December 5, 2008

Staying Inside the Lines (or not)

So, if you've been around here very long, you know well that I very much enjoy cartoons and comics.

I don't recall what I was looking for at Amazon one day, but I discovered this:

Hi-Fi Color for comics by Miller and Miller.

The book is simply put - amazing. Included is a CD of Photoshop scripts and a myriad of different comic art for you to follow along with in the book - or colour your own way. The book makes it very clear that Terry Moore and others donated their comic art to the book and that you do NOT have permission to post your colourings online anywhere (except for the very nice HueDoo forum), so unlike some of my other experiments in art, you won't see me posting anything from the book here or at Oppositional Design.

Wait,

before you run off! The stuff in this book is excellent - so much so that you do not have to be some Photoshop wizard or even consider yourself an artist to enjoy this book. If you don't have Photoshop, a good portion of the stuff in the book can be done with Photoshop Elements (comes with many digital cameras) or even the open source GIMP. Yes, the scripts and brushes are specific to Photoshop itself, but you can benefit from the book without those extras - particularly since Amazon's selling the book for a bit over $16 instead of $25. The first script, which "processes" art for you, is something you can recreate with the instructions in the book. The second script is an fx script which looks like is pretty Photoshop specific and perhaps not explained in the book. (But I bet someone on the HueDoo forum has probably explained it by now.) I haven't gotten to what the third script is yet.

Even if you simply enjoy art or comics, you'll get a deeper appreciation as you read through the book and look at the art on the CD. The instructions are clear and step by step - and leave plenty of room for your own creativity. It's the nicest blend of "how-to" which still leaves you to your own creativity I've seen in a long while.

I talk to people all the time who insist they can't draw or they are not artistic and it infuriates me, largely because I was one of those people just three years ago. I drew a lot as a kid - I wanted to go into cartooning way back then, but the only books that I could lay my hands on were simplistic cartooning for kids things that really weren't too helpful. I did enjoy my Mercer Mayer's Little Monster activity book which showed you how to draw all the major characters in the book ... but because I couldn't get the hang of grid drawing (which was supposed to simplify things) ... I got frustrated and quit trying.

As far as I was concerned, my mom was the artist and my sister was the musician ... and I guessed I was a writer. It wasn't until I was fairly deep into web design before I started also trying to draw again. A lot of it was crap ... but then I discovered the Cartoon Cool by Chris Hart and started noodling around again. And, the words that I used to tell my students in first-year writing came back to haunt me: professional writers DO have to work at writing. They don't get it magically right the first time and come downstairs with some finished masterpiece.

Oh.

Yeah.

Umm, gee, I guess the same thing goes for artists, huh? That would be why there are pages of sketches done before an artist tackles a big painting. That's why a comic book artist might do pages and pages of sketches blocking the story out before drawing a comic "for real."

It's simply work that an artist or a writer either enjoys doing or feels compelled to do.

It also helped that I worked with a very talented artist who said he often gets frustrated because what comes out on paper (or canvas or whatever) often doesn't look like what he had in his head.

Oh. So it's not just me, then?

Huh. Who knew?

The trick, really, is turning off that internal editor, that internal critic - or at least muting that voice as much as possible - and enjoying the process of making something turn out better than you thought you could do. In my opinion, both Cartoon Cool and Hi-Fi Color for comics are books which encourage our inner artists, however talented we might be.

You, personally, may not have the patience to draw exactly what you see on the page or in your head ... you might not be great at seeing the geometry of every day objects and converting them into a drawing. That's okay. But a little creativity is good for you. Keeps the brain limber and trying to see things in new ways.

If you're at all interested in drawing or art, I really recommend you give at least one of these books a try - just for a little relaxing fun. You might just surprise yourself. I know I have.

.

(And no, this is not a paid ad for this book. I've never met nor spoken with the Millers. I'm not signed up at Amazon to do referrals. I get nothing monetary or in kind from this post. I simply want to spread the word about something I enjoy and I think more people ought to try.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:23 AM | Comments (1) | Design | Sketches | Stumble

December 3, 2008

This is Whack, Yo

So, because I'm just essentially a very irreverent person who enjoys a sick sense of humour just a little too much ... and probably because I went to high school with one of these dudes (well, two of them, but I only knew one) ... I bring you ...

Whack A Santa

This was an early Flash project for me ... one of these days I keep intending to go back and clean up the graphics a bit.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:11 AM | Comments (2) | Design | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Stumble

October 28, 2008

Change Is Coming ...

Change is afoot here ... and I want to thank HaikuTimes.com for giving me the inspiration to do some sketching needed to finally get around to revamping the look here at The Red Monkey Blog. Be prepared for a completely new look ... soonish. I will try to give you a warning at least a day or two before the new template goes live.

And - to Lisa - I haven't forgotten my promise to return to the excellent conversation we were having on trans issues - particularly in light of some research I saw on BBC the other day.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:59 PM | Comments (1) | Blog | Design | Stumble

October 10, 2008

Monkeehub?

All right, people, quit dropping off the face of the earth.

The latest hit to my favourite links is Monkeehub. Laith Bahrani began Monkeehub as a portfolio site which quickly became a freaking web icon. Laith is the man behind the awesome video to the brilliant "The JCB Song" by Nizlopi. He's also behind the incredible video to Radiohead's "Creep."

Now, every domain I know to be Laith's is only a domain parking page. Monkeehub is down and has been for a few weeks. Low Morale is down as well. And Everloving is actually timing out completely. He's not logged in to MySpace since June, I think ... and he also hasn't had anyone leave him any comments since then, either.

This dude is simply too talented to suddenly drop off. Running a Google search showed scores of articles about him and interviews with him.

So ... anyone know what's going on with Laith? Is he so busy he forgot to pay the hosting bill? Is it rampant xenophobia which has made him deny access to Amuricunz?

Seriously, I need my Monkeehub fix.

UPDATE 10/13/2008
I've heard through the ether that the issue is simply a crashed server and, of course, crashed backup server. Laith Bahrani has apparently been working on an involved project and hopes to get the server issues worked out soon and get his wonderful presence back on the web again.

*phew* I'm glad that's all it was.

As for the rest of you, consider yourself on notice. No more disappearing.

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:37 AM | Comments (4) | Blog | Design | Stumble

September 29, 2008

jQuery

WARNING: This is a post about website creation. I am keeping the jargon and such to a minimum and I think there's content in here for non-techie people, but if you're a non-techie person, just know that you'll want to scan bits of this post to get to the non-tech stuff. (I swear I'll keep it short and intelligible!)

I have known that I need to sit down with a couple of Javascript books and learn to program a tad for quite some time now. But, I just never seem to have the time I need to devote to it. There's just always some other project that takes precedence.

I am responsible for the basic building of our church's website and it's been a while since the last design. In fact, the last design was probably around 2001 or 2002 - and it involves the old style of site building - using tables instead of stylesheets. I built a prototype design that I kinda liked and then I got all excited. What if!

What if I could make the site so the church office manager could update one file which stored our upcoming events and that would automatically update a little box on the homepage AND also update the larger events page? That would be cool! It would minimize typos and conflicting information and it would look COOL. (Our office manager is excellent and meticulous - but EVERYONE gets interrupted and forgets that they updated one page with some information and forgets that they didn't get a chance to update the other area. This would just simplify things.)

I know, in theory, that I can build a type of file called an XML file and we could store all of the event information there. Then, I knew there was a way to tell the various webpages, "Hey, go get this information and put it on your webpage." I was pretty sure this involved Javascript ... but like I said, I've never quite gotten around to learning Javascript. So, I hunted around online a few times, looking for a script which would do this and generally experienced EPIC FAIL in attempting to find what I wanted.

At one of my job interviews last week, I was asked if I knew Javascript. "Crap," I thought to myself. "I really need to learn this!" The interviewer shrugged and asked if I knew jQuery.

"I've looked at it a few times, but I haven't used it yet."

"Well," he replied, "that's really what we use. You should pick it up quickly."

"It's a Javascript library, isn't it? So you don't have to know Java superwell to use it anyway, right."

Pretty much. (For the non-techie who are still reading - all this means is that bits of Javascript code are already written for you - and stored in a library. It's better to think about it in terms of LEGOs. These snippets of code make up different LEGO bricks. So as a non-programmer, all you have to do is put the bricks together to build the program you want.)

So this morning, I was sitting at the computer, surveying my now beautiful and clean living room - my project Friday and Saturday had been bulldozing the living room - and wondering what my next project should be. With my allergies, I can't clean house too many days in a row or I'll wind up sick and in bed. I firmly believe dust should be left in place because cleaning it just throws it all back into the air and into my lungs and nose until I can't breathe.

At any rate, I looked around the clean room ... realized I had no projects pending really ... and I thought, hey! This is the perfect time to look at jQuery.

Oh. My. Word.

One of the first things I see is a tutorial on using jQuery to parse (read) an XML file.

The library itself is only about 54kb ("The minified version, while having a larger file size than the packed version, is generally the best version to use on production deployments."). I had expected from their quote that the larger file size would be a lot more than 54kb.

There's a great tutorial session which has already given me what I need to build a prototype for the church website. I can have the homepage show the event, date and time ... and the events page can show those items plus show a longer description. It will take me a little time to finesse the script to display everything the way I want, but I'm really excited to be able to add some dynamic functionality to the church website -- and to know that I can add that to my own sites or new creations as I move forward.

Now, of course, I have a major project! Seriously go to town on the church website.

Even if I don't get that job (and boy oh boy oh boy am I hoping that I do get it!), I've learned something useful and will probably springboard me into finally really learning javascript.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:19 AM | Comments (3) | Design | Stumble

September 4, 2008

#RNC08

First, this is not really a political post.

So, when my friend Techfun mentioned on Twitter that he was so used to get his news through text or audio that he needed some Republican Trading Cards to keep all the players at the convention straight -- I thought, now THERE'S a project!

So, I took a day off of working on Oppositional Design and cleaning house and came up with a couple of designs. The first one required a bit too much work for a quickie project (I was contemplating the really old style cigarette cards), so I went with a more modern version.

These are simple cards and they are NOT partisan. They are simply a nice design on the front with a photo of the politician. The back of the card states the name of the politician, a little about their political position and which day they spoke. I also included the day's theme and McCain quote as well.

So, if you want to print these out and frame 'em or throw darts at them, it's up to you.

Warning: These are print quality PDF files approximately 5mb apiece. Each file includes two pages, a front and back. You should be able to print these out on cardstock and cut them out to have your very own complete Republican Convention Trading Card set!

Sheet One
Includes Lieberman, the Bushes, Cheney, Giuliani, Huckabee, Ridge and Palin.

Sheet Two
Includes Huntsman, Marin, Thompson, Lingle, Steele, Coleman, Whitman, Fiorina and Romney.

Sheet Three
Includes Cindy McCain, Jindal, Pawlenty, Brownback, Martinez, Crist and McCain (plus two bonus cards!).

Front and back sample:

Let me know if you enjoy them!

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:44 PM | Comments (6) | Design | Stumble