In case people haven’t noticed by now, I’m officially on Twitter! You can see my feed here.
Now what can a person who doesn’t even own a smartphone and has no Twitter access for 8 hours ever day possible have to tweet about? Follow me and find out!
As mentioned in my previous post regarding Saturday morning cartoons, I have just reposted my cartoon interpretation of the hit sitcom Big Bang Theory. And as promised, an extra animated character that has nothing to do with the original show. Meet Schrodinger, the robocat.
I figure his backstory would be simple. He was was built by Walowitz to prove to Sheldon that he is intellectually superior, even though he only has a Masters degree in Engineering from MIT rather than a doctorate like everyone else in the group. Of course, Sheldon is unimpressed, as this ain’t no soft-kitty! Raj seems to like him.
A lot has been said about the new logo design for the Winnipeg Jets hockey team. Much of it not very good. I won’t bother rehashing any of it here though. But I have to admit, we could have probably done better.
Or could we?
I’ve been thinking of this a lot lately since I received an official Jets hoody for Christmas, and I have to admit, it looks pretty good on the merchandise.
And that got me to thinking.
I have no idea who designed the logo. Sounds like it was somebody at Reebok. And while it is pretty disappointing that a designer from Winnipeg didn’t get to do the design (and there’s plenty of talent in this city) what’s done is done, and I’d rather critique the logo based on it’s own merits rather than some sour grapes on behalf of a jilted Winnipeg design community. Of which I am a part of.
So, if an apparel manufacturer like Reebok is calling the shots on the design and ASSUMING that a big part of the mandate for this logo is to sell, sell, sell, merch. And that merch is mainly going to be on massively overpriced jerseys, shirts, hats and the like, then it had better look it’s best in that light. Both technically and aesthetically. And I’d also assume a designer at Reebok (or a similar company) would have a far better idea of what that would be than a more general purpose designer working in an agency somewhere.
I can back this up a bit in my experiences in my own work. I work for a company that produces lottery tickets. The scratch and win variety. And we always have a great deal of problems from artwork that originates from outside the company. There’s plenty of things that goes on in general graphic design that just won’t work on a scratch ticket. Either the flexographic printing process used to manufacture the tickets won’t reproduce that artwork properly (if at all), or the very nature of lottery tickets make a lot of design choices that are quite popular a bad idea. Complex or muted colors in process, blech. Small fine type, especially serif fonts, double blech. Thin lines (and I’m talking anything less than 1.5 to 2 points) , especially trap lines, you guess it, blech. The list goes on. I won’t bore you with the details.
But my point is basically this, is the Jets logo an example of what happens when you create a graphic that is designed for a very specific purpose and is reproduced using tools and products that many modern designers might consider primitive and limiting? That logo may look hum-ho on a business card but it looks pretty sharp on my hoody. And it was the version of the logo I hate the most in print (the wordmark) that is on my new piece of clothing.
Been watching this waaaaayyyyy to much lately.
While I do not think I’m the first one to do this, I think this would be a pretty cool idea. Though I’d imagine most people would notice the omission of a certain female (possibly several female) leads. And while I do love Penny and company, I have other plans for an addition to this animated quartet, but it ain’t no hotty neighbour. Then what you may ask? You may.
All the really cheesy cartoon adaptations of the sixties and seventies (My Favourite Martian or I Dream of Jeannie anyone?) had one thing in common. Bizarre extra characters that had nothing to do with the actual series. I blame The Great Gazoo from The Flinstones fame. I’m thinking some sort of cat or parrot. Maybe named Einstein or possibly Schrodinger if it’ll be a cat. Or maybe a luminous goldfish. Or a robot. Or a luminous robot goldfish named Einstein. Either way it has to be stupid and sensless. Stay tooned!
I also have ideas for Castle, Supernatural, and a hopefully suitably bizarre mashup of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Todd and the Book of Pure Evil.
Careful with that Kill–O–Zap! It looks like it’s set for extra toasty!
Now that Christmas is over, I can finally get going on this.
I’ve been exploring the world of 3D printing. Basically, it’s taking a 3D generated image developed on the computer, whether that be a 3D figure not unlike the characters seen in 3D animated movies or complex pieces of machinery or even household gadgets, and getting them made in a device not unlike the inkjet printer you have sitting on your desk. In fact, many DIY 3D printer projects start off by ripping apart an inkjet printer. More detailed info on 3D printing can be found here.
Now I’m not always the handiest guy with tools, and some of the pre-made kits floating around are still pretty pricey (and the quality of the printed goods are not always the best) and the professional equipment used for rapid prototyping in manufacturing is even more expensive, but there is some hope. There are a few companied running around the interwebs that will have you upload your files to them and they will take care of the necessary steps involved in making your object a reality. I’ll give a list of places I’ve found at the end of this post, but I’ll be mainly focused on Shapeways, as that’s the place I dealt with.
Shapeways, is a Dutch company, so anyone reading this and is interested in checking them out, please keep that in mind. I had no problems dealing with them and was quite happy with the end results, but your mileage may vary. The company is set up that you upload a file to them (usually in STL format – lots of programs are supporting that format these days) and then you indicate what material you want it printed out in, pay then using Paypal, and then patiently wait for you object to arrive. The company will keep you up to date with how things are going with your file.
I started off with a torus knot I made in Blender. I understand the program fairly well now and it could output the file in STL format. A little word of warning, different materials that your object can be made from have different restrictions. An object made from plastic can have finer detail than an object made in stainless steel for instance. This is all indicated quite clearly once you start exploring Shapeways site. I encourage anyone wanting to give this a try to do the same before starting any project with them. That pretty much goes the same for any of the other companies I have looked at online. Keeping these things in mind, I think I slightly over-engineered the object I made, but dammit Jim, I’m a graphic designer, not an engineer! And since this was to be a Christmas gift to my wife, I wanted to make certain that this piece was going to work.
Once I made my file and was satisfied I had everything the way I needed it to be, I uploaded the file to Shapeways servers, where they automatically check things over to see if there is anything obviously wrong with your file. Then I was off to the races.
A few weeks later, my file arrived via courier. I was quite pleased with the results, but it still needed a few details. I chose the stainless steel material for my torus knot. The Shapeways team makes certain your stainless steel object is as polished as can be, but the 3D printing process on stainless steaal can still leave a bit of a stair-stepping effect on the material, especially on hard to reach details. My torus knot had many of these problems. Had I been thinking, the stainless steel option has some different finishes that can be applied to an object and their antique finish would have had any left over printing artifacts as enhancements rather than detractions, IMHO. So I needed to sand those way as much as possible. And I also needed a chain to complete the jewellery piece that I just made for my wife. Happily I have some stuff laying around from some previous projects to help with that.
So with a little sanding and some fancy knot tying work (the knot I used can be seen the photo and was taught to me by my grandfather to tie the boat up to the dock – the strangest things become more useful later on in life) the piece was complete.
I have many other ideas I want to try out. I’ll keep you posted.
Some other 3D printers:
Ponoko – They mainly specialize in laser cutting, but have a small selction of 3D printed materials. They also have a nice blog to keep you up to date on all things in computer aided manufacturing. They have facilities all over the place, including North America.
i.Materialize – They are from France 🙂 A french company with a few interesting and unique materials to choose from
Sculpteo – Another French company. Limited materials to choose from. Seem expensive.
Offload Studios – Canadian company. Specialize in high-end sculptures. They do not offer any way of figuring out costs ahead of time – they won’t give you a price until someone actually sees you model, all the other places calculate automatically based on volume of material used. I’d imagine this means they are very expensive. This would be the place to go if you were a pro 3D modeller looking to make a proper statue of your work. Their portfolio is impressive.
Just in time for the end of the month! This image was first started as an experiment back in November. The Winnipeg Art Gallery drop in life drawing program decided to do a costumed extended pose. It was the first time such a thing was done. It was a Toulouse Lautrec inspired theme. The costume was supposedly the model’s own. Anyways, the turnout was quite good. Maybe a little too good. I was one of the later ones to arrive and had to make do with the view I had. With everyone setting up paints, it gets pretty crowded pretty quickly!
I started off with a charcoal line drawing and then started to work on a watercolour painting on 120-lb cold presed watercolour paper. Once back home I fleshed out everything a bit more in acrylics. Not my usual bag, but it turned out pretty good.
Anyone reading this and is in the Winnipeg area, there are plans for more costumed poses (the life drawing program at the WAG focuses on nudes) with one happening maybe in February. I’ll probably make a mention of any exact dates and times on this blog once I get better details.
Well, it’s just about that time of year, so I’ve decided to post a quickie image I put together in Photoshop. It was an experiment to see if I could get the type to look like it was cut in ice. Click on the image to see a larger version. It was actually pretty easy to do. I might just put a whole alphabet up online in JPEG format for anyone wanting such a thing for their own projects. I may even manage to persuade myself to create a Photoshop action (or maybe even a script) to create the effect automagically.
Impatient people can march over here to PSDtuts+ to see the tutorial that I modified slightly to fit my purposes. The main difference between that tutorial and my work, is mine uses defualt Photoshop brushes and relies more on commands that could be automated by the computer and less on brushwork done by the designer.
When I first started this blog experiment, I purposely decided no comments. Since I wasn’t too sure what was going to become of this whole blogging thing, I felt that having to deal with the inevitable trolls that come along with comments was not something I wanted to deal with right away. Not that I don’t have thick skin. I’ve been a designer for 16 years. I’d be a basket case by now if I took everything so seriously. But the blog has been going on for a while now, and I think I’m going to stick with it for the time being. And I am basically missing out on some of the whole “Web 2.0” thing by not having comments on subjects, thereby joining in on the world-wide conversation. So I thought this might be a good time to try the more interactive portion of our program (not to mention getting someone off my case for not having any comments sections). But before I do that, time for a quick poll…
So another meeting of the minds at the Secret Handshake Meetup. This time around it was the Christmas party and we were celebrating along with New Media Manitoba and the GDC. Very big crowd of people. And ran into some old acquaintances. A former workmate from my days at GB Graphics and someone I went to high school with. Winnipeg can sometimes be a very small place.
And while there, we all got to sample some vegetarian poutine! Didn’t really think something like that was possible. And for those of you who have no idea what the heck poutine is, well… sucks to be you! It was quite good. And strangely free. I wasn’t the only one commenting on that. Nothing is ever free. I guess whenever the collection agency of Lefty, Louis, and Knuckles show up, I’ll just send them to the goofs across the street. Unless someone at Secret Handshake has deep pockets. If that’s the case, I can be open to adoption.
And speaking of old acquaintances with deep pockets (I have no idea what that means), the nice people over at New Media Manitoba are conducting a census. Sounds like an interesting idea, and Kevin Hnatiuk, the big goofy looking guy in the video on the link to the census, is a pretty good guy and a long time advocate for new media development here in the ‘Peg. I encourage anyone reading this who is connected to new media and from Manitoba to fill out the census. As I will do once I plunk myself down in front of a computer. Sorry, Kevin, it’ll take more than a census form to get me in front of a computer on a Friday night.
So think that’s all for now. I’ll just end off with a big shout out to the two little twerps who insisted on high-fiving me every time I went around the track for my run at the Pan-Am pool. And in totally unrelated news, anyone know how to clear up a case of the common couties? Oh, and thanks NMM for the cool new toque.
Eye Opening Design 