Cochesaurus Playground

Painful Source of Inspiration part 2: Greeting Cards with Stylized Smoke

coche — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:19:02 GMT

Hi,

I'm having some troubles writing to this place, my blog, but I hope I can continue to share my thoughts and tips with you for a long time.

Ok, so in a previous post I said that I 'll write about my not so well experience with a girl and here I go...

I think most of the things are said in the previous post, only the conclusion and what I learned remains. I want to start with the following quote:

"Why so serious?"

-The Joker (from the movie The Dark Knight)

The following quote can explain this better:

"The most important thing to remember is to always remain calm, confident, and playful about the whole thing. This is a stranger, not your longtime girlfriend. Don’t treat her like she’s the only thing in the world that will make you happy…you don’t even know if she’ll make you a little bit happy at this point. You’re just making an earnest effort to get to know someone new."

-Zack Taylor (from the nice web site "Dating and Thoughts")

And that is what happened to me, I get so serious too soon and I forgot to have fun. I think the opposite is true, first don't forget to have fun, later if the things work out, then you can get serious.

Ok, let the tutorial begins!!

This time we'll do another nice and easy to do greeting card.

First, grab a nice picture that you think your friend will like. I chose a nice picture of McWolf from the Tex Avery classic cartoons. (FIGURE 1)

FIGURE 1 A cool character...Tex Avery's McWolf.

Now is time to modify the original picture, I did a soup bowl in Inkscape and then I imported it in my GIMP file. (FIGURE 2)

FIGURE 2 My soup bowl!

After this add the text balloon that will contain the special message for your friend. To draw the text balloon, use the Ellipse Select Tool to draw the initial shape, and then with a solid circle brush draw some strokes in the contour of the shape. To complete the text balloon, add some circles in diminution targeting the mouth or head of the character. (FIGURE 3)

FIGURE 3 The text balloon.

When you've completed the text balloon, its time to add the text using the Text Tool. (FIGURE 4)

FIGURE 4 Adding the text.

Now it comes the cool part of the tutorial... adding some stylized smoke to the soup, just to make it more delicious! And is really easy, just grab the Airbrush Tool and choose a Circle Fuzzy brush with a convenient size, I chose Circle Fuzzy (13). Then set the Brush Dynamics, check the size option under the Random category and draw some strokes to make your smoke. (FIGURE 5)

FIGURE 5 Our nice smoke makes the soup more delicious!

Lets see the final result: (FIGURE 6)

FIGURE 6 Our final greeting card.

And that's it, cool and easy tutorial huh.

See ya soon.

* by the way, the soup that appears in the picture is a traditional soup from my country called "Sopa de Pata" or Soup of Legs, is a delicious soup made from cow's legs, maybe it sounds not so appetizing but is really delicious!

Chalkboard

coche — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:58:30 GMT

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

Painful Source Of Inspiration Part 1: Greeting Cards Using Xach Effect

coche — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:15:00 GMT

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

Billboard Text

coche — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:35:00 GMT

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.

Spanish music drawing

coche — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:04:00 GMT

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!!