L E F T - S H I F T

Band flyer.

2011-10-14T13:53:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'm back... sort of.

I really haven't had any time to update the blog, but, luckily, that seems to be changing. I think I can spare a few minutes every now and then to share some of the jobs I've been working on.

To retake the previous trend, here is a flyer I made for my father's musical agency. The band used to do the designs themselves and, to be honest, they were bad.

The photograph on the background is not mine. I'd like to give proper credits to the photographer but, as it is, it's just the pic of a piano I found on google. I played with the levels a bit, darkened some areas so the text could be easily read.

I also completely remade the band's logo (that spiral thingy with notes) without being too disrespectful to the original image. I used some impacting font for the band name, added "night-live" colors, some elegant font for the subtitle and contact numbers, and bam! It was done.

Perhaps later I'll explain how I did the logo.
I hope I still have some interested readers around. :P

Finally back.

2011-05-20T23:13:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know I said it was going to be about a week... Turned out to be three, but hey, I'm back.

I got a new ISP at home and now I'll be able to resume the design works and tutorials.

In the mean time, I'm going to share the previously publicized web magazine I was working in:

I'm particularly fond of the LBP2 review page and the comic.

Nothing new.

2011-05-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I haven't been active in a while. I've been having some issues with my internet service and whatnot.
I expect to be able to resume my blogging in about a week, once these problems are solved.

Low Definition's banner.

2011-05-01T18:19:00.000-07:00

I'm not in the mood to make another guide today, so, I will just share this advertising banner of a videogame web-show produced by the same guys behind the the magazine.

The show is in spanish, but, if you're still interested, you can check the episodes in their YouTube's channel.

The dimensions for this were massive. Just the PNG's size was about 300 MBs; this is the reduced version. I believe all the details are still recognizable, however. Also, before I forget, the background is a vintage texture made by Princess-of-Shadows and you can download the pack here, in her DeviantArt account.

Lastly, here's a flyer based on the same design as the banner.

Criticism is welcomed and encouraged.

Bulletin Cover

2011-04-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

I've decided to tilt the direction of this blog into a digital portfolio of my current and previous works as a designer.

For starters, I'm going to share a guide about how I made this bulletin cover for a Videogame community. I'm sorry because I will not be very thorough, and you'll need to have some basic photoshop knowledge to understand half of what I'm saying.

For this cover I used Photoshop CS5.
The dimensions for this were half a standard letter size (1275x1650)

I started with a black background and the map of Unova.
Rotated it a bit and set opacity on 55%.

At this point I was trying to figure what would be the most recurring theme in the Black & White ads, and decided to go with pattern of black and white rectangles. I looked for an image with these patterns, zoomed an area where I could get some clear squares and set the pattern. To do so, after you get a clear area, select four rectangles (more than that is not necessary) with the square marquee tool, go to Edit > Define Pattern, set the name and click ok.

Notice the 3200% zoom.

Then, to use your new pattern the way I did, you first select the area to fill with the marquee tool, select Edit > Fill (you can press shift + F5), use Patterns, on custom pattern, click on the arrow on the right and scroll down until you find the new pattern.

After I did this with black and white rectangles, each one in different layers, I did a diagonal selection in the middle, feathered to 100 pixels and erased the unnecessary parts.
Then I set the black rectangles mode in Overlay and the white ones in Linear light, so it had a little transparency and the Unova background was still visible. I know you're probably not following what I'm saying at this point, but bear with me.

At this point, it looked like this:

The next part was probably the most fun and defining.
As you know, I used Zekrom and Reshiram, which was the obvious choice. After I got my hands around some hi-res artwork, I resized them and positioned them. Since they´re supposed to be the main impact of the cover, I set a glow for each one. As for the colors, I used the eyedropper to get the blue of Zekrom´s reflection and the pink on Reshiram´s; then I used them to make an outer glow with these values:

The Linear Light mode gives a good glow-like vibe, but the opacity was lowered because I didn't want it to be so bright.

The next thing was to add a subtle but interesting "shadow" in the lower part. For this, I used both Zekrom´s and Rehiram´s silhouette, copied the layers, merged them, set the color overlay to black in the blending options, skewed it (Edit>Transform>Skew) so it would look like a shadow cast on the floor and added some Gaussian blur.

At this point, I was past the "hard" part and the rest consisted in adding the editorial stuff.
Added the Pokemon logo and Black & White logos, the banner in the left, which states publishing number and disclaimers, as well as the "Proyecto Reset" logo (that I also designed) with a little customization to fit with the whole theme.

In some other entries I will upload the full magazines (even though it´s in spanish) and some other quick guides explaining how I make them.

I´m also unemployed right now, so If you have something in mind, feel free to discuss.

The beginning.

2011-04-29T23:49:00.000-07:00

Let's get this started.

Beside this being a test, I want to let everyone know of this new blog and interest them in following what I'll be writing from now on.

Welcome.