welcome to sosnewbie
sosfactory staff member

Thanks for visiting Sosnewbie!

My name is Sergio Ordoñez, a 28 years old spanish designer based in Málaga (Spain) and I´m the responsible of all what you see here. A selection of my work is included at Sosfactory, you can read a bit more about me here.

The goal of Sosnewbie is building a basic manual to help newbies to break into the digital art industry... I will try to explain things I might see interesting for you, from designing a logo or website with photoshop to the search of your first paid job or any legal issue. Of course all this from my limited knowledgement of the business and hoping you being a important part of the site.

I hope this blog will be useful for you :)


Digital illustration with Illustrator Digital Color with Photoshop Start freelancing
April 28th, 2008

Sergio Ordoñez Interviewed by PSDTUTS

by Sergio Ordonez at 7:54 pm on Inspiration
Image of Sergio Ordoñez Interviewed by PSDTUTS

Sean Hodge editor of PSDTUTS contacted me through the tutorial I did for Smashing Magazine (he is regular writer there too) to interview me. I hope you like it :)

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April 25th, 2008

SuperIcon V3: Thumbnails for Photoshop and Illustrator files

by Sergio Ordonez at 11:11 am on Illustrator
Image of SuperIcon V3: Thumbnails for Photoshop and Illustrator files

With Supericon V3 you can preview the thumbnails of your PSD, Al, EPS and also TIF files. It is a small self installing utility, which works great.

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April 5th, 2008

SOSNewbie is looking for Spanish-English translators

by Sergio Ordonez at 9:12 pm on Job offers
Image of SOSNewbie is looking for Spanish-English translators

Hello buddies, Im in need of a spanish to english translator, its a paid work, of course. As you can see my english is not too good and Im very busy with my work at

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March 10th, 2008

Free mascot design (new mascot added)

by Sergio Ordonez at 1:23 pm on Mascot design, Resources
Image of Free mascot design (new mascot added)

Searching in my old CDs and Hard Drives, i found some mascot designs. I made this ones to practice when i started designing; i never sold them… so here they are in case anyone wants to use them .

I will add more designs time to time, whenever a order from SOSFactory fails, I will upload the design for free download.

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March 1st, 2008

Why do you charge so cheap?

by Sergio Ordonez at 12:54 pm on Freelancing
Image of Why do you charge so cheap?

I have recieved many comments about this topic, even recieved emails blaming me of degrading the design industry… “your work is great, WHY ARE YOUR SERVICES SO CHEAP?”

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February 13th, 2008

Drunken Monkey Photoshop tutorial

by Sergio Ordonez at 12:21 pm on Mascot design, Logotypes
Image of Drunken Monkey Photoshop tutorial

Hello Newbies!! You already noticed SOSNewbie is not updated latelly, the main reason is because my workload (Im sleeping 5h per day one week ago) but there is another one… I was working the most complex tutorial about mascot and logo design I never did, I spent lot of time doing this tutorial like […]

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January 23rd, 2008

Manual to choose your first graphics tablet

by Sergio Ordonez at 8:03 pm on Resources
Image of Manual to choose your first graphics tablet

This article is dedicated to the Newbies, we’ll see what is a graphics tablet, what are they for and how to choose the tablet that fit your needs.

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January 17th, 2008

12 freelancing lessons for 2008

by Sergio Ordonez at 3:51 pm on Freelancing
Image of 12 freelancing lessons for 2008

2007, a year full of emotions in the professional and personal. I didn’t have much luck in the first part of the year, i lost a client that guaranteed me about 6.000US$ per month; and also one of my designers abandoned me… luckily, in the 6 remaining months i recovered my clients and even exceeded the ammount, and i discovered that i’m good enough in my work to depend on someone. If you want to know how i did it, here’s my year summary!

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December 23rd, 2007

SOSNewbie wish you a Merry Xmas

by Sergio Ordonez at 1:23 am on Uncategorized
Image of SOSNewbie wish you a Merry Xmas

This post is just to say I wish you a Mery Xmas and a Happy New Year!

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December 1st, 2007

How to publish your first website

by Sergio Ordonez at 1:02 pm on webdesign
Image of How to publish your first website

If you’ve been following this blog, you should know how important it is to have an online portfolio if you want to live from your art. While you don’t have a website you simply don’t exist, and of course, people who don’t exist work very little.

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November 29th, 2007

Linerider mascot design, the true story

by Sergio Ordonez at 12:25 am on Mascot design
Image of Linerider mascot design, the true story

Sometimes Im really amazed on how the luck (good or bad) become so important in life. Linerider project was the weirdest project I never worked on from SOSFactory. Go ahead if you want to know more about this designs.

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November 10th, 2007

Thumbnails for Illustrator files in Windows

by Sergio Ordonez at 11:04 am on Illustrator
Image of Thumbnails for Illustrator files in Windows

Everybody know that Windows use a default icon for AI files (Illustrator file format), it is really disturbing when you have a lot of Illustrator files because you cant choice the one you like just looking at the thumbnails.

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November 4th, 2007

The Skins Factory

by Sergio Ordonez at 9:35 am on Inspiration
Image of The Skins Factory

To inaugurate this section i’ve chosen TheSkinsFactory, a company from the USA that i’ve been foloowing for a while. They stand out mainly in user inteface for softwares like Nero, Windows Media and lots of gadgets for companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Panasonic, MSN, HP, Disney, Warner Bros, Sony, EA… and a lot more.

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November 2nd, 2007

Habits to increase your creativity

by Sergio Ordonez at 8:42 pm on Freelancing
Image of Habits to increase your creativity

I’ve seen this topic from the point of view of a designer in thousands of blogs, but almost always they forget something, the psicological point of view. As you may know, appart from designer i’m licensed in Psicology, so i’ll talk about both points of view: the designer’s and psicologist.

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October 27th, 2007

Thumbnails for Photoshop files in Windows

by Sergio Ordonez at 10:46 am on Photoshop
Image of Thumbnails for Photoshop files in Windows

Everybody know that Windows use a default icon for PSD files, it is really disturbing when you have a lot of Photoshop files because you cant choice the one you like just looking at the thumbnails.

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October 6th, 2007

Vectorial illustration with Illustrator

by Sergio Ordonez at 7:42 am on Mascot design, Drawing, Illustrator
Image of Vectorial illustration with Illustrator

It’s time to write a tutorial about vectorial illustration. In this post i’ll explain the process i followed at the time of designing by order (from SOSFactory) the mascot in vector format of Twisted Monkey Studios, producers of horror films.

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October 4th, 2007

8 top questions for newbie designers

by Sergio Ordonez at 7:26 am on Freelancing
Image of 8 top questions for newbie designers

A couple of days ago our friend Andreu, SOSNewbie reader, sent me an email with a serie of questions; it’s not the first time that that someone asks them, so i thought in writing this post.

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October 1st, 2007

Vectorizing with Silhouette

by Sergio Ordonez at 3:34 pm on Resources
Image of Vectorizing with Silhouette

Here i bring you another of my essentials, Silhouette is a very useful Illustrator plugin to vectorize bitmaps.

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September 30th, 2007

Madrid 2016 logo winner

by Sergio Ordonez at 3:34 pm on Logotypes
Image of Madrid 2016 logo winner

At last, after so many controversy of plagiarism and interested members of the jury panel, the candidature of Madrid for the Olimpic Games 2016 has a winner, which is only an anecdote because it’s well know that after London 2012 the IOC wont choose another european city… the politicians have to justify expenses.

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September 24th, 2007

Free: Vectors, Icons, logos…

by Sergio Ordonez at 8:33 am on Resources
Image of Free: Vectors, Icons, logos…

Here is a bunch of resources, free stuff to add that “Wow” effect to your designs. Please read the license of every file before using them, some are free for even commercial use, other just for personal use.

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