Youri asked me if I would be interested to help him out for an article that demonstrates the various steps I pass through doing an artwork. First of all I would like to thank Youri for this opportunity . As I already said in the comments I was totally speechless seeing my artworks in his latest blog entry among all the other great illustrators.

When not working for actual clients (in my case mostly bands) I always try to realize my own ideas. On one hand it’s necessary to have them out of my head and on the other hand it’s always like a journey that brings new experiences. Most of my “free” artworks are definitely influenced by literature (Neil Gaiman, China Mieville), art (Caspar David Friedrich) or mythology. I like mixing “fantasy/mythology” elements with scenery that is more contemporary which is quite obvious in “Escape from Twilight Melangery”, the artwork I’ll use for the demonstration. In the next steps I’ll explain the main stages I do to achieve a characteristic “Season Zero” design.

1. Source image selection
The hardest part doing an artwork is finding the best matching source pictures. Rarely will you have the possibility to shoot every scene yourself and so you’ll have to rely on stock material. In my case I always have the composition in my head (seldom do I do a sketch first) and sometimes it’s really time-killing finding proper pictures that satisfy my inner imagination. In this case I wanted a street with old houses as main setting

2. Cleaning up
It’s never possible to use source images the way they originally are. In this case I had to remove all urban things like traffic lights, cars, signs and so on. I also flipped the whole picture to match my original idea.

3. A new sky and street
One very important thing for me is the choice of the sky. It has a real impact on the whole mood of the image. Normally I try to have a surreal, shady sky with nice clouds. In this step I also make some first color adjustments and added some street in the foreground to have more space and better proportions (keep the “golden section” in mind!). With this the whole artwork gets more depth.

4. Shadows and light effects
Now it’s getting fun. By using some galaxy/nebula images it’s quite easy to achieve great “magical” lightning effects. Combined with selective gaussian blur you’re able to get a nice smoothness. In this step I start adding a few props like street lamps and made some corrections concerning the shadows (as seen on the buildings).

5. Extra props and lighting
I simply added a few more props like tents and caravans to bring the whole scene to life.

6. Adding the creatures
Now we come to the main actors. Like finding good source images the next difficult step is to get images that fit into the picture without messing up the perspectives. The three creatures (a gryphon, black unicorn and a manticore) are put together from different animal pictures like bat wings. an eagle head and so on. After extracting and placing them into the street I always do the color corrections and adjustments on the contrasts right away.

7. Effects and shadowss for the creatures
Correct shadows make it so that everything blends together in a more realistic way. Sometimes I use blurred shapes to do the shadows or just draw them by hand with a soft brush. I added the horn to the unicorn and added a few brushed sparks with outer glow and some blurred shapes around it. Note that the light reflections on the horse and lion are important to give the effect a more natural feeling.

8. Color balance and contrast
Last but not least we reach the “post production” stage. Using color balance I push the whole color range in the desired direction. More contrast makes the artwork more atmospheric and again you gain a lot of depth. I always try to have a reduced color range in my artworks since that gives them a distinct mood and feel.

I hope you enjoyed this short explanation and I would be honored to have you as a guest on my website Season Zero.

If Pattern Tap grows in content I can seriously see it become one of the most useful resources for web designers. I’m impressed!

Link : Pattern Tap

So this is an open call. Are you a (web)designer, illustrator or other creative and do you think you have something to say or show that people want to know about? Then I’m looking for you so read on!

What am I looking for?
Here are some good starting points for guest writing.

1. Articles with opinions (Can be controversial as long as it’s backed up).
2. Theory articles (for example : “The basics of character design” or “five things every designer needs to know”).
3. An analysis of a piece you did. For example you could show different steps in development of your work and explain why you made the choices you did. (Excellent way to plug one of your portfolio pieces also)
4. List articles (top 10’s, best off and free recourse collections), please do try and make these special.
5. Tutorials and how-to articles.

I’m open to your thoughts, so if you have an idea you think would work well just contact me.

Whats in it for you
Why guest write on a blog? There’s a bunch of reasons. While Designfeedr is growing I’m not yet at the point where I can pay for articles (this is something I’ll be exploring after further growth though). What you will get out of guest blogging are the following two things.

First of you get a nice amount of traffic to your site, blog, product or portfolio. Every guest writer at Designfeedr gets a little about me space below the post where you can introduce yourself and add up to two links. This will lead to some nice returning traffic to your site, especially if your post is high quality and starts getting hit by the social bookmarking sites.

The second thing you get out of guest writing is that you brand yourself as a specialist on the topics you blog about. This is good if you have your own blog, are freelance or if you are looking for a job since you’ll appear more credible. It’s also good for your self esteem!

How to submit
When you’ve written an article just send it to me by mail as text or an attachment. I’ll then get back to you as soon as possible so we can discuss if the article is right for the blog. We’ll then also go over your “about me” text and links. You’re of course also free to contact me first about an idea or concept you have.

Some rules
1. You must blog about something relevant to (web) design, illustration, related subjects or creativity.
2.I reserve the right to re-write things. I’m not looking to re-write whole posts, but I do want a certain minimum quality in writing. This does not mean I will add things or censor, I’m strictly talking about preserving good quality writing.

What was wrong with the old design?
The old design had some really strong points but also some very obvious weak spots in my opinion. The main page was totally image based with no text-excerpts from the post itself. On the one hand this is something that appeals to the design loving audience, they are image minded after all. From a more practical and usability perspective this does mean that users only have your image and headline to judge whether or not the post is something they’d want to see. With a more traditional blog design like the one I am using now a reader can also read the excerpt and have some more info before committing to click and read the post. The extra text information is of course also very good for search engine optimization, google wasn’t giving the old main page a lot of love because it lacked any real content in it’s view.

Another thing the old design lacked was good navigation to keep the user on the blog. The main page was crystal clear, but navigating older posts or finding stuff on a certain topic was a lot harder than on other blogs. This is a shame since there might be some interesting articles for readers in the archive that they might never see. The new theme solves this by having multiple ways to find posts placed at different places in the design, you can browse by category, tag, search results, featured posts, most popular posts or just view the archive.

Why a pre made theme if you’re a web designer?
While I have the knowledge and experience to be able to code my own Wordpress theme from scratch I also know very well how much work goes into creating and testing a feature rich theme like the one I’m using now. Since I have my personal life (read : shopping hungry girlfriend with a daughter!) and other responsibilities I just don’t have the time to spend one/two months developing a professional theme. So instead I chose to look for the best possible premium theme out there and focus on the content of the blog instead.

What I’d love to hear from you guys
Apart from if you dig the new theme I’d like to ask you two questions. The first is if you’d like the font size to be slightly bigger for articles? The second is real simple : What would you like to see (more of) at Designfeedr. More showcases, more spotlights with creatives, more articles featuring input from pro’s or are you looking for freebies and resources? Anything else? Let me know I’ll make it happen.

Edit : There are a few things I’m still working on at the moment. One is the inserting of images into the featured posts, which seems to be a waiting game since the Wordpress plug-in that makes this possible doesn’t work on the latest version I installed two days ago (If only I’d known!). So if the blog looks a bit boring, bear with me, I’ll be fixed soon.

Instead of doing the usual showcase I’m going to do one with less creatives but more of their work to let them really shine. Be sure to head over to Behance to check the rest of their work.

01. Adam Spizak | Adam Spizak’s site

02. Akimo Lee | Akimo Lee’s site

03. Matthias Bauerle | Matthias Bauerle’s site

04. Danny Ronald | Danny Ronald’s site

05. Maciej Robak | Maciej Robak’s site

01. Sean Rodwell | Sean Rodwell’s site

So if you’re looking for a certain effect you want to learn or just want to see what’s out there as far as tutorials are concerned I suggest you take a look.

link : tutorialsweheart

One really powerful way to showcase your work is the full screen flash portfolio. They say you should let the work do the talking, and that’s exactly what this type of site does. It showcases work full screen in the browser with the minimum amount of navigation and layout elements. In this article I’ll go over things you should keep in mind if you’re considering a portfolio like this and I’ll showcase a few examples and bring forth what I consider their strong and weak points.

So what’s to like about a full screen flash portfolio?
It’s easy to see what the strong points of this type of site are. Large images with a minimal interface allow your work to shine like it never has before on the web. Flash navigation and layouts often confuse (or in the very least challenge) users, but if you build this site right anyone can operate it. Using a “next” or “prev” button to browse a gallery isn’t that hard and that’s all the majority of users will want to do.

The fact that you build the site with very little interface means that your work takes the spotlight more than on any other type of site. No header graphics, text or other excesses to distract the user while he’s browsing your pieces. It’s all about the work.

Another strong point is that you don’t see this type of site that often so you’re fairly original. I’ll go into the reasons for this in a little while.

Things to keep in mind
Ok so let’s say you’re thinking a site like this might be good for you, what do you need to consider before you take the plunge?

Can you afford to just showcase the work?
This type of site will only work if you mainly want to express your visuals. If you want to have an elaborate about me, a contact with some encouraging words, explain the way you work and bring forth some case studies you’d best have a look at some more classic layout solutions. The reason for this is that this type of site is very different in use from what your viewer will normally see. Research proves that the majority of users will not invest time to learn how to navigate your site, if the navigation you’ve created bothers or frustrates them they’ll just exit the site. This means that for the full screen flash portfolio to be crystal clear to all users from the moment it loads it has to be very simple in use. Since your portfolio has the function of netting you clients or jobs this is obviously very undesirable. So to make this type of site work I would strongly advise you to keep it stupid simple.

There is nothing to hide behind
Since you want to use as much screen space for displaying your work you won’t be able to have great looking graphics and a good layout to boost the overall look and feel of the site. It’s your work and only your work that will decide how you come across. So consider carefully if this is what you want and if you feel your work is up to it.

Also keep in mind that larger displayed work means that the tiny details will be much more visible. For some people this isn’t a problem at all but a positive thing yet for others this means that their work might start to look a bit sloppy.

Are you capable of properly building it?
This is the big question. Most creatives I know like to build their own site which of course makes perfect sense. They know themselves and their work best and usually have the skills to make a portfolio that expresses them best. In case of the full screen flash portfolio however I would only advice to do this if you’re sure you can build it properly.

I say properly because if you build it poorly it’s going to hurt you bad. Earlier I said that you don’t see these type of sites all that often. Part of the reason lies in the fact that you need to have some real action script skills to make this work, it can get pretty technical. You have to be able to make flash check the screen resolution and size the movie accordingly. If the user re-sizes the browser window flash needs to automatically recalculate the new size of the movie. The images need to be loaded dynamically one at a time, you can’t pull the old flash trick of loading the whole site at once since you have to work with very large image files that can fill very high screen resolutions(you can of course pre-load the next image while the user is viewing the current one). And of course flash has to effectively scale your images to always fit the browser window.

So another part of the reason you don’t see full flash portfolio sites all that much most likely lies in the fact that most creatives would have to spend some cash to have it built for them.

Let’s examine some examples.
Now that we’ve given the pro’s an cons some thought lets look at some examples of full screen flash sites. As far as web design is concerned I can be pretty blunt but these are, as always, my opinions. I’m not at any point attacking the people who designed or scripted the sites but simply saying how I feel it would’ve been better.

01. Brooke Pifer | Visit site

Brooke Pifer’s site might be the most well know example of a full screen flash portfolio, and as far as I’m concerned it’s also the best from what I’ve seen. The reason is because of it’s perfect technical execution and it’s simplicity in use.

The site is easy to navigate by using the “prev” or “next” buttons or by clicking “gallery” to access a thumbnail navigation. Giving users multiple ways to navigate is in most cases a very good thing.

Other strong points lie in the things this site does not do. It skips extra nonsense like sound, splash screens, unnecessary content and also does not suffer from extreme load times.

02. Filippa Smedhagen Sund | Visit site

Filippa Smedhagen Sund’s site has been out there for a while but it doesn’t look dated at all. It’s a site that combines full screen images with a unique screen dragging navigation. The navigation works on basic level, it easy to use and even explained while the site loads so as far as operating the site goes it’s definitely good.

Where I feel the site fails however is that you can not only drag from left to right but also up and down. Combine this with the fact that the position of the images is random and you can imagine that you’ll soon be lost in the forest of images that is Filippa’s portfolio. In my opinion this site would have been way better off using a simple dragging system that worked from left to right only with a secondary thumbnail navigation like Brooke Pifer’s site has. In essence it does it right but just does too much.

03. Saso Kos Photography | Visit site

Just Filippa Smedhagen Sund I feel Saso Kos’s site does too much. The images look great, load fast and navigating the work is a breeze. Unfortunately by default the site boots up with background music (I’m a firm believer this is a no no 99% of the time), moves the photos around and has a slide show option on. That’s three things happening you never asked for and would most likely want to do without.

The user has the option to turn all of this off, it’s even possible to hide the menu bar. While I applaud the option to turn these options off I still feel the designer would have been better off just leaving them out. That said I do feel that when these options are off Saso Kos’s site is an excellent example of a good full screen flash site.

04. Emmanuel Rouzic | Visit site

Emmanuel Rouzic’s site looks great, but in my opinion that’s about the only thing it has going for it. It’s the perfect example of a flash site gone totally wrong. The load time before the site shows up is extremely long on my reasonably fast broadband connection, if you have a slower connection you can walk the dog in the time it takes the site to load. While the site loads you have deep drum sound effects that remind me off Lord of the rings. This is irritating enough on itself, if you combine this with the long load times and the fact that you can’t turn it off this means that a large part of the visitors of Emmanuel’s site will most likely close the site before it loads.

Those that stay for the ride get a navigation system that looks great but doesn’t have any grounding whatsoever and are once again confronted with the photographers favorite music track. However much I want to like this site for it’s innovative design and great look I can only say that in my opinion this is by far the worst of the bunch.

Conclusion
I love this type of site since it puts the work forward in a fairly unique way and because I’m a sucker for big images on my screen. In conclusion I’d say that if you’re after a site like this remember to keep it really simple in use and carefully consider if you want to built it yourself.

Hope you enjoyed the article and feel a bit wiser when it comes to this type of portfolio. I’m currently experimenting with the code to run a site like this so if you have any good references be sure to share them with me!

02. DB + EM | DB + EM’s site

03. Jerico Santander | Jerico’s site

04. Didier Guy

05. Jill Greenberg | Jill Greenberg’s site

06. Matias Posti | Matias Posti

07. Miles Aldrige | Miles Aldrige’s site

08. Orikon | Orikon’s site

09. Ricardo Salamanca | Ricardo Salamanca

10. Steven Young

11. Gian Paolo Tomasi | Gian Paolo Tomasi’s site

Sounds good doesn’t it? It is actually, but I think those of us who have been active on social networking sites like Myspace and Virb are inclined to be somewhat pessimistic. Myspace sometimes seems like a virtual dating site with profiles designed by five year olds. Virb on the other hand has a great clean look, is easy to use but has a very small user base so it never really feels alive. So how good is the Behance network really when we examine it critically? And why should you care about being on a creative specific social network? Read on.

Benefits of being on a social network site built for creatives
There are a lot of reasons you could have for social networking. We’ll get into some Behance specific reasons in a bit, first I want to say something about getting work and generating direct leads through social networking. To be blunt, it doesn’t happen often. I’ve interviewed quite a bit of creatives in my time(not just on Designfeedr) and I’ve often asked if social networking led to any real leads. They all said no. Even though the Behance network is slightly different and is set-up to give good exposure I still feel that the average user should not count on this hapenning on a regular basis (if it happens at all). It is however a good way to build an online presence. A strong portfolio with a good online presence(Something I will get into in a future article) will lead to job opportunities.

So what good things do come from networking on Behance? First is of course the chance to be amongst your fellow creatives. You don’t need to filter and search to find the right people in a huge sea like you would on a general social networking site. This means that from day one you can have conversations with people that have the same interests as you. You can get and give feedback, you can even ask for it if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s an excellent way to be inspired and see new trends emerge before the general public catches on and it’s a good way to attract the attention of the press and bloggers like myself.

Closer look at the Behance network
Below I’ll give my take on a few elements which I feel are critical to a creative social networking site like Behance.

Design
If you’re building a site that’s going to host the portfolios of thousand of creatives it had better look good. While most of us are on Myspace which has poor design and horrid usability that doesn’t mean that we’ll easily switch over or add another site to our daily routine if it looks as bad. The target audience of Behance is also very image minded so a good design is essential. Fortunately the Behance network looks great. It has an excellent clean semi web 2.0 design with it’s own character but never overpowers the portfolios of the users on the network.

Usability
Looking good is one thing but a smooth operator keeps them coming back for more. This is especially important on the web where users have built up a certain resistance because there is so much mediocrity and spam around. While I am no usability expert I feel that the Behance network holds up nicely. Whether you’re browsing, communicating or changing your profile most actions can be easily done without much searching or button hovering for tooltips. The configuration options are placed logically and you’re not buried under a ton of settings. The profile and project customization tools are also very intuitive in use while being relatively powerful, more on that below.

Good example of a customized layout

Customization options
While the Behance network is portfolio driven this doesn’t mean that a personal touch in the presentation is not an important element. One creative may design typefaces for a living while another might earn his money doing cute character illustration. Both need to be able to make a profile that they feel represents them properly. The creators of Behance on the other hand wants to ensure that the site doesn’t end up looking like some of the worse Myspace profiles do since that would turn certain people of. This of course calls for a tradeoff.

Behance gives users the maximum amount of freedom without letting them touch any Html or Css code. There is a visual editor that allows you to edit color, font types, font faces, add images, edit background colors and the like, all live. Personally I feel the decision to take out the option of editing the code is a very wise move on Behance’s part. It keeps the network clean and makes it so that people who are not into web code don’t feel like 2nd class citizens.

Membership by approval
Behance is membership by approval, if you want on you fill in a small form and your application will be considered. This approach has it’s pro’s and it’s cons. If you let everyone on the site you’ll end up getting a second Deviant art. You’ll get a site where there’s a lot of great work, but let’s face it, also a lot of crap. Membership by approval solves this problem, but does make it harder for the user wanting to immediately get into the thick of it. Some people are used to instant access to online services and the approval process will turn some people off. In the case of Behance though I think it turned out very well, the somewhat elitist approach is one of the key elements that gives and ensures Behance’s professional look.

Communication options
When you dissect behance on a very basic level you get a social networking site that has replaced the option of adding photos with portfolio pieces. This creates an environment where one is not judged by how he looks but by what he creates. Users can comment on work or on a profile, can give work the “thumbs up” and can send you private messages. You also have the option to send your entire circle of friends a message. All in all very similar to other social networking sites, which is fine since that’s how the medium works.

One downside I’ve experienced is that when you have a large circle of friends the amount of mail you get can sometimes be downright annoying. You’ll get mails which notify you when someone in your circle has posted new work but you’ll also get mails when someone has left you a message. This in itself can be annoying, but when someone posts five new portfolio pieces and then also sends their friends list(with you in it) a message to inform them they have new work up you’ve just gotten six mails in your inbox. And this is only one person. At first I felt this was rather broken, but when I took a good look at the settings I noticed you have the option of turning a weekly notifications on instead of the default instant one. I haven’t tested it yet but if it works like I hope it will that’s another problem solved.

Conclusion
If this article sounds very much in favor of the Behance Network I can only say that, yes, it is. Not because this is a sponsored post or anything, I have no ties to Behance other than the fact that I’m on it to promote Designfeedr. The thing is, if you’re looking for a social networking site tailored especially to creatives there is currently nothing that rivals the Behance network. With great design, portfolio based profiles, solid communication options and a nicely sized user base why would you not be on it?

That’s it for my positive rant on the Behance network. Stay tuned for a showcase I’m working on that spotlights some of the best work on the network.