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

Advertise on Vector Art Blog?

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.

Vector Foliage Brush Set 2

New 23 high-quality photoshop ps vector brushes (some floral stuff - really cute!). Imagepacks available. Download from Aless1984

Computer Arts issue 138

What's in the new issue, on sale now

It’s a special issue this month as we roll out three different newsstand covers from three different design collectives, plus an extra exclusive subscribers-only cover. Pick your favourite or collect the set! Here’s what you’ll find inside:

FEATURES

COVER FEATURE: COLLABORATE!
Discover the new way of working that’s changing the industry
CREATING OUR COVER
How four design collectives tackled our challenging cover brief
PROFILE: SANNA ANNUKKA
The half-Finnish artist whose fresh new style is turning heads
PHOTOSHOP INSIDE OUT
Derek Lea presents 33 professional tips for Photoshop CS3
Q&A: BISHBO
The design duo that named their new studio after their cat!
TEN TIPS
Self-initiated projects will keep you creative and productive
TUTORIALS

Online PDF Portfolio

If you want to get your work seen by as many people as possible, the web is the way to go. Couple that with the flexibility of the Adobe PDF format and you have a winner...
Adobe’s PDF format has beaten off the competition to become the de-facto portable document format. While Microsoft Word might be slightly more ubiquitous, it lacks PDF’s ability to look exactly as the author intended on pretty much any platform you care to mention.
For designers creating a portfolio, this is a hugely important factor in an industry where presentation is just as important as the work on display. Users who have downloaded Adobe Reader software also have the ability to view PDFs inline without having to leave their browser, which means that PDF portfolios no longer have to be emailed but can live on a server somewhere. All you need to do is email the link.
The PDF format has quite a few tricks up its sleeve, such as the ability to incorporate complex interactivity, featuring buttons and links, and the ability to embed audio and video in addition to images. Using the easy-to-use Acrobat Professional application, it’s possible to completely control how users see your document.

Continue

Mac CS3 Brush Performance

This information may be very useful for Adobe CS3 for mac users. If you notice that custom brushes are are as laggy and slow as they used to be in Cs2 and you want to enhance their speed read below.

VM BUFFERING IN PHOTOSHOP CS3 On Macintosh computers, Photoshop can directly access up to about 3.5GB. When there is more than 3.5GB of document data, Photoshop writes data to its scratch files as necessary. On a computer with 4GB or less of RAM, the data is transferred directly between the scratch files on disk and the Photoshop RAM. On a computer with more than 4GB of RAM, Photoshop tells the operating system to use the extra RAM as a buffer for the Photoshop scratch file. In this case, when document data no longer fits in the 3.5GB of Photoshop RAM and is written to the scratch file, the operating system stores it in the extra RAM and can retrieve it from there much faster than it could be read from disk. This lets Photoshop take advantage of more than 4GB of RAM to significantly increase performance with very large documents.
When this scratch file buffering is turned on with Mac OS X v.10.3 or 10.4, the operating system periodically pauses execution of Photoshop for up to several seconds at a time. This can cause problems when painting. Installing the plug-in causes Photoshop to disable the buffering so the pauses do not occur. It also means that Photoshop only takes advantage of the 3.5GB of RAM it can directly access, so performance with very large documents will decrease.
VM BUFFERING OPTIONAL PLUG-INS
You can chose for Photoshop to disable or force VM Buffering via two optional plug-ins. If you use very large documents and have no problems with pauses during painting, you should install the force VM Buffering plug-in. If you do not use very large documents or have problems with pauses during painting, we recommend that you install the Disable VM Buffering plug-in.
To install either of the VM Buffering optional plug-ins:
Make sure the Adobe Photoshop application is not currently running.
Install the plug-in by dragging it into the Plug-Ins folder inside the Adobe Photoshop CS3 folder. The full path is: /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Plug-Ins.
Launch Photoshop. The VM Buffering plug-in(s) will be loaded

Adobe Photoshop CS3 VM Buffering Optional Extensions plug in

The Revolution Of Illustration

A revolution has taken place. The digital revolution has altered the nature of illustration beyond recognition – taking it from cottage industry to household phenomenon…

Things weren’t always this way. Before the digital revolution, life as an illustrator was fairly straightforward, or so it seemed – there was no Bill Gates, no Apple, no Photoshop, no Google, no internet, no email… no hassle. Looking back at life before the revolution, albeit through rose-tinted specs, the working day for your lone illustrator was a fairly simple affair. In fact, depending on just how far back you wish to peer, it’s clear to see just how much has changed.

Back in the land-that-time-forgot, a common-or-garden commission for a freelance illustrator would come about with a phone call made by an art director to an illustrator’s land-line – mobiles only came into everyday use just over a decade ago. If you were out of the studio when the call came, chances are you could miss the job – answer phones even 15 years ago were not the norm. The brief itself would have to be posted or collected – fax machines were huge, cumbersome and expensive items even just a decade and a half ago. How the freelance illustrator, just ten years ago, maintained a professional profile, informed clients of new work and displayed their portfolios has altered beyond recognition. Without websites and email, illustrators would utilise the humble postcard as their calling card to the creative world, designing, printing, addressing and posting hundreds of these mailshots on a regular basis. Read full article (From analogue to digital, An education in illustration, The digital generation and more)

Swirly Curls Symbols For Illustrator

18 Vector Swirls and Curls Symbols for your pleasure. All work with Adobe Illustrator CS , CS2 , CS3. Download Author Page

Sketchy and Line Art Brushes

Line art in computer graphics may have increased in popularity since line art uses vector graphics, which require significantly less computer memory than raster graphics. Here is another Sketchy and Line Art Brush set for Adobe Illustrator CS , CS2 , CS3 . Download .ai file. Author page

Vector Grunge in Inkscape

In order to easily make intricate grunge shapes, we are essentially going use a picture and trace the patterns and edges using a vector graphics software tool (InkScape). Althought this IS possible to do using Illustrator’s “Live Trace,” In my opinion, InkScape leaves Illustrator in the dust as far as tracing goes (Score: Adobe-0, Open Source-1, let the battle continue!). Full tutorial

The Colors Of Fall 2007

Pantone, Inc., the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, today unveils the PANTONE Fashion Color Report Fall 2007, available free-of-charge from the Pantone Web site at http://www.pantone.com/fall2007. The report features the top 10 colors for women’s fashion for fall ‘07 along with designer sketches, quotes and head shots. The availability of the report coincides with the beginning of New York Fashion Week.

According to the report, complex and exotic describe the intriguingly unusual and inviting color palette for women’s fashion for fall ‘07. The traditional neutral shades expected for autumn have been replaced this season with rich, nuanced hues, offering more opportunity for creativity with interesting and unexpected color combinations. Full Article

How To Become a Better Designer ?

I found a great post in digg.com about improving design skills.
Being a successful creative has a lot to do with the way you work. Sure, you can’t teach good design, but it never hurts to learn a few new tricks, or simply make the most of your talents. So without further adieu, here’s 50 ways to be more successful as a designer. Take ‘em or leave ‘em. Illustration artist

Imitating A Scanner Darkly

Using Illustrator's pencil tool and shapes of solid color, you can imitate the graphic novel styling of A Scanner Darkly. An animator from the film shows us how.

Director Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly impressed audiences this summer with a stunning 2D animation style that mixes heavy blacks lines with shapes of solid color to represent a realistic image. After filming the movie live action, we used proprietary vector software to animate directly over live footage, preserving the likeness and performances of the actors - a process called "Interpolated Rotoscoping." This tutorial will show you how I was able to recreate a similar effect using tools in Adobe llustrator. Using Illustrator's pencil tool and shapes of solid color, you can imitate the graphic novel styling of A Scanner Darkly. View Full Tutorial

Hellgate:London Skyline

Artist comments: " This is a backround I made for an upcoming release called Hellgatelondon"

Hard Spray Brush Set

18 really hard abstract spray/spattery shapes. Made in Photoshop CS.
These come in really really really useful for:
- Grunge/Vector wallpapers and pieces
- Spatter/cut-out style Sigs and Tags
- Err... anything else splattery, spattery, sprayed, cut-out style, or hard grungy vector style
Made from some existing brushes, several C4D renders, and a couple of gaming renders.

Tip: Brush once + hide layer + new layer + apply image + create clipping mask with the applied image + show brushed layer + move clipping mask = really nice affect for sigs
Download Wizard Studios

deviantART Helps To Break World Record!

A new World Record – thank you deviantArt!

The One Million Masterpiece has officially taken the world record for the most artists creating a single artwork, meaning that it has officially become the world's largest artistic collaboration.

The previous record was set in Brenham, Texas , where 25,297 people contributed to a painting titled A Little Dab of Texas. While the previous record was set over 3 years and 7 months, the One Million Masterpiece members have achieved the record in just 11 months.

The new world record will be announced on Monday 09 July, however as the single largest contributor to the project, the deviantArt community deserve a special thank-you. Over 18,000 deviantArt members have taken part in the project, helping to raise many thousands of pounds for global causes and becoming world record breakers in the process.

The 25,298th member to join the project was Geraldine Tough from Crayford in London. Geraldine heard about the project from a friend and unknowingly pushed the number of participants over the previous record when registering.

Her contribution embodies the project's core aim of create a work of art that encompasses all abilities, ages and cultures. On hearing the news she was quick to point out that "I am no artist, but thought even I could do something here". She was right.

The One Million Masterpiece is a democratic artwork with no single person having more control than any other meaning that each member has today become an official world record breaker. The work is far from complete however, and new contributors are welcome in order to help the project meet its aims to raise $5 million for it's global charity partners.

Congratulations to everyone who has taken part, and congratulations to deviantArt for playing such a crucial role in making art history!

Visit the project website at: www.millionmasterpiece.com

Vintage Patterns

Twenty-two vintage patterns of various sizes. Some of them are from two wonderful stock sites, flickr and sxc. You can use them however you want to. Download Author's page

Converse All Star Commercial Poster

Commercial Converse Poster by Hash-Wednesday. Click on the image below for full size.

Vector Line Brushes Collection

This kind of line brushes are mostly used for composing backgrounds of digital illustrations. I chose to post two high resolution vector line brush sets for Adobe Illustrator. You can also take a look at the author's DA profile

Includes: 16 Vector Line Brushes
Made With: Photoshop CS2
Sizes: 1280x1024 + 1280x2048
Download





Includes: 15 new brushes, even fading brushes.
Made With: Photoshop CS2
Sizes: 2000x2000 & 1280x1024
Download

Scanline and Screentone Patterns

These are good for use in Photoshop 7 and above. All black & white or black & transparent patterns, you can get lots of different effects if you experiment with layer styles or try inverting the colours.

To use them, download the file directly into the folder Adobe/Photoshop/Presets/Patterns and restart Photoshop for it to appear in your patterns list - just like installing brushes, but it goes into a different folder. Download Aritst page

Harmonious Color Palette

Palette Generator:Choose or upload a photo and a palette of colors based on the colors in the photo will be generated automatically. Use it to help with art projects, website design, or even with decorating your home. Works with your photos hosted on Flickr or anywhere else. Below you can see a result screenshot.

Hibiscus Brush Set

I have used this brush set for creating a house club flyer, you can see it below. The set contains 26 hibiscus brushes. You can download if from here. Actually this is my favorite flower , so I decided to publish some info about it.

"The genus Hibiscus includes some 200 species, seven of which are regarded as native Hawaiian hibiscus. Although tourists regularly do associate the hibiscus flower with their experiences visiting the US state of Hawai‘i, and the plant family Malvaceae includes a relatively large number of species that are native to the Hawaiian Islands, those flowers presented to or regularly observed by tourists are generally not the native hibiscus flowers."

Photo Vectorizing in Illustrator

Mixing vector and photo is one of the hottest trends in the illustration industry today. We've seen this effect used in national ad campaigns from Anheuser-Busch to Hawaiian Tropic. In this tutorial, we'll take a look at how to create this effect in Illustrator. Go to tutorial page

London 2012 Olympics Logo

The logo for the London 2012 Olympics cost £400,000. In this video the logo is recreated in 7.58 minutes. That works out at £478.46 per second. Do you think it was worth it ? The software used in the video is GIMP.

Charlene Chua

Charline is an award winning illutrator, whose work has appeared in magazines, cd covers, advertisements, brochures and billboards.
Originally from Singapore, she currently resides in Toronto with her husband and two cats.
She is represented by Lemonade Illustration, UK. www.charlenechua.com

This is one of her vector illustrations - The bored housewife.Artist comments:

"Well... the article actually for the bored EXPAT housewife... the explanation is that a lot of expatriates come to Singapore, get cushy jobs and live in posh places. Their wives, generally, don't need to work, and some spend their days shopping, having tea with friends, lounging about the pool and probably dreaming about having a more hunky husband. I chose Beckham for the guy on the book as he's a well know figure here that most guys as well as girls know about. Plus he was cute before he got married"