If you’re anything like me, you may be getting tired of seeing the same people on those “designers to follow” lists we often see crop up here on design blogs. I scouted around the underworld of Twitter to see if I could dig up any incredibly awesome, yet under-followed creatives. And in the spirit of anti-establishment counter-culture I hereby announce the 10 of the most underexposed and fresh creatives on Twitter. Ok, so there are probably tons of you out there, and that’s the point of this article. Whether your field is web, design, digital painting, branding, logo design or any creative field – we want to hear from you. So if you know of any designers that need some love, or if you are that designer (I’m down with shameless self-promotion) – leave your Twitter name below so we can all share in your stealthy awesomeness.

@DavidCousens – Bio One half of Cool Surface illustration. We draw stuff for money!
As an illustrator and occasional tutorial author for Advanced Photoshop magazine & Digital Arts magazine, David makes the list by virtue of his propensity to share his knowledge with anyone willing to learn. You can view his blog and tuts here.

@robertoblake – Ever since I was young I always knew I wanted to become a visual artist. Learning about Photoshop put me on the path to achieving that dream.
Roberto is the unfailing voice of encouragement in multiple graphics communities for up-and-coming designers. You may know him from the Advanced Photoshop website, Photoshop Creative website and DeviantART. He also has a blog where he regularly showcases new talent. You can check it out here.

@PANDA_DESIGN – The design is inside of @pandaziri. Here tweet & RT about design, webdesign and technology for designers.
RT’s are awesome but fresh meat is what we need, and PANDA_DESIGN delivers. The image below was designed in collaboration with @cifero.

@designthatrocks – Creative Director for Design That Rocks, offering design for web & print, project management, consulting & branded line of limited edition DTR products.
Craig Bower tweets about some of the most interesting design related articles around. If you’re interesting in web, print and even iPhone topics, this is the guy to follow.

@An1ken - Bio Freelance Digital Artist and Active Blogger
Creator of CreativeOverlow.net Jacques van Heerden is the voice behind An1ken. Not only is An1ken the bringer of premier daily design fodder as well as a perpetual flow of design-related tweets, he also has a smoking hot portfolio (check it here).

@eyedesignstudio – Proprietor Eye Design Studio. Artisan handcrafted web & print design for lifestyle brands. I love design + vintage finds + PDX + foodie fun + social media
Along with her consistent stream of interesting design-related tweets, Eye Design Studio is a member of the sisterhood known as Branding Salon. They are a group of enterprising women from around the world, banding together to make their mark in the online branding industry. Because we’re worth it. Because the web needs more chicks.

@brand-nu – Creative thinking expressed in colour and shapes. Or something like that.
Radim Malinic is a rock star in the design community, worthy of every panty-throwers attention. As one of the most established graphic artists around today, he has published two design books and clocked up an impressive portfolio of clients. Check out his website here for some of the most awesome graphics on the net.

@Fantasiox – Fantasio is a digital artist, collaborator, illustrator, steampunk aestetic, storyteller for the eye, loves coffee, pin-ups and art that speaks for itself.
There are some truly awesome artists mulling around the underworld of Twitter – Fantasiox is one of them. His Twitter background will give you a good idea of his style – to see more of his incredible work visit his website here. This piece is a rendition of Stanley Lau´s “Pepper” character in a retro-cyber-style that was also included in his book “pepper-project“, which was released this year.

@henning_art – Norwegian digital artist, working as Art Director in the computer game industry in Athens, Greece.
Follow Henning as he tweets about his latest artworks. Best of all he has a pretty nifty collection of digital painting tutorials on his website. To best appreciate his work, check out his amazing portfolio here.

@FeryKloucek – I’m a PRO cyclist at first, but I’m also a graphic designer & photograph! 100% addicted to graphic design and all the things around!
Purveyor of premium A-grade RT’s, FeryKloucek filters out the noise and gives us only the crème de la crème of  design links buzzing around twitter.

Honorable mentions:

@vpstudios – I am a Graphic Designer from the cowboy state. I do both in-house work and client work.
@FriendsofDesign – Training by professionals for professionals… for all you budding DTP or Web Designers.
@giographix – Bio Small Graphic and Web Design Studio interested in SEO, CSS, PHP jQuery, Flash, AIR, Motion Graphics, Illustration and of course- Social Media
@graphixdesign – A treat for Graphic Designers
@RIVETstudios – We are RIVET studios design // art direction
@designussion – Designussion, a blog focusing on inspiration and showcases
@phototownship – Photo Idea, Photo Art, Photography, PhotoShop, Lets have fun with photos…
@devongovett – Web developer/designer and standards advocate
@Doubleolee – Graphic & web designer who loves his PS3 and football a little too much and doesn’t want to grow up just yet. half geek/half sports legend
@Andy92 – A web entrepreneur / freelancer who is setting up a few web startups, and working for a web design magazine.
@indigomay – Curious, dreamy, love to create things..often want something blue but red.
@JThompsondesign – Working hard on http://blogpost.dj23.net/. Student designer in Product and Graphic Design.
@dsaportfolio – Eu sou um webdesigner legal e feliz. I’m a cool and happy webdesigner.
@dave_woods – Web Designer from East Midland UK, specialising in user interface design, HTML, CSS and SEO

As a continuation of the last post about Typography design in 3D (Mind-Blowing Typography in 3D | part 1) we have now come to the second part. Last one showcased 25 pieces of simply stunning and truly mind-blowing 3D typography and projecting awesome inspiration and I am now going to further showcase 25 more 3D typography designs. I want to further address the fact that these designs and the execution takes a long time and is no where near easy to create. However, today pretty much everyone sees some sort of typography art whether it is in an ad or in a book but they are all around us. It’s just up to your own imagination how you create them and so far it has been the common execution to put letters and words on top of each other. However, this is not how it has to be.

I am still looking for some typography art that is organized in another manner however it seems those are short of supply. Maybe it is because stacking words on top of each other is both easy to view but also saves space in a limited area where the design is to be created.

If you yourself have created a piece of typography art please don’t hesitate to send it in to Minervity.com and if found inspirational enough I will be sure to publish it here for people to be inspired. After all Minervity.com is all about sharing and learning.

Artwork by Stillontherun

Artwork by EndEnd

Artwork by Serial Cut

Artwork by Serial Cut

Artwork by Static Moment

Artwork by Coming Through

Artwork by Love

Artwork by Star

Artwork by dr4oz

Artwork by Unknown

Artwork by Vibe

Artwork by EndEnd

Artwork bt Typeneu

Artwork by Jeff Finley

Artwork by Renaud Fetterer

Artwork by Vexeta

Artwork by Ink

Artwork by Alex Engelmann

Artwork by Alex Engelmann

Artwork by [Re]Encoded

Artwork by Esthetic Core

Artwork by Til01

Artwork by Excosoldier

Artwork by TheKellz

Artwork by Luiggi26

Typography is one of the true art forms that I find the most appealing when looking through magazines or surfing the web. The amount of detail sometimes implemented is just mind blowing and you can really see that the artist has taken his or her time to put the typography piece together. After floating around on the Internet in search for the most eye catching 3D typography artwork I came up with nothing short of a truly amazing list. I am sure there are many more inspiring pieces of 3D typography artwork out there so if you find any that you think I might have missed please don’t hesitate to mention a location to them in the comment area.

What should be mentioned here is that most of these are done in a 3D client like Maya, 3D Max or Lightwave. Using Photoshop or Illustrator to create these would take infinitely longer than any of these software’s so don’t even try. The way these 3D typography designs come out is pure skills in lighting, texturing and creating all the objects that are present in the design. Designers usually also use Photoshop to sort of “top off” their design by including real elements such as leaves, small items and effects. So a whole bundle of software’s are probably used to create most of these.

Typography Artwork by Tony Ariawan

Artwork by Artek92

Artwork by Hoe Yi

Artwork by KidsWithTools

Artwork by iunewind

Artwork by shydog1978

Artwork by Kyle Bean

Artwork by Serial Cut

Artwork by Serial Cut

Artwork by dkomov

Artwork by Jeff Finley

Artwork by Kim Holtermand

Artwork by luuqas

Artwork by Fanzi

Artwork by Stephanie DeArmond

Artwork by Jeff Osborne

Artwork by Wojciech Pijecki

Artwork by João Marques

Artwork by Tanin-André Hohmann

Artwork by Grafi-Ray

Artwork by Craig Ward

Artwork by Niels van Doorn

Artwork by Eskimo Square

Artwork by Curtis Baigent

Artwork by Chaz Madani

]]> http://www.minervity.com/features/inspire_me/mind-blowing-typography-in-3d-part-1/feed/ 8 http://www.minervity.com/features/inspire_me/mind-blowing-typography-in-3d-part-1/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Minervity/~3/aLxH8JQ8lIA/ http://www.minervity.com/features/inspire_me/creative-corner-my-favorite-firefox-tool/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:41:55 +0000 Misty Belardo http://www.minervity.com/?p=4687

Minervity.com is a great site for resource and inspiration. We came up with an idea of creating a “Creative Corner” where the aim is for designers/developers to have an area where we talk to different designers and developers and ask them a question related to their field. We feel this would be a great way to help out the up and coming designers as well as an area for other designers to also get inspiration and insights as to the tools used and trends followed by their peers.  We feel that it is also a good way for us to showcase some of the work and ideas behind both the up and coming as well as the seasoned designers.  For this month’s edition we concentrated on Firefox extensions.

Firefox Extensions add more extensive features to the browser; some add simple toolbars while others can add a wide range of new features.

Main Image.

Here are the designer/developers’ answers to our question:  Which is your favorite Firefox Extension (s) to use when developing a website?

@andysowards

This one is easy. My favorite Firefox tool is Firebug. Hands down. I could not, and will not, live without it. Sample of work I provided is my site, AndySowards.com, which I used firebug on pretty much the whole way through, it definitely helped me build the look and feel of the sites css/javascript/jQuery fairly quickly and without any pain .

The reason that it is so invaluable is because it allows you to fully understand the html/css/javascript that is on a page, very quickly and easily. It has made my css building/manipulation process at least 75% faster if not more. I can just build out the css and have the page styled exactly how I want it in firefox, then just copy and paste the css into the appropriate place. Its that easy! Of course IE, Safari, and Chrome, may need some tweaks. But FireBug allows even the more difficult tasks to be accomplished within minutes! Finding css issues is so easy now. Thank you firebug. You rock.  Check out his website: http://www.AndySowards.com

@obox

I rely heavily on “TidyHTML” and the Firefox Web Developer toolkit to dev sites.

Without those two items I feel lost, Web Developer is perfect for tracking ID’s etc when styling widgets in Wordpress themes. It also helps with spotting div sizes and picking out style values.

TidyHTML is perfect for getting your site w3c compatible. I only use TidyHTML when splicing up designs and converting them to CSS + HTML.

So yeah, without those two tools I would be lost.

Since I use them for every site we develop I will just attach a screenshot of one of our themes because of the way I used the Web Developer toolkit to style the sidebar.

Details of screenshot: Press Theme http://wwwdemo.obox-design.com/press/

@adammccombs

My favorite tool called the 960 Gridder. 960 Gridder is a jquery based tool that overlays any webpage with a 960px grid. It’s great for testing size and spacing to make sure your layouts are pixel perfect. 960 Gridder is cross-browser compliant and works well in Internet Explorer 6/7/8, Firefox 2/3 and Chrome. Safari 4 Beta and Opera 9 is also working as expected and it should work in Safari 2.x-3.x also.  960 Gridder is built upon the very famous JavaScript framework jQuery.

960 Gridder will automatically identify if jQuery is present at the website and if it is not, it will include it. However, 960 Gridder isn’t affiliated with the jQuery authors at all.More information about 960 Gridder can be found at: http://gridder.andreehansson.se/.  Check out more of his work http://www.mccombs.me/

@iBlend

My favorite Firefox tool by far is FireBug (http://getfirebug.com).  Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Firebug’s CSS tabs tell you everything you need to know about the styles in your web pages, and if you don’t like what it’s telling you, you can make changes and see them take effect instantly.

Firebug is always just a keystroke away, but it never gets in your way. You can open Firebug in a separate window, or as a bar at the bottom of your browser. Firebug also gives you fine-grained control over which websites you want to enable it for.

I use this tool to tweek styles and html on my local.  Once it looks right, I will edit the real files and upload them to the server.  I recently used this Firefox tool for the release of my new website (http://thewebblend.com). TheWebBlend is a community for designers, developers and tech junkies that keeps you current with a summary of the latest in web related news and trends.  Check out his site: http://thewebblend.com

@printedproof

The most helpful Firefox tool for me is FireBug. FireBug is an add-on that allows me edit, debug, and find CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live on any of my projects as well as any other live pages on the web.

I grew up designing for web using Dreamweaver and GoLive, so in other words “drag-and-drop”. I have no formal coding education. The past three years I have spent programing dynamic websites with Joomla! and WordPress.  For beginners like myself it is extremely helpful to have the ability to see the code of websites that have elements and designs that you may want to mimic or develop in your own ways. By finding the code behind these sites you can easily find what you are looking for and make it your own. This is big for developers who use pre-designed templates. Many times you can find other webmasters using the same template that they have customized. Access to the HTML/CSS/Javascript behind the scenes will help learning how it was done.

FireBug is great tool even for established designers and developers to debug and clean up messy code. FireBug allows me to easily find where an element resides within the HTML or CSS of a website. I can then go back to my files and make any necessary adjustments or changes easily.  Firebug also lets you make changes on the fly and see them immediately in your browser. You can measure and illustrate the margins, borders, padding, and sizes of elements to easily alight and locate. Use Firebug to break down load times to improve speed. It even includes a powerful JavaScript debugger so you can pause execution at any time.  Firebug pops up at the bottom of your window and is unobtrusive. In no time you can build upon your skills as a developer or simply streamline the process.

@lastwebdesigner

The first one colorzilla :http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/ A really good tool for colors, with come really nice features. I use it for choose and test the color palette on my websites, and for check colors on other web sites,when I’m getting inspiration, or simply when I see a good web site and I want to know the color that is using.

The second is another classical ad-don used by a lot of web designers, the “Web Developer Toolbar“. I use a lot of the CSS options, making tests on the CSS and exploring other CSS websites around the world. It’s a really good tool. I use the re-sizer too for tests in different resolutions. Well, it’s a really good an useful tool. Also, I think FireBug is a must for any designer. The third ad-don is another great tool. It’s the “HTML Validator” for Firefox. This is a great add-on as I don’t need to go to the “W3″ page every time to validate my HTML code. I can just validate the source code while I’m working on it locally. It’s a great tool as I just have to take a look at the bottom-right corner on my Firefow browser window and see if the code is validated or see where it finds some errors. Very useful. I like it a lot. The fourth ad-don is a great one for SEO and to improve your position in the search engines. “Firefox SEO Tool”

I use this to get information about websites, competitions, keywords and checking my websites, it’s a good tool, if you use this in its fullest way it can help you to find how to improve your position on Google and other search engines. And another important factor, it gives me information about social bookmark links and you can disable this add-on with just one simple click.

The last one is a must for any designer/developer. FireBug, a plug-in that I don’t think needs an explanation. Everyone in the world knows what it is and how useful it is if you are developing a website. There are, in particular, two functions that I use a lot. It’s the console for Testing/Debugging my Javascript/jQuery/Ajax and inspector to “inspect” the HTML elements of the website.

@giographix

Flash Switcher

This extension allows you to easily switch from one flash player plugin version to another, or also to remove or save the currently installed plugin (maybe for testing the express install).Once installed you will find the “flash switcher” icon in the Firefox statusbar at bottom right (and also in the Tools Firefox menu). Click on it and a list of available options will appear.

The extensionhas been tested on the followings Operating System: Window XP, Ubutntu linux, Mac OSX Tiger and Leopard. Flash Switcher has been as essential to our Flash development as FireBug has to our HTML debugging. Before finding the now indispensable add-on, we had to keep a stockpile of player plugin installers and browsers in order to properly debug a Flash movie.

With a complicated full-Flash microsite such as the one we created for WayHuge.com, we used Flash Switcher to test Flash player detection and to switch to a debugger version of the player to do a live debugging in the SWF. Having the ability within the browser to easily test Flash pages with different player versions has made Flash Switcher a stable in our Flash development toolbox and helped us get WayHuge.com to a successful launch!

@svgrob

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse.  Firebug makes it simple to find HTML elements buried deep in the page. Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, Firebug gives you a wealth of information, and lets you edit the HTML live.

Firebug is probably the ultimate web development plugin that Firefox has.  Anyone who codes for the web needs this plugin.  Firebug enables you to change CSS and debug JavaScript on the fly, live and yes in real time.

This is such a powerful way to work, as it saves time by enabling you to find out why your site is broken, without the laborious save and reload.

If you do not have firebug and you use HTML/CSS or Javascript, get it, it will change your developing life.  Here is a little introduction for you: Nettuts: 10 Reasons Why You Should Use Firebug

@ruhanirabin

I wrote an article about your topic on my site its the 10 Web Developers Firefox Extension, check it out here.  For this article I chose  a  must have tool for the SEO beginners and experts alike. Beginner web masters and seos will find SeoQuake useful for estimating effectiveness and competitive ability of their SEO efforts.

In the hands of professional SeoQuake will become a powerful and indispensable tool for analyzing optimization and promotion level of internet web-projects. SeoQuake can be distinguished from similar projects by a wide range of parameters available for analysis, simplicity of use and also a tool for creation of custom parameters.

SeoBar

SeoBar can be described as an additional toolbar, which shows the values of selected parameters for the page currently opened in the parameters shown by SeoBar is fully customizable by user window. Set of Inclusion of parameters in SERPs parameters for search results under each search result shown on SERP. Set ofparameters shown is fully customizable by user. Loading of parameters can be handled in two different ways – simultaneously with the loading of the SERP or after SERP loading, by user demand. Ranking of the results by selected parameter in ascending/descending order and storing results in file are available features.   After submission of the query into the search engine user is presented with SERP with search results. SeoQuake shows values of the parameters for search results under each search result shown on SERP. Set of parameters shown is fully customizable by user. Loading of parameters can be handled in two different ways – simultaneously with the loading of the SERP or after SERP loading, by user demand. Ranking of the results by selected parameter in ascending/descending order and storing results in file are available features.

@maddisondesigns

My favourite Firefox Addon and the one that I use the most, would be the “Web Developer” toolbar (http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer). I use it every time I develop a website. I love the “Display Element Information” (Ctrl+Shift+F) option. It’s great for seeing the layout of your Divs and for seeing what Classes/Id’s are assigned to them. Another great feature is the ability to easily disable/enable JavaScript. This is great for testing, especially with the increased usage of JavaScript frameworks like JQuery and MooTools. The Web Developer toolbar has heaps of really useful options and is an invaluable tool when developing websites. Visit his site: http://maddisondesigns.com

@pixeljedi

Primarily, i’m a lover of colorzilla and fireftp.  fireftp has been used on most of what I’ve done.  start at ccconline.cc and branch out to all of our corresponding sites.

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily.

Regarding these two tools, colorzilla and fireftp . . . the simple answer is ease of use. FTP within the browser makes sense: upload alongside the program to download. It enables fast-switching for viewing and testing of files. Colorzilla’s just a beast to make sure that I can snag a color that catches my eye and hold on to it for future use.

Two things make my life easier as a designer. Firstly, the smoother my Mac runs, the faster I can work. There’s nothing worse than trying to push work out as fast a possible and then upon the simplest of actions, opening Finder for instance, your little color wheel cursor appears…spinning and spinning… for no apparent reason other than to test your patience. It’s called a cursor for a reason – I have a special name for mine. The second thing that helps me is having the right combinations of tools that enable me to work as efficiently as possible. Below is a list of useful (and free) apps that I use consistently to help me as designer and web developer to work more efficiently and get my Mac running fast and smooth.

1. App Cleaner

AppCleaner is a small application that allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps. Installing an application distributes many files throughout your system using space of your hard drive. When you uninstall these apps, many of these bits and pieces are left on your hard drive, needlessly taking up space.  AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely deletes them. Simply drag and drop an application onto the AppCleaner window. It automatically finds all the related files specific to that app and adds them to the AppCleaner window for you to review. You then have the option of deleting all the files, or keeping the ones you think you may need at a later stage, should you reinstall the app. You then simply click the delete button. No more orphan files on your disk!

2. Monolingual

Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language files from Mac OS X, in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space. As designers, we usually have huge files which can very quickly eat away at your hard drive space so getting rid of any superfluous files is sometimes very necessary. Having a fair amount of freed-up space on your hard drive for Photoshop to use as a scratch disk will help you work on your files will less drag, especially if your RAM is limited. If you’re running out of hard drive space, this is the app for you.

3. Quicksliver

Quicksilver is an application that lets you reach any program, folder or file in a few keystrokes and is aimed at increasing user efficiency. It allows you to use the keyboard to promptly do things like launch applications, manipulate files and data, run scripts, or send email. You don’t have to go searching through your files to find something and you don’t have to worry about how your folders are arranged. You can customize its search options to include your address book, iTunes, and recent email addresses. Set this application to load at start up then customize a quick launch key so it can be at your fingers when you need it. This is the fastest way to find files and open applications.

Alternate: Namely

4.  Growl

Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X. It allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications so you know what’s happening on your computer at all times. Growl installs itself as a preference pane and is added to the Mac OS X System Preferences. Users are able to fully control notifications by going to this pane. Here the interface will allow you to enable and disable Growl’s notifications for certain applications in their entirety, or select specific notifications for each application. The display options of the notifications can also be fully customized from small non-intrusive floating icons in the corner of your screen, to larger ones with sound.

5.  Teleport

Teleport lets you use a single mouse and keyboard to control several Macs. It allows you to synchronize your pasteboard between computers (and limit the size of the pasteboard if you wish), so you can cut from one computer and paste in another. It also allows you to transfer files by simply dragging them from one Mac to another (although this tends to work better with smaller files).

Teleport will need to be installed on all Macs you wish to link up. After installing you can find the program in the System Preferences pane. You will need open up two ports on your firewall they will be saved as “trusted hosts” under the security settings.

6. OnyX

OnyX is a multifunction utility for Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel). It allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its system files; to run miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance; to configure the hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock and of some of Apple’s own applications; to delete caches; to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and much more…

Alternates: Deeper and TinkerTool

7. MagiCal

MagiCal is a menu-based clock and calendar. It features a huge range of configuration options for how the time and date are displayed, and can operate either in conjunction with, or as a replacement for the built in system menu clock. In addition to this, MagiCal features a handy drop-down calendar that can be torn off and placed anywhere on screen.

Alternate: MenuCalendarClock

8. FileZilla

FileZilla is an open-source, cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. It is available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Features include a message log, site manager, local and remote file and folder view, and a transfer queue. FileZilla also allows you to perform multiple file transfers simultaneously.

Alternate: Cyberduck

9. Aptana Studio

Aptana Studio is a top IDE for web developers. It offers integrated language support for HTML, DOM, JavaScript and CSS. Customize your Studio with additional plugins for PHP, Jaxer, Ruby on Rails, Python, Adobe AIR, Apple iPhone and Nokia S60 development. For Java support, plug Aptana Studio into Eclipse. Also available for Windows and Linux.

Alternate: TextWrangler

10: Disk Inventory X

Disk Inventory X is a hard drive analyzer for Mac OS X 10.3 (and later). It shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way called “treemaps”. If you’ve ever wondered where all your disk space has gone, Disk Inventory X will tell you which folders and apps are eating away at your hard drive space. New features include a finder context menu plugin with an “Open in Disk Inventory X” command for folders (this needs to be installed manually in the preference window) and a new selection list which can show all files or limit them to a list of a specific file type.

Bonus App. Adium

Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X. It can be used to connect to any number of messaging accounts on any combination of supported messaging services, including, AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, AOL, GTalk, ICQ, Facebook, LiveJournal, Bonjour, MySpaceIM, Skype, Twitter and more. The latest version includes support for file transfers, and for the Growl notification system. Adium is highly customizable and allows users to alter the appearance of dock icons, contact list styles, message windows, and emoticons.

The Internet has been one of the most used medium. People now go online for information with the primary objective of learning and getting inspiration. During the days when most people were not as active on the Internet, magazines and books were the main sources.

The benefit of subscribing to design magazines and design resource blogs are tremendous. You not only open your world to fantastic tutorials, freebies, inspiring portfolios, but you also get a glimpse on the insights of designers. What works for them, the tried and tested.  What is also great is that they have special sections that tackles the news, design trends, artist tools.

They are also laid out in a manner that is easy to read and ease of navigating  through the articles is what makes them a very ideal source of information.

We have handpicked 10 web design magazine| resource blogs with awesome style for your reference and inspiration.  We recommend you visit and check them all out.  We guarantee that you will have an astonishing range of learning tools that will keep you up to date and in the loop of what is happening in the design community.

(picture link)

Smashing Magazine

Founded in September 2006, Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. Our aim is to inform our readers about the latest trends and techniques in Web development. We try to convince you not with the quantity but with the quality of the information we present. We hope that makes us different. Smashing Magazine is, and always has been, independent.

Perhaps the most remarkable yet overlooked aspect of the design community is its friendly, enthusiastic spirit. Every day, literally thousands of talented, hard-working folks out there gain new insight from their work, come up with brilliant ideas and then share their experience with fellows designers.

WebDesigner Magazine

The WebDesigner Magazine is part of Imagine publishing.  Imagine Publishing is one of the UK’s fastest-growing consumer specialist magazine publishers, with over 20 print magazines and 20 websites published worldwide within the entertainment, computing, digital photography and video games market sectors.

And all this since 2005!

Web Designer is the premier magazine for aspiring online creatives and industry professionals. The monthly title offers cutting-edge practical projects spanning XHTML, CSS, Flash and WordPress as well as hosting features and interviews with the web community’s most influential people. Each issue also has a dedicated Industry section covering news and views from the trade, website showcases featuring the finest design talent and a free CD of valuable resources. The official blog site at webdesignermag.co.uk offers additional editorial, exclusive interviews, reader support plus a series of entertaining podcasts from the magazine team.

Web Designer: Defining the Internet through beautiful design…

Six Revisions

Six Revisions is a weblog that provides practical, useful information for the modern, standards-compliant web designer and web developer. It seeks to present exceptional, noteworthy tips, tutorials, and resources that the modern web professional will appreciate. You’ll find a variety of content from tools that can speed up your work flow processes to showcases of beautiful designs for inspiration and tutorials on JavaScript frameworks like jQuery and MooTools.

The creator and primary author of Six Revisions is Jacob Gube, a web developer and designer who works with PHP, .NET, Flash/ActionScript, XHTML, JavaScript/jQuery/MooTools, and MySQL. His work environment includes: Windows XP, Adobe Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Notepad++, Firebug, Web Developer tool, and on occasion puTTY. His passion is anything involved in the creation of beautiful, standards-compliant, accessible websites and applications.

Fuel Your Creativity

Most people find that true creativity isn’t a constant presence in their lives, no matter how much you fool yourself into thinking that. We’d like to introduce you to Fuel Your Creativity. This gem is the place to turn to when you’re having one of your “I’m-going-to-implode-if-I-don’t-get-an-idea-soon” moments. Don’t lie. You know you have them.

Check us out when you need some inspiration. We have some pretty cool articles and even cooler links to various sites that will keep you informed on how other creatives like yourself get things done. There are even interviews with said creatives that give you a glimpse into their world. There are some cool worlds out there.

SpeckyBoy Design Mag

Speckyboy Design Magazine launched in October 2007, as my personal web design homepage. I was just taking (what felt like) a giant leap into freelance design and consultancy, and needed a home base for my potential clients to get in touch with me… Somewhere over the following months this site changed direction, when I realized I was getting more and more visitors.
It started with an article called Top 25 Free Icon Resources for Web Designers, and it did very well on delicious, and the visitors increased. By then I had caught the blogging bug.

From that initial article I have tried to cover every aspect of web design and development offering FREE and HIGH QUALITY RESOURCES as well as attempting to inspire through our showcases. I am not a graphic designer (I still use Adobe Fireworks), but do love it and certainly appreciate it, the same goes for typography and photography.

InDesign Magazine

InDesign Magazine is a bimonthly periodical devoted entirely to Adobe InDesign and to the thriving community of InDesign professionals. With editorial direction by page-layout guru and author David Blatner and CreativePro.com editor in chief Terri Stone, InDesign Magazine brings you the in-depth features, reviews, and tutorials you need to master Adobe InDesign.

InDesign Magazine is published in the PDF format only. You’ll love the electronic format–click on a URL and Acrobat opens the page in your Web browser. Cut and paste complex scripts. You can even watch movies in the PDF! You can also print out single pages or an entire issue if you prefer paper to monitor.

InDesign Magazine is an independent publication, not an Adobe product. InDesign is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.  The magazine features the hottest designers works.  One will get a peek at what designer’s are up to and what InDesign is capable of.

Web Designer Depot

Webdesigner Depot is an exciting new platform designed to explore different web and graphic design techniques, great examples and best practices.

We love design and are passionate about it in all its shapes and forms. Our vision is to make WDD a great showcase for this passion and feed a worldwide audience of savvy designers eager to learn more and share their knowledge with the design community.

The blog is a joint effort and collaboration between leading designers around the world which contribute a wealth of expertise on all fields of design, such as coding, typography, Photoshop tutorials and more.

If you’d like to become a contributor to this website by either writing a post or tutorial or by providing some freebies to our users, do not hesitate to email .

Noupe

NOUPE passionately delivers stylish and dynamic news for designers and web-developers on all subjects of design, ranging from; CSS, Ajax, Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising & much more. Our goal is to help you communicate effectively on the web with an engaging website or functional interface.

Whether you have an interesting tutorial or example that you would like to share on Noupe or just found an interesting website design , this is the place to get the word out.

• All i ask is your subject should be Related to Web 2.o, WebDesign, Freelance, Ajax, Graphics or Blogging for it to be valid for submission
• If your submission is approved be sure that you will get the credit by posting either your site’s link and/or name with in the article.
• Well, that’s it, just fill out the form from their site and hit submit!

You can contact Noupe  via e-mail info[at]noupe[dot]com

Abduzeedo

This blog was created and developed by Fabio Sasso, a Brazilian designer living in Porto Alegre (south of Brazil).

My first contact with the Internet happened in 1995 and 1996 I started playing with it as a designer. I have a degree in graphic design and I’ve been working professionally since 1998, here in Brazil, at least in my town, I could say that it was the very beginning of the Internet.

The idea behind this blog is primarily to be a channel for me to write down some ideas, experiments, news, and a lot of thing that I see online and probably will forget in a couple of months. Basically it is an archive of my adventures online as a designer on the daily basis. Another thing that I want to do with this blog is to improve my English skills, as a Brazilian and non-native speaker of English, it’s a good way to practice it. By the way, you might find some English mistakes, maybe a lot sometimes, but I will try my best to make it as legible as possible.

“The blog’s name means abducted in Portuguese. I changed its spelling to add ZEE (my design company) instead of abduzido”

.Net Mag

.net is the world’s best-selling magazine for web designers and developers, featuring tutorials from leading agencies, interviews with the web’s biggest names, and agenda-setting features on the hottest issues affecting the Internet today. If you’re serious about web design, then .net is the magazine for you!

At Future, we base everything we do around clusters of like-minded individuals who are passionate about their interests. At this time of overwhelming choice, people want trusted editorial services more than ever before. And this is what Future does best. From computer games to films, from cycling to music-making, we provide magazines, websites and events that inform, entertain and unite these communities. We share the same passions as our consumers. These insights and our expertise are helping us to build and exploit our market-leading positions across different platforms in all of the core sectors in which we operate.

Consumers view products by its form, color and most specially by its packaging.  With so many products trying to vie attention to catch the consumer’s eye while in the supermarkets or shops.  One element used by designers is the play on fonts and the emphasis is given on typography.  The kind of typography here that we will be showcasing can be described aptly as display typography, it is a potent element in graphic design, where there is less concern for readability and more potential for using type in an artistic manner. Type is combined with negative space, graphic elements and pictures, forming relationships and dialog between words and images.

Color and size of type elements are much more prevalent than in text typography. Most display typography exploits type at larger sizes, where the details of letter design are magnified. Color is used for its emotional effect in conveying the tone and nature of subject matter.

We have put together a collection of various package design with typography as the main element for your inspiration. picture source

Brooklyn Fare’s Packaging

A colloquial brand calls for the creation of a personable typeface.  Because the brand is based on copy meant to engage the customer, the proprietary typeface we created, Fare Serif, needed to echo that same playful tone. It is friendly and accessible and meant to be used BIG. Was  applied it to everything, and we mean everything, in the store. The design team created a branding strategy that would give the store a unique voice, garnering attention and setting it apart from its competitors. The voice came through in a literal manner with text as the focus of the brand rather than imagery. We used our most excellent copy writing skills to achieve the right tone; one with the edgy humor that New Yorkers welcome.  An amazing array of package yet one look and it just mold the product line into one brand identity.

The Manual Company

Hand done typography give a lot of character to the package design for The Manual Co. a leather goods store.  The boxes you see above are designs by Peter Gregson studio, a creative design company from Novi Sad, Serbia. Here one can see the beauty of typography when used in package design.  Their work has won the studio many awards and earned them great respect in the industry.  Hand made fonts is one style that will never go out of style.  It truly brings out the personalized feel to the product.  The play of colors is also amazing with the black background as the canvass for each of the boxes and the words are truly emphasized.

Boxed Water is Better

Part sustainable water company, part art project, part philanthropic project, and completely curious.  Boxed Water is Better is a boxed water company.

Started with the simple idea of creating a new bottled water brand that is kinder to the environment and gives back a bit – we found that it shouldn’t be bottled at all, but instead, boxed. So we looked to the past for inspiration in the century old beverage container and decided to keep things simple, sustainable, and beautiful.  About 85% of the Boxed Water container is made from a renewable resource, trees, that when harvested in a responsible, managed, and ethical way serve as an amazing renewable resource that benefits the environment even as it’s renewed. We ship our boxes flat to our filler which is significantly more efficient compared to shipping empty plastic or glass bottles to be filled.

Superfused

The ability of designers to look at the world around them and decipher its meaning and relationship in order to communicate and narrate it is the essence of our practice.  Often the creative process is defined by challenges and limitations, and sometimes by observations and explorations. This self-initiated piece was created after experiencing a hard disk breakdown, where months of work were lost forever. Inspired by what was left, the tiny fuses on the circuit boards connected by fine electrical wiring, it worked as constructive healing and informed a positive outcome out of something that would otherwise have had a negative effect on the working morale.

This design project was a test of how to use even failure in your favour as a creative. Superfused became a symbol for the creative state of being pumped up with creative energy and not letting negative occurrences hold you back, something like a superpower for designers.

Milk

Packaging design by Alvaro Rubio.    “Bon vivant” means a person who enjoys the good things in life, especially good food and drink.

The design is very minimalistic and pure but also fun and frisky with the use of bold colors to highlight the product category.  Very challenging work for a designer, considering milk is pure and the design should then be able to embrace that essence.  The bottle used here is unique as well.  The over all look of a product must be considered in all cases of design and here the designer has managed to create an impact.

Milk Package

A selection of excellent packages to discover later on bottles of milk. Most are designed with cross-stitch, very creative in the studio Hattomonkey.

Hattomonkey is a Russian design studio. It was founded in 2008 in Novosibirsk. The specialization of Hattomonkey is graphic design. They create logos, corporate ID, brand ID, packages design. Their aim is to help companies and their goods to take customers attention. Their activity is based on researches and analysis. That is why they always create competitive designed products.  i feel that they have been successful with their aim with the products design.  They played on color as well as on the font.  Very creative and truly eye catching.

Compra en Positivo

This beautiful typographic inspired bottle was designed by Moruba. The bottles are for the institutional campaign to promote trade.  Their client Gobierno dela Rloeja.

Moruba is a creative studio that enjoys resolving graphic communications problems.  The designer’s task is straight forward communicate a campaign and execute to make sure that the target of the message easily captures the meaning.  Simplicity is marked here with such elegance.  An institutional campaign is a communication strategy that is commonly used to communicate an answer to an issue that the company is being viewed on. Or when a company in question shows goodwill for a cause that they strongly support.

Xococava

Xococava (pronounced shoco-cava), an extension of its big brother restaurant, Cava, is whimsical hybrid of a stand-up tapas bar crossed with an ice-cream parlour.

Inspired by Spanish and Mexican cultures of chocolate and Italy’s love affair with geleto, Xococava features artisanal ice-cream and hand-made chocolate. With such unusual creations as prune/Pedro Ximenez sherry ice-cream and choriso, dark chocolate truffles, the store caters to Toronto’s burgeoning “foodie” culture.   Concrete created an identity program that utilizes strong typographic forms. This extend to the chocolate “periodic table” that uses two-letter combination to identify the different flavours of chocolate.

The Chocolat Factory

The chocolate factory package was designed by ruiz+company of Spain. Here’s a great example of a well designed graphic identity that is simple and clean.

Designed by Ruiz+Company for Spanish chocolate company Chocolat Factory, the identity features a clean sans-serif (which looks like DIN) and a wonderful color palette. The package design highlighted here are award winning designs. And you can see why.   “The fact that the company’s founding partners are, respectively, an architect and an interior decorator, has probably exercised a decisive influence in this sensitive approach to design. As Michel Laline himself explains: “When we first launched the company, we realised that no one had used design in the sector as yet, so that formed the base of the business: chocolate and design.” And according to Titus Ruiz: “The concept of the brand was very clear from the start: design with content.” – excerpt from Lovely Package

CD Cover

“Music shares many common ideas and themes with the visual arts. For example, repetition, rhythm, harmony, tone, shape, space, scale, line, texture and colour are terms common to both the musical and visual language”- Jacob Cass – How to create a CD cover

Here is a classic example of a very cool typographic inspired CD cover.  Designed by Sabri Akin.  Deep Purple - Child in Time ‘Cover Exercise’  If you do check out his work, he is akin to the typographic style.  Good use of white space.

It is truly rare to see product such as CD covers using typography as the main design, you would usually see pictures and images.  But here the songs for the album is given more emphasis.

Tison Incence

Here is a packaging design a fictitious incense company. designed by Louise Beaudoin.   The color palette is vibrant and the font used is very much appropriate.  Simple and clean.

A young passionate designer, Louis Beaudoin has been working in the Montreal design scene for more than 2 years. On top of a BACC in graphic design obtain at UQAM, he completed a DEC in industrial design at Cégep du Vieux Montréal. In the last few years, he has been working as a graphic designer for the publishing house Québec Amérique and more recently as a freelancer for design agencies such as Upperkut, Thomas design et communication and Chez Valois.

Warm and Cosy

Warm and cosy was designed by Transfer Studio.

At a time of great creative work, your brain, spirit and body need a break. Especially if you are in the middle of winter and the dark and cold is getting to you. Joined by friends and colleagues we embraced the Swedish tradition of feasting on homemade saffron buns washed down with tenderly prepared mulled wine.

Invites for the festivities where drawn by this need to rethink the everyday routine. By using a common object as the framework for storytelling (a simple paper cup holder) and screen printing the information on to it, they formed a tactile feature that made guests feel both exclusive and co-authors prior to attending the event, and instantly conveyed the message of what to expect – a warm and cosy break on a cold December day.

Happy Planet Shots

Tired of typical Energy shots that currently dominate the market with their toxic taste and less-than-credible-ingredients, Happy Planet has brought their reputation and knowledge of healthy natural beverages to the emerging shots category.

Happy Planet Shots are formulated to address four specific occasions: Energy+, Immunity, Detox and Glow. By infusing specially-selected herbal wonders from around the world with key vitamins and minerals, and with a premium fruit juice base, each shot provides a total net effect that both tastes good and that works. With no added sugar, no preservatives and no artificial ingredients, each 75 ml is a shot of pure concentrated goodness.

Subplot Design’s strategic role involved an extensive audit of the current shots and functional beverage category as well as liaising with Vancouver’s InQuest Consumer Insights & Planning, who conducted in-depth positioning consumer focus groups. Subplot then worked with Happy Planet to create a solid brand positioning strategy, followed by bottle and packaging design.

So, I decided to attempt to create a tutorial on how to create a unique illustrated cartoon character in Photoshop. It’s pretty straight forward and the skills you need for this is very limited as it will only take a few tools. However, it is up to your own imagination how your finished character will look in the end. In this tutorial I will teach you all the different elements in creating an eye catching character that you can use for your social media character or simply want to create an avatar for a logo something in that area.

As said, skills needed to complete this tutorial is the very basic knowledge of the most common used tools in Photoshop. Anything else will be explained in detail as usual here on Minervity.com so if you are a novice that just started out using Photoshop don’t worry. You will be able to keep up just fine.

Step 1 – Workspace Setup

I have chosen to use a 450*400 pixel big workspace in order to fit this blog space perfectly. You can of course go ahead an choose whatever size you feel fits best for your needs. Also, when starting up you can choose to create the character in “Vector Graphics“, “Smart Objects” or just in plane “Bitmap Graphics“. Depending on your needs you can pick either way to create this. The creation is still the same however you will be using different tools. In this tutorial I will primarily talk about the bitmap way of doing it. However, I will talk a little about “Smart Objects” and how to create them when your character is done.

When choosing the background color you can go with whatever background you like. However “Black” (#000000) wouldn’t be recommended as it will be the color of the outlining of the character. The sketch lines if you will. I am going with a white background to start with. I will work a little on the background when I finish up the character though.

Step 2 – The Head

Alright, let’s start out with the shape of the head. We are going to use a couple of tools to get the right feel without using the “Pen” tool. Even though the pen tool is really useful in most situations as you can modify the lines when you have already drawn them I find the process a bit time consuming and prefer doing things fast and easy. However, when you are creating this character in vector graphics it’s kind of the way you have to go in order for it to become ultimately scalable.

So, before we start adding outlines, create a new layer and name it “Character Head“. Now, pick the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” and create an oval measuring Width: 160 and Height: 190. Fill the oval by selecting the “Paint Bucket Tool”. Fill it with the color Black (#000000). What we need to do now is to take a part of the fill out in order to get the desired outline line we want. So again, with the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” draw an oval measuring Width: 152 and Height: 182. Place the oval in the immediate center of your filled oval and then press the “Delete” key on your keyboard.

We also need to delete the bottom half of the oval as the ehad won’t be an exact oval due to the cheek bones and all. So, with the "Rectangular Marquee Tool" select the bottom half of the bottom cutting it in perfect halfs. When selected again press the "Delete” key to erase it.

Now we should have a half of an oval drawn with just an outline which will in the end make up the top of the head. It should look something like this:

We now have the top of the head done and now moving on to the cheek bones. This time we will be using the “Polygonal Lasso Tool” in order to create a flowing and vibrant line meant to look like it’s hand drawn. With the “Polugonal Lasso Tool" draw a similar line to what I have on the right side of the head. We will go ahead and copy the right half of the head later to the left in order to make it summetric.

After drawing it and filled it, againg using the "Paint Bucket Tool“, you should have a cheek bone outline looking something like this:

Now what we need to do is to copy the right side to the left. But first we need to delete the entire half side of the head. So, go ahead and pick the “Rectangular Marquee Tool” and select the LEFT half of the head and then press the “Delete” key on your keyboard. After doing so, select the right half of the head and press “CTRL” + “C” to copy the selection.

Press “CTRL” + “V” now to paste the copied selection. As you can see we now have two identical halves which we cannot use. A new layer has been created with the new identical half in it. We need to flip this horizontally in order for it to fit as the left half of the head. With the new, un-named, layer selected choose “Edit” -> “Transform” -> “Flip Horizontal“.

Now we have two opposite sides of the head so go ahead an place it next to the right half to make it a complete head. After positioning the left half to the right correctly you should now have something looking like this:

You might think the head looks a little stiff and hard at this point. No worries. When we’ve added a slew of details to it its going to look quite good and the hard lines makes for a great facial appearance.

Before we start of the eyes we need to add some skin to the actual head. Create a new layer underneath the “Character Head” layer and name it “Character Skin“. Again, pick the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” and select the insides of the head. Important here is that you stay IN (actually in the middle of the outline) the outline (not inside the outline). After selecting the whole head fill the selection using the “Paint Bucket Tool” and use either a Brown color or a lighter pink color depending on what kind of skin type you would like your character to have. I am using a brighter skin tone for this character (#ecc0a7). After filling your selection you should have something looking like this:

Step 3 – The Eyes

We now have the head all outlined and  it’s now time for us to create the eyes. Create a new layer above the “Character Skin” layer and name it “Character Eyes“. Time to get to work on the eyes.

Select the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” and create an oval measuring Width: 36 and Height: 32. This will become the character’s left eye. Fill the selection using White (#ffffff) as the color.

Now, using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” create a couple of lines outlining the eye which we also can add some eye lashes to in a second. I created these lines to make the eyes more recognizable.

Now when we have the eyes somewhat outlined roughly we can go ahead and add the eye lashes and the eye lid lines to create more details to the eyes before we start to add the iris and the main details.

Pick the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” and add small eye lashes to the left side of the eye attached to the line we just created there. Don’t add eye lashes all the way through the line. Just a few to the left side of the eye as it’s where you usually see them. After adding the eye lashes you should have something looking like this:

We also need to mark the eye lid out so that the character appears more human like. This is accomplished by just adding a small line just above the eye itself. To do this we need to add another layer, This time add a new layer underneath the “Character Eyes” layer (we will later fuse these layers so no need to name this new layer).

Select the “Elliptical Marque Tool” and create an oval measuring Width: 46 and Height: 34 and place the top of the oval a few pixels above the top of the eye. Fill the oval using the “Paint Bucket Tool” and use the color Black (#000000). Now, move the oval down and right just a little bit and then press the “Delete” key on your keyboard. This will delete most of the oval and leave a small line marking the eye lid.

After adding this line you should now have something looking like this:

As you can see, the eye is taking form and giving a more detailed appearance to the face. However, wee need to add the iris and other details to the eye before it becomes entirely believable. Also, if you haven’t figured it out already, I am creating a female character.

Create a new layer (no need to name it). Pick the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” and create a circle in the center of the eye measuring Width: 27 and Height: 27. Fill it using the “Paint Bucket Tool“. Color is entirely up to you. I have chosen a Brown color (#6c2e21) to give the character more depth.

Also go ahead and create another circle in the middle of the circle that you have just created and fill it with Black (#000000) color. This will make up the “Pupil” of the character.

Before we add some gloss to the eye we need to mark out the edges of the iris a little bit. This we can accomplish by adding an outline to the iris itself. Right click the iris layer and choose “Blending Options…“. In the menu to your left choose “Stroke” and insert the following settings:

The color I am using is a dark Brown color (#2f0d06).

Before we take a look at the final result of the eye itself we need to add some gloss to the eye as well. Create a new layer on top of the layer you’re working with (do not name it).

Again, choose the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” create two circles. One at the top right corner measuring Width: 12 and Height: 12. Fill it using the “Paint Bucket Tool” and use White as color (#ffffff).

Create another circle at the bottom left corner measuring Width: 7 and Height: 7. Again fill it with White color (#ffffff).

After adding these details you should now have something looking like this:

Before we continue to the nose we need to bundle up our layers and copy the eye to the right side in order for the character to have two eyes. This is not as hard as it sounds. But there are a few things we need to do in order for it not to look weird. Select all the layers that has to do with the eye except the gloss layer and press the “CTRL” + “E” to merge these layers.

Now, copy the layer you ended up with by selecting it using the “Rectangular Marquee Tool” and pressing “CTRL” + “C” and the pressing “CTRL” + “V” to paste it. Again, we need to flip this new layer horizontally. Choose “Edit” -> “Transform” -> “Flip Horizontal“.

We need to align the eyes just right and position them correctly so I will just go ahead and position my eyes and then show you where I put them. You can just position the right eye on the same distance as I have to the left, merge the layers as we did before and then just position them in the right vertical position.

Also, when you have aligned the eyes just right, copy the gloss layer and without flipping it position it in the right eye.

Here’s how it should look when you have positioned everything just right:

There, the eyes are done and all we have to do is to add some shadowing to create a more 3D like effect. But that we will get to later in this tutorial. Now on to the nose.

Step 4 – The Nose

The nose is fairly easy to create. However, there is a bunch of different ways to create a nose depending on what you want it to look like. I am going for a somewhat small noise slightly bent upwards. After you are done with this tutorial you can go ahead and experiment with different ways of doing it.

We need a new layer for the nose so go ahead and create a new layer and name it “Character Nose“. Select the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” and create a circle measuring Width: 13 and Height: 13. Fill it using the “Paint Bucket Tool” and use the color Black (#000000).

Without deselecting your selection, move it slightly to the right and then press “Delete” on your keyboard to delete most of the circle leaving only a simple outline which will be the left side of the nostril wing.

We need to add the nostril itself before we copy the entire left side of the nose to the right side. Go ahead and choose the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” once again if you don’t already have it. Create an oval measuring Width: 5 and Height: 7. Fill it using the “Paint Bucket Tool” and again use the color Black (#000000).

We also need to rotate the nostril a little bit to get the right angle of the nostril. Select the nostril alone and then choose “Edit” -> “Transform” -> “Rotate“.

Rotate the nostril “-75 degrees” and then positioning it about 3 pixels from the nostril wing and 3 pixels from the nostril wing bottom.

Now, copy the left side of the nose by selecting it using the “Rectangular Marquee Tool” and pressing “CTRL” + “C” and then pasting it by pressing “CTRL” +”V“. Now position the right side of the nose to the right side of the left side of the nose. The length between the two sides is entirely up to you to play with. If you want to do it exactly as I am doing it then just check the result hereunder and try to duplicate the length.

After positioning your right side of the nose then merge the two layers into one nose layer named “Character Nose“.

When you have positioned the right side of the nose, merged the two layers you should have something looking like this:

There, our nose is in place and again we will add some shadowing to it later in this tutorial to give it more depth. But for now it serves its purpose quite well.

Step 5 – The Eyebrows

With our nose in place we can now move on to the eyebrows in order to give the character some…err…character. This one is quite simple however probably the one that makes the biggest differents as it’s with the eyebrows we determine what kind of mood our character is in. Angry, Sad, Happy or just neutral. I will go for a more neutral look but you are free to experiment all you want to try and bring out the feeling you want your character to have.

Create a new layer and name it “Character Eyebrows“. Choose the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” and draw the eyebrow you feel most represents your character. If you’re going for the same as I am this is how I have decided to draw it:

Now all we have to do is to copy the left eye bro to the right side and align it correctly. Select the left eyebrow and copy it by pressing “CTRL” + “C“. Paste it by pressing “CTRL” + “V“. Now position it correctly and aligned with the left eyebrow on the right side.

After positioning it correctly merge the two eyebrow layers so it is one layer named “Character Eyebrows“. After doing so you should now have something looking like this:

There, our eyebrows are in place and we can move on to the mouth. Later on we will work on some shadowing to give them more 3d depth but that again comes later in this tutorial.

Step 6 – The Mouth

Here is the second hardest phase of the facial features. The mouth is such an important piece of the face that we really need to pay attention to the lining of it. We could go for a moth with big luscious lips or we could go with a more normal one or really, there’s a million choices here. I however, will go for a more normal mouth.

Create a new layer and name it “Character Mouth“. Using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” I draw the left side of the mouth in order to copy it and use the same for the right side. All to make it more symmetrical. However, you can always freehand both sides to make it more "sketchy" and "cartoonish". I am doing it this way to make sure it stay symmetrical. While adding shadows later we get a chance to make it more free hand sketched looking anyways.

When free handing a mouth, remember that you are only drawing the outlines of the mouth and lips. If it would have been a male character we would have only worked with lines in order to give it a little harder features as a male almost never have luscious lips and so forth.

Now, copy the right side of the mouth to the left side and align it (you should know how to copy and paste by now). Don’t forget to merge the two layers so you have the whole outline of the mouth in just one layer.

After free handing the mouth it is looking like this:

There, our outline for the mouth is done. We need to color it as well in order to make it fit with the character itself. Create a new layer underneath the “Character Mouth” layer. Using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” again select the lips by following the lines setting the point in the middle of the stroke itself. After having selected the lips fill it using the “Paint Bucket Tool”. You can use any color you like whether you want lipstick colors or something in that direction. I am going for somewhat natural lips so I am using a darker Pink / Brown color (#cf9679).

Time to add the teeth. It’s rather simple and we are of course using White (#ffffff) as color. Again using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” select the inside area of the mouth again setting the points in the middle of the outline line. Fill the mouth using the “Paint Bucket Tool” once again.

We need just a couple of lines more to accentuate the teeth correctly. With the “Character Mouth” layer selected, in the left side of the mouth, add a small triangle (somewhat of a triangle, almost lines) using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool“. Fill it using the “Paint Bucket Tool” and use the color Black (#000000).

You can now go ahead and merge all the mouth layers by selecting all of them and then press “CTRL” + “E“. Remember to name the layer “Character Mouth” if doesn’t already have that name.

All you have to do now is to align the mouth to where you want it. I have decided to position the mouth quite close to the nose to give the character a more Manga influence.

After you have done all the above to create the mouth you should now have something looking like this:

There, our mouth is now in place and as you can see we are starting to get quite an interesting face despite the hard head lines we first started out with. We will further smoothing these out later with even more details making the viewer unaware of the rectangular facial outline. However, first we need to add the ears.

Step 7 – The Ears

Now comes the most tricky part. Not so much the creation of it but the description of each step. However, I will try and explain it the best I can and with the including images I am sure you will be able to follow the process.

Create a new layer and name it (yup, you guessed it!) “Character Ears“. Choose the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” and create an oval measuring Width: 30 and Height: 46. Fill it using the “Paint Bucket Tool” and use Black (#000000) as color. Create a new oval measuring Width: 22 and Height: 38. Position this new oval selection in the middle of the newly created and filled oval and press “Delete” on your keyboard to delete the selection.

Select the new outlined oval and choose “Edit” -> “Transform” -> “Rotate“. Rotate the outlined oval “20” degrees. Move the “Character Ears” layer underneath the “Character Skin” layer and position the ear’s oval top approximately aligned to the top of the eyes on the right side of the character head.

It should look something like this when aligned:

Now comes the tricky part. Using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” create the ear lines to give it more detail and depth. By looking at the image below add the necessary lines to make your ear look exactly like mine.

Here’s how my ear looks after adding the inner ear details:

Alright, so the details for our ear is now there and all we have to do now is add a little bit of skin and then copy it to the left side of the head. Add a new layer underneath the “Character Ears" layer (no need to name it) and again using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” select the ear by adding the selection to the middle of the outlining of the entire ear.

After you have your selection all done fill it using the “Paint Bucket Tool” and use the same skin color as you used for the face. In my case I am using a kind of Pink / Brown (#ecc0a7) color.

Merge the skin and the ear outline layer and name it “Character Ears” using the “CTRL” + “E” command.

Alright, our ear is colored and now we need to copy it to the left side of the head. Using the “CTRL” + “C” to copy and “CTRL” + “V” to paste copy the ear to the left side and align it to the same position that the right ear has.

After doing all this you should now have something looking like this:

Now, merge the two ear layers and make sure the layer is name “Character Ears“.

Alright, our ears are in place and now we can move on to the hair. We are now very close to add some shadows to the face and the up-coming neck so hang in there.

Step 8 – The Neck

Let’s add the neck before we start adding the hair. As the hair will be in a ponytail we need to add the neck in order to know where the ponytail is going to end up showing. The neck is one of the easiest parts to add to the character but again, there is a slew of choices you have when creating it. Either you go for a thick and larger sized neck which then will make the character look either fat or muscular. I am going for a fairly normal/slim neck to fit my character just fine.

Create a new layer and call it “Character Neck” directly above the “Character Skin” layer. Using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” go ahead and create a line on the right side of the check bottom looking similar to what I have created underneath. Try keeping your outlines the same size all through the creation of your character. If it should differ from time to time and in various locations no worries. They can actually add to the feeling that the character is hand drawn using a pen.

When you have drawn the line, approximately the same size and length that I have done you should have something looking like this:

Now copy the newly created neck line using the “CTRL” + “C” command and paste it using the “CTRL” + “V” command. Also flip it horizontally the new layer choosing “Edit” -> “Transform” -> “Flip Horizontal“.

We have to fit some skin to the next as well before we go ahead and add the hair. But let’s first merge the two neck line layers. Select the newly created layer (if not already selected) and then merge the two by using the “CTRL” + “E” command. You should now have one layer named “Character Neck“.

Select the “Character Skin” layer. Using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” trace the neck line (again set your points in the middle of the line) all the way down and then imagine the invisible line where the neck would go until you again trace the right neck line all the way up to the position you started from. Fill the selection with the same skin color we used for the head. In my case the Pink / Brown (#ecc0a7) color.

After doing all this you should now have something looking like this:

There, our neck is now finished and we can move on to the hair. As you can see we are getting closer to a whole character and with a little bit of imagination you can create so many different faces just by adding different eyes etc. to your character.

Step 9 – The Hair

So it’s time to add the hair. As you can imagine there are quite a lot of hair styles we could choose from and you are free to pick whatever style you feel fits your character. I am going for a simple and stylish ponytail with a few streaks of hair hanging in front of the face.

Remember, here’s where your creativity comes in. You have the freedom to create a cool hairstyle so work on it a little and make it your own personal flavor. For references just look at pictures, your own hairstyle or come up with an entirely new on. Not an easy task but you are welcome to try.

Create a new layer directly above the “Character Head” layer and name it “Character Hair“. As always, use the “Polygonal Marquee Tool" to create the outline of the hairstyle. Make sure you’re keeping the lines flowing and in the same size as the rest ot the character outlining. This will ensure a way more unison character in the end. You are free to copy my hairstyle but praxtice is the best thing to do to learn.

After outlining the hairstyle you should have something looking like this (if you chose to copy the hearstyle that I did):

As you can see, the result get significantly more interesting after adding the hair. The hair does so much for the face that without it the face sometimes looks plain and uninteresting. As you probably also noticed the lines as way more “hand drawn” in their appearance. This is to give the hair a little bit more depth and life. Hair is never straight even if it is a short haircut.

We can now go ahead and add some color to the hair. I think I am going for Yellow (#ffd131) as it will add alittle bit of detail to the face. Create a new layer above the "Character Skin” layer and name it “Character Hair Color“. We do this in order to be able to change the color of the hair at a later stage if we so would want to.

Using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” (and having selected the newly created layer) trace the hair outline (again setting your points in the middle of the line) until you have selected the whole hair area. In order to add more areas, if your hair should be in several pieces just like mine, hold down the “Shift” key on your keyboard when you start a new selecting a new area and the old selection will still be selected.

After selecting your hair, fill it using the “Paint Bucket Tool” and your desired hair color. After doing this you should now have something looking like this (you might have to trace the excess hair color with the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” and delete it if you’re going over the head and ear outlines):

As you can see we’re getting somewhere however the hair looks kind of flat and odd. We can change that by adding some shine to it.

Create a new layer above the “Character Hair Color” layer and name it “Character Hair Shine“. Again using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” go ahead and trace up the patterns (if you’re creating a hairstyle just like me. If not…then your imagination have to work a little) that I have created in the image below.

After tracing these selections the fill it using the “Paint Bucket Tool” with a brighter shade of the color you are using, in my case I am going for something in between Creamy Yellow / White (#ffeba5).

As you can see I modified the hair a little bit making sure it was flowy enough. I also removed any overlapping where the hair disrupted the flow of any outlines. After doing this you should now have something looking like this:

We’re getting closer and closer to a neat cartoon illustration don’t you think? Well, a few steps left until we’re at the end of this tutorial so hang in there. Next is the shadowing.

Step 10 – The Shadowing

Time to add some depth to the face. Now we are going to add some shadows to the skin to make it appear a little bit more 3d. How you shadow your character is essential to the end result. Off shadows could make it look weird and throw the view off. Imagine a light source and work from there.

Create a new layer directly above the “Character Skin” layer and name it “Character Facial Shadows“. Using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” (and the newly created layer selected) start tracing out where you want your shadows to be. If you’re are unsure just take a look where I put mine and you can work from there.

After selecting where your shadows should be use a darker color of the skin tone you’re using. In my case I am using a darker Pink / Brown (#dfb096) color.

There you have my selection as well as the shadowing. These shadows are meant as facial feature shadows. To bring out the features of the bones underneath it as well as a little shadowing for the hair. Now you’re wondering why I have only made shadows on one side of the character. Well, to simplify the process again we’re going to copy the  left side cheek shadow to the right. Us the “CTRL” + “C” and “CTRL” + “V” command as we’ve done so many times before.

We still have a few more shadows to add to the face before we move on. Now we have to switch the color to an even darker skin color as we will be working with more distinctive features of the face. Again using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” trace exactly what I have traced and fill it with the darker color of your skin color if different from mine. I am using an even darker shade of Pink / Brown (#cd9a7d) color.

After adding these shadows and copying the left side of the cheek shadow to the right you should now have something looking like this:

OK, there is a few things to point out here. As you can see there are a few shadows added. The eyes, hair, neck and the ears I used the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” to select where the shadows should be. However for the nose I chose to use the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” and just created a little oval spanning from nostril to nostril to create that depth of the nose.

Our face has now been completed and we can move on the clothes now. However, there are a dew things you could do to enhance the face even more. You could for example add some shadows to the eyes to create a more round feeling. You could add a darker shade of yellow to create even more depth in the hair. Also on the teeth you could add some shadowing but we’re not going to do that this time around.

Step 11 – The Clothes

Time to put some clothes on our character before we are done. Yup, we are that close. As usual we have a ton of options here to choose from. What kind of clothes to put on your character is entirely up to you. I will go ahead and add a shirt just for fun.

The “Polygonal Marquee Tool” is one of the most used in this tutorial and it is exactly what we’re going to use once again to create the outline for our character clothes. If you’re creating your own clothes the remember to keep the line flowing and the same size as always before.

If you’re copying what I do then just look at the outline I have done below and just take your time and perfect your outlining skills.

Create a new layer on top of all the other layers and name it “Character Clothes“. This layer will be the target layer for all your clothes outline layers. Sometimes one need a few layers to create several pieces of clothes in order not to mix them up. At a later stage we just merge them all and we’ll have one single layer containing all the outlines for the character’s clothes. So, if you need additional layers to create your clothes never hesitate. Go ahead and add as many layers as you need.

After outlining your clothes (if you have done what I have) you should have something looking like this:

As you can see I have only created the right half of the shirt. It’s because I am going to copy the right half to the left side and just make minor changes such as adding buttons instead of the holes etc. You can go ahead and copy the right half (first make sure all your clothes layers are merged into one layer called “Character Clothes” with the “CTRL” + “E” command) to the left side of the character and then align it just right so it looks like a complete shirt.

Time to add some color to the clothes. I say clothes as there is a couple of lines in there that will make out the t-shirt this lady is wearing underneath the shirt itself. Again you can go ahead an pick whatever color you’d like for your character but I will go for something more colorful such as Red (#b00000).

Create a new layer underneath the “Character Clothes” layer and name it “Character Clothes Color“. This is the layer we can add the colors for the characters clothes. Remember to use the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” to trace the outline before filling in your clothes with the “Paint Bucket Tool“.

After you have done this you should now have something looking like this:

Our shirt is now colored and as you see there is still some painting to be done. I want the edge of the T-shirt to have a Pink (#ff9e9e) color and we need to paint the rest of the neck as well. It’s easily accomplished by again tracing the outlines using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” and the filling it using the “Paint Bucket Tool“.

Don’t forget to switch to the “Character Skin” layer when you are adding the color for the skin and then back again to the “Character Clothes Color” layer when you are adding color to the clothes. It’s a lot easier to keep track of everything if you stick to your layers and keeping it tidy and neat.

Now go ahead and add the colors and after you have done that you should now have something looking like this:

Clothes are colored and so is the character’s skin. There is only one part left now and that is to give the clothes some shadows to make them look even more 3d.

Step 12 – The Clothes Shadows

Only one thing left to do and that is to give the clothes a little bit of shadow treatment. We need to shadow the skin a little bit more where the shirt is. We also need to highlight the sides of the shirt as the light source seems to be coming from somewhere above and behind. We also need to add some shadows to the shirt where the light is fading. And lastly, we need to add some shadows to the shirt that is underneath where the shirt is blocking the light. All simple and straight forward really.

Let’s add the shirt shadows first. Create a new layer above the “Character Clothes Color” and name it “Character Clothes Shadows“. Using a darker shade of Red (#8c0000) just go ahead and add shadows where you can imagine the light can’t reach. Or, just copy what I am doing. Look at the result below after I have added the shadows:

Don’t forget to add shadows to the back of the collar as well. Really easy to forget that place as it’s already red. However adding a darker red there can sometimes do the trick of making it look 3D like.

Let’s move on to the high lighting of the shirt to accentuate the light source a bit. Again using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” and this time a brighter shade of Red (#d63737) create the spots that your clothes needs or just copy mine for simplicity. You can always get ideas from looking at other cartoons or just look yourself in the mirror and try and spot the highlights and shadows on yourself.

Still use the same layer and if you want change the name to “Character Clothes Shine & Shadows" to know eher everything is. Not a must just in case you should forget where you put your shines.

After ading the high lights you should now have something looking like this:

High lighting is a great way to make something look a little bit more real in terms of 3 dimensional space. Only a couple of things left to do now before we are done.

Lets add the shadows on the neck skin to make it look like the shirt actually blocks the light from coming through to the skin. Again using the “Polygonal Marquee Tool” (this you all know by now) use the same skin shadow color as before, the Pink / Brown shade (#cd9a7e) we have under the chin.

Make sure you imagine the light coming from behind and above. The shadow under the chin could work as a guideline here. After adding the shadow you should now have something looking like this:

Already making much more sense doesn’t it. Alright, let’s hit the last hurdle and add the shadowing on the T-Shirt. Let’s go for both colors at the same time. You should be able to handle it by now.

The colors I am using is a darker shade of Pink (#db7676) and a brighter shade of Gray (#cacaca). Make sure you keep the shadows in a straight line from where we left off with the skin shadow. A broken line can easily create some odd effects if not careful. Add these to the T-Shirt and when you are done you should have something looking like this:

Our character is all done and as you see we have come a long way from the edgy and clunky head shape that we started out with.

Round Up

As you probably understand there is a lot you can still add to this character and this way of creating an illustrated cartoon. You can add additional details to the eyes, work more on the shadows, create several sets of eyes, eyebrows, hairstyles etc. in order to make your character look even more pimped out.

In this composed and finished image I have added a background to give the image some additional depth. Your imagination is the limit and whatever you feel would fit your character just go ahead and add it. Create a full scale character if you want to. Adding the rest of the body shouldn’t be that hard now when you have completed the hardest part in creating the entire upper body. And in detail as well.

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial as much as I have done creating it. I get so inspired every time I finish up a tutorial and right away I always have something else I want to create a tutorial about. So, don’t worry. I am in great creative spirit so it won’t be very long until there is another tutorial up here at Minervity.com.

Thanks!

Digital image manipulation is the altering of an image using computer program tools and software to produce a contrived image, often generating new meaning. It involves already existing imagery, such as photographs, films or videos, being subsequently worked on in a multitude of possible ways.

Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator  are still the best softwares to use when it comes to image manipulation.  But for the budget conscious and those just trying it out for the first time or working on personal projects.  Some might even feel intimidated buying the premium soft wares so we have put together 12 alternative digital tools.  The aim here is to empower our readers to try out different tools and use which one they would feel they can be comfortable with.

The GIMP

The “GNU Image Manipulation Program” (originally the General Image Manipulation Program) sired by Spencer Kimball & Peter Mattis.   In their own words, “GIMP is our answer to the current lack of free (or at least reasonably priced) image manipulation software for GNU/Linux and UNIX in general.”

It is a raster editor, which means that it performs operations directly on the pixels that make up the image, and not a vector editor.  Users wanting to edit photographs will certainly want a raster editor like GIMP. Graphic designers and illustrators may prefer a vector editor depending on their tastes.

Inkscape

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.  Yes! While Inkscape does not have all the features of the leading vector editors, the latest versions provide for a large portion of basic vector graphics editing capabilities.  People report successfully using Inkscape in a lot of very different projects (web graphics, technical diagrams, icons, creative art, logos, maps). For example, thousands of images on Wikipedia are created with Inkscape, as is the majority of the content on openclipart; many examples of Inkscape art can be seen here and here. We try to always keep the codebase usable for real users, as we believe that a tight iteration cycle between users and developers will give best results. You can start using Inkscape alongside your other tools now!

Line Form

Lineform is the ideal Mac app for vector art, diagrams and illustrations. Useful features combined with a simple interface to create a wonderfully intuitive artistic process. Lineform has all of the most popular tools, including everything from freeform gradients to compositing effects, enabling you to create the designs you want without getting in your way with superfluous “features” you don’t need. Lineform is the clear modern Mac alternative to Illustrator, FreeHand, and other more costly or bloated vector drawing apps. Giving it a spin to try out its features and interface is sure to showcase its powers.

Blue Fish

Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdesigners, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, and it focuses on editing dynamic and interactive websites. See features for an extensive overview, take a look at the screenshots, or download it right away. Bluefish is an open source development project, released under the GNU GPL licence.  The latest stable version is Bluefish 1.0.7. This is the preferred version. It requires gtk version 2.0 or newer (gtk 2.4 or newer is recommended), libpcre 3.0 or higher and (optional) libaspell 0.50 or higher for spell checking and (also optional, but recommended) gnome-vfs for remote files. More information is available in our manual.

Creative Docs.NET

Creative Docs .NET is a vector-based graphic design tool with support for rich text, ideal to quickly write short documents, manuals, posters, illustrations, schemas, plans, flow charts, and much more.  The interface is tailored for high productivity: it does never get in your way. Creative Docs .NET tools are simple, yet powerful. All styles and attributes can be modified interactively with a minimum number of mouse clicks. A color gradient, for instance, can be modified directly by dragging its handles in the document window.

Note: This software is being actively developed.

Pixlr

While it’s not the most full-featured image editor you’ll ever use, Pixlr makes it fairly easy to do some sophisticated (and unsophisticated) things with images online. The Flash-based web app has an impressive set of tools, from a text engine that can use nearly any font available on your computer to layers and filters for masking and effects, respectively. Incredibly, there’s even a multilevel undo! You can import images from your machine or via URL, or paint something up yourself, and either way save it to your desktop. It’s fun to play around with, though quickly frustrating if you’re used to more powerful tools.

Sumo Paint 1.1

If you’re looking for an alternative to Photoshop or would just like to be able to create and edit images from any computer with a flash enabled browser, then Sumo Paint is your answer. While Sumo Paint May not be a Photoshop killer, it is a great alternative for those who either can’t or won’t pay the price for Adobe’s Photoshop.  Check out the video of Sumo Paint in action after the jump.

Sumo Paint is a free online image editor that operates within any flash enabled browser. Surprisingly fast loading and stable, Sumo Paint is packed with many great features and tools that will be very familiar to any Photoshop user. Some of these great features include: layers with blending modes and layer effects, filters, shape tool, brush tool, eraser tool, magic wand, clone stamp, blur tool and many more. There are also a few unique tools like the symmetry and curve tools. The user interface looks a lot like Photoshop and is very straight forward and clean.

source

Artweaver

Artweaver is a Windows Freeware program to simulate natural brush tools. It is therefore suitable to leave your creativity free run. Artweaver offers you a clear program window, which can be used without training immediately.

Artweaver is available in English and German language. Through support for language files, the Artweaver program window can be translated easily into other languages.

Artweaver supports only 24-bit color depth. Other color depths (e.g. 256-colors) are automatically converted to 24-bit. I.e. pictures with another color depth than 24-bit are converted to 24-bit when opening/importing. For what can I use Artweaver? Artweaver is meant for users, who want to bring their creativity on digital paper. Artweaver can be used for different work, e.g.:

• Digital art, for creating realistic works.
• Photo improvements, for converting photos into realistic paintings and changing or improving parts of them.

Aviary

Aviary is a suite of free web-based multi-media applications currently in development from Worth1000, using the Adobe Flex platform. The individual tool names are bird-themed, hence the suite name. The scope of proposed tools has drawn comparisons to the Zoho Office Suite. Aviary exited their invitation-only beta in October, 2008 and announced subscription plans for private collaboration under their blue plan. They have 2 plans: a free plan and a Pro plan. Only Aviary Pro members can test current alpha releases ahead of time. Pro Members also have the ability to remove the Aviary Watermark, create groups, and view Premium Tutorials as well as unlimited storage. Aviary released Raven, their web-based vector editor on February 9, 2009.  ^(source)

Choco Flop

ChocoFlop is a graphics manipulation Mac-based solution.

ChocoFlop is based entirely on Core Image.

ChocoFlop allows you to edit your photos or design stuff using Apple’s CoreImage technology. It takes advantage of the power of your graphics card (GPU). Thanks to this it is able to show real-time previews of filters and keep modifications live for as long as you want.

This means that you can add for example a blur filter on your text and keep everything dynamic. You can change the strength of your blur filter at any time or edit your text, the blur will apply on the updated text. That’s called non-destructive image edition and it really saves you a lot of time.

Sk1

sK1 is an open source vector graphics editor similar to CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, or Freehand. First of all sK1 is oriented for “prepress ready” PostScript & PDF output.

sK1 editor is a fork of Sketch 0.6.15. It was a result of day-by-day patching of Sketch in an attempt to migrate our printing firm to free software. Sketch development seemed to be stalled already, so when the Sketch/Skencil maintainers decided to switch to Gtk+ widgetset, we were forced to fork. We migrated to Ttk (former Tile widgetset), added CMYK support, color management, and Cairo-based engine.

The “sK1″ name derives from “Sketch/Skencil” and second large K character means that application layout is similar with KDE applications althouh sK1 has no dependencies on KDE libraries. Number 1 means our goal – stable application compartible with Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator and useful for regular usage in prepress.

DrawIt

DrawIt is a vector editing application with support for bitmap-like image filters. Vector editing as well as the filters are completely non-destructive which means that a vector layer can still be edited even after a stack of filters has been applied.

Every vector, image, or text object is a layer. Layers can be grouped and because a group is also a layer, a group can in turn contain other groups. Groups can be resized and filters can be applied to its contents. This in turn creates a truly powerfull tool that can be applied and used into almost endless possibilities.

There are a lot of avenues that an artist can let his creativity flow.  One such medium is called Street art or pavement / chalk art.  The artist uses a specialized sidewalk chalk, they are typically large colored (and sometimes white or cream) sticks of calcium sulfate mostly used for drawing on pavement or cement sidewalk.

The technique here may also be called Anamorphosis.  Oblique anamorphosis is closely related to an artistic technique called trompe l’oeil (French for “deceiving the eye”, pronounced “tromp loy”). Both use perspective constructions to create a “trick” image, but the difference lies in the nature of the trick.

For an anamorphosis, the viewer is presented with something that does not make sense when viewed conventionally, and so he or she must seek out the unconventional viewpoint from which the trick is resolved. For trompe l’oeil, the viewer, standing in one particular (and usually conventional) place, is tricked into seeing an invented image as if it were reality.

We have hand picked some cool Street Chalk Art for your inspiration. (photo source)

Chalk Art by Kurt Wenner

The Muses was created by Kurt Wenner an international master artist who interpret  Renaissance Classicism with a thorough single voice.  His works transcends the typical canvass and frames.  He also creates architectural art and of course he is famous for his Street Chalk Art.

Chalk Art  – Julien Beever

Julian Beever is an English artist who’s famous for his art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. Beever gives to his drawing an anamorphous look. His images are drawn completely deformed which give a 3D image when viewed at the right angle. See for yourself it’s amazing!

Chalk It Up by Lee Jones

Since graduating in 1982, Lee Jones worked for several years as a free lance artist, production artist, and managed a printing company, before opening her own design studio, LJ Designs, in 1990.  Then in 1994 she was introduced to street painting and immediately fell in love with this centuries old art form. She has been street painting throughout Central Florida and in festivals all across the country ever since.

Ice Age – Edgar Müller

Edgar needed 5 days to compile this huge chalk drawing. With five of his assistants, he painted all day long from sunrise to sunset, which resulted with this incredibly realistic and 250 square meter painting. You can also check out his Lava Street Chalk art here.  Edgar is from Germany.

Ford – Manford Stader

He began his painting, pavement art during his art studies at the famous Städel Artschool in Frankfurt, at the beginning of the 1980s and in 1985 he already became one of the few master street painters. Master Madonnaro.. a title which is awarded by the largest international street painting competition in Grazie di Curtatone in Italy. Pavement Painting Contest. Pavement drawings, sidewalk chalk art, done by artists coming from all over the world.

Joe Hill / Max Lowry

What is the most difficult aspect of street painting?

J: Getting intense tone on location. Chalk can look really washed out. If you ever see pavement art in real life it’s usually very pastel. Most 3D artists ramp up the contrast and colour on their photos if they use chalk: you can usually tell from the tone of people in the background of the pictures – they are normally really dark. It’s also why some 3D artists insist on people only using the photo they take for publicity etc… Although it’s sometimes not possible, I really like trying to achieve intense tone, so that passersby can enjoy the spectacle. Also, it doesn’t feel like you’re cheating!

M: Trying to get Joe to smile.

Ulla Taylor

Ulla Taylor has performed at festivals and events as a pavement artist since 1987, and tours festivals extensively as a solo artist.    Her work ranges from community art at festivals creating original images of celebration… to fine handcrafted promotions and enhancements for government departments, businesses and corporations.

Tracy Lee Stum

Tracy Lee Stum is a fine artist committed to creating spectacular modern masterpieces that transform, captivate and inspire. Best known for her 3D street paintings, also called anamorphic or pavement chalk art, she specializes in extraordinary visual solutions for applications in communications media, identity branding, product design and performance art based projects worldwide; her signature style defines work which adds unparalleled beauty, originality and imaginative design to any project or event.