Last week, I had some free time while waiting for some layouts to be approved, so I thought that it was a great time to test some free stuff that I had gotten and never used before. As everybody knows there are tons of free icons, textures, clip arts and stuff like that on line, and every time that I find something I automatically download it, what makes my computer's desktop a mess.

Anyway, with a lot of brushes, textures and icons, I started to create my abduzeedo's wallpaper. The idea was pretty simple a collage of elements such as icons and brushes with a light beam coming from the sky as a UFO was abducting somebody.

I started using a wooden texture and a gradient color to give it a bit of depth.

Firstly I used a wooden texture with a gradient overlay

After that I basically put some elements like a building with a woman, a crazy dude with a mask, an little deer on the top of the building.

Started messing around

The next thing that I did was pretty simple, I mirrored the elements, and aligned them in the center of the page.

Same elemets, duplicated and reflected

The image needed more elements, I put a rainbow behind the towers, added some more elements like those balloons over the girl, those tribal elements behind the buildings, everything downloaded and free.

Spice it up a little bit

The abduction laser bean was created and, basically, it's a gradient mesh with the hard light blend effect.

The abduction part 1

To give more the idea of abduction, I put an illustration of myself behind the laser with a motion blur effect, so it looks like Im being abducted.

The abduction part 2

At last but not least I added another illustration in the middle of the page, with some green branches behind it.

The final result, really simple and fun.

The whole image is nothing else than just a bunch of free stuff that can easily be found on the web. Anyhow, below there are some of the sites that I visited to get the elements I used on that wallpaper.

Brushes
http://gfxworld.org/web_templates/hi_res_tattoo_brush.html
http://www.misprintedtype.com/v3/goodies.php
http://www.psbrushes.net/index.php

J3Cons.07 Updated (icons)
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/45651910/

More Icons
http://gfxworld.org/icons/
http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/icons/dock/
http://www.kde-look.org/

Textures and Patterns
http://44suburbia.org/
http://www.theinspirationgallery.com/
http://www.kavewall.com/stock/index.html

Podcast
http://www.revision3.com/pixelperfect

About the author

My name is Fabio Sasso, I'm a graphic/web designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil and I'm the founder of Abduzeedo. I hope we can share lots of information, tips, and ideas through Abduzeedo. Also you can follow me on Twitter or my personal site at http://fabiosasso.com.

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