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I recently purchased a copy of Pixelmator and I’ve been really impressed with it.  Graphic design is one area of my skill set that I’m working on improving.  Every night, I have been running through the tutorials listed at Pixelmator’s Learn section.

I’m a big Daredevil fan, so I decided to use this Daredevil image as a base and create a wallpaper out of it.  I mostly played around with different layers and tried to create a decent looking Daredevil wallpaper.

Let me know what you think and if you want the full size version, feel free to download the Daredevil wallpaper here.

For years now, I’ve wanted to sit down and work with Adobe Illustrator.  I’ve always been proficient in Adobe Photoshop, but I wanted to learn to create my own graphics instead of just modifying existing images.  Recently, I finally sat down and took the time to learn Adobe Illustrator.

I started this learning process months ago in a day long Level 1 training class.  I was a bit apprehensive when I walked into the class and saw I was the only one signed up.  In the end, it was an advantage since we were able to work through Level 1 & Level 2 materials during the time period.

Last week, I finally decided to sit down on my own and work within Adobe Illustrator.  I found a handful of excellent tutorials that I used to learn more techniques inside the program.  Below are some of the final products and links to the tutorials.

Flashdrive

Tutorial: How to Create a Realistic Pendrive in Adobe Illustrator

Gearbox

Tutorial: How to Create a Gearbox Settings Icon Using Simple Shapes

Compass

Tutorial: How to Create a Golden, Vector Compass in Illustrator

Overall, I’m really impressed with Adobe Illustrator and the flexibility of vector graphics.  This is definitely the Adobe Suite application I’m going to spend the most time mastering.  It’s flexible enough to create everything from wireframes to mockups to site logos and graphics.  Plus, the ability to resize vector images without any loss of quality makes the final graphics incredibly flexible.

Well, it appears that people liked the original Iconolike.   I created one that should reflect what I’ve been up to in the past 30 days or so.  This one is smaller than the original, so future Iconolikes will probably remain 16 images (instead of 25).  I’ll try to create a new one every month, but I also might do one based around a particular topic (ie. Video Game Iconolike).

Now, see if you can guess what each thumbnail in the March iconolike represents.  Post your guesses in the comments.

So, this is partially inspired by the way flickr displays thumbnails.  I decided I’d take images of things that I like, and create small 72×72 pixel images.  I decided to combine 25 of them in random order into one image.  I’m dubbing it an “iconolike”.  Anyways, this is my first attempt.   I might expand on it, or do one every month or so, so people can get a quick snapshot into what I’m into.  This one is very general.

Note: During this process, I realized I need a real image editor at home.