Nanomega - Electronic design tutorials: janvier 2012

mardi 31 janvier 2012

Blog.SpoonGraphics | Latest Blog Entry

30 Illustrator Video Tutorials Every Designer Should See

Posted: 29 Jan 2012 11:00 PM PST

If you’re trying to learn a new application there’s nothing better than having an expert guide you through the various menus and tools. This post rounds up 30 of the most detailed Adobe Illustrator video tutorials and screencasts on the web. Each one features a mix of clear commentary and useful techniques that will help you on your way to becoming an Illustrator pro.

Digital Inking Demonstration & Tutorial

How To Setup and Design Business Cards in Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial – Object Expand Feature

How To Warp Text in Adobe Illustrator

How to use the Symbol tool in Adobe Illustrator

How To Use The Pen Tool in Adobe Illustrator

How to use the Reflect and Rotate tools in Adobe Illustrator

How to use the Shape Builder tool in Adobe Illustrator

How to use the Blend tool in Adobe Illustrator

Metal Lightning and Vector Leather Illustrator Tutorial

Creating a Vectorized Sparkling Heart

Illustrator Box Icon Tutorial

Masking & Transparency in Illustrator

Creating a Leopard Style Folder in Illustrator

Using Text Wrap with Compound Shapes in Illustrator

How To Create a Skewed Checkerboard Pattern in Illustrator

How To Draw a Pawn Shape in Illustrator

Illustrator Selection Tools Overview

How To Create Pixel Art in Illustrator

Groovy 60′s Retro Poster – Illustrator Tutorial

How to Make the App Store Icon in Illustrator

Create a Vine Brush in Illustrator

Inking in Illustrator and Painting in Photoshop

Sketch to Vector Illustrator Tutorial

How To Create a Blueprint Illustration

Create an Old-School Print Style Illustration

How To Use the Flare Tool in Adobe Illustrator

Make an iPod Nano Using Illustrator’s 3D Effects

Create a Dazzling Aurora Borealis in Illustrator

How To Create Realistic Vector Bubbles

mercredi 25 janvier 2012

Blog.SpoonGraphics | Latest Blog Entry

MightyDeals Giveaway for Access All Areas Members

Posted: 24 Jan 2012 11:00 PM PST

This week MightyDeals have arranged a great offer for Access All Areas members. They are giving away any of their current deals to 5 lucky winners! Fancy some new vector resources, a premium font to add to your collection, or maybe a book to learn something new? Log in and ...

Not a member? Becoming an Access All Areas member gives you the ability to view exclusive members-only content just like this. The premium category is already packed full of discount codes and useful design resources, and there's plenty more to come! Find out more about becoming a member, or take a peek at what's available to premium members so far.

lundi 23 janvier 2012

Blog.SpoonGraphics | Latest Blog Entry

How To Create a Vibrant Abstract Shards Poster Design

Posted: 22 Jan 2012 11:00 PM PST

Follow this step by step Illustrator and Photoshop tutorial to create a cool poster design of vibrant shard graphics. We’ll create the array of shapes with Illustrator’s vector tools before finishing off the poster with some subtle textures in Photoshop.

The design we’re creating today features a range of sharp vector shard shapes each with a vibrant mix of colours. These colours interact with the help of blending modes to create an intricate piece of digital art.

View the abstract shards poster design

Open up Illustrator and use the Pen tool to create a random triangular shape with three clicks. Give this shape a gradient fill with three colour swatches. Here I’m using white, a rich mid-blue and a dark blue.

Use the Gradient tool to adjust the angle of the gradient flow by clicking and dragging across the shape in a random direction.

Repeat these two steps to create variously sized triangular shapes across the document, each with a unique gradient angle.

Add shapes of various sizes to cover as much of the document area as possible. Don’t worry about overlapping shapes, when the blending mode is added these overlaps will create cool effects.

Continue adding triangular shapes to completely fill the document artboard. Make sure the gradient angle is changed for each shape.

Once the document is completely filled with shapes, drag a selection across the whole artboard to select all the elements.

Change the blending mode of these shapes to Hard Light to allow the gradient overlays to interact and intensify the colours.

The blending mode effect really adds to the design, allowing transparency to create an intricate design where all the overlapping shapes are visible.

Select all the elements once again then go to Effect > Stylize > Inner Glow. Alter the settings to Hard Light, White, 30% Opacity and 5mm Blur. Hit OK and wait for the effect to process on each element. This Inner Glow effect simply adds more vibrant tones to the design and brightens up each shape’s edges.

The vector stage of the design is now complete, but let’s finish it off with some subtle textures. Paste the graphic into a high res Photoshop poster document.

Open up a Stained Paper texture and paste it on a new layer above the design. Remove the yellow tint by desaturating the image then change the blending mode to Color Burn.

The grainy texture of the paper will be combined with the sharp vector shapes to give the design a more tactile feel. Reduce the opacity of the texture layer to adjust the impact of the grain.

Press CMD+A to Select All, then right click and Transform Selection. Minus 100px from the overall selection dimensions then press CMD+Shift+I to invert the selection. This leaves a 50px border selection around the edges of the document.

Activate the paper texture layer and Copy/Paste the selection onto a new layer. Change this layer’s blending mode to Color Burn to create a cool border effect to frame the design.

This leaves our cool abstract shard design complete! The overall process was pretty simple seeing as the Hard Light blending mode did most of the job. It’s just a case of taking the time to initially build up the layers of elements and manually.

Download the source file