Summer Blogspot: April 2008

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Pantone Color

Color is a an important topic in digital illustration, so I decided to add a new color category in the blog. I'll begin with a simple guide to pantone colors from colourlovers.com's blog, you can check the original article by clicking on the link below. The next posting in this category will be dedicated to the color libraries and swatches in Adobe Illustrator.

"Pantone was founded in 1962 as a small business that manufactured color cards for cosmetics companies. Since their humble beginning, Pantone has become a mainstay for color in the design world. The Pantone Matching System allows colors to be “matched” when they reach the production stages. They also assert that their lists of color numbers and pigment values are the intellectual property of Pantone and free use of the list is not allowed, which is controversial and could be said to cause problems, especially for open source uses. Controversy aside, the world leader in color hasn’t stopped with just their matching system and has started to move into taking over the ‘universe’ of color as well with the launch of Pantone Universe." Full text

Rotate Tool

Monday, April 28, 2008

Fresh Vector Brushes

A fresh looking brush set for Adobe Illustrator from www.dtpvids.com . Ckech it out, I found other interesting resources and tutorials. To download the brushes use this link

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Friday, April 25, 2008

Take A Seat Vector Collection

8 eps vectors of seating furniture from fudgegraphics. Download the pack from here.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Vector Trees Illustrator Tutorial for Adobe Illustrator

"Green is in vogue and clients everywhere want natural imagery in their promotional material. Ben the Illustrator shows you how to create a fresh-looking tree.

As a child, no doubt a tree was one of the first things you drew, with a brown rectangular block for the trunk and a big green scribble for the leaves...

But with companies increasingly keen to shout about their ecological credentials, now’s a good time to learn how to create a tree with a computer instead of crayons.
Full tutorial Computer Arts Magazine

Monday, April 21, 2008

Things to do on Maui

Best Maui Attractions Central Maui

So, you got an idea what a house in Hawaii with ocean view at a gated community on the Kohala Coast on the Big Island costs these days, but would like to hear more about Maui for your next vacation or even for moving there.

When writing about Maui, you have to realize that best Maui's locations are defined by geographical location on the island and altitude - from the beach resorts like Maalaea, Kihei, Wailea and Makena on the south coast, the waterfalls and mountains around remote town of Hana, grassy ranchland below Haleakala's summit to West Maui with historic Lahaina and Ka'anapali, Kahana, Napili and Kapalua resorts.

Your Maui visit will probably start with Kahului Airport where you feel warmly welcome after your long flight from the Mainland by the warm breezes of Hawaii and scents of tropical flowers of your greeting flower lei. Kahului, Maui's largest town, and Wailuku form Central Maui. Unfortunately, many tourists immediately get on the way to their West Maui resorts and only a few come back for exploring this area.

Shoppers will enjoy Maui's largest shopping mall, the Ka'ahumanu Shopping Center, in Kahului. However, the lovely town of Wailuku is well worth a visit. Wailuku is situated on the slopes of the West Maui Mountains and has many historic churches and quaint restaurants. Wailuku is also home to the Maui County. If you are interested in Hawaiian traditions and history, visit Bailey House Museum, which displays furnishings of different periods, artifacts and art. The museum is constructed of lava rocks and native hardwood.

Maui visitors know that Wailuku is also the entrance to spectacular Iao Valley, one of Hawaii's most sacred and most beautiful places. Our post photo taken from our Maui vacation photos, shows the popular landmark the 'Iao Needle', a pillar of stone rising 1,200 feet into the air. Hike into Iao valley from the parking lot, till your come to a mountain stream, a perfect location for having a picnic.

To complete your Maui vacation experience in Central Maui, try one of the Wailulu restaurants which offer a great variety for dining: Hawaiian, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, Japanese and more.

We will continue this Maui serious about Best Things to do on Maui. If you would like to share what to liked best on Maui, our Hawaii vacation blog visitors will appreciate your suggestions. Aloha, Pua Hawaii Vacations

Maui Vacation Related Articles

3 Best Things to Do on Maui
Maui Vacation Trip Report
Ritz Carlton Kapalua Maui
Surfing Maui Beaches

Things to do on Maui

To complete your Maui vacation experience in Central Maui, try one of the Wailulu restaurants which offer a great variety for dining: Hawaiian, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, Japanese and more.

Maui Vacation Related Articles

3 Best Things to Do on Maui
Maui Vacation Trip Report
Ritz Carlton Kapalua Maui
Surfing Maui Beaches

60 Random Vectors in EPS

Free vector pack from Samuel Sinaga. This set contains over 30 random vector illustrations that could be used for logo design brainstorming or for a starting point of a design concept...

The artwork is saved in AI and EPS file formats, you can use any vector compatible editor to modify or customize it.

To use, first you have to expand the ZIP archive. Free for personal and commercial use. Download

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Best Price Hawaii Home for Sale

Kohala Coast Home for Sale on Hawaii Big Island - Ready to move to Hawaii?

This Kohala Coast Home is SOLD!

Our today's blog post will probably not only attract Hawaii visitors who love to surf on Maui for their best Hawaii vacation. Most everybody in love with Hawaii will get excited reading this new post from Best Hawaii Vacation Blog. How many times have you contemplated your options of moving to Hawaii for good after returning in the cold (or rain) from another Hawaii vacation!

Believe us this is a permanent topic when sitting in your Hawaii hotel jacuzzi and exchanging opinions with fellow hotel guests about severe weather reports from your Mainland homes. When enjoying the warm, sunny Hawaii weather at any time of the year, conversations about moving to Hawaii are heating up!

As we, the editors of Best Hawaii Vacation blog, are well aware of the relevance and importance of questions regards Moving to Hawaii and the Hawaii Real Estate market 2008 for our Hawaii return visitors, we made it one of our priorities to keep you informed about the situation with Hawaii homes for sale. Many tourists who have become annual Hawaii visitors are currently sitting in the 'starting blocks' for buying a Hawaii home or condo at the best price within the last decade.

Hawaii condos or homes for sale seem to become affordable for the average person again. Don't get me wrong. Hawaii home prices are still high. They will always be, compared to the national average. This comes with the most desired location of Hawaii. Everybody know by now that mortgages are not given out like hot crossed buns anymore after the mortgage industry got badly hurt from past greedy procedures. Anyhow, if you are ready to buy a Hawaii home at an amazing price, check out this ocean view Kohala Coast Home for Sale

HUGE $$$ Price Reduction: New Asking Price 989,000!!! This is as good as it gets for a Hawaii Home for Sale at a Premier ocean view location.

This 3Bd/3Ba 'Kohala By the Sea' home, custom built in 2003, offers sweeping ocean views from every room! Owner's are now offering this delightful home fully furnished if Buyer so wishes. Huge picture windows with jalousies beneath afford clear ocean views with plenty of air flow throughout the house.

Single level open living area offers comfortable island style living with large kitchen and great room opening up to spacious ocean view covered lanai. With two master suites and an additional guest room, 3 full bathrooms and extra space for office, this custom home has one of the best floor plans available. Plenty of room for an ocean view pool if one should want. Motivated Sellers will consider all reasonable offers.

Kohala Coast Home features include:

- Two master suites at either end of this Kohala Coast Home for sale. Both with stunning ocean views.
- Huge picture windows with jalousies beneath in all three bedrooms and great room allow for refreshing airflow throughout the house and gorgeous ocean views.
- Large ocean view covered lanai.
- Additional room off kitchen which is currently used as office.
- Mature tropical landscaping with coconut palms and bougainvilleas.
- Very private and peaceful.

Hawaii Real Estate Market 2008
Moving to Hawaii Vacation for ever
Will falling prices in Hawaii Real Estate attract new home buyers
Big Island Housing Bubble
Building Boom on the Kohala Coast Big Island
Realizing your Dreams - Moving to Hawaii Big Island

Best Price Hawaii Home for Sale

HUGE $$$ Price Reduction: New Asking Price 989,000!!! This is as good as it gets for a Hawaii Home for Sale at a Premier ocean view location.

Kohala Coast Home features include:

Friday, April 18, 2008

Pretty in PUNK

Vector Illustration by Big Lew.

Convert Brushes from Photoshop to Illustrator

In December I briefly described a quick method for vectorizing pixels with the Live Trace feature in Adobe Illustrator.

In this tutorial you'll take almost the same steps in order to convert a Photoshop Brush object to an Illustrator brush file.

1) You'll need a brush set file and load it in adobe photoshop. In this case I'll use an Urban Scrawl Brush set for Photoshop available here.

2) Load the brush (.arb) file in, by double click or dragging it into Photoshop.
3) Create a new document (white background, resolution - 200 ppi).
4) Select the brush tool, and chose a shape from the brush set that you just loaded. Change the opacity too 100% and select black for forground color. (use the screenshot below as reference)

5)After selecting your shape click twice on the screen with the brush tool and save the document as jpeg or gif.

Now comes the second part - Bringing the image in Adobe Illustrator and Vectorizing it.

6)Load Illustrator and create a new print document. Then go to File>Place and choose the image that you created in photoshop.

7) Select the image and go to Object>Live Trace>Tracing Options...

8) In the Live Trace Dialogue Box make sure that you choose black & white mode and put a checkmark on Filles and click on Trace.

9)Now you see the vectorized preview of the shape that you want to be your brush. But to use it as a regular vector object you have to expand it. Go to Object>Expand and then Object>Ungroup

10) Choose the selection tool and delete the white areas that are not part of the object. You can experiment with the stroke color or fill, it's up to you and the object.
11) The last step is to save your vector as a brush file. Open your brush palette (F5) select your vector object and drag it into the bursh pallette. A "new brush" window will popup, select "New Art Brush, click OK and then name it. In the palette you can se other brushes, that are loaded in Illustrator by default. Delete them from the palette (don't worry they are not going to be removed) by selecting them and clicking on the trash can. Leave only the brush that you've just created and go to Save Brushes... (look ath the image below) and name your file.

Well that's it. I Hope I didn't shorten the process a lot.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Groove

Quickly created in Illustrator while not paying attention in my Photoshop class. Done by overlapping serif characters and playing with pathfinders and shape modes, in this case "exclude". This actually reminds me that I've got to post more examples and tutorials about usage of type and pathfinders in Adobe Illustrator. More soon !!!

Thorn Brush for Adobe Illustrator

Thorn brush for Illustrator by orgamecha. To use the brush set download the pdf file, then open it with Illustrator and you'll have it in your brush panel.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Maui Surfing Video

After posting the fascinating Maui windsurfing video on our recent blog post, we decided to be fair to the regular 'old-fashioned' Maui surfers and display another great surfing video from 2008. Maui Jaws filmed a practice session of famous surfers Laird Hamilton, Dave Kalama, John Gangini, Yuri Soledade and Kiva Rivers in March this year. This is for all those who have already booked their surf vacation for Maui 2008.

Hey, Maui surfers, let us know which surf spot on Maui you like best. Surf beginners are really interested in recommendations for Maui Surf Schools. Mahalo for your comments. Aloha, Pua
Hawaii Vacations
p.s.
I found some great Maui surfing photos on Maui Surf Report Blog.

Related Articles

Surfing in Hawaii
Maui Is The Best More About Surfing
Maui Vacation Trip Report 1
Best things to do on Maui Vacation - how about Golf?
Maui Hiking - Hawaii Waterfall Adventure
Best Halloween in Lahaina Maui
How to have a great Maui Vacation and Save Money

Maui Surfing Video

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Hibiscus Vectors

I decided to post these hibiscus vectors as a response to one of the requiests in "Hibiscus Brush Set". Below you can see a preview of the shapes. Download the illustrator file from here.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Vector Nails Tutorial for Adobe Illustrator

Take a quick look at that great eight step image tutorial. It's pretty basic but you'll save a lot of time figuring out how to illustrate simple vector fingernails in Adobe Illustrator.Thanks to taho. Enlarge the image to see the tutorial.

Adobe CS4 on Vista?

Adobe is readying a new version of its Creative Suite, that includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and other applications for print and Web design. Only this time there's a twist: The new version of Photoshop will support 64-bit memory addressing for the first time -- but only if you're running Windows.

Simply put, more bits means you can access more memory, which means you can work with bigger files. By taking advantage of 64-bit CPUs, Adobe is making it possible for designers and photo manipulators to work with really, really big images at high resolutions. Think posters, advertising displays, or even billboards.
Full Article PCWORLD.ca

Intro

Lovely Cakes menawarkan pelbagai "homemade" kek yang lazat sebagai tanda kasih & ingatan bagi meraikan hari istimewa bersama yang tersayang.
Kepelbagaian pilihan perisa, jenis dan rekaan ditawarkan mengikut citarasa anda.

Lovely Cakes brings you a delicious homemade cake to celebrate special days with your love one.
You can choose your favorite cake from our variety of flavor, type and decoration.

* We used halal ingredients

Monday, April 7, 2008

Buttercream Decoration Class

Kelas Buttercream Decoration di Bakeria. This time, student kene hias 2 kek dan sedozen cupcake, satu kek dengan hiasan bunga buttercream n satu lagi dengan image printed ( yang boleh dimakan) dan deco cupcake ( gaya bebas :D ).

EskoArtwork Studio plugin for Adobe Illustrator

EskoArtwork announced the introduction of Studio, a plug-in environment for Adobe Illustrator that brings interactive 3D packaging design to the familiar Adobe Illustrator software at its pre-Drupa press event, held in Ghent last month. EskoArtwork is also introducing Studio Toolkits, a collection of supporting simplified structural design solutions.

‘In packaging design, the world is certainly not a flat place and there is a clear demand for more 3D capabilities as communicating with a 3D design greatly benefits the turn-around time of the design process. Very often existing 3D tools are too complicated and simply not suited for a packaging design workflow,’ explained Kris Van Bael, product manager 3D and Visualisation, EskoArtwork. ‘EskoArtwork introduces the perfect solutions to solve these issues. Studio and the supporting Studio Toolkits are closely integrated with Adobe Illustrator and come equipped with built-in EskoArtwork packaging knowledge. Studio reduces the need for multiple costly mock-ups, helps to spot design-errors faster and takes away the guesswork from 2D flats.’
Full Article

Maui is the Best More about Maui Surfing

Aloha to all of our Best Hawaii Vacation blog visitors,
Guess what we are still on vacation ourselves. As you can imagine writing blog posts is not on the top of our priority list plus there are no Hawaii photos available when working on a computer away from home. However, as our Hawaii blog stats show the number of our blog readers is steadily increasing, we feel we don't want to disappoint our readers. So here it is, another blog post about Maui, the favorite island for best Hawaii vacation when surfing and wind surfing is on your top list of best things to do in Hawaii.

You probably know that surfing was 'invented' in Hawaii. Just like in the old days when the call 'Surf's up', got all the passionate surfers to the best Maui surfing beaches, the tradition keeps up strongly and hundreds of tourists join the Hawaiian residents in this passion of 'sport of the kings'. Take your turn on your Maui vacation. There are lots places to rent a surfboard and plenty of surfing teachers who get beginners on a surf board. Start with a Maui beach where the waves are gentle and low. Standing up on a board for the first time, even on the top of a one-foot swell, is a big thrill for beginner surfers.

The world's best windsurfers fly through the waters at Hookipa. Hoopika Beach is known as probably the best place in the world for windsurfing. It is the site of two major world-class competitions. Due to the strong surf, windsurfing at this beach should be limited to the experts. The regular person interested in learning how to windfurf on Maui can sign up for lessons and practice at the gentler waters of Kanaha, Kihei and Spreckelsville beaches. Kitesurfing has also become very popluar among Maui' s surfing community adding a new level of acrobatics to surfing.

As my Hawaii surfing knowledge is quite limited, I tried to find a site which provides the best Maui surfing beaches or sites at one glance to Hawaii surfers. Check this Maui site for links to all major Maui surfing sites. The same site displays a list in alphabetical order of Maui windsurfing companies I noticed in both lists that a few sites are not working anymore. I also came across a few sites which just display Google ads and don't provide otherwise good content related to Maui's best surfing beaches, surfing schools or Maui stores for buying surfing products. So be selective as usual when cruising those sites. Windsurfing School Maui is worth a visit as well.

Well, last but not least for getting you in the surfing mode for your next Maui vacation - don't forget to arrange for a Hawaiian flower lei greeting for Kahului Airport -, have fun with this Maui Wind surfing video from youtube. Aloha, Pua Hawaii Vacations

Maui is the Best More about Maui Surfing

Friday, April 4, 2008

Computer Arts Poster Design Tips

"Discover the essentials of project management and dealing with agents with these two posters to download and print out.

If you’re keen on the monthly top ten tips feature in the magazine and would like to pin it up on your wall, but don’t want to tear your magazine apart, then here’s just the thing for you..."

Full Article