patterns
I've been interested in patterns for a long time. Whenever I would try to create one, I wouldn't be happy with it.
But I tried again today and I was very happy with it indeed. Here's the basic process.
I started out drawing a vector shape in illustrator:
Then I repeated it three times to make four, rotated around each other.
I tried various methods of repating it in Illustrator using the bastardized step-and-repeat they have called Transform>Move>Transform Again. What I decided on was a sort of brick pattern:
So I did this and exported the file to photoshop, since I knew I would be making a pixelated web-page style pattern. Here's the hard part - trying to figure out how it repeats.
I know it sounds stupid, since I've already repeated it, I should know. But that was when it wasn't rectangular. When you're talking about bitmapped images, everything has to tessellate around a rectangle. So I opened up the file in photoshop and cropped it various ways and using the bullshit define pattern>new document>fill tool I would test how it worked. Eventually it just clicked and I saw it.
So I cropped it, shrunk it down, and added a few pixels here and there. I changed the color and contrast a bit, but that's the basic process. Here's what it looks like tiled:
And here's the repeating tile:
If you want to use it for anything but don't like the color, just take it into photoshop, image>adjust>desaturate and then image>adjust>hue/saturation. Be sure to click on the colorize checkbox. I wouldn't mess with the lightness, but you can slide the hue around and get pretty much whatever you want.
It's a far cry from Squidfingers, but I'm relatively pleased with the result, considering that it was almost completely random.
But I tried again today and I was very happy with it indeed. Here's the basic process.
I started out drawing a vector shape in illustrator:
Then I repeated it three times to make four, rotated around each other.
I tried various methods of repating it in Illustrator using the bastardized step-and-repeat they have called Transform>Move>Transform Again. What I decided on was a sort of brick pattern:
So I did this and exported the file to photoshop, since I knew I would be making a pixelated web-page style pattern. Here's the hard part - trying to figure out how it repeats.
I know it sounds stupid, since I've already repeated it, I should know. But that was when it wasn't rectangular. When you're talking about bitmapped images, everything has to tessellate around a rectangle. So I opened up the file in photoshop and cropped it various ways and using the bullshit define pattern>new document>fill tool I would test how it worked. Eventually it just clicked and I saw it.
So I cropped it, shrunk it down, and added a few pixels here and there. I changed the color and contrast a bit, but that's the basic process. Here's what it looks like tiled:
And here's the repeating tile:
If you want to use it for anything but don't like the color, just take it into photoshop, image>adjust>desaturate and then image>adjust>hue/saturation. Be sure to click on the colorize checkbox. I wouldn't mess with the lightness, but you can slide the hue around and get pretty much whatever you want.
It's a far cry from Squidfingers, but I'm relatively pleased with the result, considering that it was almost completely random.