March 2009 - Page 3 of 8 - Hungred Dot Com

Tutorial: How to write or design in chalk with this two technique

1. Fire up your photoshop and open up a workspace, change the background to a color where it fit the color of a blackboard(#33463a)

2. Create a new layer and mess up the blackboard so that it look like one! This can be done by using the smudge tool and some line drawn on the board. I used 1 line with a Smudge strength of 89% and a large enough pixel for me to swing continuously on the board to create a nice effect as shown below.

3. Use the Horizontal Type Tools with color (#d7d7d7) and write something on the blackboard. Next, Rasterize it.

4. Now, use the Smudge tool and rub the text until you get an effect which feel like a chalk.

5. Finally, add some blur to it by doing this, Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur, 2.5 Radius.

if you would like a nice drawing that looks like a chalk drawn you can do this,

1. Create a new layer and draw a bubble shape in the same color as shown above and contract it by 10px then color it with the blackboard color as shown below,

2. Next, take the Eraser tool and adjust its opacity to 50% and start erasing the shape until you get something like this. You can duplicate this image before applying Eraser tool to retry again for a better effect.

Done!

Tutorial: How to draw a simple butterfly logo using Adobe Illustrator

I opened up a new document in Illustrator and drew a basic wing shape using the Pencil tool. I adjust the wing shape by using the Direct Selection tool and double clicking on the path that I drew. I can then drag the lines to perfect my wing shape.

Then I filled it with a light blue colour with the Colour tool, and the border with black.

I drew a second wing shape with the Pencil tool again overlapping the first wing. This time I filled it with a darker blue.

I set the opacity on the transparency tool so that the backwing is visible

Next. again with the pencil tool, I draw a shape of the abdomen. This might not be perfect on the first try so I perfect it with the drag selection tool. Next I click on live paint bucket and make a live paint bucket from my selection of the abdomen. I then fill this in. I click on swatches and select an orange gradient. To change the degree of the gradient, I click on gradient (Window > Gradient) and drag the gradient slider around. To change colour I double click on the gradient slider which would bring me to the colour picker to choose a new colour.

Next I make the feelers. I make this with the Spiral tool hiding under the line segment tool. First I selected fill as black, and then the border as white. I then draw two spirals which I transform and edit to fit around the head.

Almost finished! The wing looks a bit dull so I add patterns with the brush tool. I select the shape I want and draw spirals in the wing.

Finished!, I can then save this as a symbol for future use.

Tutorial: how to attach an image to a link in css

First I made an unordered list in my html body with two links that I wanted. Here's an example below.

<div>
<ul>
	<li id="girl">
		<a href="http://looliwun.com">looliwun</a>
		</li>
	<li id="boy">
		<a href="http://hungred.com">hungred</a>
		</li>
		</ul>
</div>

This would result in a basic unordered list.

link1

I styled it in css using two pictures I made with Photoshop

ul
{
list-style: none; /*removes the underline below the link*/
margin: 0; /*removes the margin*/
padding: 0; /*removes the padding*/
}

ul li
{
float: left; /*this makes the element displays in a horizontal line*/
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

ul li a
{
color: #777;
display: block;  /*The element will be displayed as a block level element */
width: 75px; /*This allows the picture to be fit in the block*/
padding: 60px 10px 5px; /*There is 60px of padding on the top, 10px of padding on the right and left, and 5px of padding on the bottom*/
text-align: center;
text-decoration: none; /*removes all text decoration*/
}

ul li#girl a
{
background: transparent url(blablabla_files/rabbit.png) no-repeat top center; /*this makes the picture appears in the top center without any repeats*/
}

ul li#boy a
{
background: transparent url(blablabla_files/rawr.png) no-repeat top center;
}

ul li#girl a:hover,
ul li#boy a:hover
{
background-color: #FFFBC6;
/*this makes the color of the text change when the mouse hovers over the link*/}

ul li a:hover
{
color: #000 /*this makes the color of the text change when the mouse hovers over the link*/
}

This would make my link look like this
link2

When my mouse hovers over the link, the background colour changes to yellow, and the text of the link changes from gray to black.

Tutorial: How to add button image to a link with css

I got an image from the tutorial i wrote previous and wanted to do some simple stuff like adding it to a link so i did the following css code:

a.button {
display: block; 					/* this make it possible to hook the image to the link */
background-color: transparent;
background-image: url(mybutton.png); /*set the button image */
background-repeat: no-repeat;		/*set it once only */
width: 150px;						/*width of the image*/
height: 65px;						/*height of the image*/
margin: 5px auto;					/*align the text to center with top and bottom 5px margin*/
padding: 15px 0 0 0;				/*add a padding of 15px to the top*/
text-align: center;					/*this is required to make it align to center but we usually place this on the body instead*/
font-family: Myriad Pro, Calibri, Arial, sans-serif;/*font of the image*/
font-size: 100%;									/*font size*/
color: #FFF;										/*font color*/
font-weight: bold;									/*font style*/
text-decoration: none;								/*remove the link decoration*/
}

The code is well commented for understanding and you can find the sample code from here here. You will get something like this in HTML,

Tutorial: How to add that glow on your button with various technique

1. Fire up your photoshop and open up a workspace of the size 150, 65 with background transparent and draw a rounded rectangle as shown below.

2. Most of the technique to create a glow is to add a layer on top of the picture and gradient it with white and reduce its opacity. i will show two technique to do this. After we created the workspace as shown above, do a selection on the existing layer by clicking 'Ctrl+Click' on the layer. (selection means to select the layer) and click Select->Modify->Contract to reduce the size by 5px as illustrate below,

The red box indicate selection.

4. Now, create a new layer and paint it white using 'Paint Bucket Tool'.

3. Now, on the new layer, look for the 'Add a layer style' icon and click on Gradient overlay and adjust the setting as shown below.

4. Next, we set the opacity to 60% on the Layer Palette and use our pen tools technique to remove the background on the lower part of the layer.

5. This way you get your top glow with some curve style.

6. With some style apply on the original layer, you can get a button such as the one shown below,

So this is the first technique use to add glow on your button the next one is shown below,

2. After you have done point 1., create a new layer and draw another white box on top of the rounded triangle. Look for the 'Add a style layer' icon and click on 'Gradient Overlay' and follow the setting below,

play with the gradient bar if you want to create different effects.

3. In blending option apply the setting as shown below,

4. You will have something like this,

5. if you style it a bit, it will produce something like this

6. And so on~

I'm really only demonstrating the various way of adding glow to your button and if you notice, only the methods used are different but the same thing apply on the image(white opacity object). Once you learn some of these tricks, you can create any kind of button you desire.