Pixelden's Blog

Christmas £10 Bank Note

pixelden — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 20:34:19 +0000

For a joke present for a friend this Christmas I decided I would make some joke money to stick in one of his presents.

Unfortunately this ended up a nightmare. Firstly I found out it is Illegal to make joke money.

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/reproducing_banknotes.htm

Under section 18(1) of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 it is a criminal offence for any person, without the prior consent in writing of the Bank of England, to reproduce on any substance whatsoever, and whether or not on the correct scale, any Bank of England banknote or any part of a Bank of England banknote. The Bank of England also owns the copyright in its banknotes.

Novelty Banknotes

The Bank of England does not give authority for any reproductions in the form of a novelty banknote (e.g. one where a celebrity or other images are shown on a banknote or other such changes). This is because there have been instances of notes altered in this way, being accepted as genuine banknotes by unsuspecting members of the public.

Secondly with modern Software and Hardware it becomes nearly an impossible task. You can not scan a note in, you cannot copy a note in Photoshop (only drag from one file to another), you can not print a good copy of a note (it will only print half then stop).

But searching around the internet I found a lot of people asking about fonts etc for creating a joke £10 note, so for anyone willing to attempt it. Here are some good links.

Large £10 note scan
http://www.princeton.edu/~jbourjai/images/money/darwin12.jpg

Free Font for Bank of England
http://www.dafont.com/bertholdr-mainzer-fraktur.font?text=Bank+of+Funland

Serial Number Font
Letter Gothic Std is quite similar

Script Font for London. For the Gov. and Comp of the Bank of England
http://www.dafont.com/english.font?text=London+for+the+Gov.+and+Comp

Font for Bank of England in above text
New Century Schoolbook LT Std – Bold

Font for I PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER ON DEMAND THE SUM OF
ITC Bookman Std – Medium

Font for the Cashier Signature
http://www.dafont.com/halohandletter.font?text=Joe+King

Queens head Watermark
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/news/90875-bank-marks-50-years-queens.html

Your Own Caricature
Engraver II photoshop plugin 30 day trial
http://www.alphaplugins.com/products/products.php

Have fun.

The Shining

pixelden — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 19:30:22 +0000

No horror movie post, would be complete without one of the most iconic horror posters ever made…

The Shining

A very easy photoshop job, but taking the actual photo was a nightmare. Only Jack Nicholson can pull that face.

Original Poster

Final Poster

A Nightmare on Dole Street

pixelden — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 19:01:27 +0000

Influenced by redundancy looming, and carrying on the theme of editing myself into horror movies. Here is my take on a Nightmare on Elm Street.

A Nightmare On Dole Street

Freddy Vs Jason Original Poster

Final Poster

Saw V – Halloween

pixelden — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 18:26:05 +0000

Another Horror movie poster, with myself edited into it.

Saw V – Halloween

Original Poster

Final Poster

The Eye – My Eye Poster

pixelden — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 18:11:12 +0000

Over Halloween I was busy putting myself in various Horror movie posters. Only just got round to uploading them.

The Eye

The Original Poster

Camera Shot

Final Poster

Punk Doodle

pixelden — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:13:58 +0000

A friend of mine put this cool pencil doodle of a punk rocker on his facebook. I think it’s brilliant so I just had to bring it to life. Outlines drawn in Illustrator, Inked in Photoshop.

Wayne Rooney Caricature Tutorial

pixelden — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 01:42:36 +0000

I love caricatures, the humour the expressions, the challenge. Although the initial sketch might take minutes, it’s then a long drawn out process of inking and colouring, retouching & tweaking. Luckily I came across this great tutorial on abduzeedo.com that can be used to create awesome caricatures in no time at all.

Reader Tutorial: Easy Digital Painting Illustration in Photoshop
http://abduzeedo.com/reader-tutorial-easy-digital-painting-illustration-photoshop

I am going to show you how I used this technique to create my Wayne Rooney caricature.

Wayne Rooney England Caricature

So first thing you need is a good clear head shot of someone. The larger the better. I tend to design for print, so this is going to be A4 300 dpi poster. Obviously if you’re just displaying on the web, your source image doesn’t have to be so large. I used this picture of Wayne Rooney as my starting picture and enlarged it to A4. (Original image is a lot larger than shown here.)

So the next step is to crop around the image. Use which ever method you prefer, there is no one set way to crop an image. Path tool – Eraser – Layer mask etc etc, I personally use layer masks as they are non destructive so allow you to edit any mistakes.

Now it’s time to be creative and edit a few of the facial features. Firstly I enlarged his ears then I shrunk his face down a little. Just create a rough lasso around the areas you require to tweak, feather the selection with a 20 pixels radius (experiment with various feathering depending on size of source image) and paste into a new layer. Then transform to the desired size and finally delete any surplus. I always flatten any edits with previous layer once I am happy, therefore allowing the next transformation. Finally I further tweaked the facial features with the Liquify Tool. Experiment with the pull, bloat and shrink brushes.

As you can see this is now looking pretty cool. But we now need to make it look like an illustration rather than a photo manipulation.The next stage is already well explained in the Abduzeedo tutorial. So please follow that tutorial

Reader Tutorial: Easy Digital Painting Illustration in Photoshop
http://abduzeedo.com/reader-tutorial-easy-digital-painting-illustration-photoshop

Before you started blending and smudging you should now have a picture similar to this.

If there is far too much black outlines in your picture, go back a few stages and increase the brightness and contract of your picture and try again with the filters. Ideally you just need a few good outlines and a few speckles of black in other areas.

The last stage is now the hardest bit. Following the tutorial you now have to use the smudge tool following the natural curves of your picture. I found using small strokes rather than big strokes works best. Take your time and you can get an awesome result. The Wayne Rooney Caricature took me over an hour to complete the smudging.

A few final tips.

The Smudge Tool can be changed to Lighten or Darken only. This is really helpful in complex areas.

Try to avoid long streaks caused by the Black from the poster edges. Use small strokes back and forth to try and elimate these spots.

Not all areas need to be smudged. I use the blur brush where there is finer detail.

I always use unsharp mask when I have finished. This helps brink the picture back to life with out being too washed out.

Wayne Rooney England Caricature

I created this caricature of Fabio Capello using the exact same technique.

Fabio Capello Caricature

1966 England World Cup 2010 Wallpaper

pixelden — Tue, 25 May 2010 21:25:44 +0000

1966 World Cup Final – England v West Germany at Wembley Stadium.

The most famous image in English football history with Bobby Moore hoisted into the air proudly showing off Jules Rimet trophy.

Every 4 years we dream and dream it will happen again, the hopes are high, the squad is perfect, then it all ends the same old way…. on bloody penalties.

So just to cheer you up, I thought I would painfully recreate this famous photograph with the squad of 2010.
This is the photo we really dream of seeing. Wayne Rooney lifting the world cup next month.
Fingers crossed boys, we might just do it, and if England do, this picture just might make me famous.

England 2010 World Cup Winners Wallpaper (1280 x 1024)

Peter Crouch, Gareth Barry, Robert Green, Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard, John Terry, Wayne Rooney, Fabio Capello, Shaun Wright Phillips, Rio Ferdinand, Michael Carrick, Stevie Gerrard, David Beckham (he had to get in the photo shoot)

^{This image can be freely used in its graphically format as long as it is unedited and my copyright notice and domain remains fully visible.}^{Image may not be used in print or published without my full written permission.}

Broken Angel Artwork

pixelden — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:07:09 +0000

Personal Illustration inspired by the weather and the great stock art images on deviantART.

Source images.

Click pictures to visit the owners deviantART stock image page.

Finally Artwork

Broken Angel

Sony Ericsson C903 World Cup Theme

pixelden — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 17:11:54 +0000

Continuing my England world cup theme artwork. I have now themed my sony ericsson C903 mobile phone with my England 3 lions artwork. Feel free to use the wallpaper or theme.

This theme is compatible with the following Sony Ericsson Models: c510, c702, c901, c902, c903, c905, g502, g705, k660, k850, Naite, t700, t707, t715, w508, w595, w705, w715, w760, w890, w902, w910, w980, w995, z750, z770, z780 .

Mobile Phone England Wallpaper (240 x 320)

Sony Ericsson C903 Full theme

File Can be downloaded directly from