d r a g o n b o n e s    

Regional Information

First, I would like to thank the lovely folks of MAC (Media Arts Council) that I met last night for all the great information that they happily shared at their Media Icons photography exhibit. What a great bunch of folks, and they were very helpful when it came to some plans I am putting together for my next big project. (Which I’m not quite ready to reveal just yet.) I’m looking forward to attending more of their events. They really put on quite a show.

Next comes a little link love for some of the blogs that I’ve started following, but have failed to mention here. I found myself thinking that I should help spread the word about these sites, so here we go…

Unusual Vantage Point

First up is Project: Rooftop or P:R for short. Dean Trippe and company do a wonderful job of hosting competitions to re-imagine classic super heroes and their costumes.

This is the sort of project site that I find terribly interesting and inspirational. When I’m looking for something to kick start the creative juices, I swing by P:R and get a bunch of new ideas going in a very short span of time.

If you’re not familiar with them, you owe it to yourself to become so.

Freeware and Frugality

Next up we’ve got the Freeware Illustrator. The concept behind this blog is, imho, simply fantastic.

Starting from the most humble of beginnings (a PC gifted from a friend) the author / artist known on the blog as Lukeo25 is chonicling his journey as he seeks to use only free hardware and software to run their graphic design shop.

We’re all familiar with the concept of the starving artist, and while I’m not sure that art, as a business, has it any worse than any other business financially, this seems a great starting point for those artists who might just be starting out, are doing it ‘on the side’ or are just plain strapped for cash. Really? It’s a delight to read, and provides a lot of good information.

Deviantart

And lastly – for my Deviantart link of the day: the #Art-Studios group. I’m kinda a freak for pictures of other artists studio spaces. I’m not sure exactly why, but it’s something that brings me a lot of joy. Perhaps it’s got something to do with my art supplies fetish. Seeing so many supplies displayed (often) all over the place just brings me a chaotic moment of joy.

As anyone who has been following along with my art can tell you – I’m a big fan of Open Canvas. Sure – there are much heavier hitting applications when you want to do some hard core photo editing, manipulation, and even just good ol’ fashioned painting. Here’s the thing though – OC is lightweight, it works, and it stores every brush stroke in an event file that you can play back as an animation.

If you’ve seen one of my illustration videos, you’ve seen this aspect of the software in action. I use OC to create the animation, and then CamStudio to record that animation in a file that YouTube can use. (I touch it up and add credits / soundtrack in Windows Movie Maker.) Yeah – I guess you could say I’m a fan of inexpensive – or better – free software. I’m a believer in the philosophy of KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. When things get complicated it’s just too easy for them to break down.

The problem with the newest version of Open Canvas (4.5) is simple enough. They’re a Japanese company and they’re struggling to get the English help files in place. The software is set up / designed in such a way that even a clueless gaijin like myself can muddle their way through it, but the help files really would be nice to have. If only for the hot key combinations.

What’s that? You’re looking for the keyboard shortcuts / hotkeys for Open Canvas 4.5 too? It’s you’re lucky day. I just went through and dug out all that I could the old fashioned way – I tried them and watched what happened. I’m sure to have missed some and/or managed to screw up the definitions for what some of them do, so feel free to correct me in the comments. I’ll edit the post to make the corrections and that way we’re all on the same page.

I’ll put these behind a cut to save your RSS feeds from getting bloated:

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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. Read the rest of this entry »