Dave's Incident

My First Package Design

This is my first package design using Adobe Illustrator. Don't ask me what the product is.... as I have no idea. :)

Character Illustration in Adobe Illustrator

I completed my first character illustration using Adobe Illustrator. It took a while to finish, but I'm happy with it. :)

How Service Can Make/Break my Day

Breaking my day.

There’s this restaurant in the Philippines, which is famous for their cakes and pastries. Aside from cakes and pastries, they also offer other foods and dishes. In addition to their cakes, I’ve grown to love their “Releñong Bangus” (milkfish with the meat taken out, ‘hinimay’ and sautéed with vegetables). Their food is really great and you can expect the same good quality in all the branches of their restaurants. As much as I would love to dine as often as I can in their restaurants, I am gravely dissatisfied of their service. Service crews are grumpy and delivery of orders is very slow. Somehow the quality of their food cannot make up for the poor service that they offer.

Making my day.

One night, I went to Jollibee in Makati to have my dinner. I was working late that night and was very hungry. The service crew took my order, prepared the food, placed it on a tray, and then punched the order to the cash register. I asked for the receipt because I’d be needing it for my reimbursement, unfortunately it got jammed in the machine. I was really very hungry and can’t wait any longer so I just told the service crew not to bother, since I wanted to eat my dinner already. While I was eating my dinner, the service crew approached me and handed me the receipt with a smile on her face. She said, “Sir, eto po yung receipt nyo.” (Sir, here’s your receipt). I wasn’t expecting that. It showed how committed she was to serve her customers properly. Now, that’s service. ☺

PS Technique: Creating a Cartoon Character of Yourself

Have you ever wondered how you would look like if you were a cartoon character? You can easily transform your picture into a cartoon character using a graphics editor. I will share to you how I do it using Photoshop CS2.

First, select a picture that you like to convert. (Thanks to my friend for allowing me to use his picture.) ☺




Crop as desired and remove the background using your favorite selection tools.



Now let’s create the outline. Note that the outline should be in a separate layer. In the Layers Palette, duplicate the layer of the cropped image by dragging the layer to the new layer icon.







To create the outline:
Use the ‘Stamp Filter’ to create the initial outline.



Play with the filter options to get the right thickness of the outline.



Resulting image:



Using this as a guide, create a more defined outline using the brush tool.



Then set the blending options of the layer to “multiply”.



Move the layer containing the original image to the top. Then change the opacity to 40% . We’ll use this layer as reference when coloring our character.



Now, let’s color our character!

Create a new layer, it should be next to the “outline” layer.




Using the selection tools, select the area that you want to color. I usually start with the skin.




Select the foreground color you like, then fill the selected area with your chosen color. Let's call this as the "skin" layer.




Create another layer, this time the layer should be before the “skin” layer. Using the same procedure, color the hair. This becomes the "hair" layer.




Create another layer. This time put the new on top of the “hair” layer. Select a color and color the shirt. This layer becomes the "shirt" layer.



Create another layer before the "shirt" layer and color the teeth. This becomes the "teeth" layer.




Then create another layer before the "teeth" layer. Define the highlights and shadow by coloring the specific areas. This layer is the "highlights" layer.




Finally, I just added a white background to create a higher contrast and removed the original image. You are already done with the cartoon version of yourself. ☺

First Step

My first blog. Hmmm... can't think of anything yet. What would it be.......