Making graphics with FF ... my Gallery

I tend to misuse other people's filters. Some of my designs end up as t-shirts. T-shirt graphics are square. That is how they are printed on. Mine are 10” by 10”. (that is CafePress' requirements) A guy has to work hard to keep the designs from all looking the same. I am always looking for different ways to frame my graphics. Ghislaine's new v4 of her GF Spirowires Maker filter seemed to to present an opportunity for me to come up with some new frames. It requites using it in a way that is nothing like she intended. Here is an example.

I add some texture to the selection and do a little embossing and such in PhotoShop. I layer this image on top of my image and delete the center of the frame. Kinda cool coneflower frame.

You can go all crazy with the texture like I did on this one. I used a bunch of filters on it. Sorry I did not keep track. I was just having fun. I also distorted the frame to misshape it as well. These guys were made in a vector app on my Ipad. They are just talking. I don't know what about. They ain't all square anymore ….......

Thanks much Gigi ... You are always so kind .... I agree with you, the important thing is to just do what you like and have fun .....

Thanks Morgan .... I sometimes amaze myself ... But not always in a good way ... Glad you appreciate my crazyness .....

As an afterthought I added a drop shadow and allowed for adding a background. Here I used a tile created with a pattern in one of Gigi's spiro filters. That may make the filter a little more interesting, but not enough.

Using the magic wand tool I selected the skin color and went to work in FF. I try to use a number of different texturing methods to give my cartoons a different look. Lately I have been using my Digital Impressionism filter to add texture. (I was surprised I just got a HU for that filter. Bet most folks don't use it like I do.) I use my Foggy Edges filter to adds some fake shadow and highlighting. He may not be great art but he sure looks different than the original Funny Face filter output.

I have a history I'm not very proud of. Back before digital cameras were common, I used to scan photos and mess with them. I became addicted for awhile to a program called Super Goo from KPT. With it you could take an image and distort it with a brush. I would take people's faces and make characters out of them. Yes, and even monsters. Nowadays many other programs exist to do the same thing, including some Ipad apps and Photoshop. In Photoshop it is called liquify. That is what I used to change my boring funny face egg guy into something a bit more strange. Now it is getting fun.

I always feel guilty for not commenting on other people's filters much. I am in a very slow internet situation because I only have dial-up at my house. I usually only download filters once a week with the library's WiFi. By the time I get to try out a new filter it is no longer new. I figure that is too late to pat someone on the back. But that does not mean I don't like or use good filters made by other folk. To me the best filters are ones that force me to use my imagination to come up with unique ways to apply them. I really like Horus' Logo Creator filter. I see it as a kind of roar-shock test. (I know that is not spelled right, but I'm talking about those ink blot test shrinks use to figure how messed up in the head you are) I hit the variations until something cool shows up. I think that stimulates the imagination. In this one the bottom part pops up and I thought it looked kinda like a body. I repeated until I got something that looked somewhat like a head. I glued the head on the body. Do you see it? Or am I just crazy ? You be the judge.

One thing about how I create graphic projects is that once I get going it just rolls out of control. I let the creative process take over and just wait to see what happens. That is my excuse for not remembering how I came up with the background texture pattern. I just went crazy with FF and the next I knew, there it was. Sorry if it comes from someone elses' filter which I don't give credit for because I don't remember. As I have said before I use some kind of framing on most of my images because I do t-shirt designs and plain old square images are pretty boring. I like Voldemort's Collage Fram filter because it can produce an asymmetrical edges. I don't use it as he intended, because I use solid color instead of image inputs. That produces a random jagged, but boxed like look to the edge. As I often do, I used drop shadow on the bear to make him jump away from the background a bit. I started with something random and ended up with a design. I find that is a fun way to work.




My t-shirt shop .... Captured Image Design

Great bear, Gene
You always have such weird use to filters, that's awsome!
You really broaden my perspective on how to use all kinds of filters.You don't see them at face value, you see much more

Sharandra .... THanks for your comments ... nice to know there are others who just roll with it .... Lots of folks have been telling me I've been in a trance all my life ....


Thanks much Morgan and Gigi ... I'm just here having fun .....

I thought I'd show a couple of other ways I have used people's frame filters. This is one of my t-shirt designs. I used Voldemort's College Fram filter on it. I like the way it produces a very random jagged edge which is different than other filters I have seen.

I really like the new cartoon look you're going for

I thought I'd show a couple of examples of how I used my new Moody Shadows and Grain filter. I said it was a Halloween filter because it is meant to create a dark gloomy image. But there a couple of ways it can be used. Most folks in Music City call this the Batman building even if it says AT&T on top. This photo was taken from the hurricane deck of the paddle wheeler General Jackson cruising down the Cumberland river.

A cloudy look over a late season cornfield.

This filter is somewhat similar in idea to several of my past filters. For me, another use for the filter is to add shading and texture to my cartoons. This is my wild hair guy again. The shading around the eyes, nose, and mouth were created with the filter. The filters actually has a slider that give you some control over where the shadowing occurs. I could do shading by hand but laziness is one of the main reasons I create filters.

Early work by Van Goth and other impressionistic painters used a style where a thick base coat is applied and detail is added, causing those strokes to break up and the undercoat to show through. I love going to galleries and studying brush strokes. This filter does a similar thing with pixels. A very subtle use of bomber a combination of simplify and outline comes kinda close to that look with pixel brushes.

With some image smoothing and outline tweaking you get an image both flatter and exaggerated in detail with some nice texture.

This is why I always add a saturation node. This is the same preset as the last with no color. A bonus feature is you get faux sketchy pen and ink mode.

OK, we all know I do weird stuff with filters. I don't really do much trying to fake photos as art. I do love other folk's neat filters. As a background for this cool dude I used the “Art In The Round” filter by CFandM. Then I applied my filter to it to give it a nice textured look. Fun stuff for me …....



My t-shirt shop .... Captured Image Design

I like the guitar guy