First, one has to start off with an idea. I had a rough sketch, swatches and vintage designs to go off with.
Then, I created the header image in illustrator, and applied the vintage pallet a little brighter than normal as the image will darken after it’s ruffed up in photoshop. I also created the pattern for the wall treatment in illustrator. It’s a beach sunset… how beautiful.
Next, we rough them up in photoshop. Use a lot of multiplying blends with old paper and some images of cement. The lined paper was quickly drawn in photoshop and the header mask and several other elements are hand painted for a final touch.
These are now our textures for our 3d objects. We also create black and white layers for bump maps, specular maps and opacity maps.
Next, I created some objects in 3ds; curved paper, wall, 3d paper shrubbery, and a light bulb. I textured these objects with the maps that were made in photoshop and I started playing around with lighting and camera placement.
Now, I get the lighting and surfaces I like and I do a final render. The final render takes about thirty minutes because I’m lighting with a skylight, spotlight and an omni-light that are all area based. The camera has depth of field and is shooting from a million miles away to remove any barrel distortion. The surfaces are all physically accurate so the image could be rendered in HDR with high indirect illumination and the final image was over 2000 x 2000 so I would have some leeway in photoshop.
Finally, I bring it into photoshop and slice and dice it into the blog template’s css. This is not as easy as you might think, given the restrictions of the blogger format, but it's not as hard as anything previous to this point.
So there you have it, one blog wrapper, many steps and many programs. Fun stuff.
