Craven's blog

The Flying Man

2011-12-12T01:54:00.000-08:00

"Felt like taking a bath..."

High res version: DeviantArt

Stocks used for this project:

A pretty straightforward aproach this time. Cut out the flying man and resized him to fit the background. I removed the sky of the Grand Canyon picture and inserted the moon beneath. Added some fog to blend the pictures better.

The lava I cut out to fit the bottom of the canyon. I also had to change the perspective and distort it a bit to get the right look. I added some shading on the borders and also added some lava bursts to add to the 3-D effect.

You can also see a lizard in the bottom of the image and also a Craven graffiti tag on the canyon.

Finally I added a red shade to the bottom going to the middle of tthe image and a blue fade going from the to top towards the middle. Change contrasts and level to get a more unrealistic look.

The final result you can see at the top.

Steam Punk Rabbit

2011-12-07T07:05:00.000-08:00

Long time since I did a photo manipulation. The theme this time is steam punk (cyber punk in Swedish).

I chose a rabbit that I wanted to turn into a cool punk powered by an engine. I googled up a rabbit:

Open Photoshop and cut it out.

Next we add the engine. It consists of a Ferrari V8 enginge, a hose and a rust texture to add a weathered look. I cut out the parts and add piece them together.

Now he have an engine on our rabbit. Next we add the saddle bags.

I also added the rust texture and a small logo type detail on the bag. The detail was made using these awesome brushes: Fractal Chaos

Next we add the hair, scope eye, nose ring and earrings.

The glow round the eyes were made using a circle and gaussian blur. Also a detail in the eye was made using Fractal Chaos brushes. I generally add a drop shade on the added elements to add some depth, use it descretly though.

Finally we need a steamy background. Found a dutch factory that looked pretty cool.

Also added some fog and changed the color to orange/red.

Finally I added some fur to the rabbit using standard grass brush.In the brush settings I did some changes though. Thick Shape Dynamics to get less static strokes and most important thick Scattering. If you click on Brush Tip Shape you can also change the angle your brush stroke. This is an awesome way to do realistic fur.

In order to melt the elements better and get a better overall look I usually play around with contrasts, levels, curves and add a color layer with around 20% opacity in this case.

Cartoon omage

2011-12-04T08:47:00.000-08:00

So here's a tribute to a couple of my favourite cartoon characters. Stewie has buried the teletubbies.

Might add some shades later on as well.

First I drew up a scetch using a pencil:

Then I started filling in the outlines with a black pen.

And finally coloring the characters with my Touch pens:

And the final result you can see at the top of this post.

New Design up and running!

2011-12-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

Now we're finally up with the new design check it out! Still some stuff left to do but hey it's good enough.

Please leave feedback!

http://craven-studio.com/

Graffiti piece taking form part 3 (Complete)

2011-11-06T05:06:00.000-08:00

And finally I got round buying a new marker to fill in the background. So here we go, the final AIK logo scetch:

And here are the previous posts:
http://craven-studio.blogspot.com/2011/07/graffiti-piece-taking-form-part-2.html
http://craven-studio.blogspot.com/2011/04/graffiti-piece-taking-form-part-1.html

Craven Studio New Design

2011-11-04T02:25:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to make a new design on my web site for years but haven't had the time to do it. Hopefully this time we will make some magic.

The idea is to make a more modern look and remove all things that really aren't neccessary. A clean, more Craven style look with some graffiti elements.

This is how the site looks now:
Craven Studio

Started on a new design last night and still got a lot of things to do, but this is the general theme:

The idea here is to have the menu next to the logo and a clever quote on the right hand side. Underneath we have a graffiti wall which I can change as I please. A Christmas theme perhaps? :)

The content might change a bit, but the layout will remain pretty much the same. The idea is to make unique icons for every header.

Next we have one of those fancy big footers which i use as a link list. That's pretty much it!

We'll see what I can come up with on the weekend.

Airbrushing werewolf

2011-10-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

Just bought a new airbrush and had to test it right away. First I did a pencil scetch on a piece of paper using this as reference:
http://www.dragoart.com/tuts/1423/1/1/how-to-draw-a-werewolf-face,-head,-eyes.htm
(thanks!)

I wanted to practice a little bit so decided to do it totally by freehand.

First I roughly brushed the outlines of the werewolf, then I started to work on the fades and details.

Looked a lot better then I thought it would so finished the entire werewolf a few days later and here's the result!

A few touch ups still to go but pretty pleased with the result anyways. The question is what to do next?

Håkan Juholt

2011-10-20T09:38:00.000-07:00

Did a piece on a modern thief Håkan Juholt. Lousy paper though which makes the ink blead.

Star Craft 2 Clan Logo

2011-08-26T05:36:00.000-07:00

Did a design for a couple of friends of mine who plays Star Craft 2.

Check out their blog: http://livingontheladder.blogspot.com/

Adding Facebook iframe application

2011-08-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

I got a request from a customer to add a website of theirs to Facebook, which was easier said than done. Facebook has recently changed the way of doing this (18th of March 2011) and a lot of tutorials I found didn't match the current version so decided to write my own.

Ok so here we go, short and sweet:

In order to an a web page in an iframe on Facebook do the following:

Create a Fan Page (The link menu at the bottom of the web site).

Select Category

Fill in Fan Page criteria

Now your Fan Page is created. Fill in all the information you need, add a picture etc.
It’s time to add the actual iframe functionality. Use the search box at the top and start typing ‘static’.

Select the application called: Static HTML: iframe tabs and add it to your page:

When prompted, simply select the page you wish to add the application to:

Close the window.

Go to your Fan Page and click on ‘Welcome’:

It will now take you to edit mode for the “application”

I encourage you to read the ‘FAQ & Help Center'

In order to put our website in the iframe we need to copy/paste some code. Under the FAQ you have a topic called ‘Can I use a page from my blog or website?’. Click there and copy the code and paste it under ‘Enter your content here’ (see picture above):
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv='Refresh' content='0; url=http://example.com?page=42'>
</head>
</html>

Change the url to whatever website address you have.
Click ‘Save and view tab…’

Finally we would like this to be our start tab. Click the ‘edit info’ link next to your Fan Page description.

Then Click ‘Manage Permissions’

Change the default landing tab to Welcome (The name of our “application”).

Click ‘Save Changes’.

And you're all done!

Please let me know if I missed something or you have any questions and I'll add them to the tutorial!

Wild Style Graffiti piece

2011-08-19T14:03:00.000-07:00

Tried a style that I've never used before; Wild Style. Inspired by the video game Heavy Rain:

It's also my entry for an online sketch battle contest with the theme Brittish Summer. :)

A tribute to the victims in Utoya (Utøya)

2011-08-04T11:30:00.000-07:00

I made this piece as a tribute to the victims of the horrific massacre on the island Utoya in Norway.

2011 Norway attacks

Graffiti piece taking form part 2

2011-07-18T04:46:00.000-07:00

Now the piece is almost complete. A few pictures of the progress the last few days:

So whats left to do is filling in the tower on the top and add black to the background. Don't have a decent pen for the background right now.

More to come!

2 pencils drawings

2011-06-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Here are two pencil drawings I've done with my friend Carlo:

Graffiti piece taking form part 1

2011-04-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

Had an idea of making my team's logo as a graffiti piece.

I put the logo up on my computer screen and made the scetch using a pencil.

Here is a picture of the first part made:

So what's left is adding the outlines (black) and at the same time retouching some areas. And adding the yellow parts and coloring the bricks and the rat.

To be continued.

Entries for art competitions

2011-03-31T06:54:00.000-07:00

I did another entry for The One Cat, One fruit, One Clock competition. I wanted to try and blend the required stocks a bit more than before and it turned out pretty cool:

Here's the stocks I used:deviantart

You had to use a cat a fruit and a clock.

This weekend I also completed an entry for another competition called Heroes and Villains. You had to use at least two stocks from a pre-selected list.
This picture I will remake with more details and only with the demon. Coming shortly :)

Stocks used: deviantart

Strawberry Country

2011-03-12T05:29:00.000-08:00

Another entry for the DeviantArt competition.

If you're interested in the stocks i used, check out my Deviant entry here: Strawberry Country

It was a very difficult picture to make but turned out pretty good I think.

And another one I just made:

Submission for Art Contest

2011-03-05T07:39:00.000-08:00

DeviantArt is currently holding a competition called One Cat, One Fruit, One Clock. The premise is that you have to include at least one of each element out of a few pre-selected pictures.

This entry evolved during the creation. I found a nice ruin among the stock photos at DeviantArt and started working.

I removed the background and unwanted areas.

Next I added a stone floor. Resized it a bit to make the squares smaller.

I chose a midnight background in order to add some mystery to the picture.

I added some shadows to the ruin, some moss, birds, mist and a little spider web and blood spatter trying to add some life to the picture.

I chose to put the pocket watch (clock) where the moon is, which ended up pretty cool. Layer style Darken, other than that I didn't need to do anything to it.

I knew early that I wanted the tiger (cat) to be the center of the image. Using 2 shadow layers and a glow on the tiger to make it blend with the rest of the elements. I also used a layer of burn & dodge to highlight the face and darken the legs a bit.

A light source is also added, representing the light comming from the moon.

Where do you put a strawberry in a picture like this? I don't know.

I finally decided to put an oversized strawberry to the right of the tiger. Adding some spider web to make it even more surreal.

Adding shadows, burn & dodge in order to make it blend.

Now the image is almost complete. I wanted it to feel even colder and added photo filter with a blue color. Changing the contrast a bit and a merged layer with Sharpen effect.

And voila, the final picture: Midnight in Ruins

A few photo manipulations

2011-02-28T00:58:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd share a few pictures. Most of these pictures are from tutorials so can't really take credit for them.

Simple Graffiti scetch

2011-02-01T08:35:00.000-08:00

Got inspired by a conversation I had on Facebook and decided to make a graffiti scetch. Haven't drawn graffiti in 3 years or so , so I'm a bit rusty.

Not very satisified with the result, but decided to post in anyway to show you how I usually make a scetch.

You need a pencil, eraser, a few color pens. I really like my Touch pens. The paper I used is not very good as the paint bleeds.

First i make block letters to get an idea and also get same height and width of the letters. You can draw up a grid with a ruler first if you like.

The next step is to add details to the lettering. The hard part is to find the flow and make your adjustments fit the theme. It's easy to over do and add elements that doesn't look good basically.

The next step is to add outlines, during this part you also make small adjustments and changes.

Finally, the coloring. Not my favourite part at all, but makes the image pop.

It's very common to add a character or another element to make the piece more interesting., which I didn't do here.

M$ stands for Microsoft, which is a department at Connecta where I currently work. :)

How does photo manipulation work?

2010-12-29T00:47:00.000-08:00

I've got a few questions what I actually do when creating a photo manipulation, so I thought I'd show you how a typical image is created.

This image is made out of four different images.

First I started out with an image of a squirrel on a grass background.

Adding the helmet was the easiest part. I first removed the background from the helmet image and then pasted it into my Photoshop project.

Then I cut out the grenade launcher and pasted it into my project.

Resizing it and transformed to fit the squirrels size.

I then copied one arm at a time and transformed them to look like the squirrel shooting the grenade launcher. Using something called Healing brush in Photoshop I removed the original arms positions from his torso.

Adding shadows and bluring the edges a bit on the pasted images makes them blend better with each other.

I then drew the sight on the grenade launcher, adding the text 'Beaver VII' on the gun as well.

The flame I got from a burning car image, I also added some smoke coming from the back and also surrounding the flames.

In order to make the images blend together even more I used a couple of layers of effects: Photo Filter, Gradients and Curves.

The image took maybe 3 hours to make.