The CS6/Creative Cloud version of the superb Adobe Illustrator WOW! Book with advanced vector art techniques is now available. Along with my earlier technique contribution to the Illustrator WOW! CS6 edition last year, this updated edition has some more tips and techniques where I reveal the arcane secrets of my vector art workflow to the unsuspecting reader!
Just a quick news item: the Adobe Illustrator CS6 version of the superb Illustrator WOW! tutorial book series for Adobe Illustrator will feature a lesson by yours truly.
I was approached by the author, Sharon Steuer, to contribute an advanced technique to the book. We decided to present a unique method of quickly applying color to your line art using Adobe Illustrator’s Shape Builder tool. The cartoon logos and cartoon characters you see on my website and blog are created using this technique.
I recently needed to explain to a client the basic differences between Raster and Vector graphics, and came across this handy Raster and Vector Graphics overview at Mike’s Sketchpad.
While the explanation there is a nice summary, I would recommend any Adobe Illustrator (or other vector graphics software) users out there do a bit more research into vector art.
However for a quick explanation for a client or a non-vector graphics friend, the overview linked above pretty much sums it up as much as a non-vector art geek wants to know about the topic.
Wacom has a new online service and free companion software tool download called Bamboo Dock. The apps available so far are basic — a drawing/doodling app, a map you can draw on and a handwriting recognition app. The others I couldn’t demo as a Wacom Bamboo serial number is required.
The online service is a sort of virtual sketchpad, allowing you to doodle, draw, scrapbook and upload files to “spaces” which are like collections, and inside of each one can add multiple canvases with different contents, themes and such.
I am having a hard time imagining a use for the online portion, but the companion apps look like they might be handy and should be interesting to see how things progress as new tools are developed/released.
I stumbled across this very informative tips for freelance illustrators blog post by illustrator Nate Williams. He gives a nice overview of the process he uses not only on the business side of things, but also on the creative side.
This Animator’s Survival Kit DVD set from Oscar-winning animator Richard Willams looks like a great resource for those animators out there. Personally, I do not have the patience for animation, but it’s fascinating to me.
This DVD set is a companion to Williams’ highly-rated Animator’s Survival Kit book. The site doesn’t seem to indicate if the book is included with the DVD set, but it seems not to be.
Richard Williams was awarded two Oscars for the animation on “Who Framed Roger Rabbit“. He directed and designed Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit, Baby Herman and all the new characters for the Walt Disney/Steven Spielberg production.
The set isn’t cheap at £634.04 (or about $1,252.42 for us U.S. folks as of the date of this post).
Adobe Illustrator plugin Phantasm CS offers in-line embedded image editing, color checking and separations, duotones and vector halftones, filters and live effects color adjustment. Looks like a pretty great plugin for Illustrator users who do a lot of bitmap image placing.
Personally I do any layout work in InDesign, and not much of my work requires having bitmap images in the Illustrator file outside of placing a template for tracing. However, the halftone and separation features look like they might be really handy.Â
Just a quick tip for the freelancing and self-employed — that pain you feel paying all your taxes at once because you’re too lazy or forgetful to dole out your quarterly tax payments to Uncle Sam? It’s over. If you’re like me, and 99% of your banking and bill-paying is done online, there’s a tax payment solution for you.
Just stumbled across these handy Mac OS X software applications to help designers and artists simulate the effects of color blindness on-screen: Sim Daltonism and Color Oracle.
Sim Daltonism works as a floating palette which converts an area under your mouse cursor to the selected type of color blindness — it works similar to the Apple Digital Color Meter sampling utility. There are 8 different types of color blindness to test. Color Oracle works as a menubar item which converts the entire monitor to the selected mode of color blindness, but only offers the three most common forms.