Check out my latest tutorial from Design Instruct

This technique can be used to make your postcards, business cards, posters or any kind of promotional or personal work really stand out.

Wondershare Flash Gallery Factory is an easy-to-use flash gallery software for web designers to turn digital photos into stunning flash photo gallery, web flash slideshow, business flash banner, flash image album and cool 3D flash gallery, etc.

The intuitive interface and clear workflow of the flash gallery maker let you make a web photo slideshow within clicks. Start from 60+ free flash slideshow templates for wedding, holiday, business, etc. Just drag and drop to add photos and music. 100+ transition and motion effects will automatically bring your photos to life. Animated text, decoration and scene effects are also available to spice up your photos.

After creating, you can output flash banner and slideshow as SWF, XML, EXE, Screensaver and HTML to share on websites like MySpace, Blogger, Friendster, Window Live Spaces, WordPress, etc.

Get the free flash gallery software to better present yourself and add color to your website!

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It is so easy to get a free flash slideshow software to polish your website and to share photos in a different way. What are you hesitating for? Just join the giveaway to get a free license now at http://www.facebook.com/wondershare

In this tutorial we are going to make a wet looking text with water drops in Adobe Illustrator. After we create our water drops we are going to use symbols to spread the bubbles out throughout the document.

Step 1

First lets open up Adobe Illustrator and create a new 1200x1200px document.

Step 2

Now we are going to add our text in, which will be “Watered Down”. I am using the font Chunk Five, and making the text big enough it fill up the document.

Step 3

We are going to play around with letters to give it a playful look. So to convert the text into vector shapes, go to Type>Create Outlines.

Ungroup the text by pushing Ctrl+Shift+G a few times and adjust the letters so they have a crooked playful look.

Step 4

To get our color scheme you can go to the Kuler website (If you have CS3 or higher you can just go to Window>Extensions>Kuler. Search for “Test the Waters” by legmeego.

Now that we have our colors we can start adding it to our document.

Step 5

Using the rectangle tool (M), create a box that fills the document.

Open up the gradient window (Window>Gradient) Click and drag the two darkest blues from our color scheme and put the darkest on the right and lighter one on the left.

Change the gradient to radial and using the Gradient tool (G) widen out the gradient so you have a nice smooth transition between the colors.

Step 6

Move the gradient behind the text with Ctrl+Shift+[.

Now we are going to start adding some color to the text. First select all the text and group it with Ctrl+G. Change the color to white. We are going to add some strokes, so duplicate the text

with Ctrl+C, Ctrl+F so it pastes in the same place. Now change the background to no fill (the one with the red line across it) and the stroke to the dark blue at 16pt. Move this layer behind the white text with Ctrl+[.

Duplicate the dark blue stroke text with Ctrl+C, Ctrl+F, change the stroke to one of the light blues, and the size to 40pt. Move the light blue stroke behind the dark blue one.

Step 7

To align the text to the middle of the document, make sure you have the align window open (Window>Align). Make sure Align to Artboard is selected, then click Horizontal Line Center and Vertical Align Center.

Step 8

Now that we have our simple layout we are going to start adding in our bubbles. Start off by using the Ellipse tool (L) to make an oval. Fill the oval with a back and white radial gradient, with the whitest part at the top. Change the blend mode to multiply, and the opacity to 40%.

Step 9

To add a shine to our bubble we are going to use the Ellipse tool (L) again to make a white oval on the top left. Angle the circle so that it is parallel with the edge it is on.

Add another smaller circle that also follows the edge. Drop the opacity to 40%.

Step 10

We are now going to add a small shadow at the bottom right of the bubble. Make a circle around the top part of the bubble with the Ellipse tool (L).

Click on the bubble and duplicate it with Ctrl+C, Ctrl+F. Now click the duplicated bubble and bigger circle and open up the Pathfinder (Window>Pathfinder), and click on the Minus Front icon.

Step 11

This should just leave a small half moon shape. Take that half moon shape and shrink it down while holding shift (to keep the proportions).

Step 12

To put the bubbles all over our document, open up the symbols window (Window>Symbols). Now all you have to do is click and drag the bubble into the symbols window to make it a symbol. Shrink it down to two different sizes (so you have 3 all together, the original and the two smaller ones) and put both of them into the symbols as well.

Step 13

Click on the Symbol Sprayer tool (Shift+S) and click one of the bubble symbols we created. Make some bigger bubbles, more middle sized bubbles and the most small bubbles.

Final

There we have it some simple quick bubbles to add to your designs.

It is amazing to see how much technology has changed form the 1980 until now. Now with CSS sprites, pixelated art and retro 80′s design coming back in style, I thought we would take a look at some retro games from the past. In this article we are going to look at some retro video game from the 80′s and 90′s of some games I played when I was younger.

Be sure to comment on some retro games you used to/still play.

Frogger (1981)

Pole Position (1982)

Dig Dug (1982)

Joust (1982)

Paperboy(1984)

Duck Hunt (1984)

Super Mario Brothers (1985)

Double Dragon (1987)

Mike Tysons Punch Out!! (1987)

Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off-Road (1989)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989)

Commander Keen (1990)

Joe & Mac Caveman Ninjas (1991)

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)

Road Rash (1991)

NBA Jam (1993)

Sim City 2000 (1993)

Kings Quest VI (1993)

Daytona USA (1993)

Grand Theft Auto (1997)

Age of Empires (1997)

So you have just graduated from school and want to get your name out in the design community? Even if you have been a designer and just want to get your name out there, here are some website and tips on what to do to become more well known.

Tips

#1: Practice with Tutorials

This isn’t so much a way to promote yourself. But people won’t notice your work if it isn’t very good, overdone or old. You can always become a better designer by continuing to practice your craft and trying new things. When I finished college, I knew what everything did in Photoshop for the most part, but I didn’t know much about how to create photo manipulations or creating 3D text, or being really creative with it. This is how I got into creating tutorials, I wanted to learn how to create new things. The important thing about being a designer is continuing to hone your skills and trying new things.

Some websites to look at tutorials are PSD Tuts+, Design Instruct, Tutorial9, among others, and of course we have tutorials here at Denis Designs.

#2: Keep Designing

Just because you design one awesome design, doesn’t mean people are going to start flocking to you. You need to continue designing and create your own style(s). The more designs you make the more people will see, but don’t replace quantity for quality. Make the work you put online count so people remember your work.

#3: Write a tutorial

If you feel comfortable about your design and writing skills and skills in different programs, try writing some tutorials. This will get your work out there, and it will help you reach out to the design community and make you a better designer. Most websites will also add a link to your website, portfolios or anything else you want.

If you have a website you can put tutorials on there (or if you have a blog), or you can send a preview of the work to pretty much any tutorial website to see if they will accept it.

Promote yourself with online portfolios

Promoting yourself on many websites is a great way to spread your work out so more people see it. Even if you have created your own website (which is recommended) you want to get as many people to see your work, starting with these websites.

Deviant Art

Deviant Art is an online gallery of artwork created by Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens, and Angelo Sotira launched August of 2000. Anyone can sign up for a free account and put their work up online. You can promote all kinds of artwork by sharing it with other artists or sell prints and other products with your design on it.

Behance Network

Behance is another online gallery/portfolio site that lets you customize different pages of your portfolio, displaying images in groups, or by themselves. Since you need to apply to be accepted to Behance, your work will be presented in a professional manner along with other professionals.

Flickr

Flickr is a place designed to share your photos, but you can also put up your designs. Signing up is free, and because of the popularity and high volume that Flickr gets, your work has a real good chance of being looked at. You can also join groups of like-minded individuals to get your work seen even more. Like Deviant Art, you can take your images and create different products with them.

There are many other websites like Carbonmade, but these are the main ones that you will get the most traffic from.

Promote your portfolio and designs on social sites

Having a portfolio and having a place to show off your work is great, but you need to get people to see what you have done. Social sites are one way to promote your work.

Twitter

Twitter isn’t just a site to tell the world what you had for breakfast, or your latest random thought. Although this is how it started out, twitter has become a way to get news, hear about the latest and greatest thing. You can share links from you twitter account about your work or your portfolio, connect with other designers, and see other peoples work and design related news.

Facebook

Founded by Mark Zuckerberg, this website originally was created so that college students could connect to each other, but has become a social media hub for anyone who want to join (for free). You can connect to other designers by city, workplace, school, and region to show off your work and share your work with others.

Linkedin

Linkedin was founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 by Reid Hoffman. This site is more of a business-oriented social networking site where people can post their résumé, with their past and previous work, as well as their websites/portfolios. People can connect to others in their field, clients, potential clients, employers and employees. Employers can list jobs and search for potential employees, and users can search for jobs, people and businesses. Since it is free to sign up, it can’t hurt to get your name out for potential clients/employers.

Promotional websites

Digg

To sum it up, Digg is a place for people to share all kinds of information from anywhere on the Internet. Digg was launched in December of 2004, as an experiment in November of 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Rob Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. Users can submit links and stories and comment and vote on others links and stories. If you submit an article/image/video and it gets enough “digs” (votes) it can get put on the front page for everyone to see.

Design Float

Design Float is like Digg for designers. It is a place for people to share information on design from all over the Internet in the form of links and articles. You can vote up different articles and the most popular ones will go to the front page. A similar website is Design Bump that is for designers and you can also vote up web pages.

Delicious

Delicious is a site where users can bookmark sites that are interesting to them and share them with other people and view sites that others have bookmarked. The most bookmarked sites can be viewed on the Delicious home page.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a website where you can “like” a website to give it more popularity. There is a Firefox add-on for where you can add a bar to your browser to like pages, share with people you are connected to, or stumble onto something new. If you put
something up that a lot of people like, it has to opportunity to get onto a lot of people screens through stumble.

These are a few basic ways to get your work seen by the design community, and to get your name out there. There are all kinds of websites and place to go to do this, but I have found these are some of the important places to go to get started.

Check out my latest tutorial from Design Instruct: A Guide to Creating 3D Text in Adobe Illustrator

It isn’t always necessary to use a 3D program to create 3D text — they’re expensive and overkill if you just occasionally use 3D elements. Adobe Illustrator is more than adequate in allowing us to create some 3D objects with some basic shading for our text. In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to make some 3D text using Adobe Illustrator, and also discuss techniques of shading the text to give it a clean, consistent, and stylized look.

WARNING: There is artistically tasteful nudity for the purpose of this tutorial.

Creating designs and graphics always produces attractive results. There may be digital painters who have never gone back to basics, who haven’t picked up a paintbrush or touched a canvas. The feel, texture and craftsmanship of creating an actual painting has been lost in this day and age, so for this post we have an award winning artist who describes in detail how it’s all done.

Step 1: Preparation

This painting took about two months to create. Most of the time involved waiting for the glazed layers on the woman’s body to settle, as well as letting the background and foreground objects dry.

I’m inspired by Surrealist painters like Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte. Without heavily relying on their influence, I chose to paint a famous local scene near the sea here in Zhuhai, China and combine it with a classical nude figure. There are meanings behind the painting, but I’ll leave it for the viewer to work it out for themselves. Also, each picture was painted with a different hand…but that’s just showing off on my part!

Your setup will differ, but this was used to create the painting:

Step 2: Art Setup

• Pre-Primed Standard Cotton Canvas (This example used two 50x50cm canvases).
• Oil paints, Rembrandt or Van Gogh are recommended.
• Linseed Oil for thinning paints.
• Selection of brushes and palette knife.
• Soft pencil for sketching, ruler optional.
• Adjustable easel.

Followers of Italian Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo and Da Vinci know that Mathematics was heavily influenced their artwork. I used instruments such as protractors and rulers to get the correct angles and dimensions.

Further Reading

• How to make a Canvas
• Artist painting brushes
• Using oil paint
• Rene Magritte site
• Dali Gallery online

Step 3: Painting from Concept to Final

Firstly, make sure the canvas is “primed” which involves painting a layer of matt white paint on raw canvas and sandpapering off the paint bubbles. Note: Most bought canvases are already pre-primed and ready to go.

I think the most important stage of creating a painting is having the correct sketch as it will save time in the long run.

Step 4

Next, combine a layer of oil paint and thinner together and colour each section of the painting. Under painting of greens and blues give a painting more depth and is the start of a glazing technique.

Step 5

Focusing on the body I painted in muscles, veins and shadows. The next layer was painted on the sea, a muddy brown on top of the blue colour.

Step 6

The background was painted over with a wash of greys and white colours, the rocks at the back are more blended and have a sense of distance. At this stage the body colours are continually worked on, using a combination of whites, yellows and pinks.

Step 7

From this stage the background is already complete, my focus is on the body tones. The body colours are much too orange, however I’m using the effect of chiaroscuro by blending light into dark. Note the greens and blues can be seen in the under painting.

Step 8

The blocks in the foreground are complete using a mix of browns and paint smeared in with fingers. The body is nearly complete also, with more light added.

Step 9

The final finish is by adding the see-through red colour which gives shape to the missing figures, paint is applied thinly with a little linseed oil to allow the objects underneath to become visible.

Final Piece

I hope you liked this tutorial and feel free to leave a comment below. BTW These paintings are for sale and if you want the figure model’s number it will cost extra!

About the Artist

Born in the UK and now living in China, Giles Dawe is a full time painter who has displayed work in the UK, Europe and Asia. Upon graduating, he worked as a web designer and illustrator for news media corporations and Central Government.

His work has been featured in websites, magazines, galleries and is available for commissions.

His next exhibition called “Beautiful Melancholy” will be from 26 June to 12 July 2010 at:
Gallery by the Harbour, Level 2, Ocean Center, Harbour City, Canton Road, T.S.T. Kowloon, Hong Kong

This week’s roundup features some really awesome print and illustration articles and tutorials.

If you have something that you have created, be it a design piece or article that you would like me to take a look at, let me know (email me at info@denisdesigns.com) and it could make into one of the roundups.

Enjoy!

Here is a list of some really nice Illustrator based tutorials to help with your illustration as well as Illustrator techniques.
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If you are designing a booklet of any kind, this is the list you should look at, it has some great examples.
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Here is a great collections of portraits where the artist uses a lot of white space to make a really interesting composition.
(Link)

Here is a great collections of portraits where the artist uses a lot of white space to make a really interesting composition.
(Link)

This massive collection of game concept art features some really awesome work from some really talented artists.
(Link)

For all those people looking for a retro look, here is some great inspiration. This collection features some great real vintage beach post cards.
(Link)

This collection of poster feature all have black as a common element between them. These poster designs show the beauty that black can bring to a design.
(Link)

In this tutorial we are going to create a retro/grunge looking metal text using some basic Photoshop techniques as well as a texture. We are going to then finish off the image using another texture and a few other techniques to bring the whole image together.

You will Need:

Grungy Film Texture

Background Texture (First Image)

Step 1

Create a new 1200x1200px document in Photoshop and bring in your text/logo, and make sure it is set in black (The shorter amount of letters you use, the easier it will be).

Step 2

Create a new folder (Layer>New>Layer Set) and call it “Metal” This is where we are going to put all our pieces that will become metal.

Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), click and drag a dark gray box (#333333) so it covers some of the text/logo.

Step 3

Continue making different size and shaped boxes, one on each layer (Create a new layer with Ctrl+Shift+N, or going to Layer>New>Layer), so they cover the entire logo.

Now we are going to add some layer styles to each of the boxes. Go to Layer>Layer Style and click on Drop Shadow.

Next we are going to add an inner shadow.

Now add a Bevel and Emboss.

And finally add a Gradient Overlay.

Add these styles to each box we just created.

These layer styles will add an edge to the box as well as some shading to the inside to make each box stand out on its own. You should have come up with something that looks like a really boxy version of your logo, like I have below.

Step 4

Now to get our logo shape back, Ctrl and click on the original logo, which will make a marquee selection around it. Click on the “Metal” folder and go to Layer>Add Layer Mask>Revel Selection. This will add a mask to the folder and get rid of the extra metal parts that we had.

Step 5

Click on the “Metal” folder, and go to Layer>Merge Layer Set. This will turn all those layers in our folder into one layer.

Go to Layer>Layer Style and click on Bevel and Emboss. This will give an edge to the entire text like we had for the individual boxes.

Step 6

Make a new folder called “Rivets”. Create a new folder (Ctrl+Shift+N), using the Circular Marquee tool make a circle 6x6px and fill it with #999999.

Go into Layer>Layer Style>Drop Shadow.

Add a Bevel and Emboss

Also add a Gradient Overlay. This will give our rivet more of a shape to it.

Step 7

Duplicate the Rivet we just made with Ctrl+J and put as many as you would like throughout the logo, on the corners of the boxes.

Step 8

We are now going to add a texture to give the metal a little bit of inconsistency, for a little more realistic look. Go get the grungy film texture from Zen Textures.

Shrink the texture down until you get a section that you like. Now Ctrl and Click on the original black logo layer, to select it. Click on the texture layer and go to Layer>Add Layer Mask>Revel Selection. This will make the texture only show up on the logo. Change the blend mode to Soft
Light and change the opacity to 50%.

Step 9

Now we are going to go get our background texture (the first one) from Lost and Taken.

Open up the texture in Photoshop and go to Image>Rotate Canvas>90 degrees CCW. This will put the dark part of the texture at the bottom. Now Go to Image>Image Size, change the resolution to 72 pixels/inch and the height under Pixel Dimensions to 1200px.

Bring the texture into our document and put it just above the background layer.

Step 10

We are going to add a Pillow Emboss around the logo to make it look like it is sunk into the background. So first we need to duplicate the logo with Ctrl+J and move it below the other one. Double click on the Bevel and Emboss on the layer, this will open up the options.

Step 11

Using a paint splatter brush (Something like this brush from brusheezy) we are going to put some paint splatters like the one to the right of the logo.

Change the blend mode to Overlay and duplicate the layer with Ctrl+J.

Step 12

Now we are going to add some text below the logo in white. Add a drop shadow to it by going to Layer>Layer Style>Drop Shadow.

Step 13

To finish off the design, we are going to add a few small finishing touches. First, using the Square Marquee tool (M), change the feather to 50px, then click and drag a box around the entire document. Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N), go to Select>Inverse and fill with black. Change the blend mode to Overlay. This will give the image a subtle dark edge.

Step 14

Now we are going to make the middle of the document lighter. Click on the Gradient tool (G), and using a white to 0% opaque (gray and white checkered) gradient click from the middle out to the edge of the document. Drop the opacity down to 20%.

Step 15

Finally go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map. Pick a yellow to purple gradient and check reverse. Drop the opacity to 20%.

Final

This week’s roundups are web design themed, with some inspirational articles, a list of google doodles, as well as a web design tutorial.

If you have something that you have created, be it a design piece or article that you would like me to take a look at, let me know (email me at info@denisdesigns.com) and it could make into one of the roundups.

Enjoy!

Illustrations in web design can give your website a more friendly as well as intresting look. Here is some great examples in use.
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The great thing about designing restaurant websites is that the theme can change dramatically from one to another depending on what they server or how fancy it is. Here are some examples the that round up all kinds from the elegant to the gritty ones.

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Here is an absolutely massive list of the Google doodles from 1998 to 2010. Its interesting to see how they have changes from using clip art looking images to some pretty complex images.

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Here is a list of 100 amazing WordPress themes. They are a great source of inspiration, as well as a great way to start out with a new blog, or find out how they work.
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Here is a list of 100 amazing WordPress themes. They are a great source of inspiration, as well as a great way to start out with a new blog, or find out how they work.
(Link)

To finish off our web themed weekly roundup we have a nice clean web layout tutorial.
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