December signals the start of 'holiday mode' for a lot of people, but there are no holidays for TUTS! Throughout the month we released dozens of new tutorials and informative articles. Here is a selection of the best -- just in case you were too busy eating Turkey and chocolate!
AETUTS - After Effects Tutorials
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How to Create Explosive Flower Fireworks
In this tutorial AETUTS Editor Lloyd Alvarez shows you how to create a unique twist on the traditional fireworks display. The tutorial shows you how to create fireworks with Trapcode Particular, and how to reflect this effect over water.
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Create an Elegant Signature Written With a Whisp of Smoke
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a written title that appears to be written in smoke with the use of Trapcode Particular. The final effect can be used for many purposes, particularly to create a very unique personal signature for your work.
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How to Create Glowing Elegant Lines
In this tutorial you’ll be creating elegant glowing lines using shape layers within After Effects. We’ll create a few basic arc layers and then stylize them by using the find edges effect, glows, and blending modes. I enjoy this technique and you can easily adapt this concept to many different shapes to create some stunning looks.
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How to Create a Cinematic Opening Title
In this tutorial AETUTS Editor Lloyd Alvarez shows you how to create a cinematic opening title using Trapcode Form similar to those used in movie trailers and openings.
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After Effects for Beginners: Getting Started
When we launched we asked you to tell us what content you wanted and quite a few of you told us you wanted the basics. Well we are listening and this is the first installment of a 3 part series for after effects beginners. Each section lists at the top the topics that are covered in that section. Even though this series focuses on the latest CS4 release, most of the concepts apply to all the versions of After Effects.
This first part of the Essential Training series will teach you how to get started in After Effects. You will learn all the basics you need to be able to use After Effects and understand the cool tutorials posted here on AETUTS.
NETTUTS - Web Development
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How to Setup a Dedicated Web Server for Free
All great websites have a great server behind them. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to set up a dedicated web server (with Apache, MySQL, and PHP) using that old computer you have lying around the house and some free software.
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Converting a Design from PSD to HTML
Several weeks ago, I showed you how to take a PSD design and convert it into HTML and CSS. Given the popularity of that particular tutorial, I've decided to create a second series. However, I'm not much of a designer. Instead, I asked Collis if he would allow me to use the design that he used for a recent tutorial for Web Design Week.
Just like last time, I'll take you through the process step by step - even through the tedious parts. Enjoy!
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Intro to Drupal: Build a Simple CMS
Drupal's popularity has lately been rising. It's a great platform for setting up content management systems and community driven sites. Here, I'll give a general overview of Drupal and build a simple site for a fake client. We'll begin with outlining the client's needs, installing and configuring a few modules, creating user roles and assigning permissions, and finally we'll add in some content. We won't go into theming, as it's a bit out of the scope of this article.
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5 Easy Ways to Tackle IE 6's Transparency Issues
You create the perfect site in Photoshop using the latest trends. Half of your backgrounds contain a nice 50% opacity to simulate depth. The only problem comes from that darn old IE6, and how it decides to display a nasty gray background. You try to search the web for a solution, but there are dozens of choices. How do you know which methods are the best?
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The Golden Ratio in Web Designing
Math is beautiful. Does that sound a little strange? I sure thought so when I first started designing. Math is so rigid and often times boring, or so I thought. You would be surprised to find out that most aesthetically pleasing designs, works of art, objects and even people have math in common. Specifically the Golden Ratio, also known as the divine proportion, which is designated by the Greek letter Φ (phi). This tutorial will cover the anatomy and layout of a website and how the Golden Ratio relates.
AUDIOTUTS - Audio production tutorials
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8 Easy Steps to Better EQ
Knowing how to use an equalizer is a fundamental skill for anyone working with audio, yet it is one of the most abused. Here are some tips and tricks for using your EQ more effectively. You’ll notice there are more don’ts than dos on this list; that’s because EQ is best when used in moderation.
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West Coast? East Coast? Hip-hop Explained
In the realm of popular music, perhaps no genre has been as popular in recent years as hip-hop. However, hip-hop is hardly a new phenomenon, so in this article, we’re going to take an in-depth look at its history and try to make sense of it all.
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Warping Tunes for Live Sets With Ableton Live
Ableton is fast becoming the tool of choice for the digital DJ and has just about every tool you could ask for when putting together a live show or DJ set. One of the most important parts of getting things right on the night is syncing individual beats or entire tracks and if you want to get things 100% locked down the best strategy is to warp your files before the show.
Warp markers are small flags that Ableton uses to cut audio into small portions, these portions can then be shifted back and forth as the tempo of your project is changed. This basically means that the audio takes on an elastic nature and can be played back at any tempo without suffering from the degradation and anomalies related to traditional time stretching.
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20 Worst Music Videos of All Time
It’s hard to imagine a world without music videos. But there was a time when artists had to rely on, you know, their music to convince people that their stuff was worth buying. Those days are long gone. Nowadays, it’s all about image. If you look right, chances are you’ll probably sell some records. With that much riding on your visual presentation, you would think musicians would go all out when it comes time to make a music video, and most of them do. Except for…
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How to Remake Soul Survivor by Young Jeezy and Akon
When rapper Young Jeezy went into the studio with Akon to create “Soul Survivor,” the concept behind the song was a dark one. Most evident in the music video (based on the Roc-A-Fella film “Paid In Full”), the song is essentially a story about life on the streets.
Thus, when Tha Bizness and DJ Toomp handled production for the song, they needed to create an instrumental that would live up to that feeling. In this tutorial, we’re going to break down just what made the song feel so dark, and also what sort of elements went into creating a #4 Billboard Hot 100 song.
VECTORTUTS - Vector & Illustrator
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New PLUS Tutorial - How to Create an Illustrative Vector Pattern Design
We have another great PLUS tutorial exclusively available to members today. If you want to create professional vector patterns in illustrator, then this is a comprehensive tutorial for you. It details how to create an illustrative pattern design. A complete and precise workflow is covered.
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Illustrate and Animate a Bouncing Ball: Part 1 - Adobe Flash
Part 1 of this tutorial will take Flash novices through the fundamental principles behind drawing and animating vectors in Flash. We'll be drawing and animating a bouncing beach ball. Prior knowledge of Flash will of course help, but the following techniques should be accessible to everyone and with most software versions. Part 2 coming soon...
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Interview with Masha Gubar, AKA Limkis
Masha Gubar (AKA Limkis) is a talented digital artist from Russia. Her painterly style of vector illustrations are like poetry in visual form. Her vivid artworks are the indicators of what immense possibilities vector illustrations and programs like Adobe Illustrator are capable of.
In this interview, she sits down with me (virtually), where she goes down memory lane and recounts when she started her journey in the creative field. She shares her very first vector works, her thoughts on arts, creativity, challenges, and her road ahead!
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How to Turn Glasses into a Great Geek Icon
In this tutorial, we'll show you how to make a cool, or should we say geeky, glasses icon. You should be versed in Adobe Illustrator's tools to complete this tutorial. You'll learn how to take creative license and create an illustration that uses a photo reference, but differs a bit in the final design.
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How to Make Realistic Skate Wheels in Illustrator
Using Illustrator’s 3D Revolve tool, we will create a set of realistic skateboard wheels and map our own artwork on the wheel. We will cover advanced techniques, such as using the revolve tool, preparing the artwork, mapping it to the 3D surfaces, and some cool tricks for adding the finishing touches.
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Ben Reid January 7th
Just to let you know the article titled ‘The Golden Ratio in Web Designing’ has the extract from ‘How to Make Realistic Skate Wheels in Illustrator’
( )insic January 7th
AETUTS tutorial rocks.
( )Pete W January 7th
Please please please make the pictures and titles of these into links. I’m tired of middle clicking on them and then shooting down the page because I’ve forgotten.
UI fail.
( )Alex Mitchell January 7th
Great list over all and my personal favourite, narrowed down to a single point within these submissions…
Tackle IE 6’s Transparency Issues | Don’t Fix It! Make a Statement! = Genius!
Alex | Zen Elements
( )Jeffrey January 8th
@Alex - Thanks.
( )sean steezy January 8th
thank you for putting my skate wheels up there! i hope to get off my lazy ass and do more vector tuts!
( )Melody January 8th
You all are aware that interviews and bad music videos don’t counts as tutorials…right?
( )Alexei January 8th
There are so many resources, tuts and other stuff, on the tuts sites that it’ll take a lot of my time to follow up.
@Alex Mitchell- I totally agree
The best fix for any IE6-related issue is telling the user to get a normal, properly working browser…
( )Limerance January 8th
Melody, it’s a round of the best articles from the tuts websites, such as vector tuts; psd tuts; audio tuts, etc. Read the intro paragraph:
“Throughout the month we released dozens of new tutorials and informative articles.”
So this page collects the best pieces that were released on the tuts websites throughout December - not just tutorials.
( )afrix January 9th
I think the oter pack was waay better… but this is good 2 : )
http://afrix99.deviantart.com/
( )Gabriela January 12th
nice tuts!
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