Well after a long year of development SketchBook Pro 2010 has finally been announced and I am released from Non-Disclosure so I am allowed to talk about it! I was lucky enough to be included on the beta team and I have to say it’s an amazing update! There’s quite a few great updates to this iteration and I’m sure you’ll agree it’s with the upgrade!

Pencils, paper, markers, white-out, sharpeners, erasers, rulers, ellipses, I’m not kidding when I say you’d need a backpack to carry all the stuff that comes with Sketchbook Pro 2010 in one elegant and easy-to-use package. And yet, it’s simple layout will have you up and running in less than 10 minutes. I dare you not to fall in love with it’s streamlined interface!

For me the best part of SBP is that it has a pencil that feels and looks like a real pencil, something that no other graphics program is capable of doing out of the box and even then SBP does it better. I’ve seen even grouchy old school artists smile when they begin to draw with it, it’s that good.

But there’s more than meets the eye with this simple tool because with SBP’s new Custom brushes, the simple lowly pencil becomes a 900 lb. gorilla which can create tools that look like feathers, or skin or hair which you can then sketch with! The Custom Brush’s easy-to-use interface makes it simple to capture either specific pen strokes or areas from a texture that you can then paint with. Let me see you do that with a #2 pencil! You can also load and save out the new custom brushes as well as trade them with others which is a great addition to SBP’s already sweet lil’ arsenal. Plus in this new addition, there’s a long awaited Ellipse tool and a Ruler tool as well!

All in all, you’d be crazy not to use Sketchbook Pro for the simple reason that it makes your job as an artist/designer/draftsman easier and who doesn’t want that these days in this hectic world?

I’ve been told by the fellas at Autodesk that they are in need of more Beta testers for the new version of Sketchbook Pro due out early next year. If you’re interested, sign up by shooting a mail to Chris Cheung below…

In a few months, we’ll need help from artists-at-large for the testing of future SketchBook Pro features.  I want to start recruiting new candidates now.  If you are interested and think you would be able to spend the time to check out beta cuts and provide valuable feedback, I’m interested in hearing from you.

Mail chris.cheung@autodesk.com
To download the latest version or trial of SBP: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=11895121

I’ve been a beta-tester for the last year or so on Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro (SBP) and it’s been a lot of fun; I even ended up with a free copy of it. Being a beta tester really just involves downloading their not-ready-for-prime-time software and testing it out and then posting your thoughts and a wish list as to what can make it better. Converting to digital has made my work better and faster as well as more efficient because in one program you have all the assets to do a complete storyboard, or design or painting which can even be emailed as opposed to hand delivered. For storyboards, production likes it because they do not have to scan the board to do an animatic. It also does away effectively with a Xerox machine which can make freelance a pain in the butt. Granted there are other programs that do the same thing essentially but I think you’ll find that SBP does it easier and right out of the box as opposed to Photoshop, Painter, Flash or Toonboom which need to be tweaked to mimic real life tools such as a pencil or a Col-Erase pencil or even a marker, or pen.

Why am I bugging you, you ask?
A new version of SBP is slated for release early next year and with that they are looking for Beta testers who do what we do. They are really trying to listen to us; the artists and I know some of you work digitally, others are on the fence about it. Still others have not yet made the jump.
SBP makes it really easy for you to get the job done and not think about the fact that you’re using a computer to do it. The interface is ridiculously simple and even the old veterans I’ve shown it to shine on it now… The only thing you will need to use SBP is a Wacom tablet. Granted a Tablet PC or a Cintiq would be best but a decent Wacom tablet will work as well. Additionally, it works with both Mac and PC.

Anyway, if you’d like to become a beta tester for Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro contact Chris Cheung at Autodesk and tell him you want to be involved. You may end up with a free copy of SBP; then again you may not.
For those of you who’s mail doesn’t support hyperlinks, here’s the email address on it’s own… chris.cheung@autodesk.com
Tell him Mike sent you! ;-)

P.S.
I get nothing from your joining, I have just found going ‘digital’ to help me significantly and thought perhaps you might find the same.
In this tough business you need all the edge you can get!

Photoshop was the first program I used on a computer. I loved it. It worked so well.

Times change.

Adobe has turned into a retarded behomoth with no common sense at all.

There are many, many, many reasons why I hate Adobe… Flash is buggy and more bloated than ever. They made an update which really gives you nothing much except some crappy filters that look like a dog threw up on the screen….Acrobat STILL takes ridiculously long to open… Premiere is a joke compared to Final Cut Pro… Dreamweaver was better before Adobe messed with it… ( and it wasn’t that great then either)… Illustrator? Eh. Integration? Suuuuure. try opening an Illustrator file in Flash. HAH! Did I mention that Acrobat STILL takes ridiculously long to open???????

How about this one? Install their programs and then have your hard drive go belly up. Go ahead…

I’ll wait.

Hard drive destroyed now? Okay try to get them to understand that at Adobe. They won’t.

Ever.

You get two installs, count ‘em… TWO… and if you don’t deactivate the programs before your HD goes belly up you can not use the software you bought for $1500 bucks because you didn’t thing to deactivate it before your HD went bad. Well, I lie, you can use the box to store old plastic forks and knives or cigarette butts. You can use the DVDs as Christmas ornaments or earrings. You can use the manual to straighten out that wobbly table.

What you can’t use it for is software.

Fool!

Imagine THAT!?!?!?!?

But seriously…you can’t very well do it AFTER you’ve got a bad drive because you can’t access anything from it!

God how I HATE Adobe!

$@%^#(@#(&*#(&^*$^*%^$&^&(%(%&(&$#(^*#&*^^&**!*&!

Almost justifies software piracy.

Almost…

Okay I could go on (and you probably can too) but the final straw?

Case in point:

Try and uninstall their stupid assinine CS3 Suite.

Uh oh, even though you uninstalled it, it still retains prefs from all the dlls and additional files the programs spray all over your computer’s hard drive.

So they tell you to download the spiffy *WinCS3Clean* utility to fully erase the evil Adobe apps from your computer…

Uh oh… you can’t just uninstall it. You need an update from Microsoft to do it!

God how I HATE Adobe!

Want to get some details about that?

Wait for it…

Open the ‘PDF’ file to read how to do it! You know… use the Acrobat program you just UNINSTALLED to read the directions to the next step!
Hot damn!
God how I HATE Adobe!

That has got to be up there with the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen…

right behind the guy who’s car was too cold one winter so he put some gas in the microwave to warm it up.

That’s how stupid you are Adobe.

Stupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupid.

…and yet?

I need their software and that’s precisely why they could give a rat’s ass on a platter about me, you, or anyone else that buys their software. Except the big corporations but they don’t count.
They have no souls anyway.

They’ve got us over a barrel! We need them.

Screw you very much Adobe.

Screw you for making me the strung out software whore that I am.

My daughter recently graduated from 5th grade and will be moving into Middle School. Here in CA. that’s a big deal and they have a graduation for it and everything.

As a present we gave my daughter an iPod Nano which as most know will play video. She loves it and of course now wants to watch everything on it. That said, she of course came to her dad wanted to digitize video to do it.

But how to do it?

A quick search on the web produces quite a few black holes that all claim to do it well with deeper research fall short.

My brother and I were talking today and he just bought something off the web that ended up being buggy and for the most part useless. And it was made by Corel!

So where do you go to get a tool like that, and not get your head handed to you in the process?

Enter Handbrake the free DVD to iPod exporter!

Handbrake is a simply amazing lil’ tool which will turn any Dvd into an mp4 or a AVI.

Best of all it’s for PC, Mac and Linux!

It’s quick, it’s easy and it does the job right out of the gate. Isn’t that really what you’re looking for?

I know it is for me.

If you’re searching for the right tool to do this… try Handbrake, it’s got lots of options for tweaking and the price is right. It’s even got  detailed instructions (In English) for both Mac and PC.

Soapbox begin:
Now, I’m not saying you should steal DVD’s because that would be stupid and inadvertently take money form my mouth living in L.A. as I do so I think that you should only use this on legitimate DVDs that you own.
Soapbox End.

(No I’m not affiliated with them in any way, I just the like the product.)

Here’s some stats:

Supported sources:

• Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (encrypted or unencrypted, but protection methods other than CSS are not supported and must be handled externally with third-party software), and some .VOB and .TS files
• PAL or NTSC
• AC-3, DTS, LPCM or MPEG audio tracks

Outputs:

• File format: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM
• Video: MPEG-4 or H.264 (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
• Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

Misc features:

• Chapter selection
• Basic subtitle support (burned into the picture)
• Integrated bitrate calculator
• Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
• Grayscale encoding

As I’ve said before I was on the beta team for SBP earlier this year and my frequent posting and keyboard diarrhea on the forums there got the attention of the guys over at Autodesk I guess.
Anyway, they asked me to write an article on Digital Storyboarding and I have to say I had so much fun doing it, I want to do more! Article writing is fun! I only wish I had learned that writing could be fun back in school. I might have turned out better!

Anyway, you can read the article here.

Well it’s finally arrived!

The Autodesk e-store has been updated and SBP is available on the Autodesk website store

If you can’t find it you can get it here.

Some reasons to Buy:

Sketch. Annotate. Communicate. Designed for use with tablet PCs or digitized pen tablets, Autodesk® SketchBook® Pro software is your digital sketchpad. Use it in any creative process where pen and paper would traditionally be use.

• Sketch Naturally Free up the sketching process with ultra-responsive digital pencils, pens, markers, and airbrushes that look and feel just like the real thing.
• Annotate Instantly Quickly take snapshots of your current application, and load and view images or digital photographs. Use SketchBook Pro’s brushes to mark up and add comments. Annotations can be emailed directly to colleagues and clients.
• Communicate Ideas Anywhere Communicate more efficiently by emailing sketches and annotations instantly to colleagues and clients.

IrFanView- Arguably the best renamer tool out there. It does so much else as well. You can edit pictures with it, create a Cd slideshow with music, resize, rename and renumber files all with the click of one or two buttons. Invaluable tool!

MultiMon- Allows you to have two Start bars on a multi-monitor setup. It also installs a little widget on each window that let’s you switch that window from one monitor to another.

LogmeIn- So useful you’ll spit when you can’t use it! this lil’ gem allows you to login to your computer remotely and do whatever is needed; from anywhere you have an internet connection. it works with PC and Mac and also cross platform. All you need to do is download a little piece of software create a user account and go to logmein.com each time. it’ll give you a list of available computers you own that have Logmein installed. Amazing app!

PowerISO- Great lil tool to mount ISO files you have. Will also create ISOs out of CDs and DVDs.

ArtRage- An incredible painting tool that kicks the crap out of anything else out there. It’s also free if you can live without layers. (which I can’t)

Belarc Advisor- A cool application that will give you stats about your PC like for instance what the motherboard is in case you have more than one PC and don’t remember which MB is in what case..

Driver Grabber- Copies all your installed drivers and make a nice package of them for backup! Cool!

OpenOffice- An absolute must replacement for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It does just about everything they do and it’s free!

Inkscape- A great replacement for Adobe Illustrator

Artweaver- A great replacement for Painter. So close in interface it’s hard to believe they haven’t been sued. What’s more… why would anyone want to mimic Painter’s terrible interface?!?

Gimp- A decent Photoshop replacement. It has a kinda weird interface for some things but mostly it’s the same thing as Photoshop.

Joycur- this lill app lets you map key commands Macros to things like joysticks or game controllers

Photobie- A little app that does simple resize stuff when Photoshop is acting up or in use for something else.

Flash Sideshow Maker- Does what it says.

PAP- A free animation program which has, a light table layers and a decent set of tools to draw with. very weird interface but works well once you know it.

Dogwaffle- A powerful free Photoshop/Painter replacement. It does so much more than Photoshop too. Many plugins and fractal editing tools as well. Pretty deep app.

Google Apps- While my brother will call me a Google fanboy ( of which I am rightly so) the search giant has a lot of free and very useful applications all accessible from your Gmail account too! the thing I most like about Google is that they update their applications frequently so you can fire it up one day and see some really cool new function they’ve implemented.  I love that!

Below are some Google Apps I use regularly.

GoogleDocs ( which as of yesterday is about to be available offline as well as online) which is a Word replacement

Picasa- which is a Photo retoucher and also makes some nice slideshows and html presentations for the web. Also it will create Flash presentations. you can also upload photos ( read- portfolio) to their site and get 2 gigs of strorage to store your art. Then you can export to an imbeddable Flash slideshow like this.

Gmail- I don’t care what anyone says Gmail rocks, and now anyone can get an account. Plus, if you use Gmail Drive you can store files on their servers.

Google Earth- Come on, who doesn’t want to see their house from air?

Google Sketchup- A free 3d program you can actually build stuff with.

I am addicted to digital painting. Yes it’s true…and I am not even a good painter (yet)!

I have ArtRage to thank for it too.

I find myself looking at the world through my tired old animator eyes with some brand new artist eyes which is really cool. I used to look at the world from an animator’s perspective, checking out how long it takes for a person to walk from point A to Point B and how long it takes to pick something up, the way something overlaps or anticipates but lately
that has changed.

Now I am constantly looking at the light and how dark the shadows are… where the highlights fall and ways to make colors pop by using contrasting colors.

Very odd.

Anyway, back to Artrage. What a fantastic application! It’s only $19.95 and it’s better at true painting than Photoshop, Painter, Paint Shop Pro and just about any other grpahics app I’ve come across. the reason? Well, it’s just… simple.

For instance, there’s no cludgy pallets or windows that clutter up the screen. Instead there are elegant shelves that slide in and out when you need them. they also auto slide in when you get too close to one so it doesn’t get in your way while you paint. Pianting a stroke that looks and feels like real paint is as simple as grabbing the paint brush and sliding your hand across the screen. Amazing! No setting up brushes to behave like paint (hello Photoshop) no sifting through endless technical boxes of endless technical settings and knobs and sliders ( hello Painter). Nope, you just pick and paint! Want to mix some color? Just select the pallet knife and smear to your hearts content. Colors blend right over eachother mixing as your stroke. Don’t want that/ Simple! You make your brush an Instant Dry Brush via the elegant wheel that is invoked when you select the tool.

Tools to choose from range from a Paint Roller when you want to color mass areas, a Crayon for that waxy feel (which works great for those John K type paintings), Chalk for a bit of grain (very similar to Crayon BTW), there’s a Pencil to sketch with (which ain’t as good as SketchBook Pro’s but you can’t have everything) and you can even add glitter or tubes to your painting (although I have no clue what the heck I’d do with that), the aformentioned pallet knife (which I find invaluable when painting), an Eye Dropper tool for sampling colors and of course the invaluable Paint Brush which works great right out of the “tool box”.

You can save your own mixed swatches, and you can set a “tooth” for your paper or load your own texture to paint over as well. One of the best features is the Load Tracing Image function which allows you to set a drawing onto your canvas and paint over it, so you can see what you want when you want it. It’s easily hideable as well making in a great asset when you paint.

There are so many things I like about ArtRage that I can’t even list them all.

Suffice it to say, I am hooked and as far as my tablet Pc is concerned, Autodesk’s SketchBook Pro and Ambient Design’s ArtRage are my two most used applications. I find myself using Photoshop less and less except to export the images I am creating to post to this blog.

Download this program. Both the free and USD$20 full versions are curiously tiny installers at just over 4 MB. Get ArtRage 2.0 here.

The free program is wonderful, but the commercial version was something I wanted for the layers, PSD capabilities and extra tools and canvas options. Honestly though? The free one is pretty awesome itself!