After doing a random AS3 search for some code that might let me outline text clean/easily, I stumbled on this post by Tom Carden.  It’s a short and sweet little post with some sample code.  However, what caught my eye was his clone function (note, that’s a screenshot to the right, please go to his site if you want to see/use the code.).

Basically, my thought process was: "what the? why is he for-each’ing an array created on the spot? –oh, that’s pretty elegant, I should share that."

So basically I just wanted to post to say "hey, check out this for loop." :)

(and go read Tom Carden’s blog! :)

Appreciating the little things,
~Danny

It’s pretty amazing how many muscles go under and around each other all the way down the arm. It’s also interesting that each finger is controled by two muscles in the fore arm.

Also, the muscles from the upper and lower arms interlock like links in a chain.

It’s interesting that the same lines you might use to draw hair, also work well for muscles.

Here’s a thought: don’t clean up your hobby –or whatever it is you’d like to get done but keep putting off.

Why is it that so many people come home from work and waste away watching tv? I have this theroey that it’s because tv is so easy. There’s no obsticals to overcome, no work to do –it’s already hooked up! If you had to hook up your tv every time you wanted to use it, and then disconnect it and put it away when you were done watching it, no one would bother! :) it wouldn’t be relaxing, it would be work.

So why do we even consider “putting things away”? (especially our favorite things) The act of setting up and putting away can turn something you want to do into something that’s too much trouble to do. (seriously, would you watch tv if you had to set it up and dismantle it when you were done?).

I realized that, after a long day at work, I often just take the path of least resistence, which is tv. This also means a week will go by and I’ll ask myself, “why haven’t I done any of the stuff I wanted to do ( like sketch or paint )?”

All of this clicked in my head for me after I tried out a suggestion from some one in my painting class. “the trick is, you’ve got to set everthing up and then leave it out. Don’t clean anything up and you’ll alway be able to paint on a moments notice.”

And It worked! I’d find myself wandering past my ready-to-go painting desk and spotting something I wanted to try out. I’d make a few brush strokes while standing and find myself sitting down. Then, next I realized, it’s two hours later. Much of the time I’d normally find myself in front of the tv, I now found myself painting. :)

It worked so well that I went out and bought a bigger desk. :)

I’ve been tring to make time to sketch more and I’ve been trying to experiment with approaches I don’t normally use.   

Normally I start with a gesture and start marking landmarks to keep my proportions in check before I start, then I move on to making contour lines.  After all that, I’d normally start shading.  But this always leaves me with these sketches that have hard outlines around everything.  Like a cartoon that’s trying to look real by having a lot of shading work inside the lines.

So, just for a change, I was trying to capture as much as possible without making lines.  I was blocking in big areas with the side of the charcoal.  Which means you’re laying down information to define the forms outline show volume at the same time.  It’s pretty interesting.  Here’s a couple 10 minute poses to illustrate.

In the first one you can see how quickly the form takes shape and "lines" start to form –but not as "lines", instead they are "edges".  For example, where the front leg overlaps the back leg.  It feels like there’s a line there, but there’s not.  In fact if you trying to draw a line there it will never be as thin as this "line" created by to edges meeting.

One other thing I’ll just throw out there while we’re looking at the legs.  Note the vertical strips of value I made with the side of the charcoal.  I was trying to fill in large blocks of space all at once… so a vertical line seemed like a nice idea, even though it goes against the curve of the form.  I figured I just try it out to see what it looked like in the end.  Basically, I feel like these legs look like the belong to a robot.  They’re not round, they’re angular and blocky.  Just and interesting observation.  If I had moved the charcoal from left to right along the curve of the legs they would have, no-doubt, looked much rounder.
 

In the second image, I was continuing with the "don’t draw lines" experiment.  I tried to draw as little as possible.  I have some dark spots, some medium tone and I tried to leave all highlights blank white.  Again I made a lot of long lines that following the arms and legs down.  for example, the back arm is not finished so you can see it’s just one long stroke with the charcoal.  But even though I didn’t have time to give it much more attention, it still look like it’s there (your mind kind of fills in the rest)

As I got a little more creative with those "edges instead of lines".  the heads are not outlined at all but you still get the feeling that the fingers are there.  Also note that the back was done in the direction it should be when you’re trying to make thing look round.  So you can compare the back’s shading to the legs and arms and see how the direction of the stroke make a difference.

No lines.  Give it a try some times. :)

~Danny

I know this is supposed to be an art blog, but as soon as you introduce a computer, the lines between art and engineering start to get blurred. Regardless, I found this Flash AS3 Memory Leak to be such a landmine that I just had to post it somewhere for other people to hopefully find and breath a sigh of relief when they realize why their flash game slows down and grinds to a halt the longer they play it.

Okay, no beating around the bush. Do this code once a frame (or more!) and you’re flash game will grind to a halt.

mySprite.graphics.beginFill( 0xFFFFFF );
mySprite.graphics.drawRect( vPos.x, vPox.y, vSize.x, vSize.y );
mySprite.graphics.endFill();

This was my “DrawBlock” function for my falling blocks game. I see these three lines posted all over the web in tutorial and in forums. –Worse, I often only see the first two lines and no endFill(). The above code eats memory.

(more…)

Seriously, pass this post on to everyone you know. I’m furious because I know they just screwed me. but the average person who’s never bought a domain name before won’t know the difference. I HATE seeing companies screw people just because they know they can get away with it.

if you have a domain name you’re thinking about getting NEVER search for it using NetworkSolutions.com!! they will lock the domain as if a customer is buying it (ie, you) and then try to charge you $35 for it! when the going rate on other sites, like godaddy, is $9 or $10.

but since I searched with NetworkSolutions first, now GoDaddy can’t register it because NetworkSolutions put a lock on the domain… all GoDaddy can do is offer to “buy on back order” for $20.

(more…)

I’ve been making a comic journal and a vacation comic journal (as you can tell by the links at the top of the page). In both cases I knew I had a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time. I needed a style that would get the point of the content across to the viewer but also something that was moderately fast to crank out. So I went with a loosely drawn Sunday comic strip style. It worked great. The looseness of the lines kept me moving and discouraged me from getting bogged down and spending 3 hours adding excessive detail to an otherwise lighthearted story.

However, one day I went back and cleaned up one of the pages and realized that it looked better. Not night and day, but definitely better. Here’s an example:

I thought loose drawing *had* to look sloppy. I thought having lines meet in overlapping intersections was what made it classified as “loose drawing.” However, now I realize you can still have a loose drawing with clean lines and corners. And I think it looks better. So, yes, I went back and cleaned up every page.

It’s really surprising how fast a few clicks of the eraser tool can really cleanup a sketch. I’ll definitely be setting aside more time to cleanup my work more often.

(Image From: lukeroberts on deviantart)

Well, I’ve finally arrived. I had my first piece of art ripped off yesterday. It was an accident really, the person meant well, but none the less, they took an image I spent hours making and pasted it right into their own work.

I always knew these things happen to artists, but it’s pretty unsettling when it happens to you. Thankfully, it was exactly what I thought, just someone who meant well, but didn’t realize they were crossing a line when they used it without asking permission first.

This is the reply I sent to him. Please, educate your friends and family about Creative Commons so we can all be creative together without stepping on each other’s toes.

Hey man, thanks for taking it down. but I just want to make sure you know I’m not angry or mad at you. I had a feeling it was an accident, but it was a very unsettling feeling to see how easily things can get ripped off (even with the best of intentions).

believe it or not, I was more worried about you than my image. I’m not too broken-up about it, but I was worried you might accidentally tick someone off someday if I didn’t speak up. (as in, tick off someone with lawyers or something)

the good news is, it’s really easy to tell when artists do and don’t want others to edit their work.

Just look for: “Creative Commons” here’s a link to wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons

Flickr has Creative Common options and I noticed that DeviantArt is doing it now too. So just look for that and you should be all set to have fun with an image.

Here’s an example: http://lukeroberts.deviantart.com/art/Creative-Block-43033454

notice the (CC) instead of (C)?

Pass on the word. The more people who know about these things, the better.

Best of Luck to You,
~Danny