Tag Archives: Gimp

Animated Banners and Buttons

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Once I am over my bout of ‘Man-Flu’ which is making my voice a bit croaky, I will be making a little tutorial on producing animated banners and buttons using my old friend GIMP.

If you are not sure of what these are, below you will see an example of something that I made tonight for one of my groups on deviantArt using one of the images that can be found in the clip art gallery on this blog.

dA-Animal-Lovers

An avatar button made for the dA-Animal-Lovers group on deviantArt

I am hoping that this might inspire some more of you to start using FOSS in the near future. The link to download the program can be found in the footer of this page.

Steve Allen

July 5, 2012

Avatar of Steve Allen

You may have been wondering why I have not been making the usual frequency of posts on this blog over the last few days and thought that I had taken another well deserved holiday. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as I have been adding more stuff to our galleries instead, as I figured that it was time that they saw a bit more life!

The new additions are as follows:-

  1. More national flags in our clipart gallery for you to use.
  2. More fonts in our font gallery from which you can choose (all free fonts and can be found on the web).
  3. A new art exhibition from one of my friends on deviantArt.

I now intend to add a few more bits of clip art into our plants and object galleries, but would still appreciate any submissions from readers who have used my tutorials.

Very soon I am expecting a posting from a guest contributor about the Aberdeen Kettlebells competition. Hopefully this might inspire some more of you to contribute to the blog?

MonkeyHeader

Tripitaka has a quest for you!

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When I set up this blog at the end of January, one of the objectives that I set myself was to make it into a library of clip art and photoclips to help up-and-coming artists. I made a few tutorials on producing photoclips using the free software GIMP, and hoped for a few contributions from readers. Unfortunately, this has not yet happened, so I have decided to start producing a few interesting images of my own in the hope that members might join me.

Monkey

A carved version of 70′s cult classic Monkey.

Last night I spent an hour or so extracting a wooden carving of one of my favourite TV characters ‘Monkey’ (seen above), who has now been submitted to our photoclip library for your use. If anyone would like to contribute to this gallery, just let me know and please remember that you will have to use a CC-BY-SA license on your work (or make it CC0 – Public Domain), so that it can legally be used as intended. If you are interested in CC licensing for your own work, I recommend that you click on the link at the bottom of this page and see how it can help you.

As we have now started making a weekly puzzle, I will take this opportunity to add another ‘poser’ to our members:-

What were the names of Monkey’s other two companions on his quest?

Once again, there are no prizes for this. I thought that it might be a bit of fun for some of you that grew up in the 1970′s and watched badly-dubbed Japanese TV programs!!

Please try and contribute to our galleries. Your work will be accepted regardless of quality (within reason).

Aurora Borealis

Have you visited our Art Gallery yet?

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One (of many) things in life that really annoys me is hearing people say that they have nothing to do. I, for one, could fill up another 24 hours added on to each day and still find that I am pushed for time.

If you really are at a loose end, why not take up some form of graphic art? There is so much free software available today (see links for downloads on the footer of this page), from which even individuals who consider that they can’t draw to save their lives, are able to produce images that are both appealing and interesting. Continue reading →

Ubuntu Wallpaper

Good Riddance April – May is here!

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I, for one, am glad to see the back of April 2012. Not only did we see the wettest month for some considerable time in many parts of the country, but those of you who know me personally, will know that I also had a major family tragedy with which to contend. I am therefore looking to May to help make amends for a truly miserable month.

There were a few things, however, that came out of April that are worthy of note. The first being the launch of Ubuntu 12.04 which, I believe, has managed to convince one of my friends of 50 years to admit that Linux might be a good thing! I have also learned how to make (albeit somewhat dodgy) tutorials for Gimp and Inkscape, which I have posted earlier on this blog. For this reason, I took a bit of time off tonight to produce an Ubuntu wallpaper in celebration. I hope that this will inspire some of our readers to give Inkscape a go so that we can start a small gallery of our work. I offer this as my ‘opener’ for, I hope, many more contributions of this type:-

Ubuntu Wallpaper

Ubuntu Wallpaper

All the techniques used to produce this 1600 x 900 pixel wallpaper have been covered by my tutorials on this blog so, theoretically, you can all produce something similar (or, hopefully better) by giving my tutorials a go.

We have a lot lined up for our readers in May, including:-

  • Rock Challenge stuff from Cockermouth School ( and others),
  • More information on the Glasgow Kettlebells event,
  • Results from our ‘sponsored’ team at the Crimond Stock Car races,
  • Information on the Aberdeen Ice Hockey scene,
  • More competitions in conjunction with Waves Radio,
  • More of ‘Billy’s Bargains’ (hopefully as good as the pen drives from last month),
  • Tutorials from yours truly on Gimp use,
  • Postcards from around the world (I am going on holiday),
  • Much more of our usual features.

If anyone else would like to help with contributions, please make yourself known to us, as we would like to keep this blog lively and relevant to our readers’ interests.

I am also waiting for contributions coming in for inclusion in our ‘user clip art galleries’. All contributions, no matter what their quality, would be gratefully received and would help to contribute to the community nature of this blog.

A last appeal to all of our readers in North East Scotland to help support our radio show on Fridays by entering our prize competitions. We intend to be offering some ‘Ping’ polo shirts for our “Where’s Waves?’ contest this week, so be sure to tune in to 101.2 FM at 6 o’clock on Friday!!

Nouveau Tabletop

Coming soon…

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Just over a week ago, I gave readers of this blog a list of things to come in the near future. If you refer to this list and compare with what we have posted during the ensuing period, I’m sure that you will agree that we have very nearly completed ‘our manifesto’. In light of the aforesaid, I am producing this by way of an update to give you a taste of what is to come on this blog over the next couple of weeks.

  1. Rock Challenge news from several schools in England and an update from Fraserburgh and Westhill as they prepare for the Dundee Scottish regional finals.
  2. News about our support for 3 cancer charities, in Fraserburgh, Cockermouth and (now) Nottingham.
  3. Tutorials on using the Inkscape vector graphics program to produce ‘Art Nouveau’ style borders and motifs.
  4. More tutorials on using Gimp to produce elementary photomanipulations.
  5. Pictures and news about one of our stock car racing customers.
  6. More ‘Special Offers’ from Billy.
  7. More clip art, photoclips, fonts, flags, borders and more.
  8. Another Caption Contest, this time ‘just for fun’.
  9. Results of the March competition, along with the winning entries.
  10. More details about the April contest (the lottery).
  11. Anything else that crops up during everyday life at PomPrint Designs (hopefully more local photographs if the weather holds).

In support of items 3 and 4 (above) I have put together a piece of artwork to illustrate some of the techniques that I intend to cover in the next few tutorials.

Nouveau Tabletop

Nouveau Tabletop - click to enlarge

Here you can see that I have made up a simple curvy motif and used it to make a border and a set of mathematically-inspired ‘subjects’. I have also included the use of textures and gradient fills (on the table top) and the superimposing of one of our photoclips (a lily in this case, to give an eastern feel), complete with shadow.

Although I have had a little bit of feedback about my GIMP tutorials, mainly about the way they were written and presented, I have yet to hear from anyone who has used them successfully. Please contribute if you can!! This site is specifically designed for all its members to share ideas and resources.

Creative Commons Licence
This work by PomPrint Designs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.pomprint.co.uk.

Tutorial – Creating your own Photo Clip Art – Part 4 (Finishing off)

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This article is part 4 in a tutorial. It is recommended that you read the first three parts first.

So far we have made a roughly cut-out version of our daffodil flower floating on a transparent background. If you zoom in to the edges of the petals, what I mean by rough-cut becomes all too apparent – this mosaic like effect, with occasional bits of background and a few bits of petal missing can now be ‘healed’ by working on the transparency mask that we set up in the last part of this tutorial. Continue reading →