this is alan's blog

random sigs

2006-09-08T03:24:00.000-07:00

A bunch of sigs i've done. THey're not in chronological order, but you should be able to see the varying standards for each ^^

Just did this, i know it's rather simple and not nice, but.. didn't know what to do with the render.

This was done some time back but i like it alot although chris said it was just average. i think it's the best la! haha.

lala

I like this one alot!

eeyer. i dont like this one. haha.

focus!

2006-09-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

after reading chris' blog, i decided to do something simple for her too.

Come on buddy! exams so soon, cannot afford to slack arr. focus!!

when the going gets tough

2006-09-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

A present for lydia :) can be for anyone taking exams too =)
(if the picture is blocked by the tagboard, then just click on it)

Go lydia! You can come SA one!! Have confidence in yourself!

request

2006-08-18T04:43:00.000-07:00

WOOO!! i achieved my first target. i made a sig that someone actually liked and used. now to do more :)

anyway here are the signature and the avatar.

sigs

2006-08-11T19:55:00.000-07:00

made some attempts to do sigs for some people.

more work

2006-08-10T01:54:00.000-07:00

haven't updated in a while, here you go.

used some simple blurring techniques for the background. quite cool man the effect. The flower is a brush.

I like how this turned out ^^ Btw the background was done with 5-6 layers of grunge brushes

Distort polar coordinates, and alot alot of blurring on the background. :)

Similar to the first one in technique, but just with more filters done.

vector art

2006-08-08T06:43:00.000-07:00

Here's the tiny thumbnail. Click on it for a larger version of this:

Whew, this was a tiring piece of vector. 60+ layers in total. I never thought i could do it when i started off, but that's the strange thing about doing shadowing - it looks weird at the start but as you do more and more it starts to look nicer.
There are actually many more creases on the sweater, but to attempt them all would make it look messy. :/

I still don't know how to do eyes, so i just left the face blank. i know the chin is a little sharp, can't do anything about it, tried already. The cap is a little plain at the top, probably could have one more shadow but i'm lazy to do it. =X

Woot. vectors rock.

human vector

2006-08-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

One of the hardest things i've ever done in my life. =X
I'm not very satisfied with the background, but i can't think of anything else so decided to keep it plain.

The hands are quite badly done, because the photo itself was blur, so hard to imagine what it's like. Those shadows and creases ARE DAMN TIME CONSUMING. But it adds to realism so... guess it's worth it.

i like :)

photoshop tutorial

2006-08-06T05:32:00.000-07:00

Ok someone requested to know how i did the black and white thing, how i cleaned up the background?
Well it's really simple actually.

First, you open up the image you want in photoshop.

Then you click on 'Create new adjustment layer -> Hue/Saturation'

Set Hue and Lightness to 0, but Saturation to -100.

The picture should appear black and white now. Now set the Foreground Colour to Black , and click on Brush. Select the new layer (as shown in the screenshot) as your active layer.
Now whatever you paint over on the picture will become colour. So just paint over the sections you want. Edges don't have to be very clean to get a good effect (as i've shown in my picture), just do it closely by zooming in, etc.

(If you set foreground colour to white, whatever you paint over will be turned to black and white)

feel free to ask about anything else! :)

more more.

2006-08-02T05:29:00.000-07:00

My first attempt at vectoring.. it's tough man! And i gotta learn how to add lighting and shades and stuff. That's the hard part.
:/ i just realised the font is pretty hard to see after uploading the picture. it says 'alan's guitar'

Heh, my favourite work so far! :) It's supposed to be 'sketch-like' but it turned out quite.. scarylooking. So i decided to add in the text and the red eyes =)

And.. just a few simple tricks to make the background black/white and myself coloured. Just trying this out.
The text is meant to be inspirational. Think a little, you may understand it. =)

For enlarged views, click the thumbnails below:

abstract

2006-08-01T06:01:00.000-07:00

Tried various techniques on this one. Essentially was the vectoring of faces, but it's super hard. Hard to select the different shades of the skin. :/ so in the end look like got skin disease. So i just made it more abstract to compensate.
I got lazy on the hair, lazy to make it nicer and neater. heh.

my first work.

2006-07-31T03:07:00.000-07:00

Just a brief introduction for this site: basically i'll be posting all my Adobe Photoshop artpieces here. Yup. Don't worry, i will always let you know whenever i have a new artpiece by saying so in my blog.

here's my first piece.

The edges aren't as clean as i'd like, but i'm still learning. I initially added some stars in the background, but they looked like crap because they're actually fonts and they have ugly black outlines.

Things i want to learn:
1) how to clean up edges very smoothly
2) how to add objects?