Inspiration Typography

A type face that isnpired me for one typographic project of mine. Soon I'll post it to get some feedback. Tramyad font free for personal use from protofonts Download
download link fixed

Free Vectors

I found a great website for free vectors, you can also submit your own work and recieve feedback from other vector artists. "Vecteezy is an index of Free Vector Graphics available for download by some of the best artists around the world."

Vector Convert (Suggestion)

Most of the brushes for Adobe Photoshop can be easily converted to vector objects with the help of Illustrators, the Live Trace feature .

Photoshop Brushes are actually information about grayscale shapes, all you have to is to use them once in a blank document, export them as a jpeg, gif or png file , and then load it with Illustrator (File > Place).

The final step is to select the loaded file and go Object>Live Trace.

Note: The Live Trace Feature is avalable in Adobe Illustrator CS2 and CS3. You can also take a quick look at "Producing creative drawings with Live Trace and Live Paint"

Urban Scrawl Brush set for Photoshop

Here is a good proposal if you would like to apply grungy/sketchy style to your digital artwork.

This Photoshop brush set contains 29 different hand-drawn shapes. Feel free to experiment with different colors and layer transparency.

Author - InvisibleSnow Download from here

Merry Christmas

Have A Wonderful
Christmas Season


Thank you all,  For the support!

2007

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial Create Vector Metal Icons Buttons

Create these nice little metal buttons that can also be used as icons. Everything we make in this video is 100% vector so it can be used virtually anywhere! Check out www.tutvid.com for more great video tutorials!

Pattern Tutorial For Adobe Illustrator

Wednesday 19 Dec 2007

Patterns are everywhere. Look around and you’ll probably see one right now. It might be a pattern on a tie, a shirt, pants, a paper cup, bathroom tiles, an umbrella, on a bag, a sofa, wrapping paper… the list goes on and on. Patterns add decoration and beauty to many consumer products. If you look closely at a true repeating pattern you can see the ‘repeat square’, the area of the image that repeats along vertical and horizontal seams where one section flows into the next.In this tutorial we will use vector elements to create a four-way repeating pattern swatch in Adobe Illustrator and then mask the pattern into several mock products. So, let’s get started! Fulltutorial

Holiday Decoration Brushes for Photoshop

Browsing www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com I found great proposal for holiday design projects. A set of 32 brushes made up of various vector designs and shapes. Most designs come in a basic shape of that brush, then another with one shape inside another - somewhat offset, another with dots or smaller versions of that same shape within it, and all kinds of variations of that. Great for making patterned paper or patterns, or for single embellishments to a design.

Includes: circles, squares, stars, hearts, triangles, swirls, flowers, brackets Download

Vector Elements Brush Set For Photoshop

Here is another vecotr set of of oval element brushes from adcor. Compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS + . Download link , Enjoy !!!

Fade In and Out Action Script Tutorial

Here is a very basic but useful tutorial for Adobe Flash Action Script. Fading in and out alpha... but no timeline. A small introduction of onEnterFrame event function and its usages. You can see a preview at the final result here. Download tutorial (.fla file)

Flower Pattern for Illustrator

This pack contains 24 patterns for Illustrator CS3. Flower in 12 variations.All patterns in red and green. You can mix these patterns to get even more variations.To change the flower color, simply drag the pattern to your canvas, paint it, and then drag to the swatches pallete again. You can also resize and overlap them to get endless results.Author's profile in DA. Download link (pdf file).

Water Color Brushes for Adobe Photoshop

Here we have ... 13 High Quality Adobe Photoshop Water Color brushes. 

Originally built in Adobe Illustrator CS3 and then finished on Photoshop CS3. 

Artist profile Download link

Flash design tips: precise drawing in flash

To create precise vector graphics in Flash, it’s all about learning to use and control the tools.
The drawing tools in Macromedia Flash MS 2004 allow you to create precision vector graphics. Vector graphics are line-based graphics. In the world of mathematics, a vector is a line that has a defined starting point, a designated direction, and a specified distance. With vector graphics, vectors control the manner in which curved and straight lines are shaped between specific points. The picture is made up of these lines as well as the colors of areas enclosed by the lines.

Because of how they are created, vector graphics can be resized easily without reducing image quality. A vector graphic appears much smoother and more precise than a raster (or bitmap) image, which is made up of pixels (dots). Vector graphics also download faster than comparable raster images. View Few Article.

Power Of Type

Type is powerful and important graphic design element. Combined with artistic adjustment of type/font, balance, color and rhythm, you may design very entertaining and unique final composition. In the samples below you can notice that for each composition the designers had used no more than two different font families. From that point of view “less is more”, but the designers should also solve a problem with the effect of negative space and the focal point of the concept. Don't be afraitd to use repetition of type elements to achieve a clear and balanced work.

Samples from www.deviantart.com

Vector-based T-shirt design (Tutorial)

www.digitalartsonline.co.uk

US designer Joshua Smith shows you how to create a killer T-shirt design using a 3D object as a starting point in Adobe Illustrator.
In the age of clip art books and simple solutions, it’s rare to find good illustrations that someone invested some time into that will make its way on a shirt that we, the consumer, can be proud of.

However, if your favourite T-shirt is a slogan-based one, with the likes of ‘I’M WITH STUPID’ or ‘NICE RACK’ with a simple illustration of a gun-rack, then this probably isn’t for you.

This whole concept stems from the idea that we want to broadcast what we are most passionate about. Only a few brands in the industry have amazing illustrators working for them, or a brand might be a spawn of something that’s already illustration-based, such as Tokidoki & Obey Giant.

Brands like RVCA, Monarcy, Drifter, and others in the same field strive to have illustration as the message that carries their themes. This tutorial shows how I would attack a T-shirt design if someone commissioned a piece. Continue

Nighmare Before Christmas

A Photoshop Brush Set with shapes and symbols from the movie "Nightmare Before Christmas".
Download from here. More Christmas related resources coming soon.

Blog Directory

Vector Drawing with ZeusDraw on Mac OS X 10.5

Chromatic Bytes has updated ZeusDraw—a vector drawing program that has both vector brushes and textured, pixel-based brushes that remain objects that can be selected, edited (path and attributes), moved, scaled and rotated—to version 1.2.1. It contains a number of small changes to insure that ZeusDraw works well on Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”). Read More

Create an animated 3D logo (Illustrator, Swift 3D, Flash)

Bloody Splatter Brush Set For Illustrator

I haven't added any new vector brushes for quite a long time. The collection of illustrator brushes needs an update and here it is. 

A great set of Bloody Splatter Brushes for Adobe Illustrator. Useful for beginner and advanced digital artists. Resource by maddama. Download from here.

Illustrator CS3 tutorial - Using a Smart Art Object

Adobe Illustrator CS3 Tutorial

Samurai

The latest image in the gallery. Author's comments:
" Used a sketch by an unknown artist as a reference for the figure.
The symbol in the sun is tomoye, it signifies the revolution of the universe (I think it's shintoist but I could be wrong).
The Japanese word says "samurai" (so I'm told!)."

Vector Design Brushes for Photoshop

Vector design brush set for Adobe Photoshop compiled by TammySue Download

Illustrator Brushes and Symbols

A result of playing with brushes and symbols in Illustrator.

Avidly growing an editor's network

"Avid has a bullet-proof software that has paid for my mortgage," says veteran editor Peter Hordylan, regarding the company that created the first commercially available digital nonlinear editing system.

Hordylan is the new president of the 12-year-old 700-member Avid Toronto Users' Group (replacing the group's founder Al Mitchell), and he's keen to put the perfect spin on the technology. "Everyone I know in the industry has one," boasts Hordylan. "You never have a problem with Avid."

Hordylan's message comes across as pure PR (as Avid is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year), but as the new leader of the non-profit association, his top priority is actually to create a much-needed directory and database of editors in a revamped ATUG website.

"I've noticed the difficulties production and post-production facilities have had finding freelance editors," says Hordylan. "My hope is that through the website, the frustrations of companies looking for editors will end."

Avid Technology is fully supporting the project and has promised Hordylan that the site will be up before 2008. The directory will offer every ATUG member one free demo and CV page and the site will also feature job postings and a forum.

Hordylan says the invigorated group will also increase the scope and variety of its seminars - which typically attract about 80 participants - adding sessions that underline "what editing really is - an art form."

On Oct. 25, at the Bravo! studio in the former CHUM/City Building on Queen Street, ATUG will present a panel on editing dramas and comedies.

Eric Abboud, who has worked on Bravo!'s Arts and Minds, will host, and one panelist, The Tudors' editor Lisa Grootenboer, has been confirmed to participate.

Another more technology-based session dealing with intra-frame editing, advanced motion effects, vector-based graphics and advanced key framing is expected to take place in late November.

Hordylan notes that ATUG founder Mitchell started the first Avid user group in the world and that chapters now exist in the Middle East, Japan and the U.S.

www.atug.ca

Producing creative drawings with Live Trace and Live Paint

Producing a creative drawing on paper tends to be a two stage process involving “inking” and “colouring”: sketching the defining lines in black and then filling this framework with colour. The first mainstream program to attempt to translate creative drawing to a computer environment was Adobe Illustrator back in 1987. Based on Adobe’s PostScript technology, Illustrator and subsequent competitors such as CorelDRAW and Macromedia FreeHand build their drawings as mathematically-defined vectors or “paths”. “Stroking” an open-ended path produces a line and filling a closed path produces a coloured shape. And with a stack of stroked and/or filled paths you have all you need to reproduce any illustration – or technical drawing, graphic design or even text-based layout. It’s a beautifully efficient system and one that has become second nature to generations of computer artists.

Second nature maybe, but no-one could say that drawing with vectors is truly natural. Compared to the simple creative freedom of sketching on paper, the whole process of drawing onscreen is intrinsically awkward and indirect despite important advances such as freehand tools and digitizing tablets. And there are further limitations imposed by the underlying vector architecture. For creative drawing, you often want lines that are fluid and expressive, but that’s just not possible with stroked paths which are intrinsically uniform along their length. Again advances such as vector brushes that treat each stroke as a filled path radically improve the end results – Creature House’s Expression deserves especial credit here - but no-one could claim they were as natural as pens and pencils.

by www.designer-info.com veiw full Article

Flowers Everywhere Wallpaper

Give your desktop a fresh outlook. Vector Wallpaper by Mgssy image resolution:1280×1024

Swirly Curls Illustrator Symbols

An artistic symbol collection for Adobe Illustrator by namespace. Download link. Enjoy !

Line And Dot Photoshop Pattern Set

Searching for new patterns for texturizing an element in a composition of mine I found a great resource in Deviantart You can download the set from here . The patterns are for Adobe Photoshop CS and higher versions. The pack contains 17 assorted patterns, most of them are vertical lines in diferent colors. Also created in Photoshop heare is the link to the authors profile. Enjoy :)

Live Trace Tutorial

A video demonstration how to use Adobe Illustrator to turn pixel based images in scalable vectors by using Live Trace.In this tutorial we will look at a fast and easy, yet highly optional and precise way of tracing your photos or sketches in Illustrator. The possibilities are endless! This feature is not available in earlyer than CS2 versions of Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator Brushes

A great vector brush set containing floral and pop art brushes. For Adobe Illustrator CS, CS2 , CS3. Click here for designer's profile. Download

Contemporary Printmaking

Exploring the widening frontiers of contemporary printmaking
By JOAN FINN
of The Montclair Times

Always a frontrunner in the celebration of the visual arts, the George Segal Gallery at Montclair State University has long been known for presenting innovative and informative art exhibitions. And in pursuing that goal, the gal-lery is focusing on the effect that a rapidly evolving technology has on the art of contemporary printmaking.

“Contemporary Printmaking at the Crossroads,” on view through Nov. 10 at the George Segal Gallery, investigates the ways digital processes are transforming contemporary printmaking today. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Sept. 28, from 7 to 9 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

“Printmaking has traditionally accepted and even embraced the concept of the hybrid, with printmakers often incorporating multiple processes into the making of a single print,” said Catherine Bebout, who along with Mary Birmingham, are the curators of the exhibition. “Today printmaking continues to earn its reputation as a ‘democratic medium,’ integrating traditional techniques like etching, woodcut, lithography, and silkscreen with photo-based media and emerging digital applications. At the crossroads where traditional and digital processes intersect, new hybrids are energizing the practice, and even redefining our understanding of the ‘original print.’”

Constantly evolving digital technologies are transforming the realm of contemporary printmaking, concurred Curator Mary Birmingham. “The Internet provides a vast array of images and information available instantaneously,” she said. “Raster- and vector-based graphics-editing programs like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator enable artists to create and manipulate images. Large-format archival pigment printers allow them to push the limits of scale and production. Consequently, this expanding field is inspiring traditional printmakers and attracting artists from outside the print world — painters, photographers and sculptors — fostering an atmosphere of cross-pollination that is provocative and enlivening.” Full article

Vector Skateboard Template (Blank)

Here we have another great resource for all skateboard deck designers out there. A blank skateboard template in vector format for Adobe Illustrator.

Might be useful if you scan sketches and implement them within the template. The size of the vector template isclose to the standard skateboard deck.

Artist page . Download

Another great vector brush collecion

Vector Brush collection by vihr2. Compatible With Photoshop CS2. and CS3. The set contains 20 brushes, Appx. Size: 256x256 Pixels.

Download from here. Enjoy !

Vector Growth

Variegate your work with new Photoshop Patterns

A great proposal for variegating your design work - a pattern collection for Adobe Photoshop CS2 , CS3. Download

Vector Tutorial

View the tutorial : www.vectorportraits.com This is a step-by-step guide on creating your own vector portraits using Photoshop. Site also features a gallery so you can upload a vector that you finished after reading the tutorial. 

I really hope that this tutorial could help those who want to start with vectoring photos.

svg Heraldic Brushes

Since there's a visible trend towards heraldic-symbols in graphics design the illustrator decided to gather some of these symbols and trace them so that they can be used in Inkscape and any other vector-illustration software. This set contains over 70 Brushes! Images taken from www.heraldicclipart.com . You can use these bruses free and do whatever you want with them. Download

Big Girls Don't Cry

Artist comments: "Don't ask me why I did another piece involving a nose bleed, but I did, and you'll all just have to deal with it. I think its the stark contrast between something beautiful and grotesque."

National Art Competition for Students with Hearing Loss

Rochester Institute of Technology announces its second annual Digital Arts, Film and Animation Competition for high school students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Students with hearing loss in grades 9-12 can compete for cash prizes and an all-expenses-paid trip to Rochester, N.Y., for the awards ceremony and an exhibition of their work.

This national competition recognizes students’ artistic expression with awards in the following categories: Mixed Digital Media, Web Page Design, Graphic Media, 3-D Animation, Film, Interactive Media, Photo Illustration and Free-Hand Art in Digital Form. Film is a new category this year.

Students may submit up to two entries. Entry forms, contest rules and other details are available online. The submission deadline is Oct. 8, 2007. More

Shapes Clipart for Illustrator

Some free shapes from FlaCake for Adobe Illustrator CS2/CS3. Free For commercial use. Download

Website Design: Improve your Navigation

by Rich Goldman
There are billions of different Web pages floating around the Internet, and unless you have the ability to trawl Google and memorise the URL of every page of every site, there's no way you'd survive out there without a little help.

Thankfully, we don't have to wander round the Web feeling our way like a zombie in a maze. Navigation forms the basis of any Web site, and always has done. Despite the fact that it is a necessity of Web design, it has become something of an afterthought for many designers, as they concentrate on trying to get clever with content.

Navigation remains the single most essential aspect of site construction, and the wonders of modern technology mean you can guide your visitors around your site in a range of innovative ways to make their online experiences all the richer and more rewarding.

What’s the point of navigation?

For the benefit of anyone arriving on the planet in the last few minutes, the base principle of site navigation is to help your visitors find their way around your Web site, providing links to all its pages. Common sense reasons that it is imperative that your site is easy to navigate or your guests will soon leave the party for pastures new.

The home page of a web site is where visitors form their impressions about the entire design, and its importance far outweighs that of the other pages that make up the site. The same theory applies to the site's navigation mechanism, ie if you manage to convince new visitors to make the step from your home page to one of your sub pages, the chances of them wanting to peruse the other delights on your site increase no end.

Proper site navigation should give the visitor a sense of 'place' within the site. it should help you maintain consistency throughout the site, even establishing something of a brand. It's important that anyone delving through your site knows how to get back to where they started, otherwise they're likely to flee in frustration.

Your navigation system should also encourage the user to explore other areas of the site by suggesting pages of related interest, and challenge their minds by pointing them towards more obscure links elsewhere online that will interest them. Ultimately, your top priority when designing site navigation is to ensure that the user doesn't have to work hard to find everything you're offering.

Traditional navigation

Back in the old days, navigating the Web was a completely different experience from the one you'll see today. We all know that developments in Web design software have made it easy to create prettier pages with flashy graphics and stylish content, but site navigation has also evolved considerably.

In the late Nineties, when the Web was just beginning to take shape, the core device for site navigation was the trusty textual link, and a blue underlined piece of text was your ticket to a world of information. once clicked, the text link would turn purple (or sometimes red) to indicate that this was one corner of the Web that you'd already explored, and this became something that even newcomers to the Net could get their head around right from the off. Of course, these conventions still apply today, albeit in a slightly more 'glam' format.

A few years ago, the closest you'd have got to a graphical interface on a site would be a series of boxed text links across the top of the page of running down the side. Occasionally these would be accompanied by hideous animated G11's or clipart that vaguely represented the part of the site a link pointed to ('borne' would be a house, contact us' a phone, 'buy' would be a stack of coins, etc).

Just because these navigation systems seem a little primitive from this side of the Millennium, it doesn't mean
they weren't effective, and they are still used in some form these days. The Site Map, for instance, was one of the first devices to appear, and still represents probably the quickest way to find your way around large Web sites. On the whole though, exploring a collection of pages in 2003 is a much richer experience than it was seven years ago. The emergence of modern WYSIWYG design applications and advancements in graphic manipulation technology have meant that Web developers can get more imaginative with their navigation bars in order to truly achieve usability.

Navigation musts

If you mosey along to any Web site worth its salt and look carefully at how it was put together, you'll notice that all the big sites follow the same navigation methods a tidy nav bar for effect with a bandwidth friendly set of textual links somewhere on the page. However creative you think you are, or however much you want to hurl saliva in the face of convention, there’s no use trying to fight against these methods. They work and they always will work, and users are unlikely to stick around if they don't get what they're expecting.

Textual links, or embedded links, are the most basic form of navigation and represent a clear, instant method of accessing pages within a site. These are generally arranged in the form of a series of underlined words across the top of a page or a list running down the side.

Another key device in the quest for an easy ride online is 'breadcrumb' navigation. By using trails of HTML links, you can show the route from the home page to the current page, helping the visitor to move up and down the menu tree more effectively, especially on large, page heavy sites.

In order to give the user the richest, most diverse surfing experience, it's wise to slap in as many related links, within reason, as you can unearth. The key here is to avoid simply using the obvious links, and to add pointers to more obscure, off the wall sites that are likely to titillate your readers, adding greater value to your site in the process.

It's also important that you position your navigation links in a place where the user will expect them to be, and where they won't intrude into the content of your site. Many Web designers favour the placement of links along the top of a Web page, plus down the left or right hand side, and at the bottom of each page for good measure. Basically, you need to make sure that your visitors are never more than a scroll wheel rotation away from the next page. Make sure you stick to colour conventions too blue is generally recognised as the norm for a text link, with purple or red used to indicate a page that's already been accessed by the browser.

New methods

While these traditional navigation principles should still be foremost in your mind when designing pages, there are a number of trendy new devices kicking around town that are also worth thinking about.

Let’s first consider image maps, a navigational tool that has the potential to be something quite special, but which invariably turns into a confusing mess. The key to achieving a workable image map is to choose your picture carefully. Make sure it's something that lends itself to being logically sliced up and split into parts, rather than a generic piece of art with no determinable boundaries within it. if you can afford to do so, buy the image in from a picture agency before slicing it up in Image Ready (or a cheaper alternative such as Paint Shop Pro) and exporting it to your Web editor to apply the rollovers.

If pictures aren't your bag, or if you're keen to avoid bandwidth heavy navigation, you may want to think about exploring the DHTML route or even applying JavaScript pop up menus. While these have been around a few years now, they're still called upon by pro designers as a means of adding dynamic navigation. Adding DHTML menus is far easier today than it ever was, and there's plenty of software around that will do the job for you without you having to lift a brain cell.

However, when it comes down to designing sites 'in the Twenty first Century, you won't find many better tools for the job than Flash. Macromedia's cherished vector graphics application houses all the functionality you need to produce slick, easy to follow, fast loading navigation. The program allows you to create virtually any type of dynamic navigation system you can think of, from stylish icons and Flash buttons to pop up and pull down menus. Flash is also great for generating actions and animation within a navigation bar in order to engage the user and promote interactivity.

Ironically, relying too heavily on these swanky new navigation methods can lead to your site becoming overwhelming to a visitor, and a jamboree of weird and wonderful menus is no use to anyone. If you are intending to use devices such as Flash or JavaScript menus, always make sure this isn't your sole form of navigation, and that there are text links for those without the right plug in. As accessibility is what we should all be striving for these days, you should always be sure to include ALT tags on any images you include in your navigation to cater for anyone using a screen reader and make sure you create a text only version as well.

If you really want to know if your site is truly useable, the best idea is to unleash it on a group of friends and get them to try and navigate it. Come up with a list of things that a user might want to do on the site, then observe your guinea pigs as they try and access the information. You'll soon learn that it pays to keep things simple and not to try anything too elaborate when designing navigation. That's not to say you can't be original, and with advancements in creative applications such as Flash, navigating Web pages can only get more enjoyable.

Contest for Photographers, Digital Artists

The Arts and Design Society is seeking entries of original photography or digital arts for its 8th Annual Photography and Digital Arts exhibition to be held from Aug. 24 through Sep. 22.
The exhibition is open to all photographers and digital artists. The artwork must be original, entirely of the work of the entrant and completed within the last three years. Entries must not be copies or derivatives of copyrighted or published paintings or photographs. Artwork that has won an award in previous ADSO exhibitions may not be entered.

Registration will take place at the Arts and Design Society’s Art Center Gallery, on Monday, Aug. 20 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Entry fee for the first three works:

High School Students – $15
ADSO Members – $25
Non-Members – $35

Additional works can be submitted for $5 each. Each entrant can only submit up to six works. Registration forms may be picked up at the gallery from 1 to 4 p.m. on Friday and Monday.

The opening reception will be held on Friday, Aug. 24 from 6 to 8 p.m. Awards will be given out during this reception.

Arts and Design Society’s Art Center Gallery is located at 17 1st St SE in Fort Walton Beach. For more information, call (850) 244-1271 or visit the ADSO website at http://www.artsdesignsociety.com

Xerox

Artist comments
"Slightly different from the normal - spot the difference!"

The Act Of Freedom

Artist Comments: "I had a weird idea, I wanted to make a blob with the ben tool, and than just add a bunch of crap, and you know what, I'm liking it. It's about 80% pen tool, 20% brush (MindFrame's second vector brush pack) I really like the K blob, and well.. it's a simple message (the sub text says nothing lol.)"

Basic Shapes in Illustrator CS

In Adobe Illustrator, you can paint both the fill and the stroke of shapes with colors, patterns, or gradients. You can even apply various brushes to the path of the shapes. For this logo, you’ll use a simple method to reverse the default fill and stroke of your shapes, painting the fill with black and the stroke with white. Full tutorial

Vector Polaroid Brush Set

The set contains 8 Photoshop CS2 / CS3 brushes made with Flash and Photoshop CS2. Download

Vector Illustrations Price

According to the IStock web site, the price of ten credits –– the least that a customer can buy at one time –– will rise to $13. Currently, the division charges $12 for ten credits. The price of 600 credits will be $600 after Aug. 19. Until that date, customers can purchase 625 credits for the same $600.

The number of credits needed to purchase a still image will apparently remain the same after Aug. 19, but some vector illustrations and video clips will require more credits, the division said.

The purchase of a single still image will continue to require one to 15 credits, depending on the digital file size. Vector illustrations will require the expenditure of one to 25 credits after the change. Currently, no separate category exists for vector art.

Rocket Fish Wallpaper

Rocket Fish Wallpaper by Philorawing

iStockphoto to raise prices in August

iStockphoto, the Getty Images "microstock" subsidiary that sells low-cost imagery and video, will announce Monday plans to raise prices and therefore photographer revenue next month along with a number of promotional activities.

The company sells credits that give customers rights to use contributors' photos in materials such as advertisements, Web sites or brochures. The higher the resolution, the more credits an image costs, and the credit cost will increase from $1.20 to $1.30 on August 19, said iStockphoto Executive Vice President Kelly Thompson. (Credits are cheaper in bulk.)

Because photographers get a proportion of the credit cost ranging between 20 percent and 40 percent, the increase will mean a few more pennies at least per sale for photographers, too. That may not sound like much, but some popular photos sell hundreds or even thousands of times over, so there are economies of scale at work here. Read more

Advertise On This Site

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We offer attractive ad spots. Please send a brief email to vablog@yahoo.com. We will respond shortly. Please have in mind that we would never publish information about paid content or write reviews about the advertiser, unless we found them useful to the digital illustrators community. The postings on Vector Art Blog are objective; the quality of each article is defined by the extent of its utility to our subscribers. 

Promote Your Work

If you are a vector artist and you are looking for exposure send us links to your work. We will review it and with your perimision we will publish it in our Artists directory.

Squadron Festival 2007

Busy preparations for one of the most awaited festivals this year have already commenced as Squadron have just launched their official Squadron Festival 2007 website (www.squadronfestival.com).

For the first edition, Squadron Festival together with the support of Pure Promotions will deliver three international heavy-weight headliners, and that being none other than the true Godfather of House Music 'Marshall Jefferson'. This man is responsible for literally defining house music as we know it today and boasts the repertoire of being the man responsible for turning House music into a universal sound by introducing it for the first time ever straight across the ocean to Europe with his legendary classic 'House Music Anthem - Move your Body'.

Squadron Festival 2007 will also feature two of the most requested DJ's - Dr.Lektroluv & Spacid, both residents at the popular yearly I Love Techno in Belgium. Squadron being the originators and leading electro music event organizations in Malta & Pure Promotions being the most sought after House event organization on this island, the two now join forces in an aim to bring together Malta's most prominent music scenes, in one big festival.

Make sure to check out www.squadronfestival.com for more info, downloads and features!

SQUADRON HISTORY!
Squadron has played a most important role in the ever increasing popularity of the so called 'electro' sound. Having been involved in the music scene for over 4 years, Squadron events have successfully managed to breed a new era of freaks who were not interested in dancing to the music which had dominated the scene for the past years.

Squadron provided the means for these people to listen to all sorts of genres jammed into one night, ranging from true Electro and Chicago house music from its purest days, to the more evil days of acid techno, mixed in with the less sinister Italo-Disco sounds of the early 80's. Besides bringing innovation in music locally, Squadron has also managed to fashion their very own unmistakable Squadron brand artwork, a fusion between classic chic art-deco and modern vector illustrations.

Since their first ever event back in April 2003, Squadron flyers have been sought after gems for flyer enthusiasts around the island.

Seeing that crowds at Squadron events have been on the increase and having already brought over the creme the la creme of modern electronic music artists namely Legowelt, Bangkok Impact, Alden Tyrell, Aux 88, DJ Godfather and Dr.Lektroluv, Squadron now shift their ambition in bringing over legends from both our era and these past two decades. One can expect anything from early Chicago house legends, 80's Miami Bass/Oldschool live shows, Classic Detroit techno DJ's and hard rocking new era electronic artists inspired by all of the latter!

The following artists have been brought over by Squadron: Legowelt, Dr.Lektroluv, Spacid, Le Syndicat Electronique, Alden Tyrell, DJ Serge, Bangkok Impact, Aux 88, Luke Eargoggle, Orgue Electronique, DJ TLR, DJ Godfather, The Chicago Shags, DJ Kafka and Rollinka.

The infinity of art

by di-ve.com Tuesday, 17 July, 2007

Enter the world of Digital Art and be prepared for a roller coaster ride of high lows and incredible no limit highs. Digital Arts is nothing new, but due to the nature of digital technology it is permanently redefined through the constant updates and digital innovations.

However, at its core beats the same original artistic heart as before. The upgrades to the system, the redesign and the technical advancements in the design programs work to change the outcome of the art, but in the end it still boils down to the talents of the artistic user that controls and guides the software to create art work.

ICA Ltd a leading and innovative communications agency based in Malta is hosting a Digital Arts Expo in 2008. The DA 2008 is split into Digital Art Galleries, Exhibition stands and Educational Workshops/Seminars for the creative enthusiast and professional alike.

Innovation is something that the DA 2008 is looking for, so having two of our in house talents Martin Bonnici and Roderick Darmanin, do what artists generally don't do and compete against each other in a digital Photoshop Tennis match sums up the extent that we are prepared to go to.

Photoshop Tennis is when two or more Digital Artists do the unthinkable, and try to improve on their opponent's digital creation. One artist starts off with his design and forwards it to his opponent. The opponent then takes the original design and adds his art to it thus changing the original. The rules are, the concept of the original design needs to be kept, but anything can be added or improved on.

With this in mind, we are very proud to present the players of the first "Digital Playoff" of the DA 2008 Expo;
Martin Bonnici (b. 1985) balances his time between working as a Post-Production Artist/Flash Designer and recreating his thoughts and dreams in still and moving pictures. Whereas his day job pounds him with demanding clients and projects, his late nights working on short films, animations and studying special effects allow him to flex his creative muscles and vent of the pressures of his happy little existence.

Roderick Darmanin (b. 1985) torn by the evils of work and play is forced to splits his talents. As a day walker he is a Graphic Designer extraordinaire and a vivacious Vector Artist. Using Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand and Indesign, he earns his money at one of Maltas up and coming agencies. By night he enters the murky world of Speed painting.

Let the playoffs begin. With the art designs below Martin and Roderick have started as they mean to go on, so to follow the digital excellence as it progresses log on to the DA 2008 website at www.digitalartsexpo.com.

Registration and participation is free, so join in and be part of Malta's digital culture. Limitations are yours to exceed.

Animate your illustration

Adding animation to your illustration work can reap great creative and financial rewards. But what does it take to make the small jump from Illustrator to Flash, Photoshop to After Effects and page to screen? Nick Spence finds out.

For any illustrator safe in the static world of editorial illustration, animating your work may seem a job best left to others. New skills, new software to learn, thinking not just about the image but also about time, will certainly present fresh challenges. But the rewards for adding animation to your creative canon should outweigh any lingering doubts about venturing outside of your comfort zone.

The rise of broadband and mobile content in recent years has opened up vast new opportunities for anyone creating animation and motion graphics. Online interactive content is big business and much has been made of the potential funds available in web advertising. The internet is now also the ideal platform to showcase your animation skills, with broadband best able to cope with the most demanding video and audio showreels. Many savvy illustrators have added impressive animation sections to their personal online portfolios to great effect. Continue
article by www.computerarts.co.uk

The easiest way to convert images to line art

Faster than a tracing hand, this powerful software is the raster to vector converter you need for Illustrator (Adobe), CorelDraw (Corel), Flash (Macromedia), WebDraw (Jasc), Sodipodi (freeware) and any vector-based software. Vector Eye instantly converts scanned black-and-white or color raster images (bmp, jpg, tiff, png) into editable vector files (svg, ps, eps).

Just scan any sketch, or select an image (or a sequence) in an AVI movie, make some bitmap adjustements (scale, select zone, enhance, swap colors, rotate...) and Vector Eye will automatically create multiple SVG file corresponding to differents settings. You can analyse, modify till the result suits you (quality, weight, number of vectors).
Just save it in the appropriate format for your purpose and drop into your favorite editor or authoring tool to complete or animate your design. You could also use the batch system to launch hundreds of vectorization processes. Download

Vector Cloud Brushes

Vector Cloud Brush Collection from cloud-no9. Three different versions of the brush set. For Adobe Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3.

Download:
Ver. 1.0 Ver. 2.0 Ver.3.0

Vector Animation

Excellent work by Vector Bridge. Right panning camerawith with masking vectors beneathe the background. Motion graphics by www.VectorBrigade.com .

Hot Vampire Girls

Well a jacuzzi full of blood...with hot vampire girls, that sounds fun. This vector illustration reminds me of an awful scene from Tarantino's HOSTEL 2. I coudn imagine that blood bath can be attractive. Artist page

Designing Logo In Illustrator

In this tutorial I hope to illustrate some of the process of logo design using Adobe Illustrator. However, I must stress, this is not so much a tutorial on the use of Adobe Illustrator as it is a way to show you one method of the "process" of refining an image to a corporate identity (logo) or stylized illustration.The basic process here could be applied to any application.

It should be noted that the example provided here was done mostly for this tutorial and I have bypassed a few of the earlier stages of logo design and concepting such as thumbnail sketching, etc.

The logo is for a company called stone gecko, so I thought an illustration of a chameleon/gecko type animal would be good. Part of the concept originanlly was to make the gecko"s lines apear blocky or stone like, but the process began to go out of the scope of this tutorial so I opted for a more simplified approach.

This tutorial assumes you have at least a basic working knowledge of Illustrator, for example you should know how to select objects and change their outlines and fills. Being comfortable with the pen tool is also a big plus. Go to tutorial page

Hed Kandi Street Art

"Poster art" is usually a graphic made on a newspaper thin paper. To stick a poster up so it is less tearable, artists use a paste called "wheat paste" .Its made up of approximately 1 part flour and 3 parts water. Generally posters are found in suburban or urban areas and are pasted on smooth surfaces. Hed Kandi poster on Manchester Street

Shoot Your Creativity

The most suitable motto for all designers - Shoot Your Creativity supported by the idea of a tank that's shooting markers and the smoke is coloured .Nise and simple. Artist - kontrastt.

Free Rising Sun Vector Brushes

This set contains 28 high resolution brushes for Adobe Photoshop CS, CS2, CS3 and CS4. The size of each shapes is 1280x1024 pixels. If you want to convert them to vector you can easily do so by following the steps in this tutorial.

You can use them for create abstract / minimalistic vector backgrounds. Download

For more Adobe Photoshop brushes of that kind, you can have a look at the Author's DA Profile.