abduzeedo's blog

Book Suggestion: New Skateboard Graphics

abduzeedo — Thu, 24 May 2012 04:45:22 +0000

Inspiration is everywhere, I believe everyone knows that but each one of us has some preferences or things that inspire more than others, in my case it's skateboard graphics. That's why the book suggestion of this week is about Skateboard Graphics. It's called New Skateboard Graphics. If you remember we ran a giveaway of this book 3 years ago, but I was checking it out again and had to add to our book suggestion list.

Skateboarding grew from a Southern California hobby born out of surfing to a nationwide trend, which developed into a visual style. While the bottoms of skateboards have always been adorned with graphics, back then only a handful of skateboard manufacturers existed. Today, vast amounts of visuals are created for skateboards, with more than 40 major brands in the market. Because of how the sport has grown, however, many of these graphics are used for only a season, and then are forgotten about - until now. From spreads of full-board designs to detailed crops of patterns and graphics, Skateboard Graphics features the best, most innovative work going on today. Interviews with designers and creators of major brands, like Joe Castrucci of Habitat and Jamie Thomas of Zero, will help elucidate this colorful phenomenon.

Also, I got a copy of the book New Skateboard Graphics book from Mark Batty Publisher to give away. To participate, just leave a comment. We will announce the winners next week.

Images from the book

Inside the Book

About the author

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there, with a special selection of Photoshop Tutorials and Illustrator Tutorials. You can get in follow us via Twitter at @abduzeedo

Playing with Timeline in Photoshop CS6

abduzeedo — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:37:12 +0000

Photoshop CS6 has some great features, one of them is the new timeline for basic animations and this time Photoshop gets a little bit of the After Effects taste. As the idea of the blog is to play with these tools, we decided to come up with something for this new feature.

So in this tutorial we will show you a simple animation using the new timeline and some light effect tricks. The whole process is super simple and won't take you more than 20 minutes.

Step 1

Open Photoshop CS6 and create a new document. Fill the background layer with any color, then go to Layer>Layer>Styles>Gradient Overlay. Use Radial for the Style and for the colors use black and #38556f for the center.

Step 2

Add a new layer and fill it with a pattern. I am using one from http://subtlepatterns.com/ called Broken Noise. Use Soft Light for the Blend Mode.

Step 3

Add a text you want to use for the light effect. I am using the letter A of Abduzeedo using a stencil font called Major Snafu. You can download it at http://www.dafont.com/major-snafu.font?text=a+A

Step 4

To create the light effect we will use Layer Styles. Just follow the instructions below for Bevel & Emboss, Inner Shadow, Inner Glow, Color Overlay, Outer Glow and Drop Shadow.

Step 5

Duplicate the layer and disable the layer styles. Use Inner Shadow and Inner Glow using the settings below.

Step 6

This is the results you will get after the layer styles. It's very similar with another tutorial I wrote a few years ago showing how to create a neon effect in Photoshop. Again the idea of this tutorial is to play with the timeline feature. That's why I will cover the first steps quickly.

Step 7

Add 2 layers on top of the other layers and name them right and left. After that group these 2 layers in a folder. Change the folder's Blend Mode to Color Dodge. With the Brush Tool (B) and a very soft brush, paint with white on top of the right part of the letter A. Select the left layer and paint another spot of light on top of the left part. Use the image below for reference.

Step 8

Go to Window>Timeline. You will see the timeline panel. The first thing you will notice is that all layers are in the timeline. Select the 2 layers in the folder. Expand them in the tree and make sure that the timeline is in the 0 frame. Click on the Position option to create a keyframe.

Step 9

Move the timeline to the position 1:00 and then move the layers in the composition where you want them to move to.

Step 10

This would be the second position of the light spots.

Step 11

Move the timeline again and after that move the layers to create new keyframes.

Step 12

Keep moving them until you complete the animation you want.

Timeline

This is how the timeline looks like. Note the keyframes for the points where the animation changes position.

Conclusion

After a few steps this is the final animation. Using the timeline is quite simple if you compare the number of steps necessary to create the light effect. The cool thing is that Photoshop makes our lives much easier when it comes to create simple animations.

Download the Photoshop file

Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial.

About the author

Wallpaper of the Week 204 by Vlad Axinte

abduzeedo — Sun, 20 May 2012 05:35:40 +0000

The wallpaper of this week is an image created by Vlad Axinte, a self-taught designer from Romania. The image is called "Coordinates of Chaos" and it was inspired by street art and grafitti.

I tried to take the street art into a digital environment using my Wacom Bamboo Pen and Adobe Photoshop CS5

For more information visit Vlad Axinte's Web site at http://www.behance.net/lexington

Desktop Version

iPad Version

iPhone Version

abduzeedo's blog

Book Suggestion: New Skateboard Graphics

Images from the book

Inside the Book

About the author

Sponsored Links:

Playing with Timeline in Photoshop CS6

Photoshop CS6 has some great features, one of them is the new timeline for basic animations and this time Photoshop gets a little bit of the After Effects taste. As the idea of the blog is to play with these tools, we decided to come up with something for this new feature.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Step 8

Step 9

Step 10

Step 11

Step 12

Timeline

Conclusion

Download the Photoshop file

About the author

Sponsored Links:

Wallpaper of the Week 204 by Vlad Axinte

The wallpaper of this week is an image created by Vlad Axinte, a self-taught designer from Romania. The image is called "Coordinates of Chaos" and it was inspired by street art and grafitti.

Resolutions:

About the author

Sponsored Links: