Tag: How to

How to do an easy Random Drawing using Excel
As I wrapped up the Christopher Hart Cartoon Faces Book Giveaway, I thought I share with my readers a tutorial on “How to do an easy Random Drawing using Excel.” If ever you don’t want to print out entry chits and draw by hand, these five easy steps will make things less time consuming for you.

STEP 1:
- In Column A, type in or import all the names of the people who are part of the drawing.
- In cell B1 type in the formula =RAND() This will generate a random number in B1 between 0 and 1.
- Copy the formula in B1 and paste it down the rest of the column so each name has a random number next to it.
STEP 2:
- In excel, hit CTRL-A (PC) or Highlight all the cells with data in it in Columns A and B.
- Click on the DATA tab and then the SORT button. This will pull up a new dialogue box.
- Choose Sort by Column B and it doesn’t matter if you choose smallest to largest or largest to smallest. Select OK.
- What this does is the same thing as having physical entries that you mix up by hand. You have randomly assigned each person a number and that number sorted mixes up all the entries.
STEP 3:
- Go to www.random.org/integers/
- Since I want to have only one winner I put “1” where it says “Generate X random integers”
- Value set is 1 to 37 because I have a total of 37 rows. If I had a header in row one such as “NAME” and “RANDOM NUMBER” this would have pushed my data from rows 1-37 to rows 2-38. So be sure to only include the rows of the data and not the headers.
- Select Get Numbers.
STEP 4:
- Your number has been generated and the results show up here. In my case the result was number 25.
STEP 5:
- Return to excel and scroll down to the 25th row.
- That is your winner.
Hope this helps as you do drawings on your own. Please let me know if you have any questions.
October 29, 2014
Create a Custom Jack-O-Lantern Pattern in Photoshop Express

It has been a while since I have done a tutorial so in time for the season, here is the How-to create a custom Jack-o-Lantern pattern in Photoshop or Photoshop Express. What could be scarier on your front porch than George Ford (of Addanac City fame) greeting all the kids in the neighborhood. I swear I would pick on someone else sometime but the rest of you don’t post enough pictures on the web.

Step 1

– Open a new document (I made mine about 8inx8in), paste your picture in the document and resize it so there is some white background showing.

– Using the brush tool, make a white border around the entire picture. I used a 10pt brush.

Step 2

– Color the background layer black.

Step 3

– Select Image>Mode>Grayscale

– You want to make sure the color is balanced. My original pic was too bright so you can adjust by going to Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast in Photoshop Express or Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast in full Photoshop.

Step 4

– Select Filter>Adjustments>Posterize (Express) or Image>Adjustments>Posterize (Full). Choose 3 levels and select and it will give you a Black, White and Gray Image. If the outline that you did in Step 1 is full white, change it to 50% gray. You should get above. You will notice that it has bits of color all over the picture that you don’t want to have to carve so,

– Using your pen too set to black, white or gray color in the image to remove some of the dithering and random color spots.

Step 5

As you can see in the above pic I cleaned up the image to make it into cutable chunks. In the end you are going to want to shave off the skin of the gray area, cut the white area completely through, and leave the black area alone. Look at your white area. If there is danger of you cutting away detail of the gray you need to adjust your picture more. As you can see in the final template in the first image of this post, I added more gray area around the nose so I wouldn’t cut my nose to spite my face..haha

George was too scary to carve so instead I did Bearman.

Here is what it looks like unlit. It was my first time trying to use a dremel so I need to clean it up.

As you can see, in this one I only posterized to 2 colors (black and white). For the white, I pulled off the skin and the black I left alone. I then put two full holes in the eyes.

Here is the the final look when lit.

And in case you want to make your own Bearman Pumpkin…here is the template.

October 23, 2011
Mad Art of Caricature and Made for Art

So I was excited to get the mail this week and find my ordered copy of Tom Richmond’s The Mad Art of Caricature. For the uninformed, Tom is one of the regular artists for Mad Magazine along with a host of other projects. Pretty much most of the movie/tv spoofs of the last 10 years has been his work. He also hosts a blog and has been an invaluable resource on copyright and caricatures.

Here is my signed copy.

On this blog post you can see Tom actually drawing the Alfred E Neuman to ship to me (ok maybe it wasn’t mine but it looks like it COULD be).

The book looks amazing and I can’t wait to dig in and find out all the things I have been screwing up in my own caricatures. But Tom, I think your foreign printer messed up a little with this insert. I can’t find this book or this author online..haha

On a separate note, I want to give a shout out to a Google Plus friend who has been very supportive over there. Artist Eric Johnson has created a new site called Made for Art . This is how he describes the site:

If you enjoy browsing interesting, creative sites showcasing the talents of interesting, creative people, you should check out my new site. Whether its art, poetry, webcomics, ebooks, sculpture, photography, crafts or hobbies, etc., let MADE FOR ART be your link to Creative Minds . And if you are a Creative Mind and would like to share your work and links on this unique, up and comings site, just let me know you’d like to be added to the MADE FOR ART circle!

Head over there as he has featured my work and if you want Eric to include you in the future reach out and support him.

October 16, 2011
Testing New Social Links

Thought I would join the world of bloggers who have social media buttons on their posts. But of course I had to make some of my own for my favorites. Many of you already have seen my Tweet This button to allow readers add any article to Twitter (directions here). Well my other two favs are Digg and StumbleUpon so I created those as well.

Now in order to catch all the remaining ones, since I am hosting on wordpress.com there are some limitations. A guy named Hillel Storer created GetSocial to easily handle this for any post. Click here for an overview and click here for the latest download.

Let me know what you think and if I screwed up any of the coding.

BTW…I have gotten requests about using my Tweet This button in the past and I there may be some for these new ones. I have no problem with anyone using them on their own site with one simple condition. You must add my site to your blog roll.

Follow me via TWITTER updates. or you can…

July 3, 2009
How to make a Tweet This Blog link using an Image

So some of you have been wondering how I was able to make an image link on my blog that allows my readers to click on it and it automatically creates a completed Tweet in Twitter account.

For example if you click this image:

It should open up Twitter in a new window with a Tweet about the post already completed. It looks something like this:

Now I looked around on the web for something that would do this more automatically but either, you had to to download something, they were too confusing, or they just didn’t work when your blog is hosted on WordPress.com like mine is.

[sourcecode language=’html’]

[/sourcecode]

So once you have copied the above in the bottom of your post there are three things to change:

1. Change @BearmanCartoons to @whatever your twitter name is
2. Change “Creating a Tweet This Blog Link” to the title of your blog post
3. Change the URL link to your specific post from mine of “http://bearmancartoons.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/tweet-this-image/” If you are using wordpress.com there is a permalink url right below the blog title entry box.

Don’t change the last URL which links to the image (I have changed the wrong one before) unless you are using your own image. And depending on the length of your URL, you may need to use a site like http://www.tinyurl.com to make it a workable link with fewer characters.

Let me know if something isn’t clear in the instructions or if you have trouble with any of the links. Would love to know if you find it useful too.

Follow me via TWITTER updates.

May 8, 2009