Best Of Web And Design In April 2013

May 2nd, 2013
News

Another great month compact with lots of Photoshop and illustrator tutorials worth getting teeth sunk into, as well as some web related articles which are a must read. I hope you enjoy the monthly round-up, and would love to hear your thoughts in comments section.

Illustrator

How To Create an 8-Bit Pixel Character in Illustrator

If you’re a regular reader of my blog you’ll know I love creating artwork in Illustrator using simple or basic shapes. This tutorial takes that idea to the extreme by using nothing by the rectangle tool to create a simple 8-bit style pixel character. Pixels are usually associated with Photoshop, but the great thing about Illustrator is your artwork is 100% vector, so unlike Photoshop you can scale your design to any size while retaining those blocky 8-bit characteristics.

Create Detailed Tulips With Gradient Mesh, Without the Mesh Tool in Illustrator

We’re celebrating spring in this tutorial! Here you will learn how to draw beautiful tulips in a vase. We’ll start with a 3D base and then go on to create tulips with Gradient Meshes without the Mesh Tool, all in Adobe Illustrator. So let’s take a closer look.

Quick Tip: How to Draw a Hand Based on Geometric Shapes

Today I’m going to show some simple guidelines you can follow to create a reference base to draw a hand. It will mainly focus on how to place fingers and knuckles along with proportions.

How to Create a Detailed Flag Stand Illustration in Adobe Illustrator

n the following steps you will learn how to create a detailed flag stand illustration in Adobe Illustrator. We’ll start with the pole. Using basic tools and vector shape building techniques along with some complex gradients we’ll create the starting shapes. Next, using the Appearance panel, some basic blending techniques plus one or two effects we’ll add the highlights. Moving to the flag, you will learn how to create a simple pattern, how to easily align your shapes and how to take full advantage of the Transform effect.

Photoshop

Draw an Electric Guitar in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you will draw an electric guitar in Photoshop. We will start by tracing its shape in Adobe Illustrator and then export those paths to Photoshop to add the final touches.

How to Make a Split-Flap Text Display in Photoshop

While in the real world split-flap displays are becoming obsolete in favor of digital displays in places like airports, train stations, bus stations, and so forth, they still live on as a symbol of travel. Whether you use them in app interfaces or a vintage-inspired design, I’m sure that you’ll find this tutorial interesting and useful. In this tutorial, we will use Photoshop to create a split-flap display.

Create a Beautifully Designed 3D Starfish Icon

With just about everyone using a smart phone, it is important for mobile apps to have beautifully designed icons to represent the brand. In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a beautiful 3D starfish icon using several applications including Photoshop, Cinema 4D, and ZBrush. In the process we will show you how to create 3D objects and then combine them with textures in Photoshop to create an amazing icon

How To Give Your Photos a Gloomy Split Toning Effect

We’re probably all familiar with the classic techniques of photographic toning from seeing various examples of Sepia toned images, but for years analog photographers have been experimenting with chemical toners to create various processing effects.

Web & Design articles

The Best Way to Learn CSS

CSS works hand in hand with HTML; HTML sorts out the page structure, CSS makes it look pretty and adds subtle levels of interaction. As a web designer you should really get to grips with both these languages. Even if you don’t do the coding yourself, understanding how they work will help you design for the web.

How To Improve The Deployment Of WordPress Websites

As WordPress matures into a full-fledged CMS and more and more large online publishers come to rely on the platform, the practice of developing and deploying websites becomes increasingly important. High-profile members of the WordPress community, such as core developer Mark Jaquith and Cristi Burca, have spoken on the topic and built tools such as WP-CLI and WP Stackto improve the professionalism of our administration and deployment.

Repurposing Photoshop For The Web

HTTP: The Protocol Every Web Developer Must Know – Part 1

prtocol

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It’s a stateless, application-layer protocol for communicating between distributed systems, and is the foundation of the modern web. As a web developer, we all must have a strong understanding of this protocol.