onClipEvent (load) {
total = _root.getBytesTotal();
}
onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
loaded = _root.getBytesLoaded();
percent = int(loaded/total*100);
progress = ""+percent+"%";
gotoAndStop(percent);
if (loaded == total) {
_root.gotoAndPlay(2);
}
} 

Step 16

While the "preloader" is still selected, go to the Properties Panel below the stage, choose Filters > plus icon > Bevel, and choose the following options from the picture below.

Then, click again on plus icon, choose Gradient Glow and set the options from the picture below.

Now you get this:

Step 17

Create a new layer above preloader layer and name it loading.

Step 18

Take the Text Tool (T), go to the Properties Panel below the stage and choose Static Text. Then, type above the preloader loading. See the picture below

Step 19

While the text ("loading") is still selected, press F8 key and convert it into a Movie Clip Symbol.

Step 20

Double-click on the movie clip on stage with the Selection tool (V), or choose right click and Edit in Place.

Step 21

After that, press F6 key (Keyframe), six times.

Step 22

Click on every second frame, and after that, press delete key on the keyboard.See the picture below.

Step 23

Go back on the main scene (Scene1),Take the Selection Tool (V) and click once on the "loading" text to select it. Then, go to the Properties Panel, choose Filters > plus icon > Bevel and set the following options:

Step 24

Create a new layer above the loading layer and name it picture.

Step 25

Click on frame 2, and press F6 key. Then, go to the A.S.Panel (F9), and enter this code inside the Action Panel:

stop();

Step 26

Then, while you're still on frame 2, choose File > Import > Import to Stage (Ctrl+R) and Import any picture.

That's it!

Enjoy!

Download source file (.fla)

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Abstract artworks often combine renders, stock photos and simple techniques in Photoshop to create professional results.  However, understanding symmetry, composition, lighting and the tools in Photoshop can take awhile to learn, and practice is required.

In this tutorial, we are going to extract the ability of Photoshop tools to make an epic piece of digital art.  We’ll look at how to manipulate a pre-made render into the composition, as well as how to utilize blending modes, gradients and the liquify tool to achieve a brilliant abstract result.

You’ll learn a variety of techniques and useful tips to use in your own compositions, so let’s get started!

Tools Required:

• Adobe Photoshop

Final Image Preview:

Step 1:

To start, create new canvas sized at 994×1312 pixels, and fill it with black.  Next, create a new layer, and go to Filter->Render->Clouds.  Duplicate this layer, and then merge the two layers.  Set your blending options to Luminosity and reduce the opacity to 21% and the fill to 13%.

Next, we need our subject.  For this piece, I’ll be using this mask, located here: http://lured2stock.deviantart.com/art/Mask-1-2777188
Extract it from the background, in this case I just rendered it with the pen tool.  Paste it into your document and arrange it where you want.  There are a few rough edges, so I decided to do some enhancements to make it look better.

First, I applied smart blur to the mask.  Go to Filter->Blur-> Smart Blur, and apply the following settings: Radius: 3, Threshold 34.7, Quality: Medium, Mode: Normal.

After applying this blur, I also adjusted the brightness and contrast.  To do this, go to Layers->New Adjustment Layer, and apply the following settings: Brightness: 61, Contrast: -28
Resize it and erase the upper part using soft brush, to create a fading effect (see before and after below).

Here you can see the before and after, and how our effects helped bring out the image.

So, now you should have what I have below:

Step 2:

The ‘hair’ part of this mask is a render from Cinema4D.  I only used one C4D for this tutorial, and manipulated it to get the result.  You can get it here. Grab the rendered C4D and put it in to our canvas.

Next, I desaturated the render.

After desaturating the c4d, I applied some technique to make it flow around.  To do this, I used the liquify tool.  Open the liquify shortcut command (ctrl+shift+x) or go to Filter>Liquify.
In applying liquify, first you must have concept of what are going to make. Just play around  liquify preset.  I only used the forward warp tool, set the brush size to 150 and leave all the rest to default.


I came up with this and I’m comfortable of this outcome.  So I duplicated and flip it horizontally for a symmetric effect.


I decided to add more hair volume, so grab the render again and open again the liquify preset.  Just be creative and be patient, be willing to undo your changes if you don’t like the result.  Erase some unwanted parts according to your liking.  Resize it to be a bit smaller, which will help with the effect.   Again, just experiment.



To add some more visual impact again, I used the same process but this time I didn’t apply desaturate to the C4D.  This allowed the image to be colorful. I put the colored C4D layers in the middle, under the smaller render.

Step 3:

We are on to the coloring process, so first I used a nebula stock shown below:

Grab the nebula stock to our canvas, and set the blending option to ‘linear dodge’.

After I erased the unwanted parts, I just duplicated it and flipped horizontally to place it on the other side.


Now, we will add soft lights.  Create a new layer under the colored c4d layers.  Fill it with black and set the blending options to linear dodge.  With the soft brush 400px size, I chose three colors to blend. ( #ff9c00)( #00e4ff)( #ff00fc)  Next, I blurred it, by going to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur with a radius to 10px.  Be sure to follow this process to make it like mine.

Step 4:

Create new layer again under the c4d layers. Fill it with black and set the blending options to linear dodge again.  Grab the rectangular marquee tool put some gradient on it of color ( #00fff6) to transparent.  Duplicate it and place it diagonally, erasing the hard edges using soft brush.  Follow the image below to duplicate it and place it on the other side.


Using pen tool we will draw an illustration then stroke it with simulated pressure with 3px brush. Just like what we did before,  again the rectangular marquee tool follow the same process but we will using this color ( #fc00ff).  After that duplicate again and flip it horizontally.

Step 5:

We will add more lights. Create new layer again, fill it with black and set it to linear dodge. Using the rectangular marquee tool again we will make a selection like this:

Grab the gradient tool and set to this color (# 0000ff) to transparent.


After that, erase some parts using a soft brush, duplicate it, resize and place it to the desired position.  I also added a pen tool stroke below it.


Add more effects, this time using elliptical marquee tool and gradients, just like our previous layers set it to linear dodge.

After erasing erase some parts and after adding more by duplicating and resizing it, make some small particles using a brush, and use an Outer Glow blending mode to give it a nice glow.  Duplicate it and flip it to the other side to continue the symmetrical appearance.

Step 6:

We are almost finished. We will add small particles spashing around.  To do that, we’ll use the same nebula stock as the previous tutorial.

Paste it onto our canvas and set the blending mode to linear dodge.  Just play around in placing the stock.


I added some of this color ( #ff7200) to make it more dramatic.  Create new layer, fill with black and set to linear dodge and paint the color using a soft brush.

Conclusion:

Try to check your layer arrangements, as it is important in order to make it more realistic.  When making light effects, the blending option linear dodge is our main weapon here as well as the stock photos.  The symmetrical appearance helps the visual appeal, and creativity and patience leads to a successful artwork.  After a few minor adjustments, I came up with this.  Thanks for reading and drop some comments below.  Hope you learned something new in this tutorial.

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In today’s tutorial we will create a clean and colorful arcade layout. This tutorial was create to teach the readers how to create different content boxes. hope you enjoy!

Preview:

Create a new photoshop document

1 Open up Photoshop, create a new document that is 1200px by 1300px, with a background color of #2d2d2d

Creating the background

2 I found a nice picture of some mountains from SXC and placed the image at the top of the canvas. I then used the eraser tool to lightly blend the background and the image together

Creating header and navigation

3 Select the rectangular selection tool (M). Create a rectangle in the top center of the canvas with a width of 942px and height of 3px

4 Select the gradient tool (G) with the linear gradient option selected. Use the rainbow gradient and drag it from the right of the canvas to the left

5 Select the rectangle tool (U). Create a dark Grey (#292929) rectangle with a width of 942px and height of 95px place the rectangle underneath the rainbow rectangle

6 1px below the rainbow rectangle section create a 1px white (#ffffff) that spans 942px lower the layers opacity to 50%

Creating the main content area

7 Select the rectangle tool (U). Create a white (#ffffff) rectangle with a width of 942px and height of 1093px place the rectangle underneath the header / nav leave a 20px – 30px gap

8 Double click the layer to open the layer styles dialogue box. Use the settings below

Adding a rotator area

9 Select the rectangle tool (U). Create a dark Grey (#292929) rectangle with a width of 924px and height of 286px place the rectangle at the top of the white area

Creating a featured game box

10 Select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a blue (#008fff) rectangle with a width of 331px and height of 78px

11 Double click the layer to open the layer styles dialogue box. Use the settings below

Creating a tabbed game menu

12 Select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a Grey (#3b3b3b) rectangle with a width of 270px and height of 115px

13 Again select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a light blue (#a4d0ff) rectangle with a width of 331px and height of 202px

14 Once again select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a light blue (#a4d0ff) rectangle with a width of 115px and height of 202px place the rectangle to the left of the blue box this should overlap part of the Grey area and create a nice looking tab

Creating the main content boxes

15 Select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a orange (#ffa100) rectangle with a width of 279px try to make the height at least 50px. Select the rectangular selection tool (M) create a selection overlapping the bottom of the rounded rectangle, hit delete

16 Select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a dark Grey (#292929) rectangle with a width of 279px its height should be 170px place the layer behind the yellow bar then raise it until you have something like this

17 Repeat steps 15 – 16 until you have something similar to the image below

Adding a nice sidebar

15 Select the rectangle tool (U). Create a light Grey (#d8d8d8) rectangle with a width of 296px and height of 526px

16 Above the light Grey rectangle box I added an advertisement banners

17 Here is what we should have now

Adding some extra background details

18 I added a render to both sides of the layout. These can be found on Planet Renders

Adding details

Adding the navigation bar

19 To create the navigation bar we need to create a white (#ffffff) 1px line that spans the header area

20 Directly above that select the rectangular selection tool (M) create a rectangle that spans the header its height should be 20px

21 Set the foreground color to #292929 and background to #000000. Select the gradient tool (G) with the linear gradient option selected and drag a gradient from the top downwards. this will create a gradient in the selection

22 Duplicate the layer. select the duplicate and flip it vertically (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP VERTICALLY). Change the layers blending options to overlay and reduce its opacity to 40%

23 I added a logo and some game type categories

24 We are now going to create a drop down list. Select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set to 4px. Create a rectangle with a width of 259px and height of 192px double click the layer to open the layer styles dialogue box and use the settings below

25 Rasterize the layer and cut the top section away so it smoothly joins the navagation bar

26 I added a rollover state which is a simple arrow facing down which indicates a drop down menu. on the drop down menu I added the same arrows facing right with the games that fit into that category

Adding content to the rotator

27 I added a centered a image i found at SXC to the middle of the dark Grey rectangle

Creating the featured game thumbnail box

28 Create a white (#ffffff) rectangle with a width of 77px and height of 65ox. double click the layer to open the layer styles dialogue box. Use the settings below

29 I added a thumbnail to the middle of the rectangle and to the right I added information about the game

Creating the tabbed game thumbnail boxes

28 Create a light blue (#eef6ff) rectangle with a width of 76px and height of 76px. double click the layer to open the layer styles dialogue box. Use the settings below

29 I duplicated the box and added a thumbnail in the middle of each box. On the right I added the games title, a rating system which I found the icons for at Iconfinder.com and the amount of plays the game has had

Creating the lists for the boxes

30 For the lists throughout the layout I used a image based list. The icon can be found on Iconfinder each one has a 10 – 30px space between them

31 I added game titles next to each icon. I then gave each box/tabbed menu a title, the text has been aligned to the left of the box

Completing the sidebar

32 Select the rectangular selection tool (M). create a rectangle with a width of 282px and height of 46px. Set your foreground color to #679ad2 and background to #85b6ed. Select the gradient tool (G) with the linear option selected, drag a gradient from the top of the selection downwards

33 I added a icon to the left of the title bar, next to that I added the actual title. For the content of the sidebar I added a dual list that contains all the games that would be on the site

Completing the sidebar

34 For the top games box I created the same thumbnail I created in steps 28 – 29 as for the content to the right. i then duplicated the thumbnail/game information until the box was filled

Completing the footer

35 For the footer I created a simple copyright line this is placed to the left

Congratulations!

You have now completed the tutorial design hope you enjoyed it!

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This first tutorial at Spoon Graphics covers the process of designing a logotype, this particular logo created in the tutorial is for a fictional business named Purple Lemon, which immediately suggests a modern, trendy, possibly web/internet or design related company.
The tutorial covers the complete design process from conception to completion, creating a practical logotype that will work in the real world.

For a commissioned project more details on what the business specializes in, and their desired image and values would be researched, but for this tutorial the rather vague description allows us to create a more generic logo.

When designing a logo it is important that the final creation is practical, in that it can be used in everyday business life as intended. Here are some general rules that should apply to your logo designs:

1) Always design your logos in a vector application such as Adobe Illustrator, and not a raster application such as Photoshop, reason being the logo must be scalable without losing quality and needs to appear crisp when printed on anything from business cards to 20ft vinyl banners.

2) Ensure that the logo can be reproduced in a single colour, such as black and still be recognisable. Think how the logo will look on a press advert or fax letter, or reversed out of a black background.

3) Bear in mind that the logo may need to be reproduced as small as a postage stamp, so ensure that any fine lines or text will still be legible when scaled down.

4) Limit your colour palette and specify your corporate colours with Pantone or CMYK references to certify correct colour reproduction when printed.

5) Finally bear in mind your use of typeface, colour and form to give your logo the desired appearance of it's business.

The logo that will be created in this tutorial can be seen below. Following the above rules this logo can be implemented on anything from a pen to full van livery, by designing it to work well in black and white, it can then be produced in flat colours, and then maybe even be given some trendy gradient and reflection treatment for use on screen.

Before starting your computer based designs it is always useful to sketch out your ideas with a good old pencil and notepad.
It may also help to browse the internet for relevant images and photographs, for example in this project it helped to study the shape of a lemon.

Once you have your chosen design(s) in mind open up Adobe Illustrator, and create a canvas in CMYK mode.
Use the Ellipse Tool to draw an oval shape and fill with a random colour.

Draw a smaller circle while holding shift, then duplicate it and place them at either side of the larger oval.
Select all three objects and select 'Add to Shape Area' with the Pathfinder tool and click Expand, this merges all the shapes into one path.

To create a smoother, lemon-style shape, draw a curved line with the Pen tool that follows the form of the graphic, and complete the path to form a shape. Repeat this on the remaining corners. It may help to toggle to outline mode by pressing CTRL-Y.

Select all the shapes and select 'Add to Shape Area' again in the Pathfinder window and Expand, this shape now looks more like a lemon!

Zoom in on this shape's path and you will find a few unnecessary points, it is good practice to remove these using Delete Anchor Point under the Pen tool to give a smoother shape.

Next, select the shape and go to Object > Path > Offset Path…
Enter 3mm in the option box. Fill this new shape with another random colour.

To give the impression of a bulge in the centre of the shape, two curved lines will be added, to create these select the Star tool.
While clicking and dragging press the down arrow key to reduce the number of points until you have a triangle.

This triangle has some unnecessary points so remove them as before with the Pen tool. Then select the upper most point and drag vertically while holding shift to constrain the axis.

To bend this triangle go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Warp…
Select the Arc style and enter 50% on the Vertical axis.

Make this new shape editable by going to Object > Expand, and select just the Object box.

Scale, reflect and rotate this shape as necessary to fit within the outer shape as shown. Duplicate and repeat on the opposite side. Then fill these shapes in the same colour as the outer shape.

Select the inner shape and press CTRL-C to copy, then select just the outer and inner lemon shapes and press use the Subtract From Shape Area tool from the Pathfinder window and expand. This has now removed the centre of the outer shape. Press CTRL-F to replace the inner shape.

This will now allow us to merge the curved lines with the outer shape by using the Add to Shape Area from the Pathfinder window, press CTRL-SHIFT-] to bring this shape to the top.

Zoom in and check for any unnecessary points that can be removed.
Next the lemon can be given it's corporate colours, in this example I have used a dark purple of 70C, 80M, 0Y, 0K and a lighter purple of 45C, 70M, 0Y, 0K.
Rotate the lemon to roughly 45degrees to give it a little dynamism.

Despite adding the curved lines to give the appearance of a bulge the shape still looks rather flat, a reflection may help give more of a three dimensional impression..
Draw a circle whilst holding Shift, then drag a guide along the vertical centre of the shape.
Use this guide along with the pen tool and create a triangle as shown in the screenshot.

Use the Add to Shape Area tool from the Pathfinder to merge these shapes.

Give the shape a bend by using the Envelope Distort tool again (Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Warp), using the same options of Arc, 50%, Vertical.
Object > Expand > Object to make the shape editable.

Rotate, reflect and scale and bring into position on the lemon graphic, give it a light shade of purple such as 35C, 45M, 0Y, 0K.

This leaves our lemon icon/graphic complete, now onto the typographic element…

Type out the words 'purple' and 'lemon' and set in your desired font. In this case I have used a free font from www.dafont.com called Eurofurence. It's rounded appearance is similar to the popular VAG Rundschrift typeface used in many 'Web 2.0' logos and gives a friendly, modern, trendy image.

At first I used the bold weight for the word 'purple', but it looked too overweight so I set them both to regular, and used a stroke to give a slightly stronger appearance to 'purple'.

Convert the text to outlines (CTRL-SHIFT-O) and align the two words to the baseline, zoom right in and use guides or a temporary square shape to adjust the kerning of the characters by eye. Also adjust the word spacing as desired.

Select the word 'purple' and go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke, draw a selection across each letter individually and Add to Shape Area from the Pathfinder window. This removes the duplicate paths from the stroke we added earlier and creates a nice simple letter outline.

Use guides again to balance the lemon graphic with the text, scaling the lemon to fit within the Ascender and Descender lines.

Finally add the corporate colours to the text to link the design together. Then variations can be produced such as a single colour version, flat colour version and full blown glossy reflected super trendy Web 2.0 version!

This logo now sets the theme for the whole corporate identity, where the colours, lemon graphic and typeface will be implemented into the design of the stationery, brochures, advertisements and website.

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In this easy lesson made for Flash 8 professional I will show you how to create a set of cool, neon glow playback control buttons easily. No other applications will be used to create these buttons, because Flash has so much power on its own! You will see:

• How to use the basic shapes to create the ones you need,
• How to use the great blending filters in Flash 8 pro,
• How to combine multiple filters and objects stacked upon one another, and some more.

You can see the example of the sleek buttons below.

Preliminary steps — setting the background

1 Open a new Flash document. Choose Modify > Document (shortcut: Ctrl+J). Select black as document background color. Click OK.

2 Select the Rectangle tool (R). Turn off the stroke color by clicking on the little pencil icon and then the small red-striped square at the bottom of the Tools panel: .

3 Make sure that both the Object drawing and Snap to objects options are turned off: .

4 Click the Set Corner Radius icon () and enter 6 in the window that will show up, click OK. This is done in order to have rectangles with round corners.

5 Draw a flat color (any color will do) 410 by 120 pixel rectangle.

6 Select the Paint Bucket tool (K). Go to the Color Mixer panel (opened by default — you can always find it in the top right part of the Flash working space). Do the following (see numbers in the screenshot below):

1. Click on the paint bucket icon to select the fill color.
2. In the Type menu, select Linear.
3. Click once on the small colored square found on the bottom right.
4. In the color code field, enter the hex code #2E70AA (that’s a zero, not the letter O).
5. Set the Alpha property for this color to 34%.
6. Set the same color for the left square, but set its Alpha to 100%.

7 Press and hold Shift, click near the rectangle’s top and drag your mouse down until the rectangle’s bottom. Release your mouse button, and there is your nice gradient!

Creating the glowing outer ring

8 Lock the current layer and call it background. Create a new layer and call it buttons.

9 Select the Oval tool (O). Go to the Property inspector and make the following selections: block the fill color, select any flat color for the stroke (outline) color, set the line type to Solid and choose 3 for line thickness.

10 Somewhere over the rectangle, draw a ring (it is a circle, but because of the line thickness and lack of fill, it looks like a ring). Make it 70 by 70 pixels.

11 Select the ring by clicking on it with the Selection tool (V), if it isn’t already selected. Go to the Color Mixel panel and click on the pencil icon to select the Stroke color (). In the Type menu, choose Linear exactly like you did for the fill color previously. Add two more color squares to the gradient by simply clicking anywhere between the two existing ones. You should have four of them in total, with the following color values, positioned like this:

Note: all the four squares should have their alpha set to 100% (complete opaqueness). The ring will now look like this:

I have hidden the background layer to work more easily and so that you can more clearly see the various steps.

12 Select the Gradient Transform tool (F). Click on the ring to select it. Rotate the gradient by 90°. To successfully do this, make sure that Snapping to Objects is turned on (View > Snapping > Snap to Objects). Then, press and hold Shift, click on the white circle handle and start moving your mouse clockwise.

13 While the ring is selected, press F8 (or select Modify > Convert to Symbol) to make a symbol out of it. Name it outer ring. Select Movie clip as type and be sure to select the registration point in the middle (see screenshot below):

Click OK. This choice for the registration point will make it easier to align the elements inside the button later.

14 Click on the Filters tab in the Properties panel (see no. 1 in screenshot below). Click on the plus icon (2) and select the Glow filter. Make the adjustements as follows:

1. Blur X and Y: 8
2. Strength: 260%
3. Quality: High.
4. Color: #ADE2FC.

Leave the Knockout and Inner glow options unchecked. You will get a nice glow for your outer ring:

Making the main button circle

15 Select the ring again and press F8 again, while leaving the same registration point as previously and Movie clip as type of symbol. Call the new symbol play button and click OK.

16 Double-click on the newly made play button symbol to enter inside it. Call the first layer outer ring and lock it. That’s where the ring that you have just created resides. Make a new layer above it and call it circle.

17 Select the Oval tool (O) again. Go down to the Properties panel. Set #B0E2FD for the outline color and #3A5274 for the fill color. Select Solid as line type and a thickness of 2.

18 Draw a 54 by 54 pixel circle on the stage, anywhere.

19 Select the circle (both the outline and the fill). Open the Align panel by selecting Window > Align. Turn on the To stage button (1). Click the align horizontal center (2) and align vertical center (3) buttons.

The circle will now be perfectly aligned with the play button movie clip’s registration point and also with the ring below it.

20 Choose the Selection tool (V) and click on the fill of the circle once to select it. Press Ctrl+C to copy it.

21 Lock the current layer and call it circle. Make a new layer above it and call it circle overlay.

22 Select Edit > Paste in Place to paste the circle you copied two steps earlier exactly on the same position, but inside this new layer.

23 The copy of the circle fill will be selected by default after pasting. Go to the Color Mixer panel. Click on the paint bucket icon to select the fill color. In the Type menu, select Linear. Make the following gradient:

• You should have three color squares, one in the middle and one on each end of the gradient.
• Each square’s color should be white.
• The alpha factor of squares on each end should be 41%. The middle one’s should be set to 3%.

24 Use the Gradient Transform tool (F) to rotate the gradient by 90°, just like before. The final result should look like this:

Creating the play icon

25 Lock the circle overlay layer, make a new layer above it and call it icon.

26 Select the Rectangle tool (R). Block the stroke color. Set the fill color to #3A5274. Draw a 33 by 33 pixelsquare anywhere on the stage.

27 Turn on the Snap to Objects option and use the Selection tool (V) to create a triangle out of the rectangle. Do it like this (follow the image sequence below):

1. Bring the cursor close to the square’s upper right corner.
2. Click and start dragging down, until you reach the middle of square’s height. Release your mouse button.
3. Repeat the same thing for the lower right corner of the square, this time dragging the corner towards the point you just made in the previous move. Once near, the corner will snap into place. Release the mouse and there is your triangle.

28 Click on the triangle to select it. Go to the Property inspector and type 27 in the W (width) field. There! You have a good-looking play button now. The screenshots below show the difference in size before and after the width of the triangle was modified.

29 Center the triangle inside the button.

30 Select the Ink bottle tool (S). In the Properties panel, choose Solid as type and set the thickness to 4. Click anywhere on the triangle to give it an outline.

31 Choose the Selection tool (V). Double-click on the triangle’s border to select it.

32 Press Ctrl+X to cut the outline.

33 Lock the icon layer. Make a new layer below it and call it icon outline.

34 Select Edit > Paste in Place to place the icon border here, right below the icon itself.

35 Lock the icon outline layer and unlock the icon layer. Select the triangle inside it.

36 Hit F8 to convert it into a symbol. Call it play icon and click OK.

37 The new play icon movie clip will be selected by default. Go to the Properties panel and click on the Filters tab to set the blending options for this symbol. Choose the Glow filter and tweak it like this:

1. Blur X and Y: 6
2. Strength: 240%
3. Quality: Medium
4. Color: #ACE0FD
5. Inner glow must be turned on.

And — ta-daa — here’s the final result, with the background:

Now ain’t it cool? This blue neon glow looks soooo good ! Let me show you now how to easily duplicate theis button and create a stop button out of it.

Creating the glowing stop button from the play button

38 Go back to the main scene by clicking on the Scene 1 link.

39 Open the Library by selecting Window > Library.

40 Right-click on the play button in the Library and select Duplicate from the pop-up menu. The Duplicate Symbol window ill appear. Just change the symbol’s name to stop button and click OK.

Repeat the same thing with the play icon symbol: duplicate it and call the new symbol stop icon. You will have fice symbols (all of them movie clips) in the Library now: the outer ring which is present in both the play button and stop button symbols, as well as play icon and stop icon for each respective symbol. Let me show you now how to make the modifications.

41 Double-click on the stop button symbol inside the Library to enter inside it. Unlock its icon layer.

42 Click once on the play icon that is inside it, to select it.

43 Go to the Properties panel and click the Swap button.

44 The Swap Symbol window will show up. All the symbols that you made in your Flash document so far are displayed here — exactly as they appear in the Library. Select the stop icon symbol and click OK.

Although this movie clip symbol looks exactly the same as the play icon, you know that this is the stop icon in fact. Flash informs you of this by displaying the name of the currently selected symbol in the Properties panel:

45 Now, double-click the stop icon movie clip on the stage to enter inside it. Erase the triangle and draw a 28 by 28 pixel borderless square in its place. I have made the square smaller, because if it had the dimensions of the triangle, it would come too close to the circle’s border and that wouldn’t look so good. Oh, yes: the color of the square should be the same as triangle’s: #3A5274.

46 Click on the stop button link to go back to the movie clip’s timeline.

47 Align the icon in relation to the movie clip’s center.

48 Lock the icon layer. Unlock the icon outline layer. Erase the outline triangle that is inside it.

49 Draw a rectangle here, without a fill, and make it the same size as the icon above it: 28 by 28 pixels. the line should have the same thickness as before (4) and the same color (#3A5274). Align it like you did with the icon. It should look like this:

And finally, here are both the play and stop neon glow buttons, side by side:

They look awesome! And there was no need at all to use Photoshop! The pause, fast forward and rewind buttons can be made easily now — you know now the easy principle of duplicating symbols. Just make smaller triangles for the rewind button and make two rectangles for the pause button. Nothing easier than that.

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Web analytics is the process of measuring site statistics and analyzing traffic behavior. Here are there of the main benefits of web analytics.
It is typical for any business to do some data analysis. Data analysis is used to determine sales, profit, loss rate, and market interest. However, in terms of establishing a strong e-presence for your website, there is one tool that you could used in order to collect necessary data that you would need to promote your site.

Web analytics has been gaining steady popularity among websites, blogs and portals. It is used to analyze market trends and to identify website users or visitors. It is also used to determine the behavior of website users. It is a great tool to determine your latest website trends and your visitors’ or users’ preferences in terms of site features. Here are the benefits of web analytics.

Number 1: It helps monitor your visitors and users

With web analytics, you would know how long your visitor stayed in your website, who they are and where they came from. You will be able to know their clickstreams, the keywords they used, and how they came to be in your website (referrer pages, search engines, etc). You would be able to determine how many times a user or a visitor returned to your website and which pages were given preference.

In fact, a web analytics tool would tell you your website usage down to the last specifics. It would tell you about your visitor’s nationality and language. It can even pinpoint the city of origin. Of course, it will tell you the IP addresses and the host used for access. Further analysis would reveal if your visitors were there to actually check out your site or if they were mere strays. Most certainly, you will know how many visitors you get daily.

Number 2: It can help you optimize your website

Once you have carefully studied the actions of your visitors or web users, you would be able to act accordingly in order to optimize your website. You would also have an idea about the things that need changing and the aspects of your website that may appeal more to your market. You would know which pages are most viewed and which are basically ignored. You would be able to adjust certain aspects of your website that need improvement or adjustments. You could then fix any technical problems; or you could also improve, streamline or reshape site navigation to better assist your site users or visitors.

Number 3: It can help you formulate a sales and e-marketing plan

Web analytics will be able to assist you in preparing for an e-marketing plan and course of action. This will be more effective because your plan would be based on actual facts and not mere probabilities. You would be able to really know what your market wants. By tracking the items which were highly viewed, you would learn which products received the highest response. You would also be able to enhance other programs that you have already employed like pay-per-click or PPC advertising. You would be able to get more clients, as well as monitor and keep your clients interested.

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For those of you without good sketching ability – please don’t jump ship just yet! I will also discuss a number of tips and techniques to using your pen tool that applies to ALL vector artists – so keep reading. You’ll still learn a thing or two. And who knows – maybe you try to sketch something anyway.

I am going to meander a bit between different sketches, but here is one example of a vector illustration that was based off of a sketch.

This is a design our firm was hired to do for the rock band Mr. Gnome. The theme was straight forward, a gnome with a guitar in a dynamic pose.

The tools you’ll need for this tutorial are:

1. Pencil
2. Paper
3. Scanner
4. Computer (with a monitor)
5. Adobe Illustrator (and Photoshop wouldn’t hurt either)

This tutorial will cover:

1. Sketching – How detailed to get in your sketch?
2. What resolution to scan your sketch.
3. How to set up your Illustrator file.
4. Tips and Techniques to digitally inking your sketch using vector lines.
5. Tips and Techniques to coloring your vector illustration.

Step 1. Sketching.
Ok here we go. Since we will not be using photographs – we’re going to have to rely on our ability to draw.

First, I believe that learning how to draw is like learning any other skill. It takes time, practice and it doesn’t hurt if you study a little. So go buy yourself books on drawing, find tutorials online or sign up for classes at your local college. And of course, nothing in the world can replace practice.

This sketching phase of the process should be a fun relaxing part of the process. If you put pressure on yourself you will surely struggle. When I am drawing I try to let go of all expectations. When you sit down to draw tell yourself: “I may draw for the next three hours and may draw nothing good. But I am going to enjoy the process.” Have a pile of paper, a pencil sharpener and an eraser. Always start by sketching as loosely as possible; just work on basic shapes. Get yourself to relax. Turn on some good tunes, have a can of Coke, whatever it takes to get yourself into a good place. I really think this is a big part of getting yourself in the right frame of mind to draw well. It may seem silly – but imagine if you sat down with one sheet of paper, a thirty minute deadline and a rigorous expectation of what you needed to draw. Wow… what pressure! You would be setting yourself up for failure! That’s no fun. So, sit down, relax, let go of any expectations you put on yourself and have some fun.

Also, you need to know that the final sketch will usually be achieved through a process. Many amateur artists don’t truly realize all the “steps” that go into creating a final piece of art like the one I drew. The assumption is that I sat down and in one fell swoop illustrated this final sketch. Frequently there are a lot more steps to this process. Here is a typical process that a professional illustrator might go through to produce a final illustration:

1. Extremely rough “comps” are drawn to show your client what you are intending to draw. Often times there will be several of these so your client has some options. Often times the client will give you feedback on your comps – so you’ll have to modify your composition until they’re happy. Here is a sample of how rough the early “comps” can be:

2. “Studies” are then drawn for a variety of the elements in the image. If, for instance you’ve never drawn a palm tree before you might want to download some pictures of palm trees and sketch them for a while till you get a good handle on how to draw them.

3. The first draft of the final illustration is then done. It always starts with loose light lines to get the composition worked out, then you’ll go over it filling in with “tighter” lines to get your details.

4. Often times some aspect of the illustration looks bad. A professional artist will re-work that part of the illustration on a separate piece of paper until they get it right.

As you can see – this is definitely a process. So, don’t get frustrated if it takes a lot of work to get your final sketch together.

How detailed you get with your sketch is up to you. Personally, I find that it is always easier to decide where I want lines while I am in the sketching phase. So I will get fairly detailed in my drawing before I scan it into the computer. Deciding where to put lines when I’m vectorizing (digitally inking) my sketch is much harder. So I will err on the side of a “tight” sketch (lots of detail) versus a “loose” sketch. Here are two examples of illustrations. This first one is the fairly tight sketch of a demon that I drew for Ozz Fest.

The second sketch is a much more loose drawing:

Lines are not well defined and there is a lot that you would have to make decisions about once you get the drawing into Illustrator. You have to be extremely skilled in your ability to work through a drawing on-the-fly. If you are, you can take a very rough sketch like this and make inking (vectorizing) decisions as you work. I don’t think most people have this ability, so I would recommend that you try to get a little bit more detail into your sketch before you scan it into Illustrator.

While I am endorsing a “tighter” sketch I want to mention the fact that one of the biggest advantage of creating a vector illustration off of a sketch is that the over-all feeling of it is MUCH looser than what you create when you work off of a photo. When, for instance you are working off of a photograph – you are somewhat bound by the natural laws of nature. But in a sketch you can really go over-board with exaggerated features. When you combine these loose exaggerated features of a sketch with the tight clean lines of vector art you really get a wonderfully unique looking illustration. So, don’t be too tight with your drawing! You don’t want to lose your personality.

Step 2. Scanning your Artwork.
HHmm.. not sure why I made this into a whole section of this tutorial. I guess it’s just an important step – you need to get your sketch into your computer. Here are a few tips to scanning your sketch:

1. Make sure to scan your sketch in “photo” mode at 300dpi or higher. You may want to go as high as 600dpi. It really helps to zoom in on your sketch while you’re vectorizing (digitally inking and coloring) it. At this zoomed in state you might be looking at a part of the sketch 300% – 400% bigger than the size you drew it, so you’ll need that extra resolution to see where to put your lines.

2. If your sketch is bigger than your scanner – you’ll have to scan it in pieces and stitch them together in Photoshop. One little tip that helps make this process easier is to make sure that you butt one side of the paper up against the edge of the scanning surface. Scan it, then slide the paper keeping that same side flush up against the edge of the scanning surface. This process insures that your different parts of the sketch are not rotated differently. It is much easier to piece together two images that don’t need to be rotated. Once your sketch pieces are in Photoshop, open one and enlarge the canvas area to make room for the other pieces. Copy-and-Paste the other pieces so that they are all in one image. Set the properties of each layer to “multiply.” This will allow you to see through each layer and more easily line them up. Once you have them all lined up, change the layer properties back to “normal,” flatten the image, and save it as a .jpeg

Step 3. Setting up your Illustrator file.

I like to create 3 layers in Illustrator when vectorizing a sketch. The bottom layer is where I place my sketch. I will lock this layer so I don’t accidentally select it or move it. The middle layer is my color layer. This is where I will fill in my shapes with colors. I will also lock this layer until I get to the coloring part of the process. The top layer is the inks (the lines) of the drawing.

I should take a moment here to mention that you can illustrate vector art without lines. The artwork can be comprised completely of solid shapes with no “line art.” Here is an example of each:

This is a vector illustration without any lines defining the shapes. It simply uses color and value to define the shapes.

This illustration does have lines to separate the shapes.

Whether you choose to make line art or not is up to you, but we WILL be making the line art first on this project.

Step 4. Tips and Techniques to digitally inking your sketch using vector lines.

Ok.. now we get to drawing our vector lines. I don’t have one set style for creating these lines; in fact I have several. I will discuss each. But before I do, I want to discuss our goals. The goals with these lines are that they have character. And by “character” what I mean to say is: “they look cool.” So, how do we make our lines look cool?

For starters, we need our lines to vary in what is known as “weight.” “Weight” of a line basically means how thick or thin your lines are. A lot of weight is thick a little weight is thin. Making your lines vary in weight adds a LOT of character (makes them look cool.)

And where we put this character into the lines is also important. I use three general rules when making a determination of where to put weight:

1. Most important is how close an object is to you. So, if you have a drawing where the super-hero is punching out towards you, the fist would be the closest thing to you. The closer something is to you, the thicker the lines should be. The further away something is – the thinner the lines should be. The city in the background, for instance, should be illustrated with very thin lines. This creates an illusion of depth.

2. The outer-most line of each separate object I will also tend to make a little thicker than the interior lines. This helps define that object apart from the other objects.

3. I will also pay attention to light source. If, for instance, the sun is just over the right shoulder of a character – I might thin that line so much that it ends… there is actually a gap where the line ends then re-starts. The side of the object opposite of the light source will have thicker lines.

4. Finally – I will tend to thicken a line that dead-ends into another line. This is a hard one to explain, so here is a picture:

Now that we have a clear understanding of what kind of lines we’re trying to make… how do we make them?

My first step is usually to outline my object or a portion of the object and then “knock out” the shapes that are inside it. Using my pen tool I will simply find a starting point and start drawing around a shape. If you are not experienced using the pen tool in Illustrator this may be a bit of a frustrating process. Have faith that in time you will get better and faster. It takes time to learn how to best use this tool. Here are a couple of tips:

1. Place your points at the most extreme spots – at the very top of the peak of a curve or the very bottom of a curve.

2. Fewer points will give you a smoother line, so challenge yourself to eliminate points.

3. If you need to bring a curving line to a sharp turn, click on where the curve will end, click-drag your mouse to create the curve before the sharp turn (don’t worry about the vector line on the far side of the point. When you get the curve before the point where you want it, let up on the button, but before you make your next point – click one time on the point you just made. This will eliminate the bezier handle that runs through the point. When you place your next point, the line from the previous point will come out straight from that point. Here is a little picture sequence of this process. **This is a VERY useful tip. So, if you don’t understand it – read it five more times, study the images below and don’t proceed till you get it. It will be on the S.A.T.!**

Once I have my outline I will simply start drawing the shapes that are inside it that need to be subtracted (or for us old-school designers: “knocked out.”) Be aware that the “lines” you’re creating will be comprised of the outline minus the interior shapes. So, in terms of giving your final lines varying weight, you will have to vary how close your interior shapes are to the outline.

Here is an example of how I will draw an outline, then subtract (or knock-out) the interior with a second shape:

One way to deal with this varying line weight issue is to deal with it in the sketching phase. This way – you don’t have to think about it while vectorizing. You can just follow your sketch lines.

While you are drawing these knock-out shapes you may want to ignore little detail lines that might be hard to draw. If for instance you have some cross-hatching lines that extend from a large black shape – I won’t try to draw them both at the same time. I will start by just drawing the black shape, then will go back and draw the hatch-lines. I can merge these shapes using the Pathfinder tool later if I want to. Here is a sample of that:

Once you have all of your interior shapes in place, you’ll now need to knock them out of your outline. You will do this by
1. Grouping all of the interior shapes.
2. Bringing these grouped interior shapes to the front: Object>Arrange>Bring To Front
3. Selecting both your grouped interior shapes and your outline
4. Clicking on the knock-out (or “subtract”) function of your pathfinder tool.
5. Fill with black! (or whatever color you want your lines.)

Another way to draw lines of varying weight without drawing the inside and then the outside of each line is to just draw a single vector line down the center of your intended line. Then you “stroke” this line with a brush. Specifically you might want to use one of the calligraphy brushes that Illustrator includes.

Here is how using one of these brushes looks when applied to a curving line:

This looks great and is a much easier way to make lines with character – but it is much harder to control where the line is thick and where it’s thin. This is determined by the shape of the brush and the angle of your line. If you have a set of brushes set up at various angles and experiment a bit, you can figure out how to control where the thick and thin parts of your line are, but it takes some work.

If you are using this technique to vectorize (digitally ink) your sketch there is one additional step you have to take. Once you get the line how you want it, you’ll have to: use the Object>Expand Appearance function. This will take your brush stroke and convert it into a solid shape.

You may also experiment making your own brushes in Illustrator. One very useful brush is a simple triangle.

Simply make this triangle shape, select it and then go to the drop-down menu in your brushes window and select “New Brush>New Art Brush. Then draw a curvy line and apply this brush. You will quickly see how useful it will be in inking. Here is a sample of what a triangular brush on your vector path looks like:

I suggest experimenting with brushes like this. I will not reveal all of Go Media’s secrets here – but this should get you started.

Now you have the meticulous job of “inking” your illustration. Depending on how complex your drawing is – this process may take an entire day or more, so settle in and try to enjoy yourself. After all – that’s why we’re here right?

Here is the finished inking I did on this sketch… Pretty sharp if I do say so myself!!

First the pencil sketch:

Now the final inked illustration:

Ok, now to the really fun part – coloring.

Step 5. Tips and Techniques to coloring your vector illustration.

This tutorial is going to cover coloring in Adobe Illustrator. At this point you could also export your line art to Photoshop and color your drawing in it. In fact, most professional coloring you’ll see of illustrations is done in either Photoshop or Painter. Making a vector coloring – as we are in this tutorial is a very different process with a different look and feel to it. In Photoshop for instance, you can much more easily make soft-edged transitions between your various colors. Here in Illustrator your color shapes will have sharp edges.

Now I will make a confession – I don’t think I have a very good sense of color. I think I am a bad colorist. So, hopefully I can give you some tips I use to “fake it.” Remember: “Fake it till you make it!”

Now, you’ll be coloring on your color layer, so lock your inking layer and unlock your color layer.

Usually I will try to pick the colors I’m going to use before I start coloring. I will start with 2-4 main color themes that work well together. For each of these colors I will try to get a range of color values from dark to light. Once I have this palette of colors I try very hard to stick with it. Since I don’t have a good sense of color, I’m afraid to stray too far from a nice color palette once I’ve made one. Here is an example of a color palette I put together:

I will usually assemble my color palettes by opening a Pantone Swatch Library (located in the Swatch window drop-down in the Swatch Libraries drop down). I’ll then see a color I like and grab the entire value range from dark to light of that color.

One “cheat” I use occasionally for finding a good color schemes– is the website: colourlovers.com. It doesn’t give a complete coloring palette and isn’t usually exactly what I’m looking for, but it’s a great resource for inspiration.

In the case of this illustration, he went with a fairly straight-forward coloring scheme. The girl’s skin is flesh color, the skull is grey and the devil-baby is red. For each of these object there is about 3-4 color values; a middle value, one dark color for shadows and one light color for highlights.

While going with a straight-forward coloring scheme is fine, I want to encourage you to really experiment with colors. Explore the space. I got a fever, and the only prescription – is MORE COW BELL… no wait – I mean – MORE COLORS. I think doing a good realistic coloring job is almost passé these days. Using non-traditional colors is the current trend.

To start, lets use this little devil baby sketch that Dave did and start by filling each main shape with a middle value. Here is what the baby looks like with each of his primary shapes filled with the middle-value. You’ll notice the back of the tail is dark. We obviously decided that we were going to have a light source to the upper left. This would place the tail in a shadow.

When I say “We filled each main shape..” what I mean specifically is that we stole the line art and used the vector lines that were already drawn to fill the main shapes.

In order to do this you need to make sure you’ve used your Pathfinder tool to subtract (knock-out) and consolidate all your line art into one complete path, then you will:

1. Unlock your inking layer (if it isn’t already)
2. Select your Inks (lines)
3. Edit>Copy
4. Switch to your color layer (I’ll even re-lock my inking layer)
5. Edit>Paste In Front – this will drop a copy of the inks into the coloring layer in the exact same location that it was taken from – so it lines up perfectly.
6. Select the line art and then Object>Compound Path>Release. This will break all of these shapes back up into their own pieces of art. You can then delete the outline and simply deal with the fill shapes. By selecting them you can fill them with the appropriate color.

Using this technique will save you a lot of time. Here is the single-color initial fill of the devil-baby:

If you are not familiar with the Pathfinder tool in Illustrator, let me just say: please take the time to explore this tool. It is indispensable. I use it constantly.

Once the main color fill is in place, we can start adding shadows and highlights. Since your highlights and shadows will be contained within the area we’ve already established with our fill, you really only need to draw the line that will distinguish the barrier between your middle value and shadow.

In this first image you can see where I drew the dark red shape to define the shadow area. I only concerned myself with where my shape intersected with the red fill of the devil baby’s body.

I then need to make a copy of the devil-baby’s fill shape so I won’t lose it when I use the pathfinder tool. I use the Copy and Paste-In-Front function to create two duplicate shapes that are directly on top of one another. Then I select the main fill shape and the shadow shape as well.

Then, using the Pathfinder tool use the overlap Pathfinder tool. I’m not sure what the technical term is for this function, but it basically takes two shapes and removes any parts of them that do not over-lap. Here’s a pic:

I will go through and use this technique to define each of my shadows, bright spots and any other little details I would like to add.

So there you have it. An insight into my mind as I go from sketch to vector illustration. This is how I do it, but every illustrator has a different technique. So use this article/tutorial as a guide to help you establish your own technique. I hope you learned something useful!

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In order to make your website live you will need to sign up for a hosting server and domain name.

Once you have all the pages ready and linked, it is time to transfer all the files onto your hosting server and make your site live!

You can do this using an FTP tool like Filezilla. Dreamweaver also provides FTP facilities. Simply enter you server ftp details, connect to the server and upload all the files (html pages, images etc.)

Once this is done test the site thoroughly in the browser to check if all the pages are loading properly and are linked properly.

Your website is now ready and live for public viewing!

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