Day 172: Puzzle Charlie

I applied a puzzle pattern over the image and took forever cutting out the individual puzzle piece and border. I love the original picture so the time it was still fun.

Tutorial link

Day 166: Grunge Border semi-HDR

Here is one of the freakiest things I've seen during the daytime. This photo was taken at creepy shack near a cow pen in the middle of Neveda. The "rape shack" was adorned in cow bones, shotgun shell garland and a bicycle with cow horns. I added a border, tweaked with the edges and applied a high pass filter screen over the original.

Interesting.

Day 138: Digital Dog (or Barney Bookmark)

I really like the concept of this technique but I'm not sure if I got it to work. The brush dynamics (scatter and texture) of the clone stamp and the brush for masking  were something I hadn't used before. I think with some more practice and finesse I could create a more polished piece. I may have to revisit this one.



Tutorial link

Day 136: Orange Zipper

I found this lesson and photos in a UK magazine called Advanced Photoshop. I'm happy with the overall result and the compositing effect was interesting to work with however the techinque is way too dependent on the photos. For example, I had three pictures of the orange; one on a blank background, one with a zip actully taped to the orange and one with the orange in grass. In order to have the zipper work on any other image I would have to have a picture of an object with a zipper taped on it in order to get it to easily, and naturally follow the contours of the object. I guess my main frustration is the apparent lack of transferable skill I got from this tutorial since I can't see using what I learned without access to the stock photos. I could be wrong and might try it on another object but I doubt it.

Day 129: Picture Perfect Pug

Benjamin is Barney's show quality pug friend (and older brother to Bella). The effect replicates that of an old Lomo LC-A camera. I didn't use the vignette technique from the tutorial (opting instead to create my own). The rest of the effect was from the lesson.

Tutorial link

Day 128: Kung Fu Pug

Here is an anime style picture of Barney's girlfriend Bella. She's a cutey!

Tutorial link

Day 120: Zombie Joe

Nuff Said.

Day 119: Tracey Inkblot

Cool effect... I had to rework it several times to get the effect I wanted but I like the subject matter :)


Tutorial link

Day 116: Burnt Wood Face Man

Title says it all. :)

Tutorial link

Day 115: Zombie Pussycat Doll

Before and After.




This was a tremendous amount of fun to do. Liberal use of the burn tool and lots of layers. Cool brushes and great way to tweak with skin tones.

Tutorial link

Day 100: Singing Apple

This tutorial I did I plan on using in my CGD class. It's a great intro to image manipulation and provides practice with the Pen Tool which I'm currently having them work on. The last few steps are a bit vague but I can walk them through ways to clean up the final image.

Tutorial link

Wow! I'm hitting the 100th day of my design work for 2010. I'm really happy with all of the techniques and tricks I've learned so far. The sheer volume of practice is worth so much more than the final results. I'm excited to hit the next big benchmark.