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First tutorial (to achieve this stunning effect):

Fireworks How To: The Ultimate Aqua Button (tutorial) (by Brian Edgin)

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I always liked graphic design. As Web designer, up until now I did not need any 3D skills in my work, and in the rare occasions, when I was imitating 3D or 2.5D (as this pencil, for example, created with Fireworks), I did it for fun:)

If you watched Ice Age or Shrek, you certainly know how advanced is now the 3D animation. Of course, I watched these movies, too, and I know that nowadays, almost every real object can be drawn in such a way, so it looks really real:)

Notwithstanding this fact, I was amazed to see this:

[©Steve Moody, virtualcoder.co.uk]

Looks incredible!

Yes, I know it’s not a photo, I know these balls were created using a 3D program, and for all that, my mind cannot accept this fact, somehow… I was even trying to convince myself not to check for available EXIF data in this image, it looked so much as a photograph to me:-)

Here’s a pencil:

It’s made with Fireworks;-)

I’ll write a short tutorial one of these days, maybe, on how you can easily re-create it using Fireworks, but not today, ’cause I’m too sleepy right now:)

You asked for it - so here it is! Michel with a twin - again! (See also this post: The Double Michel - inspired by Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir)

The tutorial?

You’ll have to wait a bit more - it’s cooking right now:-)

I avow, that this post by the famous photographer Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir (no, don’t ask me to pronounce this Icelandic name!:-) inspired me… And also a question on the same subject, which my wife asked me a few days ago:

How this is done? And this?
Can a normal digital camera be used for this purpose?

Can the technique be reproduced using Macromedia Fireworks?

So, here’s the answer:

It could be done using a variety of methods.

Yes.

Yes.

The results are shown above [click on the thumbnail to see the image in full size]:-)

This is it - short and sweet. It’s me in the office today, shot by my small Pentax Optio S40 digital camera. And this is me, again… although, my second me is holding a knife and looks a bit evil;-)

If there’s interest, I may try to write a tutorial on it:-)

A while ago I posted two Yahoo! logos on my website, asking the audience to tell, which one is the original Yahoo! logo made by Yahoo! and which I have re-created using Macromedia Fireworks.

Now comes the long-awaited answer:

Yahoo! logo #1 is the one I made, and Yahoo! logo #2 is the original Yahoo! logo from the Yahoo! Messenger starting screen, captured as screenshot while the Yahoo! Messenger was loading.

I thank everyone for their participation, votes and comments:-)

I’d like to thank you here especially Alan Musselman from Adobe (formerly Macromedia), whose answer and comment was one of the most thougthtful and thouroughful ones:

Definitely the one on the left (#1). The only way I noticed is the Y is not proper like the Yahoo! branding. :) Good job though… I will also say the shadow on the teeth is a little stronger on #1 as well. If it wasn’t for these two things I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. :)

Both remarks are correct - the “Y” wasn’t perfectly made, and the shadow on the teeth is a bit different. Also, a lot of people reported that Y! logo #2 is somewhat saved with a bit worse compression than Y! logo #1 and because of that they presume #2 is the original logo, because probably it’s a screenshot and thus, was saved with worse compression and some artifacts, while #1 was exported from a high-quality vector-based file.

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OK, today’s riddle:

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