My handmade creative project – Dubanci / Acorn elves

Few years ago I started creating animals and figures from chestnuts and acorns. Over time, I have improved the figures and their photography – you can see more images on their English Acorn Elves site or on the Czech Dubanci site.

Also there are two e-shops, where you can buy Acorn elves products (calendars, t-shirts, postcards, posters and much more):

In 2015 I started to share them on social networks, where they had great success. Photos of the toilet acorn elf probably flew around the entire internet world. I tried to make a wall calendar from the photographs and it was a quite successful achievement. After the end of the season, I was not able to say goodbye to these little creatures and I continued to produce them the entire winter and spring (luckily the kids had collected a large supply of material in the autumn). And so, the entertainment for kids became an entertainment for me.
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How to convert text to vector glyphs

Script for converting text to vector glyphsI bought a great Path Type – Single Stroke Glyph Set from Sam Jones (Sivioco), but I was too lazy to put together the text from the glyph letters. So instead of spending few minutes on playing with letters, I spent few hours with programming a script, that will do it for me. Maybe there are more designers, that will appreciate this script, so you can download it for free and use it in your work. Continue reading

Lorem Ipsum plugin for Adobe Illustrator

Lorem Ipsum plugin for Adobe IllustratorAs a illustrator and designer I need to fill my designs with some texts. The easiest method is using dummy Lorem Ipsum. But it is too complicated to open some web browser go to http://lipsum.com or some other site, copy the content and paste it into Illustrator text field.

Because I’m too lazy, and didn’t found working plugin I created my own simple Lorem Ipsum plugin (script) for Adobe Illustrator. You can download it and use for free. It was created for Adobe Illustrator CS5, but should work also on other versions (the plugin is very simple, if you have some problems, just let me know in comments). Continue reading

How to pass iStockphoto Logo Design Application Quiz

Did you know, that you can sell logo designs on microstock? Well one of the sites, where you can sell your logo designs and suggestions is iStockphoto. In this article you will find the right answers for iStock’s Logo Design Application Quiz (check also the quiz for vector illustrators and for photographers). The quiz is really easy – only 12 questions (and if you do some mistake, you can go back a fix it). Don’t forget to read the iStockphoto Logo Training Manual – it will save you some rejections.

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Are you a graphic artist looking for work? Try drawing / taking photos for microstocks – seasonal work, a second income or full-time work

I run into classified ads in which graphic artists are looking for work all the time on the internet. I would like to recommend to them one source of income thanks to which they will be independent, free, can work from the warmth of home and if it goes well for them they will also be well provided for financially. It is drawing for microstocks.

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Microstock file formats for uploading vector illustrations

Every Microstock agency use a bit different upload system – specially for vector images. On some sites you need JPG preview with EPS file with same filename, on others you need to have it packed in a ZIP file, somewhere you need big JPG preview and some sites needs just EPS. Here is a simple overview of all bigger microstock sites with their file format requirements for vector illustrations.

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