November 2011

Featured Artist: Michael Vincent Manalo

Michael Vincent Manalo is a self-taught digital mixed media artist, a photographer and a musician.

The themes that are mostly seen on his work revolve around surrealism, pseudo-realism, nostalgic sentiments, and human emotion.

He creates his art through merging scenes that have been captured within his mind with scenes that have been captured by his camera to create the living space that his subconscious tries to convey. He does all this through Photoshop.

Create A Nature Inspired Digital Illustration in Photoshop

For this tutorial I will be showing you how to combine various photos all inspired by nature into a collective and unified illustration. The design will use coloring and lighting effects along with advanced masking techniques. If you are ready to go then fire up Photoshop and let’s get rocking!

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

Let’s create a New Document in Photoshop and we will make it 11” x 8.5” or standard paper size. The document should be horizontal, and we will be able to make our image nice and large.

LoungeKat has written a brilliant post on Webdesigntuts+ called 5 Traits of a Successful Icon Designer. Though the post is especially aimed at icon designers and web designers, its points are applicable to us all.

Kate sums up what it takes to be successful in design in the intro to the article:

The truth is, it’s managing to be many things at once and keeping a balance between communicating a concept and crafting great designs.

Design a Retro Futurism Space Scene Poster

Final Image

Here is a preview of the image that we are going to be creating:

Step 1

Create a new document (600X700px).

Fill your canvas with 213a50.

Members Area Tutorial: Design a Complete Ecommerce Website (Part 1)

Final Image

The result of this tutorial is shown below:

Featured Artist: Craig Shields

Craig Shields has been a massive inspiration for me for years now. He’s a fellow UK graphic designer, and his work really speaks for itself. Craig is in his final year studying Graphic Design at the School of Art and Design in Lincoln. In 2009 he was featured as one of the top 10 UK illustrators to look out for.

Craig has had his work featured in such prestigious publications as Advanced Photoshop Magazine and Digital Arts Magazine. He’s also taken on board some notable clients.

Craig’s work covers a range of techniques and mediums but he is most known for his awesome photo manipulations. He has a great eye for lighting and detail, and his techniques have inspired many designers in the community. His works are often bright, vibrant and eye catching, and he frequently integrates abstract motifs into his designs. Go check out his work today!

Design the Retro Futurism Photo Manipulation ‘Cosmic Rocker’

Final Image

Here is a preview of the image that we are going to be creating:

Step 1

Create a new document (1100X1000px). Fill your canvas with black:

Video Content: Coming Soon

With our network growing, and BLOGS.FanExtra launching imminently we’re very keen to expand to other types of content. Something we’ve been wanting to offer for a while is video content, and we’ve had quite a few requests for this in the last year.

Today we wanted to really know how you guys felt about video content, and more specifically what types of video content you may be interested in!

That’s why we’ve put together a short survey to better understand what our readers want:

Congratulations to this week’s featured marketplace authors!

CartoonSmart is now selling items on our Tutorial marketplace! CartoonSmart are an independent tutorial provider, specializing in everything from Flash and Web Development, to Animation and Game Development. Their courses are detailed, multiple-hour videos, taught by experienced people in each of the fields. Not only are they professional and informative, CartoonSmart always include their source files and assets, so you can follow up on your learning.

Promoting WordPress and getting paid for it, being a mobile worker, loving to travel, and working from a balcony in Paris with a view of the Eiffel Tower. This week we meet WordPress Evangelist Japh Thomson.

What is your position in Envato, and what has it been like to work with us so far?

I’m Envato’s new WordPress Evangelist! I’ve worked for Envato before in Support, a few articles here and there, and also some WordPress plugin development. So I’m not new to Envato, but I’m loving this new role. Promoting WordPress and getting paid for it! <3

What projects are you working on at the moment?

You might have developed a lot of static flash applications in which all the images and the swf clips are embedded in the flash file. If you want to develop more dynamic applications in Flash then this practice is not very good. Some applications require images and swfs to be loaded from some external source. There are two major ways to implement this. One way is to use actionscript to load these external assets, but this method requires expertise in actionscript and it is a little bit time consuming too. Another, much simpler, way is to use the UILoader component. In this tutorial I am going to show you how to use UILoader to easily create dynamic Flash applications.

Advertise here with BSA

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

So let’s start with a new document of 2000 px width and 1600 px height at 300 resolutions. Actually size doesn’t matter here; you can keep any size according to your preferences.

Step 2

Press G to select gradient tool and choose color b91414 & ffc600.

Drag from top of document to centre. The result will be look like this.

Step 3

Now select gradient tool by pressing G and select white color and gradient type “Foreground to Transparent”.

Congratulations to this week’s featured marketplace authors!

Create a Detailed Colourful Heart Illustration

In this tutorial we will be creating a beautiful, very detailed heart illustration. We will use some stock images and develop our drawing skills in Photoshop. Don’t worry I’ll show you step by step how to do it.

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

The iPhone is an incredibly diverse tool that offers loads of functionality to practically any type of user, and this includes web developers. There have been tons of apps to surface on the app store to make the job of a developer just a little bit easier, and the following are definitely top applications that should not be overlooked.

These are 10 of the most indispensable iPhone apps available to users right now.

Typography Manual

Create an Abstract Playing Card Photo Manipulation

Have you checked out the marketplaces’ free files for November? Download them while you can!

ActiveDen: XML Slideshow with Ken Burns Effect

What is one graphic element that you see dozens, if not hundreds, of times a day? Icons. And Rockable Press have just released a new book all about them: Rockstar Icon Designer by Vectortuts+ Associate Editor Kate McInnes.

You can get $5 off the eBook version until November 7th. That’s only a few days away, so hurry!

What’s Inside?

In this book Kate not only teaches you how to whip up a good icon, but she takes you on a crash course through the world of icon design.

Here are some of the topics covered in the book:

Do you find copyright a little fuzzy? Over the next week we’ll bring you four helpful articles on copyright from the Envato Wiki. This article can be found on the wiki here, and outlines Envato’s policy about copyright.

Do you have any questions not covered in these articles? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll put something together to clarify.

Congratulations to this week’s featured marketplace authors!