The reason I wanted to use Tree houses for today’s daily inspiration is because anything that looks beautiful to the eye is inspiring and all these illustrations do just that.

As a kid I always wanted a tree house! most kids do. Now grown up that dream still hangs round in my head. I have spent some time going round the net finding some lovely examples of really cool tree houses. This post really isn’t about design or illustration but it’s definatley inspirational. I hope it inspires you!

All the images are hand picked by me, from various sources around the net.

If you want to contribute your own work to our daily inspiration posts, then please send us an email with the images you want included.  Then we’ll do our best to get them on the post!

Feel free to leave some comments or share this and please be inspired!

Oxford English dictionary: Inspiration: “someone or something that gives you ideas for doing something”.

More tree houses!

Thanks for reading this post, I hope it has helped to inspire you and will continue to do so every day.

If you would like to be featured in the daily inspiration collections please send me an email with your work and I will add it to the collection.

Being creative is a way of life and being inspired keeps us striving to get better and keep moving forward!

The post Tree houses: daily inspiration appeared first on creative-phlare, design tutorials, photoshop tutorials, daily inspiration.

Today Creative-Phlare has had the honour of interviewing the amazing Ken Barthelmey. We want to say thank you again to Ken for this interview, which is absolutely awesome.

1.when did you become interested in illustration/art ?

Ken Barthelmey: I started drawing when I was very young. Even as a child I would pick up pen and paper and draw everything I saw. When ever I watched a movie
or read a book I would draw their characters. I have also always been
interested in comics, it inspire me very much. Telling stories through
paintings is what  fascinated me the most. At that time, I could have
never imagined that my hobby would eventually become my profession. That
makes me very happy.

2. How did you develop your style and how would you describe it?

Ken Barthelmey: I always try to make my painting as realistic and detailed as possible. My goal is to always create believable and realistic characters or
creatures. I don’t like super clean-looking digital paintings, so I try
to bring my CG works in a more classic look, using several custom
brushes. I love the look of real oil paintings

3. How do you come up with a concept for a piece?

Ken Barthelmey: This is very difficult to explain and I don’t even know if I can explain it, because my ideas alway come as a flash. All of a sudden, a
global idea starts to form and takes its own lead… Films, books or
games are always a great inspiration. And listening to music makes me
more creative.
For commission work you usually get a detailed description from the
client. That is very helpful, and I can immediately start with the work.

4. Can you describe a bit about your creative process while creating a
piece.

Ken Barthelmey: As soon as I know what I want to draw, I search through books and the internet to find more inspirations. Animal references for example are
very helpful to design new creatures. The next step is to sketch my
ideas. I prefer to do first a lot of pencil/pen sketches on paper and
don’t use the computer, because drawing on paper gives me a different
feeling. With classic drawing you often get a ‘happy accident’, that’s
very helpful to find some interesting shapes. When I was happy with the
sketches, I scanned it into my computer and proceeded it digitally.

5. How would you describe your daily routine?

Ken Barthelmey: After breakfast I always check my e-mails first, after that the work can begin. usually the day looks like a normal working day. As a
freelance artist you can arrange your days.. however I prefer to have a
planned working day, because it’s very important to keep your deadlines.
Fortunately my job is also my hobby so it can happen that I work in my
free time, as well. Besides the painting I also like do a lot of sport
activation. I think that is very important, sitting the whole day at
your desk without much movement isn’t really healthy.

6. What five things do you believe are really important for every
illustrator.

Ken Barthelmey: I think there are hundreds of important things, but in my opinion these
are the most important:
1) Have fun! Passion and fun, I think, are the primary things you must
have as an illustrator.
2) Don’t get discouraged! Nobody becomes an master over night. Every
work you make is a preparation for the next one…
3) Try to do your best for every work
4) Try to beat yourself by learning from your mistakes.
5) A lot of experience and fundamentals.

7. Do you have any advice anyone new who starting out on this kind of
business.

Ken Barthelmey: Do not cow down! Every start is difficult. When you have the passion
and love what you are doing, nothing can hold you back!
This was my first year where I’m working as a professional artist. I
am newcomer myself and know how difficult it can be at times. You should
have a lot of goals in your live, it makes a lot of fun to work and
reach for them!

So that’s it for this interview. We hope you enjoyed this article and please make sure you follow Ken on his website and  his facebook. A true inspiration!

See Kens Portfolio here

Follow Ken on facebook

Thank you again for the Interview Ken and keep up the fantastic work!

Read more Creative-Phlare interviews here

Please feel free to share this and comment, and as always, keep coming back for more cool articles and inspiration at Creative-Phlare!

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Street art is a very versatile art form

Produced around the globe by many fantastic artists, it turns the urban jungle into one big canvas.
Devised specifically for the street, street art has become hugely popular, with famous artists like Bansky exploding it on to the mainstream art world. Not to be confused with graffiti (as much as I do love good graffiti) street art uses many different mediums to create a finished piece, As you will see in today’s post many street art works are done with traditional media like spray paint, but a lot of street art is done with things like models, surrounding material, shadow, cracks in the wall, grass and pretty much anything that is to hand. One thing I love about street art is the artists find inspiration in anything and everything. As you see, a broken pavement or cracked wall is turned from an eyesore in to something quite stunning and often very clever and funny.

Street art is also used to express opinions on current issues like politics and religion. Big advertising agencies have caught on to the idea of street art now and are using it in gorilla advertising campaigns.

It can be as simple as a word on a wall to as complex as a full side of a building! But whatever it is, its eye catching and awesome!

Please enjoy today’s post on street art and please feel free to send in any pictures you find on your travels.

That’s it for today’s daily inspiration. I hope you enjoyed it.

Please check out this for more cool work

Sources:

For more great street art, check out this link

As always, Please share this and re-post it, like it, stumble it, sell it to your mates and make sure you come back for more cool stuff

at Creative-Phlare.

Robin Powell

The post Street art, Daily inspiration appeared first on creative-phlare, design tutorials, photoshop tutorials, daily inspiration.

Browsing the web for some CG art today has been an eye-opening experience! The amount of amazing artists out there is unbelievable.

CG art is a mix of drawing, 3d techniques using programmes like Maya, Cinema 4D and other great 3d programmes. Also there is a lot of matte painting and concept art techniques. Used a lot for video games and movies this stuff is top of the top and you really have to be a master in this business. Looking at some of this art is very very inspiring but at the same time can be very disheartening, When you see the level of talent out there it’s quite easy to feel like giving up. But, the thing to remember is that all these great artists started out the same as you and me. (not that i’m any good at it, but I would really love to be!)

A great way to improve is to find images and art you really like, find out the programmes and techniques used and try to reproduce them (not claiming them as your own though!)

Anyway. I hope you enjoy this CG art post and feel inspired to get your wacom pad and a cup of tea! you’re in for a long night!!

Thats it for today’s daily inspiration. I hope you enjoyed it.

Please check out this for more cool work

Sources:

http://www.interstation3d.com/portfolio.html

http://www.vitrux3d.com/cargorilla_01.html

http://theartofken.com/

As always, Please share this and re-post it, like it, stumble it, sell it to your mates and make sure you come back for more cool stuff

at Creative-Phlare.

Robin Powell

The post CG art, todays daily inspiration appeared first on creative-phlare, design tutorials, photoshop tutorials, daily inspiration.

Cool websites are the topic for today’s daily inspiration. If you check around the web you can find a serious amount of crap!! Sorry but there are so many bad websites out there it’s redonkulous! But!! There are also some unbelievably cool websites that leave you jaw droppingly inspired! With the release of HTML 5 and HTML 5 canvas things have just got even better. Gone are the days when you needed flash to do lovely animations or crazy navigations and galleries!

The web is moving fast and the sites popping up are just stunning, now you can go as mad as you like when designing a site and it’s possible to build it in any way you like!

I search the net regularly for cool sites to keep up with the trends and to inspire myself  and get idea’s and it really can be a lovely experience!

A good thing to do for any web designer is first thing every morning before starting any designs or any work is (providing your boss will allow it!) is to trawl the web looking at different sites and styles of the moment. This way you can build up a library in your bookmarks and in your head of great idea’s and design techniques. Also its a great way to keep up with current trends on the net.

The cool sites I have listed to-day are just a handful of awesome sites out there.I hope these cool sites will leave you inspired! Enjoy.

Legendary

Axt

Qvivo

Apple

Paranorman

Facebook

Milwaukeei police department

My favourite cool website

Diesel

Tinkle

London calling

BBC.com

If you enjoyed these cool websites you might like the post too! check it out here

As always, I hope you enjoyed this game concept art post. Feel free to share this with your buddies and comment, And keep coming back for more cool stuff on Creative Phlare.

Robin Powell

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These beautiful elements make any website look lovely and professional. These files are well organised, fully layered and easy to use.

If you don’t learn anything from these, I.e layer styles, at least they will save you some time!

Enjoy.

Mini Tool Tips

Alerts

Dark Tips

Notifications

Notifications message boxes

Patch tool tip

Testimonial boxes

Tooltips

(love these guys! so many good resources! visit them here)

That’s it for today’s post. I hope you find these wonderful psd’s useful.

If you enjoyed this why not download more cool stuff here

Keep coming back for more cool stuff on Creative-Phlare

Robin Powell

The post Free Notifications, tool tips and alert psd’s appeared first on creative-phlare, design tutorials, photoshop tutorials, daily inspiration.

This tutorial is going to show you photo manipulation. Photshop is a fantastic tool for photo manipulation as you probably already know.
When new to photoshop things like layers, levels, curves and balance all seem a bit scary, but once you get the hang of them you will see they are a piece of cake!

In this photo manipulation tutorial I am going to show you how to merge 2 animals, a Frog (ok, I know it’s not an animal!) and a hippopotamus to create one hybrid animal. I call it a frogopottomus! The techniques you’ll learn here aren’t strictly for photo manipulation, they can be used on a variety of different projects, By doing this and completing it, you will have a good grasp on many of the tools in photoshop and will be able to use them for lots of other things! I hope you enjoy this photo manipulation tutorial and please feel free to send us your versions!

Onto the tutorial!

This is the final photo manipulation:

Step 1: Images

Ok, So first you are going to need to decide what animals you want to cross! Once you have decided, find some nice images and cut out your 2 animals!

A good thing to do when picking your images is to find two animals in roughly the same position, if not, it will make it harder to look convincing as one animal when you’re doing your photo manipulation.

Step 2: Placing the animals together

Now take the part of the animals you want to manipulate and place them roughly together. One slightly over the other, and using Edit > Transform > Scale try to get the 2 body proportions the same.

Step 3: Colour adjusting

Now that your happy with the proportions of your beast you are going to want to make them the same colour!

Open the colour balance palette using  Image > Adjust > Colour balance

Now, using the sliders try to get the colours of your 2 parts the same.

You wont be able to do this perfectly with just colour balance because you’ll have different brightness so open Image > Adjust > Levels, again, using the sliders get the 2 parts brightness the same. There is no hard and fast rule for this. You just have to play around until you have a match.

Finally, open Image > Adjust > Hue and Saturation, Using the Saturation slider, simply  slide around till you have a saturation match.

By now the too parts should be looking pretty close!

Now with your hard edge eraser tool, clean up all the edges, Then with your soft edge eraser tool set at 50% opacity, gently erase the joins of the two pictures so they merge into one. If you have got all your colour correction done well in the previous steps you really wont need to do much erasing!

Create a new layer under your frogopottomus and name it shadow. Now with a soft black brush, gently draw in a bit of shadow. Easy.

Step 4: Place the image on to a desired background

Merge the 2 animal layers together and then place them on your chosen background!

Your done!!! I added a layer of noise on top of the whole image with an opacity of 10 just to scratch it a bit, but you are pretty much done!

Here is a slight photo manipulation variation.

I hope you enjoyed this photo manipulation tutorial and I hope I explained it easily enough.

It really is easy, like all of the tutorials on this site. The idea is minimum effort with fantastic results!

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out these other tutorials? Click here

Please feel free to comment and share this and keep coming back for more awesome tutorials

Robin Powell

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Game concept art

Has got to be one of the best and absolutely the coolest kind of art around. Being a guy I obviously love video games anyway so when you see a game cover with great game concept art, that will draw me straight over!

When I was younger my dream was to be a game artist, At that time though, concept art and computer art wasn’t around! Photoshop 1 had just come out when I started my third year of studies. (I’m not that old btw, 34, but internet wasn’t about while I was in my teens!)

I studied Art at college and realised one afternoon after having a long conversation with my very poor art teacher (and he was the most amazing artist I have ever seen!) that unless I wanted to be broke forever I had better chose a different career. Because of that conversation and my love of art I went on to become a designer, But my true love still lies in art.

Now I spend a lot of my spare time drawing in Photoshop and enjoying drawing in general. Game art and concept art is mainly used in movies and video games, the artist have to create fantasy worlds and characters that are not only beautiful but also believable! These artists come up with concepts in a number of different ways often awesome before being taken to final renders to create the most stunning art around. This collection of works do just that!

Enjoy this game concept art.

If you enjoyed this you might like the digital art post too! check it out here

Or the interview with Jonathan Kou, a fantastic  game/concept artist. Check it out here

For more great game concept art see these guys

As always, I hope you enjoyed this game concept art post. Feel free to share this with your buddies and comment, And keep coming back for more cool stuff on Creative Phlare.

Robin Powell

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Today, we have the great pleasure of interviewing the fantastic Therese Larson.

First we would like to thank Therese Larsson for taking the time to give us this interview and telling us how she works and what it’s like to live you art.

Please check out Therese Larsson works here

1.when did you become interested in illustration/art ?

Therese Larsson:

Art has always been a huge part of my life, I have drawn since very early childhood. It has almost not even been a conscious choice, I’ve always had an inexplicable urge to pick up that pen and just doodle. I was an unstoppable art force as a child. My parents couldn’t afford enough paper in the end so they went and got scrap paper from their offices. Many of my childhood drawings have black type on the back of the paper. Art was my life, my main driving force. However, I started practising seriously when I reached my early teens. At about 12 or 13 I started reading books about how to become a better artist and it was then my journey to perfect my skills started. It still continues today and will continue for the rest of my life.

2. How did you develop your style and how would you describe it?
Therese Larsson: My style is a reflection of myself and what I enjoy, and always has been. I always paint what my heart desires, and then it doesn’t matter what is trendy or in at the moment. I love cute things and I can be such a girly girl at times, so naturally I enjoy to paint cute things and that is almost always animals or made up creatures. I would call my style a mix between realistic and stylised, while I enjoy to draw characters I prefer to give them realistic fur and such.

3. How do you come up with a concept for a piece?

Therese Larsson: It always starts with a sudden strike of inspiration. I can be out and about, doing something, and then that particular situation can result as a sudden idea in my head that literally pops like a kernel. Usually these ideas are really unrefined, so I sketch them down real quick and then think it through for a while. Is there a different angle to this particular idea? Can I make it more appealing? Does it have a twist? Will it make the audience think? My process for working out ideas is usually very long and tedious, and it takes me months to finish a single piece.

4. Can you describe a bit about your creative process while creating a piece.

Therese Larrson: It always starts with a rough sketch. I try to get an idea out, and it’s always a mental digging process. What do I want to get across? What feeling do I want to give the viewer? These sketches are always super rough and can somewhat resemble the scribblings of a doctor. No one else can read it, but it’s all very clear to me. Once I am happy with the sketch, I put it on top of my other layers and I start blocking in the main colours. Colours and light are extremely important, so I spend a lot of time trying to get it just right. I work with different layer styles, such as multiply, hard and soft light, as well as screen. I always start big and then go smaller, so for example while painting fur I would shade out roughly the fur direction and then later go over it with finer details and bring out the different areas of interest. I take my time while painting, half the time I know what I am doing and the other half I am just experimenting and exploring. It makes it more fun! I never really know what a piece will end up like.

5. How would you describe your daily routine?

Therese Larsson: I wake up at around 8 or 9 AM, get up and get myself some coffee and feed myself and my animals. Then I go through my emails and maybe check some blogs I follow. I work mainly as an illustrator for advertising so I do a lot of storyboards and sketches for TV and print. After my work day is finished around 6 PM, I either take some time to work on personal projects or I go outside to see friends. I also do a lot of exercise such a running, gym, and sport climbing.

6. What five things do you believe are really important for every illustrator.

Therese Larsson: The most important quality and what has helped me through all my artistic struggles, is persistence. I cannot stress this enough! You will not evolve if you do not experience hardships and persist through them, and that you will be faced with many obstacles as an illustrator. It is a tough and competetive business. So practise your skills and never give up!
Be humble. If you are humble toward others and yourself, good karma will come your way. Be helpful to others and you will receive help yourself. So share that arty love!
Learn the basics and practise classical painting. There is a lot to learn from the old masters, when it comes to light and composition for example. And those are skills you will need, despite working with more modern subjects.
Be inventive! Try to think of interesting ideas, it’s not always just about a pretty painting. A painting that makes people feel something will have a greater impact on people.
Do what you love, and the praise will follow. If you’re doing something that is trendy, but not something you love doing, you should rethink your choice because that will show in what you create. Passion is a huge boost for creativity, so if you love painting bicycles then you can be the best bicycle painter around. And people will love you for it.

7. Do you have any advice anyone new who starting out on this kind of business.

Therese Larsson: Be prepared for tough economical struggles in the beginning. It took me 2-3 years before the money actually started coming in such a way that I could make a living off of it. You should also be prepared to work extra hard in the beginning to prove yourself, as a new illustrator people don’t know what you can and cannot do. But like I said earlier, persistence is what will get you to your goal. It will get easier, I promise. This is a business that will challenge you the hardest in the beginning.

That’s it for this interview, we would just like to say thank you again to Therese Larsson again. We love your illustations and keep up the fantastic work!

If you enjoyed this interview with Therese Larsson, Please see more interviews here

Please feel free to share this and comment, and as always, keep coming back for more cool articles and inspiration at Creative Phlare!

Robin Powell

The post Therese Larsson: an interview with an awesome illustrator appeared first on creative-phlare, design tutorials, photoshop tutorials, daily inspiration.

Today Creative Phlare has had the honour of doing an interview with Jonathan Kuo

First we would just like to say thank you to Jonathan Kuo for taking the time to do this interview.

You can see his works here:

www.wix.com/ovius-mon/jonathankuo

www.jonnadon.blogspot.com

Working and creating at Rebel entertainment and an impressive list of previous experiences and degree’s under his belt, Jonathan Kuo is an artist to be inspired by!

Having A look at Jonathan Jonathan Kuo’s website or facebook photos you can see straight away this man know his stuff (and loves dinosaurs! Don’t all guys?). At Creative-phlare we are always on the look out for things that inspire and just looking at Jonathan’s office doodles we’re ready to get our sketch pads and pencils out and draw! Talented in all aspects of concept art and game art it looks like there’s not much this man can’t do!

Anyway, here is our interview with Jonathan.

1.When did you become interested in illustration/art ?

Jonathan Kuo: As long as I can remember my grandmother was an artist and both of my parents are artists so I started at a young age.

2. How did you develop your style and how would you describe it?

Jonathan Kuo: I don’t really feel that I have a style I always focus on the fundamentals like basic shape designs, light and color theory, perspective, line of action, line rhythm, animal and human anatomy. the most important thing is not style but fundamentals over time your style will come out.

An example is like building a cake, you must have a good base before you put on the icing, your style and rendering is basically the icing and if the base of your cake looks like crap your icing is useless

one of my mentor also told me this once
“no matter how much you polish a turd it’s still a turd”

3. How do you come up with a concept for a piece?

Jonathan Kuo: I do a lot of research on subjects that I like and over time you start building a library in your head and that makes it easier to come up ideas.

I start with mostly fast scribal sketches and rough shapes and it’s also easier to come up with concepts when you get your fundamentals down.

4. Can you describe a bit about your creative process while creating a piece.

Jonathan Kou: first I sketch my ideas most of time it’s very rough, then I take it to a cleaner sketch and if it’s a subject that I have a lot of knowledge on I’ll start painting without any research but, if I don’t I’ll take some time and do some research before I start painting

5. How would you describe your daily routine?

Jonathan Kou: Before I start working I do sketch warm-ups like basic shapes rough sketch ideas, then rest of the day is pumping out designs for up and coming games and in my free time I either work on my personal projects or practice my craft, pretty much living the artist life.

6. What five things do you believe are really important for every illustrator.

Jonathan Kou: I only have 2 things,
1st fundamentals! fundamentals is the key to every good design!!!
2nd have fun

7. Do you have any advice anyone new who starting out on this kind of business.

Jonathan Kou:  Master the fundamentals !!! you could never get enough of fundamentals even now I still practice them

- In this business it’s a small and tight group everyone knows almost everyone so your reputation travels fast, make sure everything you do is the best and have a good work ethics.

- Also in this business there is no room for self-doubt so get that out of you head and take pride in what you do

So that’s it for this interview. We hope you enjoyed this article and please make sure you follow Jonathan on his website and  his blogs. A true inspiration!

Thank you again for the Interview Jon and keep up the fantastic work!

Read more Creative-Phlare interviews here

Please feel free to share this and comment, and as always, keep coming back for more cool articles and inspiration at Creative-Phlare!

Robin Powell

The post Jonathan Kuo: Interview with a Game Artist/Concept artist appeared first on creative-phlare, design tutorials, photoshop tutorials, daily inspiration.