Let’s face it – in the world of professional illustration, time = money. It’s true in most professions, but when the work to create your product is work that you can’t delegate, you need as much time to produce as you can get your hands on. Many of us still have to do the rest of our ‘run the engine’ work on our own and that makes the time crunch even worse.

We Need to Work Faster

How do you make yourself more productive in less time? How do you make yourself more efficient? You work on speed. You work on understanding forms and figures and settings so that you can draw them faster.

Possibly the best tool that I’ve ever come across to help with this very thing are the tools made available by the awesome Kim at her website Pixelovely.com. She’s crafted a set of automated web tools for displaying photos of reference images for artists to work from – in a timed fashion.

Did I mention that she offers this to the public for free? (You can, and IMHO should donate to her via Paypal, but she doesn’t require it for the user of her site.)

Currently the tools allow you to use both human figures and a wide range of animals for reference material. Humans can be filtered by both gender and clothed or nude. Animals can be broken down by type (birds, canine, insects, etc). All of the above can be gone through in time increments of  30 seconds, 60 seconds, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, or 10 minutes for fast sketching. If you prefer to take your time and focus on quality over quantity? No problem. Kim’s got you covered by allowing you to ‘take a class’ and set the timer to 30 minutes, 1, 2, 3, or 6 hours.

Did I mention that it’s free?

How Photographers Can Help

Kim/Pixelovely really could use your help. She would like to expand the set of tools to include two new options – one for portraits, and one for hands/feet. Any of you who are willing to donate your existing photos (or some portion thereof) should contact her via her contact form and let her know!

She does give credit for every photo with a link to the site of your choice and you would have her (and my!) thanks. So you would receive a little publicity and some gratitude for work you’ve already done. Doesn’t seem like a terrible idea to me, and you would be helping artists everywhere get better at working faster. What a way to support your fellow artists! So if you’re a portrait or hand/foot photographer, please please please drop her a quick email and lend a hand.

I know I will be.

(Thank you!)

Open Figure Drawing Studio – Wilmington DE

I have to say that I am beyond thrilled to report that the Delaware Art Museum is having Open Figure Drawing Studio time every 1st and 3rd Monday evenings of each month. Find more information on their website (scroll down – it’s under the ‘drawing and painting’ subsection.

I’ve only been to two sessions, but I’m really looking forward to number 3, and I feel like I can see a marked improvement just since the first session. It’s long past time I got back to the basics. I have a feeling this will greatly improve my work overall.

If you’re in the area, and like to draw figurative work, I can’t recommend this highly enough.

Aviary

So the combination of images above (sorry about the crappy camera phone ‘scans’) was assembled in Aviary in my Chrome browser session. I’m always interested in checking out new technologies – especially when it comes to digital art, and that’s what Aviary provides: free, comprehensive creative tools – all right in your browser. There’s an app for it in the Chrome App Store, and  I have to say that it works pretty well. There’s some bugs to be worked out, and this is clearly a ‘young’ product, but the potential of this thing is amazing.

I use Google Docs pretty much exclusively for my personal document editing, and the idea that there will soon be a creative suite to match it is just awesome! You can bet I’ll be watching this one closely.

Yes, the book has been available for a while now. What can I say? I’m playing catch up.

Truth is, I couldn’t be more proud of this book if I had written it myself. Like its predecessor, the OGT v2 is a collection of the best articles to come out of role playing blogs over the past year.

Through an extremely impressive efforton behalf of Dr. Jonathan Jacobs, a collection of tremendously dedicated reviewers, writers, editors, and my fellow artists, we have managed to refine, tweak, add to, and re-tweak a collection of entries that could keep any group of gamers in new ideas for quite a while.

Inspiration? No problem. Rules / crunch? No sweat. Philosophy? You betcha.

Go. Check it out. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

How It All Started

It wasn’t long ago that I found this great YouTube video about the comparing of the Apple iPad and the LS 800 by Motion Computing. LatinVixen, a fellow illustrator, does a great little synopsis of the two devices and their pros and cons.

I like the idea of an iPad, and I would love to get one, but they seem a bit on the pricey side to me. Call me a miser, but I’m betting that a big part of their popularity (and subsequent cost) is sorta self  aggrandizing.  This is all just the reason I thought it would be a good idea to watch the video and see what’s what.

I’m so very happy that I did.

Doing the Deal

Just a couple of days later, I’d found myself a device via ebay and purchased it for $350. It’s in great working order, and it runs Open Canvas 4 (my software of choice when sketching) without lag. I’ve since added a second gig of RAM (via a 2Gig chip in place of the original 1Gig) and it runs great. I haven’t bothered to upgrade to Windows 7 because I feel no need to.

I had already purchased Open Canvas, so that was no additional cost for me. In the event that you don’t have OC, Latin Vixen has some other suggestions on her video, or you can always go with good ol’ GIMP. I’ve run the Portable Apps version on the tablet with no real issues.

The vendor even gave me a great leather case, a small usb keyboard, and a Windows Recovery Disk in the deal, so I can fix it with fewer headaches if something goes awry. Your results may vary, of course – I recommend you do your homework for shopping for any vendor for used computer hardware.

This all means that I got my digital tablet set up and running for less that $400. Compare that to the cheapest iPad (at ~$499) and even the smaller Cintiq (at ~$1000) and you’ve got one very happy illustrator.

The Cons

Forgive me – I’m a bad news first kinda guy.

The down side is that I’ve found a couple of (fairly minor) issues with using this device as my digital sketchbook. They are: (in no particular order)

• Reduced levels of sensitivity over traditional Wacom tablets. This isn’t the end of the world. In fact, in my humble opinion, it’s not even that big a deal. If someone had told me that before I bought it, I would have weighed it pretty heavily, but now? It’s not a problem. I wanted this to just be a ‘sketchbook’ – not something that I did finished work on. This could also just be caused by a setting that I have yet to notice/find.
• Angled sensitivity of the pen seems a bit reduced over traditional tablets. See above – this really isn’t a big deal.
• It gets hot. No, really. I’m talking hot. I haven’t had any major problem with this, but I also picked up a little ‘laptop fan’ device for a couple of bucks. It plugs into the usb ports and runs some extra fans beneath the machine to keep the air moving. But honestly? I only bother using it when I’m doing long stretches of drawing with the device.
• There’s another model I might have preferred. I’m not sure about this one, but Motion has a couple other devices that are sized differently (like the LS1600 at a 12″ screen). I might have liked having more ‘real estate’ to work on if I had spent more time looking. Honestly though, this one is lighter weight and very convenient to throw in a bag to keep with me. So much so that I’m still considering getting one of the other devices, but keeping this one in addition for its portability.

The Pros

Here’s a few of the things that I love about the device:

• It’s a Windows XP Tablet device! This is huge in my book. Unlike the Cintiq, which needs a separate device to run it, this is all contained in one unit. Simple. Elegant. Easy.
• It’s not a capacitive screen. When I’m drawing, I don’t get ‘smudges’ because I rested my palm. There are ways around this with the iPad, but why, if I don’t have to?
• It’s got pressure sensitivity. While it’s true that I don’t think that it has as many levels of sensitivity as traditional Wacom tablets, it has far more than an iPad (which is binary). I can change the thickness of my brush or the darkness of the ink through how much pressure I put into it. This alone is worth the machine’s weight in gold.

The Synopsis

This unit isn’t an iPad. I can see why it didn’t sell like hot cakes to John Q. Public. It is, however, perfect for artists like myself who would like an inexpensive way to have a portable digital solution that doesn’t cost them a fortune. The fact that it will already work with your Windows based software, the interface is familiar, and it has pressure sensitivity all make it worth far more than you’re likely to pay for it. We just luck out because most vendors are pricing them based on what John Q. Public would spend on them.

If you have any questions about the device, please feel free to ask them in the comments below, and I will be sure to answer them to the best of my ability.

I’m also curious about other portable digital art solutions if any of you have any others out there – let me know. I’d love to hear about your experiences! Any Android artists out there?

I’ve been a gamer to varying degrees for roughly two dozen years and I’ve seen all manner of software come and go when it comes to gaming supplies. For many years, smaller companies have tried to take on the Big Boys in an effort to squeeze out some small piece of the market pie. The problem is that gaming is, at least for most of us, a hobby. Hobbies sometimes get a good chunk of people’s spending cash, but I’ve always delighted in the fact that gaming can be inexpensive.

Yes. Inexpensive. Aside from the basic rulebooks, a pad of paper, some pens and pencils, and a set of dice, I’ve spent very little directly on the hobby of gaming. Practically nothing. That’s what I want to talk about today – software that costs us nothing and yet is greatly useful for your gaming group.

Google Groups

Google Groups are a great way to collaborate online. It’s how Nevermet Press is able to collect all of our Content Developers in one place and review / modify the many projects we’re working on all over the world. Create Pages, Discussion groups, upload/share files, and maintain email lists all via this simple and oh yeah, free tool.

Google Docs

Use the services of Google Docs in combination with Google Groups, and you have yourself a nice stable means of storing/editing just about any documents you might use in your game. Character sheets, maps, tables and more are all easily accessed wherever you have an internet connection. In fact, you can even read most documents on your cheapy cell phone and (I believe) all documents on your smart device! You’ll never have to hear “I must have left my character in my other folder…” again.

Open Office.org

Yes, I use Google Docs for most of my document editing and storage, but I use Open Office’s suite of software to do some of the creation of those docs – especially map creation. I’ll be creating some tutorials for just that purpose soon, so keep an eye out here. Also? You can keep a portable version of Open Office on a thumb drive so you don’t have to lug your laptop around if you’d rather not. It really is a spectacular suite.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a burgeoning software package that allows you to create vector graphics much like Adobe Illustrator. Vector graphics are great for the creation of maps because the can be scaled to any size without the deterioration or pixelation of bitmap images created by programs like Adobe Photoshop or the Gimp. The downside? Detail work tends to take a bit longer to do in vector oriented programs.

The Gimp

The Gimp is the other option that I use for mapping purposes. Because it’s a bitmap oriented program it is a bit faster for the detail work than something like Inkscape. The downside is that bitmap images break down when you blow them up past a certain point.

Wilderness Mapper

The last program I’d like to point out today is Wilderness Mapper created by Bruce Gulke of Mythosa.net. The Wilderness Mapper is a simple program and it’s functions are slightly ‘basic’, but in the end, I find that it’s like so many things created by Apple – simple, basic, but stable and easy to use. Sometimes you don’t need something completely unique – you just need a good solid map with plenty of information.

Bruce has been developing Mythosa for many years, and he has long had what I consider one of (if not the) most professional, clean, and well thought out campaign sites on the net. His Tablesmith software is also one of my favorite programs for gamers, but as it’s technically shareware, it will have to be part of another post. Minor note: you’ll need to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to get to Wilderness Mapper.

So how about you? What freeware do you like to use in your game?