Ben Blogs

I always wanted to know how to create flames and I’m glad I found this tutorial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xFsH1B0JZ4&feature=fvw

My flames did’nt turn out as fierce as his but I liked it!

Its actually really easy and takes less than 5mins to do it. But I think drawing those swirls takes skill. I was afraid of messing it up so I didn’t really go crazy with the swirls.

On a side note, I played Starcraf 2 yesterday to see what the fuss is all about. Back in the old Starcraft days, I only played one race – Protoss.

I liked the new and improved Protoss so I have a feeling I’ll find myself at the cafes early in the morning soon.

It was really hard to wake up today though. Dammit!

Also, Ill be off for a short trip to Penang this weekend. Looking forward to a relaxing trip. Bet I’ll be stuffing myself till I cry.

Anyway, won’t be doing any tutorials till I come back.

Originally I really intended to do this daily but I realized that I can’t as things keep popping up. But I will still put the days in the title to show how many I’ve done, though not consecutively.

I found this tutorial and it looked pretty interesting. It teaches you how to acheive the Lomo effect on GIMP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kcAVm5XiKU

However, I think I chose the wrong picture so I felt that it didn’t turn out as good.

Original Picture

Lomo’ed

But I really like this effect. I’ll definitely be trying it with other pictures.

I just finished creating this fireball.

Wow ok. I didn’t know it was so big until I uploaded it here. (Had to resize)

Actually I didn’t quite like the end result. Felt like I used the Gaussian Blur wrongly. I was fumbling with the layering as well haha!

It certainly looked far from what this guy acheived

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7NQv-thLZY

Plus I still don’t know how to make use of this.

Like how do I crop it to onto another picture of me farting this energy ball at your face?

Hmm. Interesting none the less! I might do another one later tonight.

Oh WOW! As Im writing this my Malware scan finally ended after 5hrs. Kinda disappointing to see that there was no malware detected. I mean, I waited SO LONG. I had to be careful not to open to many programs or tabs to make sure it didn’t hang halfway.

Gah.

I decided to self learn web design as a challenge to see if I could do it. I was hesitant at first because I have ZERO design/art background but what the heck, lets just see how far this goes.

My plan is to start learning some basic tutorials and post what I do everyday. Since I haven’t got my copy of Photoshop, I am using GIMP, a free software that works the same as Photoshop.

Today I attempted to create an Andy Warhol inspired image following by  this tutorial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6deRLsjbFk&feature=channel

Thats a pic of my friend talking to me. Can’t remember what I was saying but it sure looks like he’s giving it some serious thought. Lol

Next, I played around with the Lens Flare filter to create a very simple wallpaper using the following tutorial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEmMiwm6BhU

I really hope to be attempting at least 1 tutorial a day to improve my skills.

Cause it sucks big time now!

But I wonder whether this is the right way to learn because right now, I’m just blindly following the instructions. We’ll see.

More to come!