Graphics

[Feanorgil]

Okay this may show how little I know, but just hear me out. As with many of you much of the fan contributions have slick graphics, scripts and a delightful LOTR RPG Unoffical disclaimer. The "Question" is where do you guys get all of this stuff. I do alot of creating for my LOTR campaigns and I would be delighted if someone would share their secrets (ie the page borders, the heading above on this forum is clever, the fonts and page layout etc). Anybody out there able to share and lend some advice?

Wilson

[Ezri's Toy]

Heh. What you are asking for is a graphic design education. I suppose you could take my route and get a degree in it (yes, I finally graduated!), but for netbooks and personal stuff, all you need to do is a bit of research.

Unfortunately, graphic design books go out of date very quickly, so the public library isn't much help unless the librarian keeps on top of things in that area.

But, if you're looking to buy a book or two on the subject, try these -- If you're only going to buy one, get the first one:

The Non-Designer's Design Book, Second Edition

Layout Index: Brochure, Web Design, Poster, Flyer, Advertising, Page Layout, Newsletter, Stationery Index

Idea Index: Graphic Effects and Typographic Treatments

(The majority of graphic designers are Mac users, so be prepared to encounter Mac references. Don't worry. There are usually PC equivalents. For the most part, Macs are tailor-made for the graphic design / professional creative community -- print, web, video, audio, and video game design.)

Hope this helps. (As for disclaimers, you'll need a lawyer or legal expert. )

Ezri's Toy
BFA Graphic Design

[Feanorgil]

Much thanks ... Fortunately I like the rest of the europeans I live among are going back to Apple! In fact I am ordering my powerbook over Xmas. Thanks for the info and guidence.

Vaughan Wilson

PS- I ordered the books as well.

[Ezri's Toy]

Originally posted by Feanorgil
Much thanks ... Fortunately I like the rest of the europeans I live among are going back to Apple! In fact I am ordering my powerbook over Xmas. Thanks for the info and guidence.

Vaughan Wilson

PS- I ordered the books as well.

Woo hoo ! Hoopla Macintosh !

In regards to my advice: As my British friend is fond of saying, "Cheers, mate !"

[Tobian]

Coming up with nice designs just takes time! If you're ot a designer start to look at how the designers of the product have done it, allot of which, in most products, is deceptivelly simple, especially using modern software.

Don't fall in to the mac trao of 'Mac's are creative computers' - A Mac does NOT make you into into a designer, and you have to buy the same software you need to buy to design anything on it, that you would ona PC! Don't get me wrong, I do like mac's, they are nice simple computers, but the reason designers like them is because they are easy to use for non technical people.. designers aren't neccessarily technical people, however unlike most deskjockeys, who do a bit of typing or emailing, graphics can really push your computer to the edge (huge graphics and complicated images - especially anything 3D make your CPU melt often - so they want something stable that takes the edge off it and doesn't crash from an unintelligable error every 10 minutes... because unlike your average PC gamer, who might get annoyed when his bundled bag of cheap parts crashes, design professionals are doing it for real, and they lose money if their machine is doing funny business!

Professional software can help you out allot, Photoshop, Illustrator and In design by Adobe are really nice, allongside similar products such as freehand, paintshop pro and of course the everpresent Quark Express. They make your life much easier, often coming (in the current versions) with PDF exporting tools built in (In Design is NIIIIIIIICCEEEEEE! ). Of course you can.. technically.. make all these same things in Word and Publisher and err Windows paint ? but save your sanity and hair and do not try !

Of course, again, owning these products does not make you a designer nor do they have a 'make this piece of rubish into a good design' plugin installed.. that plugin is your brain Just the same as you can't expect Word to have a 'make this dreadful tale into a Pulitzer prize winning best seller" plugin either

Ezri, I might take a look at those books myself, I am not a graphic designer by trade, so I'm always looking for hints and tips myself I am more an educated amateur.. who just occasionally does it for a living

[Feanorgil]

thx for the input! But I am sold on apple, but that doesn't mean my dell inpision goes in the trash. I just hate re-booting everything every 9-14 months.

[Tobian]

Do you mean reformatting and resintalling, because if you go that long without rebooting, then you probably have a record there!

I hope you're getting one of the new G5's - they are pretty fantastic

[Feanorgil]

Just a simple notebook about 15oo us. To bad it will sit in my room in virginia for a year un-usedwhile i am in afghanistan.

[Feanorgil]

Just a simple notebook about 15oo us. To bad it will sit in my room in virginia for a year un-usedwhile i am in afghanistan.

[Ezri's Toy]

Originally posted by Tobian
. . . .

Professional software can help you out allot, Photoshop, Illustrator and In design by Adobe are really nice, allongside similar products such as freehand, paintshop pro and of course the everpresent Quark Express. They make your life much easier, often coming (in the current versions) with PDF exporting tools built in (In Design is NIIIIIIIICCEEEEEE! ). Of course you can.. technically.. make all these same things in Word and Publisher and err Windows paint ? but save your sanity and hair and do not try !

No. No. No. I do NOT recommend these tools for beginners at all. They're expensive. (Adobe Creative Suite Premium (which contains Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, Acrobat, and Indesign) at $1200). Plus, they all have a fairly steep learning curve and have many features which a beginner or netbooker simply will not use.

For bitmap image editing (GIF, JPG, TIF, etc.), I'd recommend either JASC Paint Shop Pro (for Windows only) or Photoshop Elements. They're a lot cheaper and have most of the same functionality as standard Photoshop. Sure, you can't take your images to press with those programs, but I don't think your average netbooker wants to do that.

Vector art (i.e. Illustration) programs are fairly cheap ($99 to $149 if you buy Macromedia Freehand) and are great for designing graphics and maps of all kinds. (Many pro cartographers use Freehand with special map-maker add-ons.) But, the learning curve is fairly steep and you will need person-to-person instruction -- the manual (whether Freehand or Illustrator) is insufficient to show you how to manipulate the software's tools.

I can not speak for layout software as the only one I have ever used is QuarkXpress ($800 to $1000 by itself). Now that InDesign is slowly becoming the industry standard, I'm having to learn that program right now. In a pinch, Freehand _can_ do adequate layout and also exports to PDF.

As for Acrobat: I love it and the extra tools in Acrobat Pro are fantastic. But, again, your average netbooker doesn't need them. Since PDF is an open standard, there are other pieces of software out there that can generate good functional PDFs cheaper than Acrobat. (Heck, the Windows-only PDFCreator is free under the GNU Public License http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ ) Some research should reveal other cheaper PDF creators for Mac.

[Tobian]

Hmm, no I wouldn't generally recomend you to use these things if you're a beginner (sometimes I forget how much stuff I've learned) but I disagree over the tutorship.. I am pretty much self taught on everything.. that's what the manual and tutorials on the net do for you I do agree it's a big investment to buy in high end software if you're just doing it for grins and you have no training at all though!

It can sometimes be a false economy to buy cheap software. Elements is good, as is PSP but they are NOT photoshop and if you know half of what you are doing you'll rapidly realise that!

In-design is actually really simple to use, especially if you're even slightly used to Quark express.. it's more powerful and simple, and has much more in the box, and is fairly ideal for netbooks, with a fantastic PDF export function which supports lots of the more advanced PDF features.

Acrobat and distiller and wonderful products.. Distiller is probably the best way to make PDF's (I can't speak for freeware, but allot of them mangle your text) and I've sometimes saved as much as 50% on filesizes by exporting the file as an EPS and then distilled it (something I recommend you try, especially compared to Illustrator's export function!)

It's a very tough call, but I just happen to like using that stuff, and maybe it's because I use it I'm biassed, but I like them, and with a good working knowledge they are quite easy to use.. One advantage in using something like the Adobe CS is everything is self similar.. You learn one thing and it's similar in the other software (which is true by and large with allot of software, but moreso if it's from the same company!). I learned Photoshop in university, but it's virtually the same since version 3, with more bells and whistles added on, and Illusrator felt allot more familiar than Freehand, so I just ended up leaning that way.. I could never get used to Freehands clunky interface, though I admit I haven't tried it in a few versions (and I do like the updates they have done on Dreamweaver and Flash), so I guess it's down to personal preference.

Anyway I think I've sidelined this topic enough.. To be honest however, I do come from an Amiga background, and I would often astound my university lecturers with the work I would produce on my little slow computer with the several very nice apps (somewhat overlooked even then) that they had back then, and so often it's not about what you use as what you actually do... If you think your way round a problem you can surprise yourself with what you can achieve!

[Feanorgil]

Why do I feel like all my life all I have done is bang to rocks together?

[Feanorgil]

Why do I feel like all my life all I have done is bang to rocks together?

[GandalfOfBorg]

hehe if you'd like more information about how the 'zines do it, Tomcat on the boards is the LE for HOF and David Pipgras is the new LE for Beyond the Final Frontier (he worked on Star Trek RPG books).

GOB

[GandalfOfBorg]

If you'd like to know how the zines do it, Tomcat (on these boards and DEC's) is the LE for HOF and David Pipgras is the LE for BtFF (he used to work on the actual Star Trek RPG books).

GOB