Too many posts to handle? If you missed out on a great post from last month, here’s a quick digest of the top posts that you may want to check out:
- Inspiration: Are Mokkelbost
Posted on Saturday, November 1st, 2008 in inspiration – Comments: (0)
- Inspiration: Understand Your User
Posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 in inspiration – Comments: (3)
This quote is in regards to software, but I think it applied to creative folks as well:There’s only one person in the world whose needs and problems you really understand and whom you know exactly how to satisfy: that would be you. So build something that you use all the time, and, unless you’re really weird and different from everyone else, you’ve got a potential winner.
- Monster Monday: Blue Beast
Posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 in cartooning – Comments: (2)
Cartoon drawing of a blue devil/demon I drew up for Monster Monday.Original sketch drawn in my sketchbook, graphite on paper, then scanned into Photoshop where the sketch cleanup and color was added using a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet.Original sketch was very rough, the scanned sketch was tweaked in Photoshop and then flipped to save time and keep the symmetry.
- Video: Photoshop CS4 Spring-Loaded Keys
Posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 in video – Comments: (1)
http://www.vimeo.com/2304626Another brief video in my instructional series introducing some great new features in Photoshop CS4 for artists, cartoonists, illustrators and anyone else who sketches or draws using Photoshop.This video features the excellent new Spring-Loaded Keys feature that allows you to access a tool temporarily by holding down the key for that tool, similar to using the Spacebar for the Hand tool – only for every tool in Photoshop now.
- WordPress Sidebar At Bottom? Div Tags Via Copy/Paste In Visual Editor
Posted on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 in resource – Comments: (2)
A non-cartooning post here, but when I run into issues with the blog and find solutions for the errors, I like to pass them along.I recently had a bizarre problem with this blog: the Sidebar was appearing way at the bottom of the home page, at the end of the last post entry. I saw some potential fixes for this on the wondeful web, and all seemed to point at an unclosed < div > tag.
If you enjoy the content on this site, please make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed.
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Great resource for Adobe Photoshop users — reference cards for quick overviews of Photoshop’s interface, specific and often-used tools.
Includes links to versions for Photoshop CS3 and CS4 as well as both Macintosh and Windows versions.
Some of the “cards” are actually links to Adobe’s own online help (which is where the default Help in CS4 apps now takes you). But the rest of the cards look helpful in learning or referencing common tools such as the Pen tool, the Marquee tool, and the Brush tool. Worth a look and a download for the reference cards that suit your workflow. Sure to enhance your productivity.
Continue reading 'Photoshop Cheatsheets and Reference Cards: Free Downloads'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
A quick note that as of the posting date, there are a handful of plugins not yet available for the Creative Suite CS4 applications.
The list for me so far includes: all font activation plugins for Linotype’s Font Explorer X, “Select Menu” for Illustrator CS4, Canon’s Scangear CS plugin to access your scanner from within Photoshop’s Import menu, and plugins from developer Worker72a such as the ‘Zoom To Selection’ plugin for Illustrator.
Continue reading 'Creative Suite CS4 Plugin Availability'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Just a quick tip for those out there getting ready to upgrade to the new Adobe Creative Suite CS4: I discovered after the upgrade that CS3 customized keyboard shortcut files do not transition into CS4.
This is a huge bummer, as there is no easy way that I know of to display what you have changed compared to the default set. I can only speak for Photoshop CS4, Illustrator CS4 and InDesign CS4 as I do not use the rest of the programs in the Design Premium suite enough to customize keyboard shortcuts.
I can’t recall if this is the case with previous Creative Suite upgrades as well or if this is a CS4-only situation.
Continue reading 'Creative Suite CS4: Custom Keyboard Shortcut Woes'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Sharon Steuer’s free ”Zen Of The Pen” PDF is an excellent introduction to the inner mysteries of the vector pen tool in Adobe Illustrator.
The pen tool is one of those obscure graphics programs tools that everyone tries once, and then gets so confused by that they never get any further with it. And understandably. It looks like a fountain pen, but it doesn’t act like one. Click and “draw”, you get weird “handles” sprouting out from a dot. Ignore that, and some annoying rubber band line gets stuck to your pen tip, all distorted out of — not even a straight line! Right there most Illustrator users think to themselves “this program sucks”.
But they couldn’t be further from the truth…
Continue reading 'Zen Of The Pen'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Vectips has a post with 10 Free and Extremely Useful Illustrator Scripts.
Illustrator supports scripting from AppleScript, Visual Basic, JavaScript, and ExtendScript. What’s a script you ask? We’ll they’re kind of like plug-ins, kind of like Actions. Basically they are small chunks of software that you can invoke to perform functions.
You don’t need to know anything about programming, coding or anything like that. It’s as simple as downloading the files and placing them in the Adobe Illustrator CS3/Presets/Scripts folder. After doing so you’ll find them in the Scripts menu (under the File menu).
Lots of great scripts. Here’s what you’ll find:
Continue reading '10 Free Adobe Illustrator Scripts'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Adobe Illustrator Automator Action Pack from Automated Workflows allows extended use of Mac OS X’s Automator in Leopard with 20 actions for use with Adobe Illustrator.
For years I have been trying to wrap my head around Automator in OS X; it seems like a super handy tool, but I can never seem to get it to do exactly what I want. But don’t let my ineptitude stop you — lots of users swear by Automator and if you are in need of additional Actions for Automator for use with Adobe Illustrator, these look like they could be really useful.
The full list of the Adobe Illustrator Automator Actions:
Continue reading 'Automator Action Pack For Adobe Illustrator'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Texture King looks to be a great free resource for photographic texture images for your design projects. I downloaded a random file and found it to be 300 PDI @ 3″ x 5″, so the files are of a decent size to use in your print projects, and perfect for web usage.
via Creattica
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Mordy Golding has a nice interview with the product manager of Adobe Illustrator, David Macy, over at the Real World Illustrator blog. Vector geeks, go check it out.
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Bittbox is working on a cool new project — Conglomerfont. The idea is that creatives send in hand-created letters, and the final result will be collated into one schizophrenic, ransom-note looking über-font from everyone’s submissions. The final font will be freely available and evry paerticipating artist will get credit for their contribution.
There’s still a handful of letters — uppercase & lowercase — as well as numbers left. Head over and drop Bittbox a line about the letter you’d like to create and join the community typeface project.
I created the uppercase “G”.
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Social Stuff