Deke’s Techniques | lynda.blog

Posts Tagged ‘Deke’s Techniques’

Deke’s Techniques: Creating a vivid aura around an entire character

Published by lynda.com Content team | Tuesday, May 14th, 2013

Welcome back to Deke’s Techniques. This week Deke McClelland takes the 2D character from last week’s tutorial (inspired by the art of video game designer Dan Paladin) and adds a radiant cartoon aura in Adobe Illustrator.

1. Delete the template layer and select the back layer. Option-click or Alt-click the Create New Layer icon to open the Layer Options dialog box. Name the new layer aura and click OK to add the layer to your document.

2. Unlock the body layer. Click in the upper corner of that layer’s row in the Layers panel to select all its paths.

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Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Deke McClelland, Deke's Techniques
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Deke’s Techniques: Drawing a distinctive 2D video game character

Published by lynda.com Content team | Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

Fans of Dan Paladin, the artist of popular video games such as Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers, are going to be really excited about this week’s installment of Deke’s Techniques. Deke McClelland uses a few predrawn elements and a template to create a Paladin-inspired 2D walrus warrior with Adobe Illustrator. By tracing Deke’s template, you’ll re-create his steps and learn vital drawing techniques to help you create your own characters. To get started on the helmet, watch the video and use the steps below to help you along.

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Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Deke McClelland, Deke's Techniques, illustration, Illustrator
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Deke’s Techniques: Precisely aligning artwork to the bleed

Published by lynda.com Content team | Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

A proper “bleed” ensures the ink extends to the very outside edges of a printed page, leaving no margin or whitespace around your artwork. And though there’s no way to set it up automatically, in this week’s Deke’s Techniques, Deke McClelland shows you how to precisely align your artwork to the bleed in Adobe Illustrator.

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Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Deke McClelland, Deke's Techniques, Illustrator
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Deke’s Techniques: Making a danger sign more dangerous

Published by lynda.com Content team | Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

Take a warning sign to the next threat level with Adobe Photoshop. In this week’s Deke’s Techniques, Deke McClelland takes a photograph of a real-life sign from The Cliffs of Moher in Ireland—better known as The Cliffs of Insanity in the movie Princess Bride—and adds a menacing shark with the combined power of paths, channels, clipping masks, and some other tools in Photoshop.

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Tags: Adobe Photoshop, Deke McClelland, Deke's Techniques, Photoshop
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Deke’s Techniques: Defringing purples and greens in Camera Raw

Published by lynda.com Content team | Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

Learn how to get rid of a special variety of color distortion called color fringing that’s at work inside your digital photographs. Color fringing falls into two color ranges—purple and green—which are color complements, falling on opposite sides of the color wheel. In this week’s Deke’s Techniques, Adobe guru Deke McClelland shows you how to identify and remove color fringing inside Camera Raw, and ensure that you get accurate color corrections.

Note that these instructions work best with Camera Raw 7, which ships with Photoshop CS6. If you’re working in an older version of the program, check out the videos at the end of this tutorial.

The original, fringed image

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Tags: Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Photoshop, Deke McClelland, Deke's Techniques, Photoshop
Posted in Deke's Techniques, Design, Photography | 1 Comment »

Deke’s Techniques: Creating synthetic water droplets

Published by lynda.com Content team | Tuesday, April 9th, 2013

Learn how to create realistic beaded water droplets and composite them on top of a background photo in Adobe Photoshop with this week’s Deke’s Techniques. The crux of the technique is a simple black and white, almost ink-blot-like pattern, which Deke creates from scratch with a combination of Photoshop filters and adjustment layers. No drawing required! To this pattern you can add styles that transform it into spilled water, ink, soda, or any other liquid.

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Follow along with Deke in this week’s free video and use the companion text below to help with each step.

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Tags: Adobe Photoshop, Deke McClelland, Deke's Techniques, Photoshop
Posted in Deke's Techniques, Design | 2 Comments »

Deke’s Techniques: Drawing a radiant, cheerful cartoon background

Published by lynda.com Content team | Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013

Last week, Deke showed you how to create your very own “grumpy bird” with Adobe Illustrator. This week, learn how to give our wingless friend a pastoral background filled with rolling hills of grass, rays of light, and a couple of flowers.

The final grumpy bird illustration

Follow along with Deke in this week’s free video and use the companion text below to help with each step.

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Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Deke McClelland, Deke's Techniques
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Deke’s Techniques: Drawing an Angry Birds-like character

Published by lynda.com Content team | Tuesday, March 26th, 2013

Are you a fan of a particularly popular game featuring a group of agitated birds and noisy green pigs? Well, in this week’s installment of Deke’s Techniques, Deke McClelland shows you how to create your very own “grumpy bird” with Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started.