I posted just last week about how Oliver Jeffers creates the penguin in his book Lost and Found. I’m a big fan of his work, not only is he is a talented artist, he is one funny guy as this 2 minute video shows…
I’m a big fan of Oliver Jeffers’ children’s books, so I was pleased to stumble across a post by Oliver on the Guardian website where he provides a tongue-in-cheek tutorial on how to draw the penguin from Lost and Found.
Happy New Year…
Here is a 3 minute inspirational video, narrated by the 20th Century Philosopher Alan Watts, to think about for the new year. Are you doing what you love? If not, why not make it your new year’s resolution.
Trelissick Water Tower, Wrapped in a bow
Just a quick post to wish you, a merry Christmas and happy new year…
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This has been circulating a while but here is a great video with 29 tips to stay creative. I can personally relate to pretty much all of the advice.
I was working on the updated design for this site and wanted to create a visual timeline on the about page. For each item in the timeline I wanted a gradient box with a slight tooltip arrow on the top pointing up at the timeline. As this site is responsive I wanted to keep the amount (and size of all assets to a minimum) so was looking to create this in HTML/CSS as much of possible.
When it comes to creating a rounded gradient rectangle, this is fairly easily achieved with CSS3 definitions. The small point / tip however isn’t. There are solutions that can be used, using a small rotated square for example, but I couldn’t get satisfactory results so opted to use a graphic image for this.
I use Fireworks for all my user interface design, one of it’s biggest failings is how it renders a thin stroke that is also anti-aliased. For some reason Firework’s 1px soft stroke is rendered 2 pixels wide and not 1 pixel as the name suggests. The only stroke in Fireworks that appears to be truly 1 pixel wide is the 1px hard stroke but as that has no anti-aliasing, the corners become jaggies. This is frustrating if you want to generate or simulate how a browser (or how an operating system) will render a border, especially if you want to combine the graphic with some code generated borders.
The vector on the left uses Fireworks built in 1px soft stroke. As you can see the border is thicker than the one on the left, where the border has been created using Fireworks builtin Photoshop Live Effects.
I stumbled across this little gem a few months back while under the addictive influence of TED videos. Poet Rives has uncovered that 4am had impressed itself on the minds of many great creatives, when wanting to communicate that most unearthly hour of the day. This nine minute clip is both funny and entertaining and highly worth… Read the full article »
In an era of global austerity there are still ways to fund your creative ideas. When it comes to funding, the paradigms are shifting. I’ve mentioned Kickstarter before, the site that uses the crowd funding model and draws on your fans to fund your visions and work. Perry Chan the founder of Kickstarter recently gave a talk… Read the full article »
I have been meaning to share more of others’ work, that I find inspirational. Helen and I had a rare child free morning last Saturday so we headed to Tate St Ives. Tate are currently exhibiting the work of New York painter Alex Katz, showing a collection of painting spanning from his early work in the… Read the full article »
When I released Old Maps of Paris and Old Maps of New York projects my ambition was that they would come in useful and educate. I am pleased to see that 20×200 are selling one of the Paris maps from oldmapsofparis.com to raise money for their Artist Fund (that helps promote artists worldwide). Although I… Read the full article »
