2011 has been the first full year in my own shop. And since christmas is the time for giving I wanted to do something nice and handmade for my clients. Many thanks to Ed at Danger Press for doing work on the shirts and and Alvin of G$P for some letterpress love. If you didn’t happen to give me money this year, here’s what you missed out on.
My good friend Alvin is a great designer. He helps me make sense of all the stuff I did not learn when I did not go to design school. The following words of brilliance recently fell out of Alvin’s face:
Design is part intuition (talent) and part math. Even if you don’t have the talent you can learn the principles. Follow the rules and it will look good.
This got me thinking about grids, and how I never really figured them out. So in an effort to wrap my brain around this fundamental technique/tool, I redesigned my slate. A slate is a boring thing that no one ever notices – the funny thing is, all the clients who have seen it have noted it’s good-looking-ness. This is the nerdy stuff behind why it looks nice.
Phi: The mystical ratio of 1.618 forms a rectangle (864×1398) that sits nicely within title-safe of a 16×9 comp. This serves as the base form for the grid. The large chunk of the golden rectangle will hold the information, while the small holds the titles of that information.
Read MoreI just rigged up an incredibly simple candle flame effect in After Effects and thought I’d share.
Reference:For recreating anything natural the first step is to find reference. Do a quick search for stills and/or video and observe how candle acts and looks.
Shape: Start by creating a bright yellow solid (248, 240, 185). The basic flame shape is a non-sharp teardrop. The quick way is to draw a circle, and move the top point up.
The bottom of a flame has an elliptical area of transparency where it touches the wick. Draw another circle at the base. Set this mask shape to Subtract mode and bump up the feather until it feels nice.
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