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An interview with John Campbell: Creator of DesignBump
2008-06-10 10:15:00
DesignBump, a new community website especially for design, has just opened it's doors. I mentioned it before in the sideblog because I think this website has a lot of potential. Today I had the chance to get an interview of the man behind DesignBump: John Campbell . He'll tell us some background information about this upcoming and growing website. As you could have expected, I'm a registered member too. If you're really in to design, you should really take a look at DesignBump. Read more...
More About: Interview , Creator

Making a 3d scene using 3d models in Photoshop
2008-06-08 12:30:00
One of the coolest new features of Photoshop CS3 extended is the possibility to import 3d models. Together with vanishing point they can really give you a good 3d look-and-feel in Photoshop. In this tutorial, we'll be creating a nice 3d scene using 3d models. This was my first time working with this technique, so I haven't perfect it (yet). Still, it's pretty fun to play around with and if you've never worked with 3d models before, you'll learn a whole lot of new things. My PSD file of this tutorial was to big to put online (83 MB) because of the many 3d models, but you can download a wallpaper pack containing my final result in high resolution in 2 different sizes (1440x900 (widescreen), 1600x1200 (normal)). Read more...
More About: Models , Scene

[Contest] Summer 2008 Guest authors
2008-06-06 20:12:00
The summer vacation break is coming up soon over here and I'll be gone for almost one whole month (sorry folks!). Right now, I'm holding a contest, searching for all (potential) guest authors out there that want to share one (or more) articles with the world by placing them on Marcofolio.net. I'll personally review all submitted articles myself and will send a notification when the article is approved. Your article is placed on the front page of Marcofolio.net in this summer (July or August). Prizes What would a contest be without any prizes to win? 1st place: A 125x125 px banner in the "Sponsors" section, advertising your website for 2 months 2nd place: $30.00 USD in cash on your PayPal account 3rd place: One of your own chosen articles on your blog will get featured on the sideblog Of source, all articles will have a link to your own website, together with a short biography of yourself. You'd be promoting your own website too! So what are you waiting for? Start writing an u...
More About: Contest , Summer , Authors , Guest , 2008

[Imagedump] June 2008 - Part 1
2008-06-03 23:14:00
I know there are many people out there that like my blog for the monthly imagedumps. The month June has just started and I'll kick-it-off with another great picture collection. Here's a small collection of the best, funniest or coolest images from 2008 .html">June 2008 . Don't forget to check out the other imagedumps and stick around to see part 2 of this month. Read more...
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You think you can design? Join the MTV Engine Room
2008-06-02 19:28:00
Simply answer the following question. If your answer is "Yes", please read on. MTV is doing a casting call on all digital artists out there. Together with HP they're looking for all kinds of digital artists around the globe for their new series called the Engine Room . Go to the website and send your digital art. This can be anything: Animations, websites, short films, sound mixes, digital art, you name it. Just show that you're creative enough to enter the room. Remember: Your only limit is your own imagination. React fast: Casting ends June 30th. Personally, I really love this idea from MTV. Bringing several creative minds to one place to let them compete on a TV show is absolutely fascinating. I expect very innovative things to come out of this project. Read more...
More About: Design , Join

12 inspirational shirt designs
2008-05-31 14:43:00
A while ago, I wanted to buy me myself a new shirt for the holiday. I ended up searching online for the most beautiful design shirt, but there's just so many to choose from. Here's a round-up from what I think are the 12 most awesome design t-shirts that can give you some inspiration. If you're not so much into design, you might want to check out the 30 funniest and geekiest shirts. If you like funny shirts, you should check out Glennz. Read more...
More About: Inspirational , Shirt , Designs

Photoshop freebies: 2x High resolution textures
2008-05-28 23:42:00
On the 9th of May 2008, Smashing Magazine announced a Smashing Textures Contest. The goal was set to let all readers take beautiful pictures that can be used as textures. It was one amazing contest. They received in an enormous amount of e-mail from over 600 participants. The results speak for themselves: The Smashing Texture Gallery is one great Photoshop Resource. My girlfriend (Amber from DressYourAss) and I were two of the 600 participants. The sun was shining and we took the afternoon to take some photo's with my camera to enter the texture contest. Two out of the ten that we send were selected by SmashingMagazine. All photographs are taken with a simple camera on a bright day. None of them are edited in any way, exept some have non-texture parts removed. The pictures are taken in a very high resolution, perfect for Photoshop artwork. Read more...
More About: Freebies , High , High Resolution , Resolution

A simple starry Web 2.0 ad
2008-05-25 10:50:00
A couple of days ago I recieved an advertisement from a store that has just opened his doors. Normally, I would throw those things directly away, but the simplicity of the design did draw my attention. I wanted to recreate the Web 2.0 looking ad and here I'll show you how. So start up Photoshop, it won't be a long ride. There's no shame in always improving your Photoshop skills, so get ready to create a simple starry Web 2.0 ad with Photoshop. Read more...
More About: Simple

[Imagedump] May 2008 - Part 2
2008-05-22 18:44:00
The end of the month is coming closer and you know what it means: Part 2 of this months imagedump is there! Here's a small collection of the best, funniest or coolest images from May 2008 . Don't forget to check out part one in case you missed it. Enjoy! Read more...

Your own CSS parallax illusion 3d image
2008-05-19 20:43:00
A couple of days ago I placed an article about a parallax illusion with CSS: The Horse in Motion. Today I'll show you how I created such an image so you can do it yourself. In this example, I'm going to use Photoshop for the actual image and Illustrator for the 3D effect. I wanted to try something else instead of the "frame by frame" (Like the Horse in Motion). Be creative! The final example (demo of the effect) looks pretty amazing and maybe even better than my previous one. Read more...
More About: Illusion , Image

A parallax illusion with CSS: The Horse in Motion
2008-05-17 12:28:00
Time for some fun with CSS and optical illusions. For those people that are feed subscribers for a while, will know that I really love optical illusions. I already wrote several articles with optical illusions (15 cool word illusions, Illusion of a 3D dragon and more), and now it's time to create one myself with the help of CSS. One of the optical illusion video's that I saw a while ago, was the example of the book called Magic Moving Images. The video clearly explains how this optical illusion works and I really liked it. I wanted to recreate the effect of the illusion with the help of parallax and CSS. Chris Coyier wrote an article about Starry Night: Incredible 3D Background Effect with Parallax. This was the foundation of the effect of an optical illusion. Check out the demo page with can be created by combining those two awesome techniques. Read more...
More About: Motion , Horse

22 signs you're NOT addicted to design
2008-05-15 19:12:00
I guess you've seen them all. Articles like 25 MORE Reasons You Might Be A Hardcore Graphic/Web Design er, You Know You're Addicted To Photoshop If... and 24 Checkpoint Signs You're Obsessed With Web/Graphic Design. All are great (and somewhat funny and true) articles, but how do you know you're not addicted to design? So you think you're not addicted to (web)design? Here's a check-list in random order. Read more...

Expanding a HTML form using JavaScript
2008-05-14 23:24:00
Using forms in a website to let the user register is pretty common these days. But what happens when you want several input values of the same subject? It's pretty ugly to make 20 fields with "I can speak the following languages:". Those users that can only speak one or two languages would leave a big empty space and would have to scroll down a lot. Those users that can speak more than 20 languages can't input everything they want. In this example, what you want is that the user can give an input and dynamically expand the form. This can be achieved with the help of JavaScript and here I'll show you how. This isn't going to be a long article, since I don't have much to tell about this technique. Just check out the demo, look at the code and learn for yourself. I added comments to make it a bit more easier. Read more...
More About: Javascript , Form , Html

Enable Gravatar support in !JoomlaComment
2008-05-11 11:50:00
!JoomlaComment is one of the leading free commenting components for Joomla!. I've been using the component since the beginning of my website. Still, !JoomlaComment isn't perfect (yet) in my opinion (And I'm not the only one). I would really like to see Trackback support and the ability to edit your own post in 120 seconds. For my website, I wanted to add Gravatar support, so I went editing the !JoomlaComment code to show those globally recognized avatars. One of the strangest things is that !JoomlaComment already supports most things needed for Gravatar. There is already avatar support for Community Builder. The only thing needed for support Gravatar on a PHP platform is an email address. !JoomlaComment has the build-in functionality to ask the user for his email. So let's edit the PHP code and let's add Gravatar support! This tutorial is written on the latest release of !JoomlaComment at this moment: 3.23. Read more...
More About: Support

Happy 1st anniversary Marcofolio.net
2008-05-09 19:44:00
Whoohoo! Party time! Today (9th of May, 2008) is exactly one year after I bought the Marcofolio.net domain. Meaning, today is the first birthday of this website. I'm pretty satisfied with what happened the past year. The first couple of months, this website was nothing more than my personal portfolio. After a while I started blogging and even made a pretty nice list with my favorite articles from 2007 and even made an april fools prank. Because of the increasing number of readers, I updated my layout for the website to version 1.5. Recently, I became #2 top blogger under 21. For all my articles, you can go to the sitemap. As a little present for you, I added Gravatar support in the commenting system. This way, your comment will be more personal with your own avatar. Also, for the RSS Feed Readers among you, using a RSS Reader like Feedreader: The feed will now display formatted HTML. This way, you'll get a faster intension of the article (image & links) and it looks a lot nicer. ...
More About: Anniversary , Happy

[Imagedump] May 2008 - Part 1
2008-05-07 12:58:00
Another month, another imagedump! Here's a small collection of the best, funniest or coolest images from May 2008 . Don't forget to check out part 2 that will be released later this month. Enjoy!
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Presenting gadgets in a superb, grungy way
2008-05-05 21:52:00
Time for all those Photoshop lovers out there to follow another tutorial. This time, we'll learn how to present technology gadgets in a superb, grungy way. I was inspired by the artwork from Eric Oosterhof (http://www.designflavr.com/details.php?i d=389) and wanted to created something looking just as amazing as that. My PSD file was too big to put to download because of the smart objects (26 MB), but you can download a wallpaper pack containing my final result in high resolution in 3 different sizes (http://www.marcofolio.net/downloads/phot oshop/growing_technology_wallpaperpack/de tails.html) (320x480 (iPhone), 1440x900 (widescreen), 1600x1200 (normal)).
More About: Gadgets , Presenting

Being #2 top blogger under 21
2008-05-05 01:02:00
Michael from RetireAt21 (http://www.retireat21.com/) released a list of top young bloggers under 21 (http://www.retireat21.com/blog/top-young -bloggers-under-21/). I was pretty happy to hear that I made it to his list, but did't expect to get listed that high: I'm listed as number 2 top blogger under 21. Rank Name Website Age Alexa Technorati 1 Thilak Raj Rao http://tech-buzz.net (http://tech-buzz.net) 18 21,749 20,499 2 Marco Kuiper http://www.marcofolio.net (http://www.marcofolio.net) 19 32,712 14,278 3 Eli Burford http://www.photoshopstar.com (http://www.photoshopstar.com) 17 36,526 21,714 4 Carl Ocab http://www.carlocab.com (http://www.carlocab.com) 14 90,186 6,138 5 Ahson Rafiq http://www.blueverse.com/ (http://www.blueverse.com/) 18 43,137 17,285 The full list (http://www.retireat21.com/blog/top-young -bloggers-under-21/) contains 30 of the most top-ranked blogs by authors under the age of 21. Some of them are really great! I would...
More About: Blogger

Protecting an image with the use of Flash
2008-05-02 23:29:00
It's been a while since I wrote my last Flash / Actionscript tutorial (http://www.marcofolio.net/actionscript/v isualize_audio_bars_by_using_amplitude_in _flash.html). But lately, I got several requests on different Flash tutorials so I decided to start up the program once again. Many websites don't want their images to be copied. You can add a (hidden) watermark (http://www.marcofolio.net/photoshop/crea te_a_hidden_watermark_in_images.html), slamming your logo several times on the image or let it carry a secret file (http://www.marcofolio.net/how_to/hide_fi les_in_jpg_files.html), but I wanted a totally different approach. I wanted to protect my images using Flash and more important: It should be done dynamically. Before I'm going to start with this tutorial, I recommend you to check out download the source and demo code (http://www.marcofolio.net/downloads/sour ce/flash_image_protector/details.html) if you don't feel like following this tutorial. You'll only need to change the XM...
More About: Image

I got RickRolled on Queensday IRL
2008-05-01 18:18:00
Just a short, personal, non-techie post from the person behind this blog / website. I just got a new (parttime) job as a PHP (http://www.php.net/) programmer at WIWI Websolutions (http://wiwi.nl/). The CakePHP framework (http://www.cakephp.org/) they're using is pretty cool and I'm learning it now. Yesterday, it was Queensday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koninginned ag) in the Netherlands. It's a national holiday, celebrating the birthday of the Queen. This simply means: A free day with loads of partying. In the morning, there was a flea market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_market ) down town which I visited. When I was going through some old vinyls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_recor d), checking for some "good old songs", I stumbled upon the following record. I laughed, thinking that I got RickRolled (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickroll) in real life. I know it's pretty geeky, but seriously: When you listen to Rick Asteley's Never Gonna Give You Up (http://www.you...

Glowing and sparkling intense light 3d logo
2008-04-26 20:02:00
After my previous tutorial on how to create a frog logo in Photoshop (http://www.marcofolio.net/photoshop/crea te_a_frog_logo_in_photoshop.html), I'm now going to teach you how to create a glowing and sparkling intense light 3D glow logo. This tutorial shows different techniques that I learned in the past couple of weeks and it'll surely blow others away. Most of this tutorial is done in Photoshop, the 3D letters are created in Illustrator. If you don't have Illustrator, you can also try making 3D letters in Photoshop (http://www.webdesign.org/web/photoshop/t utorials/3d-letter-text-photoshop.2776.ht ml). I'm creating the word "QPoit", which actually is a fun word (and non-existing) used between my friends and me (Don't ask me why). Get ready to make some amazing artwork.
More About: Light , Logo

[Imagedump] April 2008 - Part 2
2008-04-23 12:29:00
Part 2 of this months imagedump! Here's a small collection of the best, funniest or coolest images from April 2008 . If you liked this one, don't forget to check out Part 1 (http://www.marcofolio.net/imagedump/imag edump_april_2008_part_1.html) or any other imagedump (http://www.marcofolio.net/imagedump/).
More About: Part

Flying Vector Stars: Free high res Photoshop brushes
2008-04-20 16:53:00
As you could have guessed, I'm (http://www.marcofolio.net/about_me.html) a programmer. But sometimes (http://www.marcofolio.net/photoshop/crea te_a_frog_logo_in_photoshop.html), I really like to get creative & design things using Photoshop (http://www.marcofolio.net/photoshop/). For all those Photoshop lovers out there, I created a free high resolution brush pack for Photoshop. It contains 12 super-size brushes, showing flying vector stars. The Photoshop CS2+ version has a resolution of almost 2500 px, the CS1 and lower version are just under 1000 px. Both use the same settings as Bittbox (http://www.bittbox.com/photoshop/how-to- make-a-photoshop-brush/). You can use these stars in your striking Photoshop artwork.
More About: Stars , Free , Flying , Vector

RapidShare: Cutest but lamest CAPTCHA
2008-04-19 12:36:00
A while ago, John Willis posted an article with 10 worst forms of CAPTCHAs (http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/top-10- worst-captchas/). Yesterday, I found another form of CAPTCHA that could be added to his list. This is an image from file hosting service RapidShare.com (http://rapidshare.com/) What do you think the four letters are? Have you ever encountered such an aweful form of CAPTCHA like me? Show them. The Spanner created an innovative CAPTCHA called CODETCHA (http://www.thespanner.co.uk/2008/03/30/c odetcha-update/) but is mainly focused on programmers.
More About: Captcha

mfSlideBar: Sliding sidebar for Joomla modules
2008-04-17 13:26:00
A common problem in web design is having a lack of space. mfSlideBar gives you a fancy Web 2.0 solution for this problem. Simply place modules in to a nice sliding side bar on your Joomla ! website. You can place any module in to this sliding sidebar and you can set your own theme / style. mfSlideBar is very flexible and comes in sliding from the left or the right of the page. Want to have a nice Web 2.0 sliding sidebar showing your modules on your website? mfSlideBar is your solution. mfSlideBar works with Prototype.js (http://www.prototypejs.org/). mfSlideBar Download mfSlideBar for Joomla! 1.5 Download
More About: Sidebar

Create a frog logo in Photoshop
2008-04-13 18:43:00
For a school project, our project team was in need of a logo. I created a simple frog logo, because it has something to do with the project we'll be working on (sorry, can't give you any more details). I'll explain here how I created it. You can also see this logo as an icon that can be used in documents. In this tutorial I'll try to teach you the basics of the 'Pen Tool', since many people will find it hard to use it for the first time. Of course you can use this technique with other animals to create logos or icons. To create a nice logo (or icon), most of the times you want to create it as a vector image. Adobe Illustrator is always good, but the Pen Tool from Photoshop allows you to create vectorized shapes too. So get your Pen Tool and let's start.
More About: Frog , Logo , Create

mfDropCaps: Add your own drop caps to your Joomla articles
2008-04-10 17:17:00
A drop cap is an effective way to jazz up articles on your website. It'll make your site look a bit more professional. There are several CSS techniques (http://www.mandarindesign.com/dropcaps.h tml) to achieve this, but some are not cross-browser compatible and it doesn't support every font. mfDrop Caps replaces every first character of your article or paragraph with a beautiful drop cap by showing an image of the character. This technique is SEO-proof and you can create your own font by changing the images provided by mfDropCaps mfDropCaps works with jQuery (http://jquery.com/). mfDropCaps Download mfDropCaps for Joomla ! 1.5 Download
More About: Articles

[Imagedump] April 2008 - Part 1
2008-04-07 23:31:00
Another month, another imagedump! Here's a small collection of the best, funniest or coolest images from April 2008 . Don't forget to check out part 2 that will be released later this month. Enjoy!
More About: Part

Fun with the sleeves of vinyls
2008-04-03 23:29:00
A vinyl (or Gramophone record (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_ record)) is pretty big and normally comes in nice sleeves. Here are a couple of examples what you can do when the sleeve has a face from a person on it. Too bad that vinyl, just like the tape and even CD are history already. You can't do this fun stuff with a MP3 file.
More About: Vinyls

The browser that destroyed my April fools joke: IE
2008-04-02 00:43:00
"Your website has ben hacked! Everything is turned upside down!". One of the more common e-mails that I found in my mailbox today. I think many people actually forgot which day today was: April Fool's day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools '_Day). For those people who have contacted me with the message above (or a like), a big thanks for you. You're showing some real appreciation for my website. But let this be a lesson for everyone: Be aware of and don't believe everything on April 1st. And which hacker / defacer would take the time to turn all article upside down & add a nice CSS floating corner (http://www.marcofolio.net/css/create_val id_css_floating_corners.html)? I got the idea of this joke from flip (http://www.revfad.com/flip.html) and the upside down ternet (http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-do wn-ternet.html) router hack. It wasn't that hard to make, but the results were pretty funny. I used some unicode characters (http://theorem.ca/~mvcorks/code/charsets /au...
More About: Joke , Browser