How to create a …?

Hi everybody,

here’s something alot of people ask me when they see my pictures, wallpapers or other graphics. How do you get the ideas? Well I have to admit that sometimes a wallpaper or a poster “creates itself”. That sounds stupid, but on that rare occasions I just doodle somethings with my tablet or try out some tutorials I just read, adjust some properties and I end up with a new graphic. But if you actually want to create something and not just doodle around, you have to work. It’s actually not that complicated but I like my graphics to be “organized”. I want them to look like the idea I had in my head. This means I need a concept. And this is how I do it:

First of all I need a theme. Most of the time I’m designing posters and flyer for the japanese-studies student representatives, which means I have already created a logo and some details I use for every poster to get a unified look.

So let’s get started:

1.Preparation

Grab yourself something to drink. Coffee or tea or water will do. (That’s because I/you will most likely forget time while working with Photoshop.)

2.Theme:

Let’s say, you want to create a poster for a party. In my case the students of the japanese-studies want to celebrate Tanabata. Now you know the topic of your poster. What I’ll do next is gather information. Since I study japanology I ought to know enough of tanabata. For everyone that doesn’t a quick overview:

Tanabata (七夕, meaning “Evening of the seventh”) is a Japanese star festival, originating from the Chinese Qixi Festival. It celebrates the meeting of Orihime (Vega) and Hikoboshi (Altair). According to legend, the Milky Way, a river of stars that crosses the sky, separates these lovers, and they are allowed to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month of the lunisolar calendar. The celebration is held at night.

In present-day Japan, people generally celebrate this day by writing wishes, sometimes in the form of poetry, on tanzaku (短冊 tanzaku), small pieces of paper, and hanging them on bamboo, sometimes with other decorations. The bamboo and decorations are often set afloat on a river or burned after the festival, around midnight or on the next day. This resembles the custom of floating paper ships and candles on rivers during Obon. (www.wikipedia.org)

Usually there’s also fireworks in the evening. I don’t know any matsuri – festival without fireworks in the evening in japan.

So we can find alot of symbols and topics within the tanabata. And maybe you already have an idea which wo use. Fireworks, Stars, the milky way, tanzaku, evening, candles, river…

3. “Pre-Design”

I called this step “pre-design” because now I start doodling around… actual doodles. With pen and paper. Because I really don’t like to do scraps on the computer. Pen and paper make me feel like I actually do something. Sounds weird, but that’s just me. You can do this however you like.

I start with drawing little rectangles that resemble the poster. And then I just doodle. I think it’s easier to show you than to explain.

As you can see I came up with 4 different concepts. Which means  I have a general idea, what I will be working on.

Also I went online and searched for pictures of a typical tanabata. Or how others interpreted tanabata.

 

4. Stocks/Brushes/Fonts:

Now we have to get some nice stock photos of tanabata. Or maybe just an evening sky, a river, candles, stars…. But you don’t need stocks, you can draw everything yourself, if you’re lucky enough to own a graphic tablet or so skilled with your mouse, that you can draw it this way. Or you can go and shoot you own stock photos.

Some matching fonts would also be nice. But I prefer a nice and plain font – sans-serif. But you can take a look around www.dafont.com

As for brushes either try google or www.deviantart.com <- this also works for stocks.

5. Get to work

Open Photoshop (duh! I know ). Open a new document, preferably already with the wished size. (I’m german so I always use the DIN-Format,

but there’s also the US-Letter). File>New File:

Final Tips:

- Use as much layers as you can

- Save every 5 minutes (believe me you’ll wish to throw your computer out of your window when it freezes and destroys 4 hour work)

- adjust layer properties, you’ll never know what you’ll get ^^

- take a few brakes and take a walk outside, this’ll relax your mind

- show your work to someone and ask for nice criticism, this will improve your skills

- always make sure you DO know your stuff… so when you add chinese/japanese characters to the graphic, ” ‘cuz you think it’s cool” make sure you KNOW the meaning… I’ve seen to much graphics where people didn’t know. Japanese people will never tell you if something insults them. (At least when you’re not best friends) Keep that in mind.

I hope that helped! I know I kept it somewhat… theoretical…