About the iGoogle Papercuts themes

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)

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

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

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)

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)

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])

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

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

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

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?