20% Time 3/17/08

This week, I decided to take a little break from photo-manipulation.  The reason for this is because I need to take time to learn one of the most basic elements any person will absolutely have to know for graphic design: the pen tool.  I have used it sparingly before, trying to focus on effects, but I need to try it out some more.  Also, I am going to have to take the advice of my peers on photoshop talent and focus on small details and perspective.

So, the first thing to tackle is the pen tool, and just free hand drawing in general, and the best place to draw is on Illustrator.  So I looked up some tutorials to try to create a very common object in graphic design- an advertisement/pamphlet (Note: no perspective needed, just depth.  The difference is one has a vanishing point, the other has shadows). 

The first thing I made was a flower that was actually very easy.  I just took the polygon tool, and set it to ten sides, a decagon, and set the size.  Then by adding a ‘pucker bloat’ effect and rough edge creates an uneven, natural petal look.  Then Just applying the gradient.  The next thing to do was create two more smaller petal levels by using pentadecagon (it is also called a pentakaidecagon) and using the tweak effect instead of pucker and it will move the ‘petals’ into each other to give it a more natural look.  The last level of petals called for a small circle and ‘zigzag’ it with 20 ridges and the use rough edges on it as well.  The end result:

Then, I tried to recreate a picture from a tutorial that I found by TripleTee.  I say recreate because after trying to make the picture, I quickly discovered that even though the tutorial was labeled as ‘beginner’, the author must be using a tablet, or I have a really big handicap because of my ‘marble’ mouse.  Unlike conventional optical, or even track ball mouses that move according to the way you push it, a marble mouse is guided by a big red ball that you move with you fingers:

cc “Logitech Marble Mouse Optical Trackball” by Saxguy

So, my main problem was the pencil tool.  For that, you must click and drag to make a completely free-form line.  As you can see, that is the one thing this mouse is not made for.  However, I just toned down the opacity to be able to hide some of the blemishes.  The rest of it, though, was fairly easy with the pen tool.  I followed the tutorial with all the shapes and the overall setting, but the author kept using the pencil tool, so I just had to ignore him.  After that, I added some text (I turned it into an invitation so I can use it again later) along with some lines and the “tropical” logo symbol.  Then I just arranged some flowers with varied opacity across the page.  I thought the outcome was pretty good.

(The file doesn’t upload correctly, see it here.  I was having problems uploading pictures to Flickr, but now I have to go and flag each photo myself to mark it as safe in order to allow it to be seen without being signed in.)

Multi-Touch Computing

I saw this video this week by TEDtalks presented by Jeff Han.  Overall, I thought it was a  really cool idea to be able to have multiple touch points on the computer screen with very few bad points.  The whole concept of this computing interaction is to be able to take out all the hassles of point and click with a mouse and replace it with real-time, natural interaction with the objects on screen with as little need for an interface as possible.

First off, the ability to manipulate photos on screen with your hands is a very good idea.  The first thing I thought of for this were the implications it could possibly have for photoshop.  Even though Han said that there would be no real interface, Adobe could work out a system to create that interface to make be able to change between tools (like now, only now it will be ‘on demand’).  This would make it so that tablets (it’s just a touch screen without the screen) would not have to be in use anymore, they are a little expensive for their small size.  A five inch tablet (the smallest size) could cost as little as a hundred dollars.  If you see my next 20% time post you will see why anything with the pencil tool is difficult without a tablet.  The idea about satellite imaging was intriguing too.

 cc “tablet 1” by Randall Bennett

Next, I enjoyed the concept for integrating it into business.  Most everyone has thought about having automated order/serving machines from the auto-man to “Back to the Future”.  Yet, I had no idea that the technology was actually that close to production.  Microsoft has already started fine tuning their Microsoft Surface computer.  I really like this because it has the programing to recognize objects and wirelessly transfer information.  Such things like these will make things quite interesting in the decades to come.

The only thing I do not like is that because it is still so new, and apparently the company is having difficulty launching their product, that there are going to be huge amounts of glitches in the system for (in my opinion) several versions down the line.  Hopefully, they can work to prevent that.