A long time ago I received a demo copy of Comic Life from Plasq software. It was one of those rare chunks of engineering where you could tell they had a lot of fun developing it, and it actually did something very unique, using a unique tool set, in a very simple but special way. As a long time creator of comics, I fell in love with it immediately. I could now create in Photoshop or Sketchbook Pro and drop it into Comic life to finish up the bothersome chore of paneling and lettering.

Recently, I discovered a new version of Comic Life called Comic Life Magiq. With the success of Comic Life under their belts, the developing team; drunk with code driven excess, jumped off the cliff of infallibility into user-interface hell.

The upgrade (a cross-grade — because they still offer the original version of Comic Life) is not without some great improvements. More balloon and frame control (curving tails) and support for Photoshop layers makes it interesting and worthwhile. But the user interface is confusing, self indulgent, and often leaves you with that ever so wonderful “WTF?” look on your face.

The bottom line; There are parts of me that really like what they have done with the software and there are parts of the software that I really HATE. Comic life is built around the idea that you can use iPhoto as an image source for a comic-book-style layout using your own creative dialog and questionable wit. CLM takes this one step further and gives you special effects and retouching controls for your photos. These however are built into an artist’s pallet screen dialog that sacrifices clarity for gee-whiz smoke and mirrors. Instead of clearly labeled controls, I have icons that again leave me guessing at what I am doing and where I am.

Since I draw my own content, and I own Photoshop, I find the new interface to be underwhelming.

For fun I used a half-finished editorial cartoon from last year as the basis of my test. I have been thinking of reviving this part of my creative expression for a while. Maybe even starting a depository for it using ComicPress under a subdomain.

I will be using CLM for the next week or so to create some comics. Maybe my viewpoint will change. Maybe the interface will grown on me. Maybe I will see the everlasting light of truth buried under a pink button. It could happen.

We will see.

So … My Mondays and Wednesdays are nutty crazy as this last emergency fill-in sub situation for North Idaho College has a stranglehold on my life. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard, But 2.5 hours teaching in the morning (7:30 – 10:00) then coming home for studio work, then teaching again in the afternoon (3:00–4:50) then coming home to wrap up studio work and set up the next days work is killing me. The loss of creative momentum is staggering and to be honest the politics of academia would make disgruntled postel workers shudder in fear. If it weren’t for the students, and what they give back in energy and shear joy for the work It would not be worth it al all. (It’s certainly not the money … I mean … really? This is what professional teachers get paid?) If I have not said it before … I am grateful for my studio work.

Speaking of which, I have been very busy working on a host of divergent projects including an ecom website for one of my regular clients, a large 6′ x 4′ standee (Standing advertising display), a logo and brochure, a couple of newspaper ads and some misc promotional items for a local broadband internet company.

All of this put together means I am a very busy man. Not as busy as I would like, and not productive busy, (I spend a lot of time comuting from my home studio to campus and back again, and grading, and reviewing lesson plans, and trying to get into a creative groove and then leave and then getting back into it again.

This means that my webcomic is falling behind, and my game play is down considerably, and of course updating this site has taken a back seat to real life and trying ot get a grip on the whole, only 24 hours in a day thing. Fortunately we are past midterms and I have high hopes of organizing all of this into a profitable and well managed machine … uhm … real soon.

I have made my ebook a priority and decided to take it live on Oct. 31st. Of course that means setting up a real domain and doing site transfer from one place to another. No biggie right? Wrong. My test site was built using ComicPress 2.1 and version 2.5 has new CSS base code. So I had to go through each line of code and rework it to match what I had before. Not impossible, just a pain in the backside.

Anyway the new site is up and working. I am sure I will be tweaking it indefinitely but it is a start. Now I can concentrate on drawing a few posts as my posting cushion.

Oh yeah, the new (and final) address is: www.ArtisteGullible.com

With school starting, and work piling up, and my personal “things to get done” list getting longer, I find myself a bit behind in so many areas. Yet the sun continues to rise and set and oddly enough I find myself in Idaho Falls promoting Bitterroot Mountain publishing and in turn promoting my online ebook Artiste Gullible and digital illustration / book jacket design skills

Speaking of Mr. Gullible, I have decided to release him to the real world on Oct. 31st, under his own domain and host. I have figured out as much as I can hidden under this domain (vanettenstudios.) and I think I am somewhat prepared to move forward with a general public release. Of course after attending a few of the writing meetings here at the conference I am tempted to rewrite whole sections of the story line. The nice thing about the web is I can truly edit as much as I like.

I know it seems like I have dropped of the end of the earth, but the reality is I am completely overwhelmed with  work. It is times like these that make me want to hire more people, but I know that in two months things will be back to normal. So I plow ahead. My to-do list is 28 entries long and extends into September.

I have a sculpt due tomorrow morning, and a web redesign, and of course School starts Monday! I have a logo project that is waiting in the wings, they are getting impatient and two illustration projects that will not die.

My webcomic “Artiste Gullible” is sorely neglected and I feel bad about that worst of all.

ARGH!!!!!! I can do this , I can do this, I can do this …

Getting back to work now.

I have used a digital sketchbook for going on two years. It took me a while to find the right software; one where I was more comfortable using on the fly than wading through the interface. Then I took quite a period of time weening myself from my black book and the warm spot that it occupies in my heart. To be quite honest I still use my black book from time to time, but by and far most of my serious sketching is now done via my pad and laptop.

My sketches started to take a turn a while ago. I was influenced by by another illustrator (Tommy Kane) who uses a combination of words and pictures to round out a visual journal. It appealed to the “inner” writer in me and opened up a new direction in both my writing and my drawing; which I see as right and left hands of a unified vision that takes place in my head. Writing helps me picture the drawings in a more clear way. Drawing adds the detail that I sometimes miss while writing. It is strange how the two work together.

Anyway, I have taken a few of my sketchbook drawings and combined them with the writing inspirations they are paired with (which comes first; I can’t remember?) and formed a sort of web comic / e-book. I have dubbed it “Artiste Gullible’s travels in the here and now.” I spent a long time tweaking the web interface (I used a blog format and scripted template called Comic Press.) and it is now ready for inspection. I hope to publish once a week, but I already know how that will turn out — still it is a goal worth pursuing.

When I get more than 10 posted I will start to promote the site and see what I can do to build readership.

This is going to sound silly, but it wouldn’t be the first time. I needed to create a digital mosaic from a piece of Illustrator art. Not one of those high tech picture mosaic, where a person’s portrait is rendered with a thousand little pictures. I am talking about the old school little chips of tile, cut and clipped and assembled piece by piece to create an image or design. Of course I have neither the time nor inclination to do one by hand and the nature of the job I am working dictated a digital solution.

PhotoShop has a mosaic filter which is more of a name than a tool. It will apply a mosaic-like texture over a photograph and I am sure (like most of the filters) it is a great place to start to develop random fields of texture from which to build or apply masks. But as a stand alone solution it sucks. Not very mosaic like. Alien Skin Software makes a plug-in for PhotoShop that has a mosaic effect, but it falls short as well. While definitely more mosaic like, it nver the less looks “canned” and delivers a buggy, gap filled, inconsistent mosaic patten.

AutoFX also has a plug-in and a stand alone product which really doesn’t do much more than PhotoShop’s basic mosaic filter (plus or minus a few bells and whistles.)

After studying a few mosaics I stumbled across a solution that is perfect. I am not sure why I didn’t go here before but I never really thought of it. It is a tool I use a lot — but over the course of years have never uncovered this gem hidden in a menu that I obviously glaze over in search of other things.

Corel Painter has a Mosaic tool, that is not strictly a filter but uses your pen to fill in or “paint” tiles. This can be done freehand, (like the real deal only faster and digital), or you can use a cloned color source and paint over top. What really makes this outstanding is the natural way you control the pattern of tiles. Because it works like a pen, you can control the direction, the overlap, the natural gapping, the color, everything! You can override a portion or a single tile. You control the grout color and width and it works as fast as you can draw a line.

After drawing my test mosaic, I dumpped it into photshop, attached a layer effect to give the tiles some dimention, and exported it out to my program 3D texture program. Very cool.