After an engaging exchange on Twitter with illustrators: Garth Bruner and Von “Vonster” Glitschka, who are constantly Twittering about their frustrations with being forced to switch from Freehand to Illustrator after Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia, things reached the point where all involved thought that we need a way to band together and get some feature requests implemented in the next version of Adobe Illustrator.
Continue reading 'The Beziér Artist’s Liberation Front: Adobe Illustrator Feature Requests'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
It’s been about a few months since I upgraded to Adobe’s Creative Suite CS3 suite of graphic & design applications, and am running them all on a PowerMac G4 (dual 1.25 processors, 2 Gb RAM). I thought I would share my experiences with anyone out there contemplating upgrading to CS3 with an older Macintosh. I also have one of the original MacBooks, so there’s a decent comparison with CS3 running on an Intel processor Mac.
In short, I would recommend waiting to upgrade your Mac to at least a G5 or an Intel based Mac before going to CS3, but that said it’s still usable.
Continue reading 'CS3 + G4: Using Adobe Creative Suite CS3 on a PowerMac G4'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
It’s going to happen you you eventually – a client who doesn’t pay their bill. And unless the project was for a significant amount of money, the unfortunate truth is that many times it isn’t worth the cost of suing. The legal fees can very quickly outweigh the money you’ll get, and that’s the positive side!
Because of this, I make it a standard practice to ask for a 50% deposit for all work before starting a project. But this only covers you so far. I also do not transfer any high-resolution or vector art until the final balance is paid, but sometimes this doesn’t cover your butt – for example, the client may only want to use the art on their website, or may have no clue about proper printing resolutions and will go ahead an use the low-resolution JPEG preview images you’ve been sending them.
Continue reading 'Avoid Non-Paying Clients With Watermarks'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 arrived this morning, and was immediately installed on both my trusty G4 and the MacBook. Here are my very initial thoughts on the first run of the main software applications: Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.
Continue reading 'Adobe Creative Suite 3: First Thoughts'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Creative Bits has a neat informal poll going on about readers preferences for working on concepts: do you sketch with pencil & paper, or jump straight to the computer and work on the graphics software to start?
You can read my 2¢ in the comments section regarding the gradual takeover of the Wacom tablet and my Photoshop sketching habits. I still work on paper, but I find myself more and more finishing up sketches in Photoshop due to the endless flexibility I have to tweak and refine while I am perfecting things.
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
There’s an interesting entry over at the excellent blog Drawn regarding a study done on copyright term lengths by a Cambridge economics PhD. He argues that 14 years is the optimal amount of time, due to production and other economic factors.
Head on over to the post at Drawn.ca for some interesting discussion in the comments, and also a link to the original article at Ars Tecnica which has a link to a PDF of the actual paper.
Copyright is a very interesting concept, especially coming from the creative/creator side of things. Part of me wants to own and control everything I create for infinity, but the other side of me can understand the need to stimulate creativity in society. However, patent holders only have 20 years to capitalize on their work. There seems to be a dichotomy there, but perhaps there are finer points which separate the two.
In the meantime however, make sure you always drop a © (that’s the “C in the Circle” symbol, which is Option-G on your Mac) on your artwork. You can include the date and/or your name, but don’t have to. You don’t even have to officially register the art to use the Copyright symbol (although it’s recommended for added protection).
Here’s a quick overview of Copyrights at the USPTO (United States Patent & Trademark Office).
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Fun list over at BittBox for all us designer/illustrator freaks out there. One of my faves:
23: You can’t go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.
Be sure to browse around for some great tips and free stuff for Adobe Illustrator while you’re there.
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
