Creating Arctic Kiss: Photoshop Techniques for Illustrators

A Creative COW DVD Training Review

Who is this for
Illustrators , both digital or traditional, will certainly find this useful. The techniques Jerry presents are his own that he is sharing. Jerry tackles one of the toughest topics of drawing fur, and makes it look so easy. After showing you how to set up a brush, Jerry gets right into illustrating this polar bear. Jerry goes over why certain brushstrokes work, and other do not. You are not just watching an experienced illustrator create a polar bear, but getting a step by step instruction by the illustrator himself. An illustrator who is either professional or a hobbyist will love this DVD.

Intermediate & Photoshop experts without Illustration expertise, will find this a must watch video. I am a photo retoucher and did not realize how close I was to being able to create airbrushed Illustrations. Topics like holding detail and enhancing shape made me feel right at home. Many of the techniques are similar to retouching, and a retoucher will feel at home watching this DVD. Jerry is not teaching you Adobe Photoshop, but something more important: how to digitally use shadow, color, light and the important artistic issues that no one has really covered so well before in all the materials that I have reviewed. Thanks to this DVD I have a new appreciation for the smudge tool, and will probably use it more often to get more randomly flowing results in my work.

Those who never used Photoshop before, will learn from this DVD to Illustrate digitally. The title suggests that this DVD is for Illustrators, but anyone with an interest in art or computer graphics should find this a useful tool. A beginner may not understand how to switch the brush to paint with 40%, but they will understand the big picture and how a digital illustrator creates artwork. Experienced Photoshoppers will know hitting the number 4 on the keyboard while in the brush tool will give you 40% opacity. You need not be a photoshop guru to enjoy this DVD.


Presentation
A comp image is put together from various research images found on the web, and the final artwork is illustrated over this reference comp. Jerry pulls off an excellent presentation that becomes smoother by the end of the DVD. I am glad to see someone in casual setting, working in his own studio. You will feel Jerry’s studio is brought inside your home or studio, and with this being on DVD you can watch this at your own pace.

The video quality is excellent and for the most part is a screen capture of the instructors screen. The audio volume could be louder, but the quality is very clear and free of noise. No problem though, just remember to reduce your volume before switching to iTunes, so you don’t blast your eardrums. The video was proofed and edited well, and helpful red type was overlayed, incase you missed a keyboard command or something. The color gamut of the production is very good which is important on a DVD like this so you can see the shadows and colors being tweaked.

There is not much more I could ask for from this DVD, except that I would have liked to have seen a few layers duplicated, prior to being worked on. This would help compare and show off the before and after results, to see the true impact of what was done.

Final Thoughts
This DVD I have to say is great, as there really is nothing else out there that covers as much Photoshop technique and illustration. Even if you don’t have an interest in illustration, I recommend this DVD to show you new ways to use Photoshop and thinking out of the box. Creating Artic Kiss gets 5 cows. The website is http://www.airbrushaction.com/dvds/creating-arctic-kiss.html. The bullet points of Photoshop topics on the website are covered, but don’t pay too much attention to them as there is so much more you will learn in terms of technique and illustration.