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I just finished posting all the photos I took at Photoshop World 2008; well most of them. Due to the crappiness of my old camera, or my ineptitude, a lot of photos didn’t come out. This camera didn’t do well in low light but it’s the best I could do.

Check them out in Vectorgeek’s Photoshop World 2008 Photo Gallery.

Here are some of the guys (and gal) I got a chance to see at the conference and relevant links:

• Bert Monroy: I’ve learned a ton of stuff from his “free” video tutorials and just picked up his new book at the expo. His class on working with Illustrator and Photoshop was right up my ally. His new book “Photoshop Studio, Digital Painting” is great and I love how he describes his whole process from beginning to end.
• Deke McClelland: I have his Illustrator and Photoshop One-One-One DVDs and have learned more from those than just about anything else. I like people who teach with a sense of humor and Deke is very funny. He had a great class on working with smart objects. Smart objects really are the main reason you have to get CS3.
  
• Lesa Snider King: I really enjoyed her class. My buddy Craig would have enjoyed it more but all the seats were taken so he had to sit on the floor. She had the whole audience wowing and laughing.
  
• Dave Cross: His best line: “I never understood why the shortcut for the Healing Brush was the ‘J’ key until one of the students in my class blurted out Jesus Heals!” His class on selections was great.
  
• Ben Willmore: I took his HDR class and his Jaw Dropping Photoshop Tips class. Great stuff! His HDR gallery really is jaw dropping.
• Dan Margulis: I think anyone who sat through his two part “Every Files Has 10 Channels” class deserves a medal. It was in-depth and enlightening though. It made me think of image files not as separate rgb, cymk or lab images but as a file where you can grab the best parts of all those channels and make one great looking image.
  
  

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www.photoshopworld.com

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I just finished creating the game art for the Beyond the Red Line Freespace2 total conversion mod. These are resized versions of the Squadron Patches I just completed. I have 2 versions with the required green background. One is the 128×128px vector pcx version and the other is the resized cloth patch pcx version. Some of the cloth patch versions didn’t scale down very good because these were large, high detail images. The vector versions will probably work best for model decals. You can download the whole pack here (346k). Use them how ever you want and if you get a chance send me a screenshot of them in action.

(Updated again: Corrected green “indexed” color pcx files so they will work correctly in game)

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Since I’ve become a huge fan of the show, I decided to make some desktop wallpapers of my favorite sci-fi show. The Battlestar Galactica Galaxy wallpaper is just the first. I also scrounged the web for pics of the Squadron patches used in the show for my next little project. Since there aren’t any good pictures of them I decided to recreate them based on photos. Once I’m done doing them all I plan on creating some nice desktop wallpapers with them too. I plan on creating some nice cloth textures and stitch brushes so I can make them look like sewn patches. You can see my progress in Work In Progress gallery along with the reference shots I used.

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This is my first try at recording a tutorial. If it works out ok, there might be more to come.
This problem came up in the Illustrator World forums and I was beating myself over the head trying to figure out how to create an effect like this >Link

After many different suggestions that required a bit a manual labor, finally IW member Ray Mullin came up the most eloquent solution I just had to share it here.

This effect has so many possibilities in art design I’m having a lot of fun playing with it.

http://www.vectorgeek.com/artwork/video/Spiral-text-flash.html

Note: My Deviant tutorial on this effect can be found here >Link

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I’ve been on a tutorial kick lately and decided to add some of the ones I’ve created to my gallery. I like helping people on Deviant Art and the Illustrator World forums and I end up learning new stuff too so it’s a “Win-Win” situation.

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Before I left to visit my family I posted my long awaited Counterfeit President. It was a labor of hate

I had a great time back home visiting family. I got to see my brothers and mom and dad. I presented my dad with the Counterfeit President art I made him. He was very impressed and it made him laugh. That made it worth all the hard work.

I just saw on the Digital Bits website that one of my all time fav movies Blade Runner “The Final Cut” will be released December 18th. To mark the event they are having an art contest at http://www.bladerunnercontest.com/. I just might have to enter that!

At work I’ve been plowing through the lynda.com tutorials we purchased. I’m about 3/4 of the way through the Illustrator CS3 One-On-One DVD. Color me impressed! Even when the exercises are covering stuff I know I still learn new shortcuts and nice little tips. It’s well worth the $149 price tag. Deke McClelland is really thorough and he adds a little humor to his courses which makes it nice.

During my down time I’ve really been enjoying the new season of Dexter! The writing keeps delivering awesome show after awesome show. Even though it’s not a comedy this show makes me laugh so hard. It kind of takes the sting out of Deadwood being canceled.

This animation was created by Simon Tofield of Tandem Films and if you have cats like I do you will have a real sense of Deja Vu.

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I posted a new piece I did in Illustrator CS3. I played with the 3D extrude and multiple path effects. I like the end result. I might try something else using this effect. I had an idea for a pinball machine with an Illustrator theme. Still trying to finish the George Bush novelty currency. I’m stuck on the back design and have been fiddling with colors and design. I hope to finish it soon.

Surfing the net I found a great series of t-shirts. This is one of my favs:

Check out the other great political shirts here: strk/3

I found some great tutorial vids at pixelperfect. I like Bert Monroy’s stuff and he does great tutorials. I really envy his hardware and the drawing tablet he has! Maybe someday…

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I thought this was a fun video that contrasts old school typography with type created with the computer. Even though I’m a computer guy I lean towards the old school view. There is just something about type created using a typesetter and press that adds more character than most computer generated type.

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