Ex-Purgatory : Peter Clines

**Slight Spoilers**

The 4th book in the Ex-Heroes series, I really enjoyed this book - a lot less zombie / superhero / post apocalypse world action than the last 3 books but still really enjoyable.  

I was pleased there was no use of the main go to super-villain  "Legion" in this book but I was saddened by the loss of one of the heroes. Hopefully this will be a temporary thing.

Clever usage of well known characters in a different setting and  loved that Gorgon was back in the book (although only a tiny bit) Banzai's cameo made me realise who Nick actually was.

If you haven't read the other 3 books then do so - you wont regret it :D

10 / 10

p.s. I noticed this spelling mistake on the About the Author page - made me chuckle :D

Digital Art by David Cousens (Book review)

Recently I wrote a review of the book Digital Art by David Cousens - it can be found here http://www.tipsquirrel.com/book-review-digital-art-by-david-cousens/ :D

Comic Book style text Photoshop tutorial 34/365

I'm a huge fan of comics – not that I've been able to buy any in the last 5 years or so :( but I do love rereading my old ones. This had me thinking about the old style Pow's and Thwaks they used to put in fight scenes. I liked them, so I thought i'd show you a way of making them in Photoshop.

Step 1.

Go to http://www.dafont.com/badaboom-bb.font and download and install the font Badaboom, this is a fantastic comic font that I love. Also we want to download a cloud brush from http://simonrudd.info/brushes/. Next make a 1024x768 sized document inside Photoshop. Next using the Gradient Tool make a 50% grey to black gradient.

Step 2.

First set your foreground colour to white by pressing D followed by X on your keyboard, Select the Text Tool from the Toolbar and using the Badaboom font type KABOOM! I set my font size to 72 but you can choose what ever size you want.

Step 3.

we now want to add a Layer style, go to Layer>Layer Style>Drop Shadow. Leave the settings as default, next add a Inner shadow style, set the colour to #f70a0a and the blending mode to normal. Increase the distance to 5, choke to 8 and size to 24. Finally add a Bevel and Emboss Style leaving the default settings.

Step 4.

We now add a new Layer under the text layer and using Control and E merge the text layer and new layer together (First select the Text layer then merge). Select the now flattened text layer and go to Edit>Transform>Perspective. Grab the top right hand anchor and pull it up so the right hand side is larger than the left.

Step 5.

Now duplicate the Text Layer using Control & J, This layer is going to be a sort of shadow. First we hide our original text layer by pressing the eye icon in the layer window. Next we want to make it black, the easiest way of doing this is to add a Colour overlay Layer style (Layer>Layer style>Colour Overlay) set to black. Then we unhide the original text layer.

Step 6.

Finally we use the cloud brush we downloaded in step one, on a new layer brush in some clouds around the word. Make it thicker towards to beginning of the word and less at the end :)

Hope you liked the tutorial and please feel free to visit my website :)

Room by Emma Donoghue

I was given Room by Emma Donoghue for my birthday (from my brilliant other half)and i have to say that i loved the book.    Its all about a small boy called Jack and his Mum who live in a single little room.  to Jack this room is the entire universe and he has no idea of life outside.  He watched TV when his mum lets him and thinks that nothing is real except for him, his mum and old Nick (the bad guy – booooooo!).  His mum (Ma!) finds ways of entertaining Jack each and every day, by telling him stories, napping, doing exercises and having sparse amounts of food.  To Jack all the things in Room are his friends, Dora the Explorer for example is his friend who speaks in a made up language called Spanish. 

Its a heart warming story and really made me smile. I read this book within 10 days, so that proves it was hard to put down :)

8.5/10

buy it here