Well, it has been a few weeks in planning, and a few days in working, but finally got another YouTube video tutorial created and uploaded!
[NOTE: Video best viewed enlarged]
To bring this video to you this lovely evening, I finally got some decent software on my computer for screen capturing. The free programs kinda stink (sorry, but true), but you can always rely on Adobe for good software. Adobe Captivate created this nifty vid...CS4, which even let me publish the finished video to AVI format (which is one of the formats YouTube actually accepts, so that was necessary).
I hope you all love the video, and appreciate the headache I got trying to get everything in place for it! ;) The written tutorial for this is coming soon (hopefully very soon, but I make no promises).
I know, I know, it has been forever since I added a new tutorial to the site. I am honestly ashamed. I completely blame it on moving though, which has been good for me, but bad for website release scheduling.
Anyway, I hope you all forgive me for the recent inactivity and I hope you enjoy this new tutorial on how to Draw a Frog.
P.S. View just the finished (non-moving) frog by clicking the thumbnail below.
Tonight was spent working on a background for CraftyArtWorld's YouTube Channel.
Now I realize there are only two videos in said YouTube Channel, but someday there will be more...and the Channel was ugly. I dislike ugly things. So now it's pretty. Yay!
So take a look and keep an eye on it for future videos! And let me know what you think of the pretty new background. If anyone has any ideas how to improve it, I'd appreciate a comment. :)
In an effort to help demonstrate how to use the Pen Tool in Adobe Photoshop, and particularly how to use this tool to select images, I have written a (so far) 3 page comprehensive guide and made my second ever YouTube video!
The last few days I've gotten a wild hair up my......er......I've gotten the urge to re-hash a few things. If you are super observant (or a follower of my Twitter account) you'll already have seen the changes in the headers on the site. Not a lot of differences. The bar at the bottom has more depth to it, the font and floral swirls are now beveled, and the logo has been moved to a more prominant frontal location.
I've also remade my "Back to Top" buttons. They're now a completely original Anika creation; rather than simply being graphics I'm using from FlamingText.com.
Finally, I've redone my Twitter button a bit. I created the original art button about three months ago. I had always intended to pull it back up and clean it up a bit, but didn't get around to it until now. The original button was more of a sticker in appearance and the shading on my Twitter bird was somewhat rough. I've gone back in and smoothed out the shading and created a new background to the bird.
As you can see, the new background is an actual button...as in a pin-type button. Few reasons I decided on that. 1) I wanted to see if I could figure out how to make it, 2) I wanted the button more three-dimentional-ish, 3) I wanted the colors to match this site more, and 4) I collect button pins and just wanted include one somewhere.
Unfortunately, I've got nothing else at the moment. Trying to think of something special to get up for Halloween. Suggestions are always welcome on that front. Just click the pretty comment link below (right above the shiny new Back to Top button) and give me some ideas!
P.S. I'm not promising to actually DO any of these ideas....but if I really like them, then I just might. :Þ
P.P.S. If you look at my Back to Top button on any page in the site (outside of this blog) you'll see that I made it go pressy when you hover the mouse over it. Ooohh. Ahhh. ;-)
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.
CraftyArtWorld has updated the gallery section to include a portfolio of some of Artist Anika's best and/or favorite peices (with a few exceptions excluded due to mature content). In celebration of this new addition, I've created a special graphic just for the portfolio. It is designed to match the colors and layout of all the other graphics of this site:
I hope everyone enjoys the new graphic (which has been added to the CraftyArtWorld homepage) and portfolio. If you are a frequent visitor here and have a favorite piece of artwork that you feel should be shown in the portfolio, feel free to leave a comment and let me know. If you are a first time viewer...well, I hope you enjoy the art anyway. As always, constructive criticism and outright praise is welcome and encourages: Note the little comment box at the bottom of the portfolio. Hint Hint. Nudge Nudge.
Well, I hope you all haven't gotten board or scared off by change yet, because this weekend has been rather tediously spent on spring cleaning...not within my home, though that could certainly use it, but within this website.
Anyone who has come to this website before last Monday can attest that is was somewhat dated. Every page had a different image title (most from flamingtext.com) and each page just a touch bland. I hope to have fixed it up a bit now.
The main changes you will notice begin with divider bars:
Divider Bars:
I've spent some time studying HTML for tables and playing in Photoshop and have come up with the above lovely divider bars. I hope these will help split my pages into convenient sections and to bring a bit more color to the pages (hopefully in a more professional manner than just changing the color of my font).
I have also worked to create an image that can be added behind the titles on the top of my pages; images which can be personalized, so to speak, to the page or group of pages they are accompanying. Below are the current results:
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As you can see, most of these images show the hand holding a pen/pencil and are obviously designed for the World of Drawing section of this site. To see the first four hands in use, visit the following pages:
The fifth image shows a hand holding a woodburner and is currently the only image being used in the Crafty Creations portion of this site. Though I recommend viewing the image in use here: in our Pyrography page, within its more "natural settings" as it were.
Eventually, I plan to create a version of the hand holding a glue bottle and needle and thread...just to add more variation to the Crafty Creations title images...but for now, this will have to work.
Anyway, it is late, and I am signing off now. I'd love your guys' opinions on the new design, if you care to give it.
Oh, and I know it is a bit belated (being Sunday night), but HAPPY EASTER to all!
This entry is a post script to my last, so if you haven't read that one, read it first.
Besides just designing a store banner and re-creating my homepage, I also woke up early this morning and created a new title image. For those of you who don't remember, or didn't see, the old image, I've included it below:
There were many things that I loved about this image, in particular: the colors and lava feel. However, I didn't care for the font type and thought the overall effect was too bright. Between the really thick font and the bright colors, the title itself became hard to read. I also wanted to incorporate a font type that matched the "Old English" font in my site name.
I also wanted to replace the original image because it was made by a text generator (flamingtext.com) rather than made personally by me. So, with all that in mind, I created the below image in Photoshop:
I'm pretty pleased with it. It is easier to read, a better font type, and it still uses the lava look (without being quite so bright) of the original. I might play with it a bit more someday, but for now I like this one much better than the generated one.
Well, I've managed to reinstall Photoshop on my computer (as well as a few other things). I haven't yet had a chance to move my files back to the computer, as that project will take hours. However, in my idle time I am cleaning up some areas of this site that have become...shall we say: "dated" in the nearly two years that the site has been up. The first order of business was, of course, the lovely menu changes that you have witnessed. Second order of business was to clean up the homepage of my site.
Much of my original content on the homepage is unchanged (besides the occassional paraphrasing), but I have now devoted a section of the homepage to "Tutorials of the Month." As I try and come out with at least one new tutorial each month, this will make it easier for people to see the new tutorials on the site without having to memorize my menu. Though I admit that this month's featured tutorials are older ones, due to the "spring cleaning" in the site preventing me from writing a new tutorial this month (though you have recieved a few new pages).
I have also created a new banner for my online store, which I am featuring to the left. I tried to keep it simple, as banners should be, while still looking creative and eye pleasing. I hope you all approve.
I am fairly pleased with how it turned out, but would love to hear your opinions. I'd also love to hear any suggestions or opinions on the clean up of Crafty Art World's homepage.
As for those of you still curious about my poor Lucivar project...I hope to start it back up again next week. I would say this week, but I am challenging myself to join an art competition on Deviantart and want to take this weekend to get my submission together. I will post pictures of that and of any Lucivar progress soon.
Buzz it!
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