Design a Rocket-Powered Retrofuturistic Digital Illustration Retrofuturism is a topic that has always fascinated me. In this tutorial, we'll go through the steps of recreating my own experiment in this style. After making the 3D typography in Illustrator, we'll use Photoshop to create an out-of-this-world digital illustration on the topic of space exploration. Introduction As Wikipedia puts it, "retrofuturistic design is a return to, and an enthusiasm for, the depictions of the future produced in the past (most often the 1920s through 1960s), both in science fiction and in nonfiction futurism of the time, which often seem dated by modern standards." I love dated! This is what we're doing; a retro interpretation of the future based on the theme of space exploration. Video Tutorial Our video editor Gavin Steele has created this video tutorial to compliment this text + image tutorial. Step 1 Open Illustrator, start a new web document and get this font, called Airstream. Step 2 It's time to add the 3D effect. Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Step 7 Step 8 Step 9
Create 3-D text with some extreme lighting | Denis Designs Today we are going to take an object/text, change it from 2-D to 3-D and give it some realistic effects. We are going to be using Illustrator to create the object, then bring it into Photoshop to add highlights and shadows. Step 1 So lets open up Illustrator and create a 5â€x5†document. Step 2 Alright, now we want to turn our object 3-D, so go to Effect>3-D>Extrude & Bevel. Step 3 That’s all we are going to do in Illustrator, so now copy your image (apple+c) and paste it into a 1680x1050px Photoshop document. Step 4 Now we are going to setup a background. Step 5 Lets grab this wooden texture here and bring it into our document. Step 6 We are going to give the wood some darker color, so we are going to go in and grab a dark brown color. Step 7 Now press apple + shift + I to select the inverse and fill the space with the brown with option + delete. Step 8 Step 9 Take that yellow layer and stretch it out so it fills the area without the brown we filled earlier. Step 10 Step 11 Step 12 Step 13
Retro Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop Last week I was talking to Aloa, one of the Abduzeedo writers, and he was showing me some images that he thought were cool for tutorials, one of those had this mix of vectors and gradients but very geometric. It was a nice inspiration so I decided to do something mixing Illustrator and Photoshop. In this tutorial I will show you how to create an abstract image for a poster using Illustrator and Photoshop. We will do all the vectors and shades in Illustrator then in Photoshop we'll give to the image a nice retro style using some textures and brushes. Step 1 Open Adobe Illustrator and with the Rectangle Tool (M) create some rectangles. Step 2 Select a few rectangles, move them to the right holding the ALT key to duplicate them. Step 3 Repeat the same thing, but now to the left to create a third column. Step 4 Again repeat the same thing you did in the previous steps, now to create the fourth column. Step 5 Select the first column and go to Object>Transform>Shear. Step 6 Step 7 Step 8 Step 9 Step 10
Vector Art Free Download - Envelope Icon Set | You the Designer Vectors June 10, 2008 You the Designer Exclusive! Vector Art Free Download – Envelope Icon Set Our latest edition to our exclusive free vector art collection is this awesome and extensive envelope icon set created by our good friend and talented illustrator Phil Earley. This set features a variety of different envelopes and folders of different sizes which we foresee being extremely useful for many print and web design projects. Vector Art Free Download – Envelope Icon Set | Created By Phil Earley Download and Usage Terms Author: Cadence Wu Cadence is You The Designer's senior blogger, and the most jack-of-all-trades of the staff.
Design a Sin City Style Poster Sin City was a really cool movie, at least visually. I really liked the stylish scenes and colors. A few months ago I saw a poster of another Frank Miller movie called "The Spirit." The poster is titled "My City Screams." In this tutorial, I'll show you how to create that effect in Photoshop, but this time we'll use Illustrator to create the perspectives and text. Final Image Preview First, let's take a look at the image we'll be creating. Step 1 Create a new document in Photoshop, use 1000 pixels by 1300 pixels. Step 2 We'll use Illustrator to create the text in the correct perspective. Step 3 Now that we have the vanishing point, it's easy to create more lines. Step 4 With our grid done, it's easy to apply the correct perspective to anything you want. Step 5 Select the "PSD" text and go to Object > Expand and just click OK. Step 6 Now type "TUTS,". Step 7 Place the same image in our Photoshop document. Step 8 Copy the "PSD" Blend from Illustrator. Step 9 Step 10 Step 11 Step 12 Step 13 Step 14
Illustrator Quick Tips #2 - Scatter Brushes | Abduzeedo - design inspiration and tutorials Brushes are very useful in Photoshop. We may create all sorts of effects, from clouds to grunge brushes and many others. In lllustrator it is no different, actually it's easier to create and use brushes than in Photoshop because you can preview how they will look and edit them in real time, what makes a big difference. Creating brushes is really simple: just drag a shape to the brush panels and that's it! You got yourself a brand new brush. Step 1 Open Illustrator and create a new document. Step 2 Create some basic shapes that will be used to create the brushes. Step 3 Let's edit the first Scatter Brush. Step 4 Apply the brush to the logo. Step 5 Repeat the same thing using the triangle brush, you may open the Edit Dialog Box by double clicking on the brush. Step 6 Now let's edit the square brush, repeat the same technique used for the other brushes and use pink for the color. Step 7 Click on the Brush Library Menu icon (1) and select Decorative then Decorative Scatter to open that library.
Iron Man View Interface Effect in Photoshop Last weekend I was watching the Iron Man movie and I was blown away by some of the effects I saw. Loved the bombs and some interface designs, in special when he puts the mask and lots of cool elements start popping on the screen, like the Terminator view. That really inspired me and I decided to try that in Adobe Photoshop. So in this tutorial I will show you how to create the Iron Man screen interface, I don't even know if I can call it that way :). We will use Illustrator to create some vectors and Photoshop to put everything together. Step 1 Create a new document and fill the background layer with black. Step 2 Now let's use a photo. Step 3 - Digital Make Up Create a new folder on the Layer Palette and rename it to Face. Step 4 Duplicate the layer and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Step 5 With the Eraser Tool (E) delete the areas we want to keep them sharp and crisp, like the eyes, beard, hair. Step 6 Duplicate the original photo, not the blurry one and go to Filter>Other>High Pass.
Illustrator Quick Tips #1 - Complex Symbols with Pathfinder Last week I posted an article showing some great logos using 3D effects and colorful gradients. There are quite a few ways to do create those effects in Illustrator, however for most of them you will have to use the Pathfinder tools. Because of that I will show you an example based on a few logos from that list. References When I was looking for references for a logo design project that I'm still working on, I selected some awesome logos. Step 1 Open Adobe Illustrator and create a new document. Step 2 Duplicate the Circle and resize it, but just the width. Step 3 Repeate the same process of the previous step, this time however reduce the height of the new circle. Step 4 Repeat the Step 2 again, this time align to the right and use yellow for the color. Step 5 Repeat the Step 3 just aligning the new ellipse from the top. Step 6 Select all ellipses and go to the Pathfinder panel (Window>Pathfinder). Step 7 Playing with the Abduzeedo colors. Step 8 Step 9 Conclusion