Planet of the Web

How much should I charge for a freelance job?

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

I get this question a lot, especially from students. It's weird that people don't really like to share how much they charge or how they arrive at their rates. I have a surprisingly simple formula for calculating how much I charge. Read all about it here.

Non Destructive Retouching

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

I work for a TV and Radio studio and I do photo shoots every week. Most of my people photos are of radio personalities. Regular Joes with excellent vocal talent, but lacking some of the perfect skin that comes with young models. This tutorial shows you my workflow for editing without committing to any pixels until I'm done.

2009 Wallpapers

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

This series of wallpapers used our new series of waves which was meant to reflect sound and radio waves.

Mega Mousepad

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Our radio station's 2009 mousepads

Orlando Most Wired

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Orlando 5th Most Wired city

The Technology behind Flash Photography

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

A great deal of photography has to do with capturing light. Dollar for dollar better light gives you a better photograph than a better camera. The problem is photography requires a lot more light than our eyes. Flashes are a great way to take photos, but you must learn some of the technology behind their magic.

Creating a Panorama

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Creating a panorama is a little bit time consuming but well worth the effort. It's an exciting project because it combines planning with photographic skill and editing execution.

Whitening Teeth

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Whitening teeth is a fairly simple and quick correction in Photoshop. There are lots of ways to go arround it...here's a simple and quick way to take care of it.

The Importance of Reflections

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Photography is largely about capturing light, but most of the light our eyes see is not from a direct source, it comes as a result of reflections affected by objects. Therefore, it's important for photographers to examine how objects reflect light.

The Physics of Light

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Why is it that sometimes you can get stunning photographs from your cellphone and someone with a $2,000 DSLR can still get cruddy photos. What makes the difference is the light. In this lesson Ray will explain the science and practical aspects of light.

Portrait Photography

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The portrait is one of the most common photographs you'll be asked to take. The elements you should consider when working on this project are the people, location, props, lighting and posing.

Understanding Lenses

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

All cameras, wether DSLRs or simple point and shoots use lenses to capture images. The types of lens vary, but their function is to filter light coming through to the camera's sensor to make a picture. The type of lens you use will dramatically affect the overall quality of your image.

ISO and White Balance

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Other than the shutter speed and the F-stop, the ISO setting of your camera gives you the ability to control the quality of your exposure, but there are two other things that will affect the quality of your shots...the white balance setting and the kind of lens you use.

F-Stop and Depth of Field

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

After Shutter Speed, the second element that helps a photographer capture a good exposure is the Aperture. The Aperture is a little more complicated than the Shutter Speed. Ray Villalobos continues his series on capturing good exposures with a discussion on Apertures.

Capturing Motion

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

There are three controls that affect an exposure: Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO. In order to master photography you must learn what each one of these controls does and how to use them to achieve certain special effects. This week, we'll be discussing shutter speed.

Learn to build a horizontal platform game.

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Ray shows you how to build a fairly complex platform game using Flash and ActionScript with walking, jumping, gravity, friction, ladders, multiple levels, etc.

Encapsulation

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Flash allows you to embed movie clips inside other movie clips. An important concept to master is a clear understanding of the Flash hierarchy. This lesson teaches you to control the structure of your flash piece by purposely creating complex clips.

The Joy of Preloading

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Fri, 25 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Preloaders give visual feedback to your users about the loading progress of large flash documents. In this tutorial Ray Villalobos teaches you how to build extremely re-usable preloaders. He also covers building common libraries and templates to make your workflow more efficient.

XML in Flash

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Learn my award winning technique for separating presentation from content. It allows producers and designers to work concurrently instead of making designers wait for content from producers. You'll be twice as productive and you'll never program the same way again.

Pixel Transition and masking

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Create a neat pixel style flash transition using masking and a pattern developed with Adobe Illustrator. Learn the basics of masking to create animations.

Multi purpose buttons and loading externals

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode of the Flash Video Podcast, Ray shows you how to build a slideshow that uses generic buttons and loads photos or flash animations from an external source. You can download the source files for this project here to follow along with the podcast.

Draggable Menu Element

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Ray shows you how to do a draggable menu element. It all starts with a circular button that expands into a full menu, then collapses back to it's original shape and allows you to control an interface element. Drag it around the screen in either it's original or open position.

Navigational Scroller

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Ray shows you how to create a scrollable navigational element. Very useful for instances where you need to navigate through a lot of photos in a confined space. Learn to control movie clip movement through ActionScript with a little bit (very little, I promise) of math and physics.

Auto Centering Content

planetoftheweb@gmail.com (Ray Villalobos) — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Learn to build a flexible auto centering content area with Flash and ActionScript. Click on a button to control the movement of a separate movie clip that looses momentum as it reaches it's destination. Once built, you can arrange your movie clips in any way you like.