Eye Opening Design

Webcomic – Curse of the Tiki Toki, Page 1

So here’s my first installment on the Clint McQueen series, Curse of the Tiki Toki. It’s going to be a very simply drawn comic with a few Photoshop embellishments. I want it to remain fairly visceral and dynamic. And quick to draw 🙂

I’m going with a square format for each scene. It’s a little odd in dimensions, but an art supply store here in Winnipeg recently went out of business and was practically giving away its left over stock in merchandise. They had these very small, square-ish sketch books. I bought an armload of them with this webcomic thing in mind. The books are very portable, so I can take them around anywhere, and being rather small, it will force me to draw quickly, simply and focus on only what is important to get the meaning across for each and every scene I plot out. Should be fun.

I am also going to try and be a little disciplined in when I put these out. Since this is the third Sunday in the month, I’m going to try for that. Except for the next installment. I’ll be away for the next installment, and while I will be bringing the sketchbooks along and plotting out the scenes, I have no intention of brining along a computer to complete the scenes or post them to the internet. I’m certain the throngs of readers (yeah, right) I have acquired will understand 🙂

So stay tuned for next month, when we see just how Clint will get out of the predicament I put him in, and maybe why I put him there in the first place.

A Bit Early But Happy St Patrick’s Day Everyone!

I’m going to be pretty busy the next few days, so I’m posting this a bit early. Black and white only (my first love) and all done in Photoshop. Lots of crazy textures. And pointlessism (not pointillism) is a lot more fun in the digital age! Enjoy!

John Carter of Mars. My $0.02

Even though I’m not much of a movie guy, and I’d heard some bad things about this John Carter movie, we went out to see it opening weekend. Actually, we wanted to celebrate some good news in my wife’s photography world, and it was the only movie out that seemed worthwhile watching.

I do not think this movie will do well at the Box Office. Opening weekend and the theatre wasn’t very full.

I was pleasantly surprised though.

I’m not that familiar with the source material. Many years ago, when I was a kid, my public library only had one of the many Mars books Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote. It was well into the series, and while I have read many, many SF and fantasy series out of order, I was totally lost. So all I really know about the series was what was related in Carl Sagan’s book, Cosmos (my childhood bible until I discovered Hichhicker‘s Guide to the Galaxy – but that’s another post) and some cool covers that where made during the seventies/eighties. I DO have most of the books squirreled away on my iPod, but I’ve never had the chance to read them as I’m still old fashioned and prefer books.

But on to my impressions of the movie.

It was pretty good. The acting and dialog could have been a little better, but considering the pulply/slocky source material, I’d say it was mostly appropriate. The visual effects were great. I could have done without the 3D though. It really did nothing to advance the movie so all it really gave me was some sore eyes and a wallet a little lighter than I would have liked. Kimmy wanted to see the female lead wearing more clothes, but I pointed out that most of the popular renditions of the story usually have much less in the way of clothing, so we should be grateful it was Disney who filmed the movie. There was also quite a bit going on (and made the movie rather long). Seems the writers wanted to try and explain as much as they could about the world the Mars books take place in. So my major complaint about the movie is this: it could have been broken up into maybe two movies, braking up the need for all the exposition. My other minor complaint regarding the movies, stems from the soundtrack. This movie is being billed as epic as Star Wars. Say what you will about Star Wars, but it has real awesome, epic music. John Carter of Mars has very forgettable music.

Oh, and Kimmy had some questions regarding the whole 9th ray business. I’d have to see it again, but the room with all the planets showing (and illustrating the power of this so-called 9th ray) may cause some furor amongst astronomers if it does indeed show 9 planets. And we cannot blame it on the source material as I do not think Pluto was discovered when most of the books were originally written (though it was suspected to have been in existence). I doubt I’ll see it again in the theatre (it wasn’t THAT good), but I suspect my in-laws will probably buy it, so I can watch it any time I want, and maybe clear up that mystery, should I still care once it comes out on video.

I wonder if anyone has ever published some sort of omnibus collection of the Mars chronicles, and if I can get a used copy on Amazon. I wonder…

3D Prints arrived!

A follow up from a previous post where I posted some 3D jewellery designs I had come up with.

I had them printed out. I had to go with Shapeways rather than Ponoko as Ponoko has some size restrictions on how small you can go, and these designs are rather small in their total volume. So I will have to wait and see how it is like dealing with Ponoko. They seem to be more a laser cutting and CNC routing sort of place anyways.

Anyways, the turtle and heart pendants turned out pretty cool. The ring on the other hand will jave to go back to the drawing board with. It fits (half the battle). but I think the detail I have might be a bit too subtle. It MIGHT come out better in the silver material (the material I eventually hope to eventually print it out from) but I think if the effect is too subtle in the plastic, I probably won’t be too happy with it in silver. And I’d rather get it right paying five to ten dollars a shot than sixty dollars a shot!

That’s all for the good news. Now for the bad. I designed the honu turtle pendant with some people in mind, but Shapeways is experiencing silver overload in their pipeline, and if I order right this very minute (rather than type out this blog post) and cross my fingers, it might arrive in the very nick of time. As in the day I’m off for vacation. That’s a little too close for comfort, so I’m just going to sit on all this 3D printing until after my holidays. If the people who I had in mind for the turtles ever read this post (and they shall remain nameless in the event some miracle happens) all I can say is, ”There‘s always this summer.”

February Image of the Month

Better late than never! Only a day late mind you. Work has been pretty hectic and I’ve got a couple of little side projects that also required some attention this past month as well.

This image is similar in nature to one of my first Image of the Months. I basically took an image from a rejected work project and finished it off for my own amusement.

The image started out as a pencil sketch and was then recolored in Photoshop along with the ink job. Considering I had less time to colour this pencil sketch than my last several attempts, it turned out rather well. And, as well with my very last post, I was playing around with some of the brushes found on this site. Very interesting use of Photoshop brushes. His drawing blog is pretty cool too.

Guess I’m Committed…

As mentioned before, here’s the very first installment of the adventures of Clint McQueen. The title is pretty corny, but I think most of the series will be as well. So hopefully it will be appropriate.

I’ll try to post these as regularly as I can (and with a little more content than this one) but work’s been really crazy lately, so no promises.

Oh and if anyone is interested, some of the grayscale pattern stuff was done with some custom Photoshop brushes I found over here.

Finally! The Perfect Buddha!

I’ve been on the lookout for the perfect Buddha for years and years. And I finally found it.

Did I find it high up in the Himalayans? Nope.

Deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia guarded by scores of ninja assassins and bored samurai? Nope.

No. After years of fruitless searching in exotic places like Walmart, flea markets, and even a few closeout sales of failed import shops, it was my wife, in the strange and exotic land of the LC, that my wife found the perfect Buddha.

Buddha beer!

Being a teetotaler myself (except in the Caribbean – but that’s another story), I rarely find myself in any LC, so it’s little wonder it took so long to find it. Thank God one of us drinks!

If anyone’s interested, yes I did take a quick sample. It wasn’t half. The last time I said that about a beer I was in New Zealand of all places. There was a microbrewery on the south island, whose name escapes me, that I was rather partial to. Kimmy liked it too. And before anyone tries to help me remember, no, it wasn’t Speights (or Tui for that matter either).

The Anthm to your life

This is a quick little update to my last post. Now that I’ve actually had the chance to try out the Anthm app as opposed to watching over someone‘s shoulder, I think I can say a few more things. Some good, some sort of ’meh.

We’ll start with the good.

The app is pretty easy to use. It integrates quite well with Rdio. And while I’m still sitting on the fence regarding paying for streaming music (call me old fashioned, but paying for “radio” still seems slightly fishy to me) I can also see the benefits as well. I’d have to do a more thorough check into the kind of music available on Rdio and any music discovery features it may have before I give a final verdict. Setting up a new party is very easy. And putting a password (even a very simple one) on your party mix may be a good idea. Seems people have been having strangers log into their test parties (as it has only been a few days available online) and fill up the playlists with random crap. I hate to admit this, but the night this app was beta-tested on us at Secret Handshake, I had similar devious thoughts. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a touch bit older than most of it’s members, and while I think I have fairly pedestrian tastes in music, it does run a fairly wide gamut. I spent my very early childhood listening (much to the utter shock and horror of my parents) to country western music and AM hits. I then graduated to oldies and didn’t start listening to a lot of music typical to my age group until almost my college years. And I’ve been dipping into my early childhood music a lot lately. The idea of flooding a playlist with old Conway Twitty, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash to a bunch of twenty-somethings was rather tempting. Three Dog Night anyone?

Though I suppose it would make me more memorable at these gatherings. That’s the problem with joining a group with over 400 members. I get a lot of, “I think we’ve met before… right?”, along with a rather anxious looking face. I’d imagine forcing everyone to listen to the Powder Blues Band or Boxcar Willie would do a lot to change that! 😛

So now for the ’meh part. This is most definitely an iPhone app. It seems to have a problem determining a location on my iPod touch. It’s also an older model (second gen) so that might have something to do with it. Either that or there’s no one currently running the app the River Heights/Fort Rouge area. Doubtful, but you never know. So you might have somewhat limited functionality if you only have an iPod or wi-fi only iPad. But that’s a little hard to tell, as the only real test would come if I can convince Kimmy to get it installed on her iPod. She likes the idea of the app, but hasn’t really shown enough interest in it. She doesn’t really use her iPod Touch for music. It’s mostly a PDA for her. I have to admit my sympathies lie her way. But I do use it occasionally for listening to podcasts and some music.

Oh, and the app crashed on me the first time I used it. It may have been my fault though. I signed up for Rdio but had no music selected in my account. Once I had a few songs selected, everything worked just fine.

I can imaging quite a few interesting scenarios for this app though. Having a way to have multiple people be able to select music from a very large sampling of songs could be very useful for a lengthy road trip. That way everyone could get a chance to listen to the music they want to and not have to resort to zoning out with a private pair of headphones. Or having to plug in different devices to whatever cables needed to run the iPod on various car sound systems.

I also wonder if there’s a way to share the playlists at multiple destinations? Then you could simulcast the party music at several different locations. Have the same party here in Winnipeg, but also have people in say, Toronto or Vancouver both add to the playlist AND listen to the same music at more or less the same time. That would be cool. Same party, different locals. Though, that would be a very good reason to use a password as that could get out of hand very quickly.

So I think for a first time out the door app, it’s a good first start with a lot of future potential! Best of luck to the Anthm team!

UPDATE: Just got a tweet from the fine folks over at Anthm. If anyone reading this experiences problems locating a party, and you have multi-touch gestures enabled on your device (I don’t as it is way too many hoops for me to jump thru at this time) a 3 finger swipe to the right should give you a list of ALL parties. Good Luck!

Not quite so secret handshake

So, this past week, I was off to yet another installment of the Secret Handshake, a monthly meetup of Winnipeg’s finest (and not-so-finest) creative freelancers and such. It was held on a Wednesday, so I was able to drag Kim with me for some company. It was held at the King’s Head Pub this time around. The last time it was held there I found it got rather loud. It was loud again this time, but not quite a loud as before. You could actually hear what the other person was saying this time around. Not that it was all that difficult as there was some rather loud people there (and the loudest person there was a marketing person – go figure).

Anyways, the evening was in dedication to an iPhone app that was just developed. Anthm. And yes, I spelled that right. It’s an interesting app. It basically lets someone setup their iPhone as a jukebox of sorts (assuming they have their iPhone hooked up to a stereo via an aux cable). And then other people in the party who have the same app installed can vote on what song comes up next on the playlist. It seems fairly simple and straightforward. I don’t actually own an iPhone and the King’s Head doesn’t have wi-fi so my iPod Touch was pretty useless for the evening.

There are two drawbacks to the app as far as I can tell. The first is, it uses Rdio (again with the missing vowels, Pat Sajak, where are you?) to generate a playlist and grab songs from. That’s all fine and dandy if you have an account with them. But if you’re a cheapskate like me, that could be drawback. At least it is if you’re the one who is hosting the jukebox party. For voting purposes it doesn’t seem all that necessary I think. Might be an idea to use the iPhone’s music library or maybe even patch into an iTunes’s music library on a handy nearby computer. The other problem is every now and then, everyone’s (and I mean everyone’s) head is buried in their mobile screen instead of socializing. Though, I have been to a few parties where that would have been an improvement and not a drawback. Hey, we’ve all been there!

The app, as of right this very moment, is not available on the iTunes App Store, but it should be as soon as it gets approved by Apple. Somehow they managed to have the app available for download on the night of the debut on Wednesday on their website. It does not look like it’s available any more. So you’ll all just have to stay tuned.

And now for the rest of the evening.

We were only there for a bit. I had had a very odd day and was feeling rather tired. And while Kimmy had a more normal day, she was beat as well. So we left after having an interesting chat with a photographer, who much to Kimmy’s delight was quite the name dropper. And I also made sure we stayed long enough to partake in the munchies provided by our host. I still have no idea how that happens. Nobody I’ve spoken to has any idea how this stuff gets paid for either. I guess I’ll just have to be on the lookout for Lefty and Knuckles when they come for my Secret Handshake dues. And put my running training to good use when/if they show up.

Next month’s meeting is supposed to be a big one. Which is too bad as I’ve got a lot of things on the go right now, and I think I may have to miss it. And then in April I’m gone for a big chunk of the month as I am off to the Domincan Republic for a destination wedding, so I’m most likely going to have to miss that one as well.

Some New 3D designs

I’ve been mulling over a few ideas I’ve recently had for some jewelry designs. I’ve flirted with being a rockhound over the years (a nasty outgrowth from an unhealthy obsession with fossils and dinosaurs) so it’s only natural to have a rock tumbler around. And occasionally I’ve tried my had at amateur jewelry making. I’m not very good at it (these fingers were made for drawing, not needle nose pliers) , but I am also pretty good with this whole computer thing, so I’ve been playing around in 3D programs with the intent of getting these things 3D printed. And since my first attempt turned out pretty good, I thought why not?

So I’ve got a ring, and two pendant designs just about ready. They are a little derivative, but what was it that Picasso said? Good artists borrow, great ones steal?

I think I’m going to get these printed over at Ponoko. They have a limited set of 3D printed materials to offer, but they are local (ie North American) so I hopefully won’t get quite so dinged with import charges as I will with other companies I could name. UPS equals highway robbery when it comes nasty import fees! I’d rather deal with USPS/Canada Post any day. But anyways, I think I’m going to get this first printed in a standard hi-res plastic print to ensure these designs will work in the real world, and then get them printed out in sterling silver. Probably over at Shapeways, as they have a printing process similar to the ones used in professional jewelry making. So I’d imagine they’d turn out pretty sweet. And worth the import fees.