Drawn

The technology described in this video will probably amaze you.

David over at Ironic Sans explains how he was able to imbed the New York skyline into an image’s histogram (viewable in Photoshop’s levels dialogue): The histogram as the image.

Blogger Josh Millard took the idea a step further by creating a Perl script allowing you to imbed any histogram image (without any vertical gaps of course, which makes skylines perfect targets) into any given image, allowing the original skyline image to contain itself as its own histogram.

I love this stuff, and I’m so glad there are people out there with this kind of time on their hands.

Blogs are fun but they’re filled with all that cumbersome writing. Why write a blog post when you can draw it?

Introducing the new web-app, Sketchcast. Mashable breaks it down for us:

You log in to the site, start a new “sketch”, and after you click the record button, you start drawing on the screen and can even record your voice to go along with it. Once done you click on the stop button and you can then publish the sketch just like a YouTube embed. Put it in a blog entry, send it to friends or co-workers, just anywhere you can put a video, you can put your sketches.

Here’s a video demo:

Thanks to Rob for the heads up.

Our own Luc Latulippe has put together this informative and handy look at the various small business accounting solutions available to us freelancers — both stand-alone software applications and web-based services. When I needed a new invoicing system, Luc was the first person I went to, and his advice was invaluable. If you’re struggling with your own bookkeeping, it’s definitely worth a read.

The folks at Big Huge Labs have created quite a library of goodies that can interact with your Flickr account. I particularly like the Palette Generator (which works with or without a Flickr account).

As you can see, it works better from photos than it does from illustrations though. It seemed to have trouble locating the pinks and reds in my work, but that may be because of all the white space that makes up the file. Still, if you want to generate a rough palette for an illustration from a photograph you like, this is a quick and fun way of doing it.

Illustrator Chet Phillips (previously) has graciously posted the pages from a recent interview he did for Corel Painter Magazine in which he details the process of his digital scratchboard work. The type’s a bit on the tiny side, but it’s even worth a look just for the illustrations and sketch work.

Hope Larson has a nice clear explanation of how to do the pre-press in Photoshop for working with spot colours – or Pantones.

For examples of her spots in action, check out one of her wonderful graphic novels, Gray Horses or Salamander Dream.

[Link]

Related stuff:
Interview with Hope Larson
Reddingk.com’s Reproguide (Link to PDF)

Yesterday I attended a free, day long Adobe seminar/sales pitch. They are a really efficient way to get up to speed on the new software, get tips,get tech support, bitch directly at the reps about bugs and features, and maybe win something. I missed CS2 while I was in school, so I have some major catching up to do. Actually, everyone has some major catching up to do, with CS3. You’ve probably already heard all the buzz about it being the biggest upgrade ever, bla bla bla. Well, this time the buzz is true. Now that they’ve added in Dreamweaver and Flash and a billion other things, and made Photoshop the grand central station of them all, the world just ain’t the same. I predict our industry (I mean anything graphically creative) is about to undergo a huge jump in look, feel, efficiency, and impact because of this. I’m not here to plug Adobe, so that’s all I’m going to say, not that opinions matter since we have few alternatives to Adobe any more. Personally, I was just pleased to see Illustrator pen tool capability in Flash.

I will mention though that I get a little big-picture worried about the digital divide, now that the software is getting so expensive and complicated that only full-time users will be able to keep up.

Now for some fun: Adobe began this colour-swatch exchange thing a while ago, called Kuler. For those who love mixing paint and choosing colours, it’s addictive. You can dynamically download colour schemes from the site from within CS and apply them to your work in progress. I only wish they had made the site background colour a neutral grey, to see the colours more accurately.

Sure Adobe finally released Adobe CS3, but this video proves that even the simplest pieces of software can yield great results.

Canadian comic book artist Stuart Immonen has penned an interesting article for Comic Book Resources on building an arsenal of tools and reference material in order to make drawing comics efficient and productive. His toolbox includes everything from 3D modelling software to old-fashioned paper photo and reference archives. And to those who think this is “cheating” he says:

Face it, deadlines are murder, especially when they come around every thirty days or so. The sheer volume is astonishing; even with a lowball mean estimate of four panels per page, the typical monthly superhero comic boasts nearly 90 separate drawings each issue– that’s over a thousand a year! I don’t think there’s another job in the commercial arts field which is similarly demanding. The comic artist’s motto might very well be “by any means necessary.”

(Thanks, Jashar!)