Twin Dragon Productions Blog

Entry: June 12, 2008

2008-06-12T15:24:15Z

Things have been going as usual with my freelance work and I've made several updates to the website including adding the downloads section where I'll show off and allow people to download some of my work in full print quality. Those things can be used freely as long as the copyright stays in tact.

I've also posted links to all my networking profiles across the web. You'll notice on the right side of the site there are icons for Myspace, Linkedin, Facebook, NextCat, and IndieClub. I've also posted a link to my gallery on DeviantART on the left side of the site.

I finally got to complete my latest website, http://www.c21ccre.com/. It's fairly simple but you get what you pay for. I did some searching through other Century 21 affiliate sites and none of the ones I found even come close to the I did here. That makes me feel a lot better about putting something like this together.

I've got a few other potential clients I'm working on locking down. It's kind of hard during these hard economical times and I doubt it's going to get any better. Even with my extremely low pricing jobs are getting scarce. Being a freelancer you kind of hope the work will speak for itself and just draw in the clients, of course you have to get out there and promote the hell out of things, but it's just not working anymore.

I've gotten a lot more into the photography thing. It's going pretty well, my work was featured in another article on DeviantART, and I have a couple models lined up to do head-shots and just random modeling shoots. This will be more for learning than anything and I'm not even close to being confident enough to sell any of my work. Besides, most of it is of my daughter and I'd prefer not to have some stranger hanging prints of my kid in their home.

Part of the download section as I pointed out earlier will be for people to freely take some of my work and use it or just collect it. I've only made up a few desktop wallpapers at this point but I'm hoping I get more shots that will warrant print type work or even posting up some of my posters.

That's all for now. I'll just keep updating as I go. Tutorials have all but been ignored because I'm busy with filmmaking work and promotion of some of my other stuff like the Mid-Ohio Comic Con and my work with Columbus IndieClub. I'm in the midst of pre-production on my new horror/thriller A Thousand Words: Revelation and have been busy pulling in interviews so that's been fun. Once those are put out there publicly by the interviewer I'll post links.

Featured Photography

2008-06-12T15:22:06Z

I've been taking a lot of photos lately, more specifically since I got my new photography equipment. I actually have about 8gigs of photos on my computer now from just February on. That's already more than I've taken in any two or three years since 2000 when I first began messing around with photography.

Though I've been doing this for a couple years I still consider myself a beginner since I really don't know the ins and outs of what it takes to make a good photo. However, I seem to have a natural talent for it. Not that I am bragging because I'm not, it's just that it seems like it's not that hard to come up with really good shots that even impress me . Sometimes I can't believe I actually shot some of the things I've gotten pictures of.

This is good for me and good for my clients if one should so choose to take advantage of my photography skills. It is also good for those who I do graphic work for because now I can get exactly what I want on my own without having to use someone else's work (stock pictures and such) or something of less quality than I really want.

I really never meant the photography to take over a semi-pro aspect to it but as it turns out I'm ok at it. I'm good enough that in just a short time people have favorited my work several times (very unexpected) and now someone has featured one of my shots in their article on deviantART (one of my favorite art sites).

This is a shot of my daughter on a nice sunny day right at the beginning of Spring. I enjoy this pic because it shows a bit of her personality and how at such a young age she gets how to pose for the camera effectively. Not that it's a full grasp, but you should really see some of the poses she strikes when she sees the lens pointed in her direction.

I can't wait to get out to the Zoo and grab some nice shots of the animals there!

Newly Completed Work

2008-01-22T07:44:55Z

Recently I completed work on a new website for a filmmaker in my neck of the woods. The People Inventing Motion Pictures website can be found here:

Simple Polaroid Collage Fun (with actions)

2008-01-22T07:45:39Z

INTRO

If you know the program called Picasa then you may know of it's function to make a collage of several photos. It basically takes the photos and puts Polaroid type frames around them then makes it look like the pictures are laid out in a tossed fashion. This all composes one completely new picture of a collage of many pictures.

I was playing around with this function and found it lacking because you can't move or position the photos and so depending on how many you want to use, some may be covered up by others. (This is not to say Picasa itself is lacking because I find it to be a very useful program and recommend trying it out)

I decided to try my hand and do the collage myself using Photoshop; this way I could choose the size and dimensions of the collage myself, I could also choose how to place the photos and I could add things like text and other styles that are not offered in Picasa's tool. I already had picked out twelve (12) photos of my daughter, one for each month so I could make a collage that would be sort of a year review of Sydney. The next thing I needed was to make a Polaroid type frame to lay over each photo.

I had previously downloaded a Photoshop Action for this very thing a while ago. Photoshop Actions are recordings of steps toward a specific goal that people can make and distribute to others or you can download them and load them into the program where with the push of a play button you can do things automatically in the program without going through all the steps manually. For instance, with this Polaroid frame action I had all I needed to do was go to my Actions window and find the Polaroid Frame action and hit the play button. This would then create the frame for me.

(You can read more about actions and how to use them in my article Making Photoshop Work for You.)

The thing is I wasn't happy with the frame as it was designed so I went in and tweaked it adding steps, modifying others, and deleting some. Eventually I came up with a new action of my own that used steps from a few different sources and some I thought up myself.

You can download my action here - This is a set of two actions, one will give you a realistic (properly sized and shaped) Polaroid free standing frame that you can move around and adjust, the other will just put a Polaroid type frame around any picture of any size and shape.

You can check out the result I ended up with here

NOTE: Normally I would credit the person who made the original action and in this case I would have posted a link so people could compare the two. Unfortunately, I don't recall where I got the original action from, I tried to look it up but was unsuccessful in doing so. Since the original is not mine I don't feel comfortable passing it around as I'm not sure if they had permissions requested about that type of thing.

However, there are several other Polaroid actions out there and even full tutorials on how to make your own (though I do not prefer them to the results I came up with). Just go to Google.com and plug in Photoshop+Polaroid+Actions and you should come up with a lot.

I would also advise people to just check out actions in general because there is a lot of cool stuff out there and lots of time saving actions as well that others have already done. In most cases the actions are free (like the ones I've posted on my resources page) so unless you find one you absolutely can't live without and don't want to figure out on your own, don't bother paying for them.

Once you get more familiar with actions I recommend at least trying to make your own. You can also play with the settings I placed in my actions and tweak them to suit your taste.

TUTORIAL

1) Create a document in Photoshop, I used 1600x1200 as I wanted a huge wallpaper to match my desktop resolution.

2) Fill the layer with black or some other solid color just so you have something to contrast the frames and photos.

3) Take a photo and click and hold the left mouse button then drag it to the collage.

4) Here you may have to resize your photo to something smaller, if so you should hit control+T and then if you look at the top of Photoshop you will see size settings for Width and Height with a little chain symbol between them. Click on the chain symbol so that when you resize the photo it will stay the same shape.

You can either enter numbers (I put in 30% because the pics I used were very large) or just find the corner of the picture you're resizing and hold the SHIFT key on your keyboard then click with the left mouse button and drag the picture to the size you want. When done sizing just double click on the picture you've just changed to accept the change or simply hit ENTER.

5) Now you will want to find your actions window. If it's not there in front of you then you should go to WINDOW and then ACTIONS. Once you have the actions window open you should find the Polaroid action or you will need to load it by going to the Action Window's menu and selecting LOAD. Once you have the action you're looking for just select it and click the play button at the bottom of the actions window.

The action will play out and give you a frame on a separate layer.

6) Now you can select the frame layer in the layers window and then in the collage you can move the frame over the picture. If the frame layer is not on top of the photo then you will need to move the frame layer above the photo layer. You can do this by clicking on the layer you want to move, hold the mouse button down and just drag the layer up or down depending on your needs. You can also select the layer and hit control+] or control+[ to move the layer up or down.

7) Once you position the frame over the photo you can resize the photo again to get however much of the photo you want inside the frame. It's ok if there is some of the photo showing outside the frame sides. If you have some photo sticking out from under the frame go to your Eraser tool, look at the brush settings at the top and select a square brush. I suggest a square brush because you're dealing with hard straight lines.

Take the eraser and begin to erase the parts of the photo that are sticking out beyond the frame. (TIP: You can click the eraser one time then hold down the SHIFT key and click at another edge of what you're erasing to get a straight line which can be more efficient and less risky of erasing too much and having to back up a step)

8) Once you have your picture the way you want it with nothing showing outside the frame and no space erased or exposed inside the frame you can secure the picture to the frame. Go to you layers window and select the frame layer. Now click the little check box on the right and a chain icon should appear in the little check box.

This means the layers are linked. You can leave them like this so that every change you make to one the other layer will also follow. So if you were to move the frame the photo under it will move with it. Alternatively you could also merge the two layers into one by hitting Control+E. The only issue here would be if you wanted to change something about either individual layer, if they are merged you can not change one without affecting the other, if they are only linked you can unlink them at any time and make changes.

9) To add some style to your collage you can hit Control+T and use the size and shape arrows around to resize or rotate the frame/photo. (TIP: If you hold the shift key while you make your changes with your mouse the movements are more deliberate. EXAMPLE: Holding the Shift Key while rotating the picture will set it to rotate to a 45 Degree angle, then a 90 Degree angle, and so on -- rotating it without holding the shift key will leave it freehand)

10) Now, repeat these steps to add other photos and you will have your own cool little Polaroid frame collage.

That's it for now, I'll try to add photos to help later.

Enjoy!

How to "Re-color" something

2008-01-22T07:46:09Z

INTRO

Sometimes you come across an object in a picture you want to change the color of or edit it's coloring. With these instructions you should be able to successfully re-color something and from here you can test other settings and functions to come up with some cool stuff.

I made a video tutorial with the same instructions. There is no sound but you should be able to see exactly what I did and you can pause to review the exact steps.

This tutorial works with pretty much everything I've tried it on, as long as there are shadows and highlights on the object. This includes people, cars, cups, pretty much anything. Learning this and paying attention to highlights and shadows that you are preserving can also help you to learn how to give objects you make from scratch shadowing and highlighting manually.

TUTORIAL

You should start with an object that is light-gray or as close to it as you can get. If you don't have a light-gray object you should check out my tutorial on " How to Desaturate Something".

This is after I desaturated the cup using the method in the tutorial mentioned above.

1) Use the PEN TOOL to place marks around the perimeter of your object. (HINT: The more marks you place the more accurate your final selection will be).

2) Once you connect the first and last marks the line will become solid, RIGHT CLICK inside the object and choose MAKE SELECTION. Make sure your RADIUS is set to "0" then hit OK.

3) Go to your LAYERS window and RIGHT CLICK then select LAYER VIA COPY. (HINT: You can also just hit Control+J on your keyboard) This action will give you a copy of the object you outlined.

4) Now select the TOP LAYER and use the PEN TOOL to select parts of the object that are not directly part of the main body of the object. (Car = windows, headlights, vents, grill, decals, etc - you just want the main body of the object). This time you should set your RADIUS to 2 so that you get soft edges on your cut outs which will help blend the final effect.

Once you make each selection like we did in steps 1 and 2 you will hit DELETE on your keyboard, OR go to EDIT>CLEAR.

At this point you should have a fully cut out "chassis" of your object.

This is an example of the cut outs of a car - The Cup has no extra parts.

5) Select the TOP LAYER, then RIGHT CLICK, then select DUPLICATE LAYER (or just hit Control+J). Name the new top layer "Highlights", name the middle layer "Color". (To rename a layer simply DOUBLE CLICK on the layer name i.e. "Layer 2" then just type in a name)

6) Make the MIDDLE LAYER invisible by clicking on the "Eye" icon next to the layer. Now, go to IMAGE, then ADJUST, then LEVELS.

You will see the LEVELS window, there are three arrows under the level meter. Move the level arrows to make the chassis black but still showing the highlights. You want them to blend nicely, be careful when you begin to see grain or discoloring in the highlights. (HINT: Move the Left-most arrow to the right, Move the middle arrow to the right, Move the right-most arrow a little to the left -- You can also tap the arrows on the lower bar slightly to help smooth the blending.)

7) Now make the TOP LAYER invisible by clicking the "Eye" icon next to the layer. Click the MIDDLE LAYER to select it and make it visible. Hold down the CONTROL button on your keyboard and LEFT CLICK on the MIDDLE LAYER with your mouse. (This will select the entire shape of the object in the middle layer)

Go to your color boxes on your tools bar and select the color you want the object to be. Then go to EDIT, then FILL. In the FILL box that comes up make sure you have FOREGROUND COLOR selected and hit OK.

8) With the MIDDLE LAYER selected go to the BLENDING DROP DOWN at the top of the LAYERS window (It should say "Normal") Click on that and select MULTIPLY.

9) Select the TOP LAYER then go to the same BLENDING DROP DOWN and select SCREEN.

That's the end of the tutorial. You can of course play with the settings and even go further to change Hues and Saturations to make muted colors or brighter colors.

You can see the color of the original cup is actually too bright, the highlights are way overblown. In doing this tutorial I've been able to bring the highlights down a little and make the color of the cup deeper. This is in essence "fixing" the original picture. I could also have made the cup any other color by changing the HUE of the middle layer.

Here you can see the difference with the above picture having the highlight layer on and the below picture having the highlight layer off. In this picture it's a bit more subtle than I'd like but you can tell a difference.

And then here is the same cup with a red color just to show the change.

To change the color simply go to IMAGE, then ADJUST, then select HUE/SATURATION.

Change the HUE to change the color, SATURATION does little to help at this point, LIGHTNESS will help adjust shadows and highlights a little if you need it.

How to "Desaturate" Something

2008-01-22T07:46:36Z

INTRO:

Desaturating or removing color from something is easy. But doing it properly isn't as easy as finding and clicking on the "desaturate" function.

Every photo is different and should be treated that way in all editing. Tutorials are great for showing people how to perform a function or give them general steps to take in creating something, but people would do well to understand that these are just guides and the information in them needs to be flexed and bent to fit their actual needs. It's hard to make tutorials fluid that way so we do our best to just give people an idea and hope they run with it. What I'll show you here might work with the photo I'm using this time, but, though I would use the same steps I would also be using different values and settings along the way.

We use this method because it gives us more control over the levels in desaturating the photo or object. Using the IMAGE, ADJUST, DESATURATE function uses the same pre-defined settings all the time, while it's quick and can work out, it's not as good as doing it manually. Like I said, every picture is different and should be treated as such in editing to get the best results.

Try to keep in mind the end goal for the object whatever that may be for you. There are lots of different reasons to remove color, this time I'm focusing on my need to remove color and create a gray object for color replacement.

TUTORIAL:

Once you have your photo you can either desaturate the entire thing, or choose one object. For my purposes I'm choosing just part of the object in the photo. To do this you will need to use the PEN TOOL.

Go around the boarder of your object clicking and adding points. The more points you add the more accurate your selection will be in the end.

Once you completely connect the first point to the last point the points will become a solid line. Right Click inside the selection and choose "MAKE SELECTION"

In the window that pops up make sure your "RADIUS" is set to "0" - then click OK.

Go to the "LAYERS" window and RIGHT CLICK over the name of the layer and choose "LAYER VIA COPY".

You might want to HIDE the bottom layer so you can concentrait on just what you're trying to accomplish with the color of the object you're modifying.

Select the TOP layer then go to IMAGE, ADJUST, HUE/SATURATION.

Take "SATURATION" and move the bar all the way to the left to remove the color.

Take "LIGHTNESS" and move the bar either LEFT - if your gray is to light or RIGHT - if your gray is too dark.

Remember to not over do it, you still want to see shadow, you don't want to have blown out (overly white) spots either.

You can also go to IMAGE, ADJUST, BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST to tweak this a little more if you want to experiment.

Messing with these settings will help bring out shadows you want to keep and highlights you want to emphasize. Again, this is based on what YOU are trying to accomplish. For my needs I'll am replacing color and having the emphasized shadows and highlights will help me later.

Check out my tutorial on Changing Color of an Object if you want to see where I'm going with this.

New Movie

2008-01-22T07:48:43Z

So, I'm still busy promoting A Thousand Words: Bloodline. Just a little update about that. I went to Fright Night Film Festival in Louisville KY and spent a day there rubbing elbows with some celebs from some of the great horror movies I grew up on. Got to hang out with Gunnar Hansen for a bit and Marilyn Burns who gave me some tips on filmmaking. I'm planning on going to Cinema Wasteland in October to continue my tour of promotion for the movie. I'm actually planning to spend a weekend there to try to get the word out as much as I can.

While I'm still doing all this promotion and stuff for the movie I'm also working on another project now. My partner Jerod Brennen conceived an idea for a feature where we take 12 short films and put them together as a feature once they have all been shot. The 12 films will be directed by 12 different directors. The concept is a mix between Quantum Leap and Nightmare on Elm St. so it sounds like a lot of fun.

I'll be directing Dream 3 which is a slasher segment so it's right up my ally. I'll be in pre-production for two months before we begin shooting in November, so I'm gonna be tied up with this now. It's funny because I've gone years with making more movies than we have this year (since we've not shot anything this year at all) and never have I been this busy. I thought I would enter ATW: Bloodline into a couple (40+) festivals and then move on. This festival thing has sort of taken over.

I'm also really busy running Columbus' chapter of IndieClub. I took over in March and it's been getting more and more involved ever since. We finally heard back that the deal we worked out with WOSU and Columbus IndieClub has gone through and the local station will be playing several local short films, something that has never happened before. Ultimately I'm hoping this leads to an awareness of the local film culture here and that there is a need for people to support us.

With all this movie stuff taking over more and more I've fallen out of doing any graphic or extra video or website work. I'm hoping I'll get something to work on soon as I need the money if I'm gonna be able to pay for printing up posters and DVDs to take with me on these trips. What I'm really having a hard time with is getting the rest of the cast and crew to help out with promoting the movie. Most people have this mentality that once the production part is over then they don't need to really push for support. This is a mindset I'm trying to change as well through sharing my experiences.

A lot of positive things have happened to me while I've been going to these places. I got to speak on a couple panels at The Indie Gathering in Cleveland last month and met some really cool people who gave me a lot of worth while advice, plus I made some good networking connections. The award we won is helping us to get some attention too which is really good, but still it doesn't seem to get folks interested in helping to promote the movie in the festival and convention circuits.

This feature of ours is gonna rock. The idea is almost unique, I say unique because there is an international film that involved Wes Craven that had something like 22 directors and 24 writers. It's been voted highly a lot on IMDB and that bodes well for us since it's something some people are a little scared of. The hardest thing is getting through all the egos at the table. Most of the directors are cool and very accommodating and very pumped about this. If it works it will get a lot of attention and could even make some money back. A couple of people are still making the road traveled a bit difficult because of fears and ego like I said, but hopefully we will get them to jump on board all the way or they will leave.

Right now all I can worry about is my segment which begins pre-production on Monday. Wish me luck!

Still really busy and I won an award!

2008-01-22T07:49:19Z

Again, another long time has passed and with good reason. I've been really busy working on the A Thousand Words: Bloodline promotion and festivals. We won best horror short at the Indie Gathering and this past weekend I traveled to Cleveland for the film fest/convention. I was invited to speak on a couple panels about Filmmaking and the Internet and then on Low/No budget Filmmaking. I also got to attend the award ceremony but missed my screening because I was on panel at 10am.

The whole thing was a great experience. Though most of the things going on that I was interested in took place with several hours between them I still enjoyed getting to meet people and talk to some of the other good people in attendence. I wish I would have been able to go up on Friday or even Saturday to enjoy some of the other cool stuff like the networking party, but at least I got a taste of what these things are like.

The vendor area was not as active on Sunday as it had been earlier in the weekend but I still got to see some cool makeup FX being applied to people and I got to see some trailers for upcoming movies as well as talk to some people there about their movies and look over some pretty cool marketing/promo materials.

Coming home with that award has left me with a really good feeling. Even if it's the only one I ever win for this movie I'm really happy about it because someone recognized the work we all put into the production and it shows we have come to the next level of our filmmaking trek.

The fact that I was asked to speak on a couple panels was really very cool. This says a lot to me that someone respects that I bring some knowledge with me from my experience with the things I was asked to speak about. I have to really appreciate Johnny Wu for this weekend and also Ray Szuch for the great thing he's done with the Indie Gathering. I really can't thank these guys enough for this, I try but can't find the right words to honor what it means to me.

In two weeks we have a festival in Louisville KY, the Fright Night Film Fest, and we're not sure if we will be going or not. I'd like to at least go down Saturday for the screening of the movie, but who knows. I've just spent two weekends in a row busy traveling and I'm quite ready to just have a weekend to chill. My weeks are flying by so fast and now I have a bunch of work to do here at home until this coming weekend. Who knows what will crop up between now and then too.

Anyway, if I can get in a site update I will, otherwise it might be another while before I can even look at what's here.

Hey there true believers!

2008-01-22T07:49:48Z

I know it's been a really long time since I've posted anything. But what can I say, I've been really busy.

Things are going well, IndieClub is really taking off, I'm ramping up on production of a new horror project, still promoting ATW: Bloodline, working on the feature screenplay for Bloodline, and working on a bunch of other things.

Like I said I'm working on a new project that is coming up a little later this year. I'll be able to really stretch my horror directing wings and hit on some famous figures through it. Because of this very thing I've gone back to doing mask and costume replication/creation. I did it for a hobby for several years coming up with my own versions of Pin Head, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Darth Vader, and others.

One of the characters I'm working on requires a certain hockey mask so I had to take a 3 dollar costume hockey mask and turn it into something more recognizable.

The photo has been brightened up to make out the detail, but in person this thing is remarkably scary and true to the mask from the movies. All I need now is to put in some dead looking eyes behind it.

Anyway, the reason I'm sharing this here is because I think I'm going to start offering my services as a prop maker. I'm an artist and making things is what I do no matter what medium I'm using. So, if you happen to have need of a prop for a film or just want something replicated to hang on your wall let me know and I'll do my best to make it as authentic as possible.

I'll be pretty easy on the price as I'm just starting out selling this service, but I have over 10 years experience with this kind of thing as a hobby for Halloween. (I used to throw the most kick ass parties). And I know people can just as easily go by a manufactured replica, but you're not going to get this kind of detailing from a store bought product.

Anyway, I'll share more of my costume work when I get time to throw some photos together, and we'll see where it goes from there.

ATW: Bloodline Gets another great review!

2008-01-22T07:50:17Z

Got another review of the flick, this time from The Chopping Block.

Chopping Block Review of A Thousand Words: Bloodlline