tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2405098326545847112024-03-13T03:21:39.209-06:00The Blog of Glen MoyesRecent projects, original articles, sketch book, and newsGlen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-73848006021625510342020-08-06T00:52:00.004-06:002020-08-06T12:17:30.310-06:00How the Subscription Business Model Harms Marginalized Creatives<div style="text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">I'm a long-time Adobe customer. I've been in a good position to use Adobe's software throughout my education and career. It's been a good experience for me, but only because I was a student when the Adobe software had perpetual licenses. You pay for the software once, and you own it forever.</p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p>For a lot of the designers and content creators I associate with, they are not as content with Adobe as I am. Working with more students has opened my eyes to experiences that seem to be the norm, and those experiences are far from my own.</p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p>The root of this seems to be Adobe's current subscription business model. I'm lucky that I graduated when I did, because if I graduated today, there's a greater chance that I wouldn't be a designer.<br /></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">Perpetual licenses saved me after college.</h2></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p>I purchased Adobe Creative Suite Design Premium when I was a college student. The student version wasn't that expensive, and I was able to purchase every new version of the Creative Suite when it came out.</p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h3 style="text-align: left;">It was 2008 when The Great Recession hit.</h3></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p>I graduated during the financial crisis. I couldn't get a design job. I couldn't even get a retail job. The only source of income I had was the occasional freelance work. I was able to freelance because I had a perpetual license to Adobe Creative Suite 3 at the time.</p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p>That copy of CS3 got me through a few very tough years. Eventually I was able to become a full-time freelancer.</p><p>When Adobe's subscription-based Creative Cloud offering was released, I jumped on it and become a subscriber. I was doing more video-related work, and it made more sense to subscribe than to buy a perpetual license to the Master Collection (which contained everything).</p>But what would my career path have been like had I not owned a perpetual license to Adobe software after graduating from college?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">If I graduated with subscription-based software, I would have been ruined.</h2></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p>Replaying back the events after my graduation, it would have ended very differently if Creative Cloud's subscription service was the only option. I would have ran out of money sooner. I would not have been able to afford my monthly subscription. I would not have been able to do any freelance work.</p><p><b>My design career would be over until I could afford a month's worth of Creative Cloud subscription.</b> And to add insult to injury, if I was going to pay month to month (which I would have done because I couldn't ensure a year's worth of financial security) my software would have cost about 41% more than I was paying before.<br /></p><p>Realistically, what I would have done in that scenario, is saved up a month's worth of a Creative Cloud subscription and bought a perpetual license to Affinity Designer instead, and have never have any plans on using Adobe software again.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">That "what if" is the reality for many students and designers.<br /></h3></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p>I know people who were blocked from making money as a designer and content creator because they couldn't afford their Creative Cloud subscription that month. When times are tough, being blocked from getting out of that hole because you lose your tools is last thing a struggling creative or recent graduate needs.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">There are alternatives to this business model.</h2><div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><a href="https://www.squirrellogic.dev/blog/2020/07/subscription-based-software/">I've written an article that goes into more detail over at the Squirrel Logic website.</a> There are alternatives to the subscription business model that generate recurring revenue, and that don't alienate or harm more vulnerable customers.<br /></p><p>If you own a software business, or are wanting to start one, I implore you to consider the realities of how subscription-based software creates a reinforcement loop that further separates the well-off and the marginalized. Nowadays? That marginalized group is getting bigger, and their voices are getting louder.</p></div>Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-68683570800551685252011-10-01T13:21:00.001-06:002011-10-01T13:32:12.826-06:00Jazz Jackrabbit Review and DocumentaryI found out about this video by way of <a href="http://www.jazz2online.com/">Jazz2Online</a> (yes, I do still keep tabs on some of my nostalgia). It's a documentary by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/phreakindee">Lazy Game Reviews</a> about Jazz Jackrabbit, a video game that was quite possibly the most influential piece of my pre-adulthood.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="mp4downloader_embedButtonInitialized mp4downloader_tagChecked " frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/oi3yBkZ9Wss" width="640"></iframe><br />
<div style="text-align: center; width: 640px;"><button class="mp4downloader_btnForIFrame " type="button">Download Video as MP4</button></div><br />
And yes, I own a Gravis Gamepad too.<br />
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Jazz Jackrabbit is the game that got me into music composition while I was in Junior High School. That was the start of my creative endeavors, which eventually led to creative writing, illustration, and finally starting our company Lumaglyph. Jazz Jackrabbit isn't my favorite game of all time (that honor goes to Descent), but it is certainly the defining moment that pushed my life in the direction it is going today.<br />
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So how did Jazz Jackrabbit lead me to music composition? For one the music in the game rocked. In retrospect it was probably a combination of the music, setting and characters that made me love playing the game (it certainly wasn't the gameplay). At the time my brothers were really into the demo scene, so I knew about Scream Tracker and I used it to listen to sound modules (a music file format). After buying the game I read in the manual that they used Scream Tracker<i> to compose the music</i>! Wait. You can use Scream Tracker to actually compose music? I had no idea! After that I started learning Scream Tracker like crazy, and started making my own songs, many of them had samples from the Jazz Jackrabbit soundtrack. That's what started it all.<br />
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The video does a good job talking about the video game and the history behind it. At the 12:50 minute mark the video features a clip of the soundtrack. So if you want to quickly hear what got me into music composition, that's what did it.<br />
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If you are wondering after reading this why I don't compose music anymore, the short answer is that I'm a better artist than musician, and I've found that every hobby I've ever had always had story telling as the root of it. Every song I wrote was based on a story in my head. Every doodle I did was based some story that I had in my head. Even my game designs ended up being more about the story as opposed to the gameplay. I realized that I liked writing stories more, and illustration seemed to be the best way to do it.<br />
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Also there are flaws with how I learned music as opposed to learning art, which prevented me from becoming a better composer. But that's a topic I might write about later.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-33632636840420735902010-09-16T16:42:00.001-06:002010-09-16T16:47:20.992-06:00Fixing Wacom Driver Problems in Windows 7Just a quick post about my adventures/misadventures in Windows 7. There's been reports about problems with the Wacom drivers not working after restarting Windows 7, and I've ran into it as well. When going to the Wacom Tablet Properties it'll show a scary message saying, "THE TABLET DRIVER WAS NOT FOUND." This happened to me on my Cintiq 12WX. Reinstalling the driver made it work again, but once I restarted it stopped working. I researched a fix for the issue but it was either too complicated for me to bother trying or didn't work at all.<br />
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This behavior began about a month after I installed Windows 7, and I think playing around with the tablet PC features in Windows 7 (which, by the way, has really good handwriting recognition), may have been what caused it, like Windows 7 was taking over the tablet driver or something.<br />
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Anyway, suspecting that Windows 7's Tablet PC stuff was causing the problem I tried this and it fixed the problem:<br />
<ol><li>Reinstall the Wacom driver again so the tablet works (no need to uninstall the driver, in fact I'm not even sure if this step is actually necessary).</li>
<li>Load msconfig</li>
<li>Go to the Services tab.</li>
<li>Find the "Tablet PC Input Service" (sorting the services alphabetically may help you find it easier) and then hit the checkbox to disable it.</li>
<li>Restart Windows 7.</li>
<li>Tablet should work!</li>
</ol><br />
Of course if you actually use the Tablet PC features in Windows 7 then this won't be the fix for you, but it's straightforward and got rid of the offending service.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-83049434814067795222010-08-21T22:08:00.002-06:002010-08-21T22:23:38.797-06:00The Difference a Preamp Makes<img src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/images-blog/2010_08_21-m-audio_audiobuddy.jpg" style="border: 0px none; margin: 0px;" /><br />
<br />
Or to put it another way: Making a free internal sound card record like a $150 sound card. <br />
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This blog post is about achieving good audio recording as cheaply as possible, so I'm going to kick it off with an audio file so you can actually hear the difference that I'm talking about.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Here's the story.</b></span><br />
I don't use a headset to talk to people on the computer; those things are uncomfortable and the audio quality sucks.<br />
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For the longest time I used a dynamic mic (which was the <a href="http://www.zzounds.com/item--SHUPG58">Shure PG58</a>), attached to a tripod stand, and the mic plugs into my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, which has a 1/4 TRS jack socket and a built-in preamp which did a great job at recording my voice (compared to the headset). Over the many years I've used it to record video tutorials and recently I've been using that microphone constantly on Skype writing for <a href="http://hackberryhollow.com/">Hackberry Hollow</a>.<br />
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A few weeks ago I bought a new computer. The computer that I've been using (the one that was bought to power the <a href="http://lumaglyph.com/touch_the_table/">Touch the Table</a> project) started to die. And actually my timing was impeccable because 4 days after I built my new computer the old computer died completely, forcing me to move all my work over to the new computer.<br />
<br />
But I wasn't going to move my Audigy over to my new computer. So what's the problem?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Creative Labs went down the tubes.</b></span><br />
The reason why that's a problem is because A) the sound card is really old and has already been in 2 computers so far, so it's probably going to kick the bucket soon anyway, B) a while back I noticed that their most recent drivers were more annoying to use and were also more buggy, so I ended up installing the old drivers I had on the CD instead, and C) there was the <a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/04/daniel_k-who-fi/">Daniel_K incident from two years back</a>. (The short version is that Creative Lab's Phil O’Shaughnessy admitted that their company intentionally crippled its Vista drivers as a business strategy, Daniel_K modded the drivers so they would work in Vista, and then Creative Labs went after the modder), and since I'm trying to get an Audigy to run on Windows 7, that could be an even bigger problem. Yes, it's possible that they've gotten their act together since then, however I haven't heard anyone recommend Creative Lab cards recently. I suppose the point is that I'd rather not risk put my trust in a company to have good driver support on 64-bit Windows 7 for hardware that is seven years old.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Why not get a new sound card, like an M-Audio one for example?</b></span><br />
I've been a big fan of M-Audio's products. They are great for multi-track recording (very good actually), but their cards are specialized for music production and don't have some of the consumer-grade features I was wanting. For example there's no green, black and orange 3.5 mm TRS jacks for surround sound speakers, or even headphone jacks for that matter (it is expected that you have a mixer and are using speakers to monitor your sound).<br />
<br />
I can use one sound card for recording and another for playback, but having two soundcards on a computer can be a big pain. Music production software has no problem with it, but in the past I've had big problems with your normal everyday Windows programs sending sound to the wrong device, even when the default device is set properly.<br />
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Also, since I've decided a year ago that I won't pick up music composition for a while (maybe when I retire as an artist/writer), a pro M-Audio sound card is not on my priority list. However I do want to record good clean sound because I still do video tutorials and the occasional podcast, and of course I use Skype all the time, so having crisp sound would help there too.<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />
What about USB microphones?</b></span><br />
I've been impressed with the USB microphones actually, even though I originally scoffed at the concept. The Samson mics are pretty good, but I need to monitor my voice as I talk because I do occasionally wear headphones—those <i>big</i> headphones that cup around your ears and are affectionately refereed to as cans. I need to be able to hear my voice through the headphones when recording videos and podcasts to make sure I'm not breathing into the mic, that the volumes is right, and to shut out noises that could otherwise be coming out of my speakers.<br />
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The problem with wearing these kinds of headphones is that they are so big and comfy they block out all other sound that is not coming from your headphones, including your own voice. If you'd like to know why that is a problem, talk with your hands pressed against your ears, and that's what it sounds like when you talk wearing those headphones. It is surprisingly hard to talk if you can't year your own voice.<br />
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Monitoring your voice with a USB mic may not be possible, and you can't have any latency (sound delay) because that's more annoying than not being able to hear my voice at all. I will note that the Samson G Track USB microphone does have a headphone jack for no-latency monitoring that addresses that issue, but it does have another issue that I'll get into later.<br />
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Since I'm the A/V guy for Animation Nation it would be nice to have a microphone that doesn't have to be plugged into a computer to work. So a USB mic was out.<br />
<br />
Plus they are more expensive than normal mics because they are basically a condenser mic and USB audio interface in one.<br />
<br />
So I still needed to come up with a solution for my picky recording needs.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The solution: buy a preamp.</b></span><br />
Simple, right? The core problem with plugging a microphone into your computer (or anything else for that matter) is that you need a preamp to amplify the sound being recorded from your mic. You know how you have to turn on the 10 dB boost for your headset microphone to work? In the case of a nicer microphone like mine, even a 30 dB boost isn't enough. However, with a preamp you don't have to do that; it'll be full power like plugging your MP3 player into your computer or car using the line-in jack; the audio comes in loud and clean.<br />
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After reading some reviews on <a href="http://www.zzounds.com/">Zzounds</a> (which is the best online store ever for music/audio gear) I picked the <a href="http://www.zzounds.com/item--THKMIMAB0">M-Audio AudioBuddy preamp</a> because it hardly introduces any noise into the signal, it's a brand that I trust, and was the best bang-for-your-buck selling for $60. If nothing else I can still use the preamp for Animation Nation Night, allowing me to add a second microphone to our speaker system.<br />
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I got it in the mail, plugged it in, and heard the results. Here's what was stunning. There wasn't any audible background noise. Where did it go? I could have sworn I could always hear the noise that—I assumed—was from the fans in my computer running in the background. Maybe it was the new mic? I tried my old one. Same thing. No background noise.<br />
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I had some recordings from video tutorials that I used to compare my Audigy with its preamp, and the internal Realtek soundcard with the new M-Audio external preamp. The difference was night and day. My internal Realtek sound card, the one that is integrated into the motherboard, the sound card that I got <i>for free</i> sounded better than my Audigy, a $200 sound card (which I also got for free but that's another story). And the preamp has the added benifit of letting me quickly mute my microphone by pushing the power button on the preamp.<br />
<br />
So as it turns out my Audigy's preamp wasn't very good at all, and the recording quality with the integrated Realtek cards isn't bad provided that you don't use their 10-30 dB boost option either.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Adapter plugs and the mic only coming in the left channel.</span></b><br />
This will be pretty obvious when you do this, but you'll need an adapter to plug the microphone into your computer. Microphones generally have an XLR connector, and many microphones come with a free XLR to 1/4 TS cable (1/4 TS is the standard cable used for audio equipment, like mixers and amps.) So you'll need to get a 1/4 TS (mono) female to 3.5 mm TRS (stereo) male adapter so you can plug that into the microphone port on your computer. The one I bought was the <a href="http://www.zzounds.com/item--HOSGMP386">Hosa Technology GMP-386</a>. <br />
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I just happened to have had a 1/4 TRS (stereo) to 3.5 mm TRS (stereo) adapter lying around, so I used that initially. It worked but when I was monitoring my voice it was only coming out of the left speaker. (This is also a problem with the Samson G Track USB microphone, and since it uses a USB connector you can't fix the problem with an adapter. Yet another reason why I decided not to get a USB mic.) The one-channel issue is a little annoying to work with. It doesn't interfer with voice communication (like Skype, etc.) but it does when I monitor my voice, and can be a pain during audio editing if I recorded a track in stereo. So that's why I got the mono to stereo version of that adapter (and a mono to mono one as well just to see what would happen, and that adapter gave the same unsatisfactory left-channel-only results).<br />
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The drawback with the mono to stereo adapter is that the volume gets cut (per channel) because it's splitting the signal strength between the two channels, which makes sense of course. In my experiments however, recording mono tracks in my software brings both channels together to the original signal strength anyway, so in the end it's not a problem.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Conclusion</b></span><br />
If you want to record great quality sound on that integrated Realtek sound card, all you need is a $60 preamp, a $60 microphone (or that $130 <a href="http://www.zzounds.com/item--AUDOM3">Audix OM3</a> that I just bought, which only has slightly better sound quality because it's not as bassy as the Shure PG58), and that will let you record some great quality voice work with it.<br />
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I will add though that getting a sound card, like the M-audio one, should have a much better signal to noise ratio over the Realtek sound card. So if you are serious (and I'm not <i>that</i> serious), the M-Audio cards are probably always the better option, and you won't have to buy an external preamp (which in total would only cost $60 more or so).Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-79700362454146841242010-05-15T20:44:00.003-06:002020-08-06T10:24:08.569-06:00News Flash: Klok 2 released<div><b>Update: August 2020</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I've stopped using Klok and I've switched over to <a href="https://www.manictime.com/">ManicTime</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>After a few years of use, Klok started to take longer and longer to access certain views within the app. I suspect it was because of the size of the database that was making the app so unresponsive.</div><div><br /></div><div>I also ran into issues with Klok licensing. There's a fixed installation limit that is not advertised or mentioned on their website.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I'll probably do a dedicated post on ManicTime at a later date, but I wanted to mention here that I'm recommending different time tracking software now.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *<br /></div><div><br /></div><span></span><span></span><div>Klok 2 just barely got released! Go download it at <a href="http://getklok.com/">getklok.com</a>.
Previous articles about Klok:
</div><ul><li><a href="http://glenmoyes.blogspot.com/2010/02/massively-useful-software-follow-up.html">Massively Useful Software (follow up): Klok</a></li><li><a href="http://glenmoyes.blogspot.com/2009/02/massively-useful-life-changing-software.html">Massively Useful (Life Changing) Software: Klok</a></li></ul>Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-49753967475079660262010-03-20T00:14:00.003-06:002010-03-20T00:22:45.283-06:00Dynamic Range Day 2010<a href="http://productionadvice.co.uk/dynamic-range-day" title="Dynamic Range Day – Loudness War Protest"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4035/4388790638_2710efbae2_o.gif" alt="Dynamic Range Day – Loudness War Protest" height="60" width="468" /></a><br /><br />Just so you know, today is <a href="http://productionadvice.co.uk/dynamic-range-day/">Dynamic Range Day</a>.<br /><br /><span style=";font-family:Verdana,Arial;font-size:85%;" ></span><blockquote><span style=";font-family:Verdana,Arial;font-size:85%;" >Music is getting louder - and sounding worse.<br /><br />Over the past 20 years, the recording and mastering of recorded music has been increasingly plagued by an industry-wide practice of making recordings as loud as possible, while crushing any dynamics contained in the original performance.<br /><br />The result is music that sounds flat, two-dimensional, distorted, and is exhausting to listen to.<br /><br />This self-defeating race to be "louder" than anyone else has become known as the Loudness Wars. You can read more about it at Wikipedia - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war</a> - or see an example at YouTube - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ</a> .<br /><br />Well... March 20th 2010 is Dynamic Range Day !<br /><br />This is our chance to fight back and raise awareness.</span></blockquote>Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-53783031744027733872010-02-18T13:37:00.003-07:002010-02-18T14:00:51.263-07:00Massively Useful Software (follow up): Klok<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPmye_CX2EuJ2KIGRMZMi8l5zFrtg1MN-xFVCa-ye1h7iZFVvZdkb3ZNSp58YjsCps7IXpNTTeLRI4-G4A-rfTXLvHgpl_akQZh4RumFmX_i6gcr-qpSfIwC9J44qzrixkFnAmA9h4MMU/s1600-h/2009_02_22-klok_logo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 114px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPmye_CX2EuJ2KIGRMZMi8l5zFrtg1MN-xFVCa-ye1h7iZFVvZdkb3ZNSp58YjsCps7IXpNTTeLRI4-G4A-rfTXLvHgpl_akQZh4RumFmX_i6gcr-qpSfIwC9J44qzrixkFnAmA9h4MMU/s320/2009_02_22-klok_logo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305847018615634834" border="0" /></a>Did you know that <a href="http://klok.mcgraphix.com/klok/betaProgram.htm">Klok has a beta program</a>? Neither did I until today. Sure you can download a beta version but it's not the current version of the software. Thank goodness because I've been using the public beta for a year and with no software updates I was worried that the project was dead. Luckily I found frequent and recent posts about Klok on <a href="http://twitter.com/getklok">their Twitter page</a> and <a href="http://agileui.blogspot.com/">blog</a>.<br /><br />You can be a part of the beta program my making a donation (anything greater than $0). I of course donated because as you might have read on my <a href="http://glenmoyes.blogspot.com/2009/02/massively-useful-life-changing-software.html">original post on Klok</a> last year, Klok is totally worth using!Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-4093446305265543842010-01-18T17:59:00.006-07:002010-01-20T03:02:55.497-07:00Quick update: Hackberry Hollow (and other stuff too)Just checking and reminding everyone that <a href="http://hackberryhollow.com/">Hackberry Hollow</a> is still in steady production. Here's some recent concept art, showing a sneak peak of Chapter 1. Be sure to check out the <a href="http://hackberryhollow.com/">blog</a> for more concept art and updates on the project.<br /><br /><img src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/images-blog/2010_01_18-hackberryhollow-concept_art-creatures-003.jpg" alt="An undead soldier hiding in a dark forest wearing a ghillie suit" /><br /><br />Yes, I haven't been posting on my personal blog very much, but we do post on the Hackberry Hollow blog every Tuesday without fail, and the content is far more interesting. So subscribe to the <a href="http://hackberryhollow.com/feed/">RSS feed</a> to get updates on what I'm working on.<br /><br />We're all <span style="font-style: italic;">extremely </span>excited about the project. We got the story nailed and the script is being written (we are almost done with the first volume out of five). The reactions to the script have been overwhelmingly positive, so we definitely feel that we have a winner and can't wait to get this project released.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Animation Academy</span><br />About 5 months ago I enrolled into <a href="http://www.theanimationacademy.com/">The Animation Academy</a> down in Burbank for character design classes and <span style="font-style: italic;">wow,</span> has it been a big help. Also today is The Animation Academy's 12 birthday, so that's pretty cool.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Massively Useful Software</span><br />I've been using <a href="http://www.lyx.org/">LyX</a> for most of my word processing needs recently. It creates beautifully typeset PDF documents with table of contents, indexes, and so on. I've been using it for my personal and production journals, and it saves them in the TeX format so they'll be readable forever.<br /><br />I may do a full post on it eventually but I figured I'd at least make a quick mention of it now. It really is a nice piece of software for making multi-page text documents like books.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-82384042034880003372009-08-14T18:06:00.006-06:002009-08-14T19:00:01.958-06:00Massively Useful Software: nLite and ntfscloneI recently reinstalled Windows onto my computer, a ritual that I have done for years to keep my operating system running nicely thanks to Windows bit rot. I usually do it about once a year, in this case it's been two so it really needed a fresh install. The problems with regularly reinstalling Windows are downloading and installing all of the updates, which takes forever since my original Windows XP Pro disc is Service Pack 1. Luckily there's software that makes the process easier.<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >nLite</span><br />I wish I knew about this program earlier. <a href="http://www.nliteos.com/">nLite</a> is an easy to use application that allows you to make a backup copy of your Windows install disc, slipstream the service pack and updates into the Windows install (google for the Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals and Developers; it's an EXE file that nLite will ask for to do that), install drivers such as my SATA drivers that I needed to install Windows on something other than my old soon-to-fail IDE hard drive, and then finally burn the new customized Windows install disc as a bootable CD or DVD.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >ntfsclone</span><br />Another useful program is <a href="http://man.linux-ntfs.org/ntfsclone.8.html">ntfsclone</a>. It's a command-line Linux program that can clone an NTFS partition to a single file as a backup. This is useful because now I have a disk image of a fresh Windows install, so I don't have to reinstall Windows if I want a fresh system. It's also a nice way to make save-states for full system recoveries just in case something bad happens, or if I decide to—um, experiment, and want a way to recover my system if I screw something up.<br /><br />Speaking of fresh installs, I'm adding a new series to the blog.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:150%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Massively <span style="font-style: italic;">ANNOYING</span> Software: Adobe Product Activation</span></span><br /><br />For the love of all that is holy, <span style="font-style: italic;">BE SURE TO DEACTIVATE YOUR ADOBE SOFTWARE BEFORE YOU WIPE YOUR HARD DRIVE!</span><br /><br />This is the second time I've reinstalled Windows while having CS3 installed on it. Remember how the Adobe license only lets you install the Adobe Suite onto two different computers? Yeah. This was the third time I tried to install CS3, and both times prior I forgot to deactivate the Adobe software before completely wiping my hard drive. It never crossed my mind.<br /><br />So, add that to your reinstall ritual. When you are making sure that all of your files are backed up, load up any Adobe program, then go to Help > Deactivate before you reinstall Windows. Otherwise be prepared to be on the line with Adobe Customer Support with a good excuse. Luckily I was able to activate over the phone, but boy was that a pain; having to call and ask permission to use my software.<br /><br />Sadly this is not limited to Adobe. Other software/media that requires online activation to keep track of how many computers you've installed it on may also require you to deactivate it as well. So keep that in mind and tell the folks at Adobe to <a href="http://glenmoyes.blogspot.com/2008/02/better-than-free-piracy-vs-legitimacy.html">read this article</a> because seriously, activating and deactivating software is a pain.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-42816287506235498072009-05-07T14:33:00.003-06:002009-05-07T16:03:05.043-06:00Lumaglyph Project: Hackberry HollowYou know that top secret Lumaglyph project I've been mentioning recently? Well, it's not a secret anymore. Here's the announcement.<br /><br /><img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto;" src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/images-blog/2009_05_07-hackberryhollow1.jpg" width="640" height="313" /><br /><br />Hackberry Hollow is our first internal project at Lumaglyph, and we've recently launched the site at <a href="http://hackberryhollow.com/">HackberryHollow.com</a>. We set up a blog so we can post new concept art and other cool stuff as the project develops. The blog is updated every Tuesday afternoon.<br /><br />We've been writing the story for about a year now. Both Adam and I are really excited with how the story has developed, and so far everyone we've shared it with loves it. Now that we have a solid outline for the story we are going into high gear working on the concept art. So be sure to subscribe to the <a href="http://hackberryhollow.com/?feed=rss2">Hackberry Hollow RSS feed</a> for updates on my new work.<br /><br />Here's some of the artwork I've posted so far.<br /><br /><img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto;" src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/images-blog/2009_05_07-hackberryhollow2.jpg" width="640" height="320" /><br /><br /><img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto;" src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/images-blog/2009_05_07-hackberryhollow3.jpg" width="640" height="360" /><br /><br /><img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto;" src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/images-blog/2009_05_07-hackberryhollow4.jpg" width="640" height="360" /><br /><br />So that's what we've been working on: <a href="http://hackberryhollow.com/">Hackberry Hollow</a>.<br /><br />Visit the site, post comments on the artwork, and soon we'll have an epic webcomic for you to read.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-5756481896486483602009-04-26T12:59:00.003-06:002009-04-26T13:25:24.066-06:00Massively Useful Software: Gobby<div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIT8lCm4i0K10M4317AVuuVJZ0uA1yHd_0amjs7eky1lwPTmOf2aL-TsAgD-65pFXKwHR6utN-U-vBh90ex7V6mljblNaarp7LRtTxHOmJwRqMP2_uuFqLnF3-zQM_S-u1jCl9PNvVx_Q/s1600-h/2009_04_26-gobby.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10pt 10px 0px; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 287px; height: 100px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIT8lCm4i0K10M4317AVuuVJZ0uA1yHd_0amjs7eky1lwPTmOf2aL-TsAgD-65pFXKwHR6utN-U-vBh90ex7V6mljblNaarp7LRtTxHOmJwRqMP2_uuFqLnF3-zQM_S-u1jCl9PNvVx_Q/s400/2009_04_26-gobby.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329076977409258514" border="0" /></a>Celtx is a great and all for writing stories, but when it comes to online collaborative writing our team uses <a href="http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/">Gobby</a>. Gobby allows multiple people to work on the same text file at the same time. You don't have to designate one person as the scribe. You don't have to take turns. You can type where ever you want when ever you want, and any text you insert will be highlighted with your user color, so you always know who wrote what.<br /></div><br />Gobby was created with programmers in mind, so it features line numbering, auto indenting, and syntax highlighting. As writers we ignore those features except for the line numbering. Our text documents can get quite long and it's easy to say "look at line 2053," because they can press Ctrl-I and enter that line number in to zip them to the same line you're looking at.<br /><br />The user highlighting has also been useful for us to tag sections that need attention with bright red or some other obnoxious color that you can't possibly miss. We just open up a new instance of Gobby, log in as another user, change the highlight color for that user to something obnoxious, and off you go. One of the text documents we are working on with Gobby is the outline for our <em>previously</em> top secret Lumaglyph project (I'll make the announcement for that in a week or two) that is currently over 2000 lines long. To give you an idea about how long that is, a paragraph still counts as one line, and our outline would be 72 pages long if we printed it out. So needless to say that the line numbering and creating multiple users with loud highlighting colors has been a godsend in helping us work with gigantic text documents.<br /><br />Even though Gobby has no rich text support or undo (be sure to save often!), it has still been a great tool in helping us collaborate in real time on the same document even though we are all in different states. And even if we were in the same room we'd still use Gobby; it's simply that useful.<br /><br />For those that are curious, there are alternatives to Gobby out there that we have looked at. <a href="http://etherpad.com/">EtherPad</a> is a web app that works a lot like Gobby, but if you are concerned about having your work unencrypted on their server you may want to use something else, but EtherPad does have undo! <a href="http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/">SubEthaEdit</a> has some nice features like showing what area of the document a user is currently looking at on the scroll bar, but unfortunately it's OSX only and costs money too. Mozilla Labs is working on a new web based editor called <a href="http://labs.mozilla.com/projects/bespin/">Bespin</a> that has a really slick and promising interface, and a lot of neat features that are definitely geared for programmers. That might be a project to keep an eye on as it's still very experimental at the moment. <a href="http://moonedit.com/">MoonEdit</a> is also worth a mention (Windows and Linux only, free for non-commercial use).<br /><br />But out of all the alternatives out there, Gobby has worked the best for us. It works on Windows, Linux and OSX (however getting it to work in OSX is a <span style="font-style: italic;">huge</span> pain), Gobby is encrypted over the internet, password authentication is supported, and it's free and open source.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Triad of Collaborative Writing</span></span><br />As with all real-time text editors, voice chat and secure online storage for your work is still a necessity. We use <a href="http://www.skype.com/">Skype</a> for voice chat and our own <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/">MediaWiki</a> server for storing and organizing information about all our projects. The wiki has been, and still is, the keystone of our collaborative work. The best way to explain how we use the wiki for this particular project is that it's a series bible, filled full of backstory, character profiles, a milieu encyclopedia, and of course the outline and scripts, all cross linked to each other and full of reference and original images, just like Wikipedia (in fact Wikipedia runs on MediaWiki). Our Gobby documents are done in wiki code so that we can copy and paste them right into the wiki so these documents are easy to find and read.<br /><br />We originally used Gobby for taking meeting notes during our brainstorming sessions, which we would then copy and paste into a new meeting notes page in the wiki to be sorted sometime later (usually weeks later). When we did finally get around to that, we'd go through all our meeting notes and sort them into the wiki, making new wiki pages as necessary. It was pretty tedious. Now, this happened during the initial brainstorming phase of the project, so everything was kind of a mess in terms of categorization anyway. But when we came to the point where our main focus was the outline, we were working in Gobby pretty much most of the time, and usually with just 2 documents in the Gobby session: one document for our outline and then the other for our random notes, which we could then sort directly into the outline or into the various pages on the wiki. With those smaller non-outline related notes we'd often make those changes directly in the wiki. Once we started doing that process our lives became easier and we spent more and more of our time just writing and coming up with ideas. We save the Gobby session locally on our computers so we can keep all the user highlighting until we are ready to clean the slate again. And we've made an aggreement to not edit the outline on the wiki because of all this.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span></span><br />Until Celtx—or even better MediaWiki, once they've added a few more dream features of ours—ever gets around to implementing real-time collaboration, Gobby is the best solution we've found as writers working together online.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-40602437880826490402009-04-12T18:24:00.002-06:002009-04-12T18:51:17.510-06:00What I've Been Playing: Braid<img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto;" src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/images-blog/2009_04_12-braid.jpg" width="640" height="250" /><br /><br />A couple of days ago <a href="http://braid-game.com/">Braid</a> was <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/">finally released on Steam</a>. I bought it, played it and enjoyed everything about it: the puzzles, the art, and especially the story telling mechanic in the last level.<br /><br />I had already decided to buy the game long before because <a href="http://glenmoyes.blogspot.com/2007/12/design-reboot.html">Jonathan Blow always gives such good talks on game design</a>, so I was more than happy to send money his way as soon as a PC version was available. Anyway, check the game out. A free demo is already out in the wild so you can it a whirl.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-74756087581138215222009-03-03T09:40:00.003-07:002009-03-05T15:17:24.310-07:00News Flash: Celtx 2.0 ReleasedCeltx 2.0 was released this past week. For going from 1.0 to 2.0, Celtx doesn't have <a href="http://www.celtx.com/release.html">a whole lot of new features</a>. The two big changes are Celtx Studio, which is their $50 yearly subscription version of Project Central with a free beta until March 24, and the ability to add Extensions/Add-Ons to Celtx, which I'm really excited about.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-34066956716167243312009-03-01T20:53:00.005-07:002009-08-12T11:16:24.306-06:00Photoshop Brush and Tool Presets 2009.03You'll be hearing a lot more about illustration from me in the future as our project develops, and to kick it off here's the brushes I use for most of my illustration work. I didn't include any of my special brushes for things like trees and water; most of those brushes are created on a per-project basis and I only ever used them once, although I did go ahead and include my fur brush. Anyway, <span style="font-style: italic;">these</span> are the brushes I use all the time.<br /><br /><a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/brushes/glenmoyes-2009_03-brush_presets.zip">Glen Moyes 2009.03 Brush Presets</a> – 85MB<br /><a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/brushes/glenmoyes-2009_03-tool_presets.zip">Glen Moyes 2009.03 Tool Presets</a> – 85MB<br /><br />Here they are in action.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto;" src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/brushes/images/2009_03_01-brushes.jpg" /><br /></div><br />Many of these brushes have a narrow tip like a calligraphy brush, and they use the pen tilt of the stylus to rotate the brush tip, so you really need an Wacom Intuos tablet or better to take advantage of these brushes. I'll get into the advantages of a narrow brush tip when I start doing video tutorials on painting with Photoshop.<br /><br />I've provided a Tool Preset and Brush Preset file for these brushes. You should download both so you can use the Brushes Presets for all the Photoshop tools that use brushes (like the eraser and stamp tool), and the Tool Presets so certain brushes will already have the correct flow amount set so they work properly, and so you can have the Tool Presets window up easily access brushes and the special smear brush Water Color Blender brush which has become my favorite next to the Nupastel brush.<br /><br />Speaking of the Nupastel brush, that brush is the one largely responsible for the 85MB file size. The nupastel texture is huge, scanned at 1200ppi so you can increase the texture size of that brush to fill the canvas with big chunky texture without blurring. I thought about decreasing the texture size for public release but that would be doing the nupastel brush a disservice. Many of the other brushes have overscanned textures as well, like the graphite textures which are 600ppi, so you can scale them up for different effects. The texture scale for each brush is set so that if your document is set to 300ppi the texture will be to scale, so adjust the texture size accordingly.<br /><br />Another unusual thing you'll see about this set are the symbols I used for the brush names. I had a really hard time trying to find brushes with names like "Acrylic - Round - Sketchpaper" among similarly named brushes with no dividers and all sorted alphabetically. So I numbered them, found some high-bit characters to use as shapes to replace words like <span style="font-style: italic;">big</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">round</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">light</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">hard</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">rough</span>, and put a big divider between each section (which if you do happen to click on brings up a generic caligraphy brush). The symbols are pretty self explanatory—to me anyway. They do help finding the brush you want.<br /><br />I'll be updating the brushes as I create more in the future.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Note to Windows XP Users</span><br />I recently did a reinstall of my computer and I noticed a potential problem for Windows XP users (not sure if this problem applies to Vista).<br /><br />If you load the brushes into Photoshop, the high-bit characters may not display properly; they'll appear as boxes instead. To fix this, you need to go to your Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages (tab) > and check the two check boxes for "Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages (including Thai)" and "Install files for East Asian languages." You may only need one of those installed, so if you want to experiment go for it. For some reason that fixes the problem, and upon reboot (or for me two reboots because Windows Explorer crashed out of the gate the first time) the high-bit characters will show up.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-81052949788893809402009-02-22T21:21:00.010-07:002010-02-18T13:59:54.726-07:00Massively Useful (Life Changing) Software: Klok<span style="font-style: italic;">EDIT: This article has a follow up post about </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://glenmoyes.blogspot.com/2010/02/massively-useful-software-follow-up.html">the beta program</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> that was written a year later.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPmye_CX2EuJ2KIGRMZMi8l5zFrtg1MN-xFVCa-ye1h7iZFVvZdkb3ZNSp58YjsCps7IXpNTTeLRI4-G4A-rfTXLvHgpl_akQZh4RumFmX_i6gcr-qpSfIwC9J44qzrixkFnAmA9h4MMU/s1600-h/2009_02_22-klok_logo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 114px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPmye_CX2EuJ2KIGRMZMi8l5zFrtg1MN-xFVCa-ye1h7iZFVvZdkb3ZNSp58YjsCps7IXpNTTeLRI4-G4A-rfTXLvHgpl_akQZh4RumFmX_i6gcr-qpSfIwC9J44qzrixkFnAmA9h4MMU/s320/2009_02_22-klok_logo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305847018615634834" border="0" /></a>And yes, I do mean life changing.<br /><br />Ever wonder how much time you <span style="font-style: italic;">actually </span>spend on a project? If you bid a 40 hour project are you really sure it's going to take that long? How much time does each stage of the project take? How many hours do you spend emailing the client? What about other activities during the day like visiting websites, recreation, and cooking food? Where is your time going?<br /><br />I've wanted to know the answers to those questions for a very long time. I thought I had a pretty good idea, but I could never know for sure without an easy to use timeclock program. In the past I've searched for a free one that does not require a web server and is adequate for single person use, but I couldn't find one.<br /><br />Luckily a week and a half ago I found a very promising candidate thanks to an article on <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/02/14-applications-for-project-management-and-collaboration/">Webdesigner Debot</a>. It's called <a href="http://klok.mcgraphix.com/klok/index.htm">Klok</a>, an <a href="http://get.adobe.com/air/">Adobe AIR</a> app and therefore multiplatform application.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >A Week with Klok</span><br />I would have blogged about Klok sooner but I wanted to show what a full week of using Klok looks like. I've replaced the names of some of these projects so I could show you a screenshot of my schedule. So here it is: what I actually did throughout the week. No guess work, no calculating, just dragging and dropping a task into the "Currently working on" area every time I switched tasks.<br /><br /><img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto;" src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/images-blog/2009_02_22-klok-week.jpg" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br />By looking at the Week View I can see when I woke up, when I went to bed, how much work I got done that day, and so on. Every project is color coded so I can get a good idea about what I did that day at a glance.<br /><br /><img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto;" src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/images-blog/2009_02_22-klok-report.jpg" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br />The Reports are also very informative. I can see a percentage of how much time I put into each activity throughout the week. And if I wanted to get into more detail I can click on the piece of the pie chart to bring up the subtasks for that project.<br /><br /><img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; float: right;" src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/images-blog/2009_02_22-klok-project.jpg" alt="" border="0" />And lastly, another important function of Klok is knowing how much time you've put into a project compared to how much your estimate was. You can give the project an overall hourly rate, as well as rates for each subtask, so things like emailing the client can have a lower hourly rate than actual design work if you want. If no hourly rate is set for a subproject it'll just assume the hourly rate you set for the top-level project. Klok can then calculate how much the project was actually worth based on the combined hourly rates to help you better bid projects in the future.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Accountability</span><br />Another thing that's great about using Klok is the accountability of having to record everything you do throughout the day. In the same way that people who keep a food journal are much more likely to loose weight than those who don't, you'll become more likely to be productive when you can see how much time you spent goofing off instead of working. If there's too much turquoise or neon green in my Week View—turquoise representing my non-essential daily tasks and green representing recreation (i.e. video games)—I'll be compelled to start working more because I'll have irrefutable proof that I've wasted too much time.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Learning and Trying New Things to be More Productive</span><br />Based on the information I got from the Week View and the Reports I was able to make some observations about my work and non-working habits.<br /><br />For one, I spend a lot of time visiting websites, which includes reading news, insightful articles, and comics. To give you an idea I spent about 23 hours this past week working on freelance stuff and 11 hours visiting websites. Last year I realized that I spent a ton of time visiting websites, so I started using Google Reader which has saved me a lot of time, but even with Google Reader I've found that I still need to come up with a way to make that part of my life more efficient or reduce the number of sites I visit because it's a non-essential part of my life, even though I do find treasures of information on those sites occasionally (like Klok for example). So this coming week as an experiment I'll check the same RSS feeds, but instead of logging into Google Reader as a break-time activity I'll log in only once throughout the day to see if that reduces the time I spend reading articles. <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>And after the week is done I can pull up the report and make a comparison<span style="font-style: italic;">. [Update: It worked. I spent a few less hours visiting websites when I did that.] </span>Klok makes it really easy to use the scientific method in your time management.<br /><br />The other thing I was also surprised about was how much of my time was spent writing emails to clients (about 10%). Depending on the length of the email it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a full hour to write each one. The reason for this is I'll proofread each one and make sure I word everything just right and have no spelling or gramatical errors. I'm convinced that it's time well spent to sound intelligent to your clients, and I know they've appreciated it because I've gotten comments saying how informative and thorough my emails are. I'm not sure how I could speed that up except by becoming a better writer and proofreader, but it's still nice to know how much time is spent doing that when I make bids for future projects<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Conclusion</span><br />If you are a freelancer <span style="font-style: italic;">use this program</span>. The ability to keep track of your daily activities to the to the minute, and do it easily, is extremely valuable. I was able to use this program to keep track of everything I did throughout the day, which was easy for me because I'm at my computer all the time. So even if your life doesn't evolve around the computer you can still use it record what you do when you are at your computer working.<br /><br />Be sure you download (and read the information for) <a href="http://klok.mcgraphix.com/klok/downloads.html">the beta version</a> because it has a lot of really nice features that the "stable" version doesn't. And the beta is not that buggy.<br /><br />And while we are still on the topic, <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5784740380335567758">Randy Pausch gave a great lecture on Time Management</a> which I'd strongly recommend you watch if you haven't already.<br /><br />Oh, one last thing. Observant readers may have noticed from the screenshot that I've been spending a ton of time on a Super Top Secret Lumaglyph Project. I'll be sharing information on that—eventually.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-45146170745892229932009-02-15T22:27:00.012-07:002011-03-29T01:43:18.342-06:00Massively Useful Software: FontForge and YourFonts.com<i>[EDIT] Scruss provide some information on how to do this under Cygwin (and Linux I'm sure) at <a href="http://scruss.com/blog/2010/05/09/creating-a-truetype-font-from-your-handwriting-with-your-scanner-your-printer-and-fontforge/">http://scruss.com/blog/2010/05/09/creating-a-truetype-font-from-your-handwriting-with-your-scanner-your-printer-and-fontforge/</a> I haven't tried it out yet, (when I do I'll post it here) but this could very well come in handy. Thanks for the tip!</i><br />
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Many of the designers I know are typophiles. We live and breath type and will search for hours trying to find the right typeface, and when we are not doing that we'll spend weeks trying to create one. Here's a couple of font tools that I've used in the past: YourFonts.com automatically creates a TrueType font from a scan of your handwriting, and FontForge allows you to create fonts from scratch and of course edit existing ones.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;">YourFonts.com</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">[EDIT] YourFoints is not free anymore. It now costs $12.50 + $6.00 if you upload both template pages.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAXcUFfBjIaSQITK9Mo5b4vYN00wrPISGbdLcJgos9epAJj0rKfAR5Ms2UVzjIGlg0hZcogoRHQT_kLi2wA-Pa3ckRMyjXwJZanFvGyRbeEjxYiBdmHQc3j546XKN1P9R0cr95gSH6Nwo/s1600-h/2009_02_15-handwritten_fonts.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303263004703269746" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAXcUFfBjIaSQITK9Mo5b4vYN00wrPISGbdLcJgos9epAJj0rKfAR5Ms2UVzjIGlg0hZcogoRHQT_kLi2wA-Pa3ckRMyjXwJZanFvGyRbeEjxYiBdmHQc3j546XKN1P9R0cr95gSH6Nwo/s320/2009_02_15-handwritten_fonts.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 240px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 320px;" /></a>For years I've wanted to create a font of my own handwriting. Originally my motivation for this was out of novelty because having your handwriting as a TrueType font is just plain cool. But now that I'm doing more concept art I wanted my handwriting font because using a font like Myriad Pro for notes just doesn't fit well with the loose sketches and paintings. Even though it takes some time to set up the gridlines and write my notes on screen using my tablet, I do it anyway because it just looks right as opposed to using a refined font.<br />
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For a while I've put off making that font because of how long it would take for me to make one, but now there's <a href="http://yourfonts.com/">YourFonts.com</a>. After about 20 minutes of writing my font into the template they provided (which I did in Photoshop so it would look like I wrote it with a tablet) I was able to create a TrueType font of my handwriting!<br />
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The raster to vector conversion was good, and aside from some kerning issues (which I'll get into in a second) the font was perfect. So it was a good thing I waited because this site saved me a lot of time.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;">FontForge</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKrmtgIb7cU-OFnlWsQXxu_lmAjHUrNHucaXXaIolkjG-UdgI_l7o1ljpEnioNvpL5CtNKF-SZkiw0kjcZLmOXTLwhl-f4i6s9xOiQQLT9eUfu-_6bTlR4IOXDauMCi2W9uu9Ducfy4io/s1600-h/2009_02_15-fontforge.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303263116634330130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKrmtgIb7cU-OFnlWsQXxu_lmAjHUrNHucaXXaIolkjG-UdgI_l7o1ljpEnioNvpL5CtNKF-SZkiw0kjcZLmOXTLwhl-f4i6s9xOiQQLT9eUfu-_6bTlR4IOXDauMCi2W9uu9Ducfy4io/s320/2009_02_15-fontforge.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 256px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 320px;" /></a>So about those kerning issues. YourFonts.com creates a TrueType font with the left and right bearings at a fixed distance away from the glyph. And as any type designer would know this isn't always desirable, and I definitely wanted to change the width of the space character, so to fix all of that I used a powerful open source program called <a href="http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/">FontForge</a>.<br />
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FontForge isn't always a super easy program to install. It's originally a Linux program, and if you are using Ubuntu you simply go to Add New Programs, search for FontForge, and it'll download and install it for you automatically. Mac users will have <a href="http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/mac-install.html">a harder time installing it</a>, but for those of you using Windows you could have <a href="http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/ms-install.html">a frustrating experience</a>; you'll need to install Cygwin.<br />
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Now, I've installed FontForge on Windows before so I knew what I was getting into. I do have it installed on my Fedora partition but having to reboot just to edit a font is troublesome. I thought that I could sidestep the Cygwin nightmare by installing <a href="http://www.andlinux.org/">andLinux</a> which is basically Ubuntu running on something that is kind of like a virtual machine (in that it needs dedicated RAM) just so I could install FontForge without problems. Unfortunately, it crashed a lot and FontForge ran slowly too, so I decided to go ahead and install Cygwin anyway which I do still recommend if you are going to be running FontForge in Windows.<br />
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Here's some tips about installing it because the documentation on the FontForge site on how to install Cygwin properly is lacking.<br />
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From the server list select mirror.kernel.org. It's a fast and reliable server. When you go to select the packages that need to be installed, first make sure that the checkbox on the bottom that says "hide obsolete packages" is unchecked, as FontForge needs some obsolete packages. And I found clicking on the view button so it's set to "full" helped my find everything too.<br />
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The good news is that making sure that all of the packages are selected is the hard part. The rest of the steps on how to install it are pretty straight forward.<br />
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I will add though that FontForge, even though it's probably the best font editing software out there, the program is pretty ugly. But hey, once you install it and go through the tutorials they have on the FontForge site it's a pretty nice program.<br />
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After I installed FontForge I started to adjust the kerning between each pair of characters. Yes, you can set the kern for any pair of characters that you want and have the kern amount stored in the font so it's kerned automatically as you type it; it's just a matter of typing the letters into the Metric Window and drag and drop the lines between them.<br />
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But first you need to create a lookup subtable for the kern amount. And again, I do suggest you read the manual because I'm not going to write a huge tutorial on how to do this, but here's some hints: If you try to adjust the kerning it'll bring the New Lookup Subtable dialog for you. The subtable type should already be set to "pair position (kerning)", click on the "<new>" button, change the feature to "horizontal kerning", and maybe change the lookup name to "kern" just so it's shorter. When you click OK it'll ask you for a name. Just use what it put in already. After that's set up, anytime you change the spacing between any two characters that you type out on the Metrics Window it'll save the kern amount, so you'll want to try every combination of letters if you have time to.<br />
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And again, FontForge is a serious program so please read the manual before you use it. You'll be glad you did because FontForge is a great program for blooming type designers.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Massively Useful Typography Books?</span></span><br />
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Sure, while we are on the topic. <a aiotarget="false" aiotitle="The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst" href="http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881791326">"The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst</a>. A must book for typographers and type designers.</new>Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-55424551564235973152009-01-25T19:10:00.003-07:002009-01-25T19:12:53.081-07:00A Quick Design TestIf you have 15 seconds I'd like you to participate in a quick test for one of our graphic design projects. The test is at <a href="http://toastbusters.net/?p=16&v=11">http://toastbusters.net/?p=16&v=11</a>. Thanks in advance.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-79607480353232763812009-01-07T14:54:00.006-07:002010-08-06T19:30:20.321-06:00Color Wheel Swatches: Shades<blockquote><i>NOTE TO CS5 USERS: I've gotten reports that in CS5 (and maybe CS4 but I haven't heard anything yet) that the minimum width of the Swatches panel in the default workspace is 17 instead of 16. The Swatches panel must be 16 swatches wide, otherwise the circular swatch pattern becomes slanted.</i><br />
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<i>The culprit is the Layers panel which can't be as small as the Swatches panel, so if the Swatches panel and the Layers panel are put on the same column the Swatches panel will be wider to fit. The fix is to undock the swatches panel, at which point you can dock other panels below it that aren't wide.</i></blockquote><br />
Three months ago I released a set of <a href="http://glenmoyes.blogspot.com/2008/10/color-wheel-photoshop-swatches.html">RGB and CMYK color wheels</a>. After some user feedback I fixed the CMYK wheel so it has richer colors and pure CMYK data for the Adobe formats that supported it. The files are updated there so go ahead and get them.<br />
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In addition, also at the request of a user, I made a color wheel with shades instead of tints. The special thing about this palette is that it uses <a href="http://www.realcolorwheel.com/colorwheel.htm">Don Jusko's Real Color Wheel</a> theory of pigment overloading. If you've used yellow food coloring or watercolor before you'll know the color shifts to orange with the more yellow pigment you use. I included that effect of pigment overloading in these swatches. The nice thing about this is that dark yellow will not be that ugly olive color, and dark cyan will have some blue as it goes darker.<br />
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<center><img src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/images/shades-summary.png" style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto;" /></center><br />
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Here's the links to the files. For the CMYK palette only the ACO and ASE palettes have pure CMYK color information, the rest are CMYK safe RGB colors.<br />
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<b>ACO Files (Adobe Photoshop Swatches)</b><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-rgb-shade.aco">RGB Color Wheel: ACO</a><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-cmyk-shade.aco">CMYK Color Wheel: ACO</a><br />
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<b>ASE Files (Adobe Swatch Exchange)</b><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-rgb-shade.ase">RGB Color Wheel: ASE</a><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-cmyk-shade.ase">CMYK Color Wheel: ASE</a><br />
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<b>ACT Files</b><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-rgb-shade.act">RGB Color Wheel: ACT</a><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-cmyk-shade.act">CMYK Safe RGB Color Wheel: ACT</a><br />
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<b>PAL Files (Jasc Swatches)</b><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-rgb-shade.pal">RGB Color Wheel: PAL</a><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-cmyk-shade.pal">CMYK Safe RGB Color Wheel: PAL</a><br />
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<b>TXT Files (Corel Painter Swatches)</b><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-rgb-shade.txt">RGB Color Wheel: TXT</a><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-cmyk-shade.txt">CMYK Safe RGB Color Wheel: TXT</a>Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-52039467529869996842008-12-06T20:35:00.007-07:002009-03-05T15:10:10.855-07:00Guerrilla CG: Subdivision SurfacesI just barely finished my first video for <a href="http://guerrillacg.org/">The Guerrilla CG Project</a> on Subdivision Surfaces.<br /><br /><object width="640" height="483"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2450612&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=999999&fullscreen=1"><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2450612&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=999999&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="640" height="483"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://vimeo.com/2450612">Guerrilla CG: Subdivision Surfaces</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/glenmoyes">Glen Moyes</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br /><br />This video was quite unlike any other project I've done before. All but one animated sequence in this video was rendered by playblasting in Blender. I had to do some tricks like forcing Blender to use anti-aliasing in my graphics driver settings, and using chroma key to remove the background from each render so I could composite other elements together, which is something I usually never have to worry about. Anyway, the results turned out very well. I used After Effects for compositing and editing. It took me about 3 days to put the video together.<br /><br />The next video I'll be doing do will be on topology.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-33582873854640032852008-11-08T10:47:00.006-07:002009-03-05T15:09:27.468-07:00The GuerrillaCG Project<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHdpmn_w9RUf8QTaAOyULQyCedCboTXtVAT5p0z6M1j4Ff39zM-IDurE5JzJa3JAfySgk8SShnlmx0vK01l9LFcTgOfVF982IZa-3XyNDDGECKU_kbhDzij6p-jpAPBZEscIe9j3yo6-k/s1600-h/2008_11_08-guerrilla_cg.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHdpmn_w9RUf8QTaAOyULQyCedCboTXtVAT5p0z6M1j4Ff39zM-IDurE5JzJa3JAfySgk8SShnlmx0vK01l9LFcTgOfVF982IZa-3XyNDDGECKU_kbhDzij6p-jpAPBZEscIe9j3yo6-k/s320/2008_11_08-guerrilla_cg.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266348983428210818" border="0" /></a><a href="http://guerrillacg.org/">Guerrilla CG</a> is finally online. It hosts amazing videos that explain the fundamentals of computer graphics in a fun and easy to understand way. The videos are not software specific either, so you can watch them and take that knowledge to your 3D application of choice.<br /><br />During college I taught Blender workshops for two years, and prior to that I did video tutorials for Blender. I learned that in order to teach people how to use the software I needed to spend quite a bit of time teaching the fundamentals first. So in my later workshops more than half the workshop concisted of myself doing a PowerPoint presentation. It turned out to be more effective, but we only had two hours of class a week, so I continued making video tutorials as part of the class so they could watch them at home. I put those videos on <a href="http://showmedo.com/videos/?author=121">ShowMeDo</a> so other people can watch them as well.<br /><br />I was later contacted by Andrew Silke about a project he was working on called GuerrillaCG. He saw the stuff I did on ShowMeDo and wanted someone to help him out with the Fundamental Videos and put some Blender videos tutorials on there as well. I was blown away by the concept of the site and the quality of the videos, and felt flattered that professionals from places like Animal Logic actually got a hold of me to help them work on their projects. So I gadly accepted, and I'll be releasing video tutorials and concept videos for it soon.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-14724098889901626332008-10-24T13:43:00.019-06:002009-03-05T15:08:47.875-07:00What I've Been Playing: Far Cry 2, BG&E, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.A week ago I had 4 games on my wish list: Far Cry 2, Mirrors Edge, Left 4 Dead, and StarCraft 2. No one has any idea when StarCraft2 is going to be released, but the other three games are all coming out weeks apart from each other. I can't recall a time when 3 games I've been committed to buying for being so creative, well produced, and all-out awesome have all come out within a matter of weeks. There's one less game on my wish list because I'm now a happy owner of one of them, and the holiday season for gaming is looking bright.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzegyZe7DJn6S7hGIT4Tz6UNFZXS_0yzo8DMsRRjjg7JSmYcOKpMkjhd9bRTGYJgNzgMIjbpq8J60IEvOCUzMf7d3rPWIPodBiuy-BMP5mdhQ1QYSmeVm4Nbc9_iqjA_0As7TJ5q_5pEs/s1600-h/2008_10_24-farcry2-fire.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzegyZe7DJn6S7hGIT4Tz6UNFZXS_0yzo8DMsRRjjg7JSmYcOKpMkjhd9bRTGYJgNzgMIjbpq8J60IEvOCUzMf7d3rPWIPodBiuy-BMP5mdhQ1QYSmeVm4Nbc9_iqjA_0As7TJ5q_5pEs/s320/2008_10_24-farcry2-fire.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5260809145660003858" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Far Cry 2</span><br />I'm so happy I got this game. After my not so pleasant experience with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (read below) I was really hoping for another open world first person shooter. I usually wait until after the game is released before I buy it, but I've read good previews about Far Cry 2, and I wanted to save $5, so I went ahead and preordered it on Steam. I'm glad I did because the game rocks.<br /><br />Visually the game is superb. The art direction goes for realism, so I can't say anything on artistic creativity, but they did it right (even has reflected light) and it runs faster than Crysis. It also has some really fun brush fire simulation that becomes an awesome and extremely entertaining battle strategy once you have the flame thrower. Just make sure you're not downwind when you start one. Even without the flame thrower fires can still be started by Molotov cocktails, exploding gas tanks, and the backblast from rocket launchers which I found out the hard way. Seriously, the fire simulation adds a whole lot to the game both tactically and viscerally.<br /><br />They went through a lot of trouble to make the game immersive. The interface is minimal, healing is visualized by injecting yourself or pulling shrapnel out of your limbs, old weapons can jam which can happen at some hilariously bad times, and all the while you are fighting malaria, so occasionally the screen will go all sick-looking until you take your medicine. The music is well produced with acoustic instruments and African beats. The voice acting is also good. The accents can be thick so I feel like I should depend on the subtitles, but you can turn them off if you want.<br /><br />The game world is huge, and they seem to want you to remember that because you have to do a lot of traveling. Sometimes a mission will be all the way across the map, and it can take you 10-15 minutes to get there with a vehicle. There are buses that will "teleport" you closer to your destination, but with most missions it doesn't help a whole lot. At least in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. the quests are closer together, but in Far Cry 2 they can be anywhere, usually far away, and when traveling to your destination you will encounter several guard posts and maybe a random encounter or two, so that will slow you down. However, you can find hidden breifcases which contain diamonds and clear out safe houses so you can use them as save game points along the way so it's not all wasted time, but it does pad the game somewhat. It's a good thing that the game is as immersive as it is and that the combat is fun, because otherwise the travel would bug me. However, to my pleasant surprise after completing Act 1 there's appears to be a new area/county for each act, so you don't spend the whole game backtracking over the same locations. The game took me 37 hours to beat.<br /><br />You pick up and purchase new weapons as the game progresses. At first the weapons are pretty basic, but you can then get things such as mortars, sniper rifles, stealth gear, flamethrowers, and other specialty weapons. You can only carry 3 weapons, one from each class, at a time in addition to your machete, so your choice in weapons completely changes how you play the game, which is how variation in combat is addressed.<br /><br />The game also comes with a really simple and easy to understand editor for making multiplayer maps. So there's hours of fun ready to happen there.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendation: </span>Buy it. The game is huge, immersive, and fun. The story is pretty intriguing, ending is okay, wanted something more climatic considering how long the game was, but the ride was awesome.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJXSelJmhm9u0DmJzZTX8ZO6IqFGObem-Lqi3r_nYuN1FPIehpxP86p80q3hZDpfly1pLR75AQ9ZvYtJ6vJD1OrlQW6qOk5idI_T3J5mAmVpnPNtkfpuCKiYJ9baDYK-nRkm_pJ8T6rls/s1600-h/2008_10_24-beyond_good_and_evil.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJXSelJmhm9u0DmJzZTX8ZO6IqFGObem-Lqi3r_nYuN1FPIehpxP86p80q3hZDpfly1pLR75AQ9ZvYtJ6vJD1OrlQW6qOk5idI_T3J5mAmVpnPNtkfpuCKiYJ9baDYK-nRkm_pJ8T6rls/s320/2008_10_24-beyond_good_and_evil.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5260810163199690834" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Beyond Good and Evil</span><br />Beyond Good and Evil for $10 on Steam? Why not. It's one of those critically acclaimed games that didn't do well commercial for whatever reason (advertising most likely), and I hate it when games suffer such a fate. Because I feel the way I do about video games, I can't live with myself until I play it in it's entirety, which didn't take long (12 hours).<br /><br />It's an old game so the graphics technology isn't impressive by today's standards, but the art direction and execution is. Great use of color, great character design, and I'm really impressed with how they handled vertex lighting in the environments. The music is also really good too. The game plays pretty well as far as performers go. The melee combat is nothing special but at least it's easy, and there's not a whole lot of combat to do. In the later stages it's mostly sneaking. The animation is good which is especially important when the game is in third person. The story is good but it had a couple of, "What? That made no sense," plot moments, but it wasn't bad enough to be a deal breaker.<br /><br />If I could say anything bad about it, it might be that it's a adventure/platformer game that doesn't break a whole lot of new ground as far as gameplay, but it was solid nonetheless. The art direction, story, and use of a strong female protagonist is what set this game apart. It's worth getting just on those merits.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendation:</span> Great game, awesome art, awesome music, good story, plays like a platformer, has some wonderful story/action moments, and worth the $10. I recommend buying it so you can play through it once just so you can join the cool intellectual gamer crowd.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQHv9cwoCKsQxnAmwoRdQ2OXuuYvhekQy70uoRc_d_l1bdJ24woBfAVURfrNJvi9WprwBZGk_ibKnokZhspsrFQ9-fsbq590mRJI4pyU9_XqZr2o7p61akZBwHkyXBxy7EnDElG7mLtSk/s1600-h/2008_10_24-stalker.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQHv9cwoCKsQxnAmwoRdQ2OXuuYvhekQy70uoRc_d_l1bdJ24woBfAVURfrNJvi9WprwBZGk_ibKnokZhspsrFQ9-fsbq590mRJI4pyU9_XqZr2o7p61akZBwHkyXBxy7EnDElG7mLtSk/s320/2008_10_24-stalker.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5260810957972452978" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl</span><br />This game has been recommended a lot of people and it was only $20 on Steam, so I gave it a whirl.<br /><br />It's rather complex as far as first person shooters go. There's a lot of dialog, quests, inventory management, encumbrance (meaning that if you carry too much you'll slow down), hunger, bleeding, radiation poisoning, stamina, and other mechanics that give you a sense of urgency and realism. Adding that and the open world nature of the game with dangerous people and mutant wildlife really makes you feel vulnerable in a dangerous world, which emotionally pays off when you arrive at towns to turn in quests where things are relatively safe.<br /><br />The big problem with S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which was a deal breaker for me, is that the game is buggy. <span style="font-style: italic;">Very</span> buggy. So buggy in fact that even after applying all of the recommended fixes which included editing my Windows registry, I couldn't even play more than a few hours because I got so frustrated with the crashing that it would eventually crash every single time I entered the underground zone. I was going to wait for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky to see if they fixed that, but reviews said that it was still buggy. To be fair it's very likely that it's my system configuration (even though it's all top-brand parts), and most people after applying the fixes had no problems. It appears that I'm a very small percentage of unlucky ones.<br /><br />So thank goodness for Far Cry 2 for my open world fix because S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was a breath of fresh air and complexity that I've been wanting from a game for a while. I was about to ask for a refund, but to be honest I don't mind because I vote with my money and I want people to make more games like it. So they can keep my $20.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendation:</span> Wonderfully bleak atmosphere, worth it if it won't crash your computer and you'll have to read up on some fixes that may work, and there's a prequel available, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. I can't whole heartedly recommend the game because of the bugs, but I give it points for doing something different, and it's another one of those intellectual gamer crowd favorites.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *<br /></div><br />And just to let you know, I updated the previous article on <a href="http://glenmoyes.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-ive-been-playing-trackmania-and.html">TrackMania and Painkiller</a> with recommendations. I did in fact purchase TrackMania and I feel a little bit gypped, so read the end of the TrackMania section for my thoughts on that.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-80848501240063216462008-10-07T03:21:00.018-06:002010-08-06T19:29:42.754-06:00Color Wheel Swatches (For Photoshop and Other Programs)<blockquote><i>NOTE TO CS5 USERS: I've gotten reports that in CS5 (and maybe CS4 but I haven't heard anything yet) that the minimum width of the Swatches panel in the default workspace is 17 instead of 16. The Swatches panel must be 16 swatches wide, otherwise the circular swatch pattern becomes slanted.</i><br />
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<i>The culprit is the Layers panel which can't be as small as the Swatches panel, so if the Swatches panel and the Layers panel are put on the same column the Swatches panel will be wider to fit. The fix is to undock the swatches panel, at which point you can dock other panels below it that aren't wide.</i></blockquote><br />
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Edit: I've created a <a href="http://glenmoyes.blogspot.com/2009/01/color-wheel-swatches-shades.html">new swatch set with shades</a> instead of tints.<br />
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In the past I've used the <a href="http://www.visibone.com/swatches/#photoshop">VisiBone2 swatches</a> in Photoshop, and I've been meaning to make an improved set of swatches for some time now, one that's organized like an actual color wheel. So I did. Here it is.<br />
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<center><img src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/images/2-summary.png" style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto;" /></center><br />
The special thing about this swatch layout is that the color wheel is actually accurate! It's not the VisiBone-style color wheel that uses red, green, and blue as the primary colors, where cyan is the complement of red. This uses the primary colors of pigments: red, yellow and blue, and displays it in full RGB gamut. It also takes into account that monitor green is not the same as reality green, and monitor blue is not the same as reality blue. So you <i>can</i> effectively use this as an accurate color wheel, making it great for working out color studies.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/images/rgb_complements.png" style="border-style: none;" /></div><br />
In the palette I've also included 3 value scales: simple grayscale, warm to cool, and cool to warm, which I use for my under paintings.<br />
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In the bottom right corner there's a small palette of colors that's already harmonized and CMYK safe for multipurpose use. I use that palette for line drawings, sketches, notes, and incidentally the Structure of Man Primer.<br />
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There's also a CMYK version of the color wheel (updated from the old one) if you plan on doing stuff for print. The ACO and ASE files are actual CMYK palettes, whereas the other ones are just CMYK safe RGB color palettes. So if you use that palette of colors you can be confident that the image you used them on will print predictable without having to work in CMYK mode because RGB mode performs better in Photoshop.<br />
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You can download the RGB and CMYK palettes here in multiple formats:<br />
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<b>ACO Files (Adobe Photoshop Swatches)</b><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-rgb-tint.aco">RGB Color Wheel: ACO</a><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-cmyk-tint.aco">CMYK Color Wheel: ACO</a><br />
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<b>ASE Files (Adobe Swatch Exchange)</b><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-rgb-tint.ase">RGB Color Wheel: ASE</a><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-cmyk-tint.ase">CMYK Color Wheel: ASE</a><br />
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<b>ACT Files</b><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-rgb-tint.act">RGB Color Wheel: ACT</a><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-cmyk-tint.act">CMYK Safe RGB Color Wheel: ACT</a><br />
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<b>PAL Files (Jasc Swatches)</b><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-rgb-tint.pal">RGB Color Wheel: PAL</a><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-cmyk-tint.pal">CMYK Safe RGB Color Wheel: PAL</a><br />
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<b>TXT Files (Corel Painter Swatches)</b><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-rgb-tint.txt">RGB Color Wheel: TXT</a><br />
<a href="http://glenmoyes.com/files/photoshop/color_wheel_swatches/glenmoyes-color_wheel-cmyk-tint.txt">CMYK Safe RGB Color Wheel: TXT</a>Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-1213439882329510722008-08-05T16:05:00.014-06:002009-03-05T15:08:02.323-07:00Aesop's FablesI've waited for a while to talk about this on my blog; I finished this project four months ago, and if you've looked at my <a href="http://www.vimeo.com/user415883">Vimeo page</a> within the past two months you may have noticed a new video on there called Aesop's Fables. That video only showed the completed animation with the background overlay and not actual footage of the gallery installation in action. Well, today I finally uploaded a video that does this project justice, and I went ahead and updated the older video by adding the same music by <a href="http://incompetech.com/">Kevin MacLeod</a> that I included in today's video.<br /><br /><object width="640" height="360"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1473363&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=999999&fullscreen=1"> <embed src="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1473363&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=999999&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="640" height="360"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://www.vimeo.com/1473363?pg=embed&sec=1473363">>> Watch <strong>Aesop's Fables</strong> streamed in HD (720p)</a><br /><br /><object width="640" height="360"> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1203063&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=999999&fullscreen=1"> <embed src="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1203063&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=999999&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="640" height="360"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://www.vimeo.com/1203063?pg=embed&sec=1203063">>> Watch <strong>Aesop's Fables: Complete Animation</strong> streamed in HD (720p)</a><br /><br />Aesop's Fables is my first 2D animated project. And by "2D animated" I don't mean animated with After Effects or Flash, I mean actually animating a character frame by frame. I loved it. It was a lot of work, but I loved it.<br /><br />This project was an experimental motion design piece designed by Shane Janz that I did the illustrations and 2D animation for. The concept for the project was to mix printed design with motion design across multiple projection surfaces. The background paintings were printed onto three four-foot high panels with the animations being projected onto them using two projectors, meaning that the final resolution for the video was 2048 × 768.<br /><br />Once we decided on using Aesop's fables for the concept and established the art style, we quickly realized that the characters needed to be animated frame by frame in order for the style to be consistent; we couldn't use 3D rendered characters. Fortunately I had recently been looking into 2D animation software and found an open source program that would do the trick. The 2D animation software I used was <a href="http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/">Pencil</a> (except for the crow; that was painted with Photoshop). Compositing and other animation elements were done with After Effects and <a href="http://www.blender.org/">Blender</a>. Blender was also used to do the pixel-perfect keystoning for the installation, which allowed the projected characters to interact perfectly with the printed artwork, and illuminated only the panels, making them appear to glow without any immediate indication as to why (the computer and projectors were hidden and the panels were only 1/4" thick).<br /><br />The exhibit opened in the Spori Gallery on March 24, 2008. The response to the installation was extremely positive. One person described it as the coolest thing they had ever seen.<br /><br />Unfortunately, I had to head back to Utah so I didn't get to spend more than 30 minutes with the final installation or attend the open house, but it was still an unforgettable experience.<br /><br />I've been delving heavily into 2D animation as a result of this project. In fact I now own six books on the subject. I'm even more grateful for Riven Phoenix's <a href="http://alienthink.com/">Structure of Man</a> series (which I'm still yet to finish in its entirety) because I was able to animate that human character without any motion or photo reference. I've been so used to doing 3D and Flash-style animation that being able to bring a character to life without being limited in any way, or needing to create a 3D model, texture, rig, or anything else prior to animating, was something that I hadn't experienced before.<br /><br />I want to do a lot more of it.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-9338240712100859672008-07-16T01:12:00.012-06:002009-03-05T15:07:39.224-07:00News Flash: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog<a href="http://www.drhorrible.com/"><img src="http://www.drhorrible.com/images/banners/big_square.gif" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; display: none;" /></a> A friend of mine pointed me to this today, and this is something that I definitely want to make an announcement of. Come to think of it, I've been doing a lot of announcing and not a lot of creating.<br /><br />Anyway, it's show written by Joss Whedon—yes, the same guy that did Buffy and Firefly—called <a href="http://www.drhorrible.com/">Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog</a>. I've watched the first part and it's hilarious. It's an experimental project that Joss wrote during the Writers Guild Strike to show what can be done with very little, released on the web, and get compensated handsomely for it—hopefully anyway, but that's part of the experiment.<br /><br />So check it out. Watch all the episodes as they come out throughout the week; Act 2 comes out Thursday, Act 3 comes out Saturday, and after the 20th it won't be available for free anymore. [Edit: You can now watch it for free on their website. However the video will have a few ads.] If you want to support what they are trying to do—and you should—go buy their stuff so they'll know people like it and will make more of these kinds of things.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240509832654584711.post-86883703060382473622008-06-10T11:28:00.003-06:002009-03-05T15:06:26.469-07:00News Flash: Celtx 1.0 ReleasedCeltx 1.0 finally got released today. Go check it out at <a href="http://www.celtx.com/">celtx.com</a>.Glen Moyeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02396403114040415608noreply@blogger.com0