Ankhou Graphic Design

Web development, graphic design, and photography by Ian Houghton, based in Revelstoke, BC.

facegun

0 Comments | posted 25/09/09

Gunface

Facegun

Gunbook

Killspace?

mech sketch

0 Comments | posted 24/09/09

Concept for a small scout mech, funsies. I just bought a Wacom Graphire (only small, 4″x5″) and it’s improved my workflow as well as removed a lot of frustration in colouring. The pressure sensitivity is really fun.

I called it the ‘Fennec Fox’ because that was what I was trying to base the shape of the cockpit on – not much success there, I think ‘Coyote’ is a more appropriate title.

more photoshop watercolours

0 Comments | posted 15/09/09

I’m really enjoying this colouring technique. Lots of clipping masked layers and liberal use of brushes and textures. Original document size is 4589x7100px, ~500mb.

I’ve been using the excellent free hi-res brushes available from BittBox, which you can download here for set one and here for set two. There’s also a great list of free watercolour brushes here.

The original sketch is below:

photoshop watercolours

2 Comments | posted 14/09/09

I’ve been borrowing a Wacom tablet to try some digital painting, and I’ve decided I definitely need to buy one asap. I feel like I’m a two-year-old colouring in again (subject matter & ability)!

Full-size image inside the post.

sIFR: easier than you might think

2 Comments | posted 13/09/09

I added sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) titles to the site a couple of weeks ago. I was going to write about it at the time, but it’s been a busy time for university. Some seat-of-the-pants essays were submitted.

sIFR is a way to dynamically replace small blocks of text on your website using JavaScript with an identically sized Flash movie that has an embedded font; in short, it allows you to write headlines in any font you wish, rather than restricting you to ‘web safe’ fonts (i.e. the most commonly available – Verdana, Georgia, Arial etc).

sIFR has been around for a while. Mike Davis, one of the original developers, wrote about the introduction of version 2.0 back in 2005. The technology now appears to have reached version 3, and is still undergoing development.