The Ultimate Digital Artist’s Resource Tuesday, Sep 29 2009

If you are an art junkie like I am, you stumble around the internet looking for sweet pictures, or even for tutorials on how to better use photoshop, illustrator, flash, etc, etc… I’ve been doing that for a while and have amassed a daunting collection of links for stuff like that, even free brushes and vectors and such, and I’m going to share all that with you, just for visiting my blog.

Before we get started, I want to point you in the direction of a few websites that are essential to bookmark, here goes:

•www.deviantart.com, if you are not a member or have never perused this site, you are missing out. Some of the top commercial artists in the world post their drawing, sketches, full blown pieces. If you are looking for free brushes for photoshop, there are tons of them on Deviantart. It’s also great for inspiration, whether you are looking for a good tattoo design, or photos to edit, they have something for everybody.

•www.videocopilot.net, if you have adobe after effects, you absolutely must bookmark this website. The guys over at VideoCoPilot currently have 95 free highly detailed video tutorials on how to do some of the most impressive CG effects that blockbuster movies use. There is also a 10 tutorial basic training series that gets you up to speed on how to use AE, I love this site, I want to have it’s babies…I’m kidding……..but seriously…

Now lets get on to some photoshop stuff, here are some places that you can find some great content, such as brushes and vectors:

•Designm.ag (500+ free brushes.)

•Ddfont (more fonts than you could possibly want.)

•Brushking (lots of free photoshop brushes)

•designfreebies (10 free photoshop actions.)

•hongkiat (85 free high quality silhouettes.)

•public-domain-photos (5000 free stock photos.)

•smashingmagazine (ultimate collection of useful photoshop actions, explore this site theres all kinds of free goodies.)

•pictaculous (a color palette generator, so useful, you upload your picture, it gives you a relevant palette.)

•qbrushes (quality brushes for photoshop.)

•fbrushes (more free photoshop brushes.)

Finally we get to the tutorials, and there are plenty:

•psdeluxe (25 light effect photoshop tutorials.)

•sixrevisions (22 professional photoshop image enhancing tutorials.)

•photoshoptutorials (22 PAGES of photoshop tutorials.)

•tutorialking (lots of photoshop tutorials.)

•gracesmith (a resource list, much like this one, 115 insanely useful photoshop tips & tutorials.)

•sixrevisions (26 more image enhancing tutorials from these guys.)

•noupe (53 killer photoshop/illustrator tutorials.)

•designshard (11 great photoshop photo effect tutorials.)

•photoshoplady (oh man, probably my favorite resource for photoshop tutorials, its a virtual cornucopia, I want to marry photoshop lady. )

•good-tutorials (as the name suggests, there are plenty of good photoshop tutorials to be found here.)

•bestphotoshoptutorials (there are brushes here as well as the tutorials.)

•emmaalvarez (photoshop tutorials specifically for photographers.)

•tutorialmagazine (on the same level as photoshop lady, except i dont want to marry their logo, there are also illustrator and flash tutorial sections here.)

•hongkiat (we were here earlier for silhouettes, just goes to show you, you should explore these sites thoroughly, sweet retro/vintage tutorials.)

•photoshoproadmap (into typography? you should be, here are a bunch of photoshop lettering design tutorials.)

•designreviver (essentially these are cosmetic tutorials, teaching you all the nasty trickery that goes into putting models on magazine covers)

•speckyboy ( some pretty cool image manipulation tutorials.)

•tutorial9 (some simple but powerful depth of field tutorials.)

•psdfan ( 75 photoshop lighting effect tutorials)

That’s it for now, i have a few more, but i dont want to overload you guys, if you want more, comment and let me know, I’ll be more than happy to update the blog, later guys,

-Miguel

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Is the world getting dumber? Monday, Sep 28 2009

There you are, in the midst of a stimulating conversation, enjoying yourself immensely when just over your shoulder you hear someone talking on their cell phone: “I was like OMG, I cant believe he had the nerve to talk to me, I totally LOL’d.” No you are not in the twilight zone, this is the new trend with young people, speaking in acronyms. If this concept scares you, welcome to the resistance. It does not end there, not in the least, if speaking skills are in a decline, then writing skills are in virtual free fall. I admit to being somewhat obsessive compulsive about spelling and general grammar, and I forgive the occasional typo as we all do it from time to time, but I get downright fired up about people who have high school diplomas or even college degrees that spell like 4 year olds on methamphetamines. What really sets me off for some reason, is published material with gross errors in spelling, particularly when that published item is an educational textbook. If our very learning institutions are being permeated with stupid, how are we expected to stamp out this epidemic? It seems that we are not expected to do anything of the sort, we had a president (for two full terms) who spoke about as good as I pilot rocketships. The scary part about this is that he spoke the majority of our country’s vernacular, i.e. “dumb”, and that’s why (part of the reason) he was elected as president, twice.

How did we arrive in the situation where it is trendy to be a moron, it’s frightening that some people can’t spell simple words, or can’t discern when a word is appropriate for use in a sentence, for example: “I dont no wat u said, u dont seem 2 b spking english. O, u looking 4 rachel n todd? there @ da store.” I cant even replicate it, it makes me feel dirty anyhow. What’s worse than a person that can’t spell simple words? How about someone who knows perfectly well how to spell, but misspells things on purpose to fit in, this idea makes my soul shiver. Where does this road lead? Will they eventually replace words in the dictionary with dumber versions, will people use acronyms heavily in speech without knowing what words theyre supposed to stand for? I don’t think it’s cute when girls misspell, in fact, a lack of basic intelligence is a gigantic turn off for me.

Sign of the times

If you too are alarmed at the spreading stupidity problem, know that you are not alone. There are those of us that meet in secret where we guiltlessly think, share ideas, and hope for a smarter future. We are outnumbered and seemingly outgunned, but I refuse to go down without a fight, I will battle the horde single handedly if it comes to that,

this is what we're up against

thanks for reading folks, thanks for being able, you are my motivation. Stay classy people of the interwebs,

-Miguel

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