Blog

Calibrating your monitor. What can I say? We all try to get away with calibrating our monitor by eye, but that only works for so long and unfortunately our eyes change. Not just over the years but throughout the day. We get use to seeing a certain way and we adapt in different lighting situations. In the end our paintings, photos or what have you suffer. Our darks are too dark, the colors are to saturated or the hues just don't look right especially when we go to print. So we are left to buying hardware to calibrate our monitors.

Continue Reading
http://www.stevenpowerssmp.com/2011/10/quick-tip-why-calibrate-my-monitor.html

Just want to introduce some free applications that I was introduced to the other day. These are great little utilities that can help speed up ones work flow. Launchy is cross-platform while Dexpot is for Windows users who like the virtual desktops that is found in Ubuntu.

Continue Reading at http://www.stevenpowerssmp.com/2011/09/quick-tip-launchy-dexpot.html

I have been working with GIMP a lot lately and also playing with MyPaint. I have seen some very good paintings done with MyPaint and I love the feel of the brushes. But I have always been able to control my canvas size and resolution. But MyPaint doesn't allow you to set either from scratch. This is one method that gets around those issues.

Continue Reading at the link below:
http://www.stevenpowerssmp.com/2011/09/quick-tip-mypaint-and-gimp-template.html

This is an update to the original tutorial on theme. In this tutorial I show how to download, adjust the themes and install them in either version 2.6.11 or 2.7.3. In the end I preview the new themes and show how to set it as your default so it loads automatically

The tutorial can be found here:
http://www.stevenpowerssmp.com/2011/09/gimp-how-to-add-themes-updated.html

I just added a somewhat in depth tutorial on Sketching on my site.
Here is the link http://www.stevenpowerssmp.com/2011/09/sketching-4-step-method.html
Let me know what you think,
Steve

This is just a quick thought for those who are aspiring animators and are just starting out. Look for the extras on DVD / Blu-ray discs. They will often have "Behind the Scenes" footage showing the process that they went through in making the film.
Most people over look them, but they are a great resource for digital artists. Releases such as "Happiness is a Warm Blanket Charlie Brown" comes with 4 extra titles covering the screenplay, animation and recording of the voice talents. It is a quick glimpse into the process and workflow of animation. The same fundamentals can be applied to both 2D and 3D animation. For more in depth material on animation, I would suggest two books by Tony White; The Animator's Workbook" and "Animation: From Pencils to Pixels"

For more articles and tutorials please visit my site HERE
www.stevenpowerssmp.com

"Creature Eyes" is another project that is still in progress (which I need to get back to) that is for a photo-real close up of eyes. The full article and images collection can be found HERE http://www.stevenpowerssmp.com/2011/07/wip-creature-eyes.html

"Alien In A Hostile Land" is a concept piece that is in progress. I wrote a short overview of the project and the steps that I have encountered. The full article can be found HERE http://www.stevenpowerssmp.com/2011/04/wip-alien-in-hostile-land.html

This tutorial shows how to use the Path Tool in GIMP to create perspective grids. I did an earlier version showing the workflow done in Photoshop and was asked how to do it in GIMP. The tool is the same but the methods differs from application to application.

The tutorial can be found HERE http://www.stevenpowerssmp.com/2011/07/gimp-how-to-create-perspective-grids.html#more

Adding Themes to GIMP (2.7 +2.6) is rather simple once one knows how. This tutorial covers the steps and allows one to change the working environment of GIMP quickly. All that is needed is the new version of GIMP 2.7.3 and custom themes downloaded from GNOME.

Here is the LINK http://www.stevenpowerssmp.com/2011/08/gimp-how-to-add-themes.html