Speaking Of Escapism...

 

Dear reader,

It has been a long time since posting anything to my personal blog, and the vast majority of the population probably couldn't care less!

But, I thought I would share anyway.

It was about time I paid a tiny bit of love to old faithful, even if the vast majority of my content now goes towards by blogs such as DBG or design blog. I even have another project website I have launched but more on that later.

The musings and thoughts of an unimportant man.

 

It IS okay to have an escape

From the time we go to school, right up to the age of when we're in our mid 60's ready for retirement, many of us live our life 'through' work and even for work. Now don't get me wrong... having a good job and a job that you at least partially enjoy is important. But there should be more to you and us than our 9 – 5.

A danger of hinging all of your happiness and meaning on your job, it can take little more than a miserable client, an angry boss, or a rude customer to ruin your 'only' channel of happiness. Note how I highlighted 'only'.

In excess, what I believe to be another addictive and unhealthy trait – being over-obsessed with achievement.

Achievement equals happiness for some.
Win = happiness
Lose = Sad

Black and white and binary.

We like to be productive. I like to be productive! That feeling of working towards something better is a good thing. And it is. But it can take us away from being present and enjoying the moment, Basically enjoying life. It also ramps up stress too.  ( BBC Post in this link )

 Obsessing with achieving, can put you in a cycle of win, lose. Either way, it can become a vicious cycle. I also think it's this mantra is what can lead us to become workaholics. Remember that there are states of life outside of win and lose, achieve and under achieve. Do it for your own mental well being! 

Speaking Of Escapism - Workaholic! 

Work all day, spend hours commuting to and from work, and have no energy to be happy or speak to your family and friends in the evening.

Sound like a familiar life balance to you?

When working in London, I have had plenty of these periods. And I dare say that I will have more in time to come. But do look back and think about how much of my 'me' I spent at the work place. Be it freelance or my day job.

And worst still, I can't even remember half of it. I wish I gave more time to joy, not time to time wasters of those that don't value my time or knowledge.

Just remember pinch yourself sometimes and remember there is life outside of where you are. Whether it's your own business or for your employer. 

I'm & restless soul

I am a restless soul by nature, so pouring my energy into something whether it being trying to earn money and make a decent living or occupying myself with making stuff . I like to be doing 'something' whether for leisure or making a living. 

I also fundamentally realised I don't draw with the intent of making a fortune - I don't know of many wealthy artists in the modern world. I do, however, draw because it's my passion, It is also how I relax and vent my stifled imagination from the humdrum of everyday living. I need a vent!

You can form escape plans... but

Escape plans are great, but I would also remember to enjoy yourself too.

I'm currently in the middle of teaching myself new skills and looking working on new project as part of this teaching. It is called Game Gunk.com - all about indie games and computer gaming in general.

Will see what I learn in the meantime.

I think I can hear my partner putting the TV on... maybe Bake Off - biscuit week. 

What has been going on! - New Projects!

What has been going on!

If you have been half following me on Twitter or another social media platform you may have noticed that I have been up to a lot recently! Since I have branched out as a freelancer and setting myself up in business offering design, development and vector illustration things seam to be going pretty well – tough in stages but good!

If you are not yet in the loop, drop me an email to watch my design work or if you are into my art and character illustration sign up via my brand spanking new sign up page – dedicated to my illustration, art! 2 completely different things, feel free to choose or sign up to both!

Comic Sans Monster Copyright Jimmsdesign

Professional Design Blog

So this blogger or blog spot will still be used for personnel news and entries and all other random bits and pieces that do not have a home. My professional design 'wont' be posted here any more, If you wish to follow my professional design blog you will need to look here.

Design Bytes will discuss business, products, graphic design and general creative projects which are geared towards corporate, education and gaming. A post that appears to get interest is how we created a card game.

Games Promotional Website

As part of a project to expand my portfolio, I have created website which is dedicated to all things to do with niche, old school and family gaming. It was originally built as portfolio piece but due to growing interested I have added a bit more content and energy into the website. If you are into table top games and playing board games with you family I would strongly recommend having a look.

Other News

I am pleased to say that I have been working on some excellent projects for some interesting clients since I have started doing freelance work full-time. I am also looking working some very interesting projects of my own throughout the year! If you would like to watch this space you can either follow me social media or say hello!

Thank you for reading,

P.s that is not me in the pick... I just felt it represented something, maybe a much needed break!

New Gaming Blog!!

Dragon Bone Games

Hello! So this a quick post that is discusses a project that has been created – it's a called Dragon Bone Games.

Dragon Bone Games was created to promote cool board games for families, kids and adults, offering range of products that would appeal to those mentioned above.

But it's not just all about big hitter and main stream games. Dragon Bone Games was also created to publishes games that were niche, indie, obscure or simply out of print and from the good old days! You have a look at the E-shop here and see what might come about in the future.

It's not just a promotional shop!

It has also added a gaming blog to the website which will discuss games and whole manner of other gaming thing's! You can read the latest post on buying cheap card games and which would suit a certain person or family member.

So, if you want to look at cool games over and have a look!

Jimm

Dragon Bone Games

Quick method for making a custom Photoshop Brush

How to make a simple, pain free Photoshop brush!

Ever wanted to make a Photoshop brush? It's fairly straight forward, this little tutorial will have you making your custom brushes in no time! You will be defining a brush, adding it to your palette and then, all going well, using your newly defined brush in your projects! Lets draw a shape on black on a white background.

1 ) Open PS and make a new document – 300 x 300 px and 72 DPI for good measure, make sure the background is set to white.

2 ) Working in black and white (Shortcut ‘D’ for black and white) draw your brush shape (in black) onto your new document. Remember your brush shape needs to be dark /black when you come to creating your brush. For the sake of this little tutorial I have made mine a solid brush.

Photoshop Brush - Feel free to use this one

3 ) Either by using the marquee tool or Apple + 'a' to select all (CTRL + A for windows). If you have selected the brush you want to define, you can go to the next step! 


4 ) Go Edit > scroll down to  ‘Define Brush Preset’ and click on it!

5 ) label your brush, I called this one ‘blob’.

Label your new defined brush

Well done, you should now have designed your very own custom brush and saved it to your library. If you press F5 to look at your brush palette, you will see the brush you have just made at the bottom of your library. Why not open a new document and test out your newly created Photoshop tool, make ink splats, draw faces this is just to set your onto the path of making more awesome brushes.

Brushes!

Thank you for reading!

Speed tips for photoshop layers!

Ho Ho Ho a quick post before Xmas!

A couple of tips for working with Photoshop layers!

If like me you need work layers in Photoshop any time saving measure is a bonus. I have a compiled a short list of techniques for making the best use of Photoshop’s layers and icons and this is by far… only the tip the iceberg for tricks and techniques. Enjoy! (Swap CMD for CTRL on Windows)

Change the layer order, move it up and down :

Cmd+[ Move Down

Cmd+] Move Up 

Cmd+Shift+] = to move it to the bottom of the stack

Cmd+Shift+[ = Move it to the top of the stack

Direct select a layer
With move tool selected (V) hold Cmd to highlight the layers directly from the art board. This will also highlight groups.

Duplicate a layer 

Ideal for copying a layer! Cmd + J to copy a selected layer! Or you can drag the selected on this icon! OR right click and duplicate. A personal fave.

Colour Coordinated
In addition to organizing you layers into folder and groups, why not colour coordinate the layers so you glance at groups? Brown for dirt, green for sea etc. Right click and select a colour.

New Layer Cmd+Shift + N brings up the new layer dialogue.

Cycle Through Blend ModesNeed to see what a multiply, saturation, or overlay will look like on the fly?

Shift + (Minus or plus, top right of the keyboard)

Layer Opacity
With the layer selected you can quickly change its opacity by pressing ...

Shift + 22, 30, 23 (a number from the top row) typing the number in quick succession will change the layers opacity percentage. Hold shift and then press “22” the layer will be 22% “30” = 30 %. Very handy for digital painting or retouching.

Group Layers
Select your layers and press Cmd + G to group them together. If you are not grouping your numerous layers… you should start. For sanity’s sake.

Well everyone! I hope this is a little something to leave 2016 on! Merry Christmas and a prosperous new year!

#Photoshop #tips #layershortcuts

Thinking In Black – Tips and hacks for working black in digital illustration

Thinking In Black

Black can be a trouble to work with when it comes to print, especially with all of the varying print processes, paper finishes and general variations with commercial printing machines, inks, screen calibrations and so on - working with a black is a headache and I'm sure many others would agree! So, I have put together some tips and tricks to assist with your projects - it can be a dark and treacherous path. This post will mostly focus on creative approach rather than the pure technical aspects of Black ( K ). Working with 4 colour printing and spot colours is a detailed topic in its own right which is worthy of a post.

Illustrators, painters, artists and photographers

Firstly, does it really need to be BLACK? When I say does it need to be ‘Black’ are there many things in the real world that are completely black? Aside from an all light absorbing, all-life-drinking black hole that absorbs all light and colour? Besides… that's something that;s not of our world as far as I'm aware. Looking at the world around you, you will see come to see how lighting, surface, atmosphere and texture will absorb surrounding colours, including what you would what you would call a black surface. For example, someone is wearing a black t-shirt, more often that not if, even if it is new, light will catch on the folds, the creases and the contours of the fabric giving the black fabric a slight hue or tint depending on the light source and ambience.
  Study things! I like to look at surfaces and objects that have an interesting finish for example : gloss surfaces, bottles, matte paint, skin, fur, hair, shadows, animals, sunglasses, cloth, etc. Another good source of reference of how to use light and dark with dramatic effect is Chiaroscuro – do some research online - research Caravaggio (one of many artist's using this approach) and see what comes back. Caravaggio used light and dark with excellent dramatic effect framing the narrative in light and shadows. This is potentially subjective but hopefully... it will be food for thought – if its jet-black you’re after then please read on! ( I have attached a little image below with some dark but not black shading )

Illustration with a pinch of mood lighting! Left : a world of pure black and white without colours, the others... and bit of hue and tint

RGB controversial

Typically, I like to work in RGB first and then convert my files to CMYK afterwards, especially if I’m working on a bitmap illustration or digital painting. Why? Because working in RGB generally gives me more creative freedom in the beginning and it also allows me to move between digital and print at a later date anyway. This is a my preferred method when working on an illustration and by no means a rule, just a preference. I’m not the only one working this way. By doing a Google search I stumbled upon a commercial artist who also likes to work this way – this writer and artist goes into much greater detail about the in’s and outs of color channels on their blog. I recommend having a read at some stage – perhaps after you have read my post. :-)

(http://muddycolors.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/printing-your-work.html)

Unexpected Results - a pleasant accident

I was always taught to work in CMYK for print and RGB for digital. I still champion this for working with professional printers as trying to print from RGB file may produce some erratic results, be it for leaflets printing, flyers, and other mediums. I accidentally ran a test print from Photoshop in RGB (Thinking it was CMYK) and the results were far more superior than the CMYK version. Both were printed on the same satin finish paper, on a Canon Pixma A3 with an impressive result. Despite my efforts and tinkering with the levels in the CMYK version to replicate what had happened In the RGB Version, I couldn’t produce the same results. I will make an assumption that my Inject printer translated the RGB to CMYK and just knew what I was after. I can’t complain too much as this project was sent to print and retained all the vivid colours and strong black colours.  Saying this, I still recommend trying to stick with the CMYK for design and print despite this result as this is typically what is asked - best to be safe, but something worth exploring for the future.

Digital - Add a Hue

Unless your are working in RGB and your artwork will remain for screen (digital) only. Then may be best to work with ‘Designer Black’ check the numbers. Although the computer says it black (or you've had it calibrated) it is best to drop a bit of colour into the mix - and do test print it.

Have a little play in the Colour Palette - this is the picker from Photoshop

Tips + Photoshop!

If you are working on a image in Photoshop and have started in RGB and want to convert your artwork colour settings in Photoshop, don’t just click on “convert to CMYK” use the colour profile under edit instead as this will provide better results. Use U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2. Experiment with the different settings to get the desired finish.

Last Key Points!

• Take heed of the colour warnings when you are in the colour picker window. This could save a lot of headache later on.
  
  
• Let the printer do the leg work. Send your artwork to the printer and try to let them help you. A printer worth their salt will want to help you and have your return custom. To reinforce what results you could also send them a physical sample (saying like this please!) from your home printer – assuming you have a good quality home printer.
• As mentioned previously, if you are working on an image with a lot of dark areas why not add a little hue / tint of colour? 20% cyan for example or some magenta/red for a warmer image.
• Avoid working with 0, 0, 0, 100 K, as this best reserved for font/text printing and can your work charcoal appearance. Use a ‘Rich black’ or 'designers black' instead. 20, 20, 20, 100 k for example.
• Avoid 100, 100, 100, 100, CMYK as this is reserved for crop marks and using this colour can drown the paper - no one wants drowned paper!
• Don’t be fooled. Your screen can be way out of the sync with your printer. Do some test’s first and see what results come from your printer (even printing on your home printer cannot guarantee the finish you require when you send your work to print) So take note.
  
  Yes... black can be painful to work with! And can be tricky colour to tame!

Thank you for reading!

Satzuma : Design & Development Projects Update Summer 2016

ORANGE WITH A SPLASH OF BLACK

“its black and orange!” That was the first thing I noticed when I received my current employer shortlisted me and sent me a link to their web address! What's not to love about black and orange – as a kid orange used be my favourite colour and now I practically dream in it. I felt that it has been long overdue that I should post a blog update with regards to some of the creative projects that I have had the honour of working on in the past couple of years. These range from designing Air applications, websites, characters, product videos, intro's flash animations (now Animate CC) and many more.

Bit of Action Script 3

THIS WAS AN AIR APP AND BROWSER DEMO
FOR DIY PHONE CASE PRODUCT

Stand design at the Harrogate Show - TETO!

My Rufus illustrations for the book cover artwork!

Website Interface

Packaging for the Smartphone Joystick

Above, I have added the interface design and the screen grabs of the working iDesign application, this was built in flash and written in AS3. The other projects cover the trade show picks, illustration, UI and some packaging.

Not Just Design And Development.

Satzuma is a company that cultivates a think different approach, be it in marketing and design or its approach to business. Having the opportunity to work with like minded team and being at the forefront of the creative process has given some invaluable experience in creative direction, hiring staff, working with freelancers, collaborating with business development and of course, recruiting fellow design interns!

"Satzuma illustrates three important skills; Do one thing well, make it a fun thing and think different"

- Guy Kawasaki, Former Marketing Chief of Apple

"I have worked with Jimm for over 6 years across hundreds of commercial projects. Jimm's ability to produce my ideas or concepts quickly by carefully listening and understanding to what I need or want commercially makes the difference. His design skills by hand and computer combined has always produced highly creative and unique pieces of work which has formed one of the main corner stones of our business."
– J Ramm, Satzuma LTD

Thanks! :-)

Working With PHP Include : First Baby Steps For Designers - Making A Low Maintenance Website

Experiment With “Include” PHP

Maintaining a large website such as Satzuma can become time consuming.  Using “include” can take the website to the next stage of modular design. Imagine having to write 1 line of code into a php file instead of having to copy & paste the same piece of code across 70 pages, worse still… imagine that piece of code had a typo – across all 70 pages! You start to get the idea – the horror. Using PHP include can reduce the time consuming method of copy and paste, shorten time, and take your website to that next stage of design (Or look at a CMS system). With this Include method, the information you amend in one file can change across multiple webpages, just to name a couple of ideas you can use this for navigation, footers, banner adverts and much more. I cannot emphasise how much easier this will make your life when working on larger projects. Change once to  update many!

How To Go About It


As a rough example we are going to make a footer module. We also have the main document that will  “include” pull in, integrate, import a file from your website.

This tutorial/experiment will assume you already have prior knowledge of setting your website up with root folders etc, if you need some more help with this please follow these tutorials.

https://helpx.adobe.com/dreamweaver/how-to/first-website-part1.html 

Or PHP



http://php.net/manual/en/tutorial.php

You Will Need: 

 - The main file (The parent/master)
 - An external footer file (why not add some styling to your html?) 
 
 - one line of code, which you will embed into the parent folder. 
 
 - A space to upload/test your experiment. (domain and hosting)

Stage 1 - Parent File

We will treat this file as the master file, the parent which pulls in the external modules to construct the page. Remembering that if you are using this modular method for constructing your website it will make life much more efficient.

Why not call your parent file ‘master.php’ 



This image shows (with straying CSS, bleurgh! ) the master.php and Product-footer-test.html working together... or popping out of the bottom. 

Stage 2 - Footer File


I have used the footer in the example, as this area of the website has frequent updates with new products and information constantly being change and added, and it is spread across the entire website… As you can see, all styling is added to this queasy example with the accursed table! Any changes or modifications will be included in the master file once you add the “include” piece of code to the master file. So what you change here (the footer file) will be visible once you come to uploading all of the files and testing the file. So... Design and build your footer file and add you styling to it.

Stage 3 - The Simple Piece of Code to Paste Into Your Master PHP file. 

The image below shows in red where the piece of "include" code sits. So, imagine you have made a hollow space on your webpage, in the hollow space you are going to add this code to the bottom. As shown. 





Product-footer-test.html"); ?>


This will call on the footer module and all of its elements.  Once you upload your files you can see whether the footer has worked.

This visual diagram will show how the principle will work leaving aside how the coding works for the PHP include.

Hope this helps, I plan to use this much more in the future.

Happy designing...

Quick Techniques For Reducing Banding / Posterization in Photoshop - BRUSH STROKES

Posterization – Rough Techniques For Reducing Banding!

Notice the subtle rings around the soft brush?

What is it?

If like me you work as illustrator/designer, I’m sure you will have run into the dreaded banding aka Posterization If so, I will go into detail shortly. Please note; this is told from an illustration and design bias.

Illustration in Photoshop has been a blessing for me. Edit, undo, save as, copy, paste, re-colour artwork the list goes on. This issue comes when working with radial and linear gradients and tones of black and grey. Working with a lot of black and orange as part of the colour palette, I have had to figure out ways for dealing with or working around banding. For example, when I’m rendering characters like Rufus the rat, he has grey body with even darker creases in the body, getting the shading and highlights to blend hasn't always been easy - banding has been a big issue. As it stands, I’m still uncertain as to how to get a completely smooth finish when rendering by work with a grey and black tones. I can offer some methods for reducing this so called ‘banding’ effect and the bane of drawing Rufus. 

For additional information this has been written based on the specs of the my iMac - OSX, but this issue has proven to effective on a TFT Screen using windows 7 and older versions of PS.

My Setup 1 : New Document ‘I like RGB’

From the off I have tested this on Photoshop CS5 and CC with similar results from version to version. 64 bit – 32 bit RGB to CMYK I’m not entirely sure if this has an influence aside from whether you are working with 8 bit, 16 bit and 32 bit; the later offering marginally tighter rings and hues. For this example I have worked with A 300 DPI document, in RGB using 8 bit (this can be changed later) also with the colour profile listed below on an iMac. This is by no means a significant contribution to the final out come but maybe worth noting. 

‘tangent alert’
 Using RGB in the early stages is my preferred method, not everybody’s. Isn’t this madness? You won’t see genuine colours of your artwork! Well unless, your screen is calibrated exactly and your using pantones, guaranteeing what you see on the screen to print can be tricky anyway. Besides, I work across both mediums of screen and print. 

Method 2 :  Ultimate Trick - Brush & Noise

I’m assuming that you are running into this issue whilst using a soft edged brush tool in Photoshop, based on that, I would advise turning the 'noise' on under the brush panel (as shown - press F5 bring this window up) this helps in the blending of steps with greys as shown below. As far as I can tell, based on my work, this improved the overall smoothness and graduation of the tones from light to dark regardless of bit mode or any other. You can also dabble with the filters if you are using large radials (That would be a different article). 
As you can see below, the black brush at the top has rings (banding) and the one below has far fewer the brush used on the lowest part of the blob has noise switched on. The speckled effect will be less obvious once you take your artwork to print.

See how the rings blend together of the lower part of the blob?

Method 3 : Big to small, playing with scale

Another trick for tightening this banding is by shrinking/scaling down your completed artwork. When you have applied the 'noise' and finished the process you can physically shrink the image to hide some of the messier details - an illusion essentially. 


This is a method that I have used not only to disguise banding when digitally painting but also to give the appearance of tighter line work and detail.



Step 1 piece of art = 100%
Step 2 scale art to = 75%

So when you print the document some so the details and blemishes are hidden away from the naked eye. This approach can also hide some of the rings in banding with added element of noise!

Conclusion
You will see the benefits for this when you come to printing your work, especially if you are working with shades of grey.

To summarise - Add noise to your brush mode.

Hope this helps!

This method was used when illustrating/digitally painting Rufus the Rat for Satzuma LTD

Tweet