Layer Tennis

Portion of image from http://layertennis.com/100219/04.php

This week's highlight is called Layer Tennis.

The guys at Layer Tennis explain that at Layer Tennis, "Two competitors swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a "volley" and then we post that to the site live. The players may be designers, animators, illustrators or pretty much anything else, and they can use any tool or application they like. The match progresses volley by volley. A third participant, a writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action as it happens. The match lasts for ten volleys and when it's complete, opinioned Season Ticket Holders sound off and we declare a winner."

I like Layer Tennis because you can get ideas off of what the other artist do. You can see what other artists are doing and learn from what good they are producing. If you're getting pretty good at Adobe CS4 and you think you have the chops, you can request to play a match through Twitter.

The next match will be on April 9th. They usually happen every Friday afternoon. If you go before hand, you can take a look at the previous matches. Go on, check it out.

CS4 Tutorials

It's been a few weeks since I've posted, so I figured I'd post three great links. If you are like how I was, and interested in any programs in the Adobe Creative Suite, but just don't know how to use them, these links will be a fabulous help: Layers Magazine, adobe.com, and Creative Cow.

If you're completely new to the programs (like Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, AfterEffects, Premier, etc), the tutorials on adobe.com will be your best choice. It will go step by step through the different tools and applications within each program. It will be pretty basic, and you'll just learn enough to be comfortable. But after you know the basics and you want to learn to do some really cool effects, Layers Magazine and Creative Cow are right up your alley.

Through Layers Magazine and Creative Cow, you can learn more about meshes, texturizing text, and animating paint. My personal favorite is Layers because they teach you cool effects you can do when you use multiple programs at once. Once you learn some of the principles, you can make your designs more creative because of the different choices you have.