New site design & blog location

Hello! I wanted to inform everyone that effective immediately my blog will be located at: http://ericshalley.com/myblog/. My main site will still be http://ericshalley.com. Just my blog is moving.

I have made the switch to a full WordPress powered site and am also powering my blog with WordPress. It will make updating the site much easier and ease the amount of site maintenance I have to worry about.

Thank you and hope to hear from you soon at the new location.

Inspiration Series: Si Scott

I have decided to start a series of things that inspire me. I am starting with artists and plan to branch out into more general categories such as: colors, typography, etc.



Si Scott is a graphic designer from the UK who specializes in rich, hand drawn illustrations that often involve type. He uses fineliners to create the illustration and usually works about 25% bigger than the final size so the illustration looks more crisp when scanned.

I am mesmerized by the skill hat he displays with a pen. I usually do my illustrations in ball point pen, so his style immediately spoke to me. Seeing mainstream hand drawn type makes me smile all over. :)

If you would like to see more of his work check out his portfolio here.

I also dug up this short video of him at work. Take a look!

Illustration Friday: Worry

Robots can get worried when they have parts fall off that they didn't know they had.

Ballpoint pen sketch. Colors and textures added in Photoshop.

Fun with custom brushes

I really liked the way that this piece turned out, so I thought I would post it. I was experimenting with making my own custom brushs in Photoshop.
It is a very simple process and can yield some pretty fantastic results.

To create a custom brush in Photoshop:

1. Make a shape or group of shapes to serve as your brush.
   (I used a simple tall rectangle for mine.)


2. Make a selection around your shapes.


3. Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset, and create your brush.


4. Open the Brushes Engine (Window>Brushes) to see and edit your newly created brush. There are tons of options that allow you to customize your brush to your hearts desire, so play around with the settings
   for a bit.

I then painted a basic shape with my newly created brush and used the
Warp Tool (Edit>Transform>Warp) to bend the shape. Finally, I applied several layer styles to get the final effect.

For a more detailed tutorial check out the original post on PSDTUTS.com. This site is a fantastic way to fine tune your Photoshop skills.

Test your font knowledge!

Yet another great item from I Love Typography.com I didn't do nearly as well as I thought I would, but I had fun none the less. It reminded me that there is always more to be learned. :)

Typetester: A great way to compare web type

This is an amazing tool that allows you to quickly test 3 different fonts, sizes, styles, etc. all at once. There is a wealth of options that make customization a breeze. You can even export out the CSS of your tests. I'm passing along the link because it has really saved me some time in the early coding phase of my web projects.

Check out this wonderful tool when you have a chance.

http://typetester.com

Amazing ABC Pop-up

I came across this video the other day and was amazed at the detail and skill of craft that must have gone into making this. I'll never look at a pop-up book the same again.