OxCreative
2010
Ok so we’re a little slow of the mark but Happy New Year from us all! We hope everyone had a good year in 2009 (Year of the OX!) but we hope you have an even better year in 2010.
I’ve been thinking about a few things that I would like to achieve in 2010. Whilst these are really specific to OxCreative, they are things that I think most of us could try to embrace:
1. Write more Blog Posts
More blog posts equals more content. More content equals more traffic. More traffic means lots of interaction, followers and good networking! It would be nice to start interacting with those in the community and so we are looking to (more…)
2009
Andrew Bell has released images of his final piece for the 626 Experiment show and boy have they overmet our expectations! His magnificent mutilation of the Stitch figure to create to separate is nothing short of a stroke of genius! Check out more pictures at Mr Bell’s website or on flickr.
2009
Pro Markers are Letraset’s entry-level alcohol-based marker pens (the premium range are known as Letraset Tria’s). This is not to say that they cannot be used for professional purposes and with them you can achieve some (more…)
2009
1 – Use good quality products
Whilst it’s true that a good artist should never blame his tools, it’s unlikely you will create something with a stick drawing in the mud as well as you would with good quality paper and good quality pens, pencils and markers. With this is mind, it is important to get what suits you best as there are lots of quality products available. I use Windsor & Newton (more…)
2008
After just a month of getting nowhere with some pretty bad customer service at Adobe, Design Premium CS4 has finally arrived!
Photoshop CS4 extended , Illustrator CS4 and my Wacom are the most important things for me to be able to do my job and I was hoping there would be some great upgrades from CS3.
I have only had a few days using the products but it is already clear to see what is good and what is bad.
Illustrator CS4 has a cool alignment tool which flashes up guides helping you line up to other objects on the page. It also highlights individual elements as you roll over them making it easy to see where everything is – this has been really useful for more accurate vector work.
Photoshop CS4 extended on the other hand has had some rather questionable upgrades.
In Photoshop CS4 extended,  the addition of OpenGL gives, according to adobe, the following benefits:
- Smooth Display at ALL Zoom Levels
- Animated Zoom Tool
- Animated Transitions when doing a One Stop Zoom
- Hand Toss Image
- Birdseye View
- Rotate Canvas
- Smooth Display of Non Square Pixel Images
- Pixel Grid
- Move Color Matching to the GPU
- Draw Brush Tip Editing Feedback via GPU
- 3D GPU features include:
- 3D Acceleration
- 3D Axis
- 3D Lights Widget
- Accelerated 3D Interaction via Direct To Screen
Now this sounds great and I thought I am running both a high end Macbook pro (2.5ghz dual core, 4GB FB 1066mhz RAM and Nvidia 9600M GT 512mb Graphics) and Mac pro workstation (2x 2.8ghz quad-core xeons, 6GB FB RAM, ATI Radeon HD Graphics) this should be great and then I realise… they don’t support OpenGL!
Now, considering that Apple machines are supposedly the best for design and Adobe’s Creative Suite are also in the top running in their field, do you not think they would get together to discuss things such as support of a major feature within the most successful and popular image editing and graphic design software applications.
It’s not the end of the world, but it has been a major nuisance as it took forever to work out why the cursor was displaying about 15 pixels above where the actual cursor position was – so every time I clicked, it would select something 15 pixels below what I wanted!
Design Premium CS4 has some nice features and Illustrator CS4 has been vastly improved. I am hoping that OpenGL support will eventually become available so I can use Phtoshop CS4 to its full potential.
2008
I was browsing through my photos and stumbled across this photo with graffiti from the world famous graffiti artist ‘Seen’ and others. It is a really impressive piece of work and my camera doesn’t do it justice!