Here’s a quick little tutorial on how to make some fake-3d objects like cubes, book-shapes, dvd covers, cd cases and more. Those simple shapes can be recreated in Pixelmator (and photoshop since all the functions are exactly the same) easily. Then we can texture them and make them look a little bit more real. Sure with a lot of work they can be real, but the purpose of this tutorial is to create a more cartoonish-style fake 3d + we’re low on time ;)
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Finally we’re almost at where we want to be. That being “everywhere” :) Another change in the layout and the top site menu. Around the world is our “move the little guy around the world” concept, that has already put him in many places. There’s a map of his journeys as well. Remember that you can send in your picturs.
Podcast is currently under construction but will be ready pretty soon, so stay tuned for that.
Also soon you’ll see all the authors of Creation Machine with some details about them.
I’ve been extremely busy lately, doing a couple of projects at once and I realized a pretty good way (aside from the treadmill I use to “take a break”) is to open up all the projects, however different from each other they might be, and work on each for a couple of minutes, adding touches and changing the overall user-perspective. It really can help you look at your new business layout (no people in suits please!!) in a totally new way.
We reached 10,000 views on our iPad parody recently, and currently we’re working on the next “visual” thing that will be available really, really soon (probably on monday).
There are some new authors around here, so keep the RSS feeds handy, since each one is an expert in his field, and we can all learn a lot from that collaboration.
Since a lot of people are still in the dark with this, I decided to shed some light on the matter. First of all – I have tried many apps, and I do dislike a lot of things about photoshop. Mainly the price and it’s interface which actually went better in CS4, but in general is bloated and not intuitive at all. Oh and did I mention that some universal things don’t work in all adobe apps? Like alt + scroll wheel doesn’t zoom in / out in Flash. How cool is that when they’re selling it as a very pricey creative suite ? Well anyways, I do use photoshop at work and it has a lot of advantages over the rest of the software mentioned, but for most of the time, they’d do fine. Because the tasks photoshop is better at are usually those rare ocasions. I’ll focus on both PC and the MAC and talk about two alternatives that I think are the best as far as price-to-features ratio.
PC world : Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo
This is a very close one to the photoshop killer. Mainly because it’s more intuitive and the price is a couple of times lower. There are things lacking though, like a good handling of layer groups, layer styles and more. But the thing lacking the most is a good text tool, with plenty of options. Sure there are quite a lot, but the resulting effect is odd for some reason. It does not render text nicely at all. If you’re making a website, that alone can make a difference between good and bad layout. Sure a lot can be done in it, but the bad text rendering and no “justify text” option are likely to become drawbacks while designing. I did use this software for a couple of years though, because it was a lot cheaper and had most of the same possibilities. Still like it and I think you should try it for it’s price.
Corel PhotoShop website
MAC : Pixelmator
At 59$ you can’t really ask for a lot of features. But you get them anyway. A great painting engine for tablet devices, fast and reliable, cool looking interface. But there’s almost no text-tool. I mean it’s so basic it’s like it’s not there at all. And there’s no grouping of layers or layer styles so that makes it a lot harder. But the pixelmator team is working hard on it, so I guess they’ll eventually add all those things there, just like they’ve recently added an amazing save-for-web feature. They do think a lot about the interface, and speed / ease of use and that’s a big big plus. It’s got about 80% of what a webdesigner needs right now, and I can’t wait for the new versions.
You can get it at pixelmator website
Here’s a little video of us playing with the new super-gadget. Watch in HD!
We are working hard to bring you two new things, one on wednesday morning and one on thursday. this is gonna be big, promise! for now some new textures were added to our free stock.
oh and thanks for the pictures for our traveling monster idea, we’ll put that together into a page too!
First of all – thanks to all who are here every day to hear what we have to say. It makes it the more worthwhile. Of course we constantly want to improve, so ideas are appreciated! If you think we should do more tutorials tell us, or more of the viral analysis stuff.
We do have some new things planned, one sometime during this week, and it’s nice to see that our creation machine monster has already traveled a pretty long way and he has photos to prove it! Cool. We will make a special page just for him tomorrow and post the new pictures there along with a google maps with pins of his locations.
Have a good sunday!
We’ve added some new, high quality textures to our free textures database. Remember, they’re free for both commercial and non commercial use. It would be appreciated for a link to this site though. Enjoy! More textures to come and some new cool things in about two days.
Where do you usually start when designing a website? Pasting a logo into a blank document, building a header around it? Think about this for a second : forget the logo and header. Sure they’re the eye-candy and eye-catching things, but once in a while it’s nice to do it differently. Take the content. Paste it all over a solid background. And then play with it. No menu, no logo. Just the content, columns, tables, charts, images. Put them in an order that makes them fit into each other. And after you’re done playing with it – THEN add the header and logo. You’d be surprised by how good the content looks now. Usually, with the “normal” way of doing this, you’d make an awesome header and logo, with really great graphics that you like, but often you’ll feel like something is lacking just below that great header graphics. Maybe that is the point – try and organize the substance before the form. You know, that age-old struggle of form vs substance ? Maybe it’s not so corny after all…
Here’s a quick little tutorial on how to create an emboss + brushed metal + some fire effect in pixelmator. This will actually work in photoshop as well since the tools used are the same (even the same keyboard shortcuts). So if you’re a photoshop user feel free to also try it.
So here we go :
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We have started a Flickr account for all our images, along with a group that you can join if you’re on flickr. Check the group out at :
http://www.flickr.com/groups/creationmachine/
There will be a summary of what’s going on here over there as well.
+ feel free to propose your work for our “found on the web” posts series, where we will put your designs in along with a link to your flickr page.
Enjoy!
Also there’s a flickr photostream built into the right sidebar of this page.
Ok here’s the deal : Let’s put him in your hometown. Or in your vacation photos. We want this little creative guy to be everywhere. Send the links to imgshack or other hosting sites with your pictures and I will download and post it in a gallery. The image itself is a PNG file with transparency, so you only have to paste it over a photo and position. :)
You can download the image at http://creationmachine.org/img/cmach.png
Just choose file / save as. Don’t try to copy it from the browser and paste because it will loose the transparency that way.
Here’s him in a couple of places :
Amsterdam
London underground
Prague
Belfast
Dublin
Berlin – Sony Center
Roman Colosseum
Come on, let’s play. Send me links to more in the comments :)
That’s right. I’ve decided to give away for FREE the collection of texture photos that I took over the years. Some were taken with the phone, some with a DSLR. The quality is different in them, but they’re all useable for either 3d modelling, or compositions in photoshop. Head down to TEXTURES and check those out. Don’t forget to donate if you really like them. And if you want full resolution contact me and we’ll arrange something for as low as 3$ for the full resolution one (2500×1600 or higher). Currently all the 900×650 textures are completely free for both commercial and non-commercial use. It’d be nice if you link to this site though.
Here’s a little tutorial for pixelmator, since I’m working on some new visuals for the upcoming second promo EP from Krop. So let’s start shall we ? All you need for this tutorial are basic pixelmator or photoshop skills, a copy of pixelmator, about 20 minutes and a photo of a person. I used one of the promo pics from Krop. Read more for the tutorial itself. If any of the images is too small for you, you can right click on it, and choose view image opening it in it’s full. This release is an upcoming one, but if you like electronic dance music with an alternative twist check out the last cd at kropband.com . It’s a free download.
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We cannot deny the unbelievable reach that facebook has gained in the last year or so. It’s so big right now, it could be in the top 5 countries in the world, if it ever became a country. But all the bullshit aside, the guys at facebook must’ve realised that despite the potential, they’re not-really-earning-a-lot just like youtube. Sure, people love it, people use it, a lot of things are going on there. But the marketing potential was hard to use. Typical banner campaigns would’ve made the site bloated and “just like everyone else” and they didn’t want that. In fact I think that the lack of typical advertising was also one of the things that brought people to facebook in the first place. They realized that it’s a one-of-a-kind place in the web and wanted to be a part of it. But no, they don’t want to pay a fee. So what now ?
We’re starting to see facebook positioning (SEO for facebook would be FO – facebook optimization, or FPO – facebook popularity optimization since it’s measured in fans rather than clicks)
I am currently working on a PDF based document on how to use facebook to it’s full potential when marketing internet content (the test subject is gonna be this blog).
More on that soon, but there’s a big change coming in how we promote things online, so drop your banners and skyscrapers, burn the billboards and put your face in the book!
I recently give a lot of thought to two things: usability of a project (be it a website) and creative communication so the ideas are easy to grasp/read for a majority of readers. The time of “pweety weebsites” is over. It’s time for thinking at least as much as the design process itself. Think what you want to say in a claim, before you type it and add a dropshadow. Analyze other successful projects and copy only what you think is important. And by that I dont mean the 30 layer header background. If it’s a business don’t add people in business suits, unless it’s the suits you’re selling. This is so overused now that for a business to stand out it just takes to come up with something different.
Think about mobile use, it’s growing at an unbelievable rate, you don’t want to be the last on the wagon do you?
And remember that form and function should be equal without one praying on the other!
