A big hug for all that remain, and a moment of remembrance for those who already left.

I wish you all the best for next year!
Sergio.

Here you have an animated summary of the whole tutorial

The tutorial costs only 6US$ (if you use the pre-pay option, just 4US$) and it´s the most detailed tutorial about drawing and coloring characters I have ever made. Seriously, this one condenses all the tutorials in the blog. This tutorial is for advanced users, perfect for those who have already practised with some of my tutorials but still want to go further. For those who haven´t, I recommend that you practise the basics before.

What does the file contain?

• Obviously, the most complete tutorial I have ever made about drawing and coloring in Photoshop.
• PSD in very high resolution of the final design, valued at 700US$, under creative commons license. That means you can use it both for personal and commercial projects.
• Two fancy wallpapers you can use on your desktop.
• And everything in English and Spanish.

Here you can see the summary of the tutorial:

• Basic concepts: attitude, pose, action line and silhouette.
• Briefing and search of references
• Before starting to draw
• From the first sketch to the final lines, step by step
• Extracting the lines
• The importance of the history brush
• Plain colors
• Shadows
• Soft light
• Hard light
• Outlines
• Coloring
• Very important: Final effects using layer modes
• Final presentation and acknowledgements

Well buddies, if you download it, leave some feedback, ok? Greetings from Greece!!!

Priorities

The main priority is my job as freelance designer from SOSFactory, for obvious reasons.

My second priority is to consolidate a social network to disseminate my content more effectively. For the time being:

• Deviantart: +2000 watchers
• Youtube: +1000 subscriptors
• Twitter: 355 followers by now
• Facebook: + 200 fans in just a pair of weeks
• RSS: about 300 subscriptors
• TOTAL: near 4000 users, making a traffic of 100.000 visits a month in the whole SOSFactory (blog and portfolio)

The next priority is the redesign of SOSFactory. The design is quite advanced and I´m working on the content now.

The blog is not a priority by now, although I keep working on it.

Quality

There won´t be any “padding posts” (I mean, posts of lists, compilations, interviews or not very important reviews…). Useful articles and tutorials only.

The main blogs of this sector usually release new content every two or three days since they have editors working full time and guest writers previous payment. For a freelance designer, it´s impossible to post that often, I would have to lower the quality of my content… And we don’t want that, do we?

Frequency

I´ll post when I have something to say and when I can spend the required time to say it properly.

I´m seriously wondering whether to remove the date of the posts or not. That´s because the blog looks as it was abandoned when it is not. Moreover, current and high quality content, will keep being useful for a long time (see next point).

Re-editions

When some post becomes obsolete, it will be updated, deleted or you will be redirected to the updated post.

Financing

I´d like to create a blog for users, financed thanks to them. If possible, I´d remove the few ads we have on the web now.

Don´t worry! Most of the content will be free, but there will be downloads, high-res videos and Photoshop files that will require some payment.

Please understand that creating good quality content demands lots and lots of time. And this investment must give some return, otherwise it would fade away.

Language

The blog continues being bilingual (English-Spanish) when it comes to its content.

I´ve noticed that most of the comments are in Spanish, this is not good for other users from the rest of the world.
I would appreciate if every user with a decent English level would help me with this task.

Of course, every proposals and contributions are welcome!

News

• Photoshop CS5 is coming!
• Iphone: Pantone In Your Pocket

Fun stuff

• 30 Stunning Apple Concept Designs
• 25 Photomanipulation mistakes
• The Bizarre Fly Art
• Color pencil creatures
• 80+ Photo Manipulations Art to Ignite Your Creativity

Inspiration

• Craig Mullins
• Highside Lab´s
• Janoliehoek
• Jthreeconcepts

Photoshop Tutorials

• Design a Vintage Radio Icon in Photoshop
• Create a Shiny Earth with Photoshop 3D Layers
• Create a Steam Powered Typographic Treatment – Part I
• 7 Black and White Photoshop Conversion Techniques
• How to Create a Rusty Texture in Photoshop

Vector Tutorials

• Quick and effective vector coloring with Flash
• Create a Happy Sun Character
• A Beginners Guide to Digital Textile Printing s

Photography Tutorials

• An Introduction to Using Strobes in Your Photography

Web Design Usability

• Restraint web usability principle
• 10 tools to test the usability of your website
• Most common fonts
• Font embedding services
• Analysis of the Amazon Shopping Experience

Web design: CSS

• Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started

Web design Showcase

• Clean and simple web design
• Free Slideshow, Gallery And Lightboxes Scripts
• Inspirational examples of pricing pages
• Creative Uses of Illustration in Website Design

Freelancing Tips

• Random questions from a newbie illustrator
• 5 Reasons Freelancers Can’t Ignore Twitter
• Getting Freelance Work: The Hacker Technique
• Freelance Contracts: Do’s And Don’ts

PUBLISHED on 13-Oct-2009: Hello buddies, I´m back again, this time to share a tutorial I wrote some weeks ago, it was recently published in PSDTuts.

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how simple it is to texturize objects using different fusion mode layers, adjustment layers, color tweaks and some very simple filters in Photoshop. You can use this simple technique in more complex illustrations of your own creation. Let’s get started with learning these techniques!

To read the full tutorial visit PSDTuts:

HARDWARE

We have some news from the Wacom universe. First we have the launch of the new Bamboo model, an economical tablet that allows the users to navigate with their hands through gestural movements.And don’t miss the article I wrote for PSDTuts about Wacom tablets:

• Wacom Bamboo Touch Revealed Early
• How to Choose a Graphics Tablet that Fits Your Needs.

TUTORIALS

I don’t usually fancy the tutorials published in the media blogs, but this time we have some very interesting ones:

Illustrator

• How to Create an Energy Saving Bulb in Illustrator. Very interesting tutorial, you’ll learn how to use gradient meshes.
• Create a Character Mascot with Adobe Illustrator CS4. Very well written tutorial to create a character in vectorial format. Very simple but effective.
• Gradient Mesh Bell Pepper Tutorial.
• Create An Awesome Space Rocket Avatar in Illustrator. Another tutorial about the use of gradient meshes and filters in Illustrator.
• Stylized Portrait Illustration. Downloadable tutorial in Spanish and English.

Photoshop

• Render a Cereal Box Cover from Scratch Using Photoshop’s 3D Tools. If you’re not used to 3D tools in Photoshop, don’t miss this easy tutorial!
• Create Fantastic Stone Textures in Photoshop. Very simple with a very eye-catching result.

Web design

• Build a Promotional iPhone App Website Wireframe in Fireworks and Create a Promotional iPhone App Site in Photoshop. Sean Hodge brings this tutorial about web desing. Very detailed, in two installments, where he covers the whole designing process, since the creation of the layout until the final retouches.
• Aligning Images The Right Way Using CSS. Article in which we learn how to align images with CSS HTML.
• Demystifying PRE and CODE Tags. Another article about CSS, I didn’t even knew these labels, very useful to give format to your text.
• 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines. Very useful, really recommendable.
• Beautiful Post Thumbnails: Top Examples & Best Practices. Very very detailed..
• YoDaa – The Web Design Process. Article in which we can find the process to create a web.

3D

• Model and Texture a Posh Living Room Scene in Maya – Day 1. Few blogs make good 3D tutorials, but luckily we have CGTuts.

FREELANCING

• 12 Tips for Creating a Great Portfolio Site.
• The Art of Branding Yourself and Your Freelancing Business. Very good article with lots of observations and very useful examples for freelance designers.
• Showcase of Case Studies in Design Portfolios. Another really interesting article.
• Showcase of Case Studies in Design Portfolios. Very interesting article where we can find studies of different portfolios made by prestigious designers.
• 90 Inspirational And Creative Portfolio Designs. One of those rankings including very well designed webs.

SHOWCASE

• Tstout. Pay attention to the design of the posters of films shown by this designer in his portfolio.
• Shonei Othomo. Risky design, controversial, and sometimes pornographic… really provocative.
• Joey Lawrence. I love the humanity transmitted by this photographer, specially in his portraits.
• Craig Shields. Not a very original style, but it’s eye-catching and very well made technically.

You can visit the full article by clicking on the image.

Sean Hodge editor of PSDTUTS contacted me through the tutorial I did for Smashing Magazine (he is regular writer there too) to interview me. I hope you like it

Click the image to read the interview

I would like to write a post once per week, so if you have time and you can translate from spanish to english please contact me, if you have other skills like drawing, coloring or designing it would be great.

What I have to do to win the contest?

To enter this contest is easy:

1. Write about this contest on your blog.
2. Include a link to this post, and a link to The Prize Blog.

That’s all you have to do to be entered and you could win a professional logo. Each pingback I receive will be an entry into this competiton. Winners will be chosen randomly and announced right here on October 17th 2007.

What is the prize?

Its the usual work I do from my beloved SOSFactory, here you can see some of our lastest designs: