Creative Hat

Logo Inspiration #12

Ferg — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:23:05 +0000

The intention of this post, is to give inspiration to budding designers as well as veterans of the noble industry, and to get some feedback on our design work.

(Click on thumbnails below to view showcase):

Logo Inspiration #11

Ferg — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:52:33 +0000

The intention of this post, is to give inspiration to budding designers as well as veterans of the noble industry, and to get some feedback on our design work.

(Click on thumbnails below to view showcase):

Comic Cover Art

Ferg — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:34:01 +0000

This is my first showcase contribution to the blog, which is the Original finished cover artwork for Pantherwoman (issue # 1).

I have been wanting to share the comics I’ve drawn by putting them online for some time now, but just can’t find the time for such a massive initiative at the moment. If you want to look at a brief overview on how the girl this cover was created, read the post Vector Comic Girl.

There will be more comic art being showcased in the near future, so if you want to be kept updated please subscribe to our feed.

Vector Comic Girl

Ferg — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:48:03 +0000

The purpose of this post is to give some useful hints and tips to digital artists. This isn’t an in-depth tutorial, so a fair grasp of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop will be needed to begin drawing and manipulating at this level.

Tip One: Create a rough freehand sketch of the artwork you want to vectorise. Scan the sketch, and import it into the application. This will act as your guide, in much the same way as a normal pencil to ink drawing.

Tip Two: Begin to draw around a selected area (in this case the hair), using your sketch as a basic guideline. Put a transparency inside your selected object, so that you can see the sketch, and easily modify your outline.

Tip Three: Base colour fill the object, and begin on detailing. Fine detailing can be added later in Photoshop if required, but try to add the base detail in vectors, as this will greatly enhance the finish.

Tip Four: Moving on to another object (in this case the eye), put the transparency back on the former object to aid clarity. Begin to draw around the selected area as in step two.

Tip Five: After you have repeated the above procedure for each object, you can begin painting the image (in this case the skin tones) in Photoshop. Detailing of the whole comes in at this point. Remember; the more individual vectors you use as objects for the skin tones, the easier it is to detail later.

Tip Six: Remove the initial sketch in order to see the image on its own. This where node tweaking comes in, as the image needs to balance without the guide.

Tip Seven: Add edges and comic book effect using the filter parameters in Photoshop. In this case, I used the poster-edge filter with no thickness, using an intensity of 2 and posterisation of 4.

If you wish to see Vector Comic Girl in her indigenous environment…

There will be plenty of hints and tips for digital illustrators available soon, so if you want to be kept updated, please subscribe to our feed.

Aztec Bouffon Font

Ferg — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:00:27 +0000

Aztec Bouffon is a Creative Hat font, designed entirely in-house and avalable to download and use absolutely free.

This font has been extremely successful on Dafont.com, where it has been downloaded over 70.000 times by designers worldwide. If you want to add this font to your collection, simply click on the button beneath the image.

There will be plenty of exclusive fonts available soon, so if you want to be kept updated, please subscribe to our feed.

Hynofont

Ferg — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:07:33 +0000

Hynofont is a Creative Hat font, designed entirely in-house and avalable to download and use absolutely free.

This font was created for a one-off commission, and is now available exclusively from Creative Hat. Hypnofont is free for personal use, but please read the licence (included in download) if you want to use it for commercial purposes. To add this font to your collection, simply click on the button beneath the image.

There will be plenty of exclusive fonts available soon, so if you want to be kept updated, please subscribe to our feed.

Jazz Pickle Font

Ferg — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:00:10 +0000

Jazz Pickle is a Creative Hat font, designed entirely in-house and avalable to download and use absolutely free.

This font was created for a one-off commission, and is now available exclusively from Creative Hat. Jazz Pickle is free for personal use, but please read the licence (included in download) if you want to use it for commercial purposes. To add this font to your collection, simply click on the button beneath the image.

There will be plenty of exclusive fonts available soon, so if you want to be kept updated, please subscribe to our feed.

Baby Pirate Font

Ferg — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:31:18 +0000

Baby Pirate is a Creative Hat font, designed entirely in-house and avalable to download and use absolutely free.

This font has been extremely successful on Dafont.com, where it has been downloaded over 36.000 times by designers worldwide. If you want to add this font to your collection, simply click on the button beneath the image.

There will be plenty of exclusive fonts available soon, so if you want to be kept updated, please subscribe to our feed.

Mask Overlay & Paint

Ferg — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:20:59 +0000

This section of the blog is more by way of inspiration than in-depth tutorials. The idea is to give you the means to replicate these effects, but more importantly; inspire you to work your own ideas and discover your own techniques through playing with the tools. This is what will make your work uniquely your own, and where all of the fun working ideas comes from.

(Please note: this is not a beginner’s tutorial. To understand the settings outlined in this post, you will need to have a good grounding in Photoshop.)

Step one: I created a sketch, which was imported into Photoshop (CS4). I then created a mask to paint on the image. I messed around with the sketch using the charcoal filter (thickness 1 / detail 2 / balance 84), and the pencil tool (disolve – opacity 100%).

Step two: Painting in the horses, and part of the background. For this I used a watercolour brush with 100% opacity and 80% flow. I then accented the edges (edge width 2 / Brightness / 46 / smoothing 5). I then used the cut out filter to break up the strokes (levels 5 / edge simplicity 2 / edge fidelity 1).

Step three: The rest of the background (as step 2) and contrast for the foreground. For this, I used a watercolour brush with 100% oppacity and 50% flow. For intensity I used the dark stroke filter (balance 4 / Black intensity 7 / white intensity 3). For more contrast, I created another mask and intensified the image further with the sumi-e filter (stroke width 10 / stroke pressure 2 / contrast 16).

As with all personal Photoshop projects, the possibilities for different finishes is endless, but I decided to end this one here. It achieved what I wanted, which was a hard edged sketchy foreground, with a soft background.

Mask Overlay & Contrast

Ferg — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:55:28 +0000

This section of the blog is more by way of inspiration than in-depth tutorials. The idea is to give you the means to replicate these effects, but more importantly; inspire you to work your own ideas and discover your own techniques through playing with the tools. This is what will make your work uniquely your own, and where all of the fun working ideas comes from.

(Please note: this is not a beginner’s tutorial. To understand the settings outlined in this post, you will need to have a good grounding in Photoshop.)

Step one: I created a sketch, which was imported into Photoshop (CS4). I then created a mask to paint on the image. I randomised the sketch using the charcoal filter (thickness 1 / detail 4 / balance 73), and the pencil tool (disolve – opacity 100%).

Step two: Painting in the background. I chose not to mask out the horse, but painted it in with the background. For this I used a watercolour brush with 100% opacity and 70% flow. I then accented the edges (edge width 2 / Brightness / 38 / smoothing 5). I then used the cut out filter to break up the strokes (levels 6 / edge simplicity 2 / edge fidelity 2).

Step three: Adding the rain effect, contrast, and rest of the background. For this, I created a new mask for the horse, and used angled strokes (direction balance 50 / stroke length 15 / sharpness 3). For intensity I used the dark stroke filter (balance 5 / Black intensity 6 / white intensity 2). For more contrast, I created another mask and intensified the image further with the sumi-e filter (stroke width 10 / stroke pressure 2 / contrast 16). Finally, I added uniform noise @ 12.5%.

I decided to leave it there. Obviously, with the tools available in photoshop, it is tempting to work and re-work an image. Sometimes less is more though, and I think I managed to achieve the effect I was going after with this project.