VectorVonDoom

Looks like you're having fun. I'm doing one as I said I'd try and do a half decent one, not sure it will be though.

OK. I'll alter the title and add some details in the first post after I've eaten (Which I have now done).

Back to my messing around, I've added a chunk more objects and updated the preview in the first post. Think that will do. Was thinking about doing a little competition, seeing who can come up with the best design in return for my AD resources I've started producing but not sure anyone will be interested.

How much does Hirst actually do himself though and not pass on to his minions? I remember seeing a documentary where the butterfly paintings weren't painted by him, he just oversaw them, same with the dots. He seems as much of a business man than an artist. I'm not saying he hasn't any vision though.

I think most people have the same view. In Emin's case it's not as though it's just experimenting but can do "art" when she wants to, as her drawings are dire. She's a art god compared to http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/jianhua-blank-paper-t14361 though. I don't understand how many of them even get in to art school. Having said that it's not a totally new thing. Look up Peinture Le Chien by Joan Miro, went for $2m or for the totally absurd Onement Vi by Barnett Newman went for $44m and it's just a canvas painted all blue with a white line.

Yeah that would work, just don't make it too good or it will show the others up. An excellent example of who you know not what you know. For example there are some excellent, real artists around who people have never heard of but people do know the talentless Tracey Emin.

You should enter that for the Turner prize although it is a bit too good for that.

You're being too kind, doodle's much closer to what it is lol. I'll finish off the kit properly and do a, hopefully, decent example. That one was sort of throwing it together and seeing the best way to do that throwing, although the coloured version doesn't look too awful. I might do a more realistic kit sometime, I do like my realistic.

Looks I've been drawing using my trackpad too much and it's starting to give me thumb and bit of finger problems, not something I've ever had using a mouse. So I've been practicing with my other hand using my Intuos, with the MBP's trackpad disabled, to give that hand a rest. This was some messing around I was doing. It's hard sticking to the wrong hand perhaps I need to sit on it or lock it in a drawer or something. Anyway I did a doodling kit and thought 250 objects would be plenty (I originally hoped about 70 would be) but trying it out on A5 it looks like I need more, possibly a lot more, and some small things to help fill gaps.. You just Alt-drag them over to the work artboard then rotate etc as required. The second is just some conical gradients on the few layers I used. Oh the lines are 0.2mm, so as thought they're they're done with a fineliner.

There's a way to sort of do that as long as you haven't too many colours. Swatches pallette>Hamburger menu>Create Palette From Document then probably As Document Palette rather than System/Application. You can only show one set of swatches at a time though which might be a problem and of course it's not dynamic. But you can always delete it and recreate it.

Looks good so far. The gritty vintage styles means the skin looks more realistic. I've seen quite a few supposedly realistic ones where they're totally smooth and it just looks wrong on a man, like plastic. That's part of the reason why people choose women wearing make up as then they don't have to worry about that.

Thanks. The Jaguar I did was a lot more complicated and it coped with that (most of the time) even on my macbook, so it does OK.

You never know.

After some more fiddling. Only having the horizontal gradient editor in the fx makes it a bit of a pain when you're trying to do conical gradients also not being able to use swatches anywhere in there. Messing With Gradients 3.afdesign

Very spinny. I had to quickly try something like that and as I was doing it I thought if you fiddle it might make a good button/rivet thing and perhaps more realistic than just a radial gradient as it's not uniform. And it looks OK, bit of a blur at a large size large, but can probably get rid of that (that's probably just the radial) and it wouldn't be that big anyway. They're just a main radial gradient, fx colour overlay and fx gradient overlay (plus added a shadow to the button one). I've attached the file. Messing With Gradients 2.afdesign

Trying to draw things probably hasn't a practical use, it was just interesting to see if you could even do it, however crudely. But you can create some snazzy fill styles using strange combinations of standard and fx gradients and blend modes. They're not very easy to plan though, at least not for me.

They're a picky bunch on here (only joking). I was doing something else and fiddling around with various gradients on it and my mind wondered as it does and thought I wonder if you can do that.... Didn't really think it through, just did it, so there might be a better way. Not that it's something I'm likely to be doing often.

This is a very low res version of the Orion nebula taken by my brother which I liked (I've emailed him for the full res one) and thought it was pretty impressive considering it's not particularly dark around here. But I know nothing about astro photography so it might not be. Is the blue bit above it the Running Man nebula? He has a Skywatcher 200P telescope on an EQ5 Pro mount and took it with a Canon 550D. Looks like the mount costs as much if not more than the scope. Not sure of other details I would have to check with him.

Messing around again... Not that anyone will be interested but I'm still posting it. I was wondering if you can draw something with just one object and its gradient fills. So these are just squares with a gradient fill then a fx colour overlay and a fx gradient overlay. The gradient overlays were conical with a blend mode of glow, the colour overlay was grey with blend mode of reflect. Then the main gradient was linear, normal, and that made the shape as depending on the colour it also varies the width. I tried the storm trooper a couple of times, still failed. So the the answer is you sort of can and if you spent more time perfecting the best way of doing it then they might look quite good.

A handy list. There are tons out there but here are some I've recently installed that aren't listed that you might like. Clip (works OK for neon signs). Bukhari Script Saddlebag Honey Script Hamster College Slab Hamburger Heaven Komika Title (there's a whole family if you search for Komika) Yikes Natsuki Script Barista HayHaily (only lowercase) Moreno

I've spent the week on resources, there aren't enough, so creating swatches, gradients and styles, not the sort of thing I do very often so made a change. I ended up doing about a hundred text styles and tons of gradients and swatches. Here's a small subset of the text styles I've been playing with. I was sort of thinking of foil and seeing how much I could get done using the fairly limited AD fx's. Some weird combinations of gradients and blend modes I wouldn't normally use. For others there were quite a few things I just couldn't do or had to simplify, either the fx wasn't there or I needed to apply more than one of a certain type.

You can't do that in just a gradient or a few as the triangle colours are solid. I would say you'd draw the shape then do the triangles and quads as sub objects just to split it up. Then create a duplicate and fill it with the yellow to orange/red gradient then it's easy to use that to pick colours for the triangles you drew. The Purple you can just do by eye as there's only three parts and it's not the same style .

I didn't like the gloves on the first one, especially the left hand side. It was a rubbish photo and made the eye areas a real pain too. I should have known better. Anyway you can download it to see what was going on and I put a mini how-to in the tutorials section, there's not a whole lot to say, so you can try one for yourself. Watch some youtube vids not so much for the technical side but how they construct them. It's not super low poly like some but you can choose how much to simplify it, it depends what look you like.

I got rid of the hands at lunchtime, think it looks better.

I wasn't going to do another but I have as they seem popular, my weekend project. I picked a really horrible quality image, like someone took a 100x100 and enlarged it. But, for the most part, it turned out just about OK (that's all the time I had and would look better cropped, if I'd thought I'd probably got rid of the hands, something for next weekend). I've include the afdesign file so you can view it, expand it (there's more to the image), improve it, have a laugh or anything else. It's for personal use otherwise I'll take my normal 99.99% cut. You'll see quite a few messy snapping points but they don't show up on the export. You will need to duplicate the batman layer and add a .1px blur to get rid of the micro gaps before you do export. That is his signature, I just live traced it in AI then added a gradient and some transparency. The image I've attached just has some Color Efex Pro film grain added. But if you want to do some low poly and also have AI then use that with live paint instead. You don't then need to create triangles very often just close shapes off so less errors, less cleaning up and generally quicker. Batman.afdesign