waiting for the death of Saint Louis
Here’s something I made while just having some fun with Adobe Illustrator. Nothing fancy, I was just playing around and thought I’d share the results.
There’s still alot of things that I prefer Photoshop for but Illustrator is really growing on me. If only I could merge my favorite features of both applications….
Meh.
I’m not sure why or how, but I seem to have run across a bug or flaw in Adobe Illustrator CS2. I noticed it while working on the next comic for A Little Scary. I changed no settings or procedures from the previous comics. I did every thing the same as usual but all the sudden when I would export my layout from Illustrator to Photoshop, some items would be blurry like they were run through Anti-Alias multiple times. I’ve tried multiple tests and settings and different ways of doing things but I get the same results.
But the odd thing is that the results are not consistent. I created a new AI file and drug the same character PSD into it twice from a Windows Explorer window (just like I normally would). Then I ALT+Clicked and drug each one to make a copy of each. So essentially four identical items all in one Layer in one brand new file. I exported it to PSD format for Photoshop CS2 (just like I normally would) and then opened it up in Photoshop. Two of the four were blurry and the other two were perfectly normal.
As you can see in this sample pic though, it’s not consistent as to which one is blurry. At the top, the original is fine and the copy is blurry. At the bottom of this same file, the original is blurry and the copy is fine. I also tried just adding four different characters to a new Illustrator file and exporting that. All but one of the characters was fuzzy even though they were all added the same way and all of these characters have been created in the exact same way.
If anyone has any ideas about this, please let me know. It’s driving me crazy.
For some reason, most of our Asia Pacific offices are closed tomorrow, May 1st. Some offices are closed Friday as well. Well at least our mainland China offices are. This means that I’ll get to sleep in tomorrow! Yay! Although the dogs will notice that I’m not getting up and wake me up because that’s what they do. Or if they don’t do it, the cats will. They like a really inaccurate secondary alarm clock. Unless they’re feeling snuggly. Then they fail in the secondary alarm clock role.
I need to finish up tomorrow’s comic. I’m really behind right now which kind of sucks. OK that’s not true. I’m not really behind as I know I’ll complete tomorrow’s comic in time to be posted. However, I don’t have any others that I’m working on at the moment so my buffer is empty. Well, all except an unrelated comic I drew. I’m holding that one in reserve in case of emergency. But I should make some progress tomorrow and over the weekend.
Today I have edited a few existing comic scripts and wrote a few new ones. I keep all the scripts in a .txt file which is really odd, but it works. I also drew an explosion and a glass of liquid (seperate drawings) in Illustrator while on lunch. The explosion is over there. –>
Otherwise, the weather is still quite mild for Hong Kong. It’s crazy. Winter was so short last year that we were soaked in sweat by this time last year. Now, it’s nice. Not sure what the difference is, but I am certainly not complaining.
People really seemed to like the tech tips that I posted yesterday. If you’re interested, I could easily come up with a tech tip a week at least. Not sure if I can make each one interesting or humorous but I can certainly try. If you, the readers, would be interested in that becoming a regular feature just let me know in the comments.
I’m still trying to learn Adobe Illustrator and I was goofing around in it earlier. Here’s what happened:
Nothing too fancy, just playing around and I came up with this idea for a goofy little octopus. I suppose it could double as a jellyfish as well but I hate jellyfish so: NO. It’s an octopus. I’m rather happy with it.
For those of you that are interested, don’t forget to check out A Little Scary for the newest comic posted today.
With the launch of A Little Scary came new artistic needs and an exasperated Yoshi got tired of telling me I needed to learn Adobe Illustrator. So I finally broke down and listened to him and I’ve been working with it for a few weeks now. I have to admit that it’s not as bad as I thought it would be and I’m learning quite a bit. Now Muse just wishes I’d stop making stupid little graphics that a kindergartner could draw with a box of crayons and asking her to look-y look-y on a constant basis. No I will not grow up, thank-you-very-much.
So here’s a new logo I came up with while talking to Yoshi about his new design. I did this completely in Illustrator and although it looks pretty good, I still had to fight with it to do some things and have no idea why other things happened. I guess as long as the end result looks OK, who cares about the rest of it.
As you can see it’s a bit funky and retro and I have no idea why this idea came to me. It’s just one of those rare bouts of inspiration that I actually took the time to act on. It’s not too fancy and I wanted to add more to it, but Muse kept telling me that “less is more” and I think she just really wanted me to stop showing her every little thing I changed.
So maybe I’ll figure out a way to integrate that with the theme somehow. Or maybe not. I suppose I should be working on a logo for the web comic. That would have made more sense. Any ideas for that?
I’ve previously mentioned that I’m working on another web site. And that it wasn’t ready yet. And that I’d post more details later. Well, it may not be completely in the shape I’d like it to be in but it is completely functional so far.
I present to you my new web comic A Little Scary (http://alittlescary.com) for your viewing pleasure (or displeasure). There isn’t much there yet, but you will find the first two comics I’ve posted on what I’m hoping will be a regular Monday and Thursday schedule. This will also be where I post any new (or old) art that I’ve worked on, probably as filler material when the comic is running behind schedule.
So please take a moment to pop over and look at what’s there so far. It’s just the beginning and I’m still learning a lot as I go along. If you don’t think it’s terribly funny, then you won’t be alone. It’s just introductions right now and I think that it will get better as I go along. Please leave comments on one or both sites to show your support!
Thanks!
So as I waited for the bus this morning I overheard a group of mothers talking about the school being closed. Then the conversation progressed to all the schools in Hong Kong being closed for two weeks due to a flu outbreak that has killed at least three kids so far. Wonderful. So here I am with three forms of public transportation to use each way to work and back and all these contagious kids are going to be milling about Hong Kong infecting everyone else instead of being quarantined in their schools like they should be. Quarantined of course meaning in class as normal.
Too bad it’s extremely hard to find anti-bacterial soap here….
Other than that, just been busy at work. I’m also slowly attempting to learn Adobe Illustrator. It’s hard. I like Photoshop better but only because it’s familiar I suppose. But I need Illustrator to help me with another project. One that involves another web site. But I’m not telling you which one until later. Because it’s not ready yet, that’s why. Let’s just say it involves some form of art.
It’s weird but there are two acceptable ways of spelling Macao. Macao and Macau. Whatever.
So, today me and the missus are travelling with people from work to Macao on the hydrofoil ferry. Hydrofoils are neat. The whole freaking boat comes up out of the water and it just kind of flies across the top of the water on stilts with skis on the bottoms. I have no idea how ow why it works, but I can only assume that magic or nuclear powered underwater rockets are somehow involved because they are fast.
Everyone in the region was given a blank white half masquerade mask to decorate based on their job or office for a big dinner on the weekend. From what I hear many people aren’t doing it. I hate to sound like I’m using a stereotype but many Asians aren’t very creative. Plus many people are just too busy. I could see how this little “project” could be quite hard for many in this region. Of course, I had to decorate mine.
Here’s the before picture:
Here are the after pictures:
Just thought this would be fun.
I took my Elmo vs Barney pic and made it transparent over lunch today. Then I put it on a hoody. It could be on a t-shirt too. Whatever. I think it’s pretty nifty. I think I might order me one. Weird water-mark on the picture not included.
What do you think? Any interest in things like that? If so, I could see if I could set something up. I’m going to order something… I just don’t know what yet.
It’s Friday, so it’s time for the weekly installment of Drawings by Vince! (applause, the crowd goes wild)
In case you don’t know the drill, here’s how this works. You (the reader) post things that you would like to have drawn in the comments of this post. I pick three ideas and work on them throughout the week. Then on the next Friday I post what I’ve done, no matter if they are finished or not. Easy, no? No.
So here are the drawings for this week:
This first drawing is a combination of two suggestions made by my lovely wife. She asked for quite a few things, but the ones I were most intrigued with were “a unicorn playing guitar” and “And a baby seal. I like baby seals.” So here you are, the only known picture of a rocking unicorn playing to an audience of baby seals. Notice that the unicorn must be playing one hell of a solo because the baby seals have their lighters out.
The second drawing was a difficult suggestion by Jason from Roth Family Adventures. He asked for a drawing of a character from one of my short stories. Well, I’m not very good at drawing people so I figured a monster would be a better choice. So here’s a concept drawing of one of the black creatures from my story The Magician. It’s hard to draw something black on black, so you just have to imagine that it’s all dark. I added some extra darkness with Photoshop. Because I can. Whatever.
The third picture was a suggestion from Shannon from Shannon River. She wanted a picture of a ferret. Preferaby with either a tuxedo or a chainsaw. I’m sure you could guess which one I went with. I haven’t seen the commercial she was talking about, so I came up with my own way of doing it. No mask though… you have to have the crazy ferret face.
So there you have the three new pictures for the week. Be sure to let me know what you think of these and don’t forget to make some new suggestions in the comments. Also, since next Friday is the end of the week, that will be the last time I take suggestions for this month. The results will be posted on Friday October 5th and then I’m taking a break from the crazy self-imposed drawing schedule. So make your suggestions this week and if yours doesn’t get picked, try again on September 28th for the final episode of the ’season’.
And now, over to you.
EDIT: Need more comments! Come on, don’t be shy!
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