29 juin 2009
Chalkboard
I think I will post later, the second part of my Painful Source of Inspiration series, because I need to re-organize the order of events and my thoughts about that :D
Ok, let me share with you some tips about this chalkboard that I did some weeks ago. (FIGURE 1)
FIGURE 1 Teacher's day chalkboard.
Initially I made this chalkboard to put it in the home page of the Moodle LMS that we use in my job, but like many times have occurred to me in the past :( I was told to remove the chalkboard from the home page. So I decided to store it. A couple of weeks later a friend asked me for help, because the teacher's day was almost there, and we used my chalkboard to decorate their offices and also mine. The final result was very cool and nice! many balloons also added the special touch to the decoration!!
Let's talk about the tips...
Chalkboard frame. I used a wood texture to make the frame, I rotated the texture to make the vertical and horizontal pieces of the frame.
Chalkboard. The idea was to make appear the chalkboard like the ones you can find in schools, were although the teacher erases it, still you can see some white patches and spots, and more when the time passes and you erase it many times. I used the cool pastel brushes of centipede to achieve that school feel :)
Aircraft drawings. I used some drawings that I did in Inkscape, then I imported them into GIMP and applied the "Dissolve" layer mode.
Chalkboard text. I used a chalkboard font called "Eraser Dust".
And that's it, I hope this could be useful to somebody.
Thanks for reading.
* The friend that asked me for help, was a girl :) you've probably guessed because girls like to decorate things, men usually not
** by the way, the Teacher's day is June 22, here in El Salvador
20 mai 2009
Painful Source Of Inspiration Part 1: Greeting Cards Using Xach Effect
Hi everybody :)
Some time ago I said that I'll not use drawings or paintings to impress girls and get dates, because "those times have passed away and now I know a bit more of how to conquer girls", it seems that I never should have said that.
I met a girl three months ago, normally I would not try to hit on her, because when I first got introduced to her she was working in another department of the company, and also I rarely interacted or see her, but then one day she asked me for help in programming stuff that she was studying in the university. I accepted to help (how she knew that I know a little bit about that computer things, is unknown to me).
In a short time we become very close friends and I thought it were a real connection with her, she understood and laughed at my jokes, she listen to my stories and thoughts, also she asked me a lot of questions about my life, my tastes, how my day was, and another things...
One of the great things of being close to her was that I felt good, and that I could show her the "real Coche", the real me. The weeks were passing and I finally decided to give it a try and ask her out... Her answer came, "I see you as a friend and more than a friend a brother". Ugh that hurts :(
Well lets stop talking about sad things, instead let the tutorial starts!!
I think that probably there is a lot of tutorials about Xach effect, but I want to write one myself :) because Xach effect is one of my favorite GIMP effects, I really like it. By using Xach effect you can easily create nice looking greeting cards for your friends.
Lets start by choosing a picture that you like, or that you know that probably your friend likes. I chose a nice picture of a tiger drinking milk that I found on the Internet. Now grab the text tool and write your message, I chose a thick font called "Snap ITC", also remember to change the text color to white (FIGURE 1).
FIGURE 1 Use the text tool to write your message.
Now comes the cool part, go to Filters > Light and Shadow > Xach-Effect... in the dialog that appears just leave the defaults and click in OK. And here is the little trick, in the layers dialog hide the layer that contains the text. (FIGURE 2)
FIGURE 2 Hide the layer that contains the text.
Remember that you can apply the Xach effect not only to text, but also to shapes. In the tiger example, I created a nice tiger paw shape in Inkscape, then I imported the shape in GIMP and applied the Xach effect to the paw shape (the paw was also white). Finally I added another text message above the paw. (FIGURE 3)
FIGURE 3 The finished greeting card.
Now you can impress you friends, sending to them a cool greeting card!
* Stay tuned for the part 2 and final of the painful source of inspiration
14 mars 2009
Billboard Text
Hi :)
Sorry I said I'll post a new tutorial and then nothing, but better late than never!!
This time we'll make a kind of nice billboard, so let's get started!
First try to make a cool background, maybe using a gradient or photos of yours. I pick some of my photos when I went to the soccer games of my country and then scaled and located them in the canvas. (FIGURE 1)
FIGURE 1 My cool background (in one of the photos is one of my friends with a drunk man we found).
Pick a cool font and make some text. I think a nice font for this kind of effect should be a "thick" font like Arial Black. I chose a font called "Cooper Black". Then get sure that the text layer is selected and right click on that layer and select "Alpha to Selection". Pick the Blend Tool (L) and under gradient select one called "Incandescent". Apply the gradient to the selection. (FIGURE 2)
FIGURE 2 Applying the Incandescent gradient to the text selection.
Just deselect the selection (CTRL+SHIFT+A) and always selected the text layer apply: Filters > Distorts > Newsprint. And adjust the following settings: (FIGURE 3)
FIGURE 3 Newsprint filter settings.
Now we need to apply some light and glow to this billboard, so duplicate the text layer and rename the layer to "glow". Under this layer, pick the "Select by Color Tool" and zoom in until you can see and select the black or dark colors. When you've made the selection, delete it, so only the "hot" colors remain (RED, YELLOW). Let's blur it a little, so go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply an amount radius of 8px. (FIGURE 4)
FIGURE 4 Applying Gaussian blur to the "glow" layer.
We're almost done. Selected the glow layer and change the layer mode to "Screen", wow, the effect is much better now, duplicate the glow layer to enhance the effect a little bit more. (FIGURE 5)
FIGURE 5 Duplicate the glow layer to enhance the effect.
And that's it!! I hope you've enjoyed the tutorial and as always thanks for reading.
27 février 2009
Spanish music drawing
Hey!
Fortunately I've survived after one month and a half in my new job. It's not easy you know, there is a woman in my department that thinks (and also my boss has assigned her), she is my boss or something, so she gives me a lot of work, a lot of boring and useless work, but so far I'm stand.
Let's talk about another things...
So far in 2008, I promised to a friend that I'll give him a nice Spanish music compilation DVD and finally some days ago I purchased some empty DVDs and then I added some of my favorite Spanish music, starring some of the most talented Spanish singers from all time: Victor Manuel, Joan Manuel Serrat, Miguel Rios, Joaquin Sabina and Ana Belen.
To add a nice detail I made a drawing and put it in the DVD cover, check it out: (below is the original DVD cover that I took for inspiration)
(Notice that I miscalculated the width of the front cover :( so there is a empty vertical space there)
Finally although my drawing is just a "copy" of the original, I had a lot of fun drawing it and also I did it pretty quickly, so I think I'm in good shape with my limited drawing skills :)
* I think this weekend I'll post my first tutorial from 2009, so stay tuned!!
15 février 2009
We used to... (start again)
Hi :)
sorry I've been disappeared from a while, but this weekend is my first month working for a new company, an airline in my country. I have to say that changing jobs is one of the most difficult things to do, saying good bye to your job mates and friends, the people nearby that sells food, the neighbors near the company's location, etc. Somebody one day said to me, that "humans lives as usual", we used to like that chair in front of our computers, that special brand of pencils to draw, the brand of beer or drink, and in this case that past job... maybe is not the job by itself, but all the things that surrounds it, the workmates, the discussions and jokes at the office, the coffee, the workplace, etc.
Let me remember some funny things in my last job, we used to:
- In the first months (I worked for like 1 year and a half), we (the guys in the IT office) decided that we would follow the example of Chuck Norris, so in any situation that could cause some controversy, we said "What would Chuck Norris do?". The discussions got interesting because in the office worked one girl (that never asked for help or suggestions, and many times founded herself contradicting us in almost everything), so it was like a battle of genders and Chuck Norris was always our argument to win all the discussions.
- We have one hour for taking lunch, and always after the lunch we got a little rest (many times we locked the door, so the boss won't caught us)
- In my last days in that job, we organized a soccer tournament, but it was played "within" the office, because the space was reduced, we played one vs one, buy still was pretty fun!!
- The squirrels in the garden, eating almonds from the tree.
- The workplace, we used to say that more than an office we worked in a garage (like Google in his beginnings), so we decorated the office with cans of beer, the calendar girl of the month (courtesy of Sports Illustrated, I think), an empty bottle of tequila, etc.
- The discussions about everything: the soccer, women, the situation in the job, music, the boss, etc
Finally one of the things that I miss in the same way as the previous list, is what I used to do... I used to be a Web developer and some times I did the artwork for some banners and another graphic stuff (using Gimp and Inkscape), many of the tutorials that I posted here (and some that I'll post) was inspired after that.
Now in my new job, I'm not a Web developer anymore and less doing graphic stuff, yes I earn a better salary, the company is more established so the economic recession maybe is not a big deal, but at what cost.
Finally (and this time is true) I think that many choices we made in our lives are a trade-off, there is always things you gain, now I can invite to dinner or help in another things to my family and friends. But also consider very carefully the things you lost. I don't know if I made the right choice, after a month, I think the answer is no, but when I think in my family and friends, I would try to wait a little bit more...
* Now after my first month, I'm finally seeing some light, because finally I'll start doing some stuff related to E-Learning
** About the Chuck Norris thing, don't take me wrong, I'm not a sexism fan, all the opposite, I think there is a lot of smart and creative women out there, actually some of them inspired me, and I'm very grateful and honored in learn from them
22 décembre 2008
Merry Christmas!
Hi, I don't know if in your country is the same, but here in America and in El Salvador the 24th of December we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, so maybe after the dinner with your family and friends, the drinks and the fireworks, take a few minutes and think that maybe this day long time ago, was born a man that taught to us how to really love each other, and a show of that was that he died for us and with that he gives us hope!
Finally the snowman and I wish you a merry Christmas!
* In a next post I'll tell you the history behind this snowman :)
02 décembre 2008
Hat
Hi :)
It's since a while isn't? it seems that I got running out of ideas, but I'll try to post something useful. By the way let me tell you that I've graduated from the university at last!! 7 years have passed away and now "por fin" I got the degree in computer science and also I got a lot of stress, fatigue and a debt with the bank, jeje. But after all I think it worth it.
Another thing that happened in November, was also my birthday, now I'm 25 years old, the famous "cora" of dollar (here in El Salvador we use the US dollar currency, and the people instead of saying quarter of dollar, we say cora). So let's go for the next cora! :D
So for this post let me tell you quickly how I did a cool hat using brushes and "burn" mode in the paintbrush properties panel. By the way this hat is similar to the hats worn by the farmers and other men outside the capital here in San Salvador, I think I would like to use one of those when I get old.
Ok now lets get in action, well first I did a little drawing of my hat in Inkscape using the bezier tool and tweaking some nodes. (FIGURE 1)
FIGURE 1 My basic hat made in Inkscape.
Then I imported the hat in Gimp and using the eye dropper tool, I picked the grayish color used in the hat's fill. Now select the paintbrush and pick one of the nice Acrylic brushes from centipede, I picked Acrylic 008 (32-Dark-SmearedDry)(32x32).
Keep selected the imported hat layer because in this very layer we are going to paint. Change the brush mode to "burn" and make some short strokes to add some volume to the hat. I also added a nice shadow in a new layer. (FIGURE 2)
FIGURE 2 My hat with some texture applied.
I also made a banner in my job using this hat, check it out (FIGURE 3)
FIGURE 3 A music banner using the hat.
And that's it, I hope you liked this mini tutorial.
Bye
29 octobre 2008
Antenna
Like I promised, let's create a Telecommunications Antenna using Inkscape, I'm using Inkscape 0.46
Let's begin. Pick the Bezier Path Tool and while pressing the CTRL key draw a line at 75 degrees. Notice that when you hold the CTRL key you can draw straight lines and also the angle of the line change at 15 degrees when you move the mouse. (FIGURE 1)
FIGURE 1 Drawing a straight line at 75 degress with the Bezier Path Tool.
Now select your just drawn line and go to the Fill and Stroke dialog and change the line's thickness to 6. (FIGURE 2)
FIGURE 2 Change the line's thickness to 6.
Let's duplicate the line many times and arrange the resulting lines. You can select each line with the Select Tool and if you click the line again, the rotation handles appear, so again while pressing the CTRL key rotate the lines until you get something similar to this: (FIGURE 3)
FIGURE 3 Arrange the duplicated lines to get the basic shape of the antenna.
Select the whole set of lines and go to Path > Stroke to Path, after that (keep selected the set) go to Path > Union. In this way we get a single shape. After this select the shape using the Edit Path Tool (F2) and delete some nodes so we could get a nicer shape. The nodes that we won't want are those from the left, right and a few ones from the top. (FIGURE 4)
FIGURE 4 Refine the shape deleting some nodes.
At this time we should have a nice shape, but we are not done yet, so select the shape and apply a stroke of 2px and a temporary white fill. Now draw a kind of zebra pattern using rectangles, choose the colors you like the most, white with another cool color could work. After you've drawn your pattern, group it (CTRL+G) and convert it to a pattern by going to Object > Pattern > Objects to Pattern. After this delete your zebra pattern and select your antenna, then go to the Fill and Stroke dialog and under the Fill tab select pattern and then your just created zebra pattern. (FIGURE 5)
FIGURE 5 Apply a custom pattern to our antenna (the zebra pattern is on the left).
Any nice antenna should emit signals or something, so let's add some signals. To do this create 2 perfect circles using the Circles Tool, one of the circles should be small and the other big, then remove the fill of both circles and just add a stroke (2px or 4px). Select both circles and apply Path > Stroke to Path. After this go to Effects > Generate from Path > Interpolate and select the values (Exponent 0; Interpolation steps 2; Interpolation method 1) shown in FIGURE 6.
FIGURE 6 Using interpolation to add the remaining signal's circles.
Let's apply a nice touch to the signal, so it gets faded in the outer "rings". Before applying the effect, remember to group together the signal's rings. Now the effect, draw a rectangle and apply to it a radial gradient from white to black, then if you want, extract a kind of pizza's slice from the rectangle using an auxiliary shape, then Difference or Intersection within the shapes would work (this pizza's slice step is optional).
Now select both your signal's rings and the rectangle (with or without pizza's slice eaten) and go to Object > Mask > Set. (FIGURE 7)
FIGURE 7 Applying a fade effect to the signal's rings.
Let me show you my final Antenna, I added some clouds, a field and a shadow (I've used a duplicate of my antenna with lowered opacity and black fill). (FIGURE 8)
FIGURE 8 My final antenna.
And that's it we are done.I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and as always thanks for reading.
Salu! (now you know how to say good bye in Salvadorean spanish, jeje)
27 octobre 2008
Being a Jack of all trades...
Hi :), the other day I was reading about the English phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" (and really was a new phrase to me, in Spanish I've never heard something similar before) and I felt some how identified with this description, although a little bit later I found in Wikipedia something like this:
"The 'jack of all trades' part of the phrase was in common use during the 1600s and was generally used as a term of praise, rather than disparagement, as it is often used today. 'Jack,' in those days was a generic term for 'man.' Later the 'master of none' was added and the expression ceased to be very flattering. Today it is used to describe a person whose knowledge, while covering a number of areas, is superficial in all of them"
And now I don't feel that much of being a "Jack of all trades ...", and instead pursue being a focused person, but I can't...
And I can't because I got too deep in this sea of Web technologies and stuff, I can't because is what people pays me money to do and some people considers that is what I'm proficient at.
Somehow the last paragraph become true... I remember when I was 16 and attended to some art classes (I've learned a little bit of many techniques: pencil, pastel, watercolor, acrylics and oil paintings), I used to have a lot of fun in those classes, then 5 years later I stopped doing most of my art stuff and instead I started to do some tutorials in Macromedia Fireworks and then I applied some of this teachings in my own stuff. Then I started to learn programming things deeply in the university and then I got more comfortable doing programming stuff than things related to art. My brain switched sides of the force and it's not what I intended in the first place.
If I analyze this, it seems like I've lost a lot of my artistic side in the past 9 years and with a very pronounced exponential graphic curve in the latest years.
And nowadays something change, I've found Inkscape (thanks to Rore) and Gimp, and I saw what people can create with this cool graphic programs, and now I feel really enthusiast again! I like both programs but Gimp is somehow special to me, it's a program that for me is one of the closest experiences to my traditional art background, and I really like it because of that.
Finally I know that my designs and drawings (computer graphics and traditional ones) are not the best looking ones, but like Anne Frank said:
"And if I haven't any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself...I want to go on living after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me"
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Coche (72% Web developer, 16% computer graphics artist, 6% Watercolor painter and 6% Animator)
* I'll try to grab some percentage of the Web Developer thing and distribute it in the other 3, it definitely haves too much
** Like some of my previous posts I liked to add my tutorial after my "quick" introduction but this time I've written too much. The day after tomorrow, I'll post my Inkscape's Antenna tutorial, stay tuned!!
13 octobre 2008
Music banner using Line Nova
Lately in my work I did some banners for mobile Web sites and just like everything I do with Gimp, experimentation and playing around are my steps to create nice banners and pictures (some times are not that nice, but :)
Ok, let me show you how I did one of my first banners using Gimp.
Start with an empty canvas, mine is 1008x252px (4:1). Then pick a color and drag it from the toolbar to the canvas (the canvas contains at this time only one layer, usually white), the color that I've chosen is a light blue (#6CB5ED). (FIGURE 1)
FIGURE 1 Setup your canvas with a light blue colored layer.
Now it's time to put your creativity juices to flow and invent a kind of logo for your banner. My banner it's about music, so I'll try to choose a font that goes along well with this topic. After looking around for a while I found a font called Alba (remember that if you want to use this font for commercial purposes, get in contact with the original creator), this font has a nice variant called "Alba Super", so I picked that one for my logo. (FIGURE 2)
FIGURE 2 Using a nice font for the logo.
Now it's time to add some music shapes (see one of my previous posts to grab this music shapes). You can add this music shapes in many ways: maybe grabbing some nice brushes related to music, or drawing yourself the music stuff, but in my case I used the music shapes SVG file that I did with Inkscape. The following paragraph step is optional.
Open the inkscape SVG file and from the startup dialog, choose "import paths". (FIGURE 3)
FIGURE 3 Importing the Inkscape vector paths.
Now select the paths dialog and select one of the layers, then click on the red button called "Path to Selection" this will make a selection based on the music shape that you want. In this way we can copy the selection and bring it back to our main banner project. (FIGURE 4)
FIGURE 4 Making a selection based in a Inkscape path.
Now bring the music shapes to your banner project and arrange them in a nice way. I also applied a darker shade of blue to the music shapes. At this moment you should have 2 layers, one with the text based logo and the other with the music shapes merged with the background color. (FIGURE 5)
FIGURE 5 Adding the music shapes to our music banner.
It's time to set the stage before applying one of the Gimp's coolest effects... Line Nova. Add a new layer and put it above our music shapes layer and below our music logo layer (put it in the middle). Fill the new layer with the same light blue color that we used before. Now set the foreground color to white and go to Filters > Render > Line Nova. Choose the default values and click in Ok. (FIGURE 6)
FIGURE 6 Line nova settings.
After applying line nova you should obtain the following result: (FIGURE 7)
FIGURE 7 Line nova effect.
Change the layer mode of the line nova layer to hue. After this you'll notice a subtle effect consisting of points like a semi dashed line. (FIGURE 8)
FIGURE 8 Line nova's effect is very subtle after applying a layer mode of Hue.
To make this effect more noticeable, let's apply some noise to the line nova's layer. Go to Filters > Noise > RGB Noise and set the following values: Uncheck Correlated noise and Independent RGB; set the Red, Green, Blue values to 0.20; finally set Alpha to 0. After applying the RGB noise, the effect could be too overwhelming so change the opacity of the layer to 60. The final result follows: (FIGURE 9)
FIGURE 9 Our final music banner!
Finally I also applied a radial mask to the line nova layer, in this way only the outer line nova's rays could be visible. I hope you found this tutorial useful and as always thanks for reading. See ya later!
