The Open Artist

Some Angry Bird

2012-01-24T19:01:00.001-05:00

I had a little down time and created this just for fun. It's freely available under GPL for whatever you like. Download SVG

Apple's Stickies Notes tips to get your sticky note into Notes for syncing:

2012-01-07T02:38:00.000-05:00

Open Stickies and type: Command + N, type your note.

Highlight your Sticky Note content then follow the menus: Stickies, Services, New Note With Selection. Mail should open and your new Note with the Stickies note content should pop up. If you are syncing Apple Notes in iCloud, or wherever, you should get them on your other Macs as well as your iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch devices like magic.

Nice, but....

Apple, please enhance the Notes and Stickies applications as follows.

Create a small unobtrusive menubar note app that runs when I log in! Allow the creation of notes from this tool without having to open or run the Mail app, but sync to Mail's Notes as well as in the Notes apps on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad via iCloud. As a bonus, allow this tool to also create Stickies from existing notes without having to run a service in which both Mail and Stickies have to be running; it does not make sense that Stickies runs separately from Notes anyway, they are both notes! Give the user the ability to sync or not sync each individual note, and maybe add some cool tagging to give it a little organization, but keep it mostly simple.

I know this really isn't artsy, nor is it open source, but this note thing bugs me.

Happy Halloween

2011-09-26T08:36:00.001-04:00

- Mohawke

2011-09-07T19:51:00.000-04:00

I created an eye in Pixelmator in about 5 minutes, the layers will walk you through the basics. Download the layered file here

Free 3-D Sculpting Tools

2011-09-07T18:55:00.003-04:00

If you have been interested in 3-D sculpting but were unable to dabble due to cost, Sculptris will make you smile - it's free! Blender 3D has sculpting built in for a full 3-D package, and it's free and open source.

Blender 3D sculpting in action.

Sculptris in action.

The Sketchbook Project

2011-09-07T12:29:00.001-04:00

This is just cool! Pick a journal, pay a $25 entry fee, and create your art in the journal. When you're finished, send it in and your sketchbook will travel around the world to be displayed in galleries and museums. Pretty cool, eh? When your journal finishes the tour it will be cataloged and permanently placed, for public viewing, at the Brooklyn Art Library.

What are you waiting for? get yours here.

- Mohawke

The Forlorn Feline

2011-02-20T12:14:00.002-05:00

A little piece I painted for fun.

Untitled Illustration

2011-02-13T20:11:00.004-05:00

I was trying out a vector package called DrawIt and created the background, which reminded me of an old circus poster. I pulled out an old sketch of the clown thing and painted the rest in Photoshop.

Current Painting

2011-02-03T08:26:00.005-05:00

My wife asked if I'd paint her a clown. Unfortunately, the Gimp on Mac makes me click the tools twice before it will be selected - annoying! Sorry Gimp, but I'm cheating on you with Photoshop...

Project time keeping and billing tool

2011-01-21T21:19:00.003-05:00

Ora Time and Expense Timesheets, Expense Reports, and Invoices Made Easy. Pretty cool multi-platform Adobe Air app, which is free; at least as of this writing.

Gimp Paint Shop

2010-12-30T14:05:00.005-05:00

If you are looking for an open source natural paint application why not use Gimp? MyPaint is good, but it doesn't run on OS X and it requires you to use multiple software packages to accomplish some tasks. Gimp works very well as a paint app, but it lacked brushes and tools to really make it shine. You could spend time making them yourself or now you could get Gimp Paint Studio. These assorted brushes, tools, textures make Gimp a full featured painting tool and you still have all the great features of a high end photo editor. Best part of all, it's free to use and contribute so what are you waiting for?

For Macintosh installation just move all contents of the zip to:

/Users/YOUR_USER_NAME/Library/Application Support/Gimp/

Launch the GIMP.

Go to

Edit->Preferences->Image Windows/Mouse Pointers
disable the “Show brush outline” option and make sure you have “checked” or enabled the “Show pointer for paint tools”. This will increase the speed of brushes when you are painting.

Go to

Edit->Preferences->Toolbox
Enable the three options.

Go to

Edit->Preferences->Tool options/Paint options shared between tools
Disable the three options.

Writing Tools, open and commercial, For OS X

2010-12-05T18:06:00.015-05:00

I recently decided to write a book, just for fun of course as I’m not the greatest writer in the world, but I am a software junkie, and I really wanted to see the tools available to me. The obvious thing to do was to search for “book authoring” software. It took some time, but I found a fair amount of products for Macintosh and Windows, most were affordable at around $25.00 to $100.00.

Linux was an odd man out with only two products within the search criteria. I found StoryBook, which looked promising and even has a Windows version available. Unfortunately, I’m currently running OS X, which is the primary focus of this article. Luckily there is another open source product that runs on all three platforms called Celtx. With Celtx you can write a Novel or even a movie script with similar features to the commercial products I found.

I then tried all the big guys, Scrivener, StoryMill, Ulysses, Stoyist, CopyWrite, WriteItNow, etc... Honestly, they all were good. I liked StoryMill the best because it had a cool timeline feature and a nice layout, but they all had strong and weak points. I suppose it will come down to personal preference and style that will make the decision for users, but for me I had to ask, do I really need to buy these tools?

At this point, I searched for some word processors and found a few of these as well. Bean is a superb editor with great features. The best part, it’s free and open source. It’s a great alternative to Apple’s Pages product if you’re on a budget. For Windows and Linux, I found Abiword to be a really nice tool. I had used it for years on Linux before switching to OS X this year. There is an OS X binary, but it’s outdated.

I'd like to make a quick note on Open Office, KOffice, and MS Office. These tools are heavy and I really don’t like writing with them. Open Office is an awesome project, and it would be my first choice if I had no other. The writing tools are good and they all have great features so again it’s a matter of choice. I do love iWork. I think Pages is the best Office word processor I have ever used, and it works well for creative writing.

Pages is a solid editor with all the features I need to write, like word count, proofreading, and full screen writing. Not only does Pages have an awesome toolset built in, but OS X has the best Spelling, Dictionary and Thesaurus software I have ever used, and it's easily accessible by right clicking on a highlighted word. What makes this even more useful is that the dictionary tool can be used outside of the editor so you’re not limited to using it inside Pages.

I also use the Omniweb browser, which uses another OS X utility named Summary to summarize web pages. Omniweb has become a great tool for research, and the tabs are unobtrusive. I can summarize and paste the text into Pages or a note application very quickly. With web-sites like Wiki and Behind The Name the internet can be your greatest tool.

The last thing I looked for was a note taking and organizational software. Some people like mind mapping tools like Free Mind, but I dislike them all. I prefer simplicity so after testing a plethora of note tools. I finally found one that I really liked called Notational Velocity. Apple includes a sticky note application for post it like notes on the desktop and it’s was no worse than the others I tested. I honestly saw no benefit to using a third party post it over Apple’s. Between these two tools, my note taking is covered.

If you prefer something a little more powerful I would suggest trying Evernote. You're able to sync notes from your external devices like smart phones, and It has exceptional organization and multimedia features, including voice notes. Evernote reminds me of Journlr, but Journlr appears to no longer be in development and it’s not clear if updates will be released for future OS X releases. Sad, it’s a really superb product.

My preference for writing on the Macintosh is use the preexisting tools in the OS, use simple and solid open tools, and find a great word processing you enjoy working in. You don’t need expensive creative software.

Here are a few applications worth mentioning that I omitted if you’re interested.

Ommwriter (Dāna I & II) Dāna is a distraction free full screen text editor. It comes in a free and pay version. Pay version includes more music and themes.

Chandler Is a powerful notebook with tons of features.

Slidepad Note tool which is hidden from view until needed.

ClipMenu Clipboard history. Record 8 clipboard types, from plain text to image.

Amazon Self Publish Publish your book on Amazon Kindle.

Photo POS Pro has become freeware

2010-11-13T10:13:00.005-05:00

Photo POS Pro reminds me of Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. Grab a copy if you're looking for a full featured photo editor that runs on Windows with similar features and functionality of Photoshop.

Photo POS Pro (Windows)

Creative Writing Tools

2010-11-13T09:06:00.003-05:00

If you're a writer looking for tools to help you keep your ideas and thoughts together in one convenient place while you write you have two pretty good choices. First is Storybook, which is an open source creative writers tool that helps keep all the details, like characters, places, research and plot-lines, easily at hand while working. Celtx is another with similar features. Celtx is freeware and has commercial plug-ins, which were not really needed, but may enhance the core product. Celtx supports many nice features and can be used for many types of writing including scriptwriting and comics.

Celtx (OS X, Linux, and Windows)
Storybook (Windows and Linux)

Picogen

2010-07-24T23:13:00.002-04:00

If you need a tools to create 3-D landscapes similar to Terragen, Bryce or Vue Despirit then you're limited to commercial, until now. Picogen is an open source outdoor ray tracing system, targeting large-scale terrain with realistic day/night-illumination and detailed plant populations. I haven't had a chance to use this one, but I will soon.

MyPaint + Wine + OS X 10.6

2010-05-29T23:44:00.003-04:00

I wrote up some simple instructions to install MyPaint 8.2 via Wine (Bottler) on OS X 10.6.

Download it here:
MyPaint 8.2 on OS X install instructions

Download the icon: OS X MyPaint Icon

I am looking at porting this since I am a Python programmer and Linux user, but I'm real new to programming on Mac so we will see... I guess this will have to do for now.

My latest web project

2010-05-24T10:22:00.003-04:00

If you're looking for great open or free software on Windows or Macintosh give my appShooter a try.

- Mohawke

Time

2010-05-13T21:43:00.003-04:00

A wallpaper I put together a couple of weeks ago. I based this off an older image I created. Full size is 1920x1200

Lightworks Video Editor going open source.

2010-05-13T21:05:00.006-04:00

This is pretty cool! An industry level award winning non-linear video editor soon to be released as open source! There are a few good editors for Linux, like Lives, OpenShot, and Cinelerra, but another choice never hurts. I'm assuming it will be a Windows based application, but maybe it will get ported to Linux and OS X. The application is Lightworks and it's won Academy® and Emmy® awards! Wow, I'm impressed!!! Not really.

Currently the download isn't available, but sign up so you get notified when it's released; and read the specs, pretty nice for an open source app!

Visit Lightworks

Creating a simple planet/moon in Gimp.

2010-04-17T15:36:00.007-04:00

Someone left a cool picture of Mars on my desk at work and as I looked at the image I thought it would be cool to make one in the Gimp, because I typically use brushes or actual planet pictures.

Amazingly it took me only 5 minutes and really requires no real skill in Gimp or Photoshop so I decided everything in the file itself should be the tutorial. It's pretty self explanatory, even for someone fairly new. Obviously if you do not understand layers, or the Gimp, you may need to get Grokking The Gimp, which is a free book on the Gimp and a great starter. The Gimp is also free and can be found here and runs on Windows and OS X, as well as Linux\Unix.

The tutorial is of a simple moon, which contains three layers, a circle selection filed with a white to black gradient, a texture for the surface, and a second circle selection with a darker white to black gradient. The file can also be used as a template, add your own texture(s) \ colors and play with the layer settings, I have it set to "overlay".

Download the template, around 1.6mb (includes both Gimp XCF and Photoshop PSD formats)

Published in Italy!

2010-04-17T14:12:00.002-04:00

I have a few images published in various papers, but never a newspaper and never anything in Italy. I thought this was rather cool. The full image can be found here and it's original purpose was to be a desktop wallpaper.

Pano iPhone App

2010-04-17T14:09:00.005-04:00

Pano price reduced temporarily to $.99, pretty damned cool!

Adobe Ideas for iPhone

2010-04-17T13:52:00.004-04:00

Adobe released the iPhone/iPad application called Ideas, which is a free photo editor and drawing application. It's very well laid out and the output looks really good. It lacks tools and features like smudge and layers, but it lets you draw onto photos and is clean, plus you can't beat a good tool for free. Not sure how long this is going to be free, maybe forever, but I would get a copy while you can just in case.

Teamwork

2010-03-17T12:36:00.010-04:00

Poser & Photoshop. I created this after playing with Poser for a minute. I dislike Poser figures because they generally look so fake so very little editing was actually done in Poser, aside from the Poses of course.

This image is very simple to create and consists of four layers, the demons each had a layer, but I'm not counting them. The layers are the texture, which also textures the demons, the wall, the floor, and the framed picture. Some very minor editing was done to get the shadows and demons to look more natural.

If you're looking for an open source alternative to Poser, you will want to take a look at Make Human. Available for OS X, Linux, and Windows. For a freeware alternative see Daz Studio.

The meaning is simply this, as evil and nasty as mankind can be, we can still join together and do kind things from time to time.

Lovely Charts

2010-03-17T11:31:00.003-04:00

Lovely Charts is a web based application for creating charts and diagrams. I needed something like Visio to diagram and see program flow, but I don't use these types of tools enough to warrant installing or buying something. Lovely Charts does what I need and it's free, requires no install, is powerful, and has no weird problems.

Moved to Macintosh full time.

2010-03-17T10:22:00.007-04:00

After years of running Linux and occasionally Windows I've made the switch to Macintosh. My wife has been using Macs for years and I have used them every now and then so it wasn't a big change, plus I supported them years back in a technician role, but I do believe I was missing out. My only complaint is the window management is lacking, and the fact that you can't do a lot of theming. Besides that, I'm in heaven.

First, there is plenty of open source software so I have just about everything I need. I have the power and security of Unix and the purchasing power of a commercial OS. The best of both worlds! I still have to watch when I buy strange hardware or a game, but Linux made me used to this type of lifestyle so no big deal. I still have more options with OS X and I haven't spent anytime fixing anything! My one complaint with Linux was I constantly had to fix or get something working every time I installed it.

I am a programmer by trade so of course I'm spending some time with XCode. I have about four iPhone apps that will soon be in the works. Objective-C is a little different from the world I come from and XCode/Interface Designer has a bit of a learning curve but I'm liking it so far; although, it's a very tedious language/process. Of course Python is far superior and I already wrote a bundled Python/Tk GUI tool to get data out of a SQLite database created by an iPhone application...

So I am happy with my decision and love it so far. I would recommend a Mac to anyone who wants to be productive and secure with a clean way to manage everything, including software. One thing about Macintosh the haters miss, it allows you to be as technical as you feel comfortable with. If you want to program, it's there. If you want to dig deep into Unix commands and software, it's there. If you just want drag and drop pictures with red eye removal, it's there. I do all of the above based on my mood. One day I only want to create art, the next I want to play around porting some Linux app in x11.

One thing is for sure, Macs are a little higher priced than the cheap ass crap at the local best buy. I call those consumer throw away machines. We have eight year old Macs still in use here, but I can guarantee those cheap HP, Dell's, whatever will be collecting dust within four years and you will feel the pain if they're not... That should not be an argument. I have some old HPs and I can't stomach using them. Honestly, I looked at laptops that would be about the same level of power and features as the Macbook and the price wasn't all that much different if you're out to buy a good machine that will last you awhile. If you're looking for the cheapest thing you can get, you will get what you pay for, period...

Before I start getting labeled a "fan boy" let me suggest if you have a nice laptop and want one hell of a killer Linux distro that has some of the same look and feel of Mac, get a copy of eLive! I am putting a copy on my son's laptop and I don't even mind donating to install, because it really is nicely done.

Whatever your opinion of the various operating systems, you have to admit they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I've used them all including Novell Netware/Windows/DOS/SCO, Linux (too many flavors), Solaris, BeOS, Amega, OS/2 Warp, etc... My opinion is the same, early 90s Amiga was ahead of its time, mid 90s BeOS was ahead of its time, early 2k Linux was on it's way (hasn't changed), now OS X is what I consider, not ahead of its time, but certainly in time...

La Macchina

2010-02-28T12:42:00.005-05:00

This is an edit of an older piece I created in Cinema 4D and The Gimp. I used Pixelmator to do some editing to see how it works. Decent little app, but lacks a lot of features. This edit was done in Photoshop CS mostly...

Vector Web Apps

2010-02-16T13:14:00.005-05:00

I've been poking about the web looking for on-line graphics tools. Last time I looked around there were a few emerging tools for photo editing and drawing, these areas seem to have advanced nicely (Here's a really nice list of tools), but there wasn't really any decent vector solutions worth the time. That's changed a bit.

Raven is a Vector editor similar to Inkscape that runs in the web browser. The company delivering this tool, Aviary, has an image editor and other tools available as well. I created a quick eight ball to see how well the tools work. Things went well until I went to use the gradient. This tool is very limited in movement... To get around this you could do all of your high lighting and shadows with shapes, applying gradients then transparency on their layers, which is how I would do it 99% of the time anyway. Not a bad tool for a web app!

For another nice looking vector tool, not as polished, but appears to be open and allows direct editing of svg, check out svg-editor on Google code. It's very fast and once it's gets some more tools a features it could be a contender to installable applications.

Have fun and if you see any cool on-line vector tools let me know.

Sumo Painter 2.0

2010-02-14T16:23:00.003-05:00

Sumo Painter is a web application for illustration, photo editing, and painting. After launch I was presented with a fairly intuitive interface. If you're a Photoshop user you'll be right at home as it's similar, but anyone with image editing will likely be up and working in about a minute.

Speed was really good! I ran it in the Chrome browser on Windows XP. My laptop is a hyper-threaded 3ghz machine with 1.2gb ram and an old ATI 64mb video card. I can't wait to give it a go on my new Mac Pro!

The features are dead on! Has a great plug-in set, which is what I mostly used to create the image you see. It has layers, including layer effects and can save to most formats. Good complete toolbox, nice assortment of brushes, standard adjustment filters, and selection tools.

I've played around with this a bit today and like it. You can use it as a guest, but for $20 a month you can go pro. You can save images to your machine and I noticed no limitations on the guest version. If you don't need a dedicated tool, but want something fairly similar to Photoshop this may work out for you.

Happy Halloween

2009-10-27T21:01:00.005-04:00

I've been playing around with reelDirector a video editor on the iPhone. I'm impressed even though it doesn't do a whole lot at this point. It basically let's you add a title and transition between clips, but it's fast and works. I'm looking forward to updates!

So anyway, this is my second pumkin carving ever! I'm getting better, I think... Happy Halloween.

2009-10-24T21:27:00.014-04:00

I would love to share a piece of art with you all. This piece has not been seen by anyone other than friends and family since 1977. Anyway, this painting is a little special, because it was created by a local artist named Lee Csuri.

Now maybe you don't know who she is, but you may have heard of her husband. Her husband was Charles, or Chuck, Csuri. Charles played football at the Ohio State University, but that's not what he is most noted for. Charles Csuri is known as the pioneer of Computer-Based Art! You can read his full biography at the csuriproject web-site. He also has a blog, but it does not really mention Lee and the posts stopped in March.

I have looked for Lee on the internet, but really haven't found much about her. She has art around town I'm sure, but the only peice I've been able to find other than the one my parents own is the "Sky Women" sculpture that lives at the Inniswood Metro Gardens. This statue was stolen and returned, which got it into the headlines.

"Sky Women" sculpture

I do not remember the title of my parents painting, but here it is. Enjoy it, it's a beautiful painting, very earthy, and has a hell of a message. You can hear it gently in the air when you look at this painting, "just get along".

A little detail

Click for bigger, 800x600... Please forgive the photography, but this was taken in a dark room with an iPhone camera...

~~If anyone has any information on Lee, any images of her work or display locations, please leave me a comment.~~ Charles and Lee are still actively creating art and I hope to be in contact with them soon. I will post details as I get them.

Open and Free Video Editing Tools

2009-10-24T12:20:00.011-04:00

I decided to look for some free WIndows and Mac video editing software recently since the last time I ran Windows I was pretty well disappointed with what was out there, at least as far as open tools are concerned.

The free editing software I did find for Windows is simply "still bad" and the choices haven't changed much. I was disappointed with just about everything I tried. Mostly the interfaces were just not good. Some of these were ported from Linux/Unix so there are a lot of bad editors there also. I was amazed that after a few years these products haven't become better or more alternatives haven't popped up.

Avidemux is still pretty good for some editing tweaks. I've had decent luck with it. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. ZS4 isn't too bad either so take a look at that. ZS4 runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux and will do most of what you'll need to get done. On Linux I would recommend Lives or OpenShot. OpenShot is written in Python, my programming language of choice.

For Windows Wax is still the way to go. You can use it stand alone, but it will plug into the big guys, like Adobe Premier, as well as Microsoft's Movie Maker. It also plugs into VirtualDub if you feel the need for it. I had to convert mov to another format though. I use Format Factory to convert mov to avi. This tool is the best and a must have if you want to convert any multimedia format to another, including audio and images; make sure to uncheck the Ask.com crap when installing.

For a little more power and learning curve, Jahshaka and the editor included in Blender 3D rock as well! I will highly recommend them both.

There were a couple of Windows projects I found that seem to have died. Shame really, but people get busy and I imagine video editing software is a major undertaking. The little bit of code I've done over the years leads me to believe this. Maybe these can work for you so I'll link them. Positron and Vivia, both appear to be non-linear editors.

OS X is a different monster, considering you can run some x11 applications you can actually use some Linux software with a little know how. Fink or MacPorts will give you access to some of these programs with little trouble. Not sure how well Lives would run, if at all, on Mac OS X, but if you can get it and it works well, you will likely not be too disappointed.

Some other tools that work well are MPEG Streamclip. Good for conversion and minor edits on Windows and Mac OS X. As a Linux user I've spent many hours on the command prompt using FFMPEG! It will do just about anything video! You can get FFMPEG on Mac OS X, which is absolutely brillant, or on Windows; everything you need is here.

Sometimes you need to draw directly on or edit an individual frame. For this you will want to grab a copy of CinePaint! Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Really is a nice tool and is based off of The Gimp. If I were to compare this tool to anything, I'd compare it to Photoshop, only for movies.

Of course we have some tools that were not available a few years ago, which is web based editing, and it's pretty damned good. I was using JayCut's editor and it kicks ass! Not only can you edit without installing anything, but you store your movies there as well so you can share them. I really wasn't looking to review on-line tools, but I felt they are worth mentioning. For more tools and insight read this article. I'm just amazed the on-line tools are actually better than most of the tools I installed. There are even conversion tools like Zamzar.

I guess if you're serious about doing major video editing you should consider spending the money and buying Final Cut, Adobe Premier, or Sony's Vegas line. It will cost you, but you get really good tools. If you're really on a budget on Linux you can run Cinelerra, which is free, and you can even use it without installing Linux if you wish (see the list of Live CDs on their site). It's a decent, but not without headaches, professional editing environment.

If you're like me and just want mid range editing and the ability to share with family, the on-line tools work well. If you're simi-professional or learning, the tools I mention will get you on your way.

As for authoring here are some dvd tools, check out:
DVD Flick Windows
HandBrake Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
DVD Author Mac OS X, Linux
transcoder-redux Mac OS X
DVD Styler Windows, Linux

Also look at Apple iMovie and Microsoft Movie Maker included with your OS.

A tools collection I maintain at my web-site.

Ancient Apple Wallpaper

2009-10-23T19:00:00.003-04:00

I created an iPhone wallpaper awhile ago and the other day got a request for a desktop version. I created them last night and they can be downloaded here. The file includes most standard sizes, which can be sized down if needed, and I also included an iPhone version. The original iPhone wallpaper can be downloaded here.

Let me know if they look alright, I haven't viewed them at every resolution.

Enjoy!

Free Game Development Resources

2009-10-18T22:31:00.009-04:00

Last night my friend asked about easy game design and he doesn't have time for my first suggestion, Python... I would simply develop using PyGame, Twisted, Panda3d or Crystal Space . I'd use tools like Blender, Freyja , The Gimp, Inkscape, Pencil for design/animation and Kristal, Hydrogen, and Traverso for sound. These tools are all free or open ;)

That's way too much and all he really wants to do is create a RPG with as little programming as possible. I found this, RPG Maker XP , which looked cool, but it's missing a dll so I turned my attention elsewhere. I also found a resource page anyone who would be interested in this will find useful, which contained some commercial apps like Blitz Basic, which I played with when it was first released years ago. http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html

Some that I personally liked an may even give a try I listed below, all free or open. I went through the resource to save you all time... Aren't I a nice guy?

Adventure Game Studio Create your own point-and-click adventure games, similar to the early 90's Sierra and Lucasarts adventures.

Byond Create or play free multiplayer games.

Clean Game Library Complete development system for 2D games (platform games, side scrollers), using the functional language Clean.

Dimension3 3D game "without content." Create 3-D games by changing the engine, Mac.

Legendary Tales Engine and Editor, two Windows programs for creating and playing state of the art text based fantasy RPGs.

Reality Factory In conjunction with other tools - allows you to create 1st and 3rd person perspective games without programming!

Wintermute Engine Development Kit is a set of tools for creating and running graphical “point&click” adventure games, both traditional 2D ones and modern 2.5D games (3D characters on 2D backgrounds).

As always, have fun!

iPhone for art

2009-10-18T11:01:00.005-04:00

I've been evaluating all of the more expensive drawing applications on the iPhone and honestly, most are just glorifed sketch apps that are only worth .99 cents, but three really stood out and have actually been fun to draw in.

To truely be productive I found myself using three apps. Each tool has it's weakness, but using the three made these issues less important.

The three applications that are the best in my opinion are SketchBook, PhotoForge, and Photogene. SketchBook has a gallery for your work and really nice brushes. The interface is also really good.

PhotoForge is more of a photo editor, but it does have a smudge tool for blending, clone stamp, and nice color tools and filters.

Photogene is another photo editor and it let's you place text and borders with a lot of flexability and options.

Inspire would have made it, but the brush strokes are blocky to me, but given time this may end up being my favorite.

In my screen shot there are two apps missing, one is Petite Peinture and the other is ZeusDraw. Petite Peinture I have tried and it worked ok, it was also a little blocky like Inspire and the interface simply didn't work for me. It's also a little cheaper than the rest. Most of these apps are $4.99 this one is $1.99. Of course that can change at anytime.

Zeusdraw is $10.00! Considering my luck with all these apps, I'm just not willing to sink $10.00 into it. If you have, feel free to weight in.

One last tool for the mobile artist that is just a must have. Drawing with the finger is tedious and a pain in the ass really, and I have small hands! There is a stylus, called the Pogo, for the iPhone/Touch and I recommend it as it's not to expensive and it gives you a little more control over your drawings. You can get it here.

I leave you with a little ten second sketch done in SketchBook...

Make Human

2009-10-18T00:57:00.005-04:00

I've been waiting for an open source Poser and a Z-Brush like sculpting tools. Now that Make Human is here we have them both!

Sharp Construct came out awhile ago and ended up being included into Blender 3D. This gives you the ability to sculpt a 3-D mesh like you do in Z-Brush. Simply amazing and powerful.

Make Human is similar to Poser 3D. You can edit, pose, and render the human form. Also see Daz Studio, it's not open source, but it's free and really nice.

If you need to quickly create the human figure or organic models on a budget, these may come in handy.

Collector Of Souls

2009-01-03T15:02:00.001-05:00

Hope anyone crossing this blog had a wonderful holiday. I certainly did. It was fun with my son being four, he can finally appreciate Christmas more. New Years eve wasn't so great, but I really didn't feel like going out so I spent the night at home. Maybe I am getting to old for this party shit or maybe I will get drunk tonight now that all the dumb assess are back in their caves.

I don't have much to talk about at this point, been very lazy in regards to the internet lately. Maybe I shouldn't have started another blog, WTF, Right?

Anyway, here is an image I created from six separate photos, which I individually masked, colored, and put together into a new piece. I used The Gimp on Linux to make this image. It's one of my favorite pieces and I plan to make a series out of this. I like the way the color tones came out. I put this up as proof that great art can be created without Photoshop and Windows.

I am hoping I can become motivated and get some Inkscape and Gimp tutorials up here soon. I plan to create an image similar to the above in Gimp with a walk through on how to do it. I know there are a lot of tutorials on the internet, but they usually don't focus on a complete work of art, but rather focus on small concepts.

Happy Holidays

2008-12-24T09:43:00.004-05:00

My wife got sneaky and wrapped all the presents last night so I took the day off from work and got up early to wrap presents for nothing. I did manage to workout for a bit, but then she went and got McDonald's for breakfast so I totally wiped out my exercising. Oh well...

Speaking of my wife, my wife makes glass and sculptures. If you're into that sort of thing check out her glass here and her sculptures here.

Anyway, I wanted to wish anyone who stumbles by a Happy Holiday!

MyPaint and Gogh Linux natural paint applications

2008-12-22T17:23:00.004-05:00

Last December I played around with Gogh and MyPaint, you can read that here if you like. There are screen shots there also. Both programs are natural paint programs for Linux that take advantage of drawing tablets using pressure to simulate real world medium. I really liked MyPaint at the time, but I wanted to take another look at them both since it's been a year.

MyPaint now has a version compiled for Windows, but seems to have not changed much in it's features. Gogh seems to be stagnant. I still like the brushes in MyPaint and the overall program better than Gogh. In all honesty I can get similar effects in Gimp and have speed painted a couple of things in Gimp before ever finding these programs so give that a try as Gimp really has a lot of nice features, including tablet support and layers. Here is one that I painted in The Gimp on Kubuntu using a Wacom Graphire II as an example of what can be achieved:

I originally built MyPaint on Ubuntu and the link to my older post gives details, library names, etc., but there is now a deb package so it isn't necessary. There isn't one for Mandriva 2009 though so I built it.

If you want to try the rpm there is one here created for Fedora, it might work on Mandriva. Building MyPaint on Mandriva 2009 is very straight forward - this should work on any distro...

Make sure you have the following installed. If not install the following in software management.

gtk+2.0

libgtk+2.0_2-devel

pygtk2.0-devel

Download the source from MyPaint web-site and extract to your home drive; i.e. /home/*username*/mypaint-*version*

Open the terminal and cd, change directory "cd mypaint-*version*"

Now simply type:

./configure && make && ./mypaint

./configure && make will compile the program and && ./mypaint will run it once it's compiled. You can fire it up from the terminal with ./mypaint any time after

Or you can also have make install the program for you:

./configure && make install

Hope this helps anyone interested in natural painting who is new to Linux.

Photoshop plug-ins in Gimp

2008-12-21T14:28:00.002-05:00

If you need to run Adobe Photoshop plug-ins only and you're using Gimp in Linux I have pretty good luck using PSPI . Here's a screenshot .

Install Wine, should be in the package manager that came with your distribution, apt-get, urmpi, adept, etc... You can find Wine settings in the KDE settings, which will get you setup and working easily. I typically leave everything as is for plug-ins.

Next look for your Gimp directory under home eg, /home/*yourusername*/.gimp2/, will most likely be hidden so in you file manager under View select "show hidden". In this folder there will be the /plug-ins folder. If not make it. Note, you Gimp folder may look different, especially version number.

Once you locate the plug-in folder copy pspi and pspi.exe and your Photoshop plug-ins there. If you need to install the plug-in just point to that folder when the setup asks for the plug-in directory. When you fire up Gimp your plug-ins should be ready for use.

Keep in mind not everything will work, but my favs like Flood, Eye candy, Nik, and KPT work fine.

Using these plug-ins in Gimp on Windows works much better because they don't need to run in Wine and can run on Windows natively. Same basic idea as in Linux and I think Gimp for Windows still has the PSPI file you need included. Just copy your plug-ins into the Gimp plug-in folder and you should be all set.

Download PSPI

Open or Free tools for the digital artist.

2008-12-21T11:12:00.003-05:00

Here are, in my opinion, the best free graphics applications available for Windows and a few for OS X. These tools effectively replace the need for expensive tools, like Adobe products. I use these along side some commercial applications and they integrate very well with little effort.

There are a lot of lists that consist of free Windows graphics software out here, but I actually use these products unlike many of the people listing tons of programs, and these are my personal favorites for there stability, power, and of course their licenses (open or free). If you're also wanting some nice plug-ins for Photoshop, there are some really nice ones here. I will post a "how to" to get Photoshop plug-ins working in Gimp on Linux and Windows shortly.

Windows...

MyPaint (Similar to Corel Painter) Natural painting application. Also see Pixia
Paint.Net (Similar to Adobe Photoshop) Image editor. Also see The Gimp
IcoFX Icon/Pixel editor
InkScape (Similar to Adobe Illustrator) Vector editor
Pencil 2-D Vector and bitmap cartooning and animation. Also see Synfig
Scribus (Similar to Adobe Pagemaker) Desktop Publishing.
Blender3D (Similar to Lightwave 3-D) 3-D modeling, rendering, and animation. Also see 3DCanvas
FontForge (Similar to Fontographer) Create true type fonts. Also see Win XP built in editor, type eudcedit in a run dialog.

Fyre Computational artwork based on histograms of iterated chaotic functions. Uh, yea, it makes cool images...
Fractal Explorer 2D, 3D, and Land fractals.

For a complete all in one graphics suite check out FreeSerif. Not my personal favorite, but you might like them and they integrate with each other well.

Mac OS X...

ArtRage2 Natural painting application. Free version and commercial version available. Also runs on Windows.
LiveQuartz Image editor. Also see Seashore
Pixen Icon/Pixel editor

Xaos Fractals

First post

2008-12-20T20:02:00.002-05:00

This is a new blog for me to post some of my art that I create using open source tools. I also hope I can give you some good tips and information when it comes to open source art tools. I will focus not only on Linux, but OS X and Windows as well. I run all three systems, Linux being my favorite and OS X a close second. I may be cross posting some things from my web-site, Dark Artistry just as an FYI.

I have been running Linux since 1994, give or take, and started using open art tools seriously in the late nineties. I am a Python programmer doing administrative, network, and systems programming as well as some web development in my career, but doing digital art is really what I enjoy most. I am lucky to be working in an area where I can utilize open source software on a daily basis and being in a Windows shop makes it even better. I have been running Mandriva 2009 lately and absolutely love it, KDE 4 is simply amazing.

I haven't really had a lot of time to create art. I think the the last real piece of art I created was last year. Mainly this is because I have a young son who demands much of my time when I am not working. The rest of my time, at least lately, is spent exercising. After quitting a smoking habit of almost twenty years I found that I gained a bit of weight after a year. Now that I am feeling healthy and the best I have felt in years and my son is becoming more independent, he is four, I feel the time is right to focus on my art once again. It may be a slow start, but it's a start...