Timewaster's Guide Archive
General => Suggestions Box => Topic started by: Spriggan on February 04, 2008, 09:57:46 PM
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I've been trying to get a background image for TWG that looks like old worn paper and haven't ever gotten anything that I like, the current background was made by using clouds and the smudge tool. What I've been trying to make recently is something like in the last panel of this comic: http://www.robandelliot.cycomics.com/archive.php?id=280 and haven't been able to do so.
I know there are a bunch of people here that know much more then I about this stuff and so if anyone can give some pointers so I can do it (or just make it yourself) that would be much appreciated. I need to be able to have somethign that can be tiled well and looks old, that's about the only requirements.
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?
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y47/TWGuide/background_age2.jpg)
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Humm, I worry that it's too intense because of the range of the brightness to darkness. There's only 2 of the bright spots but any text near them is very hard to read.
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1. Get some watercolor paper, make some herbal tea, brush the herbal tea on the paper and let dry.
2. scan tea-brushed paper.
3. Adjust color hua and value in photoshop.
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that's an intresting idea, I could swipe some from work tomorrow.
Skar's doesn't look too bad (not sure what font I want to use), though 42's idea might work out really well.
(http://www.timewastersguide.com/beta/header_test1.jpg)
(http://www.timewastersguide.com/beta/header_test2.jpg)
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Actually, I've done stuff like that before, scanned fabric or patterned paper, tweaked it, and used it as backgrounds. It works well, esp for me since I'm not artistically inclined.
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here's a quick sample I worked up
http://white-tean.deviantart.com/art/Texture-sample-76531719
(didn't know how to insert pictures here)
Um, if you want to use this you can ask me to change things and whatever, it takes no time really. Uh, just stuck in a quick bit of type, haven't put any effort into that but the texture looked sad and lonely without it.
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Oh....wow. That looks really cool, White!
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Very nice White. How'd you do it?
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Thanks!
Fished out a couple very old books from the bookshelve scanned in both of their blank back pages (having achieved a nice, well aged vintage) as well as scanning in a dyed fabric sample that was all texture-y and rusty.
All the layers at full percentages, with aged paper, with fabric texture (that had been filtered a bit to mellow it out some more) above that set to "soft light" and the other lighter aged paper scan above that set to "darknen" then just a little bit of a colour balance.
Using multiple textures sort of creates a more balanced overall texture some time, they seem to average out eachother to a degree as well as adding a bit more complexity.
But yeah, if you have any oooooooooooooooooolllld books (from like your grandparents or whatever) chances are the blank pages at the back will have aged quite stylishly - plus they often had more interesting paper textures to begin with.
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Cool.
I myself didn't scan anything in because I wanted the pic to repeat well and I didn't have a lot of time to spend on it. I took Spriggan's original background image, applied a water color filter to give it some texture, gaussian blurred it a bit, added a bit of noise, lowered the contrast settings, made it about 60% transparent with a white background, and applied the sharpening filter a few times.
In case anybody was interested...
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I would love to use that if I could White, thank you.
If I could get that sans-font it would be great. You can just post that here or e-mail it to me via the address in my profile.
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Alright, have emailed it texture & font to your address, if you have any problems just let me know! ;D
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Didn't know if you were still looking but here you go:
(http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n111/daarian/imgs/oldwestpaper.jpg)
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So ya, I'm liking this texture White so graciously provided but I need to work on the tiling some. It's almost the exact width I wanted so I really don't want to cube it if I don't have too but I need to work at getting the bottom to look like the top and shrink the filesize down a bit without loosing any more detail (it's 33k, would like to half that). I need to redo the footers and the login/news box backgrounds too once I get the main background where I want it.
I do appreciate the tiles from Skar and Daarian but I think I'm going to try and make this one work.
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Like This?
(http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n111/daarian/imgs/bgtest.jpg)
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Yeah, I just sent a tileable version of mine to Spriggan actually~!
Completely forgot to do that until he mentioned it!
except mine has the dark bits cetralised and whatnot.
Yeah, sorry I tend to do most of my stuff for eventual print application rather than web so it just absolutely slipped my mind initially...
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ya I got that, thanks, but I haven't had time to look at it tiled yet.
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Yeah.. I'm not real crazy about the dark angled lines. When I make a tillable background I don't want it to make patterns so my instinct would have been to Cut the center block out of that tillable image and then use that.. same basic texture without the pattern creation caused by those dark angled lines. But that is just me.
Nice job on that texture by the way, White.
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Eh, it was just the first thing I threw together, I did mention being willing to make any adjustments/changes desireable.
The reversed way I did it more give an idea of looking into an open book with some shadowing at the page join which I didn't really mind personally.
Although admittedly being a design/illustration person I do like a little more spicy detailing or character in things, even if it's just a texture I'm into visual detail in a big way.
Might still be a little overwhelming though I guess if they're really small tiles, I'll go an do some fiddlign around on another tile-able version just in case....
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okay, sorry to double post
http://white-tean.deviantart.com/art/aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh-76751142
have uploaded an unobnoxious verson which tiles in an un-maddening way when tested on my computer's BG.
Now basically the link shows you a "preview" image but you can't zoom in to see it because it's tucked away in my scraps sub-gallery so basically just click on the "download" icon to open it up or just right click and save target it to save time.
Sorry it took this long to work out a nice, good tile-ey one~!
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Wow that looks really good White.
Thanks.
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Very nice... amazingly huge... I guess I just work in way to small of an image.. the bad habits of designing web backgrounds on a small comp when I was learning.
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Yeah, I'm the opposite I do my stuff for print and whatnot so it started off HUUUUUUUUGE (and at 300dpi) so I mean, this was like a massive downscaling to the 72dpi.
And yeah, at any one time I always have at least one behemoth near-200Mb working pieces lurking around on my hard drive... Which means my computer is sooooooooo slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow all the time. (and that's *with* a dirty great big external hardrive).
Hehe, I guess we all retain habits from how we grow up computing. Personally, I'm sure I'll always need a fridge right by the computer even if I get an office one day because my computer lives in the kitchen (which, while very un-private, does have very nice perks ;D ).