One-on-One

Greetings, fellow Deke-o-philes!

This issue of dekeSpeak comes from a cool place. As the thermometer dips and layered apparel becomes increasingly conspicuous, I'm enjoying the warm fuzzy feeling I get from sharing the treasure trove of insights available on deke.com. Deke hooked up with Bert Monroy, and got a close look at Bert's most recent masterwork. Read on to get a glimpse of it yourself. Our tip for this installment comes from Deke's Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery course for lynda.com. And, I bring you good news: we've been able to extend the special (and very popular) Fotolia offer from the previous newsletter.

That's the news for now. As I'm sure you know, Deke sends all his virtual love.

Best regards, and I hope you're having a creative day,
Lou B, Speaker of the Deke, dekeOnline Read more » 

I open my window and I hear the birds roar. And do you know why? Because just this morning, my 153-movie, 14-hour and 53-minute "Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced" video course went live at lynda.com. If that sounds like a lot of hours, perish the thought. It's down slightly more than a full work day (8 hours and 19 minutes) from my introductory course, "Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals." And it goes down easy as this very Tuesday morning. (Click here for a full chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the contents.)

Here's a previously unreleased screen capture from the course that demonstrates how to integrate Photoshop images into your Illustrator workflow. What it lacks in beauty it makes up for in prehistoric bird action and sweet training goodness. Not to mention, a page curl. (Now we're talkin'!)

Members of the lynda.com Online Training Library can get started instantly by clicking on this link. Not a member? Get yourself a free week by clicking here. Not interested? Just sit there. Those are your options. Read more » 

Hey, gang. Just a brief note to let you all know that I and my team have finished work on the project that has recently consumed our every waking moments, the forthcoming book Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One. Believe it or not, all 512 pages of it went to the printer today, with all 6 hours of companion video edited and ready to go. While I slept like a baby, my designer David Futato and lead editor Carol Person were up until the wee hours generating the final PDF documents. (Thanks to them both!) And while no one is going to accuse me of being overly timely---Illustrator CS5 started shipping about the same time as Columbus---I'm convinced that we've managed to create the best book that we could, as well as the best title in the One-on-One series.

The book should be available for purchase in about three weeks. For real. I'm no longer the boy who cried "Illustrator book!" I'll actually have one. Read more » 

Well, gang. As many of you know, I've been remiss on the site lately. But only because I'm fulfilling my contractual obligations. Including this, check it out: I figured out how to create a Celtic knot in Illustrator. If that sounds like ho hum, big ole deal---I politely beg to differ. The illustration below contains not only paths that flow in and out of each other---meaning that one path can be simultaneously in front and in back of another, which is fundamentally not even sorta something you can do---but also paths that weave in and out of themselves. Themselves, I say! Which is not only currently impossible, but theoretically improbable within the construct of a vector-driver computer graphics application. And yet, it can happen---not in the future but right-this-second-now---thanks to the near-limitless depths of Live Paint combined with the seemingly infinite obsession of yours truly. (Let me make it clear: These are three shapes, filled with gradients, interacting with each other. And nothing---but much, much, much---more.)

My sidekick Colleen is the one who put me up to this challenge, so blame her for my lack of posting as of late. (Ha! I love blaming stuff on Colleen!) Incidentally, this will be part of "Chapter 17, Live Paint" in my forthcoming Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced video course for lynda.com, which will be available in November.

I'll come back to that topic in a moment. In the meantime, the final leg of my video bible on Photoshop CS5, Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery, is live and ready for viewing on the lynda.com Online Training Library. Read more » 

Some of you have been asking when my Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Advanced series is coming out. And I was all prepared to tell you this Friday. But lynda.com, being the incredible juggernaut of a video publisher that they are, began releasing it today. Chapters 13 thru 18 are up this very second. That's more than 100 movies, so it should keep you occupied for now. (If not, I totally suck.) The remaining Chapters 19 thru 24 will be up in 10 days.

Here's a live-action frame from the series. My director told me that, in retrospect, my spendy Elie Tahari shirt "looked a little disco." Let me assure you that this is one of the best shirts I've ever owned. It's a matte forest green with some excellent under-collar and inner-sleeve highlights. In the video, I don't look disco, I look positively wet. Meaning that I glisten. Like someone is misting me. Which is not necessarily what you want in a training video. But it's what you get.

That said, who gives a tinker's gumph what I look like? Read more »