash/CSS/PhotoShop resource that provides useful tutorials, links, downloads, and support for all levels of expertise. The tutorials are very educational although personally, the forums, which are worth a try, aren’t the most welcoming for beginners of the ‘noob’ kind. Be prepared to bump your thread up until you get what you need!

The Ultrashock Forums

A great resource site for Flash Professionals. The forums are great, with many a helpful members willing to take time over any questions/problems you have.

PC Mech Forums

Wonderfully helpful forum. Any computer hardware issues and you’ll be sure to find help here. If we had a badge of approval we’d pin it here.

Joomla! Forums

This is the best place to find information about Joomla and solutions to any Joomla related problems you may have. The forums are massively popular and if you follow the forum rules you will find someone who can help solve your Joomla problems. But be sure to do a thorough search of the forums before you post a new topic – you will almost always find that someone has already solved your problem!

How to make a Favicon for your website

June 26th, 2008

We’d not only like to detail more advance tutorials here, but also post a few tips to help the website design beginners amongst us. After all, we all had to start somewhere ourselves.

A Favicon is a small image (usually a logo) which shows up beside your bookmarked website as well as in your browsers location/address bar.

1) Before we begin, you will most probably need to download the Windows Icon (ICO) file format Photoshop Plugin in order to export the .ico file format required to create your favion. The plugin can be downloaded here. (Note: you will have to move the downloaded plugin to the correct location on your computer; it’s usually: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop\Plug-Ins\File Formats.)

2) Once that is done; open Photoshop > File > New and create a document of 64 x 64 pixels.

favicon example 3

3) Now either create your image, or drop and drag a pre-designed image into the newly created document. Scale the image down as you see fit in relation to the files 64 pixel size.

4) When you’re happy with your image, go to Image > Image Size. Make sure the Constrain Proportions box is ticked.  Alter the width size to 16 pixels. The height should change automatically to 16 pixels also. Click Ok. You now have your Favicon size.

favicon example 2

5) File > Save As. Name your file ‘favicon’. Be sure to change the file format from the drop down menu to: ICO (Windows Icon). Click Ok.

favicon example 1

6) Now place your favicon.ico file into the root directory of your website – the same directory as your website’s index file. Open the index file and place the following code between the < head > </ head > tags:

<link rel="Shortcut Icon" href="favicon.ico" />

7) That’s it! Upload your site and view it, your new stylish favicon will now be evident from this point on. Congrats!