This is a nice animated film by Dave Cockburn of SqueakyPictures.

Paul Manchester just started a new little online comic; a couple of the episodes are here

The Fungi Within

fun for kids and those with 'kid-inside' on the label.

He also just finished his first book Pursuits of Whimsey - just ordered my copy. If you want to support a very talented artist then get your own copy.

Minor news - new site background. Why? The site is boring me. I want to redo it but when I think of the time required to do it and test all the templates I'd rather spend it working on other projects. I created these templates right after I was laid of from Animax where I had worked on a bunch of kids art (like Beanie Babies and Ty Girlz) for a year. While I liked them well enough, if I get the time I would just as well a dynamic graphic novel or comic book look, or sci-fi or even a nice clean web 2.0 interface - but for now all you get is a cheesy background. ;)

As the media announced the death of Kim Jong il I watched Google search fill up with ominous warnings of North Korea's short range missle tests and uncertainty of the new government.

The warning bells have begun to sound from broadcast towers everywhere. For some reason I flashed to Denethor's famous line in Lord of the Rings: "My sons are spent. My line has ended. Rohan has deserted us. Theoden's betrayed me. Abandon your posts! Flee, flee for your lives!"

Personally I'm not worried about North Korea's missle tests. You see, I have been watching the news for many years and I am pretty certain that we'll all die from a heretofore undiscovered asteroid striking the earth, or global warming will raise the level of the oceans and wash away North Korea, or the world economic crisis will explode and North Korea won't have money for bullets, and will ride bicycles into battle like the Cuban military, and we will all have to fight using sticks.

Of course the best sticks will come from the Amazon Rainforest so it will be cut down, and then there will be no trees left and there won't be enough oxygen left so we'll all die. Throw in the teflon in the ocean, the radio signals which are giving us all brain cancer, monster hurricanes caused by global warming, anticipated local events like the earthquake dubbed "The Big One", the mad cow virus, the flesh eating virus, and the congressional virus and I think you can see - you don't have to worry about the North Korean's missle tests.

Millions of years from now a race of intelligent roaches will inherit the earth and have essentially the same conversation.

Working on a few ideas for a figurehead for the boat in my Hope's Journey project.

Here's a few more. Lots to learn... be sure to join in if you want to practice and learn too.

I found a web site that I hadn't seen before. It has a collection of little utilties to optimize images. No frills but they work quite well.

We needed a way for non tech users to just drop an overly large (filesize) image on the icon and spit out a smaller image. In our case ScriptJPG at this site did the trick. The owner provided a simple modification so that we could automate the picking of option 6 (maximum compression) each time so that our users wouyldn't even have to press a button. I'll paste that edit below. The web site is at

http://www.css-ig.net/

If you want an "automatic selection" of option 6, just edit the ScriptJPG.cmd file with a text editor. Line 80 you have the "choice" section, corresponding to user input. Instead of :

:choice
set /p number=# Enter an option [1-6]: 
if %number%==1 goto optimize
if %number%==2 set qua=90 & goto jpgconv
if %number%==3 set qua=80 & goto jpgconv
if %number%==4 set qua=70 & goto jpgconv
if %number%==5 set qua=60 & goto jpgconv
if %number%==6 set qua=50 & goto jpgconv
cls
goto iuser

Replace it with :

:choice
set qua=50 & goto jpgconv
cls
goto iuser

This modification will run option 6 without user interaction.

I found this nice small collection of free animated sprite effects at Pow Studios.

Weapon Attack Effects Pack 1

Bright Flash Animations Pack 1

Blood Animations Pack 1

Electricity Animations Pack 1

Fire Animations Pack 1

Smoke Animation Pack 1

Still have a lot to learn but I think this is it. It is better than the first effort anyway.

Here are some of the steps it took to get here.

Trying my hand at painting a female face in Photoshop entriely with the Wacom. I've neglected practicing in this area much and most of my girls look like Shrek with a wig. Anyway here is my progress so far.

Well got my first critique. The stuff is too soft (need harder brush), values need to be better defined (dark to front light to back) and less detail (just focus on shape and value). Finding it initially a little hard to avoid detail and get more accurate with my Wacom. I limited myself to 10 minutes per thumb here as I find I want to add extra detail otherwise. Expect to have more time tonight and will do a lot more.

I found a nice thread on the ConceptArt.org forums. User DANJAN has created an interactive post to teach the basics of environmental design. There's some good information there and I recommend you join in and work your way through the challenges. Its been going on for a big so I am behind, but by reading the thread posts you can start and catch up. I just did the first 8 of 20 thumbs and am wwaiting on feedback. These are just rough thumbnail drawings designed to work out ideas without spending too much time (in my case they took a little longer as I have to power up my Wacom skills).

You can see my first efforts here.

You can find the forum thread here.

I needed to quickly compress a few heavy png images and found PunyPNG did a great job. You can use it free or spend about $5 bucks a month for an increase in the amount of images and sizes that can be uploaded.

Check out PunyPNG >>

My son's middle school uses a lot of online resources. The kids learn how to use the technology and also have some fun.

Here is a Glog he created. Your kids might like Glogster too.

Worked out another rough for Hope's Journey ...

I'm working on filling in some missing 'concept' images for my Hope's Journey project so I can put together an animatic and try to get it funded on something like Kickstarter. I added a new image last night - I really suck at drawing people and based the girl on the beautiful 'mother and child' art of Katie M Berggren. Without looking at her images my girls look like pumpkin headed freaks or cross dressers. Note: the story beats are missing a key sequence (the 'ME' giant and the kettle burners) which I still have to write in and create concept art for.

I try not to mix politics with anything -because people tend to explode (or implode) when discussing it- but I wanted to point out a new feature on WhiteHouse.gov which allows you to create petitions or support petitions. You need to get 150 signers to make your petition visible on the website and then, if you get 25,000 signers within a month, they promise to put the petition in front of the people who need to see it.

I created a petition designed to put the issue of Congressional term limits on the table. I believe a lot of the bottlenecking we are seeing in government today is a direct result of career politicians who have lost touch with the reality most of us face. With their access to large sums of power, money and privelege, and decade spanning relationships with lobbyists and special interest groups, many of them no longer truely represent the average citizen. Whatever your political views that much at least is obvious.

We need term limits to break the power brokers and periodically flush the congressional toilet. We need new ideas and representatives who have a relationship with us, not with powerful banking, insurance and other groups who are asking favors which may not be in our best interest. We also need a congress that isn't just waiting for a new president who will support thier agenda - we need them to work now. To find solutions now. To serve the American people now.

I couldn't explore the issue fully because there is a word limit on the petition site but if you agree that we need change then lets at least let congress know how we feel. Please take a minute to support this petition (if you live in the USA). If there's one things the uprisings in the world and the many "Occupy ____" protests are showing is that the people do have power. Let's send a message.

Support My Petition

Is it worth 2 minutes of your life to maybe make a change for the better?

The move seems to have gone very smoothly. The Flash game database apparently was not moved over so HostGator is working on that right now. I have to say I am blown away by the incredible service. It is beyond good - it is great.

I use the Windows Snipping Tool pretty often (you can find it by clicking the Start button and then going to Accessories) to snap pictures of screen errors or to quicly show co-workers how to do something.

Two useful tips if you use this tool.

1- If you right click on the Snipping Tool shortcut you can set a keyboard shortcut to launch it.

2- If you want to capture the right click menu (like the menu in my Aviary post below) you must

     - launch the Snipping Tool

     - press ESC

     - launch your menu

     - then press CTRL + PRINT SCREEN

     - use the Snipping Tool to select your menu