Special thanks to bittbox for posting this one. The “eezy” trifecta of websites includes three phenomenal databases that are free, screened and stocked. They are Vecteezy (vectors), Brusheezy (PS brushes) and Fresheezy (themes).

As a hack signmaker/illustrator, Vecteezy made me drool. Yes, it’s that good, and Brusheezy is phenomenal too. I just glanced at Fresheezy, but it looks great for pre-fab blog themes.

I share because I care.

The wonderful blog Bittox has yielded another great vector tip. The tutorial is ostensibly about creating “3D vector vintage stars”, but the method is insanely valuable in a variety of scenarios- anyone who’s created this effect from scratch knows what I’m talking about here.

The design above shows the extrusion effect in question. Most 3D software can easily handle such a feat, but the effect was conspicuously absent (or so we thought) from Illustrator, where it is sorely needed. I won’t re-invent the wheel here (visit BittBox, it’s a great site), but I will say that the key lies in “expand appearance.”

Custom brushes, 3D effects, warps and distortions can all be changed from proprietary nonsense to kosher strokes and fills. All you need to do is select “expand appearance.” That’s right- a wide world of wild illustrator pizzazz awaits
you!

I will likely dedicate a whole post to bushes soon. People often wonder how to create variation in stroke weight, and this is exactly how. In conjunction with a Wacom tablet, Illustrator can come frighteningly close to a Windsor & Newton #7. And remember, after your digital inking, expand appearance!

I’ve been fooling around with my airbrush lately, and I recently borrowed an awesome book of American pin-up art from Ericka. Coincidentally, I stumbled upon a great airbrushed pin-up tutorial. It’s from 3 years ago, but that hardly matters. John P. Thompson, in his wonderful example, transports Bettie Page to the WWII era. He goes through the painting step-by-step, and provides detailed explanations of his equipment, techniques and reasoning.
The process images and explanations should be fascinating to anyone starting out with the airbrush. The advanced state of his underpainting was a relief- I subconsciously felt that such involved prep work is somehow “cheating”. It’s not, of course, and it’s great to discover enlightening tutorials such as this.

My signature is notoriously awful. I’ve refused to hand-letter signs, and simply hearing the word “penmanship” sends a chill down my Catholic-schooled spine.
Ironically, I love typography. As some of my good friends can attest, I’m a walking catalog of fonts. I’ve dabbled in type design, and someday I’ll surely dive into brush lettering. In the meantime however, I’ll scrawl my hideous endorsement on the backs of my paychecks.

In any case, check out this wonderful illustrator signature gallery.

Wow. This clears everything up. Evidently Brutus and Bluto were two different characters. Rule of thumb: Bluto cartoons were good, Brutus, not so much.

Lookee here! One of the first web pages in existence. On August 7th, 1991, CERN researcher Tim Berners-Lee published a description of his World Wide Web project on the newsgroup alt.hypertext, and made the service publicly available.

http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

From the mass migration to CSS-based web design these past few years, a single tool has emerged to help young grasshoppers. It is a beacon, a rite-of-passage and a pool of tranquility in the ever-churning, dynamic webscape. It is a curiosity of a website, static yet inherently transitory, in an age when permanence is enjoyed solely by megaliths like google and myspace.
If you’re a web designer, and you’ve passed the specific turning-point where you begin to understand the power of CSS, then you’ll already be familiar with the Zen garden. Should you find yourself at that juncture in the future, surely you will happen upon this site, the famous CSS Zen Garden. (when the student is ready, the master will appear!)
It is a fantastic resource. A static HTML file explains the garden, and lists a number of styles submitted by people from all over. Click on one, and the page reloads with the selected style sheet. The textual content is the same, but the layout changes dramatically. After trying out a few of these, you’ll begin to realize (satori!) what CSS is capable of and why it is beneficial.
And studying the CSS files themselves is a great way to learn CSS. Just install the equally-helpful web developer toolbar for firefox, peek under the hood of any Zen garden style, and you’re on your way to standards-compliant Buddha-dom.

Dancing cowboys, vaguely middle-eastern youths on a Mary Poppins-ish rooftop, enlongated livestock embedded with state names… The web banner ads for lowermybills.com are ubiquitous and distinctive, and surely you’ve wondered from whence they came. Turns out, they are generated by one Jennifer Uhll, the unassuming 35-year old former creative director at LowerMyBills. Yes, former, because– brace yourselves– the ads were such a success that she left the company in 2005 to start her own company, Juhll Inc. Now for the big payoff, folks- check out her website. It’s exactly what you’re envisioning.

If you haven’t noticed, I’m using a little widgety device to include my blog on MySpace. The thing is called a blidget from Widgetbox (I’m not making this up), and it was braindead easy to set up. And it’s a powerful way to distribute content- it effectively creates an embeddable object from an RSS feed. And it makes it beautiful. User-friendly is usually synonymous with aggravating in my book, but this is truly the best of both worlds. And after wrestling with other dead-end ideas (thanks, MySpace) I couldn’t care less about one little link. Heck, here’s another: www.widgetbox.com. Check it out.

My project this weekend was building a soundproof box. The box itself came out pretty slick, and really muffled my air compressor. In typical fashion though, the compressor basically died. So I sprang for a little Iwata compressor made specifically for airbrushing. I hoped against hope that the thing would be loud as hell, but of course it purrs like a kitten. So now I have a cool, heavy, soundproof (and homemade!) box to store my paints n’ such.

So here’s how it went down: I bought 2 “handy panels” of 1/2″ ply at Home Depot. Threw the box together with sheetrock screws, caulked every seam (inside & out), and lined the inside with roofing shingles and upholstery foam. (I heard roofing material has good soundproofing characteristics, though that may be hokum.) Then I sprayed the thing with cheap flat black. The flames were my first real airbrushing test. I cut them from my 24″ roll of yellow vinyl, then sprayed orange, then red. The paint is transparent Createx, which I’m very happy with. Not that this box is going outside, but I sprayed quite a bit of Krylon clear on there too.

My beautiful little compressor
Find the kitty for a prize