1. Bebas

FREE at DaFont.com. This is one of my favorites. I’ve used it in the Battlestar Galactica propaganda posters, the Serenity Blue Sun travel posters (both volumes 1 and 2), the Sci Fi Science project and more.

2. Berlin Sans FB Demi

This one actually comes bundled with Microsoft Office programs, but I like the bulky, uneven-ness of it.

3. CCBattleCry

A sound effects font from ComicBookFonts.com. (Check these guys out for a TON of great fonts) It’s great for more light-hearted, whimsical uses. I used it in the Gender & Genre poster I created for the California Browncoats to list the date information.

4. CCMonsterMash

A sound effects font from ComicBookFonts.com. Another one of my favorites. This one screams “they came from above!” This was the headline font for the Gender & Genre poster, as well as the Giant Fire Breathing Robot URL in the retro sci-fi poster tutorial.

5. CCSpeedingBullet

A display font from ComicBookFonts.com. This was the title font for the main Sci Fi Science book cover.

6. East Market

Another great FREE font available at DaFont.com

7. Electro Gothic

From the HP Lovecraft Historical Society vintage font collection. I use a huge number of the fonts from this collection in my work. I’ve only started using this one recently, though, and not yet in anything that’s been published. Stay tuned, though!

8. Headline Modified

Another font from the HP Lovecraft Historical Society vintage font collection. You can see this one in the “Do Your Part For Humanity” Battlestar propaganda poster.

9. Mercantile Card

Mercantile Card is also a great font for creating ephemera, like antique shipping labels. It’s another HP Lovecraft Historical Society font.

10. Newsflash BB

A nice, heavy, FREE font from Blambot.com

It’s a Start …

These are just a few of my favorite fonts. If you’re going to create a lot of pieces in this style, you’ll need to build up a large collection of fonts so that you don’t wind up repeating yourself too often. Check out these font sites to start your search:

• DaFont.com
• Blambot.com
• HP Lovecraft Historical Society vintage font collection
• ComicBookFonts.com
• FLAT-IT Type Foundry (I actually discovered these guys while researching this post. They created the Bebas font, but their site has a cornucopia of great retro-style fonts that I can’t wait to dive into)

This evening, I’ll finish and upload the blog post I promised on retro fonts, and then I’ll start one on digital organization for designers. It’s a topic I’ve struggled with myself; hopefully you can learn a thing or two from my (many) trials and errors.

Since I’ve got less on my plate this week, I’ll also be working on my resume and my e-mail pitch to prospective clients. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about subscribing to production reports to see what movies and tv shows are currently in production. I’ve found a new source called Below The Line, which is significantly cheaper than the two I mentioned previously. I’ve still got a while to go before I move to L.A., which means I can’t be quite as gung-ho about job hunting yet. So this less-expensive alternative is a great fit for me right now. I’m going to keep an eye out for productions that will be filming in San Francisco, and try to send out at least one resume a week, just to test the water. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Make-It-Worth-Your-While Link

While I hope my Monday updates are interesting (and with any luck, inspirational), I also want to offer at least one thing that’s tangibly useful. So check out this interview with Go Media’s Jeff Finley on designing for the film industry. If you could dog-ear a web page, I would have worn the corner off of this page long ago. I’ve read it countless times, and it’s a great source of inspiration and advice.

Designing for the Film Industry: A Chat with Go Media’s Jeff Finley [from Colorburned]

I’m a big believer in the idea that it’s the little things — more so than the big ones — that truly help sell a design. A tiny drop shadow here, a subtle highlight there can be enough to turn a “good enough” design into a bona fide portfolio piece.

Take for instance this image of the History of Search Engines from one of my favorite infographic designers, Paul Horn, aka Doc Splatter on Twitter.

The layout and presentation of information is professional and compelling, as his pieces usually are. But what caught my eye and inspired me to write this post was the scroll bar along the right side of the image. As it follows the timeline down from 1990 to the present day, the scroll bar gradually changes from a Mac OS 9 interface style to a modern OS X style, reflecting the changing times.

There are other similar touches, like the archaic beveling on the labels which gradually shift to a more modern aesthetic to a shifting color palette that echoes corresponding shift in web design trends over the last 20 years.

The designer could have gone without any of those added elements, and it still would have been a well-designed piece. But by pushing past “good enough,” he created a piece that really resonates with the viewer.

*waves*

Hello! Thanks for coming by! I wasn’t expecting so much company, but there’s some beer in the fridge, and some cheese, I think.

I’m thrilled that so many people are stopping by to check out the tutorial. If you haven’t read my “about” page yet, here’s the short version:

I’ve decided to restart my blog, and chronicle my efforts to start a career as a graphic designer in film and television. It’s a journey I’m already on, but in the grand scheme of things, I’m still at the start of that journey. As I go, I’ll be talking about what I’m doing to make connections in the industry, what projects I’m working on (assuming I can talk about them yet), frustrations, advice I’ve gotten from others, and anything else that occurs to me that might be relevant to my adventure. Adventure is a perfect word for this.

I’m jumping on this career path a little later than others (I’m 35 now), and to be quite honest, I have no idea where this path will wind up leading me in the end. But I’ve never been more certain of what I want to do when I grow up. In some ways, this will be a diary for me, to focus my thoughts and help me track my progress along the way. At the same time, I hope to make it a useful reference for others looking to embark on the same journey.

[You can read the rest of that first post here.]

Anyway, back to the update. That tutorial stemmed from a project that the folks at Giant Fire Breathing Robot asked me to do last week. They wanted a promo piece for PAX, and I was happy to oblige. Not only did I get a great tutorial piece out of it, but it’s going to get my art out there in front of tons of folks at PAX, which I won’t have a chance to get to myself. Plus, it was a rush job, which, granted, is a bit stressful, but it means I’m done with it quickly and can move on to other stuff.

Also thanks to the tutorial, I’ve gotten a few inquiries about new projects, which is fantastic. (I’m still accepting new work, if you’re interested!)

Finally, I posted a new piece in my portfolio. It’s the Battlestar Galactica Dogtag Packaging I did a few years ago. That was a fun one, and taught me a lot about working with licensed properties.

I expect the flood of new visitors will start to fall off in the next few hours, but hopefully some of you will stick around to see what I do next! I’m already starting to plan my next tutorial, but I’m open to suggestions. What would you like to see? Let me know in the comments!

Thrilling Tales is a sort of modern-day choose-your-own-adventure novel by Bradley W. Schenck. It’s Cornelius Zappencackler’s Derange-O-Lab Pulp Sci Fi Title-O-Tron! (What a great name!)

The Title-O-Trom randomly generates authentic-sounding titles that you’re free to use in your own work. There’s even a smaller version that you can add to your own site, which you can download here.

With titles like “The Mongoose Riders of Callisto” and “Abandoned in the Monolith of the Brain Eaters”, you’ll never find yourself without great flavor text again!

Pulp Sci Fi Title-O-Tron [via Giant Fire Breathing Robot]

Here’s a tutorial I did a few years back for deviantART. I needed to create an ad for a local rec program, featuring a picture of a young man happily working with a kid. The problem was, while I had the perfect stock photo for the job, the young man had a very serious look on his face. It didn’t look like he was having much fun, which really wasn’t the best look for the ad.

The solution? Perform face transplant surgery, Photoshop style!

Step 1: Find a Donor

First, find a photo with a face that has the expression you’re looking for. The head should be at roughly the same angle, although side-to-side tilt can vary. Also, be aware of skin differences, like freckles, etc.

Step 2: Begin the Graft

Select the feature you want to replace. In this case, we’re interested in the mouth. Copy and paste or drag it to the original face. I named this new layer “New Face” (creative, I know!)

Step 3: Begin the Reconstructive Surgery

Press Command + T (Windows: Ctrl + T) to rotate and resize the new mouth to line up with the angle of the original face. Don’t worry if the cheeks, chin and neck don’t line up exactly, as long as the main features are in the right place, and are roughly the right size.

Step 4: Adjustments

With the New Face layer selected, press Command + L (Windows: Ctrl + L) to adjust your levels. You may have to make other color adjustments to fit your images. My final image was going to be in black & white, so I wasn’t worried about matching the color perfectly.

Step 5: Blend it in

With the new face layer selected, press the Add Layer Mask button on the layers palette. Select the layer mask (the white box will have a black and white border). Click the brush tool in your tools palette, and in the brush options, choose a medium size diameter and 0% hardness. The areas of the mask that you paint black will disappear, but will not be erased. If you make a mistake, simply switch to white, and brush over the area you want to reappear.

Don’t forget: All the muscles of the face are interconnected. Since I was changing the face from serious to smiling, I had to replace the original eyes to keep the smile from looking fake. The process for the eyes, which I took from the same donor face, was exactly the same as before.

The Finished Product

I converted the image to grayscale, because it was going to be printed in a black and white newsletter. And here’s our finished product.

One Final Note

This is a LOT easier to do with a graphics tablet. I currently use a Wacom Graphire Bluetooth 6 x 8-Inch Tablet, but at the time I first did this tutorial, I was using a much smaller, entry-level tablet. Either way, a tablet makes masking work SO much easier.

I recently did a podcast interview with the folks at Giant Fire Breathing Robot, in which I discussed my work with QMx and my freelance graphic design work, among other topics. It was a pretty fun interview to do, and at the end, I mentioned that I planned to start working on some tutorials here on my blog, to help other aspiring designers learn from my experience.

About a week later, GFBR’s host, Andrew, contacted me to ask if I could create some promotional items for them to take to the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in September.. They needed a rush job, and I needed inspiration for these tutorials, so I offered to waive my standard rush fee in exchange for permission to create a process tutorial from the design. They happily agreed, and this is the result.

Since Andrew was familiar with my vintage/retro style, he asked me to create a poster that incorporated their iconic robot mascot into a 1950s-era pulp sci-fi magazine cover.

STEP 1 – RESEARCH!

I always start retro-style projects like these by looking at examples of the style and era of art I’m emulating. There are a lot of different factors that go into making a piece look believable, from choice of fonts to colors, to composition, to printing techniques, etc. A pulp book cover from the 50s won’t look the same as a propaganda poster from the 40s, and nailing those details can be the difference between awesome and not-quite-right.

One of my favorite sources for pulp images is x-ray_delta_one’s photostream on Flickr. He’s got nearly 4,500 images of classic book covers, advertisements, photos and more, the vast majority of which are posted under a Creative Commons license. Looking through his images, I found a few that caught my eye for this project.

Not only do these serve as inspiration, I can sample colors from them to use in my own piece, which adds another level of accuracy to the finished product.

STEP 2 – SKETCH

I work almost entirely digitally, but I still create rough sketches before I get to work on the finished piece. This helps me visualize the overall composition, without the distraction of lots of colors competing for my attention.

When I’m sketching out a design, I add a layer style to each layer, with a 3pt blue stroke (#0090FF) and a white color overlay. Download this as a Photoshop style preset.

I created a new file in Photoshop using the following settings:

I like to keep my layers and groups as neat and orderly as possible. It’s not because I’m particularly OCD about it, but I tend to use a LOT of layers. If I don’t give them descriptive names and sort them into groups, I tend to get completely lost. So I start out with a top-level group called SKETCH. In that, I’ll add groups for each major element of the design.

The first step is to create a border. The border serves two purposes. First, it defines the boundaries of the book, and second, it provides a safety margin for when the printer trims the final poster. The border was inset 1/4 inch from the edges of the document. (Using ruler guides helped me position all the elements properly) I also created a strip at the bottom where the URL will go. I made this nice and large, since the whole point of the piece was to be a promotional giveaway to drive people to the website.

Now it’s time to start adding some text. I started with the two most important elements: the title and the URL. On pulp novel covers, nothing is more prominent than the title, which tends to be the very definition of sensational. And just about everything on those old covers ended in an exclamation point. For the vast majority of the text on this piece, I used fonts from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which has a stunning collection of crunchy old fonts from the first half of the 20th century. I added a strong but small drop shadow to the largest text to give it some extra dimension.

The kerning (the space between letters) on these old publications tended to be quite a bit wider and more uneven than we do it today, so keep that in mind when laying out your text.

After the title and URL, I added some “flavor” text. These are the bits and pieces of text that announce the price of the book, the featured stories, and other odds and ends. These fill up the space and breathe life into it. Minimalist design can be beautiful, but it has no place on a pulp magazine cover! The flavor text is a perfect place to insert easter eggs, so I asked Andrew to provide me with some of the inside jokes and running gags he and his crew use on the podcast.

Finally, I placed one of the mascot images Andrew had sent me into the document, and applied the sketch style to it. Again this helped me work on the overall composition, since everything was in silhouette.

Placing images into designs is something I do constantly, but Photoshop doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut for the Place command by default. You can add your own by going to EDIT > KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS.

I resized and re-positioned the image and text items until I was happy with everything, and the sketch was finished.

STEP 3: IN LIVING COLOR!

Since a lot of the layout work is already done, I duplicated the SKETCH group, along with all its contents, and renamed the new group COLOR. As I work, I’ll remove the sketch style from each layer in turn. If you like, you can just mainpulate and alter your sketch layers into the final design, but I like to be able to go back and refer to my original sketch as I work.

To make things easier, I turned off all the layers except the background to start, and then turned the rest on as I went, editing one element at a time. This is another reason to organize the crap out of your layers palette.

First, I created a background layer and filled the entire layer with black. Then I filled my border layer with a desaturated blue color (C71 M45 Y31 K5) and filled the bottom banner with a vivid red which I had sampled from one of my reference images (C0 M95 Y100 K0).

Then, to create a sense of depth in the background, I added a gradient effect to the background layer. To do this, I first set my foreground color to C80 M70 Y61 K77. (This is a little lighter than pure black, which would have been too dark.) I then chose Gradient Overlay … from the Layer Style tool at the bottom of the layers palette. From the gradient picker, I chose the Foreground to Transparent option, and set the gradient angle to -90 degrees, so that the dark portion was on top.

Next, I turned the text layers back on, experimenting with various color combinations inspired by my reference images. The layout of the text and the words themselves have changed slightly since the sketch, based on first round feedback from the client. I removed the drop shadow from the URL, because it seemed to work better flat, but I kept it on the title. The size of the drop shadow remained the same, but I changed the color to C53 M74 Y76 K76:

Next, I added the robot back in, repositioning it to fit with the new text layout. Then, in a separate layer below the robot, I added an explosion by loosely painting with some free cloud brushes I downloaded online, alternating between red (C6 M97 Y100 K1) and orange (C1 M22 Y86 K0) until I was happy with the overall effect. With that, the final composition is basically complete. Now we need to start aging the design to make it look like an actual magazine cover from the 1950s.

STEP 4: AGING AND ADJUSTING

To start the aging process, I added two groups for adjustments, one above the text layers, and one below, but above the robot and background layers. This allowed me to age the text and art separately, simulating the effect of the publisher adding text to a piece of existing art. Because I only want the aging adjustments to affect the book, and not the black background behind it, I made a selection around the border of the book, then created a clipping mask on each group. Now, anything contained inside that group will be confined to the shape of the mask.

In the art adjustments group, I created a new layer, and filled it with black. Then I added a film grain filter by going to FILTER > ARTISTIC > FILM GRAIN …

Then I set the blending mode for that layer to Overlay, and set the opacity to 50%.

I then duplicated the grain layer, changed the blending mode to Linear Dodge, and upped the opacity to 100%.

That gives us the start of a nice dirty look. But the edges of the robot are still much too sharp. To fix this, I went back to the Robot layer and used the layer styles tool to added an inner and outer glow, using an orange hue that was similar to the color of the explosion (C0 M71 Y100 K0).

Moving up to the text adjustments group, I created a new Photo Filter adjustment layer (click the button at the bottom of the layers palette), which I set to Deep Yellow, with a density of 50%.

Above that adjustment layer, I created another grain layer (you can just copy one of the previous ones) and set the blending mode to Color Dodge and the opacity to 100%. It’s a small change, but it helps sell the colors.

Next, I added some detail work to the fonts. If you look closely at the text on the reference images, they’re not a uniform color. This color shift may have happened over time, or might have been a result of poor ink quality or equipment. Regardless, adding little touches like this won’t be noticed consciously by anyone looking at the poster, but it will definitely FEEL more authentic. To achieve that effect, I added a gradient layer style to each text layer, choosing a color just a hair darker than the font color itself. No need to go overboard here. We’re just adding a hint of color.

The piece is almost done now, but it needs two more things to really bring it home. The first is to make it look like this book has been battered around and read who knows how many times. To do that, I broke out my favorite grunge brushes, created by ardcor on deviantART, set my foreground color to C4 M7 Y21 K0, and set to work “damaging” the edges of the book. Again you want to apply a clipping mask to this layer so your brush strokes don’t extend beyond the edges of the book.

There’s no real science to roughing up your edges, but I do have a few tips. First, think about why the damage is there in the first place. It’s where the ink has been worn away from the page, and that’s most likely to happen around the edges and corners. The corners especially take a beating because they’re the first thing to hit when a book is dropped. The edge near the spine takes less abuse because its edge isn’t cut. Finally, remember that a little goes a long way when you’re distressing an image. If you take it too far, break out your eraser tool. Just make sure you use a grunge brush for your eraser too, so your grunge continues to look organic.

For the final step, we’re going to add a halftone pattern to simulate the printing process. First, take your whole COLOR group and duplicate it, then merge the new group (ONLY the new group) into a single flat layer. (I’ve created an action that simplifies this process. Just select a group, click the button and voila!) Convert the layer to a smart object by right-clicking on the layer and selecting CONVERT TO SMART OBJECT. Set your foreground color is set to black and your background color to white, then add a halftone pattern filter to the layer by selecting FILTER > SKETCH > HALFTONE PATTERN …, with the following settings:

Change the blending mode for the layer to Overlay and change the opacity to 75%, and change the blending mode for the halftone pattern to Soft Light.

That’s it! Our vintage pulp sci-fi poster is complete!

One Final Note

There are a lot of detailed specifics in this tutorial, from filter settings to color values. I cleaned up the process considerably for this tutorial, but in actuality, there’s a lot of trial and error involved. Settings that work for one piece may need to be tweaked for another. The most important thing is to experiment and work at it until it feels right to YOU.

Have any questions about this tutorial? Drop me a line. I’m also available for freelance design work, so feel free to check out my portfolio as well.

UPDATE: Hello to everyone visiting the blog from i09, Craft, Photoshop Roadmap and other sites where this tutorial has been featured! I’m starting to plan my next tutorial now, but I am open to suggestions. Got a technique you’d like me to cover? See something cool in my portfolio that you want to know how to do yourself? Let me know in the comments.

Had quite the productive week last week, which included a couple of new projects for QMx. Unfortunately, as per usual, they’re of the can’t-tell-you-about-them-without-getting-fired variety. Oh well.

The highlight of the week was an interview I did with the Giant Fire Breathing Robot podcast, which was released today. You can check out the podcast here. My interview starts at about 32:30. In it, I talk about my career with QMx, my work on the Save Hiatus webcomic, how important (or not) formal art / design training really is. Oh, and I also talk about how awesome geek girls are, because it’s true, and always fun to talk about.

No new contacts or freelance work this week, but hopefully the podcast will help with that. It’s all about baby steps, people!

Oh, and stay tuned. I’ll have another tutorial up sometime this week.

Art Directors Guild

First, he told me to check out the Art Directors Guild (Local 800 of IATSE). While the initiation fee is steep, you don’t actually have to join until you’re working. In the meantime, they have a magazine called Perspective, which is available online at artdirectors.org. Perspective has some really interesting and useful articles aimed at art and design professionals in the entertainment industry. While it covers a wide range of art topics (set design, model-making, etc.), it’s a great resource to start learning the ins and outs of the industry.

Production Reports

The other suggestion he had was to subscribe to one of several weekly production reports. These are lists of films and shows that are in pre-production, or will be within a few months. They list the name of the show, the studio, contact info and other pertinent details. Geoff suggests sending query letters or making phone calls to the art departments of new productions that sound interesting.

The reports aren’t cheap; Production Weekly (@prodweek on Twitter) is $59/month and Production Alert is $50/month, but the return is potentially huge.

• Production Weekly Sample Issue
• Production Alert Sample Issue (pdf)

NOTES

Image used under a Creative Commons license from @thetruthabout

Used under a Creative Commons license from @superamit

On My Plate This Week

Freelance work for a local parenting magazine: This is a long-term client I’ve been working with for about a year and a half now. Every week I put together their e-mail newsletter, based on a template I designed for them. The newsletter goes out Wednesday mornings, so I have to have the draft ready and back to the client by Tuesday for their review. That usually means I’m working on their stuff on Monday evening. I’m also in the process of designing some web pages for a short-term promotion they’re running. I’m waiting on content from them, though, so that project is on the back burner at the moment.

This client isn’t exactly related to my ultimate goal of working in film and television, but they’re definitely a good client to work for, and a consistent source of income.

QMx stuff: Can’t talk a lot about what I’m working on for QMx, but I do have a few balls in air right now for them. One of the projects I’m working on is to design a stand for an upcoming prop. I was supposed to have it done this past weekend, but a migraine on Sunday got in the way of getting it done. I did come up with a rudimentary concept for the stand that I was pretty happy with. Once I’m done with my work for the parenting magazine this evening, I’ll spend the rest of the night finishing the design on the stand.

I also have a couple of poster projects on my plate for QMx. My poster work for them is a lot different from my packaging and straight graphic design work, because it’s all about original art. I can usually punch out a box design or promo graphic in a day or two, especially if I’m working with art provided by the studio. My posters take a lot longer because not only do I have to come up with a compelling – and marketable – piece of art, but I have to come up with the entire concept for the piece. It’s much more free-form, which is fun, but also more difficult. I’ll spend a lot of time this week re-watching the source material to get inspiration for the posters. I can’t say a whole lot more, but I can say they’re for franchises that QMx already has.

Networking: I’m trying to do a bit of networking every week. At Comic-Con this year I met a TV prop master and a few independent movie producers. I’ve followed up with all of them, and we’ve talk about at least the potential of there being some work for me down the road. Don’t want to get ahead of myself by saying anything specific about the projects, but I definitely have some good leads. I’ve also gotten a bunch of new followers on Twitter from my work on the Geek Girl Con logo. Some time this week I’ll need to sort through them and see if there are any leads to be had. (That’s not the only reason I use Twitter, by any means, but it’d also be foolish of me not to use it for networking if the opportunity is there!)