Cephalopodcast - The Ocean Podcast

Super Happy Funtopus

I came across a short Illustrator tutorial at Vectortuts.com that shows the steps for making a Super Happy Octopus Character. Some of the steps were missing, but it was a fun tutorial and I finally learned how to make one of those ubiquitous starburst effects. Expect me to abuse that technique liberally in the future.

The original vector file I made is more vivid than the the image reproduced here. I still need to figure out why the gamma changes when moving from Illustrator to Photoshop to the Web. I expect there are difference between Mac and PC displays too.

Pucker and Bloat

This marks the return of my Pucker and Bloat feature where I will share some of my Illustrator and Photoshop doodlings. The feature derives its name from one of the distortion filters in these programs. Pucker and Bloat are also the names of two sea creatures appearing in a Web comic I am starting.

Unfortunately, the external hard drive that housed my original art work for those characters decided to die. I don’t mind recreating them, but having those files would have made it easier to turn out some new panels sooner.