Whether you’re an occasional personal blogger or have a full-scale content-heavy magazine site or newspaper, Deadline has you covered. Using the theme options and widgets you can control content layout, manage your own advertising, pull in your latest tweets, show your latest video, display your latest photos and much, much more.

Deadline looks great out of the box but also acts as the perfect black canvas for those looking to customise and develop their own content-focused site.

Theme Features

• Valid XHTML Strict 1.0 Tableless Design
• 5 Colour Schemes (orange, red, green, blue, purple)
• Full Localisation Support (contains .po/.mo files)
• 10 Widget Areas
• 7 Custom Widgets
• Latest Tweets
• Tabbed Content
• 125×125 Ads
• 300×250 Ad
• 120×240 Ad
• Flickr Photos
• Video Widget
• Extensive Theme Options
• Mimics WordPress UI / no branding
• Custom Logo Upload
• Plain Text Logo Support
• Custom Favicon Upload
• Google Analytics Tracking
• FeedBurner RSS Support
• FeedBurner RSS to Email Support
• Author Bios on Post Pages
• Content Configuration
• Configurable Homepage Content Blocks
• Inbuilt Related Posts (same category)
• Featured Post Selection & Display
• WordPress 3.0 Ready
• 2 Custom Menu Locations with pre-3.0 fallback
• Post Thumbnail/Featured Image Support
• jQuery Support
• jQuery Improved Drop-down Menus
• jQuery Powered “News in Pictures” Section
• Social Networking
• Enable/disable sharing
• Select which individual networks to show
• Page Templates
• Archives Template
• Full WIdth (no sidebar)
• jQuery improved Contact Form
• Custom Default Images
• Custom default Gravatar support
• Custom admin login logo support
• Optional 468×60 Banner support
• Pull-quote Shortcodes
• Layered PSDs for customisation
• Extensive Documentation

Preview and Purchase – 35$

I was looking few days after a working solution to can start my ubuntu machine without monitor plugged. The only one working for me is described bellow and is found here.

Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 is not using anymore the xorg.conf file placed in X11 folder. Create the xorg.conf in /etc/X11 with the following:

Section “Device”
Identifier “VNC Device”
Driver “vesa”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “VNC Screen”
Device “VNC Device”
Monitor “VNC Monitor”
SubSection “Display”
Modes “1024×768″
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “VNC Monitor”
HorizSync 30-70
VertRefresh 50-75
EndSection
EndSection

In case you don’t have the privileges to write a new file on /etc/X11 forlder, in terminal use: gksudo nautilus to open the file browser with root privileges.

Then, edited the grub file: sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

This will open the grub file. Now find the line that says GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX and add “nomodeset”.

You’ll have to end up with something like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”nomodeset”

Now, update the grub from terminal with update-grub otherwise the Ubuntu will be loaded without graphical interface at all.

Restart your machine. Now you can use your desktop without a monitor.

FancyForm

Is a powerful checkbox replacement script used to provide the ultimate flexibility in changing the appearance and function of HTML form elements. It’s accessible, easy to use and degrades gracefully on all older, non-supporting browsers.

CRIR: Checkbox & Radio Input Replacement

This combination of JavaScript and CSS will hide checkbox and radio inputs that have a class = “crirHiddenJS”, an id, and a proper label tag. This will allow you to style the label however you wish using CSS, and the actual input control will be hidden. The form will still collect data as it normally would because the label itself will trigger the hidden input control. If javascript is disabled no inputs will be hidden and the form is still be fully functional.

jQuery checkbox v.1.3.0 Beta 1

Lightweight custom styled checkbox implementaion for jQuery 1.2.x and 1.3.x.

Custom Form Elements

This script will let you do that. Easily. The unobtrusive script gracefully degrades, so if JavaScript is disabled, normal form input objects appear instead of your customized elements. This works flawlessly in Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 7, Opera and others. In Internet Explorer, the select lists are unstyled, but the checkboxes and radio buttons still look and function beautifully.

jQuery selectbox replacement

The jQuery select box replacement let you replace the html select tag with a stylish one in an unobtrusive way, technically it hides the real select box and create an html list, when you choose an option it reflects this change in the real select tag.

Most of the available social voting extensions are themes. Extending WordPress functionality using themes is a clumsy way to implement social voting features. What if your site already has a nice design? You would have to customize the social voting theme instead to replicate your existing design elements.

WP Community Links is a plugin, which means it works independently from your theme. You don’t have to worry about starting from scratch. WordPress 3.0 introduces many new features that make your administration life so much easier (Navigation Menu, Custom Taxonomy etc.). WP Community Links takes advantage of these features to provide a consistent and user-friendly interface. Adding new categories, tags, and items to the navigation menu is easy and painless.

What make the difference

Unlike other social voting themes and plugins, WP Community Links does not allow users to use WordPress wp-admin area to post. This reduces security risk, and also let you customize the dashboard and submission form on the front-end. WP Community Links lets your visitors log in using their Facebook account. This eliminates the registration barrier and encourages your visitor to contribute more. When your users submit their content to your website, it will be displayed on their Facebook news feed (if they give the plugin permission to do so), thereby increase your site’s exposure.

WP Community Links uses Akismet API to identify spam contents. You can also enable reCAPTCHA, which further ensures that your social voting platform is not abused by malicious users. All the constraints are configurable in the admin panel (e.g. maximum number of submissions per hours, maximum number of login attempts etc.)

For just 30$, you can get best social voting plugin for WordPress what exist at this moment among free and premium plugins.

Click for DEMO

To see more works done by Irina Vinnik, click here or here.

Blogazette is a clean magazine style WordPress theme, great for websites with huge amount of content, blogs, news websites, e-zines etc. Theme is build to be flexible in any way, from viewing and navigation to administration, from where you can change entire look of theme, from colors to background images, pattern etc. Theme use 5 areas widgets ready composed from 2 sidebars and 3 footer columns. Theme is tested under WordPress 2.9 and 3.0

Theme Preview

Purchase this theme for only 30$

Blogazette use WordPress like CMS and you can manage all the functions from live demo example, from your WP administration panel, even is talk about feed settings, twitter or drop down menu columns. Depending on your browser / display resolution, Blogazette load a specific layout with 1, 2,3 or 4 columns.

Smart flexible layout:

• Super wide < 1400px resolution
• Wide < 1200px resolution
• Normal < 1024px resolution
• Slim < 800px resolution

Features:

• Full theme options
• Colorpicker
• Colorbox lightbox
• Contact form with validator
• Dropdown mega menu for categories
• Twitter, Analytics, Feedburner, Favicon integration
• jQuery sliding paginator
• Custom avatar
• Advertising section

Compatible Browser:

• Internet Explorer 7
• Internet Explorer 8
• Safari
• Firefox 3+
• Chrome 5
• Opera 10

Blogazette theme options:

• Logo replacement
• Background image or pattern
• Background repeat
• Background color
• Inner background color
• Background content color
• Background color of first column
• Background color of second column
• Background color of widgets
• Footer background color
• Images border color
• Headings color
• Links and span color
• Text color
• Number of menu category columns
• Exclude following pages from menu
• Home page sidebar category ID
• Number of post previews in the second column on home page
• Inner page sidebar category ID
• Number of post previews in the second column on inner pages
• Path to your favicon.ico file
• Email address to be used on contact page form
• Twitter username and number of tweets
• Feedburner Username
• Place for Google Analytics Codes
• Copyright note
• Advertising (enable or disable)
• Fields for up to 6 banners ( 125px or 260×120px)

Check the screenshots to see more about theme options.

Sources and Credits

Blogazette feature the artworks of the following artists:

• Tuomas Ikonen
• Alvaro Pantoja Busch

In development of theme was incorporated parts or full code of the following comercial free to use scripts:

• jQuery
• jQuery Validate
• Colorbox
• Paginator 3000
• Colorpicker
• Custom form elements

Purchase this theme for only 30$

The delivery pack contain:

• Extensive documentation
• Theme files
• Logo sources (eps / ai)

License is for a single domain use.

Theme Preview

The bundle will only be available for 15 days, from Aug. 2-16 and includes some of the most prestigious brands in the business.
The items Included in the bundle are top selling resources for designers & developers, each of them normally sold for more than this entire bundle!

The Bundle is finally exposed, here is the complete line-up:

Billings THE time billing program for professionals who want to simplify quoting, invoicing and time tracking. Includes customizable templates for those who want their invoices to make a good first impression. Valued at $39.99

Flux is a state of the art WYSIWYG engine that creates the code for you as you drag and drop web page elements. If you prefer to have control over how the code looks, you can also switch to a mode that allows HTML, XHTML, and CSS. Official price – $63.99!

Mastering Photoshop the new eBook from Smashing Magazine, is written for advanced and intermediate designers who want to brush up on their workflow and improve their Photoshop skills. The eBook contains 178 pages, explaining fundamental techniques that Web designers need to know to produce high-quality work in Photoshop. Official price – $19.90!

Subernova is a sleek project management tool that lets you track time, send invoices and estimates, collaborate with others and keeps your business smooth by keeping tabs on late payments, deadlines and more. Get a one year membership worth $149.99!

MojoThemes offers high quality templates for WordPress, Tumblr, and co. With the Bundle, you get three best selling three WordPress themes (Signal 8, Apollo & FolioStudio) valued at $135.

DryIcons is another icon site with exclusive resources. They created a special pack for Bundle Hunt worth $150!

WP Bakery is a new WordPress themes marketplace that prepared two never-seen-before templates (Cubixoid & Simplic) valued at $70.

Icondock is one of the most trusted places for stock icons. Bundle Hunt includes their Moi icon pack usually sold for $60.

Designious is a well-known resource for designers around the world, offering more than 6000 stock graphic files. The Bundle includes the Giga Vector Pack sold for $179.99.

Photocase is a strictly curated stock photography platform focusing on modern, creative photography. They made an exclusive selection of the most popular 100 photos (extra large size) worth $500!

Vandelay Premier is a new membership-based community managed by Vandelay Design. They prepared a special pack with high quality textures, bokeh backgrounds, Photoshop brushes & more. List price – $27.

Site5 is a web hosting company specially created for web designers. They offer free migration and a guaranteed 99.99% uptime. Get 6 months of the HostPro + Turbo plan worth $83.70!

If you’re wondering who “buried” the treasure to be found in Bundle Hunt, the answer is founder Noura Yehia, web designer and blogger; Claudiu Cioba, well-known innovative designer and illustrator; and Mostash, a small team of social media professionals.

For more information, visit Bundle Hunt

2. vCard Professional Template

3. Professional vCard with WordPress

4. So Simple vCard

5. Slick Vcard

6. The Virtual Business Card

7. vCard Personal Mini-Site

8. MiniMax

9. Lucido Professiona Vcard Template

10. vCard Professional Portfolio

11. Business & Portfolio vCard

12. Pixel Portfolio – Vcard

13. DotMe Business Card Theme

14. Blackgem vCard

15. vCard Portfolio Template

Artist’s Statement: My sculptures were originally inspired by the form and function of the sea urchin. The spines of the urchin, so dangerous yet beautiful, serve as an explicit warning against contact. The alluring texture of the spines draws the touch in spite of the possible consequences. The tension unveiled, we feel push and pull, desire and repulsion. The sections of pencils present aspects of sharp and smooth for two very different textural and aesthetic experiences.

Paradox and surprise are integral in my choice of materials. Quantities of industrially manufactured objects are used to create flexible forms reminiscent of the organic shapes of animals and nature. Pencils are common objects, here, these anonymous objects become the structure. There is true a fragility to the sometimes brutal aspect of the sculptures, vulnerability that is belied by the fearsome texture.

See more pencils artworks on artist Jennifer Maestre website.

Open your function.php file from theme folder, and:

Add this code to set to “none” the links for images:

update_option('image_default_link_type' , '');

Add this code to make like default option, link of images to the post:

update_option('image_default_link_type' , 'post');

Because often thought of as being monogamous, the seahorse is a symbol of steadiness, stability and constancy. An unique characteristic of this gentle creature, is the coronet on their head, which is distinct to each individual, much like a human fingerprint. This can be a graphic point to play. Seahorses swim upright, another characteristic that can give to your corporate identity a solid statute, being different in a common world (seahorse is the only ones sea creature which not swim horizontally). But, here come the hard part of art direction. Is a really challenge to make a unique logo from a such shape. Like you can see from this list, just few are using an original approach or seahorse shape.

1. SPAhorse

2. Fantasea

3. Zeahorse

4. Stresswell

5. Seahorse World

6. The Seahorse Trust

7. Campus Cabana

8. Seadreams

9. Se7horse

10. Oceania

11. Seahorse Marine

12. Hipo Campo

13. Caballo

14. Azamare

15. Aquatic

For more, visit their website or behance portfolio, where you can see and some photos from time of production.

The Events Calendar Premium plugin for Wordpress enables you to rapidly create and manage events using the post editor. Features include Google Maps integration as well as default templates such as a calendar grid and event list for streamlined one click installation.

Click for demo

Features

• Manage event details in the Events post type
• Upcoming Events Widget
• Provides full template to complement the 2010 theme out of the box (month and list view)
• Extensive template tags for customization
• Google Maps Integration
• Calendar Month view with tooltips
• Detailed List view
• In Depth Screencast and Documentation included just to be safe!
• Includes support for venue, cost, address, start and end time, google maps link
• Support for international addresses, time and languages

If you’ve been searching for a way to manage events, band gigs, concerts, charity events, conferences, tour calendar, or any other time based event inside Wordpress, this is the plugin you’ve been searching for! Install the plugin in minutes and start managing your events now!

WP Auctions – Auction Plugin for WordPress

WP Auctions is a plugin that enables you to host auctions on your self hosted WordPress powered blog or website. Forget about paying fees to anybody for listing auctions. Host your own auctions and keep 100% of your profits!

Click for demo

Features

• Create, Manage and Edit unlimited auctions on your website/blog
• Choose from nine currency options accepted by PayPal (?) or use your own custom currency
• Delete fraudulent bids easily from your custom admin panel
• Re-list closed auctions anytime, or delete them completely
• Get notifications via email of new bids placed
• AJAX powered sidebar widget to show your auctions
• Use PayPal or send Bank Details or Address for Wire Transfers or Checks
• Show a personalized message when no auctions are active
• Use HTML to personalize your item description, even embed a video!
• Upload up to four images per auction (automatically re-sized to fit into the auction window)
• Set specific end date and time for your auctions
• Set custom bid increments for your auctions (eg. $10)
• Hold auctions for registered users only
• Show auctions in a “List” or “Featured” format via a sidebar widget
• Use a custom contact field instead of bidder URL (eg. Phone Number)
• Enter Shipping Price, Shipping To and Shipping From details
• Sell items on a Buy it Now basis only or as an option

WordPress Membership Plugin

This is a Wordpress plugin that helps you sell your content; you only need to install the plugin, create a category for your private content, setup the prices of your memberships and your Paypal account.

Click for demo

Features

• You don’t have to modify your template
• Paypal integration
• Premium posts only seen by active members
• Setup unlimited memberships
• A dashboard that shows your sales by month
• Manage your subscriptions
• Filter your subscriptions by Month and Memberships
• Subscriptions are paginated
• Easy setup
• Very well documented with plenty of images
• Works with Wordpress 2.7 and above (also 3.0)

You can easily select the posts you want to sell, manage the memberships you acquire and is fully integrated with Paypal. All you have to do is activate the plugin, setup your memberships and your Paypal account.

WordPress deposit system

The deposit system is similar to the one they use here on ThemeForest (and other Envato sites). The system enables the users to deposit their money in their accounts.

Click for demo

Features

• Deposit system
• Deposit history
• PDF generation for individual deposits or complete list of deposits
• Switch between sandbox and paypal
• Full control via WordPress control panel

Twitter Widget Pro – Wordpress Premium Plugin

If you own just one twitter plugin for Wordpress, let it be this one! The only premium twitter plugin out right now – with support for multiple twitter users and includes a ton of premium options. This is the last Twitter plugin you’ll ever need!

Click for demo

Features

• Ready to use out of the box
• The only premium Multiple User twitter plugin
• Include twitter avatars, names, times, and more in the options page!
• Caching support, both via wp_cache_set and via database options
• Graceful crashing support in case twitter goes down
• In Depth Screencast and Documentation included just to be safe!
• Ridiculously easy to use – install it in mere minutes

For more amazing sculptures, visit his devianart gallery or his website.

Maybe the most important suggested idea by a snail (coiled shell) is the perfect balance. The “Phi” number (math golden ratio) related to its perfect curl shape, make the snail perfect for idea of balance, growth or development. Because of the two parts body, the snail can be used for a such big area of profiles, from realty, restaurants and medicine, to diving, software development, childcare etc. Another big achievement of the snail body consist in love of the children’s for this small and sensitive mollusk. It can be draw like a cartoon or stylized, in no limit color variations.

Snailtrip

Snail Realty

Snail Mail

Snail Farming

Snail Art

Sea Flower

Red Snail

Red Snail

Nautilus

Nano

Mr Manolo

De Jaeger

Clinica del Mar

Caracole

1.  Making the ellipse part of the badge. Use 6 ellipses to make the following shape. A simple way is to use the “Offset path” (Object / Path / Offset Path). Use the subtract tool to have the middle area empty. The colors are: #640401 and #FFFFFF.

2. Using the rectangle tool, draw a shape with 60 px corner radius. Use same technique like on ellipse shape to make the front part of badge. Use gradients and colors on your taste to have a 3D look. To can use same colors like in this tutorial, use a free and simple color picker like “pixie“.

At this step, your badge should look like this:

3. Add a shadow shape under the rounded rectangle. From “Transparency” panel chose the “Overlay” blend option.

4. Apply a carbon vector effect for the rounded rectangle. You can make the dots yourself, or, save your time spending just 2$ to buy this Vector Carbon Metal Pattern.

5. Depending on your Adobe Illustrator version, using the middle rounded rectangle shape, crop or make a clipping mask what will be placed over the rounded rectangle badge part.

6. Apply a “Multiply” blending option to the metal carbon shape.

7. For the fence part i bought this file. Use an ellipse shape to crop a fence what fit your badge shape.

8. Is time for barbed wire. I bought also this file for just 1$. From vector resource file, select first wire and drag / drop it over the “Brush” panel. From the new pop up window select “Art Brush”. On colorization method chose “tints” to can apply later what color you want to the brush stroke. Now, select your new custom art brush and using the “pencil” tool, draw a shape close to an ellipse.

Save your file. Now, you have a vector logo badge, ready for your company name.

[photo source: Reuters]

Let’s use in our play a hammerhead shark. Very often is used in corporate identities, logos for its clear unique shape what is easy to be recognizable. Is one of my favorites too.

1. Use a hammerhead photo reference.

2. Make a deep blue background with a radial gradient on a separate layer.

3. Make a contour of your hammerhead picture. Is hard to find a picture to have 100% your wanted pose. This is also our case. You will notice the shape will be a bit different from hammerhead photo. Name the layer “contour”. To use same colors like mine, use a free and simple color picker like “pixie“

4. Make a new layer and hide the previous one, “contour” (sure, you need to make it visible each time when you draw a new shape). Now you need some shapes to apply transparency and feather style (i used a 25px  feather radius). Use also deep blue colors depending on how dark / light is your zone (shadows or highlights). The rule is simple. If  a body part is close to you, will be more light in color. The dark ones are for parts placed far away.

5. Now, the new layer over the contour should look close to this image.

6. Duplicate the countour shape andapply a stroke like in following image.

7. Place the new shape behind the contour and place it in a way to give the following edges effect.

8. The bottom part of tale look weird now, because of the new stroke shape. Use Pencil tool to draw a line over it.  Play more with the colors. Sometime an easy way to gain a more dark image is to duplicate your vector and blend it over the original one. Here is a possible final result:

AviaSlider is a very flexible and easy to use Image slideshow plugin for jQuery with few really unique transitions that were never available before, as well as some basic transitions, so the slider will fit into every project. It comes with an image preloader so the slider starts when images are ready to be shown. No clumsy animations with half loaded images.

The slider also already comes with the famous prettyPhoto lightbox, but you are of course free to use any other.

Features of the Avia Image Slider

• 8 unique transition effects
• Lots of easy to set options to create your own effects
• Autoplay that stops on user interaction
• Valid HTML5 and CSS 3 Markup
• Supports linked images
• already prepared to work with prettyPhoto Lightbox
• works with jQuery 1.32 and higher

Browser Support

• Internet Explorer 6 and higher
• Safari 3 and higher
• Firefox 2 and higher
• Opera 10 and higher
• Google Chrome 3 and higher

Demo and Download (12$)

Wolke Hegenbarth

Olya

Mesh in Progress

Lindsay

Kyoko Fukada

Jewel

Halley Barry

Ashley

Girl

Anna Sophia

Majandra

Girl

Author self-portrait at age 4

Girl

Girl

Girl

Girl

Girl

Yes, another girl

Charlize Theron / Aeon Flux

Eva Green

Gemma

Elisha Cuthbert

Ali Larter

Women

Janice

Jessica Alba – Fantastic 4

Megan Fox

Hilary Duff

Bar Refaeli

More works of Paul Lung on his devianart account.

You need to make an account on Creattica.com and submit your work to one of those twelve categories before June 1st. There will only be just one lucky winner what will get US$1000 in cash, paid to a PayPal account, and they will be selected by means of a random selection algorithm between all items approved in the twelve eligible categories. Each item showcased in one of those categories will count as one entry.

Read more about this contest

Start with a basic square shape, copy  / paste / duplicate 3 times and apply for each a different isometric rotation (top, left, right). Those will be the faces of your cube.

Now, select all your faces and go to Objects / Expand Appearance to can manipulate them more easy. Align them in shape of a cube like you saw in the first screenshot of this tutorial. Let’s assume you want to make a multicolor vector cube icon. Using few basic perspective rules, duplicate your cube. Is easy, because you just need to follow the cubes lines. In center of your cubes is formed a star shape what is like a control shape, to assure yourself that the cubes are aligned properly.

Use 3 color tints for cube faces. One for most exposed faces (light), two for shadow / dark faces.

Another beauty of this fantastic tool, is that you can create so easy patterns for your website backgrounds, wallpapers etc. Using same steps describes above (square / isometric effect / cube) you can create a seamless cubes pattern. Align each cube close to next one on vertical and horizontal, add a clipping mask for a certain portion like in next screen and you got the pattern.

Here is an example of pattern  just created.

What about a vector logo? Nothing more easy after you understand the idea of isometric tool. You can apply a lot of effects for cube faces. Light lines can give a more sharp  / contrast visual effect of your cubes.

Feel free to explore the endless possibilities of 3D rotate tool from Adobe Illustrator with its isometric effect.

Here is a screenshot of WordPress theme option:

For more screenshots, Theme Options & Shop Backend, click here. For a full features description, read this PDF.

Purchase and Demo

Artist self portrait

Veils

True Blood

Silent sin

Girl

Leather and satin

Krasnaya Roza

Konchilis sni: vexelled

Jennifer Aniston

Jaime Pressly

Eyes

Actress

Yiftach Arieli

Little

Angel

Hya

Full length portrait

Megan Fox

Girl

Actress

Women

Gina

Charlize Theron Portrait

Manika ko

Sol

Actress

Elisha Cuthbert

Smile

Haruna

Zghira

BB3X

Losha

Like you can see in following images, the painting is not limited to Adobe Photoshop. Some images are close to perfection in imitation of reality, others are easy to be recognized like graphics because of less details on hairs or other elements. But, if you can see the footprint of CG, is not because the artist had less skills there. You will see for instance images from 2005 (like is portrait of Elijah Wood) which are so full in details, in years when the vector art was not so easy to be achieved. Keep in mind the vectors are used in special for print purposes. On a banner what cover a building, or even on an apparel, those details doesn’t matter, because on a banner canvas (some are call “mesh” too) or an a t-shirt, the quality of details is limited by printing procedure and texture.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our rss feed for next coming part two from this series of vector art using gradient mesh tool. For full posts on your email account, click here.

Rockabilly Beach

Wing

Shooter

Scarlet

Rachel Nichols

Frodo

Mia Maestro

Marilyn Monroe

Loveless

Jessica Alba

Green

Katy Perry

Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury

Fixing

Elijah Wood

Deep in Thought

Francisco Bosch

Day Dreamer

Scarf

Audrey Hepburn

Angel wallpaper

Amitai

Jessica Alba

Angelina Jolie

Women

Childrens

3 Rings

The Joomla extension directory contain a lot of options for customization of your template or component, VirtueMart in this case, but aren’t too many options for a proper accordion menu. On market exist few paid solution like S5 Virtuemart Accordion Menu Module developed by Shape5 or another accordion menu done by offlajn.com, but, if you are looking for something free, you may take a look at what J.O.O.M Design released just few weeks ago: Virtuemart accordion menu.

A big plus for this module is the compatibility with SH404SEF search engine optimization component.

Demo and Download

1. Creative Zodiac

2. WordPress Hud

3. WordFolio

4. WordPress vCard

5. UflexFolio

6. WordPress Stealth

7. SleekSlide

8. Shapeshifter

9. Quambizz

10. Prominence

11. WordPress Photo Nexus

12. WordPress Photo and Graphic Studio

13. WordPress Personal Landing Page

14. Novocane

15. Minimal WordPress Site

16. Minimo – A minimal one page WordPress portfolio page

17. Minimalista

18. Luna

19. Glass

20. Flex – Wordpress Portfolio

21. Elementia

22. Creative

23. Contrast

24. Bosspress

This is a simple jQuery plugin what can be used to create an unbloated MegaMenu in seconds. Is free and flexible, easy to be integrated in your page code. The plugin offer you the engine and function for menu. Of course, for a full cross browser optimization you need to apply the proper css style to it and remove the tables. Can be integrated nicely in WordPress and Joomla.

Instructions and Demo

Starting with WordPress 2.9 is no longer need to use custom fields and hacks to have thumbnails in your blog articles or even on widgets area, sidebars, footers etc. For instance, to make a thumbnails area for random latest 12 recent posts, use the following code:

<?php
$my_query = new WP_Query('showposts=12&orderby=rand');
if( $my_query->have_posts() ) {
echo '<h1>Random Articles</h1>';
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>
<?php
$attachments = get_posts( array(
'post_type' => 'attachment',
'number_posts' => 1,
'post_status' => null,
'post_parent' => $my_query->post->ID,
) );
if ($attachments) {
?>
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
<?php
$thumbnail_id = $attachments[0]->ID;
echo wp_get_attachment_image( $thumbnail_id );
}
endwhile;
}
wp_reset_query();
?></a>
<?php endif; ?>

You need to keep in mind the thumbnails will have the sizes from your function.php call action settings, and that will not look ok in your sidebar. You can use a CSS style to make them to look how you wish. Example:

.attachment-thumbnail {
height:50px;
width:50px;
padding:5px;
background:#fff;
margin:5px 5px 0 0;
}

Maybe when you hear about 3D, you are thinking at aliens, monsters or SF worlds. Even the imagination have a free way with help of 3D softwares and rendering plugins, the real challenge remain to make a model or a scene to look close to reality. Is like on painting class. Is more easy to draw / paint / concept / mold something what isn’t exist and the human eye don’t have comparison, then to do same thing using a real model. Take a look at those 3D works to see how CG become close to reality more then ever. Many of them are using and matte painting techniques like those presented in this tutorials article.

1. Charging Kudu

2. Bernadette

3. Eiffel Tower

4. Girl on a chair

5. Rain Street

6. Chimpanzee

7. The last move

8. Ingrid Bergman

9. Juicy Head

10. ColdBlue

11. Hektor

12. Weird Science (even i don’t like the subject, is a masterpiece in rendering matter)

13. Shiba Ryotaro Memorial Museum

14. Beetle 1963

15. The Artist himself, Piotr Wysocki

16. Cologne Cathedral / Kölner Dom

17. Sunrise of the 80’s

18. Guanajuato Alley

19. Song Hye Kyo

20. Last Elf

21. Old lamp

22. Street of Memories

23. Great White

24. Car crash

25. Buzz Life

26. Death Of Roller Derby

27. Hue

28. Sunlight Bright And Beautiful Afternoon

29. Little Beast

30. Waiting for spring

31. Pu Yi

32. Porsche 911 Gt2 (993)

33. Venice. Another Look

34. Impression

35. Tokyo Metro Station

On this example, the static html code for menu use a dotted border on right for each menu item. The last menu item will have a special “li” class where the border is set to “none”, to can have the dotted separator just between two menu items.

<ul>
<li><a href="about.html">who we are<</a></li>
<li><a href="what-we-do.html">what we do</a></li>
<li><a href="partners">partners.html</a></li>
<li><a href="news-events.html">news &amp;amp;amp; events</a></li>
<li class="last"><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
</ul>

Ok, but this part of your code will look different when you are integrating it in WordPress for instance. Example:

<ul id="menu">
<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&depth=3&hide_empty=0'); ?>
</ul>

Now, the last menu item will have also the separator. If with “li” tag you can defines each item in the list, the “ul” tag defines the list. On WordPress, in this case, you cannot style a single item list without a small jQuery code inserted in your header.php

$(document).ready(function() {
$("#menu li:last").addClass("last");
});

Now the menu look ok and on WordPress. You can apply in same way and a class for “first” list item.

This script can perfectly be combined with an image preloading plugin. It show some nice ideas about how a jQuery slider can be integrated in your design under certain layout elements, like a menu, header etc. Tested and works on Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. The slideshow use images with a width of 1500px, what is pretty impressive because the loading time is similar to a standard image jQuery slider.

Tutorial, Demo and Download

Is easy to apply any blending option for texts to gain shadows, to overlay effects over a background etc, but in many cases you need to make another alterations to the text with already done blending options.

For instance, if you want to delete a part of you object with its blending options, you will discover that the blending options will follow the new shape. Can you delete / alter the shadows, the bevels, strokes and whatever blending options you need to use? Yes, you can. Follow this short Adobe Photoshop tutorial to learn how to do it.

1. I am starting with a editable text what have few blending options  available. Is nice to can have such nice effects into an editable text field.

2. But, for more deep effects we need to do few steps. Click right on text layer from your layers panel, and click on “Group into New Smart Object”. This is one of most great addition starting with CS2. With smart objects, you can make multiple copies of a single object and all copies will be updated when one of the copies is edited (you can still apply layer styles and adjustment layers to the individual smart objects without affecting all copies). Pixel-based smart objects also remember their original size and can be transformed multiple times without loss.

3. Repeat the step, but click on  ”Rasterize layer” instead (you cannot fully handle a smart object which in our case)

4. Now, all your text blending effects can be changed in any way you need, using tools or filters, without to follow the original object / text shape, because now is no more effects there. Everything now become a single object at your wish.

Coin Slider have lot of features that jqFancyTransitions didn’t have at the beginning. Basically it’s a latest (and improved) version of jqFancyTransitions but with new ‘fancy’ transitions effects. jqFancyTransitions slice your images in stripes, while Coin Slider slice them in squares. And that’s the main difference. With changing order of appearing those squares I achieve random, swirl, rain and straight effects.

Features

• Unique transition effects
• Compatible with Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2+, Safari 2+, Google Chrome 3+, Opera 9+
• Valid markup
• Flexible configuration
• Auto slide
• Navigation box
• Lightweight (8kb only)
• Linking images
• Free to use under MIT licence
• Fully customizable using CSS

Demo and Download

The following list not meant to be the cream of romanian websites, but looking over it you can catch an idea about the way romanian companies are building their online presence.

The last years in www aim to clean and light designs, and it seem .ro have plenty of web layouts with those attributes. You are invited to browse also  into portfolio of web design studios listed here to see other few good looking websites.  Almost all websites present an english version.

4night.ro

Ad-venture

Afish

Andrei Paşa

Bergenbier -Prietenii stiu de ce

Best Before

Brands Talk

Carioca

Carolo Moldovan

Caroli

Casa Mediterana

Dan Podaru

Dero

Design 19

Dj Project

Ellipse Media

Encoil

Extrude Studio

Gabi Toth

GMP

Green Pixel

Ines Advertising

Dragoş Jieanu

Koala

Leads Management

Lenor

Leo Burnett Romania

Logobox

Longneck

MB Drăgan

McCann Erickson Romania

Media Design

Media Serv

Murfatlar

Nocturn

Pixelosaurus Design

Psalmplasma

Random Colors

Cristallini

ROM Autentic

Touch Media

Urbaum

Webtailors

X3 Studios

Zupadupa

Features:

• Ease Sliding Menu
• Thumbnail Slider
• Default item first (optional)
• Easy implementation plugin
• Cross browser compatible (ie6, ie7, safari4, firefox3, opera, chrome3)
• CSS & XHTML valid

Customization:

• The “selected” li item (optional) will auto scroll to it´s position on page load. You can setup the “ulPadding” to add left and right paddings beyond items positions.
• Setup the “velocity” to adjust velocity on movement (miliseconds).
• Setup the “edges” to create an area nearly edges to scroll items to edge (left or right).
• “debug” true or false to output some usefull info, as on the left “tracer values”.
• “extendClick” – that´s it, the click function assigned, so you can control it outside the plugin function.

Demo and Download

Current Features

• 9 unique transition effects
• Simple clean & valid markup
• Loads of settings to tweak
• Built in directional and control navigation
• Packed version only weighs 5kb
• Free to use and abuse under the GPL license

Browser Support

Nivo Slider has been tested under the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer v7+
• Firefox v3+
• Google Chrome v4
• Safari v4

Effect parameters

• sliceDown
• sliceDownLeft
• sliceUp
• sliceUpLeft
• sliceUpDown
• sliceUpDownLeft
• fold
• fade
• random

Demo and Download

Learn how to create inspired log designs with our testking 1z0-052 web designing course. Also check out the new testking 350-040 tutorials and testking SK0-002 study guides to learn web designing in detail.

1. White Rhino Production – Logo case

2. White Rhino Production – Logo Case

3. White Rhino Production – Logo Case

4. White Rhino

5. Vale Tudo

6. The Battle Rhino

7. Sound Safari

8. Saving Rhinos

9. Rillusion Design Studio

10. Rhino Works

11. Rhino Wine Gear

12. Rhinos Life

13. Rhinoskin

14. International Rhino Foundation

15. Rhino Shields

16. Rhino Rod

17. Rhino Logo

18. Rhino Island Media

19. Rhino Internet

20. Rhino Industries

21. Rhino Flooring

22. Rhinoferos

23. Rhino Driveway

24. Rhino Demolition

25. Rhino Concrete Pumping

26. Rhino Communication

27. Rocksteady Investments (one of my drafts from a logo project)

28. Rhinoceros Nurbs

29. Rhino Cases

30. Rhine logo

31. Pixelosaurus Design

32. Indau Group

33. Hermes Transportes Blindado

34. Clockwork Rhino

35. Blue Rhino Marketing

36. Black Rhino Studios

37. Black Rhino

38. Binks Rhino

39. Alergic to Rhinos

40. Albino Rhino

Learn how to build creative web pages with testking NS0-163 web designing course. Go through testking 646-985 tutorials and testking 70-630 study guide to pick the unique design ideas.

1. You are beautiful

2. Yoo Tae Han

3. Whitey Clean

4. We make it live

5. Ungarbage

6. The Typographic Desk Reference [TDR]

7. Supersize

8. Rebecca Ruth

9. Ponto Criativo

10. Pomade

11. Pixel Mind

12. Onskelista

13. Nuova Design Lab

14. Neutra (Free WordPress theme)

15. Minimal

16. Midiaweb

17. Meta Maniera

18. Maqina

19. LG

20. Langoor

21. Jump To

22. Jerlyn Thomas

23. Inkd

24. I am Dan

25. Hugo Miniero

26. This is grow

27. Gaaraa

28. Forrykt

29. Feedweaver

30. Exehill

31. Eco Service

32. Digital Podge

33. Design by Silnt

34. Danny Blackman.com

35. Cynosura

36. Cups Calgary.com

37. Charles Elena.com

38. Craig Wilson

39. Cool White

40. Concise

41. Concept

42. Clogg

43. Cartier

44. Best Before

45. Bee Creations

46. Martin Balhar

47. Artypapers

48. Arrival Design

49. Area 17

50. Andrew Lindstrom

51. Alt Backspace

52. Alex Trochut

53. Agencia Moby

54. Aaron Kato

55. 3e Etage

On windows there are actions in some subfolders of the photoshop installation folder depending on photoshop version, preferable in ‘Required’ and ‘Presets\Photoshop Actions’. You can also keep your actions in a different folder, even on a different drive. Just tell PhotoShop to load the actions, and navigate to their location. This way you can keep your downloaded and custom actions in a safe place.

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1. Image Flow Photoshop Action

2. Image Flow 2 Photoshop Action

3. Image Flow 3 Photoshop Action

4. HardBack Book Action

5. Photoshop DVD box action

6. 3D render of software packaging mockup

7. Amazing Compact Disk eCover Action & Templates

8. DVD/CD Mockup Generator (Actions & Templates set)

9. Product Box Action

10. DVD Case Action

11. Paperback Book Action

12. 3D Box Generator Action set & Templates

13. Comic book effect action

14. Photoshop Business Card Action

15. Cartoon/Comic-book effect Action

16. CD Case Mockup Generator

17. Hand-colored Vintage Photo ATN

18. Oriental fan action

19. The out of boundseffect have never been easier

20. Magnifying glass action

21. Reflection wall

22. Reflections

23. Photoshop stamp action

24. Image Stack / Display Actions

1. Upload 10 of your original logo designs to 99designs
2. Customers will buy your logos from 99designs
3. You will customize it for them by adding their business name
4. 99Designs will pay you a % commission on every sale

I am sure you have a lot of good designs what aren’t meet the way of client vision. Instead to keep them just on backups,  upload them in a market where you can earn some money. More then that, those can act like a live portfolio page for your corporate identity works.

Get testking 352-001 design tutorials and testking 312-50 video emos related to web designing to learn and create creative web sites. Learn the core of web designing with testking 642-359 online web designing course.

1. Zaum and Brawn

2. Outstander

3. XP CodecPack

4. Unleaded Software

5. Two 24 Studios

6.Tedler Montov

7. Tap Tap Design

8. Switch Mediaworks

9. Studio Nash Vegas

10. Start Fitness

11. Starbucks Coffee

12. Something Interesting

13. SilverMusic

14. Saizen Media

15. Red Million

16. Quasar – Free joomla template from RocketTheme

17. Pixelosaurus Design

18. Osvaldas

19. Nue Media

20. Miriel Design

21. Mike Precious

22. Made Frog Designs

23. Livid Media

24. Life Platform

25. Kavoon Web Design Studio

26. Kardo Ayoub

27. Icki Sports

28. Honky Tonkxxx

29. Haris Vision

30. IDC

31. Esteban Munoz

32. Cleo Annex Salon

33. Gutmann Freerider

34. Gomu Project

35. Future of web design

36. Fully Illustrated

37. Brett Nyquist

38. Black Portfolio

39. Adam Hickey

40. Black Admin Template

41. Arrowhead

42. BootB

43. Blaxk

44. Magnifico – A free PSD file of this website is available for download here.

45. Different

function onMouseMove(e) {

Before to any variables, paste this code to make it to work and on IE browsers:

if (e == null)
e = window.event;

Otherwise, your javascript code will be stoped by IE.

Even isn’t a big deal at first sight, following a recent list with javascript animantions, i saw that many was not working on Internet Explorer. We like or not, over 35% from internet users (over 45% according to other statistics) use IE browsers – 10% are just for IE6!?!

To access the global brush dimensions, double click on tool, on warp tool for instance. From there, change the sizes of width, height, angle etc. Another way to change the mass distortion tool without to open this settings box, is to use two keyboards: SHIFT and ALT. Press the SHIFT+ALT key and move the mouse to change the size of brush. In case you need to change and the angle of brush, then press just the ALT key and move the mouse along x and y axis to achieve the wanted angle.

Builded like a single page website, each section of vCard is presented in a nice card animation. The bottom rainbow is the vCard menu. Click on colors to get the page displayed. You can change the order of cards, changing the order of section divs from “index.html”. The portfolio page can display images, a group of images, swf files, videos and iframe content. Nice jQuery pagination is included. Template contain a layered psd file with elements for cards, form, background, pattern and icons.

Is really easy to make a new look to the template. Simply replace the pattern and background holder for cards and your theme will look unique. In case you want to replace the colors for cards, with different gradient or palette, use the psd file and save the slices.

Do not forget that is a bio vCard, do isn’t builded for heavy content. If still you need to use a lot of texts, take care at spacing, because the cards aren’t flexible on height. Use Colorbox plugin included to load more text.

Features:
• Unique and clean layout
• jQuery Animation
• xhtml w3 validated
• Portfolio with pagination and Colorbox
• Ajax Contact form with validation
• Layered PSD file
• Extensive Documentation

See the demo of working vCard template here.

License sold.
Please contact me if you are looking for something similar or custom, or, take a look on those vCards.

What you get:
• html template
• layered psd file
• pdf help file

The problem is screen printed above. The css background attachment property loaded like default in IE6-7 is “scroll”. For IE6 you can make the background attachment “fixed” and no more scrolling. Not so with IE7.

Since Microsoft “corrected” the background attachment issues with IE7 and now is no way of having an overflow of text in a input or textarea element and not having the background scroll with the text, and if you try “background-attachment: fixed;” the background doesn’t even display.

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Because is no really css hack what fix the problem, you need to think out of css. Instead to style just the textarea element, make a supplementary div like container for textarea and apply the background image to the div, instead to textarea. Let the textarea without border and background to make a proper overlay.

#contactForm textarea {
border:none;
background:none;
width:200px;
height:85px;
color:#c8c8c8;
padding:10px 0 0 10px;
overflow:hidden;
}

#contactForm .textarea {
width:215px;
height:100px;
background: url(../images/input-text.png) no-repeat;
}

The home page layout can be used and like a landing page. Compatible Browsers: FireFox 2, FireFox 3, IE7, IE8, Opera, Safari and Chrome. You can see here a working demo. Theme have 2 grey color styles. Use the “Theme Switcher” function from blog category to test both of them.

Features:
• 2 Grey Color Styles
• Featured Projects Slider
• Nice Slide Gallery Page
• Last Twitter entries
• Dynamic testimonials
• Custom search results
• Working Contact Form
• Full Theme Options
• The new WP 2 .9 thumbnail feature
• Extensive Documentation

Usage: portfolio, image gallery, architecture, corporate business, landing page.

Style: dark grey, light grey, black & gray, clean and simple.

1. Make a full contour the character.

2. Duplicate it and apply an “offset path” with 3px.

3. Make the following shape for coat with “Pen Tool”. You can draw it above the sketch. Apply a blue gradient to it. To use same colors like mine, use a free and simple color picker like “pixie“. Will be more easy for you to copy the code of color instead writing it.

4. Make the pants. Use the following gradient settings.

5. Make the legs shape, using same “Pen Tool”.

6. For shoes we will use three layers (in second one we mix and the socks). First shape:

7. Second one, with socks:

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8. Third one:

9. With “PenTool” and “Ellipse Tool” make the following shapes for laces.

10. Details for cloth. Same, use “PenTool” and “Ellipse Tool”.

11. For face, make a shape close to this and apply the gradient from screenshot. Same one like gradient for legs, just is “radial”.

12. The next shapes are used for face details:

13. Student hat shapes. The shadow shape is a black color shape with opacity at 40%.

Your vector character should look like this:

In case you want to add a shadow, copy the first layer created and add perspective.

Thanks for reading.

2. Go to filters again, and from Texture / Grain choose “Film Grain” like in next image:

3. Make a new layer (light) and on top for background and apply a big soft brush with a light grey shade.You need to do that on a new layer because later, on html integration, will be a more easy job to set a background noise-grain pattern for body and the light like png to a div, instead to save a big image like background. This will not overload the size of graphics used and also, on any resolution the background will look good. In case you are just web designer, do not forget to develop and a programmer thinking.

4. Put your logo over the light layer. In my case i used one done with basic shapes. Doesn’t matter now the color or effects. In case you are doing it in Illustrator, let it simple, with no effects, gradients etc.

5. For slogan, i used the blending options like following:

6. For logo:

The logo should look now like:

7. Make a bar menu (centered to layout) using “Rounded Rectangle Tool” with 25px radius. Width: 940px and height: 42px. Apply same blending options like on logo, except the stroke will have a more less opacity (the stroke should have a more contrast)

8. For menu items background, use again the “Rounded Rectangle Tool” with 25px radius. Width: 200px and height: 30px. Using “Rectangular Marquee Tool” copy a part of noise-grain background and mask it with the new created shape.

Use same way to make the “hover” effect for any menu item.

9. Let’s make a slider. Make a shape using “Rounded Rectangle Tool” with 25px radius. Width: 940px and height: 305px. Apply same blending options like on menu bar. In fact, that engraved effect will be used for most of other shapes.

10. For slider buttons, use “Ellipse Tool” to make a circle 80×80px and center it along slider border. But, to make the circle to be part of slider shape, before that, is need to click on “vector mask” of slider shape layer, select the “add to shape area” option. Do the same to the right side.

11. Make an arrow. You can use the “Custom shape tool”. Apply same blending slider options. Increase the opacity for stroke and put a small shadow.

12. In bottom area will be 3 columns. Each heading will have an icon. The icons i use are standard symbols in Adobe Illustrator CS3 and in case you need to change them in same style, but with different shapes, go to your Illustrator and open the “web symbols” group of icons. By default, those symbols are hidden from symbols windows. Drag the icon needed to your artboard and expand appearance, copy the icon and paste it like smart object in Photoshop.

13. Under each icon layer, make a new shape using “Rounded Rectangle Tool” with 25px radius. 60 x 45px size. Same blending option like the menu and slider shapes.

14. For icons, apply blending settings like in following screens:

15. For text separation, in columns, use two 1px lines with two contrast grey shades. One lighter one darker.

16. We have to deal now with footer area. Using 25px radius “Rounded Rectangle Tool”, make a shape 380 x 100px. Select the “vector mask” and with “Rectangle Tool” subtract the bottom of shape area. Course, same blending style like on menu, slider and icon holder.

17. Using brushes, 1px lines, shapes with gaussian blur filter applied, make the following effect (i am not detailed here because exist a lot of “web 2.0″ brushes available for download or tutorials about that kind of effect)

You are done. See more screenshots of template. If you like the design, you can buy a xhtml/css template version with just 10$. It comes with 4 layouts in 7 pages and with predefined classes for common elements needed in website, from lists to tables.The package contain layered psd files, logo sources, detalied instructions for customizations, thematic animation / slider and working contact form

The W letter show a lot of potential in many design purposes. Is one of my favorites. Now, make a mouth for w-ram becoming shape.

Your shape should be like this now:

The W look now more like a sheep because is no horns there. To make it, use “pen tool” and make a simple shape like in following image. Select it and make a new art brush from it, using setting from screenshot.

Select “pencil” or “paintbrush tool” and using new created brush, draw shapes close to horns look. The “smooth tool” is doing a great job here.

Once you found the perfect shape, ungroup it and delete the path (line). duplicate it and transform / reflect one horn.

Place the horns in top of W brackets.

Be sure you make a proper alignment with top of W letter.

Now, combine all shapes, W letter, the mouth and horns. Note: Like you can see, the anchors points aren’t same on right side like on left one. That is because of W shape letter design. In case you want to balance it, you can move some anchors.

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Final w wild logo letter:

From here, play more if want, using “offset path” or other vector shapes and layers combinations.

Get testking NS0-153 tutorials and testking 1z0-051 study guides to learn how to create artistic logos with isometric technique. Become expert with testking 642-974 online web designing course.

1. Find a “P” font letter close to the classic look.

2. Crop the left side of the “P”, like in the following image:

3. Duplicate your new “P” letter shape. Go to effects and from 3D, choose rotate. From 3D rotate options select in positions list “Isometric right”.

4. Same things for the second “P” letter shape, except the position from 3D rotate options will be “Isometric left”.

Your new isometric letters:

5. The “P” letters look how we want but we cannot play to much with the shapes. For more flexibility, expand the appearance. Click right on letter, ungroup, click right again and release the clipping mask, then delete the rectangle path.

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6. Fill the letters with 2 different orange colors.

7. Align both shapes to the left, and be sure the alignment is pixel perfect.

8. Group the letters and duplicate (copy / paste) the group. This will be used for left side of the graphic. Transform / reflect the group.

9. Fill the new pasted shapes with two different grey colors. Align them to the left of orange letters.

10. If you want to make a shadow for logo, select all the shapes and combine them. Fill the new shape with a very light grey, and transform it using skew or perspective tool.

To learn how to use same isometric technique to make a logo, pattern and an vector icon using a square shape, read this tutorial.

Make a new layer and paste the last two shapes done. Hide the first layer with the star basic shape. Fill the shapes with blue and orange color grandients.

Now, arrange the shapes to form a star like the basic star shape is. For the next step you need to make 3 new shapes (with Pen Tool) for a small 3D star effect. Those shapes will have a more dark orange color or gradient. Each star corner will meet the center of shape. Left one will have a full orange color, middle one a 90° angle grandient, right one at 45° gradient.

This is how you image look now:

Place a shadow shape like in following image and make the happy face star. Copy now all shapes and combine them, fill the new shape with a light grey and place it behind the character. Use Free Distort effect to create a perspective character shadow.

Done. Bravo. You are a star!

In the middle of November was released a new premium ecommerce theme for WordPress by Sarah Neuber. Click here to see the shop working. For membership test, you need to make an account  (with a valid e-mail address). You’ll love it. Once logged, you can play with a 100% customized interface without to see the classic WordPress admin panel.

Furniture Store theme and Clothes Shop Template it look like anything else but not WordPress. When is talking about ecommerce, this is a true quality. With a true CMS solution like Furniture Store a large palette of shops can gain power of WordPress SEO and its light and clean ways to customization. How offen is happen that to build for a client a shop on a classic open source ecommerce solution from where you use just 5% from facilities? What just mess the not tech savyclients minds and make you to losing time with client tutoring? You will discover that is more cheap to pay few dollars for a right cart solution then spending time writing instructions.

Is really nice to see that are developed new ecommerce systems, more light, and using just necessary administration options.

Live Preview and Purchase

Yesterday was launched a new framework and from a short play with it, i can say is very flexible, light and clean. The main goal of this framework is to provide a solid base for all of your front-end projects. It will help you go through the initial steps of creating a master template quickly, without having to worry about browser rendering issues for certain elements, including numerous JavaScript plugins to perform simple tasks or even worry about CSS naming conventions.

The idea behind it is to reduce the amount of time spent on setting up the basic master HTML template by reusing the same coding techniques. Easy Framework includes all 3 layers of front-end: structural, presentational and interactive what makes it the true all-in-one solution for your next front-end project.

Easy Framework is available for download with 2 licenses. For free use you need to follow some rules mentioned here. In case you want to use it for your freelance work or for your agency projects and want it clean from copyright notes, you can choose a developer license for just 49$ (Special launch price).

For Easy Framework demo, click here. For download, click here.

Carrie and Ben

Corny Jack

Cotton Eye Jim

Cuba the scuba

Francois le chef

Landon loud

Nosy Ned

Perry the pirate

Q-Pack

Rocky Rock. A painting tutorial for this doll was featured in 2DArtist Magazine. You can see it here.

Taliban Joe

Yes, when you are thinking at logos, put on the top of needs the usability. On web design you need to think at usability like a face of accessibility, but when is talk about corporate identity, this affect just the client use, the owner of logo. Along with the final logo images, you should be able to provide the resource file of logo, for future editing. A logo resource isn’t a png or a big resolution image (like many clients discover that after a while). Depending on how your contract was negotiated, the client can pay an extra amount for full logo resources. Paths are the heart of logos, because those give you possibilities to engrave a logo on a pencil or to make a billboard on the block without to lose quality.

In this tutorial you can learn how to use the Path Tool and shapes to make resizable logos (path / shape) in Adobe Photoshop. Because of monogram logo tutorial done in Adobe Illustrator i had many visitors coming from search engines looking after “monogram logo” keyword, what show that are a many peoples around looking for monogram ideas. So, let’s make another monogram logo, but with a different software and style.

For this tutorial i will use an idea developed for a client some time ago. Instead his original company name, use now a generic Clock Starter company name, from where i isolate the CS characters for monogram. The CS letters will incorporate a clock look. To achieve that, i am using simple paths like circles or rectangles with “substract” and “add to area” options.

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For beginning, start in your Photoshop a new document 640 x 480 px. Set the background color to #202020. Add a noise effect as it is shown bellow:

Make a new layer and apply a soft brush with 675px diameter, opacity to 76% and a light grey color. Then, set the blending mode of the layer to “screen”. You can play here with layer opacity. Mine is set at 70%.

Your background should look like in this image:

Before to start the play with paths, make 2 guides on horizontal and vertical positioned at 50%, what mean the perfect middle of the work area.

Now, select the Ellipse Tool and draw a shape of circle with 375px diameter and #505050 like color.

Select the “substract from shape area” option for shape, and draw another circle with 319px diameter.

Align the circles. To do that, use the Path Selection Tool (A – same key like in Illustrator), and select both shapes while you press the shift key. Align the circles to center.

Now, using the RectangleTool, with same “substract” option activated, draw a rectangle with 28px wide. Use the Path Selection Tool to move it. Place it in left of the vertical guide (use the snap). Transform the rectangle (Ctrl+T) and make it like in this image:

At this moment, the left side is our “C” letter. For “S”, we will use indicators (3 o’clock) to transform the right side of the clock in a “S” shape. Select the left rectangle. Copy / paste (Ctrl+C / Ctrl + V). Move the new pasted rectangle (after paste will be placed exact over the source) to the right of the vertical guide. Select from top bar “add to shape area”. Make the rectangle to indicate 12 hour. The bottom of rectangle will snap with the horizontal guide. The top of rectangle will not exceed the area or the circle.

Copy the 12 hour indicator, rotate and place it under the horizontal guide, on right side of the vertical guide (3 o’clock).

The right side of the clock look now like a 9 instead of “S”. Copy the 3 hour indicator and place it above the horizontal guide. Select “substract” option from top bar icon and resize it on length.

The final monogram shape should look now like this:

Look nice but is too flat. Follow this screens and apply those layer styles:

Your monogram logo look now like here:

See, wasn’t that hard to make a clock logo monogram. Just keep in mind that for very small logo applications, Adobe Photoshop isn’t ideal. For that kind of use, exist Illustrator or Corel Draw where you can transform and the texts in curves. But, like i said at beginning, for web design use logos, Photoshop is doing a great job.

We’ll start to make the menu bar. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 5px and pick the grey color #b1b1b1. Size of menu bar: 740px / 37px.

Apply a gradient effect to the new shape created.

Your layout should look like this now:

On the right side of the menu bar place a new shape what will be a search field. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 25px and pick the green color #aab82e.

Add inner shadow:

Add the text for menu labels.

Apply to the menu labels an engraved effect. Place separators between labels. Draw with pencil 1px brush grey vertical lines. For depth, you can make for each one another light grey line.

Is time to create the header. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 5px. Chose the size for shape according to your needs. The color doesn’t matter now because the rectangle will be used for clipping mask. My size is 740px / 380px. Make a copy of this layer.

Chose an image according with the theme of website and place it in a layer above the new created shape. Right click on image layer and choose “Clipping Mask”.

Now move the copied rectangle layer above the clipping mask and set the following blending options for stroke and inner shadow:

Now you should have the following header:

Put the first layer from header in Multiply mode.

On the bottom corners of the clipping mask, for slider, will be the place of arrows. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 25px, press the shift key and drag a white color rectangle. Place it in a left bottom corner.

Duplicate the layer and move it on the right corner.

For “crop” corners shadow, make a shape using Pen Tool with color #bababa and apply a gaussian blur with 3px radius.

Duplicate the “shadow” shape and flip it horizontal. Place the blurred shapes above crop corners rectangles. Using clipping mask, make the header to look like:

Using Custom Shape Tool place arrows for left and right buttons of slider.

Split the content area in two columns with a line draw with the pencil and #b5b5b5 color. Delete bottom part of it with a soft round brush. Place the texts and pictures. For text i used Tahoma font and Futura BT Medium for titles. Like colors, #ee9802 is used for links and #a8b814 for green words. Use rectangles with rounded corners (5px) like masks for pictures. Apply to clipping mask shapes a stroke with 8px size positioned outside with #efefef color.

For next step, select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 5px, pick the grey color #a7a7a7 and create 4 boxes with 150px / 95px sizes. Use guides for a perfect alignment. Now, for blending options, follow the next screens:

Your boxes should look like in this screen:

You need now 3, 4 icons for those 4 boxes. For 3 boxes i used 3 icons from Milky set released by iconeden.com . Download the icon set from here. Change the colors in Adobe Illustrator like in following image:

Place the icons in boxes. I made the orange color too strong. Because of that, after importing the vectors like smart object in photoshop, i duplicated each icon layer 3 times with following blending options: Pin Light, Luminosity, Pin Light. Using Ellipse Tool, place a very light shadow under each icon.

On footer, create two grey horizontal lines and place between them the copyright note and a short bottom menu.

You are done! Your template should look like mine (click on image for 100% size):

From years, digital matte painting is more then a movie feature. Like a part of 2D digital painting and exceeding the professional uses, now is an area for pure imagination exercises. Almost all 2D painters started with matte painting. In fact, you will see that some tutorials are based 100% on digital painting. For such kind of tutorials you need a bit of drawing skills, many hours spend with pencil in front of your paper (yes, the basics cannot be replaced by any digital painting tutorials), studies about proportions and architectural perspective.

Like you can see, Adobe Photoshop (or any other performant paint software) is not a skill saver or a patch for our missing artistic education. Yes, using them you can save time and can make more many things with more low costs, but when you are looking at tutorials or on other matte painting showcases, think at how many hours was spent in background, many of them with unsuccessful results.

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1. Cleopatra Queen of Egypt. Matte paiting tutorial by Frederic St-Arnaud. Web: www.starno.net

2. Dark House. Matte paiting tutorial by Sébastien Gaucher. Web: www.seb4d.com

3. Making Of The Lost World: Temple of Nature. Matte paiting tutorial by Tiberius Viris. web: www.suirebit.net

4. Digital matte painting.

5. London National History Museum. Matte Painting tutorial by Sorin Bechira. web: www.bechira.com

6. Extend a live action set with custom matte painting. Video matte paint tutorial by Andrew Kramer. web: www.videocopilot.net

7. Create a mystic night scene with rainy atmosphere. Matte paint tutorial by Shantanu Jahagirdar. web: www.thesign.info

8.  Winter. Matte paiting tutorial by Sébastien Gaucher. Web: www.seb4d.com

9. Making of “Distant Shores”. Matte painting tutorial by Andreas Rocha. web: andreasrocha.com

10. Matte painting Environment – Tunnel. Tutorial by Henry H. Pashkov

11.  The Making of The Decline of Babel Myth – Jacobsen War. Matte painting tutorial by Frederic St-Arnaud. web: www.starno.net

12.  Making of Neokathmandu. Matte painting tutorial by Sarel Theron. web: www.sareltheron.com

13. Creating Movie Matte Paintings with Photoshop. Tutorial by By Thibaut Granier.

14. From Speedpainting to Matte Painting2D/3D Production Pipeline. DVD tutorial by Sebastien Larroude. web: www.rainfx.com

15.  Matte Painting Production Techniques. DVD tutorial by Chris Stoski. web: www.stoskidigital.com

16. Matte painting – tornado wallpaper tutorial

17.  Mountains

18.  Making Fire Energy. Matte painting tutorial by Shailesh Pahuja. web: www.freewebs.com/artbaazi

19.  One Year As A Lion.

20.  Making of Urban. Matte painting tutorial by Pierre Fabre. web: www.gkaster.com

21.  The Castle. Matte painting tutorial by Dragos Jieanu. web: www.jieanu.com

22.  Fable of the Night. Matte painting tutorial by Andrew Teng.

23. Venice. Matte painting tutorial by Daniel Hammonds. web: www.wade.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

24.  Making of The Lost World (another one). Matte painting tutorial by Somnath Patra.

25. The Techniques ofChristian Lorenz Scheurer 2. DVD tutorial by Christian Lorenz Scheurer. web: christianlorenzscheurer.com

Even you consider all your articles worth to be read by all the peoples from internet, don’t acting like a mass submitter. When you discover a good source for your exposure, do not submit all your blog articles. Also, be patient and flexible. If your article isn’t published there, don’t take it personally. A good website is filtering their content. Maybe next time you will be published. Sometimes, this can be a reason to review again your articles, to find what can to be improved. There will be always something to do. The originality is not an easy standard.

1. Noupe

Submit here design news related. The news get exposure and on smashingmagazine and drweb.

2. instantShift

Submit here useful resources and downloads, tutorials and inspirational works.

3. Abduzeedo

Registration is needed to can share news and sites with the Abduzeedo community.

4.  Webdesign News

The title is clear. You can submit web design related links.

5. Colorburned

Submit graphic design articles, resources and tutorials.

6. Nettuts+

Submit links about css, programming, templates, wordpress etc.

7. Phototuts+

Sumbit photography related articles and resources.

8. Psdtuts+

Place for your photoshop tutorials, templates and design related articles.

9. Vectortuts+

One of most big vector and illustrator community. Submit your works, tutorials, freebies etc.

10. Css Globe

You need to be a member to can submit your articles. About profile, i think the title is clear enough.

11. Design Bump

Design community ready to get you live there. You need to make an account before to submit your web design related articles.

12. The Web Blend

In same niche like designbump with quite same features.

13. Designrfix

Submit design related articles.

14. Design MAG

They are looking about articles and posts that have unique content (like all of us).

15. HongKiat

Sumbit here latest news and tips about design.

16. Design Newz

Only submit articles that are relevant and useful to the design community.

17. Smashing Post

Share your design and development knowledge.

18. Graphic rating

Submit fresh graphics articles, tutorials, downloads etc.

19. Tripwire Magazine

Sumbit links to good inspirational work (Designs, Photos, Web Sites, Logos etc.), tutorials, resources, downloads etc.

20. Design Moo

Yes, you got it! Submit mooarticles, mootutorials, mooresources. You need to be a moomember.

21. Fuel Your Creativity

Submit here useful resources and downloads, tutorials and inspirational works.

22. Arbent

On the sidebar, you can sumbit design related links.

23. Crazy Leaf

Submit your design news, resources and tutorials.

24. ShareBrain

A bit confusing at first, but if you get in the right place after making a member account, you can post your design news.

25. Here should be catswhoblog, but i see that there is no user links news anymore. Then, with your will, i will post reADactor user news section.

I like to read (mean links accepted) things related in special to vectors, Photoshop, CSS, WordPress, Joomla, jQuery, After Effects etc. Links will get exposure on user news section and on sidebar for internal pages.

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When you are a regular submitter, you’ll learn about each website behavior. On some, links are approved once on few days. That mean if you are at begining of links submited, after approval, you will get direct to “page 2″ of section, or something like that. On others, you need to avoid the friday day for your submission (yes, the weekend).

The user links community is not a panacea for your popularity. Your content can be. Work hard, be patient and put pleasure on what you provide in time what you are looking for quality, and in time, your website can have loial readers and not just accidental ones. Look in your stats at how many pages are read by visitors from websited listed above. If almost all are reading just the page clicked, then, you are not on the right way.

AdMob is a Mobile Advertising Platform what made exceptional progress in a very short time. After a serious economic crisis such a serious investment show an image of the future development of internet advertising wich will be more present on mobiles. “Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development…” said Google VP of Product Management Susan Wojcicki.

I don’t have any doubts is true, because according to Reuters, in 2008, Google revenue from mobile ads was nearly $22 billion in 2008. Last month, Google said its mobile searches increased 30 percent quarter-over-quarter in the third quarter. Not far from last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt also said that the company was interested in resuming its acquisition efforts, after taking a breather during worst of the economic downturn. Schmidt said Google would acquire on average one company a month. It seem that the things get started.