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Detroit & Boston, United States
Artist at heart, video editor by trade, photographer, aspiring documentary filmmaker, coffee slinger, cat herder, animal lover, US Air Force Iraq War Veteran, humanitarian and funny. A creative soul trying to find my place in this world.

Monday, August 30, 2010

My first avatar!

I've always wanted to make my own avatar. I started on it two days ago for a bit and then literally 12 hours on and off yesterday. You can go mad trying to perfect every detail and it also depends on how simplified or complicated and realistic looking you would like to make it. I decided to settle for somewhere in the middle.

I'm also proud to say that I used absolutely no tutorial to guide me on this one. I simply used all of the new tools and tips I have learned from previous tutorials and combined them all together. I also got to experiment with the gradient mesh tool, which I hadn't used prior to my avatar creation.

Here is a picture of the work in progress (the final is at the end).

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I began with the picture (shown above) and made it the bottom most layer and knocked down the opacity to about 30%. Every other layer I broke up into different parts of the face. The Illustrator layers aren't as "in your face" as Photoshop layers, so I have overlooked these in previous projects. This time I was diligent and organized.

Secondly, I started with all of the basic shapes and predominant lines (wrinkles) of the face. I initially started using black stroke and a generic skin tone and as the piece started coming together I began playing with the colors.

The eyes were the trickiest bit for me especially the lashes! I have redone my eyes since the "in progress" to the "final picture" see if you can spot the differences. The first set of lashes looked nice, but when I put them on my avatar I looked like a drag queen. My lashes are naturally short and thin, so I used the pencil tool to draw a straight line and used the handles to curve them a bit. I copied and pasted and changed the angle over and over - and rescaled and then finally made them all into one group.

The hair was the easiest part. I started by making some isosceles triangles with the polygon tool. The largest one was the main color of my hair and the smaller one is for highlights and the stroke of the largest triangle is for some natural red tones in my hair.

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Next I used the warp tool to create my naturally wavy hair. Definitely play around the with the warp tool settings.

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You can either copy the triangle of hair and resize different ones and place them then use the warp tool or just use the warp tool on one and then copy and place those. It's a more natural look to do them individually but you also have less control.

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....and voila! My first avatar!


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Saturday, August 28, 2010

Day of the Dead Skull Adobe Illustrator Tutorial

So, I was looking for some more Illustrator tutorials (I know, I should be posting video tutorials) and I came across this El Dia de los Muertos inspired looking skull from the blog Spoon Graphics and thought it was really cool.

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Everything was going pretty well until I get to the "create clipping mask step." I won't tell you how many hours I spent trying to work it out, re-reading and re-re-reading the step to see if I've missed something. I tried using the pathfinder to attempt the same step using another method and I just couldn't get it. It's easy in Photoshop, so I really don't know why I struggled with it so much. So, I've aborted this tutorial until someone can explain to me what I am missing. Here is the step:

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Here is my unhappy looking unfinished sugar skull. :o(

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Maybe this is a lesson that I should stick to what I know and that's video.

If you do want to try this yourself the tutorial link is here.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Paint an Apple with Adobe Illustrator CS5

As I've mentioned previously, I'm still new to Illustrator which is probably why the majority of tutorials are for Illustrator. I am a video editor by trade, so I should probably be focusing more on video, motion graphics and animation but I'm just having too much fun with Illustrator right now.

I've dabbled a bit with Illustrator CS4 so I can't make comparisons but apparently the bristle brush used in this tutorial is new to CS5. (I'm so glad I've upgraded from my single Adobe product to the Production Premium Suite).

This tutorial Create a Painterly Apple with Illustrator CS5’s new Bristle Brush comes from Vector tuts +. I was reading a bit about this website and they will pay you for your tutorial submissions. You can find tutorial submission information here.

I really enjoyed this tutorial, too, and I'm very pleased with the way my apple turned out. I probably should have added some shading to the bottom of the apple but it's time for bed so I'll do that later.

Tutorial Picture:

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My design:

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I pasted the photograph of the apple that I used as my model as well as my color swatches.

Half Orange Tutorial for Adobe Illustrator

I really need to focus more and kick procrastination in the rear. It's been over a week since I have posted and completed a tutorial.

This orange looks so nice and juice I'm craving some orange juice or lemonade. This tutorial is from Vector Tuts Plus.

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I did run into a few problems in step 8 with creating the pattern. The bounding box always seems to be a bit distinct. I re-sized all of my dots to 1/4 the size - copied it a few more times to make a new 'pattern' and it looked much better, in my opinion.

Have fun with this one. I think I'm going to try some lemons and limes using this tutorial, too.

My version:

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Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Great news!

My photo, from the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk, has been selected to represent Geelong, Australia. My photo is going to be one of 1,111 other photos to be judged for the grand prize and the people's choice award. I'm going to post a link on here when voting opens. I was so thrilled! Oh, and I got a pay raise today. It's been a good day.

Bomb Tutorial with Adobe Illustrator

Okay, I just got back from "Slackerville" and I'm back. Here is a bomb tutorial that I've been casually working on the past couple of nights when I should have been getting some shut eye. It's from a website called V for Vectors and has all kinds of fun Illustrator tutorials.

This is a bomb tutorial intended for beginners with an estimated completion time of 30 minutes. It took me twice as long and I still couldn't figure out how to color the stroke with a gradient without having a fill. Ugh!

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Here is my version:

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