It should be said that I have a deep obsession with Disney movies...particularly movies with awkward characters. This weekend, I watched two of my favorites: Lilo and Stitch (an all-time best Disney creation) and The Road to El Dorado. Lilo and Stitch made me want to dig through my old drawings and pull out the old fan sketches I've done for that movie. Unfortunately, I could only find one of those old sketches. This one was started around two years ago and never finished...water is evil to try and color with colored pencils, which is why the sketch is unfinished. I'll have to get back to it at some point, but for today I avoided restarting my attempt at a wave.
So, that left El Dorado. Love that movie. Miguel and Tulio are two of the best characters that Disney has come up with in quite a while. Then again, I always love the "side-kick" like characters, and Disney admits that El Dorado was made as a movie where the typical side-kick characters are the stars.
I spent an hour or so sketching the characters from the opening scene of the movie.
At some point, I may color the sketch. Not sure if I'll do that with colored pencil or in Photoshop. Depends on my level of boredom when I decide to sit down and color. If I'm really bored and willing to spend more time on it, I'll use colored pencil. Photoshop is quicker and easier, so I'll use that if I only want to spend a little time on it.
Half of my love for Disney movies comes from the music, so I put a video from the movie below. This accomplishes two things. 1) It let's you enjoy the lovely music and 2) It gives you a view the Miguel and Tulio in action so that you can better judge my drawing of them.
My other project of the weekend was to finish the written portion of my Photoshop Custom Shapes tutorial. That tutorial is now up and running. Enjoy.
Been having oodles of fun learning new things this weekend. My quest started as a search for 3-fingered hand shapes that could be downloaded into Photoshop. A set of such hands, in various positions, was needed by a friend at work who is on his own Photoshop project. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, no such hands were to be found.
This led to the first stage of my journey. I set out researching how to create custom shapes in Photoshop. After learning how, I made a set of 40 varying shapes, that I then uploaded into my DeviantArt account where they can be downloaded by anyone who needs them. Go check them out. Even if you don't want to download them, they are pretty nifty and the first set of shapes I have ever made, so I will love you forever if you give feedback.
I honestly can't decide if these were easier, or more complicated than I had anticipated. On one hand, the process of making shapes was much easier than I anticipated. On the other hand, the shapes themselves are apparently much more complicated than they appear to be. This conflict led to the second stage of my journey: making a video tutorial (I made my shapes in Photoshop 7, but they can be made the same way in any of the later Photoshop versions as well).
I've made video lessons before using Adobe Captivate, but I've never made a video for YouTube before. And, apparently, .swf files (the type of files that Captivate publishes) can't be uploaded to YouTube. So, even if I had the resources to purchase Captivate and a computer that was compatible with it, as my personal computer is not, my video making experience still falls short of what was needed.
Therefore, I went researching again. I ended up downloading Wink (a cheap and very STUPID form of Captivate) to capture screenshots of my actions. I then uploaded those screenshots into Windows Movie Maker and created the following video:
Yes, I am aware that this video is choppy. That is due to my own hack-job of putting it together...which is in turn due to a lack of knowledge of what programs to use to simultaneously capture recordings of my screen and tie those recordings together in a .wmv or .mp3 format. I'll try and find some better programs for future videos. If anyone reading this knows of any, now would be the time to speak up in the form of a comment.
Even with the choppiness of the video, I'm rather pleased with the weekend's exploration into new terrain. I've got pretty hand shapes, the knowledge to make new shapes anytime I want, and my very own new YouTube account complete with my very first YouTube video. Go me.
I'm even working on a tutorial lesson on making shapes and creating shape libraries (that may be two new lessons) for this site. So look forward to the new pages sometime this coming week.
As you're waiting on the edge of your seats for those new pages, feel free to comment below about the video, the hands, programs, or anything else that strikes your fancy. Seriously, leave comments people.
I know I've been doing a lot of redesigning in the last year. Bear with me, I'm working to improve the appearance of this site as much as possible....and, ta-da!, I've redesigned once again. Last night's project was my homepage. Don't get me wrong, I loved the graphics in the old homepage, but the layout needed some help. Here's the old version again:
Click to enlarge
You can see that it's pretty, but the layout is boring. So....drum roll please....
The new homepage is split up into peices and is organized much nicer. It is also much more graphic, which fits the theme of an art website better, if I do say so myself.
Would love some feedback, if anyone has any. I worked hard on this, for a total of 2 whole hours, so feedback please.
Buzz it!
, but they can be made the same way in any of the 
as well).
, but I've never made a video for YouTube before. And, apparently, .swf files (the type of files that Captivate publishes) can't be uploaded to YouTube. So, even if I had the resources to purchase Captivate and a computer that was compatible with it, as my personal computer is not, my video making experience still falls short of what was needed.
