Why do I have this? I don't even...

Lay Me Down

Sat, 05 May 2012 20:16:41 -0400

A rough speedpaint to practice.

Welcome to Table Hell... AKA HTML Emails

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:01:13 -0500

Notes to self about hardcore email, not for services where you drop your gnarly html in and they come out smelling like roses.

The Gist

If you want your emails to show up properly in Gmail you MUST inline all your CSS
Tables, tables, tables. Tables inside of tables. Inside of tables. Unfortunately this is the most reliable way to get your email to show up properly across most major email client/browser/OS combinations.
Try not to leave white space in your message body. Getting tagged by the spam filter will do nothing for the message you’re trying to project with your email.
Keep it small. Smaller image sizes, less number of images. Faster load. dodge the spam filter.
Add alt text to important images. Same reason.
Assume that most people won’t have images enabled and design around that. Not everyone is going to be bothered to enable images. I don’t.
Remember to test for known email client quirks
CHECK EVERYTHING (major.) All (important) mail clients. All (important) browsers. All (important) OS.

The Useful Links
http://24ways.org/2009/rock-solid-html-emails
http://css-tricks.com/using-css-in-html-emails-the-real-story/
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

Random note: I tried to have “Table” in brackets in the name but it borked. Database sanitisation anyone?

Original Article

Unique Skins Experience

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 20:33:41 -0500

So recently I finally gave up my old Palm Centro and traded up for a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and one of the first things I thought about doing was ordering a new skin for it. I’ve broken this down into two sections for people who don’t like to read: The gist, and the nitty gritty.

The Gist
The Good:

Cheaper than the rest pricing
Purchasing through PayPal
Shipped in given time frame

The Bad:

A not very professional site: takes some thinking to navigate
No image size help: didn’t know if the image would turn out fuzzy or not
Confirmation email vague: No indication of whether or not product has shipped
No tracking number for most orders
Color was not as expected: product came out purple looking when my image was blue
Image was grainy: probably due to no image size help

The Bottom Line:
You get what you pay for. For me, I’d go with someone else.

The Ramble
Last time I ordered any sort of skin (Not-so-new Mobile Phone Skin), I went with a site called Skinit. I didn’t pay much attention to details since the concept of skinning a phone was new to me, so things like image resolution didn’t occur to me when I was ordering and so I used a fairly small image that I already had sitting around on my computer. The site was fairly pricey (even with a coupon) and my biggest disappointment was when the skin arrived, I found a Skinit logo near the bottom of the skin. I would understand them having it if it were a FREE skin, but why would they even think of putting it on a skin I PAID for?! That was a year or two ago so maybe they’ve changed it since then.

Either way, I wanted to try a new service and see how they faired. After some poking around, I decided to go with Unique Skins, mostly due to price. This experience reenforced what everyone and their mother has been telling you since you were born: you get what you pay for.

I guess it’s a personal thing since I work on this kind of stuff, but having a professional looking modern design for a website that I’m buying from would make me feel much better about buying something from a site. The Unique Skins site is fine, but it doesn’t look that up with the time and the interface isn’t that easy to navigate through.

Fine. That’s not what I came here for anyways, so onto the skin editor! Here’s where the important stuff is. Uploading an image is fairly easy, but the one thing that bugs me is that there’s no help on image size. I had no idea if the image file was large enough for the skin because there’s really no way (other than eyeballing it) to tell if your image will come out looking sharp on your skin.

The payment process was pretty straight forward, no complaints there. There were some aspects that could have been better, but if you don’t care about your order after it’s shipped then this next part isn’t a big deal. Got my confirmation email as expected, but there was no confirmation email when the order was shipped and no tracking info included.

The first thing I noticed right off the bat was how red the print out was. The print job was pretty spotty and I could clearly see white spots dotting my skin. Disappointing, but I guess part of that was my fault. Application of the skin was fairly straightforward, but applying an odd looking skin is sort of pointless no?

I’m debating whether or not to take this skin off and try one from Gela Skins. I’ve heard tons of good things about them! Too bad I didn’t have a coupon this time…

Original Article

Aywas - PBC Set

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:59:29 -0500

Some custom character images for people on Aywas, first from left to right, up to down.

Original Article

Request - Angelos

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:54:24 -0500

Request for the winner from the DA holiday raffle. This turned out to be a lot larger than intended, but I really liked the detail on the character. I started to color it briefly but found that blue and white was way better. Also, I wanted to practice (speed) shading since I’ve noticed I have a problem knowing when to stop :(

Original Article

Wacom Bamboo Capture

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:45:04 -0500

Recently, I had the pleasure of getting a brand new tablet. I finally settled on getting the Wacom Bamboo Capture after looking through all the specs on available Bamboo products at the time.

I knew that I would be mainly looking at the Bamboo line since it’s the most affordable and gets the job done. If you’re way more awesome than I am and want a better version, the Wacom Intuos is probably where you want to visit.

There are three tablets in the current Bamboo line: the Connect, the Capture, and the Create. The main differences between the three (besides the price) are the touch capability and the size of the tablet. The Connect is the only one without the touch capability and the Create is the only one with the larger workspace.

I ended up picking the Capture because it’s got touch capability and I probably wouldn’t have had enough desk space for a bigger tablet. They get cumbersome! If you’re going to be using the tablet with a mac, this is a nice touch because all the swipes are supported. Granted, the surface isn’t as smooth as the mac, but at least you won’t have to shell out extra dough for the swipe mouse unless you already have one.

The one odd thing about the tablets are that the Connect comes in a black and green color, while the other two come in silver and black. I would have preferred to have the black and green scheme, but then I would be giving up the touch functionality. Boo.

If you’re a developer, another noteworthy addition to the Bamboo may be the ‘apps’ that Wacom has added to its software. Nothing too interesting, but if you want to try your hand at developing apps for the tablet, have at it!

But if you’re like me and think that there’s not really a point to creating tablet apps, then… on to the results!

Pros
Easy touch disable - Sometimes this feature really does get in the way, so with a touch of a button… away it goes! It’s not new though, since previous versions of the Bamboo line have this feature.

Plug & Go - Basically all you need to get started. Of course, If you’re using things like pressure sensitivity or mess around with button functionality you’ll need to install the software that comes with. If you’re just looking to use it as a mouse then you don’t really need anything else.

Neutrals:
Wireless feature - It’s not something I have at the moment (wireless kit sold separately.) Can’t say if this is definitively a good or bad thing. Since it sounds cool in concept, I’m just going to stick this here.

Short USB connection - This may or may not be a good thing, depending on your preferences. If you’ve got the tablet right up next to your computer that’s probably a good length for you. If you’ve got a keyboard tray or a large desk, you’ll need a longer wire. Luckily, the wire’s just a regular mini USB to USB connection so in theory it should be easy to swap out.

Cons
Bamboo tablet software - One of the things that got very annoying very quickly was the bamboo tablet software which, for me, launched on startup. It was worth going through the first time around, but you’ll probably want to uninstall it sooner or later.

Thickness - This tablet is much thicker than the last tablet I had (Bamboo Pen and Touch) and not in a particularly good way.

No more eraser - The eraser side of the pen is different from previous versions of the Wacom tablets. There’s no longer a physical ‘eraser’ that pushes down as you’re erasing something. Also, I don’t know if this is related, but I can no longer get the eraser feature to activate when I turn the pen over. Hmm. Is it gone forever?

Oversensitive (?) - Sometimes when both touch and pen are enabled they tend to screw around with each other. For instance, enabling screen savers with the pen is virtually impossible for me. I either have to disable touch, or put the pen down and swipe.

The Gist Of it
Sadly, there isn’t much to say about this tablet. There isn’t anything particularly new or wow-ing about this tablet. Kind of disappointing. So…what does this all mean? It means that although this tablet works more or less the way to need it to, if I could pick again, I’d rather go back to the Bamboo Pen and Touch.

Baby's First Winter

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:35:36 -0500

A sort of holiday inspired speed painting that got out of hand. What does this look like to you? I had a friend say it looked like a bat-dog D:

The ‘correct’ answer is supposed to be a baby reindeer that’s sitting in the snow.

7th Annual Holiday Raffle

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:52:02 -0500

It’s December everyone! Time for the 7th annual free entry art raffle! Interested? Just leave a message on this post and you’ll be automatically entered. It’s that simple. Winner will be chosen on Dec. 20th, Happy holidays everyone!

Original - Mono Color

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:37:57 -0400

I realized like two thirds of the way through coloring it that it looked much better in one color. Random sketch that turned into a lion.

Original - Cloud Spotting

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:27:23 -0400

Something you might see if you go cloud spotting. The terrible name streak continues… dum dum duuuuuum.

For those who don’t know what this is supposed to be, it’s a weird attempt at a cloud dragon. I originally wanted to do some mufasa-like cloud picture, but obviously I deviated a lot from the original goal. Oh well.

I tried to set the image around sunset time, so all the clouds are pink. I need much more work on color theory.

Pandora Hearts - Blood Stained Black Rabbit

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:10:16 -0400

Speedy picture.

B-rabbit (Pandora Hearts) is awesome and they don’t show her nearly as much as I’d like.

New Wacom Inkling - Worth Getting? Pros, Cons, Questions and More...

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 21:36:29 -0400

Sometime last week a friend sent me a link about the newest Wacom toy: the Inkling. If you haven’t seen or heard of the Inkling yet, the selling point is supposed to be its ability to record drawings done on regular sheets of paper! Sounds cool doesn’t it? At a reasonably affordable market price of $199 I set out to try to answer some questions that I had about it.

Since officially the Inkling isn’t out until mid-September (any day now…) Finding in depth information on it has been difficult. But here’s some base specs that can be found nearly anywhere:

What’s inside the box:
Inkling Digital Pen
Rechargeable Pen battery
Pen ink cartridge
Charging Case
Receiver
Rechargeable Receiver Battery
USB cable
Spare pen ink cartridges (4)
Inkling Sketch Manager Application (located on the Inkling receiver)
Quick Start Guide and electronic User’s Manual

System Requirements (You need one of these in order for the Inkling to work properly) :
Windows 7, Vista or XP (SP3, 32 or 64 bit versions), Mac OS 10.4.0 (or later)

With some of the technicalities out of the way, I got to thinking… what would I be doing if I had one of these?

Here are some things about the Inkling that initially forced me to wipe the drool off my monitor:

Compact size - Looks like you can pack this baby up and take it anywhere. A real plus for someone like me who used to drag their clunky tablet around everywhere.
Hand-eye coordination - Finally. A connection between what you see on the screen and what you do with the pen. What you see is what you get.
No more scanners - …Is what I would like to say, but that’s not entirely true. Although it is true that if you start and finish a drawing with the Inkling, what about when you mindlessly doodle in your notebook during class?
Layered lines - The holy grail for line artists everywhere. Pushing a button on the inkling will create a new layer for your next strokes.

The Inkling may seem like magic, but here’s what it won’t do:

Colors - Alas, this tool is only for the initial stages of the artistic process. You’d still need one of the older Wacom tablets to finish off the job.
Mouse behaviors - Previous Wacom tools can also double as a mouse (super handy for playing games or frustrating coworkers trying to use your workstation.) Looks like you can’t use this as a mouse anymore. Maybe you could if you’re willing to waste a whole bunch of ink and scribble all over paper. *sigh* another reason to invest in yet another USB hub.
Drafting - If you want perfection, this is not the tool for you. Apparently using other tools like rulers will interfere with the receiver and affect the Inkling’s ability to record your sketches.
Your bedroom wall - Unfortunately, if you are like me and like to randomly doodle on your desk or wall. You can’t clip the Inkling to that. Bummer.
Broad Daylight - Bright light will interfere with the receiver. Good for vampires. Bad for everyone else.
Pencil - Erasing is a big no no.

Some things to think about:

Looks like the Inkling uses actual ink. Wacom says that standard ballpoint ink replacements are all that the pen needs to keep it flowing.

The Inkling’s detection area is about the size of an A4 sized piece of paper. You can always use a larger piece of paper, but don’t bawl your eyes out when the kitty you’ve been drawing is suddenly missing half its when it finally makes it to your monitor. A word of warning: drawing too close to the receiver will also land you in the same boat.

The Inkling boasts a net ‘play’ time of eight hours. Although technically the pen lasts 15 hours total, how realistic is it to use the pen without the receiver? Average charge time seems to be 3 hours.

Like photography, it’s hard to know when you start a sketch that you absolutely know you want to keep. Therefore you probably have to pretty much have the Inkling on hand wherever you go.

And finally, some questions that I’m left with:
What happens if I start a sketch but never finish it through, do I just detach the paper from the receiver to start a new drawing?

What happens if I want to stop in the middle of a drawing, but I want to continue recording later. How is that handled?

All in all, the Inkling previews are leaving me with high hopes for greatness. Unfortunately, it is no replacement for my trusty old Wacom Bamboo. Unless someone wants to let me play with theirs it looks like I’m headed back to the ‘stone age’ of scanners.

Original - Skritchy Scratchy

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:18:55 -0400

I am seriously running out of good/any titles.

About the picture:
A (fake) scratchboard picture of a (fantasy) tiger. References were not used for the doodle, so face structures and stuff are horribly inaccurate. Also part of the way through I decided one side of the face was horribly messed up and cropped it out. Now you only get the decent bits! Yaaaaay cropping.

Aywas - Curiosity Killed the Cat

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:21:39 -0400

Pencil drawing for a contest on Aywas! It’s been a while since I put this much effort into a picture, but it’s something I worked really hard on. Winner receives a copic marker set, which is something I’ve always wanted and now have a chance at getting :D

About the picture: This was done on a piece of regular computer paper with a #7 mechanical pencil :)

International Legdor Day!

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:30:42 -0400

What is international Legdor day you ask? Well… it’s a day to honor the most lovable monstrosity ever. Legdor!

What is a Legdor anyways? Well I’m glad you asked! This fella here is an example of a Legdor:

Leigh the Legdor

Leigh the Legdor is the one and only original Legdor. He’s composed of mainly rocks and other rubble which is also his primary food source. He gets proportionally bigger as he eats more, but his body structure isn’t very strong and he usually ends up losing more mass than he takes in. Also, because of his questionable structure he can split into many mini-versions of himself. Don’t ask how he keeps track.

The History of Legdors
Legdors are classified as dragon-type monsters with no arms and subsequently larger legs. The Legdors take extreme pride in their sturdy legs and make fun of at all those who are missing legs. They are also known sometimes to admire other creature’s legs.

The (Real) History of the Legdor
Once upon a time in class, I doodled a fantastic dragon creature with no arms and large legs. This guy began to appear more and more until my friend and I somehow came up with the name Legdor. Now, three or so years later, the same friend tells me one day “legdor only has 7k google results and yours isn’t top!!” WELL. That’s a challenge if I ever heard one. This is something that must be fixed right away! So now here I am to preach to everyone about the existence of Legdor. Spread the word! Share with your friends! Click the google +1 button at the bottom right corner! -end shameless plug-

Hiya people of Tumblr. Why do I even have this? I don’t...

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:38:51 -0400

Hiya people of Tumblr. Why do I even have this? I don’t know D:

Aywas - Squishy, Not Fluffy

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:22:28 -0400

Haven’t done any pixels in a while so here’s one for Aywas.

Pokemon - Fluffy Fluffy Me

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:19:43 -0400

Arcanine is my favorite pokemon :3 Also a tools experiment that was a huge success in my opinion!

FFX - Call on Me

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 14:45:25 -0400

My favorite summon from FFX.

Original Article

Why do I have this? I don't even...

Lay Me Down

Welcome to Table Hell... AKA HTML Emails

Unique Skins Experience

Aywas - PBC Set

Request - Angelos

Wacom Bamboo Capture

Baby's First Winter

7th Annual Holiday Raffle

Original - Mono Color

Original - Cloud Spotting

Pandora Hearts - Blood Stained Black Rabbit

New Wacom Inkling - Worth Getting? Pros, Cons, Questions and More...

Original - Skritchy Scratchy

Aywas - Curiosity Killed the Cat

Read more about Leigh here: http://linai.net78.net/archives/799

International Legdor Day!

Hiya people of Tumblr. Why do I even have this? I don’t...

Aywas - Squishy, Not Fluffy

Pokemon - Fluffy Fluffy Me

FFX - Call on Me