dekePod

This week's video is the first of a two-parter, the second of which, "Assembling a seamless Pattern Brush," is available exclusively to members of the lynda.com Online Training Library. I mention this because today's movie ends as a bit of a cliff hanger. that is to say, this free movie shows you how to create all the elements required to make a seamless pattern. But you might as well know up front: To understand how to turn those elements into an actual functioning Pattern Brush, you'll have to be a paying member of lynda.com.

Hey, even a kind and generous teacher like me has to turn the occasional buck. Here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more » 

If you live in The States, very likely the only thing on your mind today is the election. Apparently that holds true for me as well because I forgot to post today's Deke's Techniques last night. It's my own thing and I spaced it. Oh, that Obama! What kinds of crazy antics will he get us into next?

Anyway, here it is. And here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more » 

Hallo, it's Halloween.

Recently, I received a member request to create a video tutorial on how to recreate the popular meme, Slender Man. He's cool. He's spooky. He's creepy. Really fucking creepy. But Slender Man already has a meme. And Slender Man already has a head. I think we need a new meme: Slender Guy Without a Head. Slender Guy Without a Head in the Woods. Slender Guy Without a Head in the Spooky, Creepy, Misty Woods. Slender Guy Without a Head in the Wherever-It's-Creepy-for-a-Headless-Guy-to-Be, Possibly in the Mall.

For the sake of expediency, let's just call him Headless Slender Guy. Here's the official description by Colleen on behalf of lynda.com: Read more » 

This week's technique is based on a request from a member of the lynda.com Online Training Library. And while I love the requests (keep 'em coming!), this one turns out to be a bit silly. This particular person--male, female, phantom, no one knows, it's so scary---wanted to know how to create a killer tomato. Like in the movies. Two problems: 1) Those movies are no good. You know how some movies are so bad they're great? Like the most entertaining movie ever made if you're a geek like me, Plan 9 from Outer Space? The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes franchise is Plan 9's opposite. That is to say, a series of movies intended to be funny-bad that are just plain unpleasantly idiotic. 2) Despite they're wretched awfulness, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is aggressively trademarked. And after that Olympic Rings debacle, I'm not willing to risk yanking another video for a crappy bunch of unwatchable films.

(Oh, I'll risk it again. You can bet on that. But it'll be for something loftier.)

Then I thought, killer tomatoes, it's a funny idea. It has a high geek factor. And we're all geeks, and watching that first movie and then researching this project by watching a bunch of gut-wretchingly awful sequel trailers really pissed me off. So I thought, you know, really, fuck it. I'll make that video. Only I'll substitute the tomato for America's most patriotic squash, the pumpkin. God + America = the pumpkin, after all. George Jefferson was a pumpkin, and so was Theodore Lincoln, and so am I.

You're gonna like this one. Here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more » 

A few years ago, I showed you how to scan real actual American money and open it in Photoshop. Unfortunately, that trick doesn't work these days, and I don't know of a trick that does. (Which sucks, because we the people own the copyright to our currency! And unless you have access to a stockpile of federally protected paper and ink, and you possess world-class separation skills, you aren't going to get anywhere scanning banknotes into Photoshop. Haven't Adobe's lawyers---and the feds that lobbied them---read something as basic as a Jack Reacher novel?) And so I thought, screw it. If you can't beat 'em, reinvent 'em.

Which is why I decided, this week, to show you how to draw your own money, one emblematic detail at a time. Here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more »