DA! Desktop Anime Design Blog

Tears for Japan fundraiser complete

2011-03-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who participated in my Tears for Japan fundraiser campaign!
A total of $163 was raised (I rounded) and donated to Save the Children Federation.

1 new wallpaper (Toward the Terra - Tears for Terra)

2011-03-19T17:48:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper: Toward the Terra - Tears for Terra (Art Nouveau)

I started this wallpaper over a year ago, having finished the character artwork trace fairly quickly. It then sat on my hard drive for many months as I never got around to completing the Art Nouveau-styled frame for it. Then, last week the Northeastern Japan earthquake and tsunami struck… I wanted to show my support for Japan, so I looked through my work-in-progress folder and found this. It was oddly fitting, seeing Jomy and Physis mourning for a home they never had, while many Japanese mourn for a home that is lost… [more]

10 years

2010-05-25T05:28:00.001-07:00

Holy cow. DA! Desktop Anime turns 10 today.
I want to say more, but I've just gotten in from a 2 week business trip. And I'm going to bed.

1 new wallpaper (Lupin the Third - Catch me if you can)

2010-05-25T05:26:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper: Lupin the Third - Catch me if you can (Art Deco)

Another wallpaper with some Art Deco sensibilities. This one is based off of the fabulous opening sequence to Catch Me if You Can. At first I was going to use Bebop characters (which also has a classy Deco vibe to the art) and was going to call it "Bebop if you can", but the more I thought about it, the more Lupin fit, what with Zenigata vs Lupin's crew... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Tonari no Totoro - Travelogue 02: Ride the CatBus)

2010-04-11T01:55:00.001-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Tonari no Totoro - Travelogue 02: Ride the CatBus (Art Deco)

Second in my Art Deco Travelogue series. To recap, I absolutely love Art Deco travel posters, so I wanted to create a series of wallpapers of travel posters for the Anime world. This one features the Fast - Friendly - Fuzzy service of the Cat Bus from My Neighbor Totoro... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Okami - Zodiac: Tiger)

2010-02-14T07:16:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Okami - Zodiac: Tiger (Ukiyo-e)

Happy New Year! Today marks the start of the year of the Tiger, so how about a new Okami wall featuring a tiger? [more]

1 new wallpaper (Vocaloid - Singing Through the Noise)

2009-11-22T02:17:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Vocaloid - Singing Through the Noise (Grunge)

I chose this scan because somehow I liked the style (when I later found related scans and learned they were all by Miwa Shirow, I figured out why -- I like Shirow's bold lines and use of black.) Anyhow, a trace to clean things up, and then it was time for grunge... [more]

Back to the old grind

2009-11-22T01:55:00.000-08:00

So I've been away from walling for nearly a year. This isn't that I've completely stopped walling, it's that I needed a break, and real-world obligations became more important.
First, I'd been making roughly 1 wall per month from 2007-early 2009 (this was down from about 2-3 walls per month in years past.) That's actually quite a bit of walling considering I have a full-time job and a desire to have a social life. I felt obligated to keep walling at that speed because I had done it for so long, and it was beginning to weigh down.
Additionally, work suddenly turned up a notch. There was a major new Toolbar release (version 6), and I also picked up responsibilities for Chrome which had several launches (although I did get to sneak in a few of my own designs in the Google-created themes gallery, which is awesome.) I also went to New York for a week to kick off themes in Google Spreadsheet Forms (again, I added some of my own designs in the mix -- Zen Spring is every~where♥.)
All of a sudden, in spring of 2009 I was asked if I was interested in working from the Tokyo office for a year. The branch of our team that handles Asia/Pacific requests needed some help and was hoping to get a seasoned webmaster out of HQ, and asked for me.
To which I almost immediately said, "Sign me up!"
The next few months were spent getting ready for the move (paperwork) and transferring some projects to others so I could take on new ones in Tokyo. And then, I moved!
It's been a busy few months transitioning over, finding an apartment, figuring out how to pay the utility bills, and meeting all the awesome people in the Tokyo office. Now things are finally settling down, and I'm ready to get back to some walling!
I don't expect to be able to match the 1 wallpaper/month speed I had previously. I'm not going to try to. I'm just going to make walls when I feel like it. I have some ideas and I'm going to fly with them as I see fit. So sit back and relax, and perhaps subscribe to the feed for updates (or add me to watchlists on Minitokyo or AnimePaper) because I'm still here, and I still mean to stay.
Also, I have totally, utterly missed DA!'s Nth birthday in May. I'm working on a new layout right now, actually. Maybe it'll be up in time to celebrate 2010. It's always good to start the New Year off with a clean slate, right?

The state of the site

2009-06-10T21:53:00.001-07:00

So obviously I haven't been making any walls lately. I've been busy with work, and a whole lot of it. Toolbar, Chrome, and Docs have all had numerous launches, and I've also been working on a variety of other projects. I have also recently bought a Nintendo DSi and have been rediscovering my love for SNES RPGs, as well as a love for BBC America programming. I haven't even turned on my desktop computer in several months, doing all my stuff on my work laptop.

I'd like to continuing making wallpapers, but right now I don't feel a whole lot of motivation. Maybe I'll find some inspiration when...

I move to Japan!

I will be working from Japan for a year starting in August, helping out our team in Tokyo. This is a big change and I'm really excited, and also kind of freaking out over all the stuff I need to wrap up before I do so. Definitely not going to have anything out before then. Maybe afterwards. Time will tell.

No wallpaper for February

2009-02-24T16:09:00.001-08:00

Unless I manage to either a) freeze time or b) steal a TARDIS, there's not going to be a wallpaper for February.
This is what's been keeping me busy all month.
I may just manage to squeak out a new iGoogle theme, but February is a short month...

About the iGoogle Papercuts themes

2009-02-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

I have been fielding an increasing number of emails lately about the designs behind my iGoogle Papercuts themes. Most of these folks are interested in somehow acquiring the designs for their own uses, whether as prints or for art projects. I figured I'd write this post now, so I can just direct future emails to it.
All of the designs (floral and animal) are traced from the art resource book, Chinese Folk Designs, compiled by WM Hawley and put out by Dover Publications (although it looks like it may have been published by others as well.) The book contains some 300 different designs, including many more floral and animal designs as well as some Chinese characters (hanzi), landscapes and buildings, and even some of the Eight Immortals and other important religious figures. They're white designs on a solid background, making them easy to manipulate via computer, copier, or old-fashioned tracing paper.
If you would like to use these designs, I would highly recommend finding this book at your library or book store. I got mine from a used book sale and it has proven to be a valuable investment.
Because these designs are not my original designs but merely taken from this book, I cannot (and will not) provide posters, cards, or other prints for sale. In the future, I would love to create my own set of papercut designs inspired by these classics but, alas, that is a project for another day.

1 new wallpaper (Okami - Zodiac: Ox)

2009-01-21T20:28:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Okami - Zodiac: Ox (Ukiyo-e)

I've been wanting to make a series of Okami walls that features each of the Zodiac animals for a while now, and what better time to launch this than at the beginning of the Year of the Ox... [more]

Internet Popular

2009-01-06T10:14:00.000-08:00

I'm #5 on iGoogle's hottest themes listing today! I don't think the first two count, either, as they're the first two for all listings.
I wonder how long this will last...

Travelogue series planning

2009-01-03T12:20:00.000-08:00

I recently finished the first in what I want to be a series of Art Deco-styled travel posters. Here's a list of other walls that I'm thinking of for the series.
In progress
Macross: Shot of a valkyrie flying through the sky, maybe over a generic cityscape.
Kino no Tabi: "The Empty Country". Vista of the Empty Country (abandoned buildings). Scan from Novel 8.
Allison: "Majestic Littony River". Vista of the Littony River (important in novel 1 of Allison) with an airplane (w/Allison and Will) flying over.
Thinking about it
Last Exile: Vanship. Over a cityscape? Possibly with the Silvanus.
Big O: Paradigm cityscape, with Big O in the background.
Gankutsuou: Paris spaceport, with spaceships taking off, rest of Paris in background.
The Cat Returns: Kingdom of Cats vista, focused on the tower.
Escaflowne: A pair of matching but contrasting posters, perfect for dualscreen setups. Fanelia vista, with Escaflowne in background. Zaibach vista, with Guymelefs in background.
Cowboy Bebop: A vista of one of the rings that is used for interplanetary travel, with Bebop, Swordfish and/or Redhawk.
Ghost in the Shell: Tachikoma, in a cyberscape?
Katamari Damacy: Vista of a city getting pwned by a katamari
Utena: Vista of the school (as seen in the movie with its sweeping/moving parts)

Hmm, got a lot of work there...

1 new wallpaper (Uchuu no Stellvia - Travelogue 01: Your road to the stars)

2008-12-30T21:35:00.000-08:00

3 wallpapers in one month? Must be the holidays!

1 new wallpaper:
Uchuu no Stellvia - Travelogue 01: Your road to the stars (Art Deco)

One in what I hope to be a series of Art Deco styled travel posters, encouraging you to visit the farthest reaches of the anime world, because Art Deco has the classiest-looking travel posters, and I love the style so. First up, why not take a voyage to Foundation II: Stellvia, your road to the stars? [more]

I guess I am giving up on the whole walltip for every wall thing. Maybe I'll just post random walltips? Later?

1 new wallpaper (Terra e - Peace on Earth)

2008-12-21T00:08:00.001-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Terra e - Peace on Earth (Celestial)

Happy Holidays (2008) everyone! Instead of a standard snow-laden wallpaper with anime characters in Santa hats, I thought I'd do something a little different - a standard Holiday message of peace and hope for the world. I must admit I have no idea what this series, Terra E, is about...[more]

Still no walltips. Maybe later.

1 new wallpaper (The Big O - Obey Giant [Robot])

2008-12-15T00:45:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper (finally!):
The Big O - Obey Giant [Robot] (Minimalistic)

Perhaps one of the most iconic works from the Obama campaign is Shepard Fairey's "Progress" (later "Hope") poster. In homage to both Obama and Fairey, I wanted to make an anime version. The simple use of colors reminded me of the Big O soundtrack art. And hey, it's a different Big "O"... [more]

P.S. I made this wall in about 2 hours... so I'll have to think of a relavant walltip later.

No wallpaper for November

2008-11-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

I won't be able to finish a wallpaper for November, mostly because I'm housesitting at my parents and don't have access to my desktop where all my files and art programs are stored. My dad does have Photoshop, but the walls I'm working on include at least some vector component, so they'll have to wait.
In the meantime, I'm working on a bunch of iGoogle themes. I just finished a snowflake one, and I'm going to create a Japanese paper pattern theme to complement the Chinese papercut theme I already have up. I'm also in the planning stages for a separate site for my themes, since they're all just using a wiki page on Google Code which is very plain.
I'm hoping that Gmail themes will be opened to the public with an API similar to that for iGoogle, because I'd love to make themes for Gmail as well. I've already made a few themes internally (a port of the Tetris theme, a green floral variant of papercuts, and a glossy theme like the DA! v10 layout) and I'd love to make these available to the public.

New iGoogle Skin coming soon - Snowflakes

2008-11-21T17:06:00.000-08:00

I've created a new iGoogle skin - wintery blue snowflakes. You can see a preview in the iGoogle sandbox. It's submitted to both the iGoogle and inThemes directories, so it should be available publicly in a week or so.
I made this snowflake graphic for a set of Google Docs holiday templates and figured, why not also create an iGoogle skin with them?

EDIT: 11/22/2008
This theme is now available in the inThemes directory.

EDIT: 11/25/2008
This theme is now available in the iGoogle directory.

Walltip: "Let Sleeping Wolves Lie" Walkthrough

2008-10-21T23:38:00.000-07:00

Today's walltip is a quick walkthrough of "Let Sleeping Wolves Lie".
Step 1: Vector trace
This is a pretty straight forward step. You go into a vector program and you trace your images. I started with Amaterasu of course, and then built the rest of the scene around her. I traced varying elements of the waterfall image and placed them in appropriate places. By tracing, I can make sure all the elements match and are consistent with each other. You'd never know there was supposed to be a shrine in the image now!

Step 2: Mix with original image to get colors
A vector can't capture everything about an image. In this case, there was a lot of great texture in the rock face and island that would not have been feasible to trace, so I matched up those elements of the waterfall image to the trace. I also added some general texture and did a color tint towards yellow, since in the end I want the image to have an aged feeling.

Step 3: Blend colors
A lot of the colors have sharp transitions (from the vector trace) or are messy (aligning the waterfall image with the vector) so I went and used the blender brush in Painter to meld things together. This is prepwork for the watercolor clone stage, as we'll want more gradual color transitions in the watercolor.

Step 4: Watercolor clone
The image was repainted with Painter's watercolor brush. The outlines are on a separate layer so they remain nice and crisp. There's not much to this step but a lot of work, since I limited myself to a max brush size of 10px (it takes a long time to cover 3840x2880 worth of canvas!) The key to the watercolor is to match the direction of the brush strokes with the color transitions/gradations. At this point I also added in the flowers of the island that I blended out in the previous step.

Step 5: Texture and color corrections
I have a bunch of paper textures in Photoshop from old wallpapers, so I just reused them here. Adding the texture increases the yellow tint (since I am basically adding yellow-colored texture) and this made the water and sky too green, so I did some quick color correction to make them blueish again.

And there you have it. 5 easy steps to a great wall... or is it?

1 new wallpaper (Okami - Let Sleeping Wolves Lie)

2008-10-21T23:37:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Okami - Let Sleeping Wolves Lie (Ukiyo-e)

It's been a while, but I'm still here and walling... As you can see, I still love Okami artwork. The image of a napping Amaterasu was too sweet to pass up. She looks so relaxed and cozy... [more]

Walltip: Image databases

2008-06-23T22:31:00.000-07:00

Today's walltip is really just that, a tip. One of the things I used in making Thank you for smoking was floral vector patterns. I already had these patterns - I've used them in the past for a number of other projects. They're really nice -- I traced them out of Chinese Folk Designs (Dover Publications) and have found myself going back to them again and again. Because of that, I put all the different floral patterns into a single file. There's one for Illustrator, which I exported to Photoshop so I can just drag any particular floral pattern I want into any file I'm working with.
Don't forget to name the different layers in your Photoshop file -- you'll want to be able grab a specific image quickly, and trying to figure out which Layer X you want by the tiny layers palette thumbnail is not a fun prospect. In Illustrator, I just lay all the patterns side by side, but in Photoshop each image is its own shape layer, so I can scale them losslessly in Photoshop.
Here are some screenshots of my papercuts files in Photoshop and Illustrator.

1 new wallpaper (Lily Hoshino - Thank you for smoking)

2008-06-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Artist: Lily Hoshino - Thank you for smoking (Pop Art)

I am currently working through a backlog of bishounen walls, because dammit, we girls need more bishounen to decorate our computers with. Why should guys get all the skimpily-clad eye candy? Except this isn't a skimpily-clad bishounen. But the smoking. That's sexy, isn't it? [more]

Monster Walltip: Quick Grunge Textures

2008-05-30T23:31:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping to start up a new series in this blog called Walltips. They'll be short posts related to any walls I add. I plan for them to range from topics such as techniques used in the walls to discussion of layouts, colors, in-progress screenshots, decompositions, and whatever else I feel like rambling on about. So in today's inaugural Walltip from the wallpaper Monster, quick and easy grunge textures!

This is a simple technique to grungify a layer or layer grouping. It basically knocks a bunch of holes in the layer so that other layers can peep through. It uses layer masking and some basic Photoshop filters, and has plenty of room for experimentation.

1. First off, on the layer (or layer group) you're interested in grungifying, you'll need to add a layer mask (not a vector mask, just a straight up layer mask.)
2. Add noise to the layer mask with the Noise filter. Crank it up to the max (400% in Photoshop 7) and make sure that you're using a Gaussian pattern and that the noise is Monochrome.
3. Blur the layer mask with the Gaussian Blur filter. The amount of blur you use will determine how patchy the grunge texture is as well as the size and distribution of the patches. Smaller blurs will result in speckled grunge. You probably don't want anything about 5px.
4. Adjust the layer's levels from the Image>Adjustments menu. You should see a hill figure, and 3 triangular sliders underneath. You'll want to concentrate all three sliders near each other, as this will create sharper edges on your grunge. If you concentrate the sliders near the left of the hill, you'll get sparse patches; if around the right of the hill you'll get dense patches. Adjust as you see fit.
5. Add some randomness to your grunge by using various Photoshop filters on the layer mask. You'll want filters that work well on black/white layers. Some good filters to start out with include most of the Brush Strokes filters, some of the Texture filters and some of the Sketch filters. Play around with their settings until you get something you like. You can apply multiple filters or none at all.
6. You're done!
Screenshots of me applying grunge to a text layer (which ultimately did not make it into the final wall) based on the steps above, with areas of interest highlighted:

1 new wallpaper (Full Metal Alchemist - Monster)

2008-05-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Full Metal Alchemist - Monster (Pop Art)

So I figured I'd celebrate DA!'s 8th birthday with a bishounen wall, and I liked the uber-angsty pose of Edward in this scan and the fact you couldn't see his face. Plus: BELLYBUTTON. Anyway, Ellegarden's alternative stylings are totally super emo-factor and perfect for the wall, so I chose the song "Monster" as the theme... [more]

Happy 8th Birthday, DA!

2008-05-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

DA! turns 8 years old today. It's rather a scary thought that I've had this site around for that long. It started when I was just entering college, and now I've already got a Masters degree and have been at my job at Google for over two years. Just crazy.
Anyway, as with previous birthdays, I celebrate by giving DA! a new layout. This year, I decided to go extremely over-the-top with Web 2.0 sensibilities (or insensibilities depending on your views.) This means shiny chrome, lots of soft gradients, and oodles of reflections everywhere. I was originally going to keep the rotating headers, but never found any other images that seemed to fit the header as well as the Kino no Tabi image that currently graces the top. I figured the slick 2.0-style UI was a nice about-face from the previous Zen, Chinese classical layout, of which I remain quite fond of (I almost wanted to keep it for another year, but decided that change was still good.)
I removed the resource section, since I hadn't updated it since two versions ago, and wasn't really planning to ever do so. I replaced it with a local syndication of this blog, mostly because one of the things I've learned to do at work is syndicate Blogger feeds in all sorts of static HTML files. I've always wanted to integrate the blog more into the look and feel of the website, and with Blogger feeds this is really easy. Of course you can still view the blog on Blog*Spot if you feel so inclined. This ensures that all sections of the site remain fresh and interesting.
Well, I'm off to another day at Fanime con. Hopefully I'll finish my next wall in a few days, but as you can see, I was a bit busy with this redesign.

DA! v10

2008-04-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

April is turning out to be a busy month for DA! -- 3 walls and an iGoogle skin... and I'm starting to work on the layout for DA! v10 for DA!'s 8th birthday next month. I'm going all Web 2.0-out for this layout -- lots of soft gradients and reflections everywhere. It'll be quite a change from the classical feel of the current layout, that's for sure.

1 new wallpaper (Keroro Gunsou - Keroro Laundry Service)

2008-04-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Keroro Gunsou - Keroro Laundry Service (Scenic)

My entry for Which?Waller Round 5: Leap Year. The scan amused me, so I traced Keroro off of it. I was lazy and didn't want to do a full background so I traced a bit of the background, recycled some clouds from my RxJ OMGPONIES!11 wall, and encircled everything to look like a sort of badge... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Katamari Damacy - This is how we bowl)

2008-04-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Katamari Damacy - This is how we bowl (Minimalistic)

I originally drew this katamari for work... It reminded me of another illustration I did that involved bowling for Lava Lamps. Except that bowling with a katamari would result in some... interesting outcomes... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Jigoku Shoujo - Hell Flowers)

2008-04-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Jigoku Shoujo - Hell Flowers (Minimalistic)

The inspiration for the setup of this wallpaper came from oPtion$, the Fake Steve Jobs book about the Apple back-dating options scandal. In one of the first chapters, (fake) Steve describes his Ultimate Frisbee uniform: "black shorts, black socks, black shoes, and a black mock turtleneck T-shirt with a tiny black Apple logo silk-screened on the shirt, a shade darker than the shirt itself, so that you can barely see it. In other words, classy." I liked the "black on black" concept...[more]

Tetris iGoogle theme live!

2008-04-09T12:39:00.000-07:00

After several weeks of waiting, the Tetris theme has been added to the iGoogle directory!
Preview/add to iGoogle
I've also added individual versions of the Papercuts theme in case you prefer a specific color/animal theme -- hopefully that will be live in a week or so.

1 new wallpaper (Okami - Conflagration)

2008-03-30T17:29:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Okami - Conflagration (Ukiyo-e)

I liked the image of Amaterasu leaping towards something, so I traced that. Then I needed for her to be leaping at something, so I found a neat scan of a warrior (Akakabuto), and traced that. Since the Akakabuto had the kanji for fire on its helmet I then found a third scan with some smoky spiraling fire and traced that... [more]

Tetris iGoogle Theme

2008-03-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest theme in development. I hope to finish it this weekend. As my coworker pointed out, it's too bad you can't embed sound in a theme and get it to play the Tetris theme (not that I advocate embedded sound in webpages, but it would be kinda cool as an opt-in feature for this one.)
Also, LOL!

1 new wallpaper (Kino no Tabi - Mixed Signals)

2008-02-26T22:50:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Kino no Tabi - Mixed Signals (Scenic)

Nowadays the world feels like its full of extraneous signals that tell you exactly what you should and should not be doing, most especially on the roads. Flashing lights and even sound cues at walk signals can lead to an informational overload of mixed signals. When I saw this image of Kino perched on a traffic light, I decided to make a wall in that vein... [more]

Papercuts iGoogle theme live

2008-02-11T20:43:00.000-08:00

Looks like the iGoogle theme directory got a big update today.

Preview and add my Papercuts theme to your iGoogle page from here.

iGoogle Papercuts Theme Preview

2008-02-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

I've submitted my iGoogle Papercuts theme to the directory. Here is a preview. I'm not sure how long the review process takes, but I'll be sure to keep this blog updated on its status :)

Coming soon: iGoogle Papercuts theme

2008-01-30T17:22:00.001-08:00

Don't these images look familiar? ;)
I plan on reoptimizing all the images for this iGoogle theme over the weekend, and then uploading to a Google Code Hosting project. Once that's done I'll be submitting it to the directory. It'll be available on a preview basis while it goes through the iGoogle theme review process. It'll be a daily theme with seven different skins in all, cycling through animals including a dragon, phoenix, carp, butterfly, and several different birds.

Other Projects

2008-01-21T19:52:00.000-08:00

Just as an FYI, I am also doing some work designing iGoogle themes. These won't be anime themes, but will also be something to look out for from me. My first theme is going to be based on the same Chinese papercut designs I'm using for the DA! layout.

1 new wallpaper (Aa! Megamisama - Le Soleil Radieux)

2008-01-21T19:51:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Aa! Megamisama - Le Soleil Radieux (Art Nouveau)

Another fun AMG wallpaper in Alphonse Mucha Art Nouveau style.
I liked the curve of Belldandy's wings in the original scan, and figured I could use in a Nouveau-style framing with a sun-in-glory complementing the arc of her wings. So I did just that... [more]

Random logo tomfoolery

2008-01-14T23:04:00.000-08:00

Was tooling around with text in Illustrator. Some random logo concepts for Anime Expo 2008 Karaoke Contest and/or the Karaoke Kaizoku-dan:

It's rather retro. The shift-color logos make me think of those "ABC Specials" graphics they used to have in the 80s, where the text would color-shift and zoom in with that catchy drum beat rolling in the background.

Making Katamari in the Snow

2007-12-29T00:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick rundown on how I watercolored "Katamari in the Snow".
First, I started with the vector trace (Illustrator 9):

Then I moved on to Painter 9 and the watercolor tool:

This is similar to how I've watercolored previous works (such as Mountain's Red Leaves.

1 new wallpaper (Katamari Damacy - Katamari in the Snow)

2007-12-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Katamari Damacy - Katamari in the Snow (Scenic)

While randomly browsing the Namco Katamari Damacy site, I got sucked into playing the character matching game, which introduces a bunch of new cousins. One of them was a snowman, and I figured it would be an excellent base for a new Katamari wall, with the Prince rolling up the poor unsuspecting Snowman into a new katamari... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Artist: Hyung-Tae Kim - All That Jazz)

2007-12-09T14:50:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Artist: Hyung-Tae Kim - All That Jazz (Art Deco/Minimalistic)

A fun, sexy wallpaper of a jazz singer, inspired by some taxi advertising for a local Jazz/Blues lounge. I thought the original image by Hyung-Tae Kim was a good fit, and basically flattened out the colors to give it a stylized, more Art Deco type of feel... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Romeo x Juliet - Take Flight)

2007-11-29T17:53:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Romeo x Juliet - Take Flight (Scenic)

I haven't done a fluffy bishounen wall in a while, so here it is. Pretty boy! With wings! And OMGPONIES!!!!!11!!1one1eleven [more] [dual screen version]

Random non-anime wall

2007-11-17T17:50:00.000-08:00

Now, I know perfectly well that Android's Dalvik Virtual Machine is named after a
place in Iceland but every time I read "Dalvik Virtual Machine" I keep reading it as "Dalek Virtual Machine." I also know perfectly well that Daleks aren't androids, being organic/biological beings encased in metal armor, but those pepperpot exteriors are certainly robotic enough. So of course I had to make this parody of the Android logo using a Dalek.
I've seen one other person who had a status message of "Can't we just agree it's 'Dalek virtual machine'?" so I'm not the only Googler to make the connection.
Image was made in Photoshop on my laptop with a trackpad based off of an image on Wikipedia of the 2005 version, because I was watching TV when making it (sadly, not Doctor Who, although I caught the end of "Parting of the Ways" the night before).
Also available in icon form

1 new wallpaper (xxxHolic - Small Spider Weave)

2007-10-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
xxxHolic - Small Spider Weave (Art Nouveau)

Another Art Nouveau wallpaper, this time in the delicate styles of Aubrey Beardsley. I started this wallpaper a year (and a week) ago because the original scan of Yuuko reminded me heavily of Beardsley's "The Peacock Skirt"... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Wolf's Rain - Dogs and Angels)

2007-09-12T23:10:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Wolf's Rain - Dogs and Angels (Art Nouveau)

Another Art Nouveau-styled wallpaper, because I can't get enough of that vintage look and feel. And from Wolf's Rain, which has plenty of great scans to fit that style to a T...[more]

1 new wallpaper (Utena - Lust Us)

2007-08-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Shoujo Kakumei Utena - Lust Us (Minimalistic)

One of my walls for which?waller round 3 ("Commercial sellout"). Originally designed as a Maybelline ad ("Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline"). I figured Utena had good, stylish art for a cosmetics ad... [more]

More on wallpaper resolutions

2007-07-14T00:10:00.000-07:00

For my recent Escaflowne wallpaper, I decided to try a different approach to the issue of cropping for various monitor resolutions. Usually I design an image as widescreen, and then crop off the sides to fit 4x3 and 5x4 monitors. This is not a very good solution, as this often means nice details are in danger of getting cropped. This time around I tried to overlay the 3 different resolutions, so the widescreen gets a little cropped off the top and bottom, and the 5x4 gets a little cropped off the sides, but this way less is cropped total.
What do I mean?

[Note: this was an in-progress version of the wallpaper in Illustrator, back when I thought I'd make it predominantly blue.]
I think I shall use this method from now on.

1 new wallpaper (Tenkuu no Escaflowne - A Girl in Gaea)

2007-07-14T00:08:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Tenkuu no Escaflowne - A Girl in Gaea (Art Nouveau)

Another fun wallpaper in Art Nouveau style! Escaflowne movie art already has the dynamic lines suitable for Nouveau-styled images, and I had begun this several months ago. I recently rewatched all of the Escaflowne TV series, which motivated me into finishing this...[more]

1 new wallpaper (Nodame Cantabile - Rhapsody in Blue)

2007-06-19T23:05:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Nodame Cantabile - Rhapsody in Blue (Art Deco)

After making a Nodame wallpaper in the Art Nouveau style I figured I should make more Nodame "posters" in other art styles. Art Deco is also a favorite style of mine (I am fond of the curvilinear forms, abstract geometric designs and influence of steampunk) and was an obvious next step... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Kino no Tabi - Orange Explosion)

2007-05-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Kino no Tabi - Orange Explosion (Pop Art)

What better way to celebrate DA!'s 7th birthday than with a wallpaper from my favorite series? ...I liked the pose of Kino and the more pop-art American comicbook styling of the image, and started to trace it, but never got very far with it. Recently I decided to finish it once and for all...[more]

7 year retrospective

2007-05-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

It's official: DA! Desktop Anime is now 7 years old. That's a scary thought. I mean, this website's old enough to hit the second grade! How many websites run by a single person on their spare time do you know of that's been updated monthly for seven years?
This site is older than Wikipedia. It's even older, by a few months, than that other "DA" site, DeviantArt.
What a wild ride it's been. When I started this site I had just begun my first year of undergrad. Netscape was a cool browser. We had just learned there was something called "CSS" that was supposed to get rid of those <font> tags for once and for all. I really, really liked Fushigi Yuugi and Pretear.
Now, I've got my Master's degree and a lovely job at Google, Netscape has disappeared almost entirely into a footnote in history of the Mozilla project. New buzzwords like AJAX and RSS are making the rounds. I have almost completely stopped watching any anime series, except for a rare few (Nodame Cantabile and Mushishi, namely.)
But don't start getting up! The captain has NOT turned off the seatbelt sign. I don't plan on stopping any time soon, so you'd better hang on because I'm toasting to another seven years of hearty wallpaper goodness.
Because some time ago (it's been long enough that I stopped counting the time gone by) I made it a tradition to grace DA! with a new layout once a year on its birthday. So here you go. Enjoy the Zen goodness of version 9, which includes a lot more ways of finding wallpapers. I dumped the ratings, which never felt like they were doing anything for the site, and added links to the wallpapers on Minitokyo and AnimePaper. I also added all the widescreen versions of walls I made this past year. Because dammit, widescreen is wiiiiiiiiide. And very, very good.

Happy Birthday, my dear little website.

Server back

2007-05-16T15:35:00.000-07:00

...and it's back up.

Server down

2007-05-15T21:26:00.000-07:00

And not in a scheduled maintenance sort of way either.
Server admin thinks it should be back up Wednesday noonish PDT.

Server Migration complete

2007-04-28T17:45:00.000-07:00

Looks like the migration is complete and everything's working again!

Server Migration

2007-04-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

My wonderful host, GeoFront WebHosting, is going to be moving servers today, with the regularly associated downtime for the move and testing to make sure everything was transferred properly.
This affects all of my sites hosted by GeoFront (DA!, DAA!, Clearly Pixelated and Vectorage).
I'll update this when I get word that everything has been moved over and is working again.

3 new wallpapers (Aa! Megamisama, Okami, Idolmaster)

2007-04-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

3 new wallpapers:

Aa! Megamisama - Heavenly Dance (Vector/Abstract)

I wanted to go back to the walling styles from the early 2000's, and emulate Cynical126's popular formula - clean scan, soft gradients, abstract background, and sparkling bubbles... [more]

Okami - Samurai Snakes (Vexture/Minimalistic)

I just love Okami artwork, and have been wanting to make a wall for it for quite some time. It took a while to figure out what to do, though... [more]

Idolmaster - iDOL (Vector/Scenic)

I have actually been wanting to make an Idolmaster wall since Dom kept contending that the Go My Way dance could be interpreted as football referee signals... [more]

What's in a resolution?

2007-04-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

Wallpaper resolution is a tricky thing. There are so many different sizes of monitors out there nowadays that it's hard to design for all of them. Generally, you just crop things to the right aspect ratio, which does mean you have to be careful about element placement.
I have a dual widescreen monitor display at work, and generally speaking, this is a rare thing to find. So every so often I make one for myself.
The question was, how do I make this wall look good on dual screens and single screens?
The answer: Move elements around.
I made two wallpapers here: a dual monitor version, and a single monitor version, and then cropped them to fit the relevant aspect ratios.
Dual monitor versions:

Single monitor versions:

It makes a difference, doesn't it?

Useful resource for typography

2007-04-20T13:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Google Personalized Homepage's new "Recommendations" feature, I found the following website:
Identifont
It allows you to either
a) Look up a font face by name
b) Look up a font by distinguishing features

B is time-consuming as it asks you to examine all the details possible on the font - the style of the lowercase 'g' or uppercase 'K', or how many lines are in a $, etc.
I haven't tried it out on any fonts in particular, but it looks extensive and possibly quite powerful, if you're trying to figure out a font someone else has used - or at the very least find something of a similar vein.

In either case, it'll return a graphic of the font (showing alpha characters) as well as information on the font and where you might be able to purchase it.

Nifty!

Walling Games

2007-04-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a bit quiet at DA! That's because I've been hard at work on Round 2 of which?waller, which is a walling guessing game I'm running (and participating in) at Minitokyo. The idea of the game is to submit wallpapers anonymously, and then people have to guess who made each wall. It's an exercise in recognizing wall styles, trends, and just to have fun with a walling competition that doesn't have the typical pressures of creating something for a panel of judges.
If you're a member of Minitokyo, I encourage you to check out the game and try your hand at guessing.
Otherwise, you'll see what I made when round 2 ends next week!

1 new wallpaper (Nodame Cantabile - Nodame Noveau)

2007-03-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Nodame Cantabile - Nodame Nouveau (Vexture/Art Nouveau)

A Nodame Cantabile wall in the Art Nouveau style. You can never have enough Nouveau. Basically, I thought Nodame's pose in the scan was well suited to an Art Nouveau style portrait. The skeletal trees in the back had a Nouveau vibe anyhow, which is what tipped the scales for me. Also, I wanted to play with framing, where part of the character is inside the frame and part is in front... [more]

A run down of Painter IX's brushes (Part I)

2007-03-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

This is an exploration of Painter IX's default brush set. Painter has a ton of brush sets mimicking natural media, and is best utilized with a tablet to gain pressure sensitivity. There are so many types of brushes, that it's hard to know which brush has what effects.

This is based off of Painter IX's brush set. Brush sets in other versions of Painter will vary. Painter arranages its brushes by categories, which are fairly broad collections of brushes with similar settings. They tend to vary by effect, brush size, brush tip shape, and pressure sensitivity.

What the chart means

Wet/Dry: Painter has two types of brushes: Wet and Dry. Wet brushes must be used on a "wet" layer, and cannot interact with Dry brushes unless the wet layer is dried. There is also a hybrid "digital wet" brush that combines some aspects of both wet and dry brushes (they combine the characteristics of wet brushes, but can be used on dry layers directly.) Some categories contain brushes for both sets (there are both wet erasers and dry erasers, for example.)
Blending: Some brushes pick up the color of other paints around them. Some do not.
Opacity: Some brushes have a greater dynamic range in opacity than others.
Brush tip: The general brush tip shape
Paper Grain: Denotes whether a brush picks up the texture of the paper's grain.

Left: Where to change your paper's grain | Right What grain means for a Painter brush
Buildup: Some brushes build up color as you pass the brush over the same area multiple times.

Above: Two brushes with different buildup characteristics.

And now, on to the brushes!

Acrylics [general info]

Sample brushes: thick acrylic bristle, thick opaque acrylic, wet acrylic
Wet/Dry: Dry.
Blending: Varies. "Wet" or "soft" acrylics tend to pick up more colors than other acrylics.
Opacity: Generally opaque. Slight opacity on brush edges.
Brush tip: Varies. Distinct brush fibers or flat tips.
Paper Grain: None
Buildup: None

Airbrushes [general info]

Sample brushes: coarse spray, soft airbrush, variable splatter
Wet/Dry: Dry.
Blending: None
Opacity: Varies from entirely opaque to almost entirely transparent. "Soft" airs are the most transparent.
Brush tip: Round, with either soft or hard edges. Most brushes have a spatter radius.
Paper Grain: None
Buildup: None

Artist Oils

Sample brushes: dry bristle, impasto oil, tapered oils
Wet/Dry: Dry.
Blending: High
Opacity: Mostly opaque
Brush tip: Generally square, tapers quickly.
Paper Grain: None
Buildup: None

Artists

Sample brushes: Impressionist, Seurat, Van Gogh
Wet/Dry: Dry.
Blending: None
Opacity: Generally opaque
Brush tip: Variable. Each brush is unique, mimicking a different artist's style.
Paper Grain: None
Buildup: None

Blenders

Sample brushes: Grainy blender on Pens, Oily blender on Oils, Soft blender on Pastels
Wet/Dry: Dry. Watercolor and Digital Watercolor blenders are contained in their respective categories.
Blending: Blenders are used to blend paints that have already been laid down on the canvas.
Opacity: N/A
Brush tip: Variable, but generally round
Paper Grain: None
Buildup: N/A

Calligraphy [general info]

Sample brushes: calligraphy brush, thin grainy pen
Wet/Dry: Dry.
Blending: None
Opacity: Fully opaque
Brush tip: Thin and at an angle
Paper Grain: None
Buildup: None

Chalk [general info]

Sample brushes: blunt chalk, square chalk, variable width chalk
Wet/Dry: Dry.
Blending: None
Opacity: Mostly opaque
Brush tip: Round or square
Paper Grain: Yes, generally strong
Buildup: None

Charcoal [general info]

Sample brushes: dull charcoal pencil, soft charcoal, soft vine charcoal
Wet/Dry: Dry.
Blending: None
Opacity: Mostly opaque
Brush tip: Round or square
Paper Grain: Yes, generally mild
Buildup: None

Cloner

Sample brushes: camel oil cloner, furry cloner, smeary flat cloner, all using same base pattern
Wet/Dry: Wet and Dry
Blending: None
Opacity: Varies.
Brush tip: Varies
Paper Grain: Varies
Buildup: Varies

Colored Pencils [general info]

Sample brushes: colored pencil, oily colored pencil, variable colored pencil
Wet/Dry: Dry
Blending: Some
Opacity: Partially transparent
Brush tip: Round and small
Paper Grain: Yes, generally mild
Buildup: Yes, generally mild

Conte [general info]

Sample brushes: dull conte, square conte, tapered conte
Wet/Dry: Dry
Blending: None
Opacity: Mostly opaque
Brush tip: Round or square, dense bristles
Paper Grain: None
Buildup: None

1 new wallpaper (Clover - Concert for a Little Bird)

2007-03-10T17:29:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Clover - Concert for a Little Bird (Vector/Minimalistic)

I just wanted to make something with an Art Deco vibe, and decided to create a concert poster for Oruha... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Paradise Kiss - Lonely in Gorgeous)

2007-03-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Paradise Kiss - Lonely in Gorgeous (Vector/Minimalistic)

Just a simple wallpaper. I saw this interesting photo when browsing Stock Exchange for unrelated stocks, and liked the striking color combination, and the strong diagonal lines in the image. I wanted to make a monochromatic wall with the purple and yellow the image had, and figured that something from Ai Yazawa would be bold enough to go with the scheme... [more]

Wallpaper Walkthrough: Painting "Under the Sakura"

2007-02-14T23:51:00.000-08:00

This is a special Paint-o-Rama walkthrough for my wallpaper, "Under the Sakura" as part of the "Let there be Light" contest.

I used Photoshop 7.0 for scan reconstruction/post production and Painter 9.0 for watercolors.

Preparation: Scan Extension
I started off with this scan of Takamichi's artwork. Since this artwork was vertical, I basically had to redraw a bunch of cherry tree branches. You can see that process in this breakdown by layers.
The "sketch" layer was used to get a feeling for where I should start adding or extending the branches so that the wall felt full, and I didn't feel obliged to follow it too closely.
The "flowers" layer consists of 2 different flower sets extracted from the original scan, repeated at different intervals. In order to keep it from looking regular, I rotated most of the clones and resized them. As long as you can keep from creating a pattern, you should be able to distract the eye enough that people won't realize the flowers are cloned for a while.

Preparation: Setting up Painter
First, I set up the Painter interface. I took the extended scan from Photoshop and saved it as a bitmap. I opened this in Painter, moved the image from the background to a layer on top, reduced the opacity to 25% and locked it to prevent myself from accidentally moving or painting on it. I also set the background to a pale blue color. That way I'd know where I'd painted and where I hadn't.
I had the original bitmap open again so I could use it as my clone source. Then I set up my watercolor brush to clone and was ready to start painting!

Branch painting 1 - coloring the inside
To start painting the branches (which are outlined) I first painted the inside of the branch with a 3-5px brush. You can see in the screenshot that the strokes overlapped the flowers. As long as the center of the brush doesn't cross over the edge of the flower, it will continue to paint in brown (that's why I use a larger brush.) I'll clean up the flowers' edges later, but this ensures there are no gaps.

Branch painting 2 - coloring the outside
To continue painting the branches, I next painted the outside of the branch (the grassy area) with a 3-5px brush. I overlapped the grass over the edge of the branch similar to how I overlapped the flowers' edges in the previous step.

Branch Painting 3 - coloring the edges
With a 1px brush, I went back and cleaned up the edges of the branch, making sure that I covered up all of the overlapping grass from the previous step. The 1px brush is laborious to use and usually too sharp for a good watercolor effect, so use it sparingly for the most fine of details, and stick with 3-5px brushes for most other parts (or for large swathes of grass, use 10-15px brushes to save time.)

Flower painting
Painting the flowers uses the same ideas as painting the branches, except the flowers have no black edge on them. Start by painting from the center outwards. Since the branch painting steps already created an overlap, paint over the branch to create a nice crisp edge for the flowers. For the flower petals I used a 3-4px brush, and for the flower pistils/stamens, I used a 2px brush. For flower stems, I used a 1-2px brush.

Tree painting
Painting the tree is similar to painting the branches. Where branch texture tends to go in one direction, however, the trunk of the tree has textures going in all directions. When painting a section like a tree trunk, always keep in mind which direction your brush strokes should go in to maintain a good edge and transition between colors.

Painting the girl
Painting the girl is just like painting the rest of the wall. However, the girl has the most details, so you'll want to be very careful with edges and corners. This is about the only place where I used the 1px brush extensively.

Done!
Keep painting and painting and eventually you'll finish!
You might notice that I redid the grass on the left side of this screenshot compared to the Painter prep screenshot. After watercoloring the grass, the scan extension didn't mesh well with the scan, so went back and added more details, more gaps in the shadows, and more variations in the green. I thought I could be lazy, but that didn't work out.

Post-Production
After I finished watercoloring, I saved it as a bitmap again and opened it up in Photoshop for post-production. This involved some color and level adjustment (I toned down the saturation of the image and skewed it towards pink) and adding some extra watercolor texture (so that even the white areas show texture, as you might expect from seeing a watercolor on paper), and added some text (which took a while to figure out.) Then you're ready to export as jpegs and post it for all to see.

Well, that's one way you can create a wallpaper that looks like it was watercolored. Hope you learned something along the way, or at least had fun seeing how this wall was put together.

1 new wallpaper (Takamichi - Under the Sakura)

2007-02-14T23:50:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Takamichi - Under the Sakura (Painted/Scenic)

My entry for Paint-o-Rama's "Let there be Light" contest. Yes, it's loli-tastic. I dedicate it to Osi just because of that. Actually, I chose the scan because I decided to go for the "light filtered through trees" sort of lighting, and because it had a nice spring theme to it... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Katamari Damacy/We [Pixel] Katamari)

2007-01-21T00:58:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Katamari Damacy - We [Pixel] Katamari (Pixel Art)

In a time when people are vectoring like mad to achieve a crispest effects, or painting like made to achieve the smoothest effects, I have decided to take a step back and wholy embrace the unloved quanta of digital art, the pixel, in all of its boxy glory. Thus I present to you a vision of what Katamari Damacy would have looked like had it been released 10 years ago -- in other words, Katamari Damacy meets SimCity 2000.... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Artist/Kazuhiko Tsuzuki: Fly)

2006-12-10T21:58:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Artist/Kazuhiko Tsuzuki - Fly (Vector/Minimalistic)

Made on a whim. Wanted something simple, with clean lines. Just a girl on a swing among the clouds. Childlike whimsy and a sense of flight... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Full Metal Alchemist: Route 66)

2006-12-06T22:54:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Full Metal Alchemist - Route 66 (Vector/Scenic)

When I first saw this scan, I thought the white ruff of Ed's red jacket looked like a Santa suit. For some reason, I decided to then use that scan for my annual winter wallpaper, despite the fact that Ed is not actually wearing a Santa suit. Go fig... [more]

Ramblings on Mushishi: Mata Itsuka

2006-12-01T18:07:00.000-08:00

NOTE: I just found this half-finished entry in my "potential blog topics" Google Notebook when I was doing some testing during work, so I decided to finish and post it, no matter how late it is.

One of the motivations behind turning my recent Mushishi wall, Mata Itsuka, from a vector-only wall (like Oyako) to a painted wall was to gain more familiarity with Corel Painter 9. I've had Painter for years (although only upgraded to 9 last year) but have only used it extensively for a few wallpapers. Frankly, having no experience in natural media aside from pencil/pen and paper, the number of options overwhelms me, and I have no basis for understanding how the oil-based brushes are supposed to work compared to, say, oil pastels. Still, a painting-based wall was just the excuse necessary to get more practice!
The last wall I used Painter on was the Okama Hunter in the Grass wall where I used the digital watercolor brushes to create a textured background. I went back to the digital watercolor tools (not to be confused with Painter's watercolor tools which is an entirely different palette) because I liked how they maintained the paper texture, and because I like the watercolor look in general.
One of the first things I discovered was Painter's custom brush maker. This thing is about 25x more complicated than Photoshop's custom brush maker and about 50x as fun, because you can actively preview the brush while you're making it but before committing to the changes. Very slick. I wasted probably several hours just messing around with controls, although in the end I created a new digital watercolor brush quite similar to the presets but with more control over the brush size based on tablet pressure and a fixed opacity (the presets were switched in pressure control on size/opacity).
Basically, I began by painting the base color for Ginko's face, then adding successive layers of shadow and highlights. I painted way outside of the outlines as I planned to mask the final color layers in Photoshop. After several frustrating attempts to figure out how to use the digital watercolor blenders, I gave up and decided to use the regular set of blenders. However, in Painter, you have to 'dry' any liquid ink layer (such as digital watercolor) before you can use the "dry" brushes (which include blenders, oils, etc.) Afterwards, though, the regular blenders were most intuitive to use and everything went from a sorta cel-style shading to a much softer gradient-style shading.
I like Painter's blenders a lot, and plan to use them in many more painty walls.

Tutorial: Painting "Mountain's Red Leaves"

2006-11-25T20:32:00.000-08:00

Here is the tutorial segment of my Hakkenden "Mountain's Red Leaves" Paint-o-rama contest entry. It describes how I created the wallpaper, step by step. Click on each image thumbnail for the full screenshot.

Step 0: Preparing the Image
I found the scan of Hakkenden from AnimePaper and decided to use it for my wallpaper. However, to make a wallpaper I had to extend the image horizontally to fit the widescreen format. This was achieved in Illustrator, using fairly simple paths to define the shape of the trees, and then applying several effects of roughen and twist at low levels to create the jaggy edges that defined the leaves. The image was then exported to Photoshop at 200% size where some texture was added.

Step 1: Base Layer
I created a new blank canvas in Painter, and then opened my prepped image, setting this as the clone source. With a very large watercolor brush I basically filled the canvas with color. At this stage it wasn't very important to get all the details right - just make sure the canvas is covered. This fills the large areas (like the orange sky and the darkest layer of trees) quickly and easily.
It's useful to have a copy of the original as the top layer in your file, set at a low transparency. Although you can use 'tracing paper' to see a semi-transparent version of your clone file, you don't have any control over it. Having it as a layer means you can show or hide at will, change the transparency levels, etc, so it's easy to see what you're cloning from.

Step 2: Start adding details
Using a smaller brush (half the size of the first brush) I began to more closely define the edges. I don't repaint the entire image, just the edges. Note that in using the watercolor option in Painter you get white halos around the brush. Be sure to have plenty of extra space at your edges, so you can easily remove them with a soft eraser when you are finished.

Step 3: Second verse, same as the first
Continue as before using yet a smaller brush. Also, be sure to lock your previous layers, as it will prevent you from painting over a finished layer.

Step 4: Small enough for details?
When you get down to 8px you can actually define all the details at the edges. In this step I used not only 8px brushes but also 4px and 2px for especially detailed areas (the area around the geisha, and the bridge, for the most part.)

Step 5: Blend it all together
After the watercolor portion is done, you'll want to erase those halos I mentioned earlier. I did that in Photoshop (because I could select the layer's transparency and use a feathered mask on the layer.) Afterwards all of the layers were merged. The canvas was also extended ~50px in all directions and the color cloned at the top. This is because when you use the blender tools in Painter, it pulls an average color of what is beneath your brush - and at the edges of the canvas, it pulls in white, giving you a bad frame effect.
Like before, use a large blender for expediency, and smaller blenders when you're painting around the edges. Below is a typical workflow:
Step 5a: (the before shot)
Here is the edge of a tree, before anything is done.

Step 5b: Blending the edges
First, using a small (6px) blender, define the edges of the tree. Since all the trees have scalloped edges, make sure your brush stroke is in the same type of semi-circle. Also, by going slightly beyond the edge of the tree, you'll pull in the lighter color behind it. This gives the edges a bit of glow and adds depth.

Step 5c: Filling the interior
Using a larger (12px) blender, fill in the rest of the tree. This technique could also be useful in painting clouds, as they have the same scallop edges and lighting emphasis.

After the blending step, there were some final post-production steps in Photoshop - cropping the extra pixels out from step 5, adding a hint of texture to emphasize the painting style, text (a haiku from Issa), and final colors and levels adjustment. Finally, add your signature and post it on your website!

1 new wallpaper (Hakkenden: Mountain's Red Leaves)

2006-11-25T20:26:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Hakkenden - Mountain's Red Leaves (Painted/Scenic)

I found the scan to be interesting in composition - the simplicity in the trees framing a round bridge with a geisha made a not-so-typical scenic setting, plus the orange-y autumn colors were quite refreshing... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Brave Story: Gathering Rain)

2006-11-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Brave Story - Gathering Rain (Vector/Scenic)

I chose the scan for the fantasy elements and because it had reflections. I love reflections, and I liked how the still water reflected like glass. I kept most of the image the same, but chose to have only water and sky (to increase the isolation of the picture and to enhance the idea of space) and decided to go for some larger, more dynamic clouds instead of the cute little fluffy things in the original scan... [more]

Possibly useful color tool

2006-11-15T09:26:00.000-08:00

Found via Google Blogoscoped: an Instant Color Schemes generator which uses a Yahoo image search API to generate color swatches based off of any query -- it analyzes the colors in the image search and returns six colors per image for a total of 5 schemes.
Although the results are rather hit-or-miss ("rain" has several red/orange sets) the sets it generates regardless of query might be useful for getting ideas for color settings in web design or walling if you're feeling stuck. At the very least it might give some thoughtful ideas.

1 new wallpaper (Mushishi: Mata Itsuka)

2006-11-01T20:58:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Mushishi - Mata Itsuka (Vexture/Scenic)

The Mushishi walling project continues. This wall started with a simple trace of the ending illustration to Mushishi 26. With the calligraphic brush style I thought I'd make a wall similar to Oyako. Then I thought I'd do some coloring in Painter. Then... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Magic Knight Rayearth: Visions of Cephiro)

2006-10-17T23:10:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Magic Knight Rayearth - Visions of Cephiro (Vexture/Scenic)

I just thought this scan was interesting. Probably the sun-in-glory design drew me in. Also, the lack of characters. I've been getting a kick from walls with very small (or in this case non-existant) character art lately... [more]

Screen size statistics

2006-10-12T23:31:00.000-07:00

I've been using Google Analytics for several months now, and one of the most fascinating things I've learned about my site visitors is how many people still use relatively small monitors.
50% of my visitors use 1024x768. This doesn't surprise me, I know this is still the most common resolution.
20% of my visitors use 1280x1024, which is the same resolution I use at home. The increasing popularity of LCDs which tend to be of the 5x4 ratio explains this fairly well.
Surprisingly, a solid 8% of my users are on 800x600. This is the third most common resolution of DA!'s visitors. There's a reason why we're still told to make sure our designs fit in 800x600 screens at work. That's 1 out of every 12 visitors to my site!
In a graphics-savvy community where 1280x1024 is considered small, people still need to remember: design your website for the least common denominator -- the 800x600 crowd. They're still a sizable portion of the internet at large.
(This of course means nothing about designing wallpapers; design them as large as you feel like, for sizing down will leave less artifacting on the image than sizing up.)
As a final note, widescreen resolutions are growing in popularity as well - a bit over 10% of DA!'s visitors use a widescreen (16x10) resolution.

1 new wallpaper (Dark Craibe: Letort Nouveau)

2006-10-05T22:59:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Artist/Tachibana Kaim - Letort Nouveau (Art Nouveau)

The original art was already done in Art Nouveau style, and has been my favorite image of Letort for years. It's about time I actually walled it. Plus, Letort is hawt. Hawt guys on my desktop, mmmmMmm... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Cafe Kichijouji De - Superstition)

2006-10-01T02:00:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Cafe Kichijouji De - Superstition (Vexture/Minimalistic)

This is my Halloween wallpaper. "Why Tama," you say, "Why is your wall done a month ahead of time?" Oh, gentle reader, it is because it gives you a WHOLE MONTH to enjoy it. I chose the scan after strolling through the CKD scans and thought the image was just too funny to pass up. The original scan had a haunted house with flashing lightning, but nothing is scarier than a humongous, looming Sukekiyo... [more]

Too many things

2006-09-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

I need to stop adding to my work in progress notebook. Or figure out a way to make these walls in 1 hour or less.
Aiyah.

New wallpaper (Honey and Clover - Inspire Me)

2006-09-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Honey and Clover - Inspire Me (Vector/Minimalistic)

What inspires you? When you look at that blank canvas, what gets you started? Is it another wallpaper? Is it a commercial design? Is it another art style? Is it music?... [more]

New wallpaper (Kino no Tabi - The Road Ahead)

2006-09-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Kino no Tabi - The Road Ahead (Vector/Scenic)

This simple scenic wall expresses one of the beauties of Kino's world: its sheer size. Kino once mentions "I don't know if the world is beautiful or not, but it sure is vast." Think of it as a change from the scenic walls where the character takes up 75% of the screen... [more]

Grrr

2006-09-10T01:25:00.000-07:00

I just manually cleared out about a hundred comments out of DA! by spam linkers who are trying to increase their search engine placement to the detriment of my own. I've now implemented some more error checking in the comment script to block any entries that include "http:" (a sign they're trying to add links; only 1 out of 300 legit entries actually used http:) and a few things that were obviously spam (a lot of the entries had the comment "Add" and "Add Entry" which was either the comment script adding the submit button value in the comment field or the spammer entering the nearest text on the page into the comments field).
Another thing I did not add was an IP check, because the script already collects the IP and they're generally different in the spammers' cases.
If anyone knows of a script (PHP preferably) that would help decrease the rate of these incidences, I'd love to hear about it.

New Wallpaper (Mushishi - Peace)

2006-09-04T17:53:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Mushishi - Peace (Vexture/Minimalistic)

I have decided I want to do for Mushishi what I did for Kino no Tabi: make so many walls that people can't help but get their interest piqued and create new fans, who in turn will make more wallpapers to introduce more fans. This is just the beginning.... [more]

Using the Smudge Tool

2006-08-30T16:38:00.001-07:00

The Smudge Tool: How to add a painted effect to an existing image

This article discusses how I've used Photoshop's smudge tool (the one that's an index finger pointing downward) to create a painted effect on several wallpapers. It does not discuss how to create a digital painting from scratch. There are many tutorials on that subject by as many artists as there are styles.

The smudge tool works really well in conjunction with an art tablet because you can utilize the tablet's pressure sensitivity to manipulate the strength of the smudging. Also, if you are comfortable using your tablet to draw, write or doodle on the screen, smudging will feel fairly intuitive. I haven't tried smudging with the mouse, but considering how labor-intensive smudge-painting a 1920x1200 image is, I can't imagine it would be good for your wrist.

Before you start smudging, you have to prepare your image. Smudging works best on an image that has some texture, half-tone dots, noise, dirt, dust or speckles, because it drags around the colors under the cursor. If you're working on a flat color, there's nothing to see when you start to smudge. This makes smudging another technique to consider for image cleanup and re-CG. Also, you should keep a copy of the original image on a locked layer. If you mess up, or want to redo a region, you can just copy it from that layer and rework it. Sometimes you can't go back enough steps in the history and even reverting won't bring you back to the state you want. Also, it helps you keep track of what areas you've worked on and where you need to go, and in the end it's fun to compare the original to the smudge-painted version.

The important thing to remember when smudging is that to get the painted effect, you need to smudge in the direction a paint brush would go. This may mean following the curves of a hand, or rolling in circles in the clouds. Use your judgement for which direction a brush's strokes would go, but there are also plenty of fine art galleries available online that you can use for reference.

Like many of Photoshop's tools, smudging makes use of Photoshop's brush engine. You can customize the brush in a large number of ways. However, for smuding you'll probably want a simple brush that changes size in response to pressure (if you have a tablet). The default round brushes with a soft edge work well, or you can use one of the media brushes if you want a slightly rougher effect.
Choose a brush size appropriate to the area you are working on. You'll want a small brush when working on the fine details on a face, but a large brush will make the job faster and smoother when working on a large area like a shirt. Remember, right-clicking will bring up the brush options box where you can change the size of the brush.
Make sure you're also at an appropriate zoom level. You want to see what you're doing up close if you're working on fine details. But be sure to pause every so often and look at the picture at 100% scale as well as looking at the entire image at once. That'll tell you if you're off in an area.
The other thing you can change with the smudge tool is its strength - how far is the color moved when you drag the cursor over it. This determines the "length" of the brush stroke, but I usually leave it around 50%. Too low (below 30%) and it takes forever to smudge, too high (aboe 70%) and it's hard to control.
If you need to smooth out a large area, try brushing first in the direction of the paint strokes, then perpendicular, then in the direction of the paint strokes again. That will help spread the colors around more quickly resulting in a smoother area. If you only smudge in one direction you'll see that you get lines - these are what create the brush stroke effect, but sometimes it's distracting.

Smudging will also create a picture that is slightly blurry. There are several ways to counter this issue. You can work on an image that is larger than what the final size will be (at least 50%-100% larger probably, but any larger may slow down your computer). You can softly overlay the original image over the smudged image - the outlines will usually come out the strongest, which is about the only part of the original you want to come through sharply anyway. A judicious use of sharpen filters may also help.

Enjoy experimenting with the smudge tool!

Vectorlicious + Painterlicious

2006-08-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

My latest forays into Illustrator mavenry has been heavy utilization of the art brushes. I've use art brushes before, but mostly as accents to a greater picture; this brush-painted styled Mushishi wall uses a few art brush strokes, but mostly it's filled shapes with some tweak and roughen filters applied to them to give it the sketchy edging. There's also some calligraphic brushes in there because when you set the width to random it can mimic a varying stroke line without any work on your part - but it's unpredictable since it's the computer that decides how wide to make the outline.
However, after reading a tutorial on creating (and using) art brushes I've decided to give it more of a go. (Computer Arts magazine from the UK is really a wonderful resource. I only wish it didn't have to be shipped overseas because it makes it so expensive! Thankfully many of their articles and tutorials are reproduced on their website!) I've already done several tests and have been happy with the calligraphic style. Creating your own art brushes means you have total control over how the edges taper out or not, which is not something easily achievable with a calligraphic brush. I hope to use this technique to make several more Mushishi walls, since it's got such a rural, classic Japanese feel to it that a calligraphic brush-styled wall would complement. So far I have another Ginko wall (which will be very dark, so I may cheat on all the effects) as well as a Nui wall (which I'm thinking will be more brush-on-parchment styled, and should showcase this technique wonderfully.)
We'll see how it turns out. After all, vectorlicious and painterlicious shouldn't be mutually exclusive.

New Wallpaper (Mushishi - Drift)

2006-08-24T23:12:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Mushishi - Drift (Scenic)

I haven't done a non-vector wall in over two months! I've finally caught up with watching Mushishi and felt like this series deserved another wall (or five). Again with the odd perspectives, this time looking up from beneath Ginko's boat as it drifts by.... [more]

Vectorlicious vs Painterlicious

2006-08-22T15:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't made a wallpaper without using Illustrator for some part of the wall in quite some time (since "Welcoming the Dragon" in June, to be precise.) No particular reason why except I really like playing around in Illustrator a lot more than playing around in Photoshop. Also, I've been into clean, crisp images with very few colors, and Illustrator pulls off that sort of wallpaper a lot more easily than Photoshop, and I've been choosing scans to that effect as well.
Looks like I'll finally be breaking that trend. The Mushishi scan I wanted to work with was in a very delicate watercolor style, and although I was initially tempted to try and use vectors to recreate the effect (and push Illustrator's natural brushes to their limit) I backed away from that idea because I think I've just been doing too many vectors lately. My other skills feel like they're getting rusty.
This wall will be done in a smudge-painterly style, with copious amounts of paper texture to maintain that watercolor feel. I don't do too many smudge-painterly styled walls, but it's rather relaxing to smooth out the details. In many ways it produces an image totally opposite from a vector's crisp outlines, but hey, variety is good.
I think this style will suit the Mushishi manga image much better as well.

New wallpapers

2006-08-16T23:10:00.000-07:00

2 new wallpapers:
Cowboy Bebop - iBop (Vector/Scenic)

I was randomly browsing the Bebop scans and this scan of Spike was just too funny to pass up. But then I noticed this scan of the whole Bebop crew was also much too silly to not do something with. So I decided to use both of them in the same wallpaper - the crew smashed up against a window trying to get a glimpse of Spike dancing in the streets... [more]

Ipod Advertisement Spoofs - iBop (Vector/Minimalistic)

The matching iPod spoof of the Cowboy Bebop wall, iBop. [more]