Life here in the Woods

I haven’t posted lately so I thought I’d sit down and bring things up-to-date.

Life here in the woods is extraordinary.   This incredible river – the Withlacoochee – flows past the studio a short walk down the hill from our door.

The shot you see here was taken a few days ago on a walk at the local marina. I get involved with half a dozen projects and neglect to go out and appreciate all this water and sky we have.

And critters – LOTS of critters.   I’ll find myself talking with a client x-thousand miles away while one of the local raccoons or ‘possums checks the yard for new scraps.

So life is incredibly good here.   There’s always a day sometime in late September or early October when the Florida humidity throttles back and the air feels fresher.  Bluer skies.  Crisp evenings.

We’ve been working for awhile now towards finding a studio space that is larger so I can work more projects at the same time.  Painting.  Carving.  They need their own spaces.   I really really want to be able to back away from a painting to allow it to dry and go carve,  shoot demos, pack pieces for shipping and paint again – Oh, and enough spare wall area to hang all the project boards instead of the file where they have to be to conserve space.

So yeah, if that’s the toughest aspect to my life I can’t really complain.  So I won’t.

But I keep my eyes open for that ideal studio move . . .

I love to hear comments and to answer questions.  Look me up at www.raoulwidman.com for more.

Handy Image Mapper – Make places in your web images clickable

You may have seen web pages with hand-drawn artwork that respond to your cursor movement – parts of a single image have been coded to allow you to select a spot on the main image as a link.

I discovered a while back that this is referred to as “image mapping” & since then I’ve been wanting to learn how to do it myself — unsuccessfully until today.

I tackled this project anew today and found a blog posting by author Kaspar Stromme here http://www.kasparius.com/tutorials/imagemap/how.htm that is an understandable tutorial on the subject.

Once I had the gist of it, I did a web search for “Image mapping freeware” and discovered Handy Image Mapper had good reviews.  So I installed it and used it to map the coordinates of a sheet I drew and to my amazement it actually worked ! And quite easily, at that !

You can get Handy Image Mapper here:  http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Web_Authoring/Image_Mapping_Tools/Handy_ImageMapper_Download.html .
The authors are SilverageSoftware and offer a set of handy Web Design tools from their site.

The cool part is that you can do this entirely through the use of freeware:

I use an image editing tool called Paint.Net which I think can match or better anything in Photoshop’s capabilities.

I create web pages with NVU,  a free web page authoring software created by the Mozilla organization of Firefox fame.

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Freelancing in Hawaii

In 1979 I was working in Honolulu.

A local shopkeeper of a mini mart on Nimitz Highway asked me to design a logo and paint it on her shop’s window.

So I drew a cartoon of a ‘Haole’ guy carrying a 6-pack and a sack of chips on 2 sheets of paper, with pencil and a Sharpie marker.

I taped the cartoon sketch to  the inside of her window and painted it on the outside.

According to Google the Nimitz Mart is still there, so I called them to ask if they still had my logo painted on the window, but alas, it is no longer there.

Alas, it is gone.

But I still have the 2 sheets with the original cartoon.

I liked this guy.  This was a fun project.

So, if you ever happen to be on that little stretch of Nimitz, between the Airport and old downtown Honolulu, let them know there is a logo that is still available for restoration….

I’d share it again for a beer or a package of sweet & sour Mango rind.

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Brushes and Paint.Net

You’ve already heard me say how much I love Paint.Net, so there’s nothing new about that.  Paint.Net just IS the greatest thing to come along in the last few years, through the hard work of developers Rick Brewster and Tom Jackson.

Just one thing though — while you can do anything you could ever want to with Paint.Net, there is ONE single feature yet missing — Brushes.  Go to the Paint.Net Users Forum and you’ll see post after post, asking: “when will there be brushes?” etc.

Well just relax, everyone.  Here’s the solution: ArtRage 2.5.

I needed a really good airbrush for a recent client’s job and tried out ArtRage.  AWESOME!  Not ONLY does ArtRage have ANY type of brush or paint effect you could ever hope for, it costs only $25, and (here’s the great part) you can use it in tandem with Paint.Net.  Piece of cake.

ArtRage allows you to create multi-layered files just like Paint.Net and save them as individual files.  So you do whatever you like in Paint.Net and any time you desire a brush effect, save the layer as a .PNG image

and open that image in ArtRage.

When you have the effect you like, Save the ArtRage Layer as a .PNG image.

Pick the saved layer(s) back up with Paint.Net and finish the job.

Bottom line ?  Photoshop costs about $400.00.  Paint.Net is free.  Add ArtRage 2.5 for another $25.00 and you just saved yourself $375.00.

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Google Wave – Better get ready now to catch this one

As a working artist I make it a point every day to study and learn something new. Now, I’m certainly not a “Geek” by any means, but I’ve been working at expanding my understanding of all of the ways I can use the internet in my work.

A few days ago I ran across several postings on Twitter announcing “Google Wave will be a tsunami” and “Google Wave will transform the way you do business” etc, so I checked it out.

After watching this presentation in bits and pieces over the last few days I have to say I believe this is going to be true. So you should make time to see this presentation yourself.

Now a lot of you at first are just going to think: “Oh, crap, that’s all we need, another Social Application to use up more of my time!” Okay, Me too, at first. But give it a couple of days to kind of sink in and then start to consider what you’ve seen here as you’re using your email, Facebook, Twitter and other tools you use in your work and communications.

With a little bit of imagination it will begin to shift your viewpoint about HOW (and why) you use different applications. You’ll start noticing a glimmer of the relationships between them and get the flavor of things to come. This one is going to be exciting. It is going to be big.

How big ? Not much, at first.

At first it’s just going to go around the arcane, inner circles of the Uber-Geek, where it already happens to be. (So if you know how to code and have an idea for a way to use it you can already sign up for an account and begin to create applications for it.)

When it finally comes into open release you will begin to see it mentioned in widening media circles – on Google accounts and Technology News feeds and blogs.

Then, after some time, Twitter will likely be the first to get a Wave application. Then Facebook. And Blogger, WordPress, Typepad.

As each of the various types of users begin to discover the growing ways to apply a “wave” and begin to think with an email that chats and collaborative albums that are social and documents that evolve, we’ll begin to see a radical shift.

Not overnight. But start to think with it. They have done something here that Microsoft will not – They’ve released it as “open-source” – Anyone with an idea may contribute a new application using Wave as its interface. You can use it on your desktop – not just online. Takes a while to grab you, but grab you it will.

Google was quite apt to choose “Wave” as the name for this application. Shakespeare gave us the phrase: “sea-change” — “Full fathom five…Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.

This

Classic Cartoon Style

Always loved classic animation. I didn’t watch Scooby-Doo or Speed Racer.

I loved Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny & The Road Runner. Foghorn Leghorn. Wile E. Coyote.

My absolute favorites were the gritty penned and washed black and white cels from the Warner Bros. Studios.

So imagine the delight in discovering Private Snafu. As it turns out, He’s drawn by the same animators that gave us Elmer Fudd and voiced by the marvelous Mel Blanc.

When I look at my own cartoons I’d say these guys really gave me my basic impression for the weight and mass of cartoon characters. My guys have the same bulb noses and round flap ears !

YouTube’s got a nice little pack of the Snafu shorts.

Happiness is a Day in the Studio

Well it’s another day in the studio and I’m sitting here at my digital tablet, pen in hand, and smiling like a fool.

I’m just plain happy, every day. But an entire day in the studio is just fabulous. I don’t about you, but I’m just not ever going to run out of ideas for work. So every day in the studio is another happy day.

When I get up in the morning, my studio is the first stop after the espresso machine.

My latest projects have been to pilot the use of Paint.Net and ArtRage 2.5 in tandem. Both allow painting in layers and saving those layers individually for further editing or new versions. It’s thrilling to have the use of ArtRage’s beautiful airbrush together with Paint.Net’s speed and technical effects (way too many to mention). I often go to the Paint.Net user forum and find that seemingly 90% of the questions from users or new feature requests involve brushes, so I’ll just say it again ! If you’re a Paint.Net user, go ahead and spend the 25 bucks for the pro version of ArtRage and use them together. If you’re not sure you can test the free version first You’ll miss out on the coolest features – the airbrush, and the ability to save your work in separate layers – but you’ll get a good idea.

Having those working smoothly, I recently discovered a new print-on-demand publishing platform named Blurb, that’s inspired me to dig a past illustration project out of the archives and create a new series ! So I’ll keep you posted as that progresses.

So, I’m darned happy.

Now all I need is a bigger studio and a lot more time in it !

Grab a pencil and join in !

Drawing Day is a fun concept and I couldn’t resist playing with it a bit.

Using Scribd’s new “ipaper”

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