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A practical After Effects texture lesson for making typography feel printed, embedded, animated, and naturally blended into paper.
Workshop
Design tutorials, creative projects, build logs, and practical notes by Ben Lords
Practical tutorials, build logs, and notes from work across design, animation, photography, web, and game development.
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Video + Guide
Use Procreate Selection and Transform to move, resize, distort, and warp artwork. Compare selection modes, interpolation, snapping, and blur fixes.
Video + Guide
A frame-by-frame Procreate water animation guide covering timing, spacing, squash and stretch, droplets, and final shading polish.
Video + Guide
Five less-common Illustrator workflow tips for faster vector drawing, cleaner paths, repeated transforms, and better layer control.
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Create custom Illustrator pattern brushes for repeating artwork, character details, decorative borders, and paths that need to follow a drawn shape.
Video + Guide
A practical Procreate gestures guide for undo, canvas movement, layers, Alpha Lock, selections, QuickShape, and Apple Pencil controls.
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A beginner Procreate animation guide covering Animation Assist, frame layers, onion skins, hold duration, playback modes, frame rate, and export settings.
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A practical After Effects smoke guide covering overlapping shape puffs, effect-driven smoke columns, reusable precomps, and settings to keep nearby.
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A practical iPad drawing surface review comparing textured screen protectors, drawing gloves, Pencil feel, screen clarity, and nib wear.
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Create comic-style shading in Illustrator with pixel halftones, classic dot halftones, and editable blended line shading using built-in effects and vector tools.
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The fast fix for hiding Illustrator’s Perspective Grid when it appears by accident, including the Shift + P shortcut, the close X, and the menu fallback.
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A deeper Procreate beginner guide covering canvas settings, brushes, Apple Pencil behavior, drawing guides, gestures, selections, layers, masks, groups, and shortcuts.
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Use shape paths, Points Follow Nulls, parented hands, Trim Paths, and Turbulent Displace to animate simple riggable limbs in After Effects.
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A natural Photoshop frequency separation workflow for separating skin texture from color, retouching carefully, and keeping portraits from looking plastic.
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A 31-day Inktober recap with every sketchbook drawing, the tools I used, and the lessons that came from making ink art every day for a month.
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A quick Photoshop compositing workflow for placing an object into a photo, masking foreground details, refining edges, and adding a believable reflection.
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A nostalgic Nintendo gift idea: clean up used DS Lites, organize the childhood games they already owned, and design custom cartridge labels that make each handheld feel personal.
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From Ben Lords
Creative Work, Shared Plainly
Workshop is where I collect the creative things I want to share. I share what I learn while designing, animating, taking photos, and building for games and the web. Some posts are tutorials, some are build logs, and some are just notes about what I’m learning as I go.
01 Why Workshop?
The name stuck because the work is practical and still in progress. I love sharing what I learn with other creative people, and my years as a college professor made that instinct stronger. This is where I can pass along useful lessons, build logs, notes, or resources for people who care about making things they actually enjoy.
02 Are the tutorials free?
Yes. Articles and guides are public and indexable. Bonus downloads may use an email signup later.
03 Do the articles include videos?
Some lessons will include YouTube companion videos, timestamps, and written guides.
04 What is your professional background?
I work across design, animation, photography, web, and marketing, and previously taught college design and animation courses where I wrote award-winning curriculum. Workshop draws from that mix of client work, teaching, and personal projects.