Rubicon.

The combination of grunge and technology, merging as one. But which is it really?

I leave it to you to decide.

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What I consider to be one of my very best works.

Initial design made in Freehand 8 and finished in 10, then moved to Photoshop 7 for production, then to Photoshop 5.5 to complete the glowing orb in the center, and finally back into Photoshop 7 to complete.

I've used it as a desktop for quite a bit now, and finally felt like sharing it with the world. It isn't a defualt resolution, 1280x1024, 1024x768, etc., but if it's used and you set your desktop color to white or black you get the best effect and it works rather nicely.

Comments, Flames, Criticism, and the other things of the like are more than welcome.

Enjoy.

http://images.deviantart.com/large/wallpaper/wtech/Rubicon.jpg

[edit]Took me a bit to realize HTML code was turned off... dagnamit. Oh well.[/edit]

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Stats.

Build time: One Week
Programs: Photoshop 5.5, Photoshop 7.0, Freehand 10, Freehand 8
Computers used: 800 Mhz iMac (Freehand 10 and Photoshop 7.0), 230 Mhz PC - aka - The Decrepit Machine (Photoshop 5.5), 900 Mhz HP Pavilion 7920.
Best viewed: Resolution of 1280x1024 or higher, True Color

[This message has been edited by phoenix_9286 (edited June 20, 2003).]

took a while to load, but it's awesome

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Not really sure, but that is awesome.

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Bassoon, n. A brazen instrument into which a fool blows out his brains.

looks pretty cool. good job.

the only part that i don't like is the little black 'splotches' in the background. the border looks good, but the splotches that look like you took a pencil and rubbed it around look out of place...

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I still wonder when the medicine will take it's effect.
And The injection they made, it's all just left me the same.

I agree about the splotches. If you found some better grunge brushes, or made your own, it would look much better IMO. Still cool work, although I'm not sure I dig the combination of the two styles.

I'm more of a grunge/dark purest, so that's probably why .

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Looks like a logo for a tribe in (gasp) Tribes.

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Current Maps

All's well that ends well; if it ever ends at all.

lol. I have a few of my own grunge brushes now. That was made before I had them, so yea... Actually, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-400 brushes. The Photoshop 7 brush file is about 5 meg.

My latest project I started last night with limited success. The Matrix code. So far, it appeals to me, but I still see far to many faults (color and placement of characters/code, realism, anti-aliasing). I'll post it when it looks a bit better.

Thanks for the comments, if anyone wants it, feel free... I'll make MINOR changes for those that would like them. The background grunge for instance that was mentioned as being "rubbed pencil". Easily removable. It has it's own layer.

Oh and the facts I forgot to mention in the specs...

PSD size is 430 meg plus or minus 5 meg. Not to sure any more.
Number of layers is upwards of 100 to 120. That's only if everything is on it's own layer and I didn't flatten anything to combine pieces. An example would be the orb. It's currently one layer, but when split up its 5 or 6.

Thanks again!

Wow... that looks way cool. I might post again in five hours when it fully loads (oh god i hate 56k).

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"Math is like love – a simple idea but it can get complicated." - unknown

I have a suggestion: Anti-alias the little lines that come out of the round thing in the middle. Right now it looks, well, non-anti-aliased.

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"Math is like love – a simple idea but it can get complicated." - unknown

Yea, That's been the biggest suggestion since I began to let people see it. I made the mistake of using vector art, and exporting it as a jpg, instead of importing it as a vector.

Maybe that'll make sense...

To go further in depth... When you export a vector as a jpg from Freehand, it basically outputs a picture of it. The best quality you get is medium jpg compression. So when you open it in Photoshop and go to select those, you're faced with a ton of jpg compression artifacts. Which in turn makes it hard to GET a good selection. Which in turn leads to that. When IMPORTED as a vector, however, (Which isn't easy to do from Freehand to Photoshop. You have to go through Illustrator first.) the vector retains all of it's qualities. When you select it then, you have a perfect line and it anti-aliases great.

I did the same thing with the rest of the shape, but the only other place that stands out aside from the circuits is the Orb in the center. Those are the two parts of the image that really bother me the most, but I haven't fixed them yet. Mainly becasue it'd require that I remake the orb. Something that took a LONG time to get exactly the way I wanted it, and something that was next to impossible to do on my 230 Mhz machine. It doesn't like dealing with 400 meg psd files.

And for those wondering why I didn't do it on my mom's 900 Mhz or the iMac... The HP was tied up with copying and setting up a movie my dad wanted to put on DVD, and the iMac doesn't have Photoshop 5.5. To do the Orb, you need to use the color dodge layer setting. Adobe changed that in Photoshop 6 and up so it behaves differently. There is a workaround, but it's easier to do it in 5.5.

Rubicon ... sounds like it should have some kind of nod to Julius Caesar.