Comments | cosmicviolet: Cover art tutorial for fanmixes

cosmicviolet

Cover art tutorial for fanmixes

Jun 09, 2009 12:07

After my last mix, eggblue wanted to know how I made the cover art. So here's a little tutorial. Sorry it took me so long to finally do this. Hopefully, some people will find it interesting....

UPDATE NOVEMBER 2014: I saw this post linked to recently, and I thought I should point out that this tutorial is now quite dated. The newest version of Gimp (2.8 ( Read more... )

tutorial

Comments 14

eggblue June 9 2009, 19:57:27 UTC

Oh thank you!!! Good timing - I wanted to make a summer J2 music mix and I'm gonna need artwork for that ;) I don't have Gimp, or Photoshop, but boy do I love free program downloads :) I've bookmarked this for later use, but just reading through it, it looks do-able! I think I can do this (or some easier variation thereof) :) And the comic art style of your cover is really beyond anything I would've normally attempted to do, so this gives me hope. Awesome, thanks!

Also, your original cover art and mix are still great -- I listen to the songs you chose all the time.

cosmicviolet June 10 2009, 00:22:54 UTC

I love giving people hope! Yay! I'd love to see what you come up with. :) You should check out gimp_users and gimp_tutorial too, they have a lot of good ideas if you want to see what's out there. There are plenty of graphics comms where you can find this sort of thing. Actually, I remember seeing a tutorial once on how to make stuff look like a comic book. If that's what you're aiming for, I could probably track it down again...

Also, your original cover art and mix are still great -- I listen to the songs you chose all the time.
Aww, I'm so glad to hear that. :) I'm going to be posting another mix this week. It would've been done in time for the finale, but the size of it kind of got away from me. It is EPIC. :P

i_am_girlfriday June 9 2009, 20:31:32 UTC

My BF loves Gimp. Are you a Linux girl?

And I'm so jealous of your icon.

cosmicviolet June 10 2009, 00:32:28 UTC

Nope. I've used Linux very briefly (the computers at the public library used to have it), but I've been raised on Windows and its many tribulations. :P

And I'm so jealous of your icon.
And I of yours. :)

sugarskyhigh June 10 2009, 07:14:34 UTC

oh, i love this! thank you!

your layout is amazing, btw.

cosmicviolet June 15 2009, 01:38:00 UTC

Thanks! The link to the layout is in my profile, if you want to snag it :)

lovely_lindiana July 23 2009, 01:41:37 UTC

ok, three words:
I LOVE YOU

diek09 December 4 2009, 20:14:09 UTC

I want to ask you something: is there a way to install a font that is not installed in the Gimp, like the everyday ghost in this case? Because I'm a bit sick of the default fonts of the Gimp.. Thanks from now.. Oh, and also I haven't installed the freetype because it didn't come on the version I downloaded, where can I find this option so I can install it?

cosmicviolet December 5 2009, 04:00:44 UTC

Yes, there is. You should be able to install a font the way you normally would and then re-start Gimp and see it listed with your other fonts. If you've never installed fonts before, generally this is done (on Windows, anyway) by downloading the font, unzipping it and then going to the Windows font folder (under Control Panel) and going to to File > Install New Font and browsing to wherever you put the font.
I included a link to FreeType at the top of the post, but here it is again here. I've since discovered though, that the regular text tool isn't as crappy as I thought, so I don't use FreeType as much anymore, but it's still good to have.
Oh, and I should tell you that Gimp will probably take longer to open and almost appear to crash after you've installed new fonts or plug-ins or whatever, but it will open eventually. It's just taking note of the new additions to the program. Does that help? Let me know if you have any further problems. :)

kimmy4eytj September 28 2011, 22:29:39 UTC

So anytime I load new fonts into Windows, GIMP will read that and add it to it's available font list automatically?

I've been going through GIMP documentation all day and it doesn't really explain it well for new users.

cosmicviolet November 5 2011, 04:12:49 UTC

I'm not sure if it's automatic...you may need to restart the program first. It will take a moment to load and might seem to crash, but just give it a minute and Gimp should load fine after that. Here are a couple links that might help in general:

Gimp Tutorials
Tutorialized
Gimp Forums

Sorry for taking so long to respond. Hopefully you figured it out by now. :)