Cover creation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo.

I love the sense this time lapse gives someone who is unfamiliar with marketing and design on just how much effort goes into some of the artwork we encounter on a daily basis. Seeing a video like this makes me question my sanity, as I do stuff like this on a daily basis. I guess it is the love of the process and seeing something complex through to completion that keeps me at it.

I really liked the way that this piece turned out, so I thought I would post it. I was experimenting with making my own custom brushes in Photoshop. It is a very simple process and can yield some pretty fantastic results.

To create a custom brush in Photoshop:

1. Make a shape or group of shapes to serve as your brush.
   (I used a simple tall rectangle for mine.)
2. Make a selection around your shapes.
3. Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset, and create your brush.
4. Open the Brushes Engine (Window>Brushes) to see and edit your newly created brush. There are tons of options that allow you to customize your brush to your hearts desire, so play around with the settings for a bit.

I then painted a basic shape with my newly created brush and used the
Warp Tool (Edit>Transform>Warp) to bend the shape. Finally, I applied several layer styles to get the final effect.

For a more detailed tutorial check out the original post on PSDTUTS.com. This site is a fantastic way to fine tune your Photoshop skills.

This is the outcome from several new techniques I was trying out today. I liked the outcome, hence the post.

The white “swoosh” line in the background is the result of making a path with the pen tool in Photoshop, and stroking it with a brush with the “Simulate Pressure” option selected. You can really create some nice perspective effects using this method.

I learned about it from this tutorial on PSD Tuts which is a fantastic resource. Take a look when you get some free time.