Saturday, August 15, 2015

Chinese Oil Painting

A tweak to the last post, its clear that the style I have produced is more like an oil painting than a water colour, in fact the graphics effect I was using was named Oil Painting, not sure why I was thinking it was a water colour.

I was then able to apply the same effects to the animated forecast thumbnails; see below for a full screen version of the theme.

 
Now going to experiment with tweaking the red sun a bit to make it look more like a painting, and then will start on the other weather conditions.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Yet More Chinese Theme

I really wasn't happy with the overall look of my new Chinese Theme.

The layout and ideas were fine, it just didn't look right, too faded out. I know was trying to emulate a sketch or pencil drawing, but it just doesn't have the impact of the other themes, it didn't look pencilly enough, and it was not easy to see at a glance what the weather condition is, which is after all the whole point.

So I was playing with ways of increasing the contrast, making it darker and more easy to see, and came across a nice visual effect to make it look more like a water-colour painting.

As it happens I visited the studio of a water-colour artist during my recent holiday in England, and it inspired me a little. Thus the theme now looks a lot more like a moving painting, more arty and abstract, and less worry about photo realism.


I think this is an improvement on the screenshot in the last post, much easier to see what is going on, and if nothing else gives me an obvious title for the theme: Chinese Watercolour