Interlocking Rings

This tip is a great exercise in using COMPOUND PATHS and the PATHFINDER PALETTE for the sometimes difficult task of making interlocking objects. Give it a try!




Open a new document, I started with a custom document 400 pixels wide by 400 pixels high. 

 

Select the ELLIPSE TOOL. Remember, to view a tool that is hidden, hold down the mouse button on the visible tool. To select a hidden tool, continue to hold down the mouse button, drag the pointer over the tool you want to select, and then release the mouse button.

 

Hold down the SHIFT KEY, click and draw a circle the size you want your rings to be.

 

Click on the RADIAL SWATCH on the SWATCHES PALETTE. If the SWATCHES PALETTE is not visible, click on SWATCHES in the WINDOWS MENU or press F6 (This will open the swatches palette).

 

You will notice that the circle now appears to have a glow as if it was a sphere.

 

To create the illusion of a ring we need to change the way the GRADIENT is arranged. Click and drag the left GRADIENT SLIDER until it is at approximately the location shown below.

 

Add an additional SLIDER by clicking under the GRADIENT BAR. Move your cursor to the black side of the COLOR BAR. Your cursor will turn into an EYE DROPPER.

 

When you click the EYE DROPPER on the COLOR BAR your SLIDER will turn black. Notice how the GRADIENT THUMBNAIL is a ring of light around the black center.

 

Your circle should now look like this. If you need to change the width of the highlight go back to the GRADIENT PALETTE and adjust the SLIDER positions to your satisfaction.

 

Select the ELLIPSE TOOL and position the cursor in the center of your circle. If your first circle is still selected, you will see a blue square in the exact center of the circle. Align your cursor with this dot, Hold down SHIFT + ALT (PC)/OPT (Mac), click and draw a circle the size of the original circles black area as shown below.

 

Use the SELECTION TOOL to select both circles.

 

Press CTRL+8 (PC)/CMD +8 (Mac) or choose COMPOUND PATH>MAKE command from the OBJECT PULL DOWN MENU.

 

You will now notice that the inside of the circle has been deleted.

 

Duplicate the ring by selecting it and while holding down ALT (PC)/OPT (Mac), drag the new ring to the right.

 

Duplicate one more ring and place it above the bottom two.

 

Select all the objects. Now we will use the PATHFINDER tools to break our rings into individual segments.

 

If the PATHFINDER PALETTE is not open, click on WINDOW>PATHFINDER or click SHIFT+CTRL+F9 (PC) or SHIFT+CMD+F9 (Mac). Click on the TRIM button to break the rings into individual shapes depending on how they overlap.

 

Click SHIFT+CTRL+A (PC) or SHIFT+ CMD+A (Mac) to deselect all objects. Notice that there are fine lines indicating the separate visible segments.

 

To make the rings interlock, we will need to create the illusion that as we look at a ring, it appears to go over, then under, over, and under the other rings. To do this, SELECT the section of a ring that you want go under and click the DELETE button to remove this section.

 

The example below shows what your rings should now look like.

 

SELECT the segment that needs to go under and click DELETE.

 

The rings now appear to be interlocked. The only thing left to do is to get rid of the lines that separate the individual segments.

 

SELECT the segments that are adjacent to each other as in the example shown below.

 

Again, go to the PATHFINDER PALETTE, but this time, click on the MERGE button.

 

Continue to SELECT and MERGE the next set of segments.

 
Continue doing this until all segments are joined. Your interlocked rings should now look like the example below.

 

If you want your rings to have more of a three-dimensional look, Open the EFFECTS MENU and select DROP SHADOW.

 
In the DROP SHADOW DIALOG BOX make sure the PREVIEW box is checked. Adjust the settings until you are happy with the appearance of your design.

 
There you have it, I hope this tip has inspired you to think of inventive ways to use COMPOUND PATHS and the PATHFINDER PALETTE.

Creative CVs

The importance of a resume cannot be over emphasised. Your resume is your surest channel of communication with a prospective employer. Given the number of resumes of potential candidates that a recruiter scans, the chances of your resume being overlooked are high. 

THE CREATIVE ADVANTAGEEnter the creative CV: A resume that breaks the norms of regular, boring resumes. A creative CV, as the name suggests, is daring and different. It has spunk and personality. It will help you stand out, get noticed among the sea of resumes and get you noticed by a potential recruiter. 

Explains HR manager Sheela Shetty, “We have to screen scores of resumes for every position. It’s just not humanly possible to pay specific attention to each application. So when we see a resume that’s different and stands out, it forces us to stop and give it a second look. Most often, we are intrigued and end up calling the candidate in for an interview. This is one of the cases where it pays to step away from the herd.” 

The beauty of a creative CV is that it allows a candidate to display his/ her creativity, innovation and original thinking. “When applying to fields where creativity is something an employer is actively seeking in a recruit, the creative CV works fabulously. Say you’re applying to an advertising agency or media house. A creative CV shows prospective employers that you have put thought into your CV, and that you are serious and deeply passionate about the field,” explains Dennis Matthew, account planner with an advertising agency. 

DO IT DIFFERENTLY So you’ve decided to make a creative CV—but don’t quite know how to go about it? You could start brainstorming keeping two things in mind. Firstly, what are your distinctive talents, interests or strengths? Secondly, what is the industry, profile or field you are applying for jobs in? Develop your CV based on this to ensure that it remains relevant at all levels. 

Journalism student Priya Kejriwal, while applying for summer internship jobs, designed her CV to resemble the front page of a newspaper. “I had sent in my CV at several newspapers, but hadn’t received any response. I decided to try something different, and so came about the idea of a newspaper CV. It also gave me an opportunity to showcase my skills on designing software to potential recruiters. I’d say it paid to do something different because I received three interview calls after sending in my creative CV.” 

There’s no dearth of ideas when it comes to making a CV that doesn’t follow standard formatting. The timeline approach is very popular—graphically depicting major educational and professional milestones. Multimedia CVs (popularised by Barney Stinson on the TV show How I Met Your Mother) are making waves as well. Right from building 3D models to placing resumes inside baked cakes (as a corporate folklore goes) the sky is the limit! Textile designer Ruchika Gupta printed her CV on a piece of fabric, instead of a boring sheet of white paper. She says, “I added a touch of embroidery on the borders as well. Using fabric allowed me to add an interesting yet relevant touch to my CV, without coming across as overly gimmicky or compromising on the content.” 

KEEP IN MIND 
While designing your creative CV, do keep certain points in mind. Creative CVs may not be appropriate for all companies, job profiles or industries. For example, a creative CV would be more appropriate for a job in advertising or media than in the banking and financial services sector. Make sure that being unconventional is acceptable in the field you are applying. 

Ensure that the content of your CV is the most important thing—do not sacrifice content for the sake of design. A creative CV may attract attention, but it is the content in it that will get you that interview call—and ultimately, the job. Try not to go overboard in the name of creativity. Being bold is one thing, but being over-the-top or overly flashy will not help your cause. Remember, certain professional standards must be maintained. Finally, be practical—a three dimensional CV may be interesting, but will the company store or file it? 

Take some time to review your CV and examine whether you can add an element of creativity. Dare to be different, and the rest will fall into place.
Source : education times 

10 Killer Adobe Photoshop Tips For Designers

Believe it or not, if you’re using Photoshop to design website, you’re on the right path to become a successful web designer. This is simply because Photoshop is one of the most advanced tool in the design industry that can make your creative imagination comes true with its plethora of professional tools which boost your productivity at the same time.
But how well do you know about Photoshop? Sometimes we’re wondering why certain web designer can design a website layout with extremely heavy graphics in 5 days, while we need around 10 days to complete that kind of design. It’s probably not about how fast you can click, it’s about how well you know about Photoshop, how you gonna unlock its full potential to boost your productivity.

We want you to know how to unlock its full potential. Yes, that’s why we created this post, to provide you 10 extremely useful Photoshop tips to boost your design speed. There can be shortcut, feature or setting you don’t know about, but not anymore. With this article you gonna learn them all, and you will design faster, and faster.
Note: Shortcut keys mentioned in this article are in Windows Photoshop format. If you are using Mac, be sure to know that Ctrl = Cmd (Command) and Alt = Opt (Option).

10. Undo, More Undo Please

I totally believe that we designer are very addictive to undo something, even until when we made a mistake on sketching, we tend to ‘undo’ it.
Well as you might know by pressing Ctrl + Z in Photoshop you can undo the previous action you made, but when you press the same key combination again, it will redo the previous action. This is quite unnatural and troublesome as you always need to undo multiple times to get to the state you want.

Believe it or not, Photoshop has a specific button for multiple undo, and it is Alt + Ctrl + Z. Yes, by using this key combination you can undo multiple times, according to the value of History States you set in Edit > Preference > Performance.
If you’re used to common Undo’s key combination which is Ctrl + Z, you can simply press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + K to access Keyboard Shortcut panel and change Undo’s key combination under the Edit section to Ctrl + Z.

9. Sampling Color, anywhere!

Stumbled upon a nicely designed website and wondering which exact colors is it using? This happens very often when I’m seeking inspiration during the time I’m doing site layout in Photoshop. For me I will launch a color picker, pick the color and get its hex number, then click on the color palette in Photoshop, then input the hex number then get the color, pretty annoying isn’t it?

Well you don’t really need to suffer like that, you can actually just click on Eyedropper tool or pressing I to activate it, then click on the Photoshop’s work screen and drag the Eyedropper icon to anywhere on the monitor screen to get the color you want. Yeah, it’s really that easy.

8. Flexible Guide

Tip #8 is actually combination of 2 tips, I hope you don’t mind about getting more tips. As web designer we have to deal a lot with guide to position an element correctly, in other words is pixel perfect.
How do you create a guide? Click on View, New Guide then decide it’s horizontal or vertical guide, input its position and click Enter? Alright, you can save these works by just pressing Ctrl + R to activate the Ruler tool, click on the tool and drag it down to create a horizontal guide, or vice versa.

Besides instant guide creation, here’s another useful tip for you. While dragging a guide with Move tool which can be activated using V key, press and hold Alt key to change the horizontal guide to vertical guide, or vice versa. Now you can probably consider yourself as professional on using guide.

7. Fun Layer Style Cloning

Layer styles are very entertaining when you can just apply them to make, let’s say, a social media icon looks pretty charming and unique, but it will be very tiring if you want to apply same layer styles to all social media icons which usually come in multiple pieces.
Have you ever realized that there’s an fx icon beside your layer? Well everything exists for a reason, if you press Alt and drag the fx icon to another layer, it will copy first layer’s styles to the one you dragged to, convenient isn’t it?

Also if you are interested about the common use of that fx icon, it allows you to move a layer’s styles to another and all you need to do is simply drag the icon to another layer without pressing Alt key.

6. Element Centering Made Easy

In order to achieve a pixel perfect design, we oftenly have to position element to exactly where it should be. This seems easy as you can just create some guides and snap the element to those guides, but it will be daunting if you want to absolute center an element in certain area, which requires a lot of guides, measurement and focus.
In fact you have a way to make this entire process a lot more easier, click on the element’s layer which you want to absolute center, then press Ctrl + A to select the entire document. After that, fire the Move tool and you will see some icons beside the option, Show Transform Controls. Click on the 2nd icon to vertical center the element, then click on 5th icon to horizontal center the element, there you go, an absolute centered element.

You can not only absolute center the element in entire document’s area, but also absolute center it in certain area. Let’s say I want to absolute center an element in footer area, I can simply select the footer area by using the Selection tool which can be activated by pressing M key, then absolute center the element in that specific area.

You can study other alignment options beside the Show Transform Controls option, they are very useful for aligning your elements in a wide range of situations.

5. View Selection, One At A Time

Often in designing a layout you need to check how an element looks exactly by its own or by few elements, for example in website layout below, I want to check slider’s buttons to confirm that they do not have transparency so they look exactly the same with or without slider’s image.

In past I have to turn off the visibility of slider image’s layer, slider background’s layer and even content’s background layer, but now I can just simply hold down the Alt key, then click on the ‘eye’ icon beside the button group to turn off all layers’ visibility so that I only view those buttons. After I checked them, I can just repeat the trick again to bring all layers’ visbilibity back.
This trick is also extremely useful while it comes to image slicing. You want to slice slider’s button without any other element like slider image, so you can use this trick to turn off all layer’s visibility to just slice the button, then repeat the trick to recover all layer’s visibility so it saves a lot of time wasted on turn on and off layers’ visibility.

4. Customize Font’s Tracking, Anytime

This particular tip shows you how to increase the font’s tracking in certain part of the type easily, so it might only be used on certain specific situation like logo or button creation, but it’s a professional tip that can save lots of time on finding fonts with suitable typography for your logo or button creation.

Alright, let’s say I want to decrease the tracking of the type, ’360′ so my logo’s type looks unique that visitor remembers it easier. I can select ‘POLO360′ by using Type tool which can be activated by pressing T key, then hold down the Alt and press < button to start decreasing the type’s tracking, which will bring the result above.
You can use this trick to tackle tracking issue of some artistic fonts, so there’s no worries about tracking next time you want to find graphical fonts for your logo creation!

3. Instant Layer Selection = Win

Layout design is an exhausting job as we have to tackle lots of issues such as typography, spacing and graphic, but it will be overwhelming if we want to find a specific element’s layer from hundreds of layers.

Let this trick makes your designer’s life easier. Activate the Move tool using V key and hold down the Ctrl key, then click on the element and you will automatically select the element’s layer. It’s really that simple but keep in mind that if you put elements into a group, then by using the same trick you will be selecting the group’s folder that contains the element you clicked, as shown above.

2. Smart Object For Smart Designer

Just as its name, Smart Object makes your editing smarter by carrying out 2 primary functions: perform nondestructive transforms and perform filtering. This feature comes in very handy especially when you’re producing a site layout with heavy graphics like stock photos, social media icons and UI kits, and all you need to do is right click a layer, then click ‘Convert to Smart Object’ to enjoy its benefits.
The first function says that once a layer is converted into a Smart Object, you can transform it anyway you want without losing its original quality. In our case we want to make the image slider smaller so we convert image slider’s layers to Smart Object and transformed it into something smaller.

Ouch, it’s just too small so I decided to change it back.

Looks like everything’s okay and nothing happened right? Below is the result if you applied a backward transformation without converting layer to Smart Object.

So you can probably see the difference here, especially slider’s buttons part. The backward transformation without Smart Object applied on layers makes the slider and slider’s buttons lose their quality. So by converting a layer to Smart Object, you can transform it to any smaller size you want but once you regretted about your decision, you can change it back without losing quality.
Another benefit by converting layer into Smart Object is once you applied filter on a Smart Object, a filter’s layer will appear under the Smart Object’s layer so you can disable filter easier by just turn off the visibility of the filter’s layer, and that’s called nondestructive filtering, great time saver for your project.

1. A Snapshot Of Beautiful Past

Now you learned how to undo multiple times, copy layer styles, faster layer selection and using Smart object these great time saving tips. Well, these are really handy skills that greatly boosts your productivity but how about after 2 hour’s work, you regretted your editing and decided to start from the middle? Redo it completely will be very exhausting and boring even you applied all killer tips you learned before, so that’s when Snapshot kicks in.

Snapshot allows you to create a temporary copy of any state of your editing so when you have trouble on improving your design and decided to go back, you can simply click on a snapshot to bring you back to the state you desired. To take a snapshot, you just have to open History palette, and click on the 2nd icon you see on the bottom of the palette.
There are also some useful features for snapshot like you can take multiple snapshots so you have more choices and you can name them so you remember them easier. Ultimately you can also use these snapshots to compare different effects you created for your design.
However, be sure to remember that once you closed the document, snapshots will be deleted instantly so if you want to keep those states, you can click on each snapshot and save the document as another file.

THE FOUNDRY AND LUXOLOGY JOIN FORCES

THE FOUNDRY AND LUXOLOGY JOIN FORCES

Combined group will provide a new avenue for computer graphics
production

London, 25th September 2012 – Leading visual effects software developer, The Foundry, today announced its merger with Luxology. The two companies are a great fit in terms of technology and markets. The combined portfolio will open doors to new ways of working, providing artists and designers with increased creative choice.

The Foundry with its stable of award-winning 2D and 3D VFX software, including industry standard compositor NUKE, sees Luxology’s complementary technology as a natural addition.

Luxology’s innovative 3D modelling and rendering technology and its flagship product, modo, are world class and favoured by thousands of artists and designers globally.

The collective product range is very exciting, but equally important is the shared ethos of the two companies and the staff within them. Both The Foundry and Luxology have strong reputations for being community driven and good collaborators. They are widely recognised for building tools around customer needs, providing artist-friendly workflows and great support.

This union will allow us to push the boundaries for our customers across a wide range of industries.

Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry comments:
“We were impressed by modo's strong roots in a variety of markets - including VFX, design and games - and by Luxology’s focus on creating artist friendly, highly advanced technologies. Both comapnies are a great match for each other. The Foundry and Luxology's products are highly complementary, and we both like our products to be open and flexible, letting the customers choose how they want to work. In the short term we will be continuing to develop the interaction between our products, which will be of immediate benefit to all of our customers. We can’t wait to see what our combined experience and knowledge will allow us to build in the long term.”

Brad Peebler, President of Luxology comments:
“The Foundry has an impressive pedigree in the visual effects industry, where its products and attention to customers are second to none. Creative industries are converging in terms of media, quality and deliverables. Joining forces with The Foundry will allow us to accelerate the development of modo, ushering in a new era for our customers. We simply can not wait to leverage our combined strength to change the landscape for content creators everywhere.”

A year ago, at a chance meeting organised by ILM, John Knoll threw down the challenge of integrating products from both companies. This initially sparked the idea that the two companies could be a greater force together than apart and the merger idea snowballed from there.

John Knoll, Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic comments:
“I am a big fan of both Luxology and The Foundry having been using modo for quite a while and KATANA here at ILM in the last 18 months. Their marriage is really exciting for the VFX community. Their combined technology and similar approach to working with customers is a very interesting development. I’ll definitely be keeping my eyes on them.”

About The Foundry
The Foundry is a world-leading innovator in visual effects technologies and is internationally renowned for its product design and collaborative approach. Founded in 1996, the company has established itself as a critical partner to major feature film studios and post production houses worldwide including The Mill, ILM, The Moving Picture Company, Walt Disney Animation, Weta Digital, Framestore, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain.

The company's products have been used to create breathtaking effects sequences on a wide range of features, television projects and commercials. High profile examples include the 2012 Oscar® winners, "HUGO" (Best Visual Effects) and "Rango" (Best Animated Feature Film) as well as the EMMY award-winning "Boardwalk Empire."

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a Sci-Tech Award® to The Foundry’s development team for the FURNACE image processing suite in 2007 – and the company now holds two products with AMPAS Sci-Tech Award® winning technology including high-end compositing system NUKE.

In 2011 The Foundry ranked 54th in The Sunday Times Tech Track (up three places from 2010), and debuted in both the Sunday Times International Track and the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 lists.

Backed by The Carlyle Group with a substantial portion still owned by the staff, The Foundry is run by its original management team.

© The Foundry, its logo and product names are registered trademarks in the UK, USA and/or other countries. Academy Award is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

About Luxology
Based in Mountain View, Calif., Luxology® LLC is a technology company developing nextgeneration 3D content creation software that enhances productivity via artist-friendly tools powered by a modern underlying architecture called Nexus®. Founded in 2001, by Allen Hastings, Stuart Ferguson and Brad Peebler, Luxology is home to some of the top 3D engineering expertise in the computer graphics industry.

Luxology’s modo is at the centre of an active global user community producing models, images and animations of the highest quality. Luxology’s rendering technology is under licence to Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation and Bentley Systems, Incorporated.

More information on the company, its licensable Nexus technology, its flagship product modo® and a gallery of images from the Luxology community is available online at www.luxology.com.

Relaxo VFX Making Starring Salman Khan by Futureworks India

Seeing this ad being played on our television sets very often these days , pervades us up with our admiration for the Superstar and the Larger-than-life presence that he creates amongst everything around him… Yes , we are talking about the entertaining "RELAXO TVC" that features Salman Khan rescuing the ladies from dangerous situations ..

However , what we are unaware about is the VFX studio that has given the look that the TVC carries today and makes us fall in love with the commercial. FutureWorks Media Ltd. India is responsible for the magnificent VFX incorporated in the TVC. Founded in 2007 , FutureWorks provides state of the art post production services to television commercial and feature productions.

Futureworks India has been gracious enough to share with us the VFX Breakdown of the whole TVC and gain an insight into the challenges faced by them shooting for the ad.

Visual Computing Labs (VCL), a division of TATA ELXSI Ek Tha Tiger

Visual Computing Labs (VCL), a division of TATA ELXSI, located in Mumbai has delivered 1300 VFX shots for YRF blockbuster Ek Tha Tiger which released last month. The Vfx was delivered using a customized pipeline designed for the complexity of these shots. Up to 60 skilled technical artists were deployed by VCL for this project, which was completed in a record six and a half month period. The entire duration of CG/VFX in the film spans over a 30 minute duration.
Presiding over the team were the Creative Director of VCL, Pankaj Khandpur and Vishal Anand, Visual Effects Supervisor at Visual Computing Labs (VCL).
Ek Tha Tiger is a romantic action thriller directed by Kabir Khan and produced by Aditya Chopra , Yash Raj Films. The movie stars Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif in the lead roles and Ranvir Shorey, Girish Karnad, Roshan Seth and Gavie Chahal in supporting roles. The movie marks the third collaboration of Kabir Khan with Yash Raj Films . This film also marks VCL’s 24th collaboration with Yash Raj Films.
Talking to AnimationXpress Ishpreet Chandock, about his experience working on Ek Tha Tiger, Pankaj Khandpur – Creative Director, VCL said,   “We started working on the movie 7-8 months before the actual shoot started, where we did a pré viz of all the sequences as it was going to be an action packed film. There is alot of action sequences in the story shot across countries, such as  Ireland, Turkey, Cuba and of course the last bit we have shot in Thailand which was supposed to be Cuba, so as it was a action oriented movie we were brought on very earlier into the scene.”
Kabir Khan, the director of the film wanted to pre viz all the action sequences before the movie went into production. So based on the director and action director’s brief we worked on the previs which was done shot by shot, sequence by sequence. We also had reference pictures of the locations it was supposed to be shot in, which  gave us a very clear and detailed idea , and helped usmake iterations with clarity.
However we had to compensate for the certain things we hadn’t thought of, for instance for the dublin shoot , for the tram sequences, we had to create a CG tram , a lot of background in CG and all the sequences around the tram as the crew were not permitted to shoot certain shots, also, the shots on top of the tram are all simulated by various ways in CG just to make the sequence look larger than life.”
“The sequences at Cuba had a simple narration compared to Dublin, but we had to work on a lot of effects on the action sequences especially the climax, for the plane sequence, a CG plane had to be  created , a lot of action also had to be simulated. So, in a nutshell we did around 1300 shots, which for such a feature film should have been around 2000 shots but we curbed it down with using a lot of CG work. Personally, this is arguably the biggest indian film which we have done so far.”
‘Ek Tha Tiger’ also marks VCL’s 24th collaboration with Yash Raj Films including films like ‘Dhoom 2’, ‘Hum Tum’,’Rab Ne Bana De Jodi’, ‘Bachna Ae Haseeno’ and the count just continues.
Sharing his thoughts about this long collaboration and his experience throughout these films, Pankaj Khandpur said” It has been a wonderful experience working with Yash Raj, the 24 films done by vcl just symbolize the same. We  hope we create more magic together in the upcoming projects.”

VIEW Conference Unveils 2012 Highlights