Little Box Of Ideas

Day 2 – Radeye With all the hype about Avatar and me wondering when I was going to get to the movies and don my 3D glasses for this epic movie, I was struck with a strange thought. If we need 3D glasses to see 3D stuff, surely there are creatures that reside in that

In 2010, I have challenged myself to create 365 vector characters, one for each day of the year. I tried very hard to resist the temptation to indulge in this Project 365, knowing very well that I am already quite pressed for time and might not see it through. But since one of my new

  A few days ago I was experimenting with plaid or gingham patterns in Illustrator for a Christmas cartoon I was making. It was a fascinating experience to see how simple it was to make a basic plaid pattern and then with just the additions of a few lines of varied widths, it transformed into

As a freelance designer, it is always good practice to send your clients and vendors a holiday greeting at the end of the year. This year, instead of purchasing a box of cards made by another designer, why not show off your own design skills by sending out your own unique greeting card. And, to

  For the past few days I have been simultaneously working on a project and a tutorial and during the process, I have been required to make a disco ball in Illustrator [Have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy my work!]. So today I am offering all you lovely people a different version of

It’s true you know. You’ll learn more from your mistakes and the mistakes of others than you will from advice and suggestions. I wish there was a mistake bank somewhere that I could log into and read to my heart’s content. Read about other people’s tomfoolery and naivette. Because that would equip me to avoid

  There is a short way of doing a task and a long, roundabout way of doing it in Illustrator. Ever since I started tinkering with the software earlier this year, I have inadvertently ended up going the longer route. But once in a while you have the a-ha moment on your self-learning journey and

A few months ago, I stumbled upon some gorgeous artwork on Deviantart. The illustrations were magical, had a solid retro, whimsy, fairy tale feel to them, something that is not easily seen in this day and age. I started following the artist on Deviantart. The art belonged to Melanie Matthews, a young and talented illustrator

I have been putting up vector freebies for a while on the blog, but I am very excited to be offering this one today. "Sola" is a gypsy sun and she has a touch of art deco running through her rays. I have been studying gradient mesh in Illustrator and having fun with it. This

  A few weeks ago I shared a free high resolution photoshop brush set with my readers. Today I am going to show you how to create that brush set in 5 easy steps. We will be using both Illustrator and Photoshop to create very high rsolution, clean vector images for the brush. We are

With the amount of vector art out there on the internet and the increasing number of both amateur and expert vector cartoonists and designers, the number of Illustrator cartoon tutorials are surprisingly less. Cartoons are so much fun! You can escape into an alter world and let your imagination go crazy with hilarious characters and

  Its free vector time again on the LBOI Blog. I have been working on some tutorials and projects recently that involved basic techniques in Illustrator. Playing in Illustrator is getting quite addictive for me, frustrating at times but fun and addictive nevertheless. When I do end up creating something viable that looks like fun,

  Today, I am going to show you how to create a vector, cartoon monster eye in 5 extremely easy steps. This is another one of those beginner tutorials that can be achieved in under 5 minutes flat, with a little bit of practice. I like to use this kind of technique to create a

I have been working on some vectors recently and I have a beautiful Purple Retro Blossom Tree Vector to giveaway today. There is a delicate, almost zen-like quality to this vector tree and I can see it being used in many interesting ways. I love the color palette, devised from my favorite shades of purple.

Yay I wrote my first tutorial. It is a nifty little 5-step process to create your very own vector Comment Bubble. This tutorial is strictly for those who are too intimidated by Ilustrator and who wake up in the middle of the night because they saw the Pen tool in a ghastly nightmare [ a