I just wanted to give you an update on the Gimp brushes available from Hawksmont.

Snowflakes
Dark Wings
Bamboo
Pine Mega Pack

They just keep getting better.

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I really don’t like to post just for the sake of it, especially if the subject is somewhat off topic for this blog, but I came across this youtube video.  Most of us will have heard of the television series ‘Robot wars’ where amateur team robot builders battle their radio controlled vehicles around a arena with traps and obstacles. 
These robot wars are between 2 legged walkers, and you should see the battle moves they have, they are amazing.  You’ll have to watch it to see what I mean,  and bear in mind that these are radio controlled. 

Enjoy.

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For quite a few years we have done the traditional thing and purchased a chocolate advent calendar.  we would take turns to open a day and have the chocolate.  This year we decided to do something different.  Mainly because we forgot to get a chocolate advent calendar for the office.  We searched and found a printable calendar from kaboose.  There are two versions, one for for the PC (90 dpi) and one for the Mac (72 dpi).  Admittedly this has been created with children in mind, and so there is a suggested use, but we decided to make it our own by putting it up on the magnetic white board and using magnets for revealing the days.

So here it is as it currently stands. 

I think done this way it is real geeky, which I don’t mind.

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I came across this Technical Illustration Affect tutorial for Photoshop and thought it would be good to have a go at doing it in Gimp.

Techniques used in this tutorial:

• Pen tool
• Layer masks
• Fading out lines
   

This is the image I started with (courtesy of Freedigitalphotos.net):

And this is the end result: 

You may notice I did not fade out my lines as in the tutorial, as this was a straight on front view of a car.  In the tutorial the car was a 3/4 (three quarter) view so the fades went out into the distance.

There is no substitute for practise, practise, practise, which is what I am doing at the moment with Gimp tutorials.  Even though I am not needing the techniques for a specific piece of work I am trying to get a good broad overview of Gimp’s features and what you can do with it.

 Occasionally I find a cartoon which brings a smile to my face, this was one.

robottoms – even robots have to go sometimes! « roodiedoodie

So it got me thinking, if a robot uses a toilet would you call it a blog instead of a bog.  And would the robot use blogroll.

I realise that Cars was released in 2006, and for some people maybe most people, what I say here is old news.  As it was new news to me I decided to pass it on to others who may also find it new news.

There seems to be quite a bit of talk at the moment about the rumours that there will be a Disney Pixar Cars sequel, Cars 2.  This has been met with rather mixed opinions.  Some comments I have read state that a sequel would be terrible news as the first one was boring.  The majority, like myself can’t wait.  There has also been a lot of speculation and hopes, mainly hopes, as to what will be in the new film, monster trucks, motorbikes etc.  Some people have even called for a prequel covering Mater’s former years, that would not be a hit in my opinion.  I started doing a bit of digging around on the trusty, or not so trusty depending how you look at it, internet and came across Eddie Paul.  Eddie has been customising cars for films for a number of years and he created some real life vehicles for the promotion of Cars.  If you want to read about it you can on Gizmag, Sally and Materand ComingSoon, Lightning McQueen.

I was thinking the other day that I remember seeing an image where someone had taken a photo of their car and using Photoshop had given it a Cars look.  This is actually what got me thinking about the movie, why I did all the searching which resulted in this post.  I managed to find a tutorial on this forumwhere someone explains how to use Photoshop to give your own car a Cars makeover.   I don not have Photoshop so I asked on another forum how to do this in Gimp.  Which he graciously did (see here).  I am still relatively new to Gimp so after a few tries this is what I came up with.

If you have a look around you will find that quite a lot of people have done the same thing.  The photo I used was taken from NetCarShow.com.

One last thing I wanted to mention was that if you wanted to make a real life Cars racer then Eddie Paul has a book that can help called Eddie Pauls Custom Bodywork Handbook.

Just a little something for today. 

I wanted to practise drawing facial expressions and chose monkeys as the base subject.  Personally I don’t think they turned out too bad.

click to enlarge

I was over at Howtodrawblog.com watching their video on how to draw a monkey head.  I felt like having a go myself and this is what I come up with. 

Click the image to enlarge.

Since installing Gimp I have been playing with brushes. After a bit of searching I have found some brushes created by other gimp users which are worth getting.  I highly recommend taking a look at the brushes from Hawksmont, Gimp-tutorials and Various Brushes.  They are of a high quality and a really nice design.

Here is just one example of the hearts brushes available from Hawksmont.

Hawksmont Brushes
 Transportation part 1
Grunge Brushes
Splatters
Fingerprints
Skylines
Fractals part 1
Fractals part 2
Floral part 1
Floral part 2
Guns
Stars
Hearts
Shells
Doodles part 1
Doodles part 2
Dill
Leaves mega pack
Bubbles

Gimp-tutorials.net brushes
Vector Grunge Brushes
Galactic
Grunge Brushes
Arrogance Grunge 2
Odysee Brushes
Fusion Brushes
Grass Brushes
Lithium Brushes
Animated Crayon
Edge Brushes
Feather Brushes
Cubes Brushes
Grunge Ink splats
Floaral Brushes
9 Cool Splatter Brushes

PStoGimp Brushes
Various Brushes including a Harry Potter brush.

Click this linkto see a search for Gimp Brushes on Deviantart. Even though the search specifies Gimp brushes the search results include some Photoshop brushes, so check before you download any.

And finally, these next two links are for brushes which are simple shapes and lines in monochrome (black and white).
1100 Brushes
pgd design, Various brushes

 Please note: It is important to double check the terms and conditions each author has put on the brushes they have created before downloading.  Most of them can be used for commercial and non-commercial designs.  Remember, always check.

I have recently installed GIMP after suggestions from other users that it is an alternative to Photoshop.   

The Windows installer can be downloaded from here on sourceforge.  This installer is for version 2.4.1, though the current version available is 2.4.2.