*Transcription Disclaimer: the following transcription was automatically generated, and may have errors, or lack context.*
Voodoo Val:
Alrighty folks. Welcome back to Adobe Live. My name is Voodoo Val and we are here for another episode of Creatives. And I'm super excited because I get to hang out with my good friend Alex Lazaris today. Alex, how are you, buddy?
I am awesome. I'm so thrilled to be doing another show with you back to back almost feels like.
Voodoo Val:
So yeah, we've been hanging out a lot lately. I'm really pumped to have Alex on this particular episode because today our question of the day is how do I make money as an artist designer? So we're going to be going over some pretty cool tips and tricks and techniques for ways that you can sell your creative work and all that good stuff. And if you have ever been to an episode of Creatives, you will probably be familiar with the previous format, which we still may do sometimes. Before, I had some really cool industry professionals jump onto the show via a clip that they would provide to offer us any advice or anything that they wanted to offer for our question of the day. But as you can see, Alex is here in the flesh.
Alex Lazaris:
Hello.
Voodoo Val:
Hello. Yeah, so we're actually going to be working. We're going to be doing kind of a dual stream today. We're going to show a little bit of his workflow, a little bit of my workflow. And I hope that all of you folks will let us know in the chat if you have any questions, if you have anything that you would like us to speak on as we make our way through our process today of creating some really cool downloadable asset packs. Because that is, I think, a pretty great way to sell your creative work and advertise that you make cool assets. But before we dive into our work, I would love for you, Alex, to kind of give everybody a little bit of a rundown. For those of you out there who aren't familiar with him, give a rundown of who you are, what you do, maybe show off some of your work and let us see all the things you make.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. So, hello everyone. My name is Alex Lazaris and I run a design studio called Lazaris. Very confusing name, I know. Where did I get that name from? But you can check out our website@weareLazaris.com. We're a small, small studio headquartered out of Los Angeles, California. Previously I was in Portland, Oregon, but I traded in the rain for the sunshine. But anyways, we know how hard it is sometimes in the economy. You're looking for some side business, you're looking for some income. So really this is, I think, a near and dear topic to both Val and I. And we're just trying to help you make money. So when we're not doing client work, know, side projects for ourselves or whatever, it's a great way to start diversifying your income stream. So we're happy to hear all your questions and answer them live. Come on over to our website. Today we're going to be working on our new Asset Pack. Adobe Behance just dropped a new assets tab in the top bar of Behance. So we're really going to try to leverage that today, I think, on our past stream together. I dropped the Simple Brand guidelines template so everybody in Chat can use it. Still free? Still free. 99. Go in there, grab it. If you want, you can check out our work on our work page, obviously for the studio page, but today we're talking about just resources. And how do you start bringing in additional income on top of your normal client freelance work? Sometimes waiting a couple of months between projects is scary. So we're trying to give you a little bit more control over your own income streams. In the past, we've done an acid wave pack, and this was a collaboration between Dave Rennon and myself. And we built out this, like, 52 JPEGs high resolution texture pack. You can use it for things like, posters, background elements, stuff that we like to do for ourselves and have some fun with, but also just a cool way to give back to the community and give people something that's a little bit unexpected for themselves. So we've done this in the past. Today, what we'll be focusing on is the torn paper and textures pack. Worked with my budy Leon Ingram. We've scanned 24 high quality, high resolution PNGs and paper tears. We also have 36 texture tips. So today is all about building out the marketing collateral for it, answering your questions in Chat, and then talking about how we would go about marketing these things so we can start bringing in additional income. I launched a case study today, actually, just before this stream on Behance. So I can even walk into the workflow behind that as well. I don't know if you want to do that now or later.
Voodoo Val:
Well, I feel like as we kind of get into the workflow today, you can kind of echo things that you worked on so people can kind of see as we get going. I think that would be great, but definitely let's take a look at it because it's really epic and I definitely want them to see it.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, so let's just jump into this. This is already published, so you can see by it being published, you've got this cool little, like, well, zoomed in too far. You've got this cool little $10 tag here that's saying, everybody, this is how much it costs. And then it'll give you two options. I've got subscriptions on Behance enabled, and I've also got a PDF download. There are some constraints. So I was building this today so there's only like three views on it. When you're building your let me go to the edit tab real quick just so you can kind of see it. And from my perspective, you attach assets. So you upload it just like you normally would any Behance case study. Put in your high resolution images and then click Attach Assets. I've attached to my subscription. And then you can attach by add files, an image. If you add the link, you can only add to subscribers or for free. And this is something that I was confused about for a while. So that's why I'm just explaining it to you all so that you can not spend the time that I did trying to figure it out. So what I did here was I actually uploaded a PDF with a link to download the asset in the upload asset section.
Voodoo Val:
Nice.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, because the asset maximum size is 500 megabits and all of our asset packs are over a gig.
Voodoo Val:
Huge.
Alex Lazaris:
So we want to make sure that we have the ability. You upload your PDF to it, people can download it from that link directly, and you're set. And then you can attach it to every single asset in here.
Voodoo Val:
Nice. And you've got a lot of really great stuff in here. So you didn't just say, like, I made textures and here they are, here's where you could access them, but you really have, like a whole kind of advertisement event thing kind of happening. Here you have this really great opening banner graphic that shows off not just the title and what they're getting out of this downloadable assets packet. But you see a lot of those textures in use. You're showing them. This is what could be, y'all, this is what could be. This is what you should sign up for. And then as you go through down if you scroll down to where you have the GIF of all of these really great paper textures coming through so you can see a little bit of a preview of more stuff that you didn't use in there and then a little bit of information about it which I think is really great. And I love that we can sell assets on Behance now because I can't tell you how many times I personally have gone to find actually a lot of fonts and things, because I will look up fonts and I will see the images that come up typically are like, people's Behance cover. And then you go and I scroll down and I'm, like, praying. I'm like, by the time I get to the bottom of this Behance project, please let there be a place where I can download it, where I can buy it, where I can purchase the license. So I think it's a really great way to get your work out there, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, and look at this stuff. People are getting incredible views on it. They're showing off their great work and yeah, especially fonts. I feel like if you're a person who loves making fonts, it's such a good way. Get your typefaces out there, get them out in front of people show them off and let people buy them immediately. I think it just removes that friction where people might be originally wanting to buy something from you, but then they forget or they can't find it on your website, they have to go search for all these things. Just having it front and center is just a really nice flow for people.
Voodoo Val:
Absolutely. I agree 100%. And I think that's the special thing about it. On that note of having it in a place where people can rack up the views on this kind of stuff. It's not like a simple shop where you're just going through and clicking on little items that people have for sale. This is like if anybody has been struggling to make case studies or to find the motivation to make case studies, this is such good incentive to make those products and put together a great case study for it. Because people are going to see a presentation when they come to your behance now of things they can actually get their hands on, which is amazing. And some of these like this is just such a great promo image here. This is really cool and yeah. So let's dive into it. Let's kind of start with we're doing a couple of different workflows today because we are going to be making some textures. And I know that you, Alex, have some stuff that you're going to be working with. And then I'm going to be starting from scratch, which is what I wanted to do just to kind of give you guys a couple of different workflows. I hope that you will all kind of follow along with us as we dive into the process today. And I think you have some free test files people can get their hands on today as well.
Alex Lazaris:
Right? I've completely forgotten about it already. It's amazing.
Voodoo Val
Thanks for reminding me.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. So if you go to the website, www.wearelazaris.com , torn paper in textures section or go through the top resources tab, go to that page at the bottom. It's like want to try before you buy? Download our test pack. And this will push you to the gumroad again and it'll give you one paper texture and one tear. And you can see in this promo image, even I used just those one images or one of each and just repeated it nice and pulled it around. You can see how that gives it a nice it does not look like.
Voodoo Val:
You use the same one. Yeah. So that's really great and I would not have known that if you hadn't said so because it looks really cool. It looks very unique no matter where that paper is tearing from. Also, if you guys are looking for the link, there is a bitly down below which will bring you to a little graphic that has the link to that page over on Wearlazaris.com. If you're having any trouble navigating to it so you can look it up. Or you can click the link in the description below. And then I figure we just jump into it. You can go ahead if you want to and kind of give us the rundown on your process. And just as a little preview while you get going there, we will be switching like this chat. I'm going to do a little fanciful behind the scenes magic here. So we've got Alex's screen. We've got my screen here where I'll be starting from scratch. And then we've got kind of a little dueling talking heads stream here where we can kind of maybe actually we'll start here so that everybody can kind of see what we're both getting started on. And then I'll pan back and forth. But yeah, why don't you go ahead and go for it? I'll say hello to everybody in the chat and then get started on my own as well. I see we got Cody Bear in the chat today. We got Ashraful in the chat. Claudia, welcome in. It's good to see you. Claudia is raving about the asset tab, which I agree, couldn't agree more. We've got Oliver in the chat. We've got annika. Thank you so much. And over on YouTube, we've got Christopher Lindstrom. It's good to see you, my friend. We just had a cool design discussion just yesterday, and I also see Valerie and Maria. So thank you guys for joining us. Let us know if you have any questions. Nick Longo is here as well. What's up, Nick?
Alex Lazaris:
Good to see you, buddy. Nick Longo can do no wrongo.
Voodoo Val:
I know the longo. The Longo. All right. So I'm just going to get started booping around with some cool textures. How do you typically begin a project like this if you're creating assets for a download? Like, you know you're going to be presenting them to people later on down the line.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, so I honestly keep the actual files themselves pretty simple, especially for this project. What I was trying to do is just get it up for this stream. But now in this stream, I really want to start going in and adding more of the lifestyle to it. So essentially how do I wrap it and make it interesting? As you mentioned earlier, you kind of start showing how you can use the textures. I really want people to understand how they can use these assets to bring their work to life. And eventually, from a marketing perspective, I would set up, like, make YouTube videos or make stream on Behance, teach people. Here's how you can do the layer effect. Just like I did it. This is how I did the masking to make it look authentic and real. And that way you're also educating people. I think the most successful asset packs do all that extra work so that they're teaching and informing and educating people how to use their stuff or else you buy it once and then you're like, I'm not going to buy from.
Voodoo Val:
That person again because yeah, not interested.
Alex Lazaris:
I don't know how to do it.
Voodoo Val:
I think that's a really great point because I realize I haven't discussed kind of like you're doing the paper textures. I'm going to do some interesting gradients because that's something I use all the time. I feel like I do really cool half tone gradients things with we're going to be getting into a little bit of displacement maps and things to make some interesting transparent, just images of grit and texture kind of coming in that doesn't cover the entirety of the canvas. I use textures like this probably every other day, every week for sure, because it's something that I personally favor. And I figure if I like it, there's other people out there that like it. And that's something that you should figure into your work. I think that there's a lot to be said for doing things for like minded designers. And if you're worried about kind of figuring out, well, what should I be creating? What should I be doing? Typically, the stuff that you like is also stuff other people are going to have a need for. Draw from your own experience of what you have ever looked for in an asset pack and make something that resonates with you.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, that's I think kind of the sweet spot, especially when it's something like this, where you might need just one asset, you might need one texture, one paper tear, and you took all the effort to make one. But really the burden of that work is all in the setup process of it. But then the rest of it you can automate really quickly. It's like, cool, let me grab all the papers we have around here, rip it up, tear it, scan it. For me to do that for just like, one asset is kind of a pain. But if I can set it up and be like, you know what, I might need this down the road for a client project or a personal project, cool. Let me just set it up, put it out there in the world, and see if other people are going to need it or want it. And that's what we're doing today.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah, let us know in the chat what kind of textures and assets and stuff you personally hunt for. Folks, I would love to know what you guys are digging these days. I would love if you guys also want to just share a little bit about maybe a situation recently where an asset pack really came in clutch for you and what exactly you were looking for. Because as you mentioned, I have wondered, am I supposed to put tons and tons of textures in a texture pack? Do people want to buy it more because there's tons of stuff, or do people buy it because it has that one thing that they're looking for? Does it serve a niche purpose? Or is it multipurpose and that's what makes it more or less valuable? I'm not sure, but honestly, I think.
Alex Lazaris:
You kind of just asked the correct questions and whether or not you meant it.
Voodoo Val:
Tell me what I did right, Alex. You did everything right.
Alex Lazaris:
Everything right. Those are the exact questions that, when you're building your own asset packs, you should start to look into. So when we did the asset wave packs, we were trying to figure out what's the correct price point for these assets go too high. What are you providing in value wise that a competitor isn't doing? So trying to find that sweet spot for a price and what the quality of your asset back is. These are all stuff that you're going to be doing research with. So you can go, uh, Adobe stock, you can go on Behance, you can go check out the asset tab. Obviously, we talked about. You can go to different marketplaces and see what they're offering. Know, paper tears have been out for a long time.
Voodoo Val:
I'm always looking for them, though.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, this is something for us. These are high quality. We love them. So now we're just sharing it with the world. And that's, I think, the happy spot that we're in with this. We're not looking at this as like, this has got to be our revenue for Q Three, and our whole entire existence is based off this is not it. But if you were trying to do that, it'd be very strategic. Look at the competition, look at the trends, find something that fits that and put it together really nicely and teach people how to use it.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah. So a little bit about how I'm approaching this sort of here. Technically, what I've got going on is I've just got this screen where I'm using a soft round brush on a dissolve mode to create this interesting noisy contrast between the background and I'm painting in black. And I will eventually remove I'll hide that background, but it's better for visibility's sake, just to see the texture I'm putting down. And what I intend to do here is, first of all, I've used not a dissolve blending mode on my layer, but dissolve mode on my brush itself. And it's a trick that I like to do. I'm sure everybody in Chat has heard me rave about, like, make your own noise brush with the standard things available in Photoshop. Just using that soft round brush and throwing it on the dissolve blend mode is really great. And for anyone who's never used the dissolved blend mode, it does something really interesting. Which is instead of giving a gradient, which if I'll go ahead and hide this real quick and I'll make a new layer and set this to normal. If I go ahead and paint with my soft round brush not on dissolve, we get this really interesting just a standard gradient across the page, but with it having the dissolve blend mode on it. Every single bit of color that I'm applying to my canvas is actually at 100% opacity. It's just the closer you zoom in, you can see that it's kind of broken it up into pixels that are spread farther and farther apart as it kind of bleeds out for that gradient effect. And that means that there's no in between colors or shades or hues on this page. It is only the white background and black applied at 100% opacity, which makes it really easy when you start prepping files and things and you know that well, you don't know really how other people are going to use it. So if it's solid black and it's all at 100%, you're not going to get any strange artifacts. People aren't going to throw it into a kind of project you weren't anticipating they'd use it for and not get the effect that you advertise, that sort of thing. So I typically start a project like this on that. And what I'm going to do here now is I've got a couple of interesting just like, full canvas paints really quick, of just some cool variation in contrast. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to snag one of them and I'm going to go in with Liquefy and kind of create some interesting, almost like oil spill type things. And then I'll make some gradient maps and also some displacement maps and apply those to give a variation in texture in position and in color as well. If I decide I'd like to offer some of them in color. So that's what I'm working on.
Alex Lazaris:
Love it. Great. Now I'm just like throwing our acid wave pack on top of our texture pack and trying to make like promo assets with it. So I've got a couple different free test file marketing assets. Some that are a little bit more chaotic and overt and some that are a little bit more simple, kind of like some of the restraints, especially when I'm using the cardboard textures on top of each other. But now I'm just trying to make additional marketing. Maybe this would be for an Instagram post, maybe a story. I think normally when I'm trying to resize things, I would love to do it in Express, but with the file sizes and how many filters and things that I'm trying to do, just going to knock it out. All in artboards, in photoshop.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah. And I use Express a lot for stuff of this nature as well, especially lately because there's just been so much. And typically what I'll do, which is honestly a little bit of the inspiration for this show, is that I can't tell you how many textures like this I've made for myself just so that I can use it in conjunction with Adobe Express in my libraries. I use them as backgrounds for my Instagram posts and things and promotional materials for other projects and I'm like the amount of hours I have spent making textures. Your girl should have a texture pack that people can purchase and it works really well that way. So we are making the dream come true today. That's what we're working on.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. Hashtag goals.
Voodoo Val:
Hashtag goals. I'm going to look. Alessandra's saying, love the purple glasses, Val. Thank you so much, Alessandra. I'm glad you like them. I'm getting old, I need glasses now. I like them pretty well, although your approval does make me feel very nice because it's a new thing for me. So thank you. Cody's saying love retro supply textures. Oh my gosh, yeah. True grit texture. Supply is a great place, too. I don't know if you've ever checked their stuff out. I've got a lot of stuff from True Grit myself that I have really enjoyed over the years. And I will say it's a great place to check out and it has inspired a lot of the custom textures that I've made over the years because they are so experimental with a lot of what they offer. And I remember seeing one of their textures before and thinking, I love this, but I didn't know other people loved this. So maybe I can I feel like there's a few Creative Foundries or studios and things that I've seen do something where I'm like, oh, people would like this. Maybe I can make this.
Alex Lazaris:
Honestly, there's so many cool mockup companies coming out and that's where I think a large portion of my budget goes on assets these days. I think it's about building, getting mockups that kind of convey the brand story or telecraft thing and just not wanting to pull up my camera or my photoshop to do it and then just supporting other creators.
Voodoo Val:
I like this pretty well and I realized that it might kind of ruin the integrity of my plan with the dissolve brush, but I like it and so I'm going to do something with it. Yeah. Cody's saying yes. Mockups. Cody is like kind of a mockup queen. I think anytime I need a mockup, Cody always has the good details on where I should be getting mockups. And it's definitely seen like I think that mockups is also one that I feel like I should be doing. And I feel like you could go about creating mockups and follow along with this stream just as well as creating textures because it's also a great way to make a little bit of money and mockups specifically, I feel like if you make texture packs, you probably need a mockup or two to showcase what you're selling. But if you make a mockup, there you go. And you can use your mockups to showcase your texture packs and vice versa.
Alex Lazaris:
See how this is all kind of building up on itself? It's like I'm using the acid wave pack that we did before on this paper texture. And then I do need to create a mockup now, obviously, so I can mock it up and sell that lifestyle a little bit more. Yeah, it's all cyclical.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah, 100%. I think that's a great rule of thumb. Just like, kind of thinking about having your work sort of interlock with itself. I found maybe I think about it that way because I do a lot of illustration and stuff, and so I always try to think about anything that I'm doing through the lens of creating a series, a poster series or whatever. But I think as you're creating assets as well, creating something that works well through the lens of developing an online shop. Right. Your stuff kind of works together, and you can use it for any other thing that whoever is coming to search through your assets will need, really. But they are interwoven in a way where using one of your products may entice people to experiment with other things you've created only to find that, wow, they kind of fit together like a puzzle.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. I think there's a lot of artists that have kind of perfected a certain aesthetic. Like the Y two K aesthetic is super hot right now. A lot of people are into the grunge and the filters and the textures and the bitmapping and the half toning. And it's like, there you go. All these things are layered on top of each other. To give you that end result, you might as well develop asset packs that speak directly to all those things.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah, I agree. I'm going to create myself a new file real quick, so I'm going to make a displacement map, and I'm going to kind of take a closer peek at your work because you have a lot of really good texture and stuff going here, and you've got multiple pieces that look really cool. So I'm going to flip over and take a look at you just so people can get a little bit of a closer look at all of these awesome things that you got going on here. There's so much character and the colors I'm living for right now.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I'm still trying to it's not perfect, but we're getting there. And honestly, we're having a lot of fun doing it. And that's like, I think, the most important thing whenever you're building asset packs or designing for yourself.
Voodoo Val:
Oh, yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
If you're not having fun making these assets, then, like, what are you doing, bro? Yeah. This is supposed to be something that you're interested in, you care about, kind.
Voodoo Val:
Of kind of bringing it back to that. Like, if you love it, make it for other people sort of thing. I think that when I used to approach building assets and stuff, for whatever reason, it seemed like a really boring task to me. It seemed like something where I was like, I'm going to go find stuff. I'm not going to make myself a big texture pack. I'm making them as needed sometimes and more. Times than not. Now I will make, like, a small series of things that I can use for my personal branding or whatever. But it seemed like kind of a boring thing to do and to get going for a long time until I realized that if I approach it with the same sort of passion I approach the projects I need those textures for. I have more fun. And I feel like people respond better to those assets because I put a little more passion them into their creation.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Honestly, I think if you can enjoy the majority of the process of making the assets, that's great. I will say there will always be a stage in the asset creation part that you as a creative won't like. And that's okay. It's mostly just like understanding that there is going to be a point in it that does feel like work. And it's not like you just creating and getting the flow. For me, it's going and reaching out to a bunch of different storefronts and being like, hey, we made this thing. Would you post it on your thing? And then they get back to you and you have to resize everything and build it just completely custom for their site. And so that for me, is not the fun part. I like this part of it where it's like, how do we build the lifestyle, how we do the marketing, how do we do this stuff that's more fun. But there's going to be steps along the journey. The goal is to make it convince yourself through that process and walk through it and understand that's going to come up and that's okay.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah. I think sometimes just being able to do something like this or tune into something like this keeps me on track because I notice I try to keep track of my internal thoughts about my own work while I'm designing anything when it comes to these assets, when it comes to doing one of my paintings. And I like to keep track of it just to keep tabs on how I talk to myself in my mind. Because I think that that comes into play a lot when you sit down and you're like, I want to make money creatively. And I realized when I'm unsure of myself, I'm super mean to me. I'm super mean to me. And being able to come and hang out and do something like this, even if it's not a live stream, but just like hanging out with a friend, bouncing ideas off of other people really helps. And I realized after a while how many of my ideas were super good ideas that I could do to help to support myself financially with my creativity. But I didn't do implement those ideas until later because I really thought that I convinced myself it wasn't a great idea. I didn't bounce it off of anybody. I just was kind of mean to myself and my own brain about it. And then I realized later when I see somebody do something similar, I'm like, oh, people would like that sort of thing. So I would say a big part to me of kind of getting into the swing of making money creatively is to develop a group of friends or join a community of people who can give you some really great feedback, things like that. Because the outside input is almost equally as important as the internal input and creating it yourself.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, honestly. And I hope that people that are hanging out with us right now or watching the VOD later on can be comfortable enough being like, you know what, this is actually I'm going to turn on this video for an hour. I'm going to hang out with Val and Alex, and I'm going to jam also and just like, use this as a way to keep yourself accountable. As Cody says, friends are the ones that are going to kind of keep you accountable. Like, if I wasn't doing these asset packs in collaboration with my friends, I think I would struggle to get them done. And honestly, Leon and I have been working on this pack for since before the acid wave pack, I think came out. So I think it's been probably six months now I've been sitting on this, and because of your beautiful show, I was like, you know what? I'm going to get myself in order. I'm going to get this done. We're going to do it on stream. We're going to do it together, and we're going to keep each other accountable. So that's what we're doing. That's great.
Voodoo Val:
That's amazing. I love to hear love, love to hear it. I will holler at you then later and be like, hey, do you make any more assets? Hey, what's going on? What are you thinking about doing?
Alex Lazaris:
Why haven't you posted this on Instagram yet?
Voodoo Val:
Yeah, where is it? You promised the people assets.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. My goal today is to be able to throw whatever we've built so far into that Behance case study so it's live immediately and then I'll fix whatever I don't like once I've slept on it.
Voodoo Val:
I am real quick. I will hold you to that. I'll come check on you. I'll come peek at you. But I am going to pop over to my cam or my screen really quick because what I've done is a bunch of craziness, a bunch of wild shapes and things. I've thrown a bunch of texture onto the canvas. I have cut out random shapes and with my lasso tool, my polygon lasso tool, my rectangular marquee tool, and I've changed it all up and I've just made this really contrasty kind of mess. And what I've done is saved it as a PSD file. And now I'm going to come over to some of the nicer textures I made and use this right here as a displacement map and see if I can get any interesting grit and things that could be cool for our custom gradients. So that is the plan. I'm actually going to do this too. I'm thinking maybe I made an artboard for this, but I don't know if I want to do, like, a full on artboard for it. I could because I've never actually and maybe you have before, but I have never tried to apply a displacement map to an artboard project. I've never done that. But what I might do is instead of removing my artboards, is I may convert them to smart objects, and I'm going to throw them into a library and then open them on their own. That's what I'll do. Yeah, I think that might work. Have you ever done that? I don't know. That's kind of a weird, specific question.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm trying to think recapping all the steps that you did despite submit maps, and I don't typically get along.
Voodoo Val:
Okay, that makes sense. They can be difficult sometimes. Yeah, they can be difficult. It can take some tweaking and there's tons of different other methods to kind of get the same sort of texture. So I think it's fine if you don't use displacement maps often. I would love to know in the chat who does use displacement maps, and I see Reverb Mike in the chat saying, scan it with your phone. That's another really great thing that I highly recommend. I use Adobe Capture to take pictures of grit and textures because it vectorizes the image and you can clean it up and then you can add vector textures to your libraries too. And I wonder if it would be cool. I could maybe do like kind of an experiment, sort of depending on how much time we have. But I'm going to go ahead and snag. I'm going to snag this guy right here, and I'm going to say, filter, distort, displace. And I'm going to leave it where it's at on just like the horizontal vertical scale stretch to fit repeat edge pixels. And then it just asks me to select a PSD file, which I am just going to grab because I just saved this texture displacement. And I'm going to say open, and then it's going to do it kind of did. I feel like we need to attempt it on one that is not as empty because this one's kind of empty. Let's go ahead. Let's do it on this one. Let's do the same thing. Filter, distort, displace. Okay. I might need to make a more dramatic displacement map, too, because that sometimes is the problem, because, yeah, I'm getting a little bit of texture, but it's not oh, you know what too is I can just crank it up. Let's try that first. Let's go ahead and do it again. But as you use a displacement map, you might apply it and you're not really getting the kind of distortions you really want. And you could either change your displacement map, make it more contrasting between the varying hues, make it a little more dramatic in that way. Or what we could do is I'm going to crank this might be a disaster, but I'm going to crank these up to 100 and just see what happens.
Alex Lazaris:
I love that mythbusters approach to design. This might be a disaster. It's kind of cool. Yeah, exactly.
Voodoo Val:
I feel like that is a great way to approach design sometimes. This may be a disaster, but it kind of gives me this interesting pull with the displacement and it stamps a lot of that texture in middle of this, which I actually think is cool. I don't know if I like these edges too much, but if I go ahead and just remove those edges, it kind of gives me an interesting texture, which could be cool. Now I might leave that. I could make another displacement. But one thing that I do want to do because I like the kind of regular ones we've created and then I also like kind of this weird jittery one is I also want to try making a like using it in a project, figuring out how would this I try to do that. Add kind of a context to sort of like what you're doing is kind of take the texture and then apply it to something and start building a piece. That could be interesting. Use case.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think it's really important when you're trying to build asset packs, it's just think about all the random shenanigans.
Voodoo Val:
Oh, yeah, 100%. Also, we have let's see, christopher was saying for me, it's enough to stand up from the computer and I get inspired from the room or the surroundings. I have pretty good imagination when it comes to inspiration. That's amazing, Christopher. And I feel like that sometimes, but sometimes I feel like I get really stuck and I feel like we've all probably made this mistake before, and that is you are like, I need inspiration. So you go to Pinterest and there's a fine line between becoming inspired and spiraling into the dumpster of everything everyone else has made is so much better, or they've already made it. Why am I here? I get that all the time where I'm just like in this never ending scroll that at the beginning is happy, but it transforms into a Doom scroll. And I'm just like, why would I ever paint a portrait again?
Alex Lazaris:
Look at all these Doom portraits. Better than me.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah, so it could be difficult, but how do you stay inspired to create content stuff like these asset packs or like personal projects and stuff? Do you have a method for finding inspiration? And if you do, do you have like a cut off point where you're like, no more?
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, man. I think I have a rolling list of like 60 things I need to be doing at any given moment.
Voodoo Val:
That's so real. I resonate with that spiritually.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, dude. I've got so many ideas of things that I want to be doing, and there's no shortage of things that I want to do. I think the shortage is, like, time and fatigue. I really want to man, got all these ideas.
Voodoo Val:
Tell us.
Alex Lazaris:
Inspiration. I just see it online, like you said. I'll see something, I'm like, man, that's amazing. And then I add it to the queue, and then until I make it a priority or use something as an excuse to reprioritize and say, this is something I need to dedicate time to right now. Like I said, this stream has lit a fire underneath my booty to get this done. So this is awesome. And finding a way to hold each other accountable for it. Right now, we're rebuilding our entire website, so that's where all of our attention is at. But doing this pack is like something I had on my list for six months. I want to get it done. So having people that go to the gym, your friends can keep you accountable, eat healthy, do these things, it's just, like, cool. Get that asset pack done. I was counting on you.
Voodoo Val:
You have to finish it. You said you would. Yeah, I feel like giving myself it's kind of like giving yourself an ultimatum. You can either get this done or you have to confront these people. You said you would finish it for sometimes the outside influence of, like, somebody is going to come looking for this soon absolutely. Is, like, the best thing for it. Reverb is saying he goes to Dick Blick and picks up some ink. My sister does a lot of traditional work. She does, like, resin casting and all kinds of stuff like that. And so as a digital artist, I don't really go into art supply stores a lot, but she goes to Dick Blick often. And I remember she was like, you really should come in here with me. It's a pretty cool place. And I was like, what do I need paints for? I got your paints right here on my computer. And then I went in there, and I was like, your girl needs some paints. I don't know what this is, but it's, like, metallic and purple, and I need it. And so I have, like, metallic purple paint pots that I don't know what I'm going to do with them, but I look at them sometime and I think, I don't know what I'll do traditionally with that, but I am going to add some glitz and glam to this digital project I'm doing. So that's very real.
Alex Lazaris:
Reverb absolutely. I don't know how you walk out of Dick Blick without spending, like, hundreds of dollars each time you walk in there. That's why I've kind of sworn it off.
Voodoo Val:
It's a trap, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Last time I went in there, I bought a bunch of stuff for linoleum cuts and then did, like, one linoleum cut. And then I found all the supplies the other day and I felt insanely guilty.
Voodoo Val:
Oh, no.
Alex Lazaris:
I was like, man, I really need to get back on that do that thing.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah, I feel like there's a few things where I just like, I go a little too ham on and I'm like, oh, no, one of those things actually is fonts. I have to stop myself. I give myself a limit. If I'm hunting for fonts, I'm allowed to get three and that's it. Because I'll get fonts for yeah, well, sometimes it's just the one, because I favor these. Really? I favor weird fonts. I'll use one because I feel like I've come to a point where I can add some interesting stuff here now, but I kind of want to bump that up. But I just added that gradient map. But I feel like I want more, but I like to find weird fonts. Sometimes they have more than one weight and sometimes they really do not. And I don't care because it looks like a witch made it. I literally have a font called Witch.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, I'll just get that. I knew that you would be choosing the witch font.
Voodoo Val:
The one that you saw with the red letters when you were scrolling through it came up when you were showing off beans. And I was like, that's it? That's amazing. So it actually did come up and I was like, don't be excited about it. Don't freak out and scream. He's explaining something. I was like, that's one of my babies right there.
Alex Lazaris:
That's awesome.
Voodoo Val:
I think I like this. Yeah, it's a little weirder. So I've applied a gradient map to this and I kind of like it. It's not as bright and bold and crazy, but what I'm going to do is grab my type and I'll show one of the crazy ones I have. So I like Gravesend Sands a lot. I don't know if that's like a popular font, if people love that font or not.
Alex Lazaris:
Gravestone Sands.
Voodoo Val:
Gravesend graves.
Alex Lazaris:
Not comic papyrus.
Voodoo Val:
We were going to get to it eventually, so I can't really be mad, but I would appreciate it if we never spoke of that font.
Alex Lazaris:
Well, it's happening. Also, I love how the stream started off so professional, and everybody in Chat was like, the king of memes. The king of memes.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah, we were just like, no, we are designers. We are not the Meme queen and king. Not at all. I was just talking about that and I'm pretty sure everybody in Chat understands what meh-mehz is, and if you don't, we'll tell you. But we were making those jokes, like the first time we met, and it has been years and I don't think I ever see you on stream where someone's not where's Val? Where are the mayonnaise?
Alex Lazaris:
These are the correct questions.
Voodoo Val:
Yes, I would love to know. On a semi related note, chat, how do you pronounce this? Word.
Alex Lazaris:
Are you typing it in Chat?
Voodoo Val:
No, I'm typing it on the design.
Alex Lazaris:
Smart.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah. We're going to put it right here. It's going to be part of my use case here. That's what we're going to do, memes. And then I'm going to put a little subtitle is not pronounced meh-mehs. I'm going to use my funny font, though, that I was saying. Tan Grandeur is a really dope font. It's a super dope font, and it's like everything's all wiggly, and it has glyphs. That was the thing that was the selling point for me. I was like, glyphs.
Alex Lazaris:
You say I can do the wingdings?
Voodoo Val:
Yeah, you can do the wing dings, sort of. There's a lot of interesting wigglies in this, which is the professional term for that. Interesting wigglies, for sure. And if I go, I can actually just open up my glyphs and take a look. So the z, I don't know. Is that A-Z-I don't know what that is. I don't. But it's just like a cool little guy. It's a funny little guy that comes with it for no reason. We're going to put it in here like it's a z. Let's put the funny little guy in.
Alex Lazaris:
If you're not designing with funny little guys, I don't know.
Voodoo Val
Yeah, what's the point if you don't design with funny little guys? I don't even know what you're doing here's. The little one. Yeah, let's memes perfect. Yeah, I think it is a z. If it's not, that's what it is now. That's what it is. Yeah. He's a cool little guy. Cody exactly. Schlara. Is it schlara?
Alex Lazaris:
Schlara.
Voodoo Val:
That's how I'm saying that.
Alex Lazaris:
Schlara.
Voodoo Val:
I feel like that's the kind of, like, schlara. Makes me feel like if I pronounce it just slightly wrong, I'll be saying a bad word. Okay. I don't know if I'm getting it right, and I'm worried.
Alex Lazaris:
I do feel like adding Comic Papyrus to this has actually made it better. It kind of feels like I'm drawn on a school bag lunch.
Voodoo Val:
I hate it so much. Go ahead and zoom in. I full screened you. Go ahead and zoom in on Comic rapyrus. It's like somebody took Comic Sands and tried to write it by hand but didn't have the pressure. Right. Like, it's broken. It's weird. I can read it really well, but I am dyslexic, so I've never misread anything in comic book pirates, I'll say.
Alex Lazaris:
That it's honestly the most form and function together. It's truly the pinnacle of all designs.
Voodoo Val:
Oliver is like, looking down face. Alessandro wants to know what memes are as well. So I guess if we're digging into the Comic papyrus and we're digging into the word memes, we should give a little bit of an explanation. So this word that I have up on my screen is the word memes. A meme. I think everybody knows what a meme is, and if you're unfamiliar, a meme is a picture that is circulated around the internet typically has funny text on it that is AHA, that you send to your friends. It is a way to visually, quickly, and humorously convey an information or a story in a way that makes people's day. Or not if you're in the meme. I don't know.
Alex Lazaris:
I love that you gave the thesaurus definition.
Voodoo Val:
I have that definition because I taught Photoshop DCC on making memes because it was combining images and text, and I was like, I better show up. Correct. With a good description of what a meme is. But yeah, this is pronounced memes and how do you say it, Alex? How do you say it? How do you incorrectly pronounce this?
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, for the memes. Go ahead, one more time for the memes.
Voodoo Val:
Memes. Yeah. Pretty sure it's not memes. I don't think it's memes.
Alex Lazaris:
Reverb says Avatar loves Papyrus. I know. I'm hoping that Avatar Three gets comic papyrus.
Voodoo Val:
I'm hoping we don't have to get that far. Those movies are way too long. It's too much.
Alex Lazaris:
I thought they confirmed that they've got, like, 16 lined up.
Voodoo Val:
You're kidding me.
Alex Lazaris:
No. I think seven, though. I think there was like, you're kidding me. All right, just think about all the elements. Like, he's got to get the fire nation, the Earth Nation. He's already done. They did. The Water Nation. Now they need the airbenders too, at least four.
Voodoo Val:
I'm in pain.
Alex Lazaris:
Come on. Oh, my gosh.
Voodoo Val:
Oh, my gosh. The Fire nation. Everything was fine on this stream until the fire nation attacked.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly.
Voodoo Val:
Everything was going so well until the memes attacked. I'm going to go ahead and change this back to a regular font and I'm going to have my own interesting little.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm so torn because I've got this paper filter and it just looks so good by itself and I just don't want to do anything to it. But I feel like I'm not giving chat what they need. I'm just like, this is so good on its own. This is perfect.
Voodoo Val:
Let's go ahead and take a look. What do you think Chat is? It just perfect on its own. You know what I think it needs? I think it needs a neon green drop shadow. I think that's what it needs, neon green drop shadow. We got a minute left, and I feel like we could do that in a minute and just really hit it with the good old do up. Let's go for it. We could get some bubble letters in there. Yeah, just a few minutes left. Unfortunately. This was fun. Stream. Star Wars Episode Two attack of the Memes That's what CJ says. Thank you. That's a good you know what is even better is yeah. If you change the spread so that there's like a hard drop off a cliff like that at the end of the gradient. Yeah. Don't do anything that Alex is doing right now. This will not sell you a texture pack or heck, maybe there's enough people here today who loved watching you tease me that will buy this texture pack just like this, just because I tried.
Alex Lazaris:
Really hard to make it not look good, but then I couldn't. And so now we have this kind of oversprayed spray paint stencil thing happening and it also works good.
Voodoo Val:
It's good because there's funnies behind it. But we are out of time, unfortunately. It was a blast to hang out with you and talk to you about creating paper textures and selling your work and cool business and the like. Where can people find you online real quick in the last few moments we have here?
Alex Lazaris:
Come on over to behance behance. Net slash Alex Lazaris or check out our website. WeareLazaris.com. And yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you. Chat as always. Super fun.
Voodoo Val:
Yeah. Thanks everybody for joining us. We will see you around the bend for sure, but that is it for Adobe Live today. We'll be back tomorrow and we will see you around. Audios, everybody. Bye.
