Kristan Franco Graphic Designs and Web Resources

4 months ago, our school's (NDDU) held its 4th MassCom Short Film Festival. This annual event showcases  short films originally made by NDDU's Mass Communication students.

I happened to have a MassCom friend and I was given the chance to design and conceptualize their film, AL LILAW. Without hesitation, I took the request and design them a poster that would match the films scheme.
AL LILAW is a thriller film which the story mainly revolves around 5 characters haunted by a psychotic killer in a dark isolated island.

So what I did during the development was to review different suspense movie posters and conceptualized a unique idea from them. The movie posters from Sorority Row and Nightmare on Elm Street helped me build up the proper concept of the short film.

I just applied the basic approach to the poster - the killer on top of the victims. By enlarging it, the emphasis on the "killer" is greater. It would really catch the attention of the ones who view the poster. Font style is also important. You wouldn't try Comic Sans in a thriller movie poster, do you? I searched for free horror fonts and came up with those. Textures are also important. It gives a crispy detail on how a thriller movie poster would look like.

The "basics" of a good concept of a wallpaper are the fonts and colors. So this is the most simple way to establish a rhythmic wallpaper. In this blog post, i'm going to share to you a very simple font effect which can be of good use in certain graphic concepts.

Let's call it the wacky font. Chug, chug, chug. With just 5 Photoshop steps, you can create a font effect like this:

Infrared Photography refers to the area of photography in which photos are taken with film sensitive to infrared light.

When these filters are used together with infrared-sensitive film or sensors, very interesting "in-camera effects" can be obtained. false-color or black-and-white images with a dreamlike or sometimes lurid appearance known as the "Wood Effect," an effect mainly caused by foliage (such as tree leaves and grass) strongly reflecting in the same way visible light is reflected from snow.

I found myself doodling and sketching while being admitted to the hospital for some medication, and after a week, examination took its toll on me. It's great to be back blogging again after a week of examination. One new post after a week or two!

Since i've been admitted for almost a week at the hospital, I was able to design two sketched canvas, with just pure sign pen. Anything out of imagination, 2 abstract drawings were made. Sketching is exciting, do you agree?


So, as you may notice that this drawing is so dull and looking at it might be uninteresting. To optimize this drawing, I decided to turn it into an cd album cover.

Music has been an inspiration to me. I've been into a band and making Album covers must be fun and exciting. With the use of certain splatter brushes and textures found around the web, I was able to make this hoax cd album cover.


Here are some tips in making awesome CD Album covers:

1.) Prepare your drawing.

You have to scan your drawing. In my part, I just shoot this drawing on a clean floor, with the highest quality as much as possible.

2.) Prepare the brushes and texture.

I was able to find some splatter brushes around the web, so go help yourself. In the texture, I've been a reader of Inspiredology and the author offered high quality textures.

So go download them.

3.) The genre of your Album cover.

You wouldn't want to entitle your album cover as "Lovely Hearts" when you notice that the design is pure grunge, would you? So decide for an appropriate theme for a title of the album.

For example, I just choose Chicosci's previous album title, "Method of Breathing" for my hoax Album cover. It is somehow related because my drawing is abstract, but can be seen and can be percept as people. Life is related to the album title.

4.) Setting the blending options to MULTIPLY.

You may notice that when you try to overlap your drawing into the texture, the texture will be covered with the canvas' white background, mainly the bond paper you scanned.

So the solution to this problem is, set the blending options of your drawn piece into MULTIPLY

5.) Splatter brushes over the layers.

To add a more dramatic effect, we use the splatter brushes. Complimentary colors are brilliant to see, so we get hold of these colors.

Be sure to create a new layer over all the layers, and brush as much as you want. After brushing, now you're almost done. Set the blending options to Linear Burn and see for yourself a good transformation out of the drawn canvas.

6.) Album Title has the impact.

For the finale, add your album title in a simple or complicated way. In my piece, I just use a very basic font in order to contrast with the grungy background. With this, contrast became an impact.

So here is my final work:



Credit for PSHero for the awesome slick cd container.

See? Just viewing your own work makes you want to be a rockstar!

Done reading? If you liked my posts, then:

Click here to Subscribe to FREE email updates from "Kristan Franco", you wouldn't want to miss out anything that can be valuable to you and your blog, would you?

Recently, I posted my 15 Brilliant Tilt-shift photos, and just in case you don't have any idea on what a tilt-shift photo is, this is a shooting technique in photography that makes a scene looks like miniature.

Without using a real tilt-shift lens, you could turn a simple photo into a tilt-shift photo by using Photoshop. Photoshop is the most conventional tool.

In this basic tutorial, you can now make your photos look like miniature. With a knowledge on quick masking, filters, and saturating, your photo will now look like a real miniature!

To start of this tutorial, choose a suitable photo for this effect. Buildings are the best examples for this photo effect. I found this photo from Google.

Photos with good contrast on colors and photos which maintain bright colors are very good for this effect. Since we are turning a photo into a watercolor canvas, we needed popping colors which bright colors could provide. If you wanted to try out this one, I suggest that you should use photos that are bright and vivid. Photos with larger dimension give a much more realistic effect.

In the early 90s, a group of students discovered a Russian camera, a bit small and complicated Russian camera, known as Lomo Kompakt Automat. The discovery led to artistic experiment on photography showing their unusual frolic shots. After having their photos mounted on panels to form a thousand of Lomographs, vast amount of viewers were astonished.

One of my dream job is to be a part of a movie where you are acquired on an advertising team who creates the whole concept of the movie poster. Everytime I watch a movie, I usually look for the poster first. The movie poster will eventually catch a viewer's attention. The poster's theme, on the other hand, should generally fit the movie.

Another great basic photo effect is turning it into a half-toned photo,in which the approach of the effect is somewhat retro. You can create this effect in JUST A MINUTE or two.