Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 3)

From Part 2:

009 Photoshop image layered for painting & fills

010 Paint Whitespace

011 Paint Background

012 Paint Uniform colour

013 Adjusted brightness level

014 Selection Brush Tool to copy signature & caption

015 Add border – Over-paint w Dry Media Brush on Transparency settings

016 Practice 1 Completed

Quite happy with this practice session. I’d say it’s a pretty decent replica of the original:

Check out Hellboy, vol1: Seeds of Destruction.

Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 2)

From Part 1:

Layering Practice1

Layering Practice2

Layering Practice3

Photoshop Colouring Practice 1 – Fill w 20% Transparency

Photoshop Colouring Practice 2 – Overlay 2nd colour 85%Transparency

Photoshop Colouring Practice 3 – Add whiteBackgd Layer for actual colour tone

Photoshop Colouring Practice 4 – Recalling colours

Photoshop Colouring Practice 5 – Create own Colour Palette

Photoshop Colouring Practice 6 – Colour Palette w Whitebackground

Next: Part 3.

Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 1)

Back in 2007 (or was it 2006?), I picked up a copy of the Hellboy “Seed of Destruction” comic at Central Lending Public Library. And I was hooked. The illustrations and storylines simply blew me away. I was an instant fan.

There’s heavy use of shadows and contrast in Hellboy (lots of black).

At one page, I saw this particular panel and decided to use it as art practice. I took a digital photo for reference (From “Hell Boy: Seeds of Destruction” by Mike Mignola & John Byrne):

Sketched it on watercolour paper (not traced). It was a practice in observational skills:

When I was happy with the sketch, I proceeded to ink the outlines (alternating between Indian Ink applied with calligraphy pen, and a marker — in the end, I was happier with the Indian Ink as was more vibrant):

Here’s a shot of how I referred to the digital image (on a laptop) and inking on paper:

This is a scanned image of the completed outline in ink:

Then I filled in the spaces with more black:

Inking completed:

At this point, I wanted to apply watercolours, but I suddenly felt like doing the painting digitally. So I scanned in the image and retouched it in Photoshop by filling in with black and white (this definitely improved the picture in terms of smoothing out the uneven tones in the hand-coloured picture, and the black and white areas more defined):

Next: Part 2.

Technorati Tag: art practice, hellboy, photoshop, inking

How to convert CD/ MP4 audio files to MP3 using iTunes 8

As an update to this post, here’s how you convert your audio files to MP3 format using iTunes version 8 (hat-tip to Fiona for sharing the info!):

For a PC, it’s:

• Preferences> General> Import Settings.
• Choose “MP3″ (or your desired format)
• Then go to your song, right-click and choose “Create MP3 Version” (if you’ve specified MP3 in the earlier step).

For Macs, it’s:

• Preferences> General> Import Settings
• Select “Import using MP3 encoder” (or your desired format)
• Then go to your song, right-click and choose “Create MP3 Version” (if you’ve specified MP3 in the earlier step).

If you’re using iTunes version 7, check out this earlier post.

Cheers!

Podcast: Summer Days, Winter Nights (musical mashup)

A collaborative piece with Firdaus.

SUMMER DAYS, WINTER NIGHTS 1.2

Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

When I heard the original (with vocals) that Firdaus posted at his blog, I liked it immediately because it reminded me of what Carlos Santana might play. I commented that his song sounded like “Santana meets Oasis”!

I asked if he could email me a ‘Minus-One’ version, as I wanted to experiment with a rock guitar lead version. He emailed me a MP3 file during the week. I downloaded it and managed to work on it on Friday night.

Thanks for sharing, Firdaus!

Basically I added several “live” guitar leads and two “live” bass tracks. I cut about a minute from the original; I tend to keep my songs to about 3-and-a-half minutes. The most challenging part was keeping time with Firdaus’ original.

There were at least two segments where his guitar strumming didn’t quite keep in time with his drum beats. After a few hours of “close-quarters” editing and experimenting, I decided to replace an entire segment (starting from the 33rd measure) with a GarageBand drum loop. At the 50th measure, I didn’t replace his original segment but lowered the volume of his original track and raised the volume for the drum loops. Luckily, Firdaus used the standard 120 bps setting, so I was able to incorporate the GB drum loops into the song perfectly.

I think I spent about 18 to 20 hours before I was happy with the final version.

I used three custom guitar effects settings:

Bass effects:

This work by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. For permissions beyond the scope of this license , please contact via RamblingLibrarian@gmail.com.

RamblingLibrarian’s Podcasts:

Changing to higher gauged strings & adjusting a floating guitar bridge

I’ve always used a set of 0.09mm electric guitar strings. Found them easier to play and bend. But lately, I found the lighter strings sounding too thin. Plus, I’ve stop harbouring any pretenses that lighter gauge strings would make me the guitar-shredder virtuoso, LOL.

I have a floating bridge, and changing to a set of higher gauge strings isn’t as straight-forward. You need to perform additional adjustments to the springs that connect to the floating bridge.

Apparently it’ll cost about $180 to $200 to have a professional change it (and a friend told me horror stories of how some “professionals” turned out to be amateurs).

I figured I might as well try learning how to do it. I had some idea how to do it. Besides, I wasn’t aiming for that good a sound and I might learn something in the process.

First, I removed the old strings and gave the guitar a wipe down and polish.

Next was to remove the access cover, to get to the springs that controlled the tension of the floating bridge.

Then I put on the new set of strings (this was a higher gauge; 0.10mm for the first string). The floating bridge no longer “floats”, since the strings have no tension.

After I tightened the strings (standard E tuning), it was clear that the tension is way too high. The bridge is raised to a level that far too high to play the guitar properly.

After this point, it was just pure “learn as I go”; a process of adjustments and experimenting. After twiddling for a bit, I realised I had to increase the tension of the floating bridge springs, so that it will bring down the bridge.

True enough, the bridge was lowered.

I continued to make adjustments to the bridge springs, and the string tension. The tricky bit about tuning a floating bridge is that any adjustment to a string tension affects the rest of the strings. So it was a process of repeatedly adjusting the tension, checking the tuning, re-adjusting and re-checking the tuning… eventually, you’ll get there.

Right now, there’s a slight buzz when I play the sixth string at the 12th fret. I was told I’d have to adjust the truss rod (a metal bar that reinforces the guitar neck) but I wasn’t brave enough to try that yet. I’ll let it go, until the buzz irritates me to further action!

OK, my guitar is still in one piece. And it’s playable. And the bridge works fine.

Total time taken to change the strings and adjust the bridge: Two hours.

Saved myself $100 plus dollars.

Not bad for a first attempt.

And the higher gauge strings sound real sweet.

Vampire & Werewolf

I did this illustration for the “Horror” Genre Guide, for the public library services (National Library Board). Well, my colleagues couldn’t hire a graphic artist in time, so I was called to create the illustrations.

“Vampire/ Werewolf”. 31 Jan 2006.
Edited using Photoshop Elements, from a composite of illustrations from my earlier works.

I asked my colleague, Wai Ling, what she had in mind. And she wrote:

“maybe something like your Sherba specimen, but can refine a bit coz the current sample looks a bit gangly and aged like those who’ve drawn the full sum of their CPF…maybe something like your Elf Warrior not bad, i.e., accentuate distinct features that are instantly recognizable – but ur elf looks more like werewolf, tho…Or, you can draw a really sinister but gorgeous specimen – in art, either be very gorgeous or extremely ugly to make it outstanding…”

So here’s how I did it (I’m assuming that you have some basic knowledge of how Photoshop works):

Layer #1 was the vampire’s face. Image was cropped from “1994 (Dec) Battle of Pelenor“, with Brightness/ Contrast adjustment. I needed a face with an open mouth and remembered my ‘Pelenor’ illustration. Outline was refined with Eraser tool (same setting as point 2 but with smaller brush size). Fangs were added, eye shadow painted more prominently, and overall image was stretched to make longer vertical profile.

Layer #2 – Werewolf was from “1989 (Aug) Sherba – Arakian Trakker Hound“. Brightness and Contrast enhanced (Enhance-> Adjust Lighting-> Brightness/ Contrast). Outline was removed with Erase tool with Dry Media Brush, set at 65% opacity. Width was also stretched (original image had narrower profile).

Layer #3 – Background was cropped from, again, the “1994 (Dec) Battle of Pelenor” image. Took part of the chain mail from the arm part, and superimposed with another selected layer (using Selection Brush Tool). Then merged down image as one layer. Initially set layer at 99% opacity but look a bit dull. Decided to stretch and crop the background image and retain 100% opacity.

Guitar Modes

Joe Satriani makes it looks sooo easy.
Joe Satriani – Great Lesson on Guitar Modes Part 1

Lydian, Dorian, Myxolydian, Aeolian (Natural Minor), Aeolian Dominant, Ionian (Major), Phrygian Dominant… must find a book or website that illustrates the modes, in a manner that a layperson like me would understand.

I know I’m already playing some modes or “shapes” (like Major, Minor and Pentatonic) but always good to expand beyond what you’re familiar with.

Joe Satriani – Great Lesson on Guitar Modes Part 2

In Part 2, Joe Satriani shows how some “scales” work with seemingly different chords. At this point, it’s info-overload for me… heh. So I go back to just using my ears, and my brain to tell me whether the notes sound nice or not.

Found this blog on GuitarModes. Good stuff! It features videos from YouTube.

And this particular webpage (www.ocmusic.com/Modes.htm) shows the various points to play on the fretboard.

Unable to ‘Empty Trash’ problem (i.e. How to delete locked files in OS X)

Recently I encountered this problem when trying to empty my Trash folder — the process kept being interrupted by an error message: “The operation cannot be completed because the item “wmphelp.htm” is locked”.

I hit the Continue button and there were similar messages: “WMPIcon.gif” is locked… “windowshade.gif” is locked…

Here’s a sample screenshot (from Otterman):

Clearly the problem were with files related to Windows Media Player I deleted earlier. I had about 300 over files in the Trash folder so I needed to find a solution quickly.

I emailed the folks in the me@n list (thanks folks!). Their suggestions included:

1. Repairing the file permissions with Disk Utility before attempting the Empty Trash operation.
2. Manually checking the offending file to ensure that I had Read/ Write permission
3. Press Option + Empty Trash

Tried suggestion #1 (even booting from a startup disk and running Disk Utility from the CD) but still had the error message.

Tried suggestion #2 but problem was those specific file names weren’t in the Trash folder.

Suggestion #3 didn’t work either.

In the end, Siva aka Otterman provided the solution. He suggested “Cmd +Option + Shift + Backspace”.

It worked beautifully!

Even scared me a little ‘cos there was no prompt to confirm the Empty Trash operation. Hit those combinations and it cleaned out everything in the Trash folder immediately.

I’m still not quite sure why the offending file couldn’t be deleted (even though I had permission to delete it). But at least now I’ve picked up this neat trick with the keyboard shortcut.

Siva has more details about deleting locked files in OS X at this post. Excerpt:

In Finder:

• cmd-Backspace = move selected item to trash
• cmd-shift-Backspace = empty trash (with warning prompt; locked files not deleted)
• cmd-option-shift-Backspace = empties trash without dialog, included locked files

Music re-engineering experiment: Sea Anemone II

The other day I took this tune from my friend, Adrian, and tried to re-engineer the sound a little. It didn’t get Adrian’s complete approval but that’s OK.

Here it is, the re-engineered version:

Compare it with the original:

I wanted to see if I could make anything out of just one single MP3 file. So now I know it can be done (of course the best way is to work on the actual GarageBand files but when that’s not possible, then now I know there’s another alternative).

I’ve posted some notes on how it was done at the SeaStars 2007 blog.

BTW, I’m currently collaborating with Adrian on an online music album project.