Themes and learnings One of the things that helps me write is to find a theme that over time I can build on and use to tuck ideas into. 2008 was mostly about getting my feet wet, testing directions and getting acquainted with you and you with me. In 2009 I’m going to focus on giving you a foundation and then help you build on that foundation throughout the year. Before I get into the details I want to tell about the graphic above, it’s my new Twitter background. Why is that … [Read more...]
Comics and the Warrior, the Healer, the Visionary and the Teacher
February 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Pixelmator: The Unexpected
February 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment
The more I play, the more I believe that I have been underestimating the power of the PixelMator. I am starting to suspect that hidden behind the humble pricetag is the image editing equivalent of "a predator masquerading as a house pet". Many of my Photoshop worklow techniques are based on lessons learned from Photoshop gurus like Matt Kloskowski and Scott Kelby. I wondered while I waited for Photoshop to load if I could color correct an image in Pixelmator and achieve similar … [Read more...]
Skitch makes it easy to annotate pics
January 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Though Skitch has apparently been around for a while now I didn't hear about it until I saw a Merlin Mann's video on how he has his Mac desktop set up. For those that don't follow Merlin's stuff you really should. Since I tend to write about software that I find for my Mac quite a bit I drop in a lot of screen shots. Since Macs have an excellent built in screen capture capability I often just used that, pushing Command-Shift-4 to activate it and drop the resulting capture as a PNG on my … [Read more...]
Making a Comic in Comic Life Magiq
January 27, 2009 By 5 Comments
Comic Life Magiq is an unusual product in plasq's software line, as it's not meant to be a replacement for Comic Life Deluxe. As an avid fan of the latter, I wanted to see if Magiq addressed some of my wishlist in templating and layout for my web comic. For folks not familiar with Comic Life Deluxe by plasq, not to worry. There will be some comparisons with Deluxe throughout the article, but the article is designed to get you going from the ground up. There is an assumption that you already have … [Read more...]
Getting Started in Adobe Illustrator’s Livetrace
January 8, 2009 By 4 Comments
One gazillion years ago (I call it 1989) I used a rather nifty application called Adobe Streamline. It had the ability to convert pixel-based bitmapped images into a vector graphic image. But why would you need that? It is due to the adage of while you can shrink a low-res image, you can't enlarge it. That's because a bitmapped image is made up of pixels. Blowing them up only creates larger pixel areas creating that all-too-familiar crappy Youtube video look. With … [Read more...]
Marketing Monday:planning your show strategy
January 5, 2009 By 1 Comment
Now is the time to start thinking about your next seasons shows. It is also a time to start taking action to move away from what I call “random acts of buying” and start moving into a position that starts to reduce the random nature of your sales cycle. Here are 3 key points to help you reduce those random acts of buying and review your past year from a more holistic point of view: Look at your sales history Use the 80/20 rule- Find what part of your inventory accounted for … [Read more...]
Marketing Monday: a double header
December 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment
This week will be double header to make up for the site being down most of last week. Both are focust on the internet and how you can use it as a tool to improve or at least stabilize your sales Know what you want This is starting to sound like a broken record but it can’t be over emphasized…start spending some time designing you road map for 2009 by getting to know yourself and what you want your businesses to do. I am bringing this up because today’s Marketing Monday … [Read more...]
Why switching to Mac was the right move for me
July 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment
I'm now at the four month mark in my move to Mac. It didn't start out as a switch; when I bought my MacBook in the beginning of February I was really looking for an excuse to play with some new technology. I was satisfied—not excited mind you but satisfied—to use Windows as my operating system. I had my development environment on Windows and was well versed in all the ins and outs of it. I custom built my PCs myself, mildly over-clocking them to get better performance and being very … [Read more...]
Common Myths for the Macintosh
June 25, 2008 By Leave a Comment
There are lots of reasons that people don't want to switch from Windows to Macintosh. I assume the most common reason is simply because Windows works for the people that are using it. The old adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it" tends to apply here. These people are not upgrading to Vista either, they're staying with Windows XP or even Windows 98 and are just fine. There are however an increasing number of people that are moving to Macs now - many of them people like me that … [Read more...]
Common Myths for the Macintosh
June 19, 2008 By 1 Comment
There are lots of reasons that people don't want to switch from Windows to Macintosh. I assume the most common reason is simply because Windows works for the people that are using it. The old adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it" tends to apply here. These people are not upgrading to Vista either, they're staying with Windows XP or even Windows 98 and are just fine. There are however an increasing number of people that are moving to Macs now - many of them people like me that … [Read more...]
Fav Iconic PS Plugin
June 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Favicons have always been the bane of my existence. 16x16 pixels is not a lot of real estate to define the essence of a website and i always forget which of my graphics programs will export a .ico file … [Read more...]
