Posted on 06 September 2010.
Another one of those very wonderful tutorials from ae.tutsplus.com as it keeps bringing the very best for those with an eye for the AWESOME.
“In this 2 part tutorial we revisit the Cinematic Opening concept with an homage to all of you, our readers, by enshrining all of the comments left on the site in a “ready for Hollywood” delivery. It features a clever use of freely available scripts and expressions to create what would normally be a very complicated and time-consuming animation. The tutorial will be split into 2 days with a total of over 80 minutes of training.”
Read whole tutorial
Posted in Tutorials, Visual Effects
Posted on 02 September 2010.
Everyone in the business world knows the importance of posters and ads in advertising for specific products. Posters are an integral part of advertising. An eye-catching, attractive poster that conveys a professional, compelling message about a product, service or event will invariably hold the user’s attention.
See Article here
Posted in Graphics Design, Tutorials
Posted on 26 August 2010. Tags: arrays, programming
thing ever seems to make sense the first time. Ok, maybe you don’t, but i do. see recently i started to learn myself php. I armed myself with an e-book that was supposed to be the bomb and indeed, it was the bomb, except it was the bomb. Turned out it was for advanced learners of php. I found this out when i got to the ARRAYS section( specifically the multidimensional arrays) and it was advising php beginners to first scoot over to the official php site for some more reading. bummer. Needless to say, when i got there, i was even more confused and perplexed. everytime am confused about something on the web, google beckons, and this time was no different. And yes after a fair few sites and and even fewer minutes, i had totally grasped the arrays concept.
My point, you ask. ok, here goes. I don’t know if this happens to you guys but everytime am learning something and i head over to its official site, i always leave more confused. Happened to me when i was trying to get my head round working with joomla( i actually had to watch someone work with it for me to get it) and it keeps happening to me with php. This is not to diss the official php or joomla webistes, but i guess thats just the way i am.
So folks, if any of you is having trouble with ARRAYS, here are a few links that helped me. Hope you will find them useful. cheers!
http://www.phpf1.com/tutorial/php-array.html
http://phpprogramming.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/php-arrays-tutorial-and-examples/
http://www.plus2net.com/php_tutorial/php_array.php
Posted in Articles, Web
Posted on 26 August 2010. Tags: Beginners, Design
This is for anyone who sometimes gets that incredulous feeling whenever a design guru looks at you and says something along the lines of : “I was once there” or “Heck, it took me 8 weeks to figure Flash out.” You know that roll your eyes feeling. 
Meet Alan of designschool.ca. At designschool.ca, you will be able to find awesome, simple and easy to follow tutorials. The tutorials are on Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Typography, as well as a few tutorials on handling a Mac.
It would be very useful if you were using iTunes, that way you can just subscribe to the podcasts. Here is how to do it iTunes Store> Search of designschool.ca> Subscribe.
However, if you don’t have iTunes: click here to get the tutorials, or copy and paste this url into your broswer:http://feeds.feedburner.com/DesignschoolPodcast.
Have fun!
Posted in Articles, Graphics Design
Posted on 26 August 2010. Tags: 3D, Illustrator, photoshop
When most designers think of 3D, their minds immediately run to complicated 3D programs with lighting, textures and animation. Most times, all you need is a simple 3D visualisation of something that you want to include in your design, be it a poster or a video.
Now, did you know that Illustrator has a very powerful 3D-element creation tool? Yep. It does. And it simplifies the creation of quick 3D elements without the need to jump into complex modelling and lighting techniques.
This tutorial from Layers Magazine showcases one way of using Illustrator and Photoshop to create a very decent 3D representation of a “Toys ‘r Us” sign.
Enjoy, and I hope you learn something new!
Posted in 3D, Tutorials
Posted on 26 August 2010. Tags: animation, Flash
Animation is one of those things that cuts across multiple design disciplines while maintaining its fundamental principles. Whether you are animating in Flash, After Effects, Maya or by hand, there will always be a starting keyframe and an ending keyframe. There will always be a tween and a motion graph. They may have different names in different applications, but the core principles stay the same.
Which is why I found this tutorial very fascinating. It’s written for Flash, but the author makes it a point to go through the animation fundamentals while creating the animation. The end result is a tutorial that cuts across multiple animation programs.
Warning: There is a bit of Actionscript 3 in the tutorial, but you can live without it if you hate programming, or do not have AS3.
I hope you learn from it and enjoy it as much as I did!
Read the full tutorial.
Posted in Flash, Tutorials
Posted on 26 August 2010. Tags: jQuery, Web
So recently i’ve been working on this project that has really got me into the world of Jquery. Jquery is a javascript framework that allows you to bypass all the lengthy code and cut to the chase of making things happen. It’s an incredible lifesaver for any web developer. Jquery allows you to do everything from animation, to form validation to ajax implementation. For those of you who are new to this world of Jquery, here is an excellent tutorial to get you started on the infinite possibilities. You will learn;
- What Jquery is and how it works
- Simple effects
- Animations
- Image manipulation
- Accordions and sliding panels
jQuery Tutorials for Designers
This article contains 10 visual tutorials intended for web designers and newbies on how to apply Javascript effects with jQuery. In case you don’t know about jQuery, it is a “write less, do more” Javascript library. It has many Ajax and Javascript features that allow you to enhance user experience and semantic coding. Since these tutorials are focused on jQuery, I’m not going to get into the details of the CSS.
Check out the full Article –>
Posted in Tutorials, Web
Posted on 26 August 2010. Tags: PHP, Web
Programming is not my thing. I am for the most part and have always been what we at NodeSix call a visual hacker. I can take a script and edit it to do what I want but I can’t write them from scratch. So as a web developer, you can imagine that the next best thing to sliced bread to me is a programming framework. Basically a framework is a collection of programming code commonly used by most people neatly organised and accessed with simple commands for those of us who don’t wanna type code.
Now PHP has long been the defacto standard language for dynamic web design and applications. I really can’t be bothered to learn the inner and outer workings of the language. I have recently discovered that there are several PHP frameworks out there and here in this article, you will get a great explanation on frameworks and the best out there. So you code-phobic people, lets get it started!
What is a PHP Framework?
PHP is the world’s most popular scripting language for many different reasons – flexibility, ease-of-use, among others – but often times coding in PHP, or any language for that matter, can get rather monotonous and repetitive. That’s where a PHP framework can help.
PHP frameworks streamline the the development of web applications written in PHP by providing a basic structure for which to build the web applications. In other words, PHP frameworks help to promote rapid application development (RAD), which saves you time, helps build more stable applications, and reduces the amount of repetitive coding for developers. Frameworks can also help beginners to build more stable apps by ensuring proper database interaction and coding on the presentation layer. This allows you to spend more time creating the actual web application, instead of spending time writing repetitive code.
Click for full article –>
Posted in Web
Posted on 26 August 2010. Tags: Illustration, photoshop, Visual Effects
A couple of years ago in the glory days of NVGOR8, the Rogueking and I developed this love for all things vector illustrated. Using photoshop, we’d get an image of say a riduculously hot woman and then spend hours transforming her into an illustration. The process is simple but not always easy. Here is an excellent tutorial showing you how to create these flat color works of art and create some great new ideas for your next design project.
Get vectorizing here –>
Posted in Graphics Design, Tutorials, Visual Effects
Posted on 26 August 2010. Tags: 3D, realistic
Alright, this is simply and totally without a doubt the most ridiculous thing I’ve come across all day. Computer graphics artists are really pushing the envelope. I have always prided myself on being able to easily distinguish a CG piece of work from a photograph but now the lines have been crossed. Just look for yourselves.
Render your way to the full article –>
Posted in 3D, Articles
