Introduction

In this tutorial, we’re going to create a 3D Typography based design. All the elements will revolve around the centerpiece and theme: dreaming. The word will dictate the entire layout and control the space by allowing everything else to emerge from within. The trees will grow out of the letters; the mountains will show themselves behind the word and overshadow the glowing moon.

Dreaming often takes you to different places and unites bits and pieces of your memory. It basically takes you to a whole new world, but that is usually made up of real elements. We’ll illustrate this by making everything float in mid air, as if suspended in time, yet maintain realism by using common elements of nature.

Naturally, people dream at night, so the overall lighting will be dark and predominated by a cold color palette: cyan and lime green.

Also, the typography should have a classic, storytelling look; one that would complete the eerie atmosphere.

Feel free to download the PSD at the bottom of the post that contains the final image. Now that we’ve planned everything, let’s begin.

Create the 3D text

The first thing to do is get this free font called Storybook. It’s a font that fits our context well, and that will look well with 3D decorations due to its elegant serifs and bold stature. Type up the first letter of your word and give it this color: 4C3F38.

Now add a 3D effect by going to Effect > 3D > Extrude & Bevel. Play around with the settings yourself to get the angle, lighting and form you want. You can recreate my treatment by using the same settings. Don’t forget to use a ‘Complex 2’ Bevel.

Once you finish the first letter, repeat the process on the remaining letters. The only modifications you should make are to alter the position. Then copy (Ctrl+C) each individual letter and paste (Ctrl+V) them in Photoshop one at a time. Once you try pasting them, you’ll be prompted to choose a method of importing. Choose the ‘Smart Object’ Option. By doing this you can make simple adjustments at all times to the Illustrator file right inside Photoshop by double clicking the layer icon.

Position the letters onto an empty Photoshop canvas. I’m working at a rather large resolution of approximately 6300 x 4500 px at 300 ppi.
Also, fill the background layer with this color: 17151d.

At this point we’ll begin stylizing the letters. Get the Magic Wand Tool (W) and make a selection of the letter’s foreground. Right click, select Make Work Path and specify a tolerance level of 1,5.

Now that it’s a work path, we’ll fill it with a color by going to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color. Fill it with white. The path should now be a vector shape. Double click on its layer and give it a bevel. Use the settings shown in the image below and choose the highlight color (94aa53) and shadow color (6c6f64).

It’s now time to create a pattern that will cover the front of each letter. I’m using a Go Media vector freebie: Seamless Swirls. Go on and download it if you haven’t already, and open the provided Illustrator file. Change its color to this: 94aa52 and copy (Ctrl+C). Open a new Photoshop project with the clipboard size (235 x 235 px) and fill the background color with another color: ebe77f. To make it into o a pattern go to Edit > Define Pattern. Your new pattern will be saved in the pattern set that is currently opened.

Now that you’ve created the pattern, you need to add the pattern to the face of the letter. Double click on the white shape’s layer and add a Layer Style: Pattern Overlay. Your newly created pattern should already be selected.

One last touch is a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer that we’ll place on top of the letter’s body. While having the layer selected, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map. Then play around with the colors until you get a similar result. My colors, from left to right are: d8c67f, 94aa53, 262628, and 141416. Make sure that the Adjustment Layer Applies only to the letter. To do this, make it a clipping mask for the letter layer by holding Alt and clicking right in between the two layers.

Now copy the layer style of the letter face and duplicate the Gradient Map. Apply these effects to the remaining letters.

Draw the scenery

The text is now finished. Let’s add the trees and foliage.
This technique I’m about to show you is what I have developed for myself. It reduces complex imagery to simple shape. A simple splatter, when grouped in a pattern begins to take a certain role, thus resembling an element of nature. You may find it useful or dull, but it’s what we’ll use for this design.

All you need is a standard Photoshop round brush and a mouse. Choose one using your Brush Tool (B) and input the settings found in the images below.

Now that your brush settings are all ready, begin painting a tree. It’s important to know that you shouldn’t create the whole tree with the same brush settings. There is one adjustment you need to make along the way. If you look under Shape Dynamics in your Brushes Window, you’ll see a setting we’re using: Fade. This fades out your brush depending on how much you put in the adjacent field. A Fade set at 100 will end faster than one set at 250. You can use whatever settings you find appropriate. I used 100 for the trunk, 150 for extensions of the trunk, and 250 for thick branches. As you increase the fade, reduce the brush size at the same time.

Continue using this technique in creating the rest of the trees and draw some roots too. Reduce the size considerably for the thin branches and add even more fading when necessary.

It’s time for foliage. Prepare a separate brush using these settings.

Now begin painting. Begin with a larger size using this green: 94aa53. In a layer underneath, with a smaller sized brush, paint with a darker green: 55612f. Again over the light green layer, use the same color (94aa53) with an even smaller size. For highlights, use the same size as the last one, but with this yellow: e3e07d. Here is an image you can use as a reference in creating your own trees.

I drew my inspiration from acacia trees, while coming up with the shape of the trunk and volume of the foliage.

Following the branches as a reference, draw away!

Add more nature elements now. I added a mountain and a moon. They will give depth to the image, and prevent the composition from being scarce. Use the pen tool (P) and create them as vector shapes.

Make the mountain fade out on the bottom. An easy way to do it would be to create a new layer on top, clip it to the mountain layer and paint with a large soft brush with the background color. I also added a glow on the moon. To add one yourself, add a layer style: Outer Glow. Keep the standard color, increase its size and reduce the opacity to 25%.

Some more improvements include adding dark accents to the lower part of the tree trunks and shadows that stretch across the face of the letters. You can create those in the same way – clip a new layer to the one you want darkened and paint with a soft brush using a dark color. This applies to the mountain, trees and roots. Use a sharp brush to draw the tree shadow though.

Finalize the design

In order to complete the artistic feel of this design, add this texture to your canvas. Simply paste it on a new layer, over all the other ones. Set the layer’s blending mode to Linear Burn and its opacity to 30%.

Now invert the texture (Ctrl+I) and change its hue by going to Image > Adjustments > Hue and Saturation. Change the hue to 153 and saturation to -73.

One last touch – add the watercolor texture inside the mountain and moon, once more, with clipping masks. Put their layers on Overlay (Mountain) and Multiply (Moon). Adjust the opacity.

And that concludes it. Now go on and create your own, one of a kind, dream design.

So here are 14 free brushes, but let’s first take a look at the anatomy of a scatter brush. A new Scatter Brush starts with any vector object you think would look cool scattered along a path. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume this is a circle with a black fill and no stroke. Drag this circle onto the brushes panel and choose “New Scatter Brush” from the available options.

You should now see a window with four major options. When adjusting these options, it is best to have a sample stroke on your artboard and the “preview” box checked so you can immediately see the effects of your changes.

All of these major options have a drop-down menu to the right that selects how the parameter will react. The default setting is “fixed”. The remaining options are Random, Pressure, Stylus Wheel, Tilt, Bearing, and Rotation. A little explanation on these options first.

Parameter Settings

1. Random: Creates a brush that varies randomly within a defined range. Now you’ll see two sliders instead of one, and the brush reacts randomly along the path between that range.
If you don’t have a wacom, then you’re going to have to settle for Random settings for variety. (Also, get your Wacom set-up properly by following this guide) Otherwise, check out all these ways to get some more expression out of your Scatter Brushes:
2. Pressure: Creates a brush that varies in response to how hard you push down with your Wacom. This setting is really only useful with the Size parameter, and can give really confusing results when used with other parameters.
3. Stylus wheel: This one is pretty confusing. From what I understand it changes the diameter of the brush in relation to the stylus wheel on a digital pen. Does anybody have a Wacom with a scroll wheel? Am I missing something? I would just stay away from this setting.
4. Tilt: Creates a brush that varies in response to the angle of tilt between your Wacom and the tablet surface.
5. Bearing: Very cool! This setting is great to use with the rotation parameter, and varies the brush based on where the tip of the brush is pointing.
6. Rotation: Also a good option to use with the Rotation parameter, it varies the brush based on how you are twisting the wacom pen along the ‘z’ axis.

Ok, on to the parameters themselves.

Parameters

1. Size controls the size of objects along the stroke.
2. Spacing controls how much space there is between objects along the path.
3. Scatter controls how much space there is between objects perpendicular to the path.
4. Rotation controls how the objects are oriented relative to the page or the path.

I usually start settings each to random and with ranges similar to the screenshot below. Then I go back and experiment with the pressure and tilt settings for the Wacom.

Okay, let’s get back to creating your Scatter Brush. A good first attempt at getting the settings right is to set all parameters to Random and a medium range. How does that look? The two parameters that I find need the most fine tuning are Size and Spacing. If your scatter brush looks too thin, try moving the range of sizes higher and moving the range of spacing lower.

In the free download there are 14 Scatter Brushes to get you started. One of coolest brushes in the freebie is a splatter brush, which allows you to paint a splatter along a path; that’s a lot of control. You’ll also find circles, shards, sticks, squares, little pills, chunks & petals. Also included is the little particle explosion from the preview image made up entirely of the scatter brushes in the freebie.

Double click the brushes to see each one’s settings. The way I have them is just a starting point - go ahead and customize them to your own style. You might be surprised how different a brush can look with a few changes to those sliders.

When trying to make something crazy with scatter brushes my best advice is to layer, layer, layer. For the preview image I laid down a bed of dark colored brushes, then some white ones on top, then some more dark. I’m sure you’ll come up with something cooler and show it off in our User Showcase.

Good luck!

Ok, I lied. We’re not entering the Food Service industry. But a tutorial on how to make some chicken wings would be pretty cool, none the less. This tutorial is all about how to make those really cool hyper detailed wings that all those bro-dawg brands are rocking.

First things first, we’re gonna need to find a reference photo of a feather. After some searching on the information superhighway, I found one that I liked. The reason I chose it is because it had good curvature and a good amount of disheveled strands. Check it out below.

So I placed it into a new Illustrator file (by going to File > Place). Once in there, like a lot of the other tutorials on here that require tracing from a photo reference - I’ll be turning down the opacity of the image and locking it’s sub-layer.

So we’re gonna start tracing the feather out. We don’t need the plume on it, just the feathery part. I put enough crazy ridges and stray strands to keep it as a good base. I didn’t go too hyper on the first one because we’ll be duplicating the base shape and adding further detail to prevent the feathers from being so repetitive. We can’t have a boring wing, you know?

So I duplicated the feather base once and dragged it off to the side. I made a couple of my own tapered brushes for the detail. If you’re unfamiliar with making tapered brushes, we have more than a couple tutorials that touch on how to achieve this effect. It’s a whole tutorial in itself, so like last time, I’m omitting it from this one too. I added a ton of detailed strands all around both base shapes. I expanded the appearance on the brush strokes, deleted the invisible stroke marks (by making a transparent box, using the magic wand to select all the invisible lines, and hit the delete key) then added the shape of the details and the corresponding base feather together with the pathfinder. And we’ve got two feathers.

Now I start building the wing. The curvature comes into play here, because it’s what is going to give our wing a legit look. I duplicated each feather, and switched off each style to keep it different, while decreasing the size little by little. I know I reached a good stopping point when the detail in the wing begins to get lossy with the naked eye.

Now we need to add the secondary part of the wing. I duplicated the wing we have so far and added it with the pathfinder. I turned down the opacity (locking it’s sub-layer is up to you, but not necessary) and got to work with the additional part. I added the detail strands much like I did in the feather. I also added some more smaller feathers to give it some more character and kill off a little of the negative space.

Now I repeated the expanding of the brush strokes, deleted stray transparent lines, and merged the wing all together with the pathfinder tool. We have a wing! Now let’s duplicate it and mirror it like it’s shown below.

So let’s align this bad boy properly, and group it together.

You’re now equipped with a pretty nice set of wings to put behind your logo or graphic. I used a skull here from the Arsenal, well, because I can… and there you have it.

Now I’m gonna go look up some Hot Wing recipes and throw down in the kitchen. Adios!

-Dave

The feather used as the photo reference was aquired by using Google’s image search, from the website Owl Prowl. Just giving them credit where it’s due.

I say mostly because it went through a series of transformations - one of which was an export to photoshop (for some wacom-esque highlighting) followed by a hi-res auto trace in Illustrator. So, some edges are slightly off, but the overall seamless effect is there. Go ahead and download it, but stick around for some behind the scene paparazzi shots of how it was made.

I’ll admit it - I had never made a seamless pattern before. I knew I wanted it to be swirly, so I pen-tooled some reference photos for ingredients as I brainstormed just how this was going to work.

By the time these ingredients were ready I had a plan for a workable but really laborious process to make a seamless pattern. In the screenshots below you’ll find an explanation of how it was done, but really, if you know of a better way please share in the comments!

EDITED: Track6 knows a much more accurate and quick way to accomplish these steps and was nice enough to share it with everybody in the comments. The idea is the same, but the process better. Thanks!

As you can see from the last screenshot, the pattern was still quite a mess at this stage. Filling out the middle took a little while of puzzle piecing everything together. By the end of the workday last Friday I had spent a little too much time on this thing, and still wasn’t happy. So over the weekend curves were smoothed and highlights added, and finally it was starting to look right. An anxious face showed up in the curves so I made a little preview image just for fun.

So that’s the story of this freebie! I hope if you embark on making your own custom seamless pattern you’ll share some shortcuts with me in the comments.

In the last post, I showed you how to make 8-bit characters in Adobe Illustrator. In this post, we will animate those characters in Adobe Photoshop using the Animation Window.

1. CREATE A NEW PHOTOSHOP DOCUMENT

To Begin, open up a new document in Photoshop and make the dimensions the size you want your final animated gif to be. This will be used for on screen viewing, so set the resolution at 72 pixels per inch.

Next, transfer your vector images into Photoshop. The easiest way to do this is to use the copy command in Illustrator and paste them into Photoshop as a smart object. You may need to resize them when you move them to Photoshop, but just remember to keep the “pixels” of the different objects the same size.

2. OPEN THE ANIMATIONS WINDOW

Now that you have all of your images in Photoshop, it’s time to animate! Open up the ANIMATION window which is located under the WINDOW menu. The animation window will serve as your timeline for your animation.

There are a couple of nice features here that should be noted.

• Each box in this window serves as an individual frame of your animated gif.
• On the bottom of each of these boxes is a drop down menu that allows you to control the duration of that particular frame.
• Below the frames in the toolbar, are the add and the delete frame icons. They function in the same manner as the add and delete layer buttons on the layers palette.
• There is also another helpful button, the TWEEN ANIMATION FRAMES button, that allows you to enter frames automatically as tweens for your animation so you don’t have to animate every individual frame. Instead you can just make two frames, one where the animation should start and one where it ends. Then, you select the last frame in the animation and you press the button that looks like little boxes going in a diagonal direction. This brings up a pop-up menu that allows you to enter as many frames as you would like to control the duration of the animation.
• On the window there are also the typical video controls that will allow you to play through your animated gif.

3. BEGIN THE ANIMATION

For this tutorial, we will do a short animation of our characters fighting. To begin, make sure that all your characters are on different layers. The way the animation works is by turning on and off different layers in each frame to controll animation. So, begin with your character on one side of the screen. Then, add another frame in the animation window, and make sure it is selected, and move the character across the screen. If you click back and forth between the frames in the animation window, the character should jump from one part of the screen to the other.

This is where that handy tween animation button comes into play. Select the frame with the character where you want him to end up, and press the tween button. In the pop-up box that appears, make sure that it says “tween with previous frame” in the drop down box. Then enter the number of frames that you want to insert in between your animation and press ok. Now you should see a lot more frames in your animation window. Press the play button to see the results.

4. BRING IT ON!!!

So great, you made a little guy move across the screen, now what?! Well, how about some good old violence? This may take some more pixel pushing in Illustrator, but what you need is to create the impression of a sword swinging motion.

The best way to do this is to have your character have two different poses. In one pose, have him stand with his sword up and in the other he should be standing with the sword in a downward slashing motion. When the two are animated together, it appears if your warrior is swinging his sword. Use the same technique to animate as you previously did, turning on and off layers in the different frames. Then all you have to do is move him towards the other character and swing away.

5. SAVE THAT MASTERPIECE

Finally, to save the animation out as a GIF, go to the FILE menu and click on the SAVE FOR WEB & DEVICES option. In the window that comes up, make sure gif is selected, and then click save and you are done. Choose a color preset like 128 colors or 32 colors depending on many you have. Remember, fewer colors mean smaller file sizes.

6. GO NUTS!

Now go crazy with it, and add some effects and some projectiles and soon it will be mass hysteria! Then, you can show it off to your friends by putting your gif’s on your web page or use them as a AIM icon. Here is the final one I created…GOOD LUCK!

If you want to, post your results in the User Showcase and show off your amazing animating skills.

Have you ever wanted to make a kick ass animation of 8-BIT characters tearing each other to shreds? Well now you can. In this tutorial, I will take you through the process of creating vectorized 8-bit characters for use in an animated GIF. I’ve also included the vector source files of the characters and objects so you can create your own animation. So start jamming to The Advantage and get started!

1. Set up your document in Illustrator

To begin, open Illustrator and create a new document. It doesn’t really matter what size, so the default 8.5 x 11 dimensions will be just fine (Since these are vectors, they can be resized later to suit your needs).

2. Turn on the Grid

Next, you want to make sure you turn on the grid in your document. You can do this by going to the VIEW menu and selecting the SHOW GRID option (or by pressing CTRL + “ for the shortcut). This grid will serve as a guide for all the pixels you will use to make your characters, backgrounds, items, etc. Also, I find it helpful to turn on the snap to grid option as well. This makes it easier to move the pixels around the grid, without having to spend time lining them up by hand. You can find this option in the VIEW menu under SNAP TO GRID (or by pressing SHIFT + CTRL + “ ).

3. Use Squares to create your Character

Now your document is set up, you are ready to make some vector 8-bit characters. First, use the square tool to make a square the exact same size as the squares of the grid. Since you have the SNAP TO GRID option on, this should be fairly easy. This square will serve as a single “pixel” that you will copy to make all of the objects in your 8-bit environment.

4. Get Creative!

Next, you’ll have to decide how you want your characters to look. You can either sketch them out and scan them into your computer or just wing it. If you are going to sketch them out, make sure that you turn the opacity down on your sketch so you can still see the grid in Illustrator. For this tutorial, I am just going to wing it using characters from the Final Fantasy series as a guide.

At this point, you need a quick way to move the pixels around to create your character. I find it works best to work with one color at a time, and then go back and add detail later. The fastest way to do this is to select the pixel you want to use, and hold ALT while pressing the arrows in the direction that you want the pixel to go. This will copy your single “pixel” and move the copy in whatever direction you choose.

5. Color your character

When you have your outline finished, it is time to fill in your character. I use the same technique as before, but I have found you also need to use the mouse to hand place pixels at times. When choosing colors, keep in mind that you need to use a limited palate like a real 8-bit game, if you are going for authenticity. If it helps, you can also keep a single pixel of each color next to your characters that you can copy or use for other elements in the 8-but world you are creating. Also, don’t forget to create a weapon for your character.

6. Create more characters

After I finished my first character, I made some other characters of a similar style so that he has someone to fight.

7. Create Your environment

Now, you need to create an environment for your characters to fight in. This can be a bit tricky, but just remember that most retro games had a block or unit of background that was usually repeated across the screen. In this background, I have created a couple of different trees and used darker shades of greens and browns to add depth. Then, I repeated them across the background using the HORIZONTAL DISTRIBUTE CENTER tool to keep them looking uniform. In the fore ground, I created a dirt road that the characters can be placed on. Also, when blocking out large areas of color in the background, it is much easier to create larger sections of color using the square tool.

8. Create Some Objects

You may also want to create other elements that the characters can interact with in the environment. For this free vector sample pack, I have made a few different things that you can add into your animation like mushrooms and torches. And now you should be ready to bring your characters to life, through the power of an animated gif!

post links to your character designs

I’m curious to see what our readers come up with. I want to see some awesome 8-bit characters, monsters, bosses, objects, etc. I’ll even post my favorites in another post!

Freebies!

Part 2 - ANIMATION

In Part 2, I will take you through the process of animating your 8-bit characters using Photoshop CS3’s animation panel.

You know damn well that drawing some hyper-magical illustration is out of the question. You’re not gonna go balls to the wall on some typographic masterpiece either. You need a solution that’s fast and looks good. You need to take some design detours because this design is on a time constraint and a BUDGET. You need stock vector art, and you need it now.

As you may very well know, we offer a solution to this dilemma over at the Arsenal. We’re one of many different choices for theme-driven vector artwork, but since this is the GoMediazine… we’ll be using objects strictly from our packs to show the power of stock art when dealing with projects such as these.

Author’s Note: This tutorial does breeze by at a pretty brisk pace, but doesn’t require a black belt in Illustrator-jutsu. Any questions with the tutorial, please place in the comments following it, and I’ll answer all of them to the best of my abilities. Please be somewhat familiar with how adding and subtracting from objects works and the layering structure within Illustrator. The pathfinder and alignment tools will cover a lot of these nifty little tricks. When duplicating objects or grouped objects – alt+drag will handle that. To paste in place – ctrl+c and ctrl+f. If you’re still confused, these subjects are covered in numerous previous tutorials we have here in the zine. Read ‘em if you need ‘em.

We’re gonna make a new file in Illustrator. 11” x 11” and RGB color mode should do the trick. Make a black square that hits the edge of the artboard (true black, not that cmyk off-black) and lock the object in place. This will be our black t-shirt background.

Now let’s double check what your client had in mind for the design. They mentioned that the design shouldn’t exceed 3 colors, and gave you creative freedom because they like your work so much. They just want it to look gruesome and crazy and all that brutal stuff. This is good because the edge of having to reinvent the wheel on a pressure-filled job like this is relieved. I’m gonna start digging through the design weaponry.

Here’s a list what packs I think will be good for the job, and why. We have stuff that makes amazing background elements for just about anything brutal, focal pieces that can bring just the right attention to the design, and decorative add-ons that help bring everything home as a whole piece.

So now I pick some colors to play with. The main thing I keep in mind with this job when choosing colors is if it will look good on black. Black makes all sorts of colors pop way more than on any other color… so I like using some pretty intense stuff, but not to the point where it’s seizure inducing. Know what I mean? On 3-color designs, I go with a dark, medium, and light tone. That’s the general rule with most designers. Below is what I settled with after some trial and error.

Author’s Note: Experiment with colors, you’ll surprise yourself sometimes. For added inspiration in the color selection process, visit Colourlovers.com – a great community site with all sorts of color schemes and patterns.

So now I start dragging objects that would complement each other into the Illustrator file. Below is what I ultimately ended up using, once again, after some trial and error.

Colors? Check. Objects to use? Check. Now let’s get on with the design.

We’re starting with the abstract halftone first. This will be our background. I applied the darkest swatch from our color scheme to it because it’s in the background. I’m not a huge fan of the negative space that gets left behind on this so I duplicate the object and flip it upside down so it fills out more.

I add the two together and expand them. Lock this object into place (like we did with the background) and we’re on to the next step.

Now I took a bunch of those wormies from the doodle pack and made the fill color on them our lightest colors (while maintaining the true black inked outline. I also did this with the eyeballs we took from our first anatomy pack. I chose a handrawn skull from the pack of the same name, made the fill color our medium turquoise-ish color, and assembled everything how you see here.

Now notice above that I took the entire skull with worms piece and duplicated it. I ungrouped everything and added it together and expanded it. I made it a stroke with the background color (stroke weight of 3 and positioned to the outside of the shape) and expanded the appearance (object > expand appearance). I aligned them together to the middle and center, with expanded stroke being on the bottom of the skull, and grouped them. Added it appropriately to the design and voila!

Author’s Note: I added this stroke because it helps isolate the skull more from the background. This approach to object isolation in design isn’t always a great thing and should be used tastefully. You give strokes to every single object and you’ll have something retarded as hell on your hands – no bueno.

So we need some text dammit! Vomit Whistle. Hmmm, well… The Arsenal does have a gnarly-as-hell font called Goatbeard. We’ll use that!

So I typed out the band name. I duplicated the text, right clicked it and converted it to paths. I then ungrouped it and moved all the letters closer together to my personal liking. I kept the words Vomit and Whistle as seperate objects (I did add them and expand them, however). I then applied an arch to them with a more positive vertical distortion on the “Vomit”, and a more negative distortion on the “Whistle” (because they’ll be going around the top and bottom of the skull). If you’re totally lost to what I just said .. effect > warp > arc. Play around with the settings. That should get you back on track.

Now remember the splatter we put aside? Here’s where it becomes useful to this piece. We’re going to duplicate our band name’s layers, drag them to the side, and make them the lightest color we’re using on the design. Copy and paste them in place (ctrl+c and then ctrl+f). Take the splatter and throw the sucker right on top of one word and size it appropriately. Duplicate the splatter and do it to the other one. Now select the word (this should only choose the second layer of the word you pasted in place, not the original) and then hold shift and select the corresponding splatter. Intersect them using your pathfinder tool and you should have the splatter cut out into the shape of the word. Do the same for the other and you should have about the same result as I have shown here below.

Now I applied a black stroke using the method I explained on the skull, and then once that was grouped into the text, I repeated it again with the background color.

I then placed the text appropriately into the design, and we’re done!

Now be professional – mock up the shirt for your client and send them a decent sized proof of the actual design too. Wait for them to approve, collect your earnings, send them their final files, and keep your eyes peeled for when it hits merch stores internet-wide… FOR YOU ARE THE DESIGN CHAMPION!!!

… and this only took you about an hour.

Follow a brief to produce complete CD artwork from concept to final product, using Photoshop and Illustrator

The CD package I’m going to show you how to create over the following pages was a real commission I undertook for New Jersey rock band Hollywood Avenue. The band gave me a lengthy brief that described their vision for their album artwork down to the very last detail. This was both a good and a bad thing; good because I knew exactly what to create, bad because with the client having such a specific idea there was little room for manoeuvre.

The band’s idea was very imaginative and allowed for a surreal and artistic piece. Typically, I found stock photos of individual pieces or textures and assembled them together using various image-manipulation techniques in Photoshop, and I even used hand illustration to fake some parts. Colour overlays and other subtle effects and textures were also used to help blend things together.

Follow this tutorial to find out how I made Hollywood Avenue’s insane vision come to life. I’ll talk you through my workflow and decision-making process rather than focus too much on specific graphical techniques and I’ll also explain how to use printers’ templates to make sure your design comes up to their specs.

Here’s the link to read the tutorial:
Design a 6 Panel CD Package

ANIMATING WITH INK EFFECTS
(software required: Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects with Trapcode’s Particular)

In this tutorial I’ll recreate a similar look from an older Gnarls Barkley video. The principles I’ll cover are foundational and can be used for some incredible animations other than simply imitating a great music video. Some of what I covered in the Photoshop Bling tutorial is being used here directly in AE. So for those who were wondering why you’d use the Bling effect unless you were designing a hip hop album… remember it’s the principles that that are most valuable… the end result for these tutorials is just to get you excited to go out and create your own. Specifically I will focus on the following in this tutorial:

- Using Alpha and Luma Mattes in After Effects
- Frame by Frame animation using CS3’s Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects

A basic to intermediate knowledge of After Effects and Trapcode Particular is needed to follow along.

Rather Watch a Video Tutorial?

You can also purchase the video tutorial version for only $9.99. It’s 32 minutes long and 155MB in .mov format.

STEP ONE: Setting up your ink file for creating a matte

Import your video footage of ink. Create a new Comp called “ink blots.” For this shot I actually placed a wet paper towel in the base of a square fish tank and filmed from below the glass fish tank as i dropped food coloring onto the wet paper towel. You don’t need to worry about professional lighting or the deep amount of texture that you see here. That will all be taken care of post as we make some adjustments. If you dont’ have the time or equipment to shoot your own ink bleeding, you can simply download a clip from revostock.com to use for the matte. Here’s what my original footage placed into a Comp in AE looks like:

Desaturate your video footage. [Effect/Color Correction/Hue&Saturation]

Adjust your levels until you blow out your background to be completely white but keep as much detail in your ink bleed as possible. [Effect/Color Correction/Levels]

The result for my footage looks like this

STEP TWO: Creating a Luma Matte

Drag one of these free water color textures from Gomedia into your “ink blots” composition - or buy the whole pack of textures here. This is being used simply to add some texture and an organic feel to our ink bleeding.

Desaturate it repeating the very first step. I scaled the texture to fill the screen as well. Now apply a layer style to it of “Gradient Overlay”

So now I’ve got 2 layers inside of “ink blots” composition. The top layer is the ink I desaturated and adjusted the levels. This layer is going to be used as a Luma Matte for the layer below it. The layer below it is the gradient textured watercolor from Gomedia that we just created. The top layer is the layer that will matte (or mask for Photoshop users) the layer below it.

So by setting the Track Matte to Luma Matte Inverted, we reveal the gradient textured gomedia watercolor in the shape of our ink video footage above it. Luma matte reveals whatever is white and masks whatever is black (and any shades between). We set it to Luma Matte Inverted because our ink is in black and we want that to be revealed, not the white space around it.

The results of a Luma Matte Inverted applied to our gradient textured gomedia watercolor layer:

STEP THREE: Applying an Alpha Matte

The Luma Matte looks great! However, I’m not satisfied with the amount of texture being revealed. I suppose I could adjust the levels of my original ink footage to control that, but here is another way to add more texture to this and cover the usage of Alpha Mattes.

Create a new composition called “new ink blots”. Drag the composition “ink blots” from your project window into the “new ink blots” composition. Then drag a different water color texture from Gomedia into the same comp. You should have 2 layers in the comp “new ink blots” - layer 1 is “ink blots” and layer 2 should be your Gomedia water color texture. Remember the layer on top will be used as your matte (mask). So you will be revealing the water color texture and using the “ink blots” as your matte.

This time you will be using an Alpha Matte. The difference is that an Alpha Matte will only matte the non transparent areas of the layer. So now that we’ve already created a Luma Matte in the “ink blots” comp, all the white space you see is actually transparency. You could change the background color of your “ink blots” comp from white to another color to understand the transparency if needed. Set the Track Matte of the water color textured layer to Alpha Matte.

Each time you choose a track matte the layer being used as the matte is automatically turned off so that you don’t see it. You will only see the layer being matted (masked). This time turn on Layer 1 “ink blots” and set the layer mode to Overlay.

The results:

I decided there is a little too much green in there so I desaturated the water color layer 2. Now we want to make this ink blot symmetrical. Set up a new composition and call it “Gomedia.” Drag “new ink blots” into that composition and apply the Mirror effect. [Effect/Distort/Mirror]

And… I’ve got a symmetrical ink blot! Raaad!

STEP FOUR: Create another ink blot and apply it as a Luma Matte and an Alpha Matte

I set up my 2nd ink blot in a new comp called “ink blots 2″ - repeating the steps from earlier. (Desaturate it, adjust the levels, and apply a mirror effect to it.) My second ink blot looks like this [see pic below] after doing that. (do not apply a gradient overlay layer style to this one):

I added a white solid below ink blots 2 layer. [Layer/Solid...]

Set the white solid Track Matte to Luma Inverted Matted.

I now have my inkblot in solid white and I’ve changed the background of the comp to a dark gray. The gray actually transparent.

I dragged my “ink blot 2″ from my project window into my “Gomedia” comp i created earlier. It now looks like this… the white ink is what we just created and the gray background is transparent.

The white inside the middle of the ink looks good. And the background will be white as well. The only problem is that if i want to put any layer behind white ink bleed in the middle, I will not be able to fly my camera thru that layer because the white is solid rather than transparent. So, that’s easily solved…. we have 2 layers in our “Gomedia” comp so far - layer 1 “ink blots 2″ and layer 2 “new inkblots.” I want to use “ink blots 2″ as an Alpha Matte for the layer “new ink blots.” I set it to Alpha Matte Inverted because I want the area where the white is to be transparent.

Now the white ink is transparent and i can put a layer in back of it or i can fly my camera right thru the center and keep going. Eventually I will set my background to white. But for now it is gray just so that i know which areas are transparent.

STEP FIVE: Working your video footage into the scene

Here is the footage of my singer on a green screen.

There all sorts of tricks and tips to green screening footage. I will not cover those here because with the effects we will be using, we do not need a perfect key. I am using Keylight that comes with AE. [Effect/Keying/Keylight 1.2]

I placed my singer with the background keyed out into my “Gomedia” composition. Made a copy of it and flipped it. Using the steps from earlier, I desaturated and adjusted the levels of the singer until I had results that were solid black & white.

Then I set my layers to screen mode so that only the whites will show.

Now I have repeated those steps (key, desaturate, levels, and place into Gomedia comp) with another shot of my singer that used a different camera angle. Notice my layer order. Because we took the time to Alpha Matte “ink blots 2″ earlier, I can place the footage below the layer “new inkblots” and have it show. If we had left it solid white as it is in our comp “ink blots 2″ we would not have been able to do this.

STEP SIX: Animate birds using Illustrator and Photoshop.

Using Gomedia’s Flock of Birds from the Arsenal, I want to choose one flock to animate.

I chose several individual birds out of the flock and layered them directly on top of each other. Make sure each one is on a separate layer in Illustrator. Choose File/Export/Photoshop.

Make sure “Write Layers” is chosen underneath Options. I don’t need Maximum Editability checked. Name it and the open Photoshop.

In photoshop, I opened the .psd I just exported. Then I need to open the Animation window. [Window/Animation]

In the top right corner of the Animation window I clicked the arrow and chose “Make Frames From Layers”

Now I have separate frames that have been created from each layer in my .psd. I can control the amount of time each frame is displayed by selecting the frame(s) and clicking on the black arrown in the bottom right corner of a frame that is selected. I chose .1 seconds. I can preview the animation by clicking the play button inside of the animation window.

I am ready to make a video clip out of this animation by choosing file/export/render to video. By default, the settings are set up to render the frames on a transparent background. Keep that setting. Now I’m ready to use my new bird flying movie in After Effects.

STEP SEVEN: Add birds into my final composition

I made new comp with my animated bird. I will be using this comp as a custom particle in using Trapcode Particular.

create a new solid (the color does not matter).

With the solid layer selected I then apply Particular

By default, there are white spheres animating out over time from a center point. I’m going to change a lot of the setting for Particular. Each one of those white spheres will be replaced by my movie of the bird flying. so as i adjust the setting for particular and watch the white spheres change direction/quantity/etc. I need to keep in mind that these spheres will be my flock of birds. I’m going to keyframe the amount of particles per second. this will keep my Emitter from continuously creating new particles. I only want a flock of them. Not an endless cycle of birds emitting. I have chosen 100 particles/second and will skip down in my timeline about 1 second and keyframe 0 for the amount. this will cause a slight trail of birds at the tail of the flock rather than an abrupt absence of birds.

I want to change my Emitter shape from a Point to a Box. This will allow me to emit from a larger area and look more natural for my flock of birds.

Now I have the option of changing the size of my Emitter. I can also come back and adjust these after I’ve turned the white spheres into my movie of birds.

Choose “Custom” from the tab under “Particle Type.”

An option to choose my custom particle is now available. When I click the tab it shows the list of my current layers. I chose “birds” from the list.

I need to tell the Time Sampling to Loop my movie of the birds.

And now I need to adjust the size of my particle (birds).

The results of my custom particle. I can go back to my Emitter settings and control the velocity & rotation of the particles being emitted. Each instance is different depending on what I’m trying to emit and the results I want.

I dragged the comp of my birds from my project window into my “Gomedia” comp. Created a copy and flipped it.

The final steps are to create a new camera. Select all of your layers inside of “Gomedia” comp and make them 3d layers. By default the Z position will be 0. I left them at zero and animated my camera towards all of the animated artwork. For additional interest, I could space out the layers in Z space and get a feeling of depth as the camera animates towards the artwork.

Conclusion

I’ve covered Luma Mattes & Alpha Mattes. I also covered frame by frame animation using Illustrator, Photoshop, and AE. Hopefully you’ve picked up on some techniques that can be used in many other creative ways. I also used the same technique of desaturating a layer and then applying a Color Overlay Layer Style to it for a great look. This was originally covered in depth in the Bling Tutorial. Have a great day and feel free to post links to some creative ways you are using this tutorial. Peace.

Ink Bleeding Effect from Go Media on Vimeo.

And again, if you would like to view our Video Tutorial for this to get a further understanding of how it’s done, you can purchase it for $9.99

This video is a brief introduction into how to prepare a font you design in Adobe Illustrator for Fontlab. Fontlab is the program of choice for building and managing fonts. There are a few steps that you need to do to prepare your illustrations to work within Fontlab but I tried to show you the most basic way to work in Fontlab.

Later on I will be creating far more extensive videos that will teach you much more that you can do within Fontlab. At Go Media we are going to start sharing video tutorials of how we do some cool tricks and tips on how to work better in creative software.

I have never done a video tutorial before so your feedback is greatly appreciated! Please let me know what you think and how I can improve!