Futuristic Boom Box

Since my brief jaunt into the world of tutorials, I've learned many useful things, especially about creating realism on Photoshop. So I decided to work on this while being incredibly bored at my math tutor's, staring at her radio. And so I ended up with my first rough sketch, which I moved onto a finished line drawing in my sketchbook, which I moved into Illustrator, and added the finishing touches on Photoshop.

Design Process

This is my final line drawing, ready to be moved into Illustrator.

In Illustrator, I traced out all the outlines and shapes, which ended up as this...

... which I finally moved into Photoshop for the finishing touches and effects.

Here is my final result:

And elaborated further still, I made black and white versions.

I hope you enjoyed this piece of work!

(Sorry for posting this blog post a bit late... it was made before I started procastinating, then I procastinated on posting this... oh the irony.)

Stagnation

I know I haven't posted in nearly 3 weeks, but since I started on my BioWater project (among other things), I haven't seem to have been able to bring myself to finish it, nor my other projects and sketches that are now filling up my sketchbook. Not to mention my science notes. Or the hundreds of photos I've taken of various subjects in different locations, and I have yet to sift through and organise. But back on the main topic, this post will not be about a finished work, but instead, a progress check on many different pieces of work that I may have finished some parts and not others. I promise that all of these will get finished, except maybe the last one. There will be  a lot to come in the next couple of weeks, if I ever get around this procastination problem and manage to post everything.

Here are the beginnings of my previously mentioned BioWater concept...

... which expanded to this...

...and that's all I have so far.

Over here is a vehicle design concept which I just started on today.

And here... well, let's just say sometimes you get really bored at the library.

Hopefully, I'll get all these done soon, if nothing comes up, and maybe I'll try "painting" that Cthulhu drawing I have there.

Follow Up - Futuristic Organic Button

I was at the library the other day when an idea struck me involving the already made organic styled futuristic button. I quickly drew it down in my sketchbook, which I had bought along to take notes.

Design Process
There's not much for this one.

I worked off the rough sketch, which featured different energy sources all grouped around the futuristic "power" button. My end product was pretty satisfying, which is below here.

Logo Concept - Sync

I drew up a logo concept for "Sync" in December last year, but I never got around to making it. So here I am, bored over the summer break, and hey, why not work on all those logo concepts lying around in my sketchbook? Here's my second one I've worked on during the summer break, which has been a lot more busier than I've expected.

The Design Process
Let's start with the small thumbnail sketch a jotted down. It wasn't much to work with, being a bit more than 4 cm across, but it was sufficient enough to scan into my computer and to work from there.

After scanning it into my computer, I made the logo shapes on Illustrator, and the text font in Flash. I then transferred both into Photoshop. Not being able to decide on a good colour palette, I consulted Kuler and my own experimentations with colour styles in the past. What I ended up with was a multitude of different versions, shown below here.

After talking with my friends and having them look over it, I finalized the colour palettes down to these two:

With further experimentation, and a friend who pointed out that sleek designs with plenty of curves looked good on the cooler end of the spectrum, I chose the lower one out of my finalized two. I did so somewhat reluctantly, as I felt that I've made too many logos with a cooler palette of colours than I have made warm, but looking back, I've made logos with all different sorts of colours, just that my main Notitia logo seemed to have the biggest influence on my thoughts. My doubts assuaged, I continued onto the next step, which was just a small makeover to pretty up my logo design, which, as fine as it looked, was still pretty simple. After 45 minutes or so with tinkering around on Photoshop I ended up with what you see below.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!

Discrepancies with Ford
Now I understand that many of you are aware that Ford has included a Sync system software in all their new cars, in cooperation with Microsoft. However, I'd like to point out that I made my logo and name completely separately without the knowledge of the fact that Ford had already patented official software under the same name. It was not until I was looking for colour palettes that I realized this flaw. This is merely a disclaimer showing the fact that I did not intend to copy their trademark.

Psdtuts

Lately, I've been incredibly bored, so after searching the web for things to do, I rekindled my old Photoshop self and decided to mess around. And then I walked into a wall. Like, a good kind of wall, that didn't really stop you, the kind that allowed you to walk up it and achieve a higher meaning. I know that doesn't really make a lot of sense to you, it doesn't make much sense to me either.

Anyways, the wall we're talking about is Psdtuts. For those who don't know, this isn't some horribly misspelled wording of "pyramids" and "Tutankhamun", Psdtuts in fact makes a lot of sense to people who are familiar with Photoshop. "Psd" is the standard universal file format for Photoshop (.psd), and "tuts", is, well, most people will have the good fortune of guessing "tutorials", which of course is, correct.

I chanced upon this cool "Futuristic Button" tutorial, and I tried it out, with a slightly different result than the actual tutorial, since I never like following tutorials word by word and ending up with the same result. I feel cheated and I have the feeling I just copied somebody. But in the end, I ended up with this:

I wasn't completely satisfied with that result though, so I decided to make another, more organic-looking one from scratch by myself, which resulted in this:

And today, I decided to learn more about designing realistic interfaces and buttons/objects, which I consulted another Psdtuts tutorial. I once again changed my end result, somewhat more dramatically than what I did with my first first button. My end result was this:

Now I'm no professional site reviewer, but if you have Photoshop, and you're interested in learning more about what you can truly do with in, visit Psdtuts, here at: http://psd.tutsplus.com/. You won't regret it.