COMING SOON! - Blender 2.5 Video Sequence Editor

This is a snapshot of a new tutorial that is on it's way.  In the past few months I have been working on moving from commercial applications to FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) and Blender has been one I have been working with since 2.48. One feature is Blenders Video Sequence Editor (VSE), which is also refered to as the Sequence Editor.  I have done some extensive testing changing options and working through some issues.  I want to show how to set up Blender's interface, add video files, edited them within Blender, add image overlays for titles, watermarks etc, and how to animate some of the properties.  These tasks maybe broken down into multiple parts so you can pick and choose what you need and to minimize the duration of the tutorial.

I hope to have it out within the next week or so,
- Steve

Quick Tip: MyPaint and GIMP Template

I have been working with GIMP a lot lately and also playing with MyPaint. I have seen some very good paintings done with MyPaint and I love the feel of the brushes. But I have always been able to control my canvas size and resolution. But MyPaint doesn't allow you to set either from scratch. This is one method that gets around those issues.

GIMP: How To Add Themes UPDATED

This is an update to the original tutorial on theme. In this tutorial I show how to download, adjust the themes and install them in either version 2.6.11 or 2.7.3.  In the end I preview the new themes and show how to set it as your default so it loads automatically.   The custom themes can be downloaded from GNOME.

Update: Installing GIMP 2.7.3 in Windows

UPDATE-: I add this update to an earlier post on "How To Install GIMP 2.7.3 in Ubuntu and Windows.
I had issues with saving to the OpenRaster extension (.ora) and had to go back and forth between 2.7.3 and 2.6.11 (stable version).  I went and backed up my .gimp 2.7.3 folder and uninstalled Gimp 2.7.3 with RevoUninstaller.  Then I reinstalled it with the version I downloaded from Gimpusers.com HERE.  I verified that it worked by exporting as an .ora file.  Then I copied my themes and brushes into the new folder.  Not sure what happened, but it is an experimental version.

Hope this helps,

-Steve

How To Sketch: Sketching The 4 Step Method

Overview: 
Sketching is a vital skill that enables one to quickly capture a vision or idea. Sketching is normally the first place that artists start out and is also the basis for most projects. Even movies start out with storyboards that are a sequence of sketches. Most often, but not always very rudimentary ones at best. Sketching is very important for digital artists for that reason. It is utilized in all media. Sketching is art in it's simplest form but can be taken to a very high degree of detail. Their is a difference between sketching and drawing where drawing is more detailed. These terms are quite often used interchangeably.