Adobe Director 11 is still waiting in the wings

It's not like I'm surprised, but the release of Adobe Director has been pushed back yet again:

Adobe has not published an official time frame for the next release of Director and generally does not disclose details of new releases more than 30 days before a product is expected to ship. However, our current planning assumption is that the next major release of Director will be announced in January 2008.

(from Director FAQs)

From the recent Adobe Max videos, it doesn't look much chop anyway. Since Adobe has been so focused on Flash, AIR and all the other funky development tools, Director is looking very lackluster at this stage.

Meanwhile...

Just a brief interlude to say I love this desk.


That is all. :)

This here's a quick atmospheric perspective study I did while procrastinating. Hey, at least i'm doing something! :D

Craig Mullins where art thou?

I've been regularly checking out Mr. Mullins site for over a year now, but no new art has presented itself in that time. Has anyone seen where he's at?

Last Man Standing 3

It is SO on!

If you've been living under a large rock, you may not be aware of the Last Man Standing, an awesome tiered head-to-head art competition. Get into it.
I'm glad I checked out Min's site today, or I might have missed registration!

The reward? The pure adrenalin of seeing the best of the best slam each other with amazing concept art. This is what all competitions should be like. I will be creamed early on, if not in the first round, but gosh darn it it's worth it for the rush. :D

Spicy!

This awesome pipe/tube/thing was sitting out the front of my work this week. It immediately brought to mind giant space worms. I love it when art presents itself to you by accident... unless some crafty builder was reading Dune at the time or something. Either way, it made my morning.

Blank and it's scary addendum

Following on from what I said yesterday, my good friend Rebecca Kimmel also pointed out one of the easiest ways to get past blank page fear is to get someone else to tell you to stop being such a big wuss!

Well, what she actually said was take a life-drawing class (or similar), but I agree with the sentiment all the same. :)

It's blank and it's scary

I'm going to talk about something everyone has experienced from time to time: Blank page fear.

Some people call it "new sketchbook fear", "white canvas fear", "empty notepad fear", but it all boils down to the same thing: A fresh clean space is looming before us and we don't want to mar the surface.

I experience this about once every couple of months when I buy a new Moleskine sketchbook. These books are so well made and so pretty that opening the cover and putting pencil to the first page is something of a fearful moment. Why? Because I don't want to ruin that page with some horrible doodle or half-baked idea.

Therein lies the problem. Many artists, be it designers, writers, illustrators, painters, 3d modellers, musicians and so forth are paralysed by the notion of failure: The all powerful mistake.

From the outset this is ludicrous. I buy the sketchbook for the very purpose of filling it with mistakes. I'll repeat that: I buy sketchbooks for the very purpose of filling them with mistakes!

Some smart cookie once said we learn from our mistakes. Another more well known one said “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”. So why do we still fear failure if our mistakes are what make us better?

Sir Ken Robinson has a theory and I tend to agree with it (watch the talk, it's amazing). Our culture has developed into an industrial mindset of failure being the worst possible thing you can do. Education can kill creativity by instilling the notion that mistakes are useless and should be avoided at all costs.

So how do we get past this? Fear ultimately does one of two things: It drives us or it halts us in our tracks. Let's look at that in the light of the sketchbook example. I can either draw something or not. Not doing anything leaves a blank page and i've learned nothing. Doing anything at all means i've done something either good, which I can be proud of, or horrendous, which I can learn from.

Digital art programs and writing applications means we almost have no excuse for not at least trying. I've halted many times in Photoshop with a slate of blank pixels and then thought "It doesn't really matter what I do since I can always try again or paint over it."

Trial and error should be the norm of creativity. Why let little things like mistakes get in the way of your creations?

Saw this one on the work fridge today. This will either be showing once again my ignorance or absorption of kerning, so get your pitchforks and marshmallows on standby!

Is it just me, or does the text here seem cramped and icky?


I had a quick hack (ie. chop and move), and here's what I thought felt a bit better:

A bit more breathing room seemed to help. Am I wrong? Enlighten me! :)

Animation Mentor Autumn Reel

www.AnimationMentor.com have just posted their autumn student reel:
http://www.animationmentor.com/quicktime/fallshowcase/index.htm

Hot DAMN they do great work.

Maxscript challenge 18

I've posted up the new MAXscript challenge over at CG Society.

If you're unaware, I started the MAXscript challenge a little over 2 years ago to help new users get comfortable with coding for actual projects, and for intermediate to advanced scripters to give themselves a chance to experiment with new ideas.

I'm always looking for feedback on the challenges and how they're run, so if you have ideas and comments, feel free to post them here.

Scary...

It's October already and I feel like I only started the year a few weeks back. I'm just passing through to say if you haven't looked at http://www.motionographer.com recently go check it out. Still one of my favourite resources for inspiration in motion graphics and animation.

(Note that although the post is DATED the 30th of September it is in fact October the 1st. Australia is from the future!)

Cute vandalism!

I found this little guy on the side of a house while walking to the gym this evening. I love it when graffiti is simple, stylish and cute. :)
It's so great to see artwork in public spaces that delight rather than make you cringe. I'm not sure the owner of the house would be happy about it, but at least it wasn't some kind of lame-ass tag.

Unsung heroes of art - Rebecca Kimmel

Although some may call it nepotism, I have to point out the amazing and tireless efforts of one Rebecca Kimmel. Not only was she a catalyst in my own art development, she has relentlessly pursued the improvement of drawing in hundreds, if not thousands of people. This has been achieved in no small part by her massive contribution to the CG Society forums, online workshops and the start of her own figurative art site.

Unsurprisingly, Rebecca now also teaches live classes in Los Angeles. I don't know where she gets all the energy!

If you've ever wanted to learn figurative drawing or need a touch up in areas you feel you are lacking, she's your gal, whether online or in person.

Typography: A world of it's own

I recently got drawn into the wonderful and strange world of typography, of which I am completely inexperienced and in awe of. As such, from time to time i'll try and post some of my study in the area. For example, which looks better?

This:

Or this?:

The difference is subtle, but the first image is a sign I shot on the street this morning, and the second is with the kerning adjusted on the "FE" pair. Now, being no expert on the subject, I may have it horribly wrong, but now that I am noticing type everywhere, this popped up immediately in my "looks a bit wrong" alarm centre.

Feel free to educate me. :)

First post! woot.