One thing bothered me about the Emily Pinup piece. The lace patterns were simple scans that I masked in Photoshop. I wanted to create a real vector lace pattern. Live Trace wasn’t an option because it was too complex and the results looked horrible. After 3 days of painstaking tracing and trimming I uploaded a new lace pattern brush for use in Illustrator. I created it in CS4 but saved it as CS2 version so I can share it with others. Included in the file is the original trace with stroked lines. After the drawing was complete I copied and reflected it so I could create a seamless pattern brush.

I outlined all the the strokes and combined it into one object so I could trim the edges and add a stitch pattern as a border. I have two versions. One is the plain one color version and the other has and added offset path with a different color. The one with the offset path leaves a telltail seam at the junction points but it still looks good for most uses.

Now go make something cool with it. I’ll add it to Emily soon.

I always wanted to do a pinup piece. Since I had some free time over the holidays I dove in and gave it my best shot. The big challenge for me was the hair. The pen tool and a lot of patience paid off. I think it came out great! Check it out in my fine art gallery.

I finished up the Zoovolution project. It was so much fun and with the money I got from that one job I finally took the plunge and upgraded to Adobe CS4 Design Premium

I also picked up Corel X4 mainly because it works with the Securidesign plugin I have for creating guilloche patterns.

My wallet is a lot lighter now but I have a huge smile on my face.

I just started playing with this last night. It took forever for CS4 to install but that might mean I need to defrag. After getting it loaded I was struck how much faster applications load and how nice the updated interface is. The tabbed windows took me back a little but I think it’s an improvement. I played with Illustrator’s new blob brush. It will make freehand drawing in Illustrator a whole lot of fun. I also checked out the new gradient tool with interactive sliders and transparency! Very,very cool. I love the new appearance pallet feature where you can turn on and off visibility of effects. It was a long time coming for Illustrator and boy is it nice.

Photoshop Extended is going to be a real treat for me. Having the animation and 3D tools built in is going to be a lot of fun.

I can’t wait till the Christmas break to sit down and make something cool with it. I want to upgrade Camtasia Studio too so I can make a few tutorials later. My old version broke when I upgraded to Vista .

Whew! What can I say. I’m in art heaven now!

I just posted 3 more pieces in my Zoovolution gallery that got approved this week. I really like how the 50 Zoukos came out. I’m really having fun with layouts and creating my own custom brushes, patterns and accents for these pieces. I could have taken some shortcuts and bought some royalty free scrolls and brushes but I like my art to be …well, my art!

I love working with the Todd and Chris at Web and Circus. They have been very helpful and encouraging.

Two down and 2 to go!

With the money I get for this I plan on buying Adobe Creative Suite Design Premium. My NAPP membership gives my a hefty discount and I need it. It’s got every art tool I’ve dreamed of. I’m really excited about the new features of Illustrator and Photoshop Extended and I’ve always wanted to dabble with Flash. I can’t wait to get my hands on them. Mordy Golding has a great writeup on the new features of Illustrator CS4. Oooh it looks like a whole bunch of my wishes came true.

I’m tickled pink. I’ve been hired to do some currency artwork for the online massively multiplayer game “Zoovolution.” I loved creating currency for previous works like Counterfeit President and Battlestar Galactica and thanks to those I got noticed. You can find out more about the game at www.webandcircus.com. I’ll be creating the currency “Zoukos” bills in 10, 50, 100, and 500 denominations (both front and back).

This kind of stuff is right up my alley. I can let my imagination run wild and with input from Todd at Web and Circus I can make something cool. It’s such a breath of fresh air after coming home from my day job of doing technical art for publications.

Stay tuned for more!

I’ve been a long time viewer of Bert Monroy’s Pixel Perfect video tutorials. He’s had a big influence on my art and when he ask for backdrops for his show, I couldn’t resist making one. This started out as a Starship background and ended up being a Vegas lounge …on a starship.

I had a little trouble with the complex blend for the lights. It was a custom brush blending 4 paths together and it gave me fits. Thanks to my friend Craig for forcing me to make it better. The rest was mostly vector work in Illustrator and then copied over to Photoshop for the final effects. The icing on the cake was the Wacom Cintiq and the two Hal 9000 computers that I created in a previous work.

I got the gallery back up and the database rebuilt. Yea!!!

I also added a new game wallpaper to celebrate the release of Quake Live.

I did a upgrade to the Gallery software which should have been a seamless transition.  Unfortunately it wiped out the database so it will take a while to rebuild it. In the meantime you can see most of my art at my Deviant Art site.

Right now I’m working on some new Battlestar Galactica Currency. I love doing currency designs. They are always a challenge but when  I get a good design in my head I want to see if I can pull it off. You can check the the  results here.

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.