Where to Find DVD Menu Artwork? [QUICK GUIDE]

[lordsmurf]

For personal hobby projects, such as recording your favorite television shows to disc, you can find good menu artwork in these locations:

• (1) GOOGLE. One of the easiest places to start from is google.com and use the IMAGE search instead of the WEB search. Look for wallpapers, posters, and scans others have done.
• (2) FAN SITES. Find a big site dedicated to the show and it usually has a ton of artwork. If you find a good fan artist, sometimes the fan art can be better than official artwork. Fan sites often archive as much art as they can, at least the good ones.
• (3) TOONZONE. For cartoons, the site http://www.toonzone.net has a ton of news items, many of them press releases from the studios, complete with artwork. Search the site for your show, and you should be able to find something good. Promo art is often VERY clean, with no over-print by text or other logos.
• (4) OFFICIAL SHOW SITES. The best place to get artwork is often the official site of the show itself. Thse usually have nice clean versions of the logos especially.
• (5) SCANNING PRINTED MATERIALS. Not every image has to be off the Internet. Pull out a scanner, and make it digital yourself. Comics, official releases, toy packages, magazines, ... anything.

IMPORTANT RULE ABOUT USING ONLINE IMAGES !!!!!
Never get a small image and enlarge it. Get something that is about 500 pixels at smallest. It is preferable to get JPEG images. GIF is indexed color, not RGB, so it can be a pain to work with, especially if it has a transparency, can get ugly.

If you have to upsize something, do it with a special Photoshop plug-in, like Genuine Fractals Print Pro. Photoshop's ancient bicubic method is awful for increasing resolution.


EXAMPLES OF GOOD HOBBY MENUS:

familyguys4-menu.jpg

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mynameisearl-menu.jpg

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pokemonadvbattle-menu.jpg

[battle7]

Previews catalogs are excelent sources for such material for scanning for comis related material.

[GreenRanger1]

I just saved a wal-mart flyer to get an image off of it, Ive used Burger King toy instructions too. Look around there are sources everywhere.

[MuppetDanny]

http://www.picsearch.com/ is not a bad place to check out