DA! Desktop Anime Design Blog

The state of the site

2009-06-10T21:53:00.001-07:00

So obviously I haven't been making any walls lately. I've been busy with work, and a whole lot of it. Toolbar, Chrome, and Docs have all had numerous launches, and I've also been working on a variety of other projects. I have also recently bought a Nintendo DSi and have been rediscovering my love for SNES RPGs, as well as a love for BBC America programming. I haven't even turned on my desktop computer in several months, doing all my stuff on my work laptop.

I'd like to continuing making wallpapers, but right now I don't feel a whole lot of motivation. Maybe I'll find some inspiration when...

I move to Japan!

I will be working from Japan for a year starting in August, helping out our team in Tokyo. This is a big change and I'm really excited, and also kind of freaking out over all the stuff I need to wrap up before I do so. Definitely not going to have anything out before then. Maybe afterwards. Time will tell.

No wallpaper for February

2009-02-24T16:09:00.001-08:00

Unless I manage to either a) freeze time or b) steal a TARDIS, there's not going to be a wallpaper for February.
This is what's been keeping me busy all month.
I may just manage to squeak out a new iGoogle theme, but February is a short month...

About the iGoogle Papercuts themes

2009-02-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

I have been fielding an increasing number of emails lately about the designs behind my iGoogle Papercuts themes. Most of these folks are interested in somehow acquiring the designs for their own uses, whether as prints or for art projects. I figured I'd write this post now, so I can just direct future emails to it.
All of the designs (floral and animal) are traced from the art resource book, Chinese Folk Designs, compiled by WM Hawley and put out by Dover Publications (although it looks like it may have been published by others as well.) The book contains some 300 different designs, including many more floral and animal designs as well as some Chinese characters (hanzi), landscapes and buildings, and even some of the Eight Immortals and other important religious figures. They're white designs on a solid background, making them easy to manipulate via computer, copier, or old-fashioned tracing paper.
If you would like to use these designs, I would highly recommend finding this book at your library or book store. I got mine from a used book sale and it has proven to be a valuable investment.
Because these designs are not my original designs but merely taken from this book, I cannot (and will not) provide posters, cards, or other prints for sale. In the future, I would love to create my own set of papercut designs inspired by these classics but, alas, that is a project for another day.

1 new wallpaper (Okami - Zodiac: Ox)

2009-01-21T20:28:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Okami - Zodiac: Ox (Ukiyo-e)

I've been wanting to make a series of Okami walls that features each of the Zodiac animals for a while now, and what better time to launch this than at the beginning of the Year of the Ox... [more]

Internet Popular

2009-01-06T10:14:00.000-08:00

I'm #5 on iGoogle's hottest themes listing today! I don't think the first two count, either, as they're the first two for all listings.
I wonder how long this will last...

Travelogue series planning

2009-01-03T12:20:00.000-08:00

I recently finished the first in what I want to be a series of Art Deco-styled travel posters. Here's a list of other walls that I'm thinking of for the series.
In progress
Macross: Shot of a valkyrie flying through the sky, maybe over a generic cityscape.
Kino no Tabi: "The Empty Country". Vista of the Empty Country (abandoned buildings). Scan from Novel 8.
Allison: "Majestic Littony River". Vista of the Littony River (important in novel 1 of Allison) with an airplane (w/Allison and Will) flying over.
Thinking about it
Last Exile: Vanship. Over a cityscape? Possibly with the Silvanus.
Big O: Paradigm cityscape, with Big O in the background.
Gankutsuou: Paris spaceport, with spaceships taking off, rest of Paris in background.
The Cat Returns: Kingdom of Cats vista, focused on the tower.
Escaflowne: A pair of matching but contrasting posters, perfect for dualscreen setups. Fanelia vista, with Escaflowne in background. Zaibach vista, with Guymelefs in background.
Cowboy Bebop: A vista of one of the rings that is used for interplanetary travel, with Bebop, Swordfish and/or Redhawk.
Ghost in the Shell: Tachikoma, in a cyberscape?
Katamari Damacy: Vista of a city getting pwned by a katamari
Utena: Vista of the school (as seen in the movie with its sweeping/moving parts)

Hmm, got a lot of work there...

1 new wallpaper (Uchuu no Stellvia - Travelogue 01: Your road to the stars)

2008-12-30T21:35:00.000-08:00

3 wallpapers in one month? Must be the holidays!

1 new wallpaper:
Uchuu no Stellvia - Travelogue 01: Your road to the stars (Art Deco)

One in what I hope to be a series of Art Deco styled travel posters, encouraging you to visit the farthest reaches of the anime world, because Art Deco has the classiest-looking travel posters, and I love the style so. First up, why not take a voyage to Foundation II: Stellvia, your road to the stars? [more]

I guess I am giving up on the whole walltip for every wall thing. Maybe I'll just post random walltips? Later?

1 new wallpaper (Terra e - Peace on Earth)

2008-12-21T00:08:00.001-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Terra e - Peace on Earth (Celestial)

Happy Holidays (2008) everyone! Instead of a standard snow-laden wallpaper with anime characters in Santa hats, I thought I'd do something a little different - a standard Holiday message of peace and hope for the world. I must admit I have no idea what this series, Terra E, is about...[more]

Still no walltips. Maybe later.

1 new wallpaper (The Big O - Obey Giant [Robot])

2008-12-15T00:45:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper (finally!):
The Big O - Obey Giant [Robot] (Minimalistic)

Perhaps one of the most iconic works from the Obama campaign is Shepard Fairey's "Progress" (later "Hope") poster. In homage to both Obama and Fairey, I wanted to make an anime version. The simple use of colors reminded me of the Big O soundtrack art. And hey, it's a different Big "O"... [more]

P.S. I made this wall in about 2 hours... so I'll have to think of a relavant walltip later.

No wallpaper for November

2008-11-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

I won't be able to finish a wallpaper for November, mostly because I'm housesitting at my parents and don't have access to my desktop where all my files and art programs are stored. My dad does have Photoshop, but the walls I'm working on include at least some vector component, so they'll have to wait.
In the meantime, I'm working on a bunch of iGoogle themes. I just finished a snowflake one, and I'm going to create a Japanese paper pattern theme to complement the Chinese papercut theme I already have up. I'm also in the planning stages for a separate site for my themes, since they're all just using a wiki page on Google Code which is very plain.
I'm hoping that Gmail themes will be opened to the public with an API similar to that for iGoogle, because I'd love to make themes for Gmail as well. I've already made a few themes internally (a port of the Tetris theme, a green floral variant of papercuts, and a glossy theme like the DA! v10 layout) and I'd love to make these available to the public.

New iGoogle Skin coming soon - Snowflakes

2008-11-21T17:06:00.000-08:00

I've created a new iGoogle skin - wintery blue snowflakes. You can see a preview in the iGoogle sandbox. It's submitted to both the iGoogle and inThemes directories, so it should be available publicly in a week or so.
I made this snowflake graphic for a set of Google Docs holiday templates and figured, why not also create an iGoogle skin with them?

EDIT: 11/22/2008
This theme is now available in the inThemes directory.

EDIT: 11/25/2008
This theme is now available in the iGoogle directory.

Walltip: "Let Sleeping Wolves Lie" Walkthrough

2008-10-21T23:38:00.000-07:00

Today's walltip is a quick walkthrough of "Let Sleeping Wolves Lie".
Step 1: Vector trace
This is a pretty straight forward step. You go into a vector program and you trace your images. I started with Amaterasu of course, and then built the rest of the scene around her. I traced varying elements of the waterfall image and placed them in appropriate places. By tracing, I can make sure all the elements match and are consistent with each other. You'd never know there was supposed to be a shrine in the image now!

Step 2: Mix with original image to get colors
A vector can't capture everything about an image. In this case, there was a lot of great texture in the rock face and island that would not have been feasible to trace, so I matched up those elements of the waterfall image to the trace. I also added some general texture and did a color tint towards yellow, since in the end I want the image to have an aged feeling.

Step 3: Blend colors
A lot of the colors have sharp transitions (from the vector trace) or are messy (aligning the waterfall image with the vector) so I went and used the blender brush in Painter to meld things together. This is prepwork for the watercolor clone stage, as we'll want more gradual color transitions in the watercolor.

Step 4: Watercolor clone
The image was repainted with Painter's watercolor brush. The outlines are on a separate layer so they remain nice and crisp. There's not much to this step but a lot of work, since I limited myself to a max brush size of 10px (it takes a long time to cover 3840x2880 worth of canvas!) The key to the watercolor is to match the direction of the brush strokes with the color transitions/gradations. At this point I also added in the flowers of the island that I blended out in the previous step.

Step 5: Texture and color corrections
I have a bunch of paper textures in Photoshop from old wallpapers, so I just reused them here. Adding the texture increases the yellow tint (since I am basically adding yellow-colored texture) and this made the water and sky too green, so I did some quick color correction to make them blueish again.

And there you have it. 5 easy steps to a great wall... or is it?

1 new wallpaper (Okami - Let Sleeping Wolves Lie)

2008-10-21T23:37:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Okami - Let Sleeping Wolves Lie (Ukiyo-e)

It's been a while, but I'm still here and walling... As you can see, I still love Okami artwork. The image of a napping Amaterasu was too sweet to pass up. She looks so relaxed and cozy... [more]

Walltip: Image databases

2008-06-23T22:31:00.000-07:00

Today's walltip is really just that, a tip. One of the things I used in making Thank you for smoking was floral vector patterns. I already had these patterns - I've used them in the past for a number of other projects. They're really nice -- I traced them out of Chinese Folk Designs (Dover Publications) and have found myself going back to them again and again. Because of that, I put all the different floral patterns into a single file. There's one for Illustrator, which I exported to Photoshop so I can just drag any particular floral pattern I want into any file I'm working with.
Don't forget to name the different layers in your Photoshop file -- you'll want to be able grab a specific image quickly, and trying to figure out which Layer X you want by the tiny layers palette thumbnail is not a fun prospect. In Illustrator, I just lay all the patterns side by side, but in Photoshop each image is its own shape layer, so I can scale them losslessly in Photoshop.
Here are some screenshots of my papercuts files in Photoshop and Illustrator.

1 new wallpaper (Lily Hoshino - Thank you for smoking)

2008-06-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Artist: Lily Hoshino - Thank you for smoking (Pop Art)

I am currently working through a backlog of bishounen walls, because dammit, we girls need more bishounen to decorate our computers with. Why should guys get all the skimpily-clad eye candy? Except this isn't a skimpily-clad bishounen. But the smoking. That's sexy, isn't it? [more]

Monster Walltip: Quick Grunge Textures

2008-05-30T23:31:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping to start up a new series in this blog called Walltips. They'll be short posts related to any walls I add. I plan for them to range from topics such as techniques used in the walls to discussion of layouts, colors, in-progress screenshots, decompositions, and whatever else I feel like rambling on about. So in today's inaugural Walltip from the wallpaper Monster, quick and easy grunge textures!

This is a simple technique to grungify a layer or layer grouping. It basically knocks a bunch of holes in the layer so that other layers can peep through. It uses layer masking and some basic Photoshop filters, and has plenty of room for experimentation.

1. First off, on the layer (or layer group) you're interested in grungifying, you'll need to add a layer mask (not a vector mask, just a straight up layer mask.)
2. Add noise to the layer mask with the Noise filter. Crank it up to the max (400% in Photoshop 7) and make sure that you're using a Gaussian pattern and that the noise is Monochrome.
3. Blur the layer mask with the Gaussian Blur filter. The amount of blur you use will determine how patchy the grunge texture is as well as the size and distribution of the patches. Smaller blurs will result in speckled grunge. You probably don't want anything about 5px.
4. Adjust the layer's levels from the Image>Adjustments menu. You should see a hill figure, and 3 triangular sliders underneath. You'll want to concentrate all three sliders near each other, as this will create sharper edges on your grunge. If you concentrate the sliders near the left of the hill, you'll get sparse patches; if around the right of the hill you'll get dense patches. Adjust as you see fit.
5. Add some randomness to your grunge by using various Photoshop filters on the layer mask. You'll want filters that work well on black/white layers. Some good filters to start out with include most of the Brush Strokes filters, some of the Texture filters and some of the Sketch filters. Play around with their settings until you get something you like. You can apply multiple filters or none at all.
6. You're done!
Screenshots of me applying grunge to a text layer (which ultimately did not make it into the final wall) based on the steps above, with areas of interest highlighted:

1 new wallpaper (Full Metal Alchemist - Monster)

2008-05-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Full Metal Alchemist - Monster (Pop Art)

So I figured I'd celebrate DA!'s 8th birthday with a bishounen wall, and I liked the uber-angsty pose of Edward in this scan and the fact you couldn't see his face. Plus: BELLYBUTTON. Anyway, Ellegarden's alternative stylings are totally super emo-factor and perfect for the wall, so I chose the song "Monster" as the theme... [more]

Happy 8th Birthday, DA!

2008-05-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

DA! turns 8 years old today. It's rather a scary thought that I've had this site around for that long. It started when I was just entering college, and now I've already got a Masters degree and have been at my job at Google for over two years. Just crazy.
Anyway, as with previous birthdays, I celebrate by giving DA! a new layout. This year, I decided to go extremely over-the-top with Web 2.0 sensibilities (or insensibilities depending on your views.) This means shiny chrome, lots of soft gradients, and oodles of reflections everywhere. I was originally going to keep the rotating headers, but never found any other images that seemed to fit the header as well as the Kino no Tabi image that currently graces the top. I figured the slick 2.0-style UI was a nice about-face from the previous Zen, Chinese classical layout, of which I remain quite fond of (I almost wanted to keep it for another year, but decided that change was still good.)
I removed the resource section, since I hadn't updated it since two versions ago, and wasn't really planning to ever do so. I replaced it with a local syndication of this blog, mostly because one of the things I've learned to do at work is syndicate Blogger feeds in all sorts of static HTML files. I've always wanted to integrate the blog more into the look and feel of the website, and with Blogger feeds this is really easy. Of course you can still view the blog on Blog*Spot if you feel so inclined. This ensures that all sections of the site remain fresh and interesting.
Well, I'm off to another day at Fanime con. Hopefully I'll finish my next wall in a few days, but as you can see, I was a bit busy with this redesign.

DA! v10

2008-04-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

April is turning out to be a busy month for DA! -- 3 walls and an iGoogle skin... and I'm starting to work on the layout for DA! v10 for DA!'s 8th birthday next month. I'm going all Web 2.0-out for this layout -- lots of soft gradients and reflections everywhere. It'll be quite a change from the classical feel of the current layout, that's for sure.

1 new wallpaper (Keroro Gunsou - Keroro Laundry Service)

2008-04-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Keroro Gunsou - Keroro Laundry Service (Scenic)

My entry for Which?Waller Round 5: Leap Year. The scan amused me, so I traced Keroro off of it. I was lazy and didn't want to do a full background so I traced a bit of the background, recycled some clouds from my RxJ OMGPONIES!11 wall, and encircled everything to look like a sort of badge... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Katamari Damacy - This is how we bowl)

2008-04-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Katamari Damacy - This is how we bowl (Minimalistic)

I originally drew this katamari for work... It reminded me of another illustration I did that involved bowling for Lava Lamps. Except that bowling with a katamari would result in some... interesting outcomes... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Jigoku Shoujo - Hell Flowers)

2008-04-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Jigoku Shoujo - Hell Flowers (Minimalistic)

The inspiration for the setup of this wallpaper came from oPtion$, the Fake Steve Jobs book about the Apple back-dating options scandal. In one of the first chapters, (fake) Steve describes his Ultimate Frisbee uniform: "black shorts, black socks, black shoes, and a black mock turtleneck T-shirt with a tiny black Apple logo silk-screened on the shirt, a shade darker than the shirt itself, so that you can barely see it. In other words, classy." I liked the "black on black" concept...[more]

Tetris iGoogle theme live!

2008-04-09T12:39:00.000-07:00

After several weeks of waiting, the Tetris theme has been added to the iGoogle directory!
Preview/add to iGoogle
I've also added individual versions of the Papercuts theme in case you prefer a specific color/animal theme -- hopefully that will be live in a week or so.

1 new wallpaper (Okami - Conflagration)

2008-03-30T17:29:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Okami - Conflagration (Ukiyo-e)

I liked the image of Amaterasu leaping towards something, so I traced that. Then I needed for her to be leaping at something, so I found a neat scan of a warrior (Akakabuto), and traced that. Since the Akakabuto had the kanji for fire on its helmet I then found a third scan with some smoky spiraling fire and traced that... [more]

Tetris iGoogle Theme

2008-03-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest theme in development. I hope to finish it this weekend. As my coworker pointed out, it's too bad you can't embed sound in a theme and get it to play the Tetris theme (not that I advocate embedded sound in webpages, but it would be kinda cool as an opt-in feature for this one.)
Also, LOL!