Eye Drawing

While searching for tutorials to help improve my drawing, I came across this! I found this video appealing not only for the end product, but the way it's mesmerizing to watch and how the artist uses different tools to create the eye. I find myself watching this video repeatedly, I can't stop! 

The little notes he/she adds in are very helpful, at the beginning he says, "The quality of the lines is not important, but the accuracy of the shapes is crucial." This is something that I find screws me up a LOT when I'm drawing. Having disproportional shapes from the beginning sketches really affects your final product. 

I'm glad he/she shows us what kind of material he is using. I've always wanted to do some form of watercolour with pencil crayon, now I have a perfect reason to try. 

I'm also in love with this video because you can see the transformation from lights to darks as the image becomes closer to the final product. 

I will definitely try this in the near future. I think that trying new styles of art help you grow and develop as an artist. 

Have a  wonderful day! 

How to create a Despicable Me Minion!

I recently found a tutorial on how to re-create the Dispicable Me minion using Photoshop and Illustrator!
While scrolling through this acrticle, I realized how difficult an animator's job can be. They need to plan out every little detail of thier character and once they are done planning, they need to create it on the computer.

The first outlines look somewhat like this:

Before is is put into Photoshop, this is the final Illustrator outline:

When you bring the image into Photoshop, the details and colours are finalized. All of these steps are very complicated if you want your minion to look exactly as the actual one. 

Basic colours: 

Here are some shots of the layer properties (ie. drop shadows, gradients, etc.)

If you're still interested, click here for the full tutorial! 

Typography in Flash

I found the link to this video again while I was looking for various Flash tutorials. Even though I had not used it, I wish I had! It is so much easier than what I had done for that writing affect. Though I guess that's just part of the learning process. If I ever need to to anything along those lines again, I know where to go! 

However, before I found that tutorial, I found this one. This was very  helpful because after I had brought the layers from Illustrator to frames in Flash, the placement and sizes were very awkward and they didn't look quite right. I am very happy I found this tutorial, it helped a lot with what I needed in my project. 

The Periodic Table of Typefaces: Popular, Influential & Notorious

I was on StumbleUpon recently and came accross this - The Periodic Table of Typefaces. Besides being amazing and helpful, the maker of this tried putting similar typefaces in the same group/period, sort of like the  elements are grouped in the actual periodic table! Sans-Serif fonts are in the first two groups/periods. As you continue looking down, the typefaces become fancier and the script fonts are introduced. I thought the whole concept was very clever!

The creator tried to display the top 100 fonts used by designers. He included the creator of the typeface as well as the year it was made. It's interesting to see similar typefaces together thought they were made at completely different times. 

Anyway, just thought this was a good find. I highly encourage everyone to check it out. Click here for the website!