Artwork for All - challenges, graphics, tutorials

[ladygris]

Love the both of them, especially the smokey look in your new sig/avi.

Thank you.

The smokey look was actually added to fill some "dead space," as I call it. It just wound up helping with the Ascended Daniel look.

[LT. COL. John Sheppard]

For. . .?

the smoky one

[ladygris]

the smoky one

Believe it or not, it's just a screen cap lightened and sharpened with a foggy texture over it, and some text. Nothing extra fancy. No extra coloring.

[maneth]

Simple is best sometimes. And it helps if you have the right pix to play around with.

[ladygris]

Simple is best sometimes. And it helps if you have the right pix to play around with.

Very, very true. I have a lot of different pics, but some of them just lend themselves to a simple texture and text. Others, I don't feel like the artwork is truly finished if there's not a stack of textures on it!

[TrueRomantic]

Well, I had a chance to do one tut week entry, but it'll probably be the only one.

It's from the tut in this post.

Also, is anyone who downloaded Gimp 2.8 having some issues? I've noticed 2 things so far that don't work right...

The first is that when I'm doing text, it has a 'text edit' box on the canvas, but it doesn't appear to do anything when I try to manipulate the text using it. I still have to use the regular tool options on the side of the screen.

The second problem is when saving, or rather exporting, into a .jpg file. What I used to do to ensure I wasn't going over the kb limit on GW was to hit 'show preview' and then it would also give me a size. But when I went to save this, it said 1.3 GB regardless of if I had it at 100 or 0. This is going to make it very difficult to save to the correct kb size for GW. Am I just doing things wrong in the new version?

[ladygris]

Very nice, TR.

I hadn't noticed much in the changes. The Export to save as .jpg or .png is different, but I didn't notice anything about sizes.

As for the text, I had no problems with manipulating it in spite of the Single Window mode.

[TrueRomantic]

Very nice, TR.

I hadn't noticed much in the changes. The Export to save as .jpg or .png is different, but I didn't notice anything about sizes.

As for the text, I had no problems with manipulating it in spite of the Single Window mode.

Thanks!

Yes the export to save is different, but the way I've always checked my size didn't work right for me. How do you check your size?

And the text...I was able to manipulate it fine, but my problem was just that I had to manipulate (for size and font especially) the regular way from the box on the left of the screen, rather than the 'improved' text tool box that pops up on your canvas.

Also, the single window mode is what I was looking forward to most lol. It's something that I've been hoping for for awhile, and I'm thrilled they finally added it. IMO, it makes it much easier to work on the canvas and to see everything.

[bailey1ak]

Also, is anyone who downloaded Gimp 2.8 having some issues? I've noticed 2 things so far that don't work right...

The first is that when I'm doing text, it has a 'text edit' box on the canvas, but it doesn't appear to do anything when I try to manipulate the text using it. I still have to use the regular tool options on the side of the screen.

The second problem is when saving, or rather exporting, into a .jpg file. What I used to do to ensure I wasn't going over the kb limit on GW was to hit 'show preview' and then it would also give me a size. But when I went to save this, it said 1.3 GB regardless of if I had it at 100 or 0. This is going to make it very difficult to save to the correct kb size for GW. Am I just doing things wrong in the new version?

To edit the text using the newer 'text edit' box on the canvas you have to highlight the text in the box. I had to play with it for a bit to figure that out too.

For saving as a .jpg I have never used the preview to see what the size is going to be... but I have always chosen 90% when saving/exporting to a .jpg and it is almost always under 100kb. In fact it is usually under 50kb when I do that.

Hope that helps True.

P.S. I do love the single window as well.

[ladygris]

To edit the text using the newer 'text edit' box on the canvas you have to highlight the text in the box. I had to play with it for a bit to figure that out too.

For saving as a .jpg I have never used the preview to see what the size is going to be... but I have always chosen 90% when saving/exporting to a .jpg and it is almost always under 100kb. In fact it is usually under 50kb when I do that.

Hope that helps True.

P.S. I do love the single window as well.

Ditto about the size. I just went back and checked the size on my current sig, and it was WELL below the 50kb mark.

True, I check sig size by saving as .jpg, then I just highlight the file under My Pictures. It usually shows all the properties of the pic, including dimensions and kb size.

[TrueRomantic]

To edit the text using the newer 'text edit' box on the canvas you have to highlight the text in the box. I had to play with it for a bit to figure that out too.

For saving as a .jpg I have never used the preview to see what the size is going to be... but I have always chosen 90% when saving/exporting to a .jpg and it is almost always under 100kb. In fact it is usually under 50kb when I do that.

Hope that helps True.

P.S. I do love the single window as well.

That is very helpful about the text box. I probably would have thought of that if it weren't midnight here lol.

As for saving, I've always tried to save as large as I can and still stay under the size limit. That's why I liked the old preview, because I could see exactly how large it was and then save. Maybe I'll try that, though I think I'll try it at 95 for now. Generally I could save them anywhere between 95 and 99 in the past for most sigs, so I'll go conservative for me lol.

Ditto about the size. I just went back and checked the size on my current sig, and it was WELL below the 50kb mark.

True, I check sig size by saving as .jpg, then I just highlight the file under My Pictures. It usually shows all the properties of the pic, including dimensions and kb size.

I always hate the extra time it takes doing it that way. That way requires saving and then checking the size, and then resaving smaller if it is too big. It's just a lot of trouble to do it that way, IMO. The way I used to do it just was part of my normal process for saving/exporting lol.

Thanks to both of you! That was helpful and maybe I'll remember the help next time I get in Gimp lol!!!

[ladygris]

You're welcome, True.

[LT. COL. John Sheppard]

Believe it or not, it's just a screen cap lightened and sharpened with a foggy texture over it, and some text. Nothing extra fancy. No extra coloring.

could you PM us the fog please

[planet_tv]

Thanks for the comments on the last bit of art I posted.

This is some miscellaneous art I forgot to post. Some are real simple.

Stargate:




- This one is for the 4th of July.

- This was made at Image Chef.

- This was made at Image Chef.

:
S/J photo art with a grocery list. This is a 1024x640 version only because 1680x1050 doesn't resize to 1024x768 without losing the aspect ratio. The 1680x1050 version will eventually be available on my website for those who want that size. The cake pics and the hearts on the dry erase side are meant to look like they are magnets and the little thing with the word sweet is just some trinket I image Sam would get for Jack since it has one of his favorite words on.

If anyone is interested to know the font for Carter's handwriting is DummyBoy and
Jack's is HoffmanHand.

The ' is SF Scribbled Sans since I didn't like that character in the other fonts. The only ' that is not that font is the one in the Jack O'Neill dental cleaning because I accidentally left it as HoffmanHand and couldn't easily fix it.

I did my best to pick a font that went with AT and RDA's handwriting.












- This is quick manip of Baal that did for someone's birthday last year.

Stargate Crossover:
- This is made with pictures of the sims I made of the characters Sam Carter, Jack O'Neill, John Sheppard, Teyla E., John Crichton and Aeryn Sun for the game The Sims 2.

Sports Night:




There's a reason Isaac is not in these two. In 2000 Sports Night was named the best show your not watching and were on the cover of TV Guide that year. Well, the online version of the Sports Night article in that issue didn't have the Isaac picture and all I had was that scanned in version from the TV Guide. I just realized there is a mistake on one of these. The word watch should be watching. I'll fix it when I fix the size since the height is 190 and that won't work on Gateworld anymore.

Most of these were made with PhotoImpact Pro 10 with some components coming from others programs, like Print Shop 20, or some scrapbooks images that came with PhotoImpact Pro.

I'm currently working on a McKay avatar but it's going to take a while since I decided to do another edit of the SGA stargate that I used in some of my John and Teyla art.

[LT. COL. John Sheppard]

nice ptv