Updates!`

I've been lazing a bit on the update announcments over the past few days so I have a rather lot to make

Cheeky Images: Two new additions to the image gallery over the last few days - those Boston Boys have been killing me all over my TV so I went on a binge. Jonathan Tucker (Stateside and The Black Donnellys) and Bryan Greenberg (One Tree Hill and the soon-to-be October Road)

Cheeky Resources: Gilmore Girls bases are up to date for 7.15 - I Am A Kayak, Hear Me Roar! but I still haven't finished (or started, for that matter, 7.16 - Will You Be My Lorelai Gilmore?)

Cheeky Tutorials: I added this earlier this week because someone who shall remain nameless mentioned that they weren't clear on how to get that icy blue color just right so I thought I would write up a quick method tutorial. I don't know if it's the exact icy blue they were talking about but it is icy blue :)

Cheeky Graphics: I took on an icons100 challenge for Guys & Dolls (the movie) and I'm into my first batch - 10 Guys & Dolls Icons. Well, frankly, they suck, but that's kind of OK with me :) I have to admit though, I'm totally phoning in the stupid themes thing. "I uh, sure that could be about love...yeah...I meant it all along *shifty eyes*"

Project Update: In addition to continued work on The Light, my pursuit of learning G-Mesh in Illustrator, my icons100 challenge, updating my portfolio as I create portfolio worthy work, my off interest in re-skinning the site, i've been playing with hand sketching and manga in illustrator. So, ya know, just to keep you posted ;) Maybe i'll have to reopen the hentai project.

Updates

Some updates to Cheeky Resources Image Gallery - I ran across an OK gallery today and added a new album in the Males --> Celebrities section for Alex Pettyfer.

Also, did you know I had comment moderation turned on? Cuz I didn't...but apparently I did have comment moderation turned on and now all of your happy comments have been moderated :)

Bases/Cuts: I am finally caught up on my GG bases/cuts. This week I uploaded 7.11 - Santa's Secret Stuff, 7.12 - To Whom It May Concern and 7.13 - I'd Rather Be In Philadelphia. I also have the caps from 7.14 - Farewell, My Pet and I'm already weeding through them to pull out the ones i'd like to use.

Icons: A few really bad Gilmore Girls icons were added today. I also added a bunch of quote icons. I think those are probably the only that i'll be doing for a while (i.e., making quote icons) because I'm really having no luck with the regular icons once i've done the bases. Maybe when

the season is over i'll do a Season in Review series. :)

Kay Does Vector

...and for those of you who are female and unfamilliar with bad retro porn, you have no idea why that makes me chuckle.

Fifteen people asked me how I create my vector designs this week. I think that’s a cry for help if I ever heard one so, in the spirit of saying things once and being as informative as possible, a text based guide to all of your questions

What is a Vector? / What is a Vexel?
A vector is a series of paths. A vexel is a series of pixels.

The best example I’ve ever been able to work with consistently is to allude to a piece of string and a piece of elastic. Loosely tie the ends together so that they both form a circle, if you try to stretch the circle made out of string, it will break. But, if you try to stretch the circle made out of elastic, it will stretch without issue.

In essence, that is the difference between vector and vexel. If you’re just looking for the “look” of blocks of color used to create a design – item, logo, whatever – you can use pixels (paint brushes, whatever) to create a vexel. If you are interested, however, it creating a true blue vector design and you want it to be infinitely stretchy, you need to create a vector.

What do I need to create Vector Designs?

Software: There are a lot of different pieces of software you can use but, for the sake of my example and understanding that these are the ones I’ve learned to use and, therefore the ones I can speak of with any expertise, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

Physical Tools: A Mouse. No, Seriously. Do not try to do this with your touchpad.

Competencies: Experience and understanding of the pen tool. Sing it a hippie song, buy it a cookie – whatever you have to do, you need to be copasetic with the pen tool before you can create a functional vector design.

If I wanted to have the gravy train of Vector Design tools, what would I want?

Software: Adobe Illustrator. It is designed to work with high numbers of paths and, because of that, a high volume of layers. Therefore, it is gentler on your system resources and has superior controls (like gradient meshing). You can get by to do most things without it though.

Physical Tools: A giant monitor and a drawing pad – a large one. Giant displays are great for vectoring because, so often, vectors start large and are resized to be smaller. Without a large visible canvas to work on, you do a lot of the zoom and scroll. Drawing pads, on the other hand, those who have them would say are indispensable. There’s something intuitive (oh, right, that’s the way the human body was intended to work) about simply drawing a shape when you want to create it.

What do you use to create Vector Designs?
I use Illustrator and a mouse. In the past, I have used Photoshop and I do still for post-production editing, but I prefer Illustrator, hands down.

Do you use Stock Photos or Reference Images?
Not using stock photos and reference images is a lot easier when you have a drawing tablet. If you can draw and you have a tablet you can vector by quite simply drawing. If, however, you cannot draw and you’re using a mouse, stock photos and reference photos are sometimes a must.

What is the difference between a Stock Photo and a Reference Image?
Truly, nothing. A stock photo is quite simply something that someone created to be used by another artist. There are a number of ways to get stock photos – either through sites that create royalty photos – i.e., that charge for the images – or through sites like iStock, who sell low-royalty photos. (i.e., they are approved for corporate use but they are inexpensive – a few dollars a piece) Or, through sites like yotophoto and deviantART, who compile CC (creative commons) photography for people to use. When I say, I used t a stock photo, I mean to say that I found a piece of stock photography, I pasted it on to a canvas and, for the most part, traced it. When I say that I used a reference image, I mean that I grabbed a few images – a tree, a fish, whatever – and I opened them up, on occasion to look at them and remember how a leaf is shaped or to ask myself where the gills are.

When you’re tracing, it’s usually a must that you credit the stock artist. If you simply are looking at the photo to decide how far apart eyes are or because you’ve forgotten what an eyebrow looks like, you don’t generally have to credit.

Where do you get Stock Photography?
As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of places to get it. You can get it from sites that sell it - and, in fact, that is a must if you are doing commercial work. If you’re using it for yourself, however, you can get a lot of CC lisenced images through sites like Yotophoto – which search numerous CC archives. Or, if you like, you can use a site like deviantART, which has a category dedicated to stock photography.

Wherever you decide to get it, be sure that you abide by the artists rules at all times.

What makes a good Stock Photo?
Well, that depends vastly on what you’re going to try to do but assuming that you like to design people – and I’m assuming that since, at this point, that’s most of what I do because it’s friggin hard – there are a few things that make up a good vector stock for a beginner.

Closed Eyes: You’ll probably notice, at this point, that most of the eyes on people I vector are either closed or unfinished. Why, you might ask? Well, it’s because eyes are difficult. With Photoshop, your only option is to detail the iris by creating innumerable little dots of color and that can leave things blotchy and unrealistic because eyes are wet. In Illustrator, you can do it that way or you can try to achieve an improved effect with gradient mesh – just don’t ask me how because I don’t know yet. G-mesh is MEAN and I haven’t figured out how to make it like me as of yet.

Simple Hair: The more complicated the hair – the more stray strands, etc… - the more you are going to want to run away crying by the time you’re done. Hair isn’t difficult, but it’s time consuming to draw every strand one at a time. In ClickyLight, there are over 1500 strands of hair drawn individually. Yeah, you read that right. 1500. And, I cheated and made a big portion of the hair a glob.

Avoid Glitter & Sparkles: Glitter and sparkles are pretty – but trying to create them when you’re getting started can be a major headache.

Image Gallery Updates

More images of Milo Ventimel....yeah...

Uplaoded

Lots of Updates

There are a lot of updates today. Obviously, it you're reading this, you probably scrolled down and noticed that I blogged about the obsessive amounts of light textures being used but, if you didn't, here is a link.

UFG: I added a new up for grabs banner today. It features Hilary Burton and Dan Radcliffe (one of the new shots from the naked play everyone is in such an uproar about :P) and, for now at elast, it's called due.
Cheeky Resources: Then, in addition to the other days additon of Hilary Burton, Bethany Joy Galeotti and some major updates to the Kristen Storms gallery, I've also made a huge update of all high-res photos to Isla Fisher's folder.

Cheeky Designs: There's also a major gift for you Godfather fans out there that I have stuck in the gallery. Namely tons of icons from The Godfather. More to come from the first film and, maybe, if i still like you, more to come from II and III as well :)

Light Textures: The Take Over

For those of you that don't yet know what a light texture is, it can be a few things. The ones i'm speaking of particularly today are called "dotty light textures." Here's an example.

See how there are spots, and how they look all...spotty. Well, set that to "lighten" or "screen" and all of the black will disappear - the color, however, will stay resolutely present and what you get is a great way to cover almost anything up. Lighten is a great function and Light textures are fun. I use them a lot - particularly in icons. Hell, this one is exploding with them. Course, it's of a 12 year old girl in a pink sweater, so, ya know, she's pretty sparkely in and of herself. For the most part, however, I prefer a different variety of light texture - subtle. Take this desktop as an example - there is a light texture that I made applied to that - it's dark red and barely visible. It's an accent, not the focus.

Why did I choose two different kinds of light texture for two different kinds of graphics? Well, I did it because they had a different feel. In the icon, I was working with a young female who had a great big smile and a generally bubbly disposition. In the desktop, I was working with an adult male pulling a total James Bond with the jacket and the pinstripes and the fedora and it was like the 1940's on a canvas - using sparkles would have been a smidge inappropriate, not to mention cluttered.

So what am I saying - when you use something, consider your audience, consider your subject and consider your desired effect.

Why am I saying this? Well, because today, ladies and gents, I saw this. Now, to spare this person any embarassment, i'm certainly not going to pick out names, but - oh man - did i laugh....then blog.
Okay, first - these are men. Men don't like dots unless they're kissing girls. At least the dots aren't pink, though. Second, I don't know if you know what show these men are on or from whence this image came but it's from a show called Prison Break (FOX) and they play ex-cons breaking out of prison. The show is about stress, death, guns and beer. Things explode all of the time. It's a show on FOX. Third, these are their wanted posters. What about any of that says sparkles to you?

Normally, a single graphic wouldn't make me gripe like that. Sometimes people do crazy things but, of late, light textures have taken over the world at The Dark Arts and it seems to have started at Pandora's Closet and I must put a stop to it! I must! I must!

Or, at least I have to go on record begging for the cessation of hostilities toward my brain.

Cheeky Resources; Image Gallery

The image gallery, post-massive deletion, is being updated.

In addition to adding Hilarie Burton and the chick who plays Hailey on One Tree Hill to the gallery, i'm also moving into a new category system and adding some general descriptions to the descriptions feilds. Please be patient.

Thus far, A & B of hte female celebs have been moved.

Launching The Portfolio

For those of you that check my gallery for updates, you probably haven't seen a lot of late and there is a key reason for that - I haven't been making any.

It occured to me, when I started trying to decide what I would show off to potential clients, that I absolutely do not want them looking at my actual gallery for all of the crap that would innundate them. I did, however, come up with a solution.

http://www.portfolio.bitterepiphany.com/

There really isn't a lot of new stuff there but there are a lot of things most of you haven't had the opportunity to see.

I've also been making a lot of uploads at deviantART.

Updates To Cheeky Resources

A lot of you probably noticed that the Resoruce Image Gallery lost all of its Harry Potter images this past week. The zips are available for download for a limited time - if you need to know where, leave a comment and I will get you URL's. More importantly, however, there have been major upgrades to the Cheeky Resources Image Gallery where OC's are concerned. Significant uploads of high-res photos have been made to

Chad Michael Murray
David Anders
Johnny Depp
Justin Timberlake
Matt Czuchry
Michael Vartan
Orlando Bloom

There are more updates - namely for, ya know, females, but I had some dog washing duties to handle today ;)

Thank You

With the reach of the 1,000,000th review at HPFF, I've been organizing a few things there and it's made me think quite a bit about my own reviewes and reviewers.

I have been a member of HPFF for a few years now and I've been a part of their staff for nearly as long. It means a lot of things in the day to day, but one thing that it doesn't mean are many thanks - so, for as much as reviews can mean to a person - to a staff member, they are inclined to mean much, much more.

As of this note, I have been the lucky recipient of 373 reviews on two stores and two one-shots and, while it certainly isn't the largest number the site has ever seen, I appreciate it all the same.

I've had some comical reviews - ranging from the short and obviously confused ("wow......very um.....deep") to the outright attempts at offensive (""). It's almost a pity that I've deleted the story now but, when I recieved my first flame, I threw an e-party - because you're not really a fanfiction author until you annoy someone to the point of leaving a snotty review. (I"ve gotten a lot more of those since.)

Knowing that I can't mention everyone, because there are a lot of reviews and quite a few regular reviewers, I feel compelled, still, to mention a few of my favorites. if you've been left out of the list, I assure you, your input was still appreciated.

As great compliments go, there are few reviews more flattering than the one Guilded Sorcerer left on Chronicles of Life. In fact, I found it so flattering that I was afraid to answer it for months on end - because I was terrified to find out that this person secretly harbored a deep seated pathology and was secretly an idiot or - worse, just screwing with me. steve34 was responsible for a very lengthy e-mail delving into the characters featured in COL and, as much as e-mails that compare me to my characters usually freak me out, it's nice to know that a person can find your characters so real that they feel a need to get into them further - to better understand.

Of course, one can scarcely mention great reviewers without giving a nod to timeturner, PhoenixStorm, and Crystal Allen all of whom, at various times, have followed my stories and left great reviews.

All in all, thanks to everyone who has reviewed and, here's hoping, to everyone who will review in the future.

New Pieces

I have a new desktop out - Adam Brody, of all things.

it comes in all four sizes.

Valentine's Day Graphics Pack

I've been looking for a way to distribute my stocks in a manner that don't require me maintaining them and, this, for now, seemed like a good solution so - introducting the graphics pack. Images, brushes, fonts and even quotes for making great ____. In this case, Valentine's Day

[Valentine's Day Graphics Pack]

New Project

So I said that, for the remainder of January and all of February, my goal was going to be to learn how to operate G-Mesh in Illustrator. Now, I come into it knowing the basic concept, so it's not really fair - but my goal was to learn to G-Mesh like this.

Obviously, i'm not there yet. After having tinkered with a few failed vectors - i'm going to go about it this way and I've started The Light.

Latest Project

Ranting Brought To You By Kay

OH MY GOD.

For as many sloppy sweatshirts and semi-generic character/text t-shirts as I am apt to wear on any given day, I have a style and it has nothing to do with any of that, so I have a few things to say about a few things but today I saw something absolutely horrific. Now, I don't intend for this to sound like technical critique on the graphic, but the obsession with fashion photography has gone way way way too far.

It's always been annoying to log on and see 88000423352 different models living in people's signatures for no reason other than that they thing they may have finally caught the most ridiculous pose/outfit and captured it in a signature. This, however - this is just going too far.

Now I Don't Mean To Be Mean, But...

I saw this today and literally almost choked on my own saliva.

What you're looking at is the result sheet from a tutorial posted on a website. This tutorial is designed to teach people how to 'shed pounds' using photoshop. Now, I haven't tried the tutorial but, looking at the result, the poster did a bang up job of it. What you're also looking at, however, is a Dove ad.

I don't know how many of you know this, but if you've accidently turned on the TV some time in the last six months, particularly during the day, you've probably seen a Campaign for Real Beauty ad from Dove. Their latest marketting gig has teamed up with Oprah, it seems, and is designed to use real people - not runway models - to market their product. Now, don't get me wrong, I've yet to see a housewive in her oatmeal stained bathrobe, but they have at least embraced the fat chick.

If you can't see the irony by now, i'll hit you over the head with it - they've taken someone who was embracing her outer fat chick on tv and in print and made her into a skinny chick, ya know, so she feels better about herself. They airbrushed an ad campaign based on not airbrushing.

Dove, I think you have more work to do.

Merry Christmas Accomplishments

Okay, so I made a blend...if I tell you it was my New Years Resolution to learn, would you believe me?

Trojan Man

Well, here's some good news for you - McAfee Spam Advisor gives me the thumbs up.

Reasons I Love Nick

Nick is me...except he's a boy and his forte is PHP where mine resides firmly within the cozy confines of Adobe products. (Except Flash. Fuck Flash.)

Tonight I was working on a new skin and I showed it to Nick to see if he had any complaints. He's never expressed any particular interest in fanboying after me, so I assume he's not inclined to lie. The next thing I know, the lovely man is putting together a skin selector script that works around all of my admittedly insane tendancies toward cruel and unsual designs that change colors depending on what buttons you push :)

What's that mean? Well, if he can get it working and refrain from beating me with my own stupid stick, all of my old skins will be selectable, with the new skin and they'll all be updated and shiny and it will be wonderful :) Or at least better.

But yes, I love Nick. I love him so much, in fact, that i've refrained from giving him a nickname for his continued mental health.

Passive Resistence

As a sign of passive agreessive behavior resistence against santa butting in on halloween, i'm butting in on christmas this year and not taking down the halloween skin.

Or, possibly, i'm just busy.