Vanderpol’s mysteries

Howdy guys, here comes… part 2 ! Continuing the line art we started in the previous video tutorial, this sequel will show you how to put highlights, shadows and textures on the character’s clothes. I hope you will enjoy the background music as well…

There will be other sequels to this video… if you have missed the first part or you want to get the sources click here

Find my dailymotion account there.The music was composed by myself, out of GarageBand loops… hope you liked it

Hi pals !

I have been roaming on the internet desperatly to find insights of design geniouses,

and how to design great landscapes, à la Dylan Cole or à la John Harris.

We have all in mind the poetic futuristic city of “Blade Runner” ,

or fantasy book covers (Dune, Arthur C.Clark, Philip K.Dick …).

But these days have seen a whole generation of digital painters, and

even more impressive, “speed painters”.

They paint beautiful strange matte paintings / settings at the speed of light.

How do they do that ? What technic do they use ? How to develop it ?

These questions have been echoeing in my mind without answers for a while…

Internet has just been a source of disapointing amateurs posting loosy

tutorials on matte painting, to higher their page ranks, but nothing

extraordinary there. Until recently.

A friend of mine lent me the best video tutorial I have ever seen.

Unfortunately, it is not free. But quality has a price, and this time it’s priceless.

The editor is : the gnomon workshop

They offer top of the range tutorials from Maya to Photoshop, including painter,

lightwave, maya … there are tens of softwares and applied technics like

character design, animation,  texturing, rendering, and tons of others.

A picture from the dvd :

I tried : From Speedpainting to Concept Art

What is so great about it ?

It’s on DVD, so the videos are full quality, the sound is perfect,

during the demonstration, we miss no details and

the authors included his .PSD files and the brushes in the DVD folder.

The author is David LEVY, a well-knowned digital artist, involved

in Turok, The Red Star, Prince of Persia the Two Thrones, and Assassin’s Creed…

What is it about ? Basically, speedpainting and matte painting technics,

through the creation of your own brushes, that become in turn tools

to produce inovative, abstract objects, settings, backgrounds.

However, the magic and the talent are not included,

but learing those tricks will save you ages…

Topics covered :

• Custom Brush Creation
• Speedpainting
• Teamwork
• Lighting Strategy
• Detail Brushes
• Scene Refining

Length of the video : 2.5 hours

Price : 59 $ (it’s cheaper for we european guys !)

My ranking : 99%  (because I wish we could have all the demos from the site of course

Exerpt from the matte painting tutorial

My only regret : I wish I had discovered these tutorials earlier in my life !

One last comment : gnomon features the great Dylan Cole cityscape and landscape painting tutorials,

so start saving money, this is going to be fantastic !!!

I’ll post something on it as soon as I can buy it.

Stay tuned and remember, the suns always shines on the internet… :-p

Hello all,

your Photoshop software on its own is as useful as a car without wheels, steering, geer box and body… really. Why ? Because you need to enhance with tons of brushes to design great forms and shapes quickly, texture to use on your layers to make your work look more realistic, fonts to use sthg else than “arial black” or “times new roman” and be original, more creative… and of course, to use piece of real photographs to blend it all. I’ll show you some tricks later.

So how can you tune-it up easily ? Visit the sites below and download everything

That should take you between 2 to 5 months only ;-)) Then you should be able to reply to any of your customer’s bid.  ITAM, and TSSYALT…. as you’ll see, some are for free, some are costy, some are under specific usage licence.  So read well, but this is worth it.

BRUSHES
http://www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com/
http://www.deviantart.com
http://www.prettybrush.deviantart.com
http://www.brushes.deviantart.com
http://gamarai.deviantart.com/
http://www.brusheezy.com/
http://dezignus.com/
http://www.psbrushes.net/
http://www.actionfx.com/pfree-addons.html
http://inobscuro.com/brushes/
http://pixel.nascimpact.com/tut_iso.php
http://myphotoshopbrushes.com/

FONTS
http://www.dafont.com (in french - oldies but goodies both free and $)
http://www.misprintedtype.com (this guy is a great artist and you’ll find there brushes in limited quantity but of very high quality, I love them)
http://www.fontfreak.com/ (many fonts both free or $)

PLUG-INS
http://www.freephotoshop.com/html/free_plugins2.html
http://thepluginsite.com/resources/freeps.htm#webdesign
(various qualities of plugins from ugly and useless to usefull)
http://www.toocharger.com/windows/multimedia/outils-pour-photoshop/
(plugins search engine in french $)
http://www.mehdiplugins.com/pages/index.htm
(corel, photoshop, paint shop pro plugins, free, but of very different usefulness levels)
http://www.emob.fr/dotclear/118-plugins-gratuits-pour-photoshop-1499
(high quality plugin to make your own effects on photoshop + 118 free plugins, in french and english)
http://www.xero-graphics.co.uk/freeware.htm
(ugly webpage but some usefull effects generator to grab)
http://www.redpawmedia.com/ ($)
http://www.richardrosenman.com/software/downloads/
(this guy is a slayer !!! limited quantiy but quality again, even if some effects are not novelties)
http://www.filterforge.com/download/
(free trial versions and $)
http://www.autofx.com/
(filter creator $$, some effects looks great, but many looks really cheesy !)
http://technotarget.com/free-photoshop-plugins/
(nice effects, some are $)
http://www.pluginsworld.com
(online catalog to buy plugins and effects generator, broad line of effects, at all kind of prices)

Now, you can start working seriously. There will be more to come in a next part

PLease feel free to share your ressources with us, and of course your comments about the one you tried.

so, WYD ?

If you have always wondered how to make your pictures look better or how to have the “californian-white-colgate-smile” without spending fortunes at your dentist, this tutorial is for you!

PS : refer to the “mystical Vanderpolian glossary” anytime you need to explain acronyms

First you need a picture featuring YTH, which most of us are familiar with.

What a beautiful smile, isn’t it ?

Let’s help him a little for his facebook pictures ;-))

1) Start the Photoshop digital surgery !

Open this picture in Photoshop and select the magic wand tool (press “w” key).

Set radius to 15, and tick the box “contiguous pixels”. Clic on the ugly yellow color once.

Then while holding “shift”, clic on the other yellow parts to increase your selection, until you have all the yellow in a selection. You can release shift when finished.

If, by mistake, you have selected lips or skin, press “Alt”, drop “shift”, and clic on the extra skin part. Pressing “alt” and clicking removes from the initial selection.

Our selection is too much aliased. A good solution is:

Selection -> Feather stroke -> 2pixels (more is needed for a larger picture - in pixels).

Feather stroke creates a progressive area between our “treated tooth” and the rest of the mouth. You must do it. Try without and your editing will stay visible. Remember : GIEITOYDOS…

Then Selection -> smooth -> 2 pixels (to make it less aliased)

2) Removing the yellow color on tooth

Clic on “adjustment layer” at the bottom of your layer palette. Choose in the list “hue/saturation”. A bow appears with several lever. In the list, clic on “global” and select “yellows” (because we want to intervene on yellows, and not other colors).

Put the saturation stick to a very low level. The yellow is turning into a grayish color. This looks better.

Then put the “luminosity” setting to a much higher value. The teeth are whitening ! ITAM ! (see mystical Vanderpolian glossary for acronym explanations).

This is much better… we have found the better toothpaste in the world But this is not satisfying enough for perfectionists like you and I.

Let’s nail the job!

3) A whiter shade of white…

Create a new layer shift+ctrl+N (shift+cmd+N on mac).

Fill it with white and name it “colgate power”

Place it above the background layer and above the hue/saturation adjustment layer if not the case.

Set its mode from “Normal” to “soft light”. Much better.

Then right click on “colgate power” layer and press “ctrl+shift+G”. Now we have a “group mask”.

Turn down the opacity of this layer to a value between 100% and 70%.

Your palette should be set like this and keep smiling !

… and we finally got our colgate smile !

To be compared to the source :

From now on all your female friends are going to ask for your service to fix their facebook photos.

SAWOASYTNEE.

Hi there,

We are going to talk about “line art” today. This tutorial is a bit long (about 1.5 hours or more if you really go deep into small details…). We are going to learn to do that:

…starting from that :

So this is basically going to be about colors, and about how to turn a black thread into a great cover. This a job for colorists! We are going to start from this comic character (”Marvel Heroes”, november 2007, N°1. see http://www.marvel.com to order it), to save time (and I liked the character too ;-). So, anyway, even if you don’t know how to draw, this is not lost! This tutorial is for you!

Obs. : you need a scanner to do the whole exercice with another material - unless you start with the drawing above

1) Step 1: getting started with a model and a neat stroke

Once you have chosen a character to redesign, take a transparent paper sheet and a sharp black pen, and trace the stroke of the chosen model. Chose a thin ink pen and not a ball-point pen because the stroke has to be perfectly neat (unless you are fond of selections that are hassles :-p

2) Step 2 : digitalizing the drawing

Set your scanner to “gray scales”, and a picture resolution of 300 ppp. No less, no more.

While the computer is working for you, you can COAHAB (see “The mystical Vanderpolian glossary guide to the multimedia galaxy” if already lost).

Now you have a digital picture that should be pretty alike as the one just above these lines (if not, then it’s maybe time to think about growing vegetables in Vladivostok…).

Set your picture to RGB : image -> settings ->RGB

Then we correct the color of the background (it’s grey-ish, and not white). Very easy. Let’s check the levels for that: ctrl+L (cmd+L for mac). And merely press “Auto”. We are back in white now.

Then it’s time to DOFOSAWASOP (see glossary).

3) Step 3 : Unleash hell ! Prepare the setting…

Unlock the background layer in the layer palette (double click upon the locker - see red rectangle).

Label it : “line art”

As the observant ones have noticed, my snowboarder was oriented to the left, while in the original marvel cover, she is surfing the other way. LECPAABLEH! (see mystical glossary)

Image -> rotate canvas -> horizontal symmetry (pour les français qui ne comprennent pas les traductions des actions photoshop, elles sont toutes là - non je ne suis pas un traître).

Now we are back on track!

Create a new layer : layer -> new -> new layer (ctrl+shift+n or cmd+shift+n for mac users).

Label it : “background”.

Set the colors in the “tool palette” as follows :

• Foreground color: #bce0ff (light blue)
• Background color : #FFFFFF (pure white)

Now apply on your “background layer” this filter : filter -> render -> clouds

If not cloudy enough, apply it twice! ctrl+F (cmd+f). SHOFITFY…

And then apply the radial blur : filter ->blur -> radial blur.

In the box, choose the settings :

“zoom”, value : at least 50 (it can go up to 100 if you dare…)

Quality: normal.

Move the center of the blur at the bottom left site of the box. Validate.

This should look more lively for snowboarding!

SAWOASYTNEE.

Hi there,

I have bought a couple of months ago the David Sprunger’s method “Play piano today”.

I started piano after 10 mediocre years of guitar playing (ear-spanking ?). I decided to start playing piano after I tried a podcast called “blues for piano and keyboard” (I love blues!) made by David Sprunger, a piano instructor for over 12 years. it is for free. He explains super well so you have to try it ! the adress is :

http://playpianotoday.com/podcasts/ppt_1.xml

After playing the tunes for some time, I decided to buy the whole package. It was around 80€, which is nothing for 17 DVD / cd-roms + music book (the price of 2 piano individual lessons with a flesh and bones teacher). I don’t think it can replace a real teacher, but you can learn any time you want, and it is super high quality (see other reviews on Google !)

This method gives me real fun and pleasure every week, since it is divided into very progressive difficulties and levels. It is super well done, clear. Songs are oldies but goodies, and you really learn to perform them following your inspiration and adding tons of gimmics, patterns, style.

The author, David Sprunger is a great teacher, gives good tricks, he is funny and he sings very well (you can even sing along if you’re good enough - I am not run for your lifes when I start singin’ ). Plus the video really helps to see his hands techniques and positions.

His website : Piano Lessons Online Demo of “Rhythmic Patterns” and you can order the package.

Of course, if you’re not ready to spend a certain amount of time behind the keyboard, this method is useless for you… adn you’re helpless !

The catch phrase is “This piano lesson podcast contains a rich library of piano lessons for absolute beginners through very advanced players. ” and that is a real good summary.

To conclude about this method, buy it or borrow it if you are any interested in music. I would have saved years if I could have the chance to find it 10 years ago.

Sincerely,

Pierre