Introducing the Pliant Redux set of cursor pointers for Stardock’s CursorFX product.

These cursors were inspired by the original Pliant set of CFX & CXP cursors I released in late 2004.  Since then, they’ve been downloaded thousands of times from the various sites on which I made them available, and even to this day I receive positive comments and feedback.  So I felt it was about time they received a makeover.

I wanted this set to be sharper and more professional than the last set so I spent some time looking at what makes great cursor sets, well… great, and what made the Pliant set so popular and tried to blend those ingredients together into a whole new creation.

So download, enjoy and leave a comment. 

Or download this file from my
DeviantART, or WinCustomize galleries.

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This piece has been in the Digital*Impulse vault for a while now but I’ve finally decided to release it publicly.

About The Artwork

Sometime last year I happened upon a great tutorial provided by the folks at PSDTuts and decided I’d try it out and see what I could make out of it.  I started following the tutorial and finally ended up with something that slightly resembled the final image in the tutorial.  Since I was quite happy with the initial results, I decided to continue editing and see how else I could improve it, so I kept tinkering with the idea of diaphanous ribbons and started shaping them with the Warp Transform tool in Photoshop.
After much flubbing about with layers and masks to get the right look I ended up with what you now see.  There’s a couple of small areas which I would have liked to have turned out different but I think it came out OK in the end.

LogonStudio Vista

In addition to the wallpaper, I whipped up a LogonStudio Vista theme using GCTonyHawk7’s fantastic Vista Reflections 3 template. I’m quite pleased with the way it came out as Justin did a great job on the glass effect and making the PSD easy to use provided you have a version of PS that supports Smart Objects and read the instructions Justin has kindly provided. 

So download, comment and enjoy. 

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With it’s decidedly future-retro look and grayscale palette, Reverse IP aims to take you back to the era of black & white visuals, and the wonders of emerging technologies of yesteryear but with a decidedly modern flair.

Desktop “tech-noir” styling is now that much closer to achieve with this IconPackage.

While it did not win any awards, it was well-received and praised for its unique styling and approach.
Here’s what the judges had to say and how they rated the package:

Frogboy

(Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock)

Usability

7/10

Originality

7/10

Overall

7/10
A grayscale concept that personally I think might have been better off as a colorful icon package. The problem with grayscale is that it tends to decrease contrast which can reduce usability. The art quality is top notch. Full XP and Vista support, users looking for a more minimalistic theme that’s easy on the eyes will definitely like this.

KarmaGirl

Usability

7/10

Originality

6/10

Overall

5/10

Zoomba

Usability

7/10
This is a very complete icon set that will serve XP and Vista users very well. The only problem with this set is the grayscale can make it hard to differentiate between icons in some cases

Originality

7/10
Grayscale was a big risk and the icons have a very unique look as a result

Overall

6/10
I want to like this set, but gray just doesn’t do it for me and makes it pretty hard for me to read my desktop. If this had a splash of color (not much, just a little) this would be a top-contender in my book.

So take a look for yourself, download, and comment and/or critique if you feel so inclined. 

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• Find a nice, thick font you would like to use for your logo. This tutorial will work for almost any typeface you can think of but I tend to think thick fonts look better.
• Have a base colour for your project in mind before you begin.  Believe me, it makes things easier than changing your mind halfway.  I’ve settled on a red colour for the entire composition, so don’t be put off by the blue colour that I start off with. 

Final Image Preview

Here’s a look at the final image we’re going to create.  At the end of part 2, I’ll make available a finished fully-editable copy of the Fireworks PNG file.

Let’s get into it…

1. Assuming you’ve already opened Fireworks, start off by creating a new Fireworks PNG document, and make the dimensions 1000 pixels wide, by 500 high as shown in Figure 1.Pick a colour for the background. I tend to think darker colours work best for this type of composition, so I’ve gone with a darkish gray (HEX: #666666). You can always modify the colours later on if you change your mind.
   
2. Select the Text tool (Fig. 2) from the tools palette and fiddle around with the text Properties panel (Fig. 3) until you’re satisfied. I’m going with the Birdman bold font I used for the original wallpaper, at 180pt font size.
   
   
3. Type the desired text for your logo. I’ve gone with a generic LOGO word. I know, boring but it suits the purpose of the tutorial.
   
4. This is where things start to get fun. With the text object selected, use Advanced Fill Options on the Colour Palette (Figure 5) to apply a Gradient (Figure 6). Then fiddle around with the Gradients Palette (Figure 7) to get a good colour combination going. You want the two colours to be within the same colour hue, but from dark at the bottom to lighter (but not white) at the top of the text.
   
   
   
5. Once you’ve set your colour, you’ll need to fiddle with the gradient adjustment handle. Fireworks has a bad habit of extending the gradient beyond the actual object to the edges of the bounding box so some playing around with the handle is required. Once that’s done you should end up with something like this, I’ve gone with red but any colour should work:
   
6. Now we want to duplicate this object, so use CTRL+Shift+D and Fireworks will do the rest, adding an identical clone directly on top of the existing one.
7. With that new object selected now press CTRL+Shift+P. This will convert the text object to a group of editable paths. However, we’ll need to ungroup this object so use your CTRL+Shift+G keyboard shortcut to accomplish this. You’ll end up with the 4 objects selected. In order to go on to the following steps we need to combine these 4 objects into one single object. To do this we’ll use the Fireworks combine paths features, so with the objects still selected, click the Modify menu, then hover over Combine Paths, and lastly select Union. This will result in one single editable Composite Path.
8. Now duplicate this object and nudge down one or two pixels using your Down Arrow key to get what’s shown here:
   
9. Now, use the Select Behind tool (Figure 10), pressing and holding Shift to add the object behind the one selected to our selection. Once they’re both selected, click on Modify > Combine Paths > Punch. This will form the basis of our top glow and bevel for our logo. You should end up with the following:
   

   Give this object an all white gradient going from 80% opacity at the top end to 40% at the bottom end, as shown below:
   

10. Then, from the object Properties panel we’ll need to add a Glow filter (Figure 13) with the following settings (Figure 14):



You’ll end up with something like this:


11. At this stage you want to group (CTRL+G) the glow object on its own in order to lock the filter into the group. It’s a little quirk that seems to work rather well as it allows you to add additional filters to the group without affecting the original.
12. The even glow throughout the entire text looks somewhat unnatural, so to give it a more realistic glow, we want to have it fade out towards the bottom by employing the use of a transparency mask. To do this we need to select the rectangle tool (Figure 16) and draw a rectangle slightly larger than the outer edge of the glow (Figure 17).
    
    
13. Once that’s done, give the new rectangle a White to Black gradient (Figure 18).
    
14. Now, select the Select Behind Tool (Step 9, Figure 10) from the toolbar and select both the rectangle you just drew, and the glow composite shape (Figure 19). Pressing Shift while clicking will allow you to select multiple objects. The Select Behind tool is a little tricky, but if you remember that it selects from the foremost layer to the furthest one in turn. I’m sure you’ll get it after a little practice.
    
    You’ll end up with the following:
    
15. So now the logo is starting look a little better. Let’s give it some extra ‘oomph!’ with a bit of shine. Take a copy of the original text object and convert it to a Composite Path as shown in steps 6 & 7.
16. Now select the Ellipse Shape Tool (Figure 21) and create a shape similar to the following:
    
    You might want to use the Align function from the Modify menu to align the shapes on the y axis.
17. Now with both the ellipse and the composite logo shape selected, click on the Modify menu, then Combine Paths, then Punch (Figure 22).
    
    You’ll end up with the following:
    
18. Now give this shape a White to White gradient, but this time play around with the transparency option handles above the gradient colour selection handles, and set the top one to 100 and the bottom one to 0, as shown below.
    
19. Give the object an Inner Glow filter (Figure 25) with the settings shown below (Figure 26).
    
    
20. Then, set the Opacity of the object to around 50-80, depending on how shiny you want the object to be. I’m going with 80 for this logo. You might want to fiddle with the stacking order, I’ve gone with the Glow layer first, then the Shine, then the text last. You should end up with something similar to this:
    
    
21. This ends the logo part of the tutorial.

In part 2 of this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the creation of the background environment and ambience around the logo we just created, which will give it a more realistic and flashy look.

Part 2 to follow soon so keep your eyes open. 

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I had a piece with this kind of composition stashed away in my WIPs folder on my drive for a while and never really found a real use for it until now.  I thought it would make a great submission to make freely available here.

Click on the image above to see a preview and the link below to download the archive which comes with a number of resolutions.

Resolutions included in the archive:

So go ahead and download below. Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

But wait, there’s more…

As a mega-bonus, I’m going to base the tutorial mentioned in my earlier post on the design of the logo in this wallpaper.   So stay tuned for another update soon. 

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