Jul 14

iStockPhoto.com Royalty Free ImagesAre you familiar with iStockPhoto.com, a popular website for buying and selling stock photography? iStockPhoto also has a”Steel Cage Battle” section to their forums, where designers battle it out over several days. As part of the rules, designers must incorporate portions of the opponent’s most recent design into their next visual attack. (For an example of a steel cage battle, check out these images, created by the MPC’s Brian Palmer and Instructional Technologist Nick Smerker. Images also shown below)

Now for the point of this post… iStockPhoto is getting ready to hold it’s yearly Battle Royal. This is 85 days of design battles, head to head with other designers, until only one designer remains. First prize? $5000.00!

How can you get involved? If you don’t already have a free account with iStockPhoto, go get one. Don’t waste time, because I think there is a day or two waiting period before you can post to the forums (to help prevent spamming the forums), and the Battle Royal is part of the forums. Better yet, if you email me, I can “invite you”, which will get you 3 free credits for downloading stock images, video, audio, flash, and vector images.

The battle begins this Thursday, July 17th, and runs for 85 days. So even if you just wanted to follow along with the design mayhem, that would be fun too. You’ll be seeing some of the world’s best designers in action, always good inspiration for your next Photoshop project.

Have fun, and good luck!

Images from the battle between Nick Smerker and Brian Palmer:

Round one:

Nick’s first attack:

Brian’s response:

Round two:

Nick’s response:

Brian’s response:

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Jul 03

Are you an aspiring motion graphics designer? Here is some inspiration from 2 accomplished designers to get your creative juices flowing:

Eden Soto - http://www.edensoto.com
Demo Reel

Vitamin Devo - http://vitamindevo.com
Demo Reel (2004)
Mini Reel (2005)
Flash demo for his DJ work (2005)

Vitamin Devo

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Apr 22

Chase Jarvis is an amazing Seattle based photographer who, in his mid thirties, is both a Nikon and Hasselblad Master Photographer. This short video “Frames” shows every frame of a 4-day photo shoot, pausing on a few featured images. Chase has several videos online that show a glimpse of the man behind the curtain, so to speak. These tutorials and demos have helped countless aspiring photographers advance their skill. I highly recommend checking out his website for inspiration, and his blog and videos for education.

Frames

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Apr 21

Wanna play a funny prank on your roommate? Download this image of a broken LCD screen, and bring it up full screen on their computer. Turn off their screen saver, and then unplug their keyboard and mouse. When they return to their computer, put on your best “I didn’t do it” face :)

Broken LCD

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Apr 15

Photoshop Lady provides tutorials from all around the world in her blog, added daily.

http://www.photoshoplady.com

Apr 15

Create slick SVG text versions of your graphics with this online utility.

Make your own textorized graphics here.

Turn this:                                         …into this:

bsp_8499.jpg text.jpg


Mar 27

Check out this cool visualization tool that uses Google the Maps and Google Earth API to see the latest Flickr posts in real time, and where in the world they are being posted. Very slick :)

Flickrvision 3D

Links: 

3D Google Earth + Flickr

2D Google Maps + Flickr

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