Feb
10

Waterbending Tutorial

By lauren // Photo Manipulation, Photoshop, Tutorial, YouTube Videos // 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I made a tutorial. The other day, someone commented on my waterbending photo manipulation video saying how they’d love to know how to do it. I’ve also had comments saying how people wished the video was slower so they could see what I was doing. Well yesterday I made a tutorial! In written form and as a video.

This is the original image everyone wanted to know how to make.

Waterbending

You can find the written tutorial here.

If you prefer to listen and watch how the photo manipulation is done, check out my video tutorial on Youtube!!

You can also see the time lapse video of this photo manipulation I did a few years ago here:

I hope you enjoy these videos and the tutorial! If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask! And I’d LOVE to see your take on this tutorial! =) Please leave comments and links! Or shoot me a message. B)

Oct
31

Paintings of Popular Youtubers

By lauren // paintings, YouTube Videos // No Comments

Hey there, how was everyone’s Halloween? I hope you all had fun and were all safe! =)

Today I finished and published a new video! Happy Halloween! haha I love Micheal Buckley from the What The Buck show and someone requested I draw Tobuscus….I watched him in some Jackfilms videos and I got a chance to see some of his videos and he’s pretty cool. =) Sooo I drew him and Buck!

I’d write more but I’m not feeling very well…too much candy I suppose haha I’ll seee you all soon!! <3

If you’d like to make a suggestion or just keep up with what I’m doing, LIKE my FACEBOOK!! =)

Jun
15

Mystical Smoke Effect

By lauren // Art, Art Tips, Photoshop // No Comments

I’m so excited! Today I got a request from someone asking if I could turn their image into a cartoon and add in a space background and some sort of cool light, smoke effect that makes it look like it’s coming from the guy’s hand. Here’s the final image:

The person who ordered this image wanted a colorful effect and absolutely loved this image! They said I was the best cartoonist on the Fiverr website they have seen! =) That really brought up my spirits and confidence in my work! But what else made me feel happy is that I finally pulled off a wonderful smoke effect without looking at a tutorial! I’ve see tutorial using the “Distort – Wave” filter but the settings they have don’t always work out the way I want.

For this effect, I had my settings on the following:

Number of Generators: 10

Wavelength: 71 Min and 216 Max

Amplitude: 5 Min and 178 Max

Scale: 55% Horz. and 86% Vert.

Type: Sine

Undefined Areas: Repeat Edge Pixels

To make the smoke effect, I used the wave filter about 4 times and after each, I went to “Edit – Fade Wave” and put it on 50%. I recommend playing with the wave settings to get the best effect.

Other tutorials say the same thing, they list the setting they have and they tell you to use fade wave (or at least some do). What I find to be the most helpful is that when you start to make your smoke effect, you have to draw the basic outline. This means don’t just go in a draw a square then hope the wave effect will magically turn the square into smoke!

I’ve read a tutorial where someone used the Polygon Lasso Tool to draw your smoke outline, which does work. You just have to draw a few points then connect them. But I find the Pen Tool to be the best because of the ability to make curved lines. I think the wave tool works best with curved lines rather then completely straight edges.

For my smoke effect, I drew some spirals around the gentlemen’s hand in the image and then used the setting above in the wave filter then used the fade wave. I did the wave filter and fade method about four times to the same outline. Then I drew in a white line (pressure sensitivity on when I went to stroke the line) and added the bending option “outer glow” of white then played with the size and blending options.

Finally, I used a clipping mask and used the rainbow gradient tool to make the overall rainbow look. I’m very happy with how this turned out. What do you think? I love colorful images like this and was very happy when I got this request! lol

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May
12

Lip Syncing

By lauren // Animation, Art, Art Tips // 2 Comments

I always have some sort of art project going on haha and lately I’ve been trying to figure out frame-by-frame animation and syncing audio to the animation. Hm…this may take some time.

I watched a video on Youtube saying that a way to understand mouth motions is to rest your chin on your fist with your elbow on a table or some other hard surface and just talk normally (preferably speaking the lines you want your character to say) and feel when your mouth motions push against your chin to know when to have the mouth wide when you’re animating your character to speak. It’s important to know because theres a misconception about animation that says you open your mouth wide when you talk so that’s how people animate their characters.

Another technique I’ve heard was placing your finger on the corners of your mouth and feel when your mouth goes wide and when it goes narrow. These exercises just help you understand the motions of the mouth as you speak so that the animation flows.

Also, apparently our mouths forms the words before we actually speak…so placing the audio about 5 frames ahead of the animation. I’ve read that animations typically are about 1,440 frames per minute…I’m working on an animation that is about 2 and a half minutes long so I’m looking at about 3600 frames…ugh..but I”m sure the end result will be worth it! haha

Wish me luck! And have fun trying out your own lip syncing animations! =)

Apr
21

Animation Information

By lauren // Animation, Art, YouTube Videos // No Comments

Lately I’ve been fascinated by animation. I’ve had a few ideas of different kind of animation videos to do for Youtube – maybe even shows! I’m currently working on a few ideas that I can’t wait to share!

I used Flash for the first time a few weeks ago for my Internet Technology class. It was hard understanding how buttons and actions work and the frames and everything but now it’s so easy and I love flash! I also discovered that Photoshop actually has an animation feature built in! That is so awesome! It’s not very advanced though, all you can do is frame-by-frame animations and motion tweens.

Tweens? That word confused me the first time I heard. What the heck is a tween?!?! Well a Tween is animation terminology that comes from “in between”. There are different kinds of Tweens.

Motion Tween is just when you animate something to move, for example a ball bouncing.

Shape Tween is when you animate a shape to morph into another.

Classic Tween is an animation that doesn’t affect the shape or instance of the object you’re animating. It’s not really that different from a motion tween.

The difference between a motion tween and a classic tween is that a motion tween is new – since FlashCS4. Motion tween allows you to do 3D motion tweens!

Flash is amazing! I think I’m going to try to get some ideas for some tutorials! ^.^ Right now, I’m working on a simple, basic, frame-by-frame tutorial using the Photoshop animation feature! Yay!

This is my first animation video. It was something random I did to just give animation a test run. I did it all in Photoshop. Enjoy!

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Feb
18

Using Adobe InDesign: Brochure

By lauren // Art, Art Tips, Photoshop, Tutorial // 1 Comment

So the first project of the spring semester at my college in my graphic design II class introduced us into Adobe InDesign.

Adobe InDesign is a layout program. It’s used to make posters, newspapers, brochures, ect. The text book for my class gave us exercise to make a very complex and highly typographic brochure. It was white, with black and pink lettering. But it was very messy! Words were overlapping, hanging off the edge of the pages, and they were slanted.

This exercise allowed the user to use pretty much all of the major functions in InDesign. It showed how to use guides to align everything, how to add and alter type, add images, use character settings and character styles, about master pages, the swatch panel, the stroke panel and more.

For my project, I’ve decided to make a summer soccer camp brochure – the idea from a very dear friend of mine whom helped me with the process. InDesign turned out to be a very fun program to play with! And with the help of Photoshop, the process of making a brochure was smooth and fun.

Disclaimer: The information in this brochure is fake but based off of actual brochure. I’ve made the camp up for this project!

This is the finished product! During critique, which my class has every time a project is due she had some pros and cons about this image:

Pros:

- - - The images were evenly spaced
    - The color of the font stuck out perfectly and the yellow highlighted text fitted well with the rest of the text and the over all color scheme.
    - She liked how it faded from blue to green from one corner to the next
    - I added a filter to the guy because it was in bad quality
    - The star burst effect that is very light in the middle panel, in the background.

Cons:

- - - The background font on the front page and on the welcome page was slightly pixelated
    - The text on the registration form was pixelated
    - The font on the welcome page was a bit big for her liking.

(Click on the image to view full size)

During critique, I was asked how I did all of this stuff because my classmates kept their color schemes simpler and didn’t have things blend like I did. So I will share with you how I did it an hopefully you’ll be able to follow along better then my classmates! haha

First off, the image is set to normal, US paper but landscape. I equipped the rulers (View – Show Rulers or Crt+R/Command+R) and I set a small border around the edges with the guides and to divide the papers by three sense this is a tri-fold brochure.

All images are on separate layers and the text section of text is on it’s own layer too!

For the images I have in my brochure, I took pictures of my friend playing soccer, but sense I’m horrible at action shots, they came out not in the best of quality. This is where Photoshop comes in! I selected around the figure using the pen tool (short cut P for pc and mac) then right clicked (option click for mac) and made a selection around him, deleted the unwanted space, then added the cutout artistic filter. (Filter – Artistic – Cutout) This was to make him look like a graphic.

After I arranged all the photos in to place (including the background soccer field image which I didn’t add a filter) I used a rainbow gradient from Photoshop and pulled it into InDesign, laid it over the entire image. (I also added a plain b/w gradient in the background in InDesign) I opened the effects window (Window – Effects) and set the blending mode to multiply.

There is also a star burst effect I made in Photoshop that I added to the background of the brochure and made it a light blue. That layer was set to luminosity.

Those are some basic things I did to make this brochure. My teacher says that it’s the small “polishes” of a design that really makes a difference to the over all look. I had a lot of fun working in InDesign and in Photoshop – the Adobe products are meant to used together and that’s what I suggest to everyone! Download the 30 day trails for the prodcuts and just play around with the features in each. You’ll have a lot of fun!

Feb
2

Ethics of Photoshop

By lauren // Art, Photoshop // 4 Comments

Photoshop is a powerful tool for photo editing. It gives you the ability to make wonder works of art and edit you own photos. However, this software also allows people for unethical, deceitful, and even illegal use.

Unehtical

The photo to the left is my attempt at retouching a photo of myself (for lack of a better subject haha). Don’t the two look different? I don’t think I’m a bad looking gal but I must admit that the second one does look better. What do you think?

What is considered unethical use of Photoshop? Well ethics is a controversial topic – what may be unethical to one person, would be ethical to another. Would is be ethical for check personal email or facebook while at work? Ethics are based on what a person finds right or wrong. But what are some ways Photoshop can be used in unethical ways?

The Photoshop Effect is a series on Youtube about retouching in magazines. How much is too much? Tim Lynch, the photographer and retoucher interviewed in The Photoshop Effect Pt 1, says that magazines often just assume that readers already know that the photos in the magazines are retouched.

Think about it:

Should magazines have a disclaimer saying that the photos are retouched?
Is it right that magazines retouch their photos to a point of impossible perfection?

You can view the first part of the interview here.

Illegal

More then half the users of Photoshop is illegal! Most people download the program or find product keys online. But how can the program itself be used for illegal use? Well it’s simple, people can pass other people’s photos and artworks as their own. Any signature or watermark on a photo can be removed with a well experienced Photoshoper.

Deceitful

This rolls the ethics of Photoshop and the legal aspect together. Some examples of false representation using Photoshop was back when Lance Armstrong was on the cover of Outside magazine back in 2010. Mr. Armstrong posed for the cover but then the logo “38 BFD” was advertised on his shirt. It was added via Photoshop and Lance wasn’t happy about it. Here is the full article.

Not impressed? Well try this example of deceitful Photoshop use: back in 2009, to prove his theory of global warming, Mr. Al Gore turned to Photoshop to “enhance” a photo to make people believe more hurricanes were occurring throughout the world. That’s pretty dishonest if you ask me! You can check out the full article here.

I love using Photoshop! And I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at figuring out the tools to edit images for myself or for whoever requests something. However, giving credit is crucial! Like if you use stock photos in a photo manipulation, say where to from whom you got each photo from. It doesn’t make you any less of an artist for using someone else’s photos, especially if that person uploads them specifically for other people to use!

Remember: Use you Photoshop powers for good, not evil!

Dec
19

Photoshop Rap

By lauren // Art, YouTube Videos // No Comments

Hey, sorry I haven’t been posting a lot lately. I have a lot of art projects that I want to get done that’s taking a while to get done haha

Today I just found a video that may tickle the funny bones of those who are fans of Photoshop.

Check it out, I thought it was pretty funny and entertaining lol

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Aug
17

Learn to Digitally Render Cars!

By lauren // Art, paintings // No Comments

So lately I’ve been reading and sampling this product to teach you how to Render Cars in Photoshop – or any program like it. It’s called “How To Render Cars In Photoshop: Fast and Easy”.

I don’t know about anyone else, but sometimes written tutorials confuse me – even with pictures they seem to jump from one step to an another…I’ve read some bad tutorials that couldn’t explain how to do anything right! I did, however, find some I did like and am quite fond of. But I’d have to say video tutorials are best because you can see what the person is doing. This program has 4.5 hours of video content to teach you how to render cars – hallelujah!

I love photo realism but it can be quite difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing. And with cars…I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING! Check out this photo:

Yeeah this could be way better! I’ve always had a problem with drawing cars and rendering them in photoshop wasn’t any easier for me. But with a good teacher and plenty of detailed instruction I think anyone can learn how to render cars in photoshop.

If you’d like to learn more about this product, follow these links:

Render Cars In Photoshop

Draw Cars In Photoshop

Render Cars Fast and Easy

Waterbending Tutorial

Paintings of Popular Youtubers

Mystical Smoke Effect

Related Blogs

Lip Syncing

Animation Information

Related Blogs

Using Adobe InDesign: Brochure

Ethics of Photoshop

Photoshop Rap

Related Blogs

Learn to Digitally Render Cars!

Related Blogs

Slideshow

My Links

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