Thoughts on Fanart and Such...

[jo_anne_storm]

booster17 wrote a sequel to Educating Veronica.  It's just as insane and funny.


So, fanart.  Haven't really done a lot of it lately.  At least, not like when I was doing a series for msgordo and spent several weeks straight resizing and blending and such.  I realized today, while opening GIMP to make a banner for tthjinni, that I hadn't used the program in months.  

Anyway, kinda headachy and rambly, so expect tangets.  

I've noticed a change in how I'm designing things.  My earlier stuff has a bunch of interesting things in the background.  Yeah, it centers on a main theme, but there's all sorts of stuff going on.  Such as my default icon, which appears all over the place, just so faintly that you have to know what to look for in order to find it.

That last few things I've done though, have been very different.  My banner is very simple, as is the one I made for jinni.  The last manip I made for laney_1974 was similiarly simple.  Not that they were any less fun to make.  

Anyway, I'm sure I could ramble on some more, but DH just came in bearing Narnia.  Which means I need to cook dinner.  Raw chicken!  Fun!

Comments

[booster17.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking for a while about changing my LJ layout to something similiar, but I'm absolutely clueless about graphics. Any hints or clues would be gratefully received.

[jo_anne_storm]

I always feel weird about giving advice because I'm in no way an expert. Plus, I have no idea how much experience you have with graphics and/or graphic programs, which means that some advice my seem patronizing. But, I'll give it a shot anyway...

OK, first of all, you need to start with a good program. Paintshop just isn't versatile enough to do much of anything with. The most popular is Photoshop, which you can either buy new for an insane amount or buy an older version off ebay (sometimes still for an insane amount). I personally use GIMP, which is a Photoshop clone. And, better yet, it's FREE.

Once you have a program, you have to learn how to use it. If you have a program with a user's guide, then use that as a starting point. Here is a good Photoshop tutorial. If you use GIMP or another program, it may take a little longer to do the steps if only because the programs are not exactly alike. Also, read the tutorials at Tangled Synthesis. Vrya deals specifically with things like layer masks and stock photos.

After you've learned how to do at least basic things in the program, you're ready to play. You don't have to have a solid idea of what you want before starting. Most the time I start with a picture I like and just experiment from there.

With jinni's banner, I started with the Logan picture. I was lucky enough not to have to resize it to fit the way I wanted. I added a layer mask to Logan and used gaussian blur to fade it out. Then in the background layer I added the light brown color.

Once I had that the way I liked it, I recreated the brown lines from camperx's icon. But, since the background was the same light brown color as the outside lines, it disappeared as soon as the background became dominate. So, I copied the line layer and switched the colors around. Next I added a layer mask to about 2/3rds of each layer, on the right for the light brown lines and on the left for the dark brown. I gaussian blurred both masks and that was it.

I finally added the text and spent much longer trying to replicate the effect camperx used than I did on any other part of the banner.