OxCreative
2010
We caught up with our first place winner of the Letraset competition we ran a few months ago.
The ever-so funky Holly Stanway was the lucky winner of a 24-piece Letraset Tria Visualization kit with a bleedproof marker pad.
Holly is an Illustrator & artist working with everything from pens & paints to fabric & textiles. If you’re looking for an interesting read, or want some instructables on making somethings yourself, check out Holly’s blog alittlestranger.com.
2010
Ok so we’re a little slow of the mark but Happy New Year from us all! We hope everyone had a good year in 2009 (Year of the OX!) but we hope you have an even better year in 2010.
I’ve been thinking about a few things that I would like to achieve in 2010. Whilst these are really specific to OxCreative, they are things that I think most of us could try to embrace:
1. Write more Blog Posts
More blog posts equals more content. More content equals more traffic. More traffic means lots of interaction, followers and good networking! It would be nice to start interacting with those in the community and so we are looking to (more…)
2009
Here at OxCreative, not only do we like art, illustration, urban vinyl and graffiti, but we also take a bit of a fancy to web design! We also like to promote beautiful design and today is no exception!
I am constantly surfing online and it would seem a lot of designers’ websites/agency websites are stale and boring – using the same ol’ colours, the same ol’ way – with the same “look at our bizarre layout… we’re quirky” designs.
Some of these “fantastic” agency’s websites are so similar you’d struggle to pick them out of a line-up.
However, whilst surfing the web I found an article on amending CSS for the iPhone on a website called www.squaregirl.com. It’s the first time in a while where I have been taken back by a website design, that in my eyes, is near flawless.
This is a good use of colours, gradients, textures and layout with a methodical approach to usability.
Check out the site at www.squaregirl.com
2009
I try to avoid ranting within the OxCreative blog but I stumbled upon a document that really annoyed me. Whilst studying at the University of Portsmouth I competed in their “enterprise challenge for business” in 2005.
My business idea was to set up a creative agency which would source external work and give students and supply it to freelancing students. The agency would allocate the work and project managed each task (overseeing and ensuring it is to a high standard). For the project management and finding of work, the agency would take a slice of the revenue and would be self-sufficient and eventually profitable. (more…)
2009
Pro Markers are Letraset’s entry-level alcohol-based marker pens (the premium range are known as Letraset Tria’s). This is not to say that they cannot be used for professional purposes and with them you can achieve some (more…)
2009
1 – Use good quality products
Whilst it’s true that a good artist should never blame his tools, it’s unlikely you will create something with a stick drawing in the mud as well as you would with good quality paper and good quality pens, pencils and markers. With this is mind, it is important to get what suits you best as there are lots of quality products available. I use Windsor & Newton (more…)
2009
After what seems like a lifetime, my last day in my current (now previous) job arrived and ended. I was presented with some great opportunities but the hours were long and arduous and prevented me from working on my own projects. As of monday, I am starting my new job as a web designer for a giant global cosmetics company and I cant wait!
2009
I have been planning for a while to create some tutorials and so I was playing around with photoshop CS4 and came up with the following method to creating a blood splatter effect.
Blood Splatter Tutorial
Time: 20 mins
Skill Level: beginners to advanced
Equipment Required: Mac/PC, Photoshop (CS, CS2, CS3 or CS4), Wacom Graphics Tablet (optional)
Step 1
Create a new document in Photoshop – I created a 500 x 500 pixel document.
Step 2
Next, create a new layer and fill the layer with black.
Step 3
Go to the brush selector and choose the ’soft round 65′ brush (hover the cursor over the brush picture to see the name).
Open the brush panel (F5 key or go to Windows > Brushes) and select the ’shape dynamics’. Set ’size jitter’ and ‘angle jitter’ to 100%. Select ’scattering’ and set ’scatter’ to 100% and select the ‘both axes’ option. Select ‘other dynamics’ and set the ‘opacity jitter’ to 100%. Finally select the ‘wet edges’ and ’smoothing’ options.
Step 4
With our customized (customised for us Brits!) brush selected, choose a dark red/maroon colour and brush over the page and you should get the following effect:
 
 
Step 5
Repeat step 4 with a variety of light and darker colours which should leave you with an image like the following:
 
Step 6
Select the magic wand tool from the toolbar and set the tolerance to 60. Select the black area and delete it. Your image should now look similar to the one below:
 
 
Step 7
We now have the basis for our blood splatter but it needs a bit of adjusting to look more realistic. Go to the layer style panel by double clicking on the layer we have been working with. select bevel and emboss  and check both the contour and texture options. Under the texture option, select the cloud texture and set scale  to 81% and depth to +79%. Under the main bevel and emboss settings, use the following settings:
 
Double-click the contour icon and use the following settings:
Use the above input and output percentages for the first point and for the second point use the following percentages:
 
Step 8
The final effect should be the same as below. By adjusting the scatter settings of the brush, it can also be used for freehand drawing.
 
 
I hope this tutorial is useful and am happy to answer any questions people may have. More tutorials will be coming soon!
2008
I recently got the chance to work on a Flash project and test Flash CS4. From the moment of opening the application it was clear adobe had been very busy updating Flash for the CS4 version.
The default layout is somewhat confusing and seems like they have changed it just because they could – but onced swapped back to the old default (tools on the left, timeline on the top, properties and actions at the bottom) things became a bit more familiar.
The new motion editor offers alot more than the classic tween from earlier versions but at the same time can be quite complex. The classic tween method can still be used which is something I imagine alot of people will use.
Along with the motion editor comes 3D motion, allowing you to twist, flip and rotate shapes as if they were 3D.
Another useful feature is Adobe’s Media Encoder which comes bundled with many of the Adobe packages. It allows you to convert various video formats into flv files so they can be used in flash.
As a whole, Flash CS4 feels alot more robust than previous versions and is definitely worth upgrading.
2008
After just a month of getting nowhere with some pretty bad customer service at Adobe, Design Premium CS4 has finally arrived!
Photoshop CS4 extended , Illustrator CS4 and my Wacom are the most important things for me to be able to do my job and I was hoping there would be some great upgrades from CS3.
I have only had a few days using the products but it is already clear to see what is good and what is bad.
Illustrator CS4 has a cool alignment tool which flashes up guides helping you line up to other objects on the page. It also highlights individual elements as you roll over them making it easy to see where everything is – this has been really useful for more accurate vector work.
Photoshop CS4 extended on the other hand has had some rather questionable upgrades.
In Photoshop CS4 extended,  the addition of OpenGL gives, according to adobe, the following benefits:
- Smooth Display at ALL Zoom Levels
- Animated Zoom Tool
- Animated Transitions when doing a One Stop Zoom
- Hand Toss Image
- Birdseye View
- Rotate Canvas
- Smooth Display of Non Square Pixel Images
- Pixel Grid
- Move Color Matching to the GPU
- Draw Brush Tip Editing Feedback via GPU
- 3D GPU features include:
- 3D Acceleration
- 3D Axis
- 3D Lights Widget
- Accelerated 3D Interaction via Direct To Screen
Now this sounds great and I thought I am running both a high end Macbook pro (2.5ghz dual core, 4GB FB 1066mhz RAM and Nvidia 9600M GT 512mb Graphics) and Mac pro workstation (2x 2.8ghz quad-core xeons, 6GB FB RAM, ATI Radeon HD Graphics) this should be great and then I realise… they don’t support OpenGL!
Now, considering that Apple machines are supposedly the best for design and Adobe’s Creative Suite are also in the top running in their field, do you not think they would get together to discuss things such as support of a major feature within the most successful and popular image editing and graphic design software applications.
It’s not the end of the world, but it has been a major nuisance as it took forever to work out why the cursor was displaying about 15 pixels above where the actual cursor position was – so every time I clicked, it would select something 15 pixels below what I wanted!
Design Premium CS4 has some nice features and Illustrator CS4 has been vastly improved. I am hoping that OpenGL support will eventually become available so I can use Phtoshop CS4 to its full potential.