DAZ Platinum Club – The Celebration That Wasn’t

So basically the platinum club celebration this year is… the ability to buy more stuff? They’re not giving members anything, we get no special vouchers, no free products, no package as in former years. The big “gift” is Hey, buy more things and you will get some money back in a few months that you can use to buy more stuff!

Yeah. Ummm. Thanks?

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I have seen nothing even approaching the previous years’ anniversary gifts.

Once Again

Once again I thought I might play around with 3D. I opened D|S – needed a new version. Downloaded, installed.

Checked plugins.

Needed to redo all of my settings, re-save all my preferences.

Wanted to use A4, needed a new version. Downloaded, installed.

Now it’s an hour later and I need to go to bed.

Repeat every 6-8 wks, as needed.

*sigh*

Is there something free-er than free?

DAZ Productions – 3D Models, 3D Content, and 3D Software

Because that’s what it would have to be for me to download this.

My Flickr Favorites

These are all my favorite photos (taken by other people) from the last two years or so, on Flickr.

Creativity. Sort of.

I followed this tutorial at VectorTuts.com. The results are absolute donkey hell. But I am posting them anyhow because I did it, and it fulfilled my “be creative” for today, even if it sucks.

In addition, Illustrator sucks balls in that when you try to “save for web” it saves the whole fucking artboard, even if it’s 90% empty. Why wouldn’t it just save an area surrounding the actual shapes on the page, and not a big wonking empty artboard? Had to use the “crop area” tool to get it down to what I actually wanted. That’s bad workflow, because I can see working on an image for web and wanting to save bits of it while keeping the artboard at the final work size. So that’s bullshit and I was in no mood.

But anyway, here’s some shitty “realistic” vector hair.

Tor.com/Patrick Arrasmith

Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Gallery / Patrick Arrasmith

Have I pimped out tor.com on here yet? If not, let me do that now. Fun community for SciFi/Fantasy writing, reading and artwork. Lots of great artist galleries there. Loving on this for the combo of raven imagery and pinkness.

Edit: Wow. The more I look at this, the more I love it.

Sarah’s Sketches: Strawberry Shortcake

Sarah’s Sketches: Strawberry Shortcake

Love this artist’s take on Strawberry Shortcake. The whole thing is perfect, from the elongated limbs to the super-floppy hat to the perfect paper color choice. Anyway, link to her blog (& from there her website/portfolio) above, first seen at Design You Trust.

Thinking of giving up my DAZ PC Membership

It’s been months and months since there’s been anything there I even kind of wanted to have. Actually it’s been months and months since I’ve done anything vaguely 3D creative, really. Especially anything that would require buying new content. I sorta feel like I HAVE all the content already, you know? Now all the new stuff just looks the same. Plus my aforementioned issues with Studio needing to be completely reinstalled-updated virtually every time I open it, some of my favorite hair not working with it at all anymore (an issue I have to troubleshoot when I have the time/inclination) and a general “meh” about all things mesh…

I don’t know, it’s not the money, it’s the fact that I don’t have any interest anymore and even their major releases haven’t impressed me for the last year. I can’t decide though.

Doing Illustrator Tuts

Create a 3D Push Pin and a Paper Note in Illustrator – VECTORTUTS

Needing to freshen up my Illustrator skills, so doing random tutorials. Love PSDTUTS, VECTORTUTS is just as cool. Nice to have someone walk me through the 3D capabilities of CS3, here’s my output.

(What, like you thought it wouldn’t be pink? Please.)

Unraveling

full size at Rendo

A river of tangled string
you are unraveling
and no one else seems to mind.
You keep it to yourself, stay numb and act fine.

- Deb Talan “Unraveling”

Playing in Painter

Real creativity eludes me at the moment, so playing at creativity while swirling paint around is my temporary substitute.

Painter (plus PSCS3 composite/adjustment) version of photo I took in Savannah. Original photo after the jump. Click to embiggen.

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More Playing in PS

I forget what this effect is called, it’s a forced-perspective trick in PS where you make your shot look as if it’s of scale models. Anyway, it’s fun and it works best on shots taken from up high. I thought this shot I took out the window of the courthouse last week would be perfect.

Original after jump.

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Playing in Photoshop

Too hot to be outside, too distracted to read = playing in PS

see original after jump Continue reading »

Art Resources – Commercial vs. NonCommercial Usage

I’ve been following lots of links lately to “64 FREE and Beautiful Photoshop Brushes!” or “100 of the BEST FREE Vector sites online!” and I’ve been seeing lots of amazing and inspirational work by really talented artists. But what I’ve also been seeing a lot of in these compiled-resource lists is links to resources which are not licensed for commercial usage. And unfortunately those are not resources I would ever download.

As a sometimes-content-creator/provider myself, I understand the desire to have ones work recognized, and the hesitation to release that work into the wild for anyone (corporations, creepy porno people, etc.) to make free use of. That would suck. But at the same time, as a content USER and a freelance designer, I can’t take a risk in downloading something non-commercial that I might accidentally use in a paid project. (And I think we all know that I am not organized enough to keep separate databases of free-for-commercial-use and not-free-for-commercial-use products. Especially when it comes to something like Photoshop brushes, which are too hard to keep in order anyway.) Nor do I want to be in the position of having the perfect resource at hand but having to explain to the client “Yes, well I can use this image in your ad, but we have to have a link back to contentProviderX’s Deviant Art page.”

Since the content I create is for my own pleasure and education, and because I do not aspire to ever become a paid creator of art-related resources, I don’t restrict or limit usage of the resources I create.

For those who do make money from the content they create, I would think that any freebie is released as a teaser, in order to help publicize the paid content. If so, the goal is to maximize downloads and usage of the resource to get as much exposure as possible and to introduce the end-user to your products, which they may want more of. Limiting the usage to non-commercial leads to fewer downloads (from people like me, at least) and less exposure for your work. It also prevents me from ever discovering that you make the best brushes I’ve ever used, or that I can’t live without your vector scrollwork files.

For those who are strictly hobbyists and create resources purely for their own pleasure and that of their peers (and/or the name recognition that goes along with being a premiere freebie creator) I can understand a BIT more the instinct to keep your work non-commercial. You’re a hobbyist, your friends are hobbyists, you don’t want commercial entities coming in and misappropriating something you have a passion for. And you want to KNOW, darnit, when someone uses your product. As a 3D hobbyist myself I do understand that, but would still rather have my products downloaded and used as much as possible, even if I don’t know about it. If it brings more people into my hobby, or it helps someone sell a product, then I think there’s been some positive benefit. To me that’s at the root of the instinct to create and share. To make people happy, to be part of something bigger, to learn and grow as an artist.

I regularly buy content created by both amateurs and professionals, and I would never say that I (or anyone else for that matter) “deserve” free commercial-usage product. That’s not my point. But I would encourage those who release freebies out into the wild to go ahead and release them for commercial use. You’re needlessly limiting your user-base and cutting out a lot of professionals otherwise. And I would encourage those who compile these “BEST FREE VECTOR RESOURCE” lists, which are so popular on Digg and Reddit at the moment, to make clear that you are linking to non-commercial-use licensed wares. If you don’t know the difference yourself then you need to learn it, and if you do know and mix and match commercial and non-commercial freebies you’re just wasting my time.

Playing in Photoshop

Found a cool tutorial here, and this is the result.

The result isn’t the same as the one in the tutorial because the shapes I used were more delicate, they don’t seem to wrap around her face very much. I really liked the curling, peeling effect the tutorial image had, but I wanted to create something which wasn’t exactly the same. Of course, this technique could just as easily have been applied to a render, but I worked with a stock photo for expediency. My favorite part is the strawberry, I think that looks pretty cool.