For awhile now, I have contemplated doing a Q&A feature post that would address questions from my readers. I’ve been compiling some of the questions and answers that I think will help people out of a tight spot. These questions can be on any topic; from Photoshop questions to Wordpress issues, tutorial requests to general banter. I will try to answer each question as best I can and give you resources where you can find more help on a given topic. So without further ado…I give you Q&A with GrandmasterB.

Question From: Jamie
In one of your tutorials it says to place a guide at 400x and 400y. How is this done??? Please help.

(more…)

I’m writing my week in review a few days late this week. Last Saturday we found out that my father-in-law had passed away suddenly. We drove out to Omaha, Nebraska for the funeral and just got home this evening. This week has been very trying and extremely saddening. We had a very special relationship with my father-in-law and spent a great deal of time together going to Rockies games, family barbecues and most recently a fantastic camping trip to the Western Slope of Colorado.

This past week I was able to meet some of his family and friends that live in Nebraska, and I must say it was great to hear all of the stories about his life and how he was growing up. I know that my boys are truly going to miss him very much. We had some great times and I will cherish them forever. Rest in Peace Tom…we all miss you.

Before heading out last weekend, I did not have much time to work on anything good for the blog. I’m working on a custom vBulletin skin for a forum that we’re putting together at work. I’m hoping to have the new community launched by August 27th in time for the start of the College Football season…I hope I can make it.

July 22: Photoshop Tutorial: Grunge Styled Banner -  After spending countless hours writing and preparing the images I finally published my latest tutorial. The response has been very good so far, but none of the major tutorial players have picked it up yet. I’m assuming since there is an image of a pot leaf in the banner they may not pick it up, but that’s okay too. If you haven’t seen it yet, definitely give it a look.

I’m working on a new question and answer feature post for the site. I know that some of my readers have questions regarding how to do certain things in the tutorials or even suggestions for tutorials. If you have any questions at all please send me an email via the Contact Page. 

~ GrandmasterB

Recently, Cuzzy from Cuzoogle.com contacted me about creating a new banner image for his blogroll post dubbed “Rolling a Blog Joint”. Since the overall premise is a play on the word joint, I thought something with a textured paper background and perhaps a pot leaf image would do the trick. Amazingly, enough there is a company named ‘Pot Leaf’ and their logo was available on BrandsoftheWorld.com, so that will save me a step of recreating the leaf in illustrator. The paper texture for the background will be a combination of a number of paper artwork that I found on Bittbox; which is a great resource for this type of stuff. So, that should be enough background on this project…let’s get ‘rolling‘.
 

STEP ONE: SETTING UP THE DOCUMENT

The finished size of this image will be 450p wide x 150p high, but I’m going to start with a bigger canvas size. The reason being is that I want to be able to adjust the textured background to fit, and later I will crop it out. So, let’s start out by creating a new document that’s 600×600. From there drag guides to the center at 300x and 300y and then recenter the rulers to make that point 0. After that drag out horizontal guides to +/- 75px and vertical guides to +/-225px. These outer guides will be our bounding box…all of the content will go inside this area. Anything outside the bounding box will be cutoff in the final step, so make double sure everything is inside that box.
 

STEP TWO: CREATING THE BACKGROUND

I want to make the background a different color from the text and leaf image, so I thought a light shade of brown would be a good contrast and it will make the paper more realistic. I’ll use a light shade (b79573) and a darker shade (7a5f43) and create a radial gradient; which will be the base of the background. Create a new layer and drag out a radial gradient starting a bit above the top guide and down towards the right corner (light to dark). We create a new layer, because I want to have a base layer that’s transparent…this layer will come into play later on in the tutorial. After you’ve made your gradient, rename the layer to ‘Base‘.
 

(more…)

While browsing through the expansive Arsenal of vectors and fonts over at Go Media, I noticed something new…
GoVandal!

Is GoVandal a vector pack? Is GoVandal a font? What is it? Well, it’s a little bit of both. GoVandal was created in response to the demand of a graffiti-inspired font that looked authentic, naturally handwritten, and original.

It comes equipped with an exclusive Vector Pack (an Arsenal First!) full of underlines, arrows, drips, and the actual letters themselves. That way you can spice up your designs, or adjust the size and spacing quickly at your discretion. Things you can’t do with normal fonts.

I’ve been waiting a long time to find a decent graffiti font that looked similar to hand-written, real graffiti. The logo in my header is all done with calligraphy brushes in Illustrator and it took for goddamn ever to created. Each letter was painstakingly drawn out, sometimes three or four times. If you’re looking for a quick resource to create some awesome graffiti text, this will definitely do the trick. Tomorrow is payday at GrandmasterB HQ and I will definitely be purchasing this sweet little package. I’m working on a new tutorial and this is going to tie it in nicely…so you’ll get to see it in action! If you can’t wait to see it, get over to Go Media now and get a copy for yourself.

~ GrandmasterB

Good stuff today kids! If you’re an MMA fan and missed the big Kimbo Slice fight on Saturday night I’ve linked to the video on YouTube. WARNING: If you’re squeamish don’t watch. James Thomson’s got a nasty case of cauliflower ear and it doesn’t look pretty. Definitely check out Forest’s tutorial on creating a 3D EBook graphic and some cool new work from Dave at Go Media.

Cuzoogle - NBA Finals…Who ya got?
YouTube - Kimbo Slice vs James Thompson (if you didn’t see it yet…it’s great!)
John Cow - Initial On Page Optimization…
Go Media - Dave Portfolio Update
Bloggin-Ads - Entrecard is Down, Now What?
The Random Forest - Get Yourself a Free 3D Ebook Creator (tutorial)
BuzzMyBlog - CommuterChronicles.com is the Cure for Road Rage