March 2013 Video tutorial: Creating Neon and other Noble Gases

[Gare]

I know it's probably more work for you but I think it works if the video teaches the techniques and you give and add mock assignments in the thread. The threads become kind of a virtual classroom :)

You're absolutely right, Frances.

It is more work.

:)

I'll entertain the idea the moment our virtual classroom gains seats, eh?

Okay, I've been modeling and rendering and here's a disk scene of an American diner, sort of the thing we used to see along the major highways in the late 1950s and early 1960s.



I see a lot of creative opportunities here and I deliberately let the lights off within the diner so you might want to put a sign there, too. Or take a crack at adding lights (a shape, light colored, with feathering, partial transparency in Bleach mode), or whatever. I think this will suit this month's technique quite well (I hope!).

My Best,

Gary

[angelize]

I had some free time this afternoon so I had a go with the first image. With a little bit of Xara Magic day turned into night! (well Ok maybe dusk)

I'll take a crack at the Diner scene later

[Gare]

I LOVE IT, Frances!

You did excellently! Improvisation, invention, all the stuff I'd hoped for this month!

My Best (and obviously yours),

Gary

[angelize]

Thanks Gary, The font I used for Wild Bill's is one of Nick curtis' free fonts called dancing donuts. I converted it to editable shapes and because it was an outline font I had to do a break shapes to get the shapes I needed and subtract shapes to knock out the centers of the B and D. The link you posted in the Fonts and typography forum is a great resource for retro fonts for anyone doing these neon signs.

[Gare]

I'd go to Nick as a first stop for vintage typefaces because I know him and he needs the traffic. And his work is very, very reminiscent of handcrafted lettering styles you'd see in Lost Wages (sorry, Las Vegas), and 1950s diners.

But I'd also be remiss not to mention Letterhead Fonts. Pure caviar and you'd need a good line of clients to support any addiction to these gems.

Also, and very sadly, Dan X. Solo (Solotype) passed away last year, and you might be able to find one or two of his typefaces for free online if you search hard. His work digitizing Dover clipart into font sets was meticulous and I have one or two of them:



In any event, you might want to base your neon on neon style typefaces and also Kaufman, which is alternately called "Diner Script".


My Best,

Gary

[BeanPole]

I love it too Frances!

It is similar to what I am working on (still not finished yet). How did you make the photo look darker?

[angelize]

Thanks Bean Pole

Turning day time into evening is really quite simple first I cloned the photo (Ctrl +K)and then I clicked the little eye icon in the page and layer gallery to hide the clone. I enabled the masking layer and used the shape tool to mask the lower windows of the building and then I increased the brightness and adjusted the photo temperature slider make the windows brighter and warmer. At this point the windows look over exposed but that's what you want. Next I unhid the clone and adjusted brightness down quite low and gave it a stained glass transparency to blend it with the background photo. Depending on the photo you are working with you can also make the stained glass transparency a linear transparency if you wish. The final step is to either use the eraser tool with a very soft nib setting and erase out the window panes on the clone if you have version 8 or draw shapes over the window panes and cut them (Ctrl+X) to the clipboard and Paste as opacity mask in version 6 or 7

I look forward to seeing your neon signs.

[stygg2003]

You guys have been busy and posted some great images, so I thought I'd better get my skates on and get busy. The 50's diner gave me the idea!

Stygg

[Gare]

I always imagined that after the Xara Xone, I'd step up to doing used car ads on late-night television.

Thanks, stygg.

No, seriously. You did good!

-g

[BeanPole]

Stygg, I love your Chevy. The older cars sure had style.


Frances, Thank you for the instruction on darkening the photo . . . still working on it!