The Fantabulous Inkscape 0.46 About Screen Contest

Ryan Lerch spreads the news that the About Screen contest for the upcoming 0.46 release of Inkscape has been announced. The deadline is January 6th and I may try and make some time to field an entry or two once again. No luck last year, but it sure was fun coming up with ideas.

I seem to be mired in end of term exam marking, full time engineering work along with the website/blog stuff I'm trying to get finished. Oh yeah, and then there's Christmas to contend with...better start shopping. ;)

I may just have to extend an arm and "sweep the desk clean" for a little while over the next week or two and come up with some new ideas for the Inkscape 0.46 About screen. It would be kind of nice to see your name up in lights inside one of my absolute favourite apps.

Here are my not-so-great entries from last time out.

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Episode 045 - Snapshot Mosaic

I've *finally* completed a new screencast. Sorry for the long delay. This one was a fun one. It demonstrates a fairly easy way to take a single image and break it up into component 'snapshots'. So it looks like you took several pictures of different parts of an object and reassembled them. The example I do is a pretty basic one. You could do things like adjust the lightness, contrast or saturation of each snapshot separately to really give different creative effects.

This is another example where I really think Inkscape is significantly quicker than using Gimp or Photoshop for certain photographic projects. The method is simple, very intuitive and leaves room for lots of creative ideas once you get familiar with it.

Hope you enjoy it. :)

Screencasters now accepting pity...er.. donations.

Heathenx and I have decided to add a completely voluntary donation button to our screencasters website. He seemed to articulate the reasoning just perfectly in his post. So don't be too dismayed to see the paypal donation button on the site, we're not going all capitalist and closed-source on ya, at least not until we take the thing public and retire to a beach in Tahiti..  ;)

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Me again on Linuxreality...

The second part of my guest segment on the linuxreality podcast is up today. More Inkscape chatter from yours truly.

The new found fame I've enjoyed because of this is just wonderful. I did a photo shoot for Podcast&Ammo magazine just last weekend. Unfortunately it included a nude photo spread and the editor deemed it far too graphic to publish. For shame, the prudes.

;)

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Screencast 35 now glitch-free and up on YouTube

I finally got around to fixing the glitchy video by re-encoding my screencast episode 35. I also managed to upload it to YouTube although with it being over 10 minutes long, I once again had to split it up into part 1 and part 2.

The workflow was still by no means painless. There are a few things I still need to streamline, but definitely mencoder is the way to go for me.

Perspective Reflections - Inkscape Screencast

I've uploaded my latest Inkscape screencast (Episode 35). This one describes a neat method of creating reflections using a simple black to white mask. I discovered this neat trick at Nicu's great blog.

While I've made reflections using Inkscape in the past, I've always had two problems. First, if the group of objects to be reflected consisted of multiple colours, using a simple opacity gradient was quite a pain. Second, creating a realistic looking reflection for an object in perspective (particularly photos) was very difficult. The one that we use on the screencaster LCD monitor thumbnail (at the top of this post) is really faked with a white opacity gradient. The problem being that if I changed the background to anything but white, you'd suddenly see the retardedness of it all. ;)

So the mask method eliminates these two problems and makes creating reflections of more complex objects (including perspectives) much easier and more elegant.

Hope you enjoy it.

For those who care about the mechanics of screencasting, this was actually the first one that I created solely with recordmydesktop, mencoder, and Audacity - although I did use an ffmpeg one-liner to extract a screenshot for the thumbnail (anybody know how to do that with mencoder/mplayer?). I think the quality is better and the workflow is definitely easier and more logical. Big thanks to Heathenx for helping me out with this stuff.

But it wasn't completely without problem. You will notice some weird artifacting that occurs about 2 or 3 seconds into my sped-up intro. This wasn't in the original ogg capture, but occurred somewhere during the post-processing. I thought it might disappear by the end - but no such luck. ;) I've decided to leave it there for the time being and will correct it and replace the files when I can.. ie. not tonight. ;)

One other thing is that I haven't yet put this one up on YouTube. It's about 12min long, so I'm gonna have to split it up like I did with Episode 26. I'd like to do it with mencoder as well this time, so in the next couple of days I expect to have the two-parts finished and up on YouTube as well.

Shattered Photo - Inkscape Screencast

I've finished another Inkscape screencast, Episode 032 to be specific. This one shows one way of creating a shattered glass effect with a photo image using Inkscape. I've uploaded a lower quality version to YouTube and of course you can find it in significantly higher quality, along with all of our other screencasts at: screencasters.heathenx.org

Hope you enjoy it and find it useful. :)

A source for free comic fonts...

Among the 1001 other things I've wanted to learn more about is comic design and creation. A nice find this week was the Comic Tools Blog. Via that blog, I found a homey 90's looking website of the very experienced comic letterer Todd Klein. Lots of interesting information there.

Of course, being into Inkscape I was keen on the computerized end of things. Long story short, I ended up at the Blambot Comic Fonts and Lettering site. They sell a wide range of comic fonts, but wouldn't you know - they also offer several high quality free fonts for non-commercial use.

I'm sure experienced comic artists already know all this stuff, so for any of you aspiring web comic artists out there, you might want to check it out.

Incidentally, one of the free fonts there was called Evil Genious. Dave Slusher would be proud. ;)

ps - Come to think of it, I miss Earl's comic-captioned photos too. Where'd they go Earl?

Device Graphic - Inkscape Screencast

Amidst the quagmire heathenx and I are calling 'Codec Hell', I did manage to get another Inkscape screencast done. This one demonstrates the use of Inkscape's guides, gradients and some shadow effects to come up with a decent looking 3D device graphic. This one is about 17 minutes long (my longest to date), so I had to split the YouTube version into two parts. Hopefully I won't lose anybody at the halfway mark. With their 10min/100MB limitation it makes screencasting about something substantial a bit of a tough one. But that's one of the reasons we started screencasters.heathenx.org. So if you want to see the whole video in one piece, and in significantly higher quality, check it out there instead.

Also, please let us know via our blog at screencasters.wordpress.com or via the comments here if you have any trouble watching the video.

Neon Sign Effect - Inkscape Screencast

I've done a new Inkscape screencast. This one quickly (very quickly) demonstrates how to easily achieve a neon sign effect. Maybe you're putting together a tawdry pr0n site or something. ;) What's next you're asking yourself... flashing Unicorn gifs?? :)

Check out this episode and all of our other Inkscape screencasts at screencasters.heathenx.org where you can view the flash version online or download a high quality avi of your very own.

Screencasters Update

There has been significant discussion over on this thread at inkscapeforum.com about our screencasters.heathenx.org site. We received several good suggestions and as a result we've updated the site slightly. Kudos to heathenx for his successful journey through video encoding hell, and his patience with my absolute skill at butchering his CSS work. ;)

Here's the low-down on the changes:

- tweaks to the css to make it suck less in IE browsers

- we're now streaming the swf files and offering up avi files for direct download (the avi's are encoded with xvid and mp3 codecs for those interested).

- we now show the size of the avi file so that you know what you're about to download

- we added anchor links for each episode so if great people like Ryan Lerch and Nico Buculei and other Inkscapers want to blog about specific screencasts they can link directly to the specific episode

That's pretty much it. If you've got more suggestions, keep 'em coming. Although now maybe heathenx and I can concentrate more on coming up with some new screencasts.

A New Site is Born...

Well we've gone and done it. Fellow Inkscape screencaster heathenx and I have spent the last month or so putting together a home for higher quality versions of our screencasts. You can see the fruits of our labour at http://screencasters.heathenx.org.

About 6 months ago I uploaded my first Inkscape screencast to YouTube and soon after heathenx started doing them too [he does nothing but copy me ;)]. We've had plenty of views on YouTube, but two things always bugged us. The quality/size of the video, and the 10 minute/100MB limitation on uploads.

So while we won't be abandoning the YouTube posts, we're going to be putting our screencasts over on the new site and likely posting versions to YouTube in tandem with that.

We've got all of our 23 episodes up on the site right now. We decided to encode them in flash format (.swf files) for two reasons really: ubiquity of the flash format and easier streaming capability. You can download the swf files to your local machine and view them in your browser or any flash capable media player, or watch them right on the site in your browser. The site also has an RSS feed which will serve mainly as a outlet for announcements - ie. not as a video blog per se, at least for the time being.

Call me a masochist, but I have to say that the hurdles and challenges we had to overcome to get the site the way we wanted was the most fun I've had in a while. Both heathenx and myself are engineers and because of that, I think that we're pretty much in our element when stuck with a problem and left to our own devices. The fact that we share the same dry and sometimes childish sense of humour didn't hurt the fun factor either. A quick check of the About page will illustrate that fact quite clearly. :)

And that's really the whole motive behind it. Fun. Sure, we could easily use the site to make millions (after all, we developed a completely custom-built content management system for it - in 80 lines of python [cough cough]), but we're far too modest for that. ;)

So if you've enjoyed any of our past screencasts, or want to check them out, head on over to the site at: http://screencasters.heathenx.org

We'd appreciate your feedback to help improve the site, so if you've got any comments or questions, you can comment on this post, or email us at: screencasters AT heathenx.org

And of course, if you like the site (or hell, even if you don't) spread the word to your screencast and/or Inkscape loving friends.

How is Technorati *supposed* to work?

I was checking out the newer, faster, better, Technorati today and did a search on 'inkscape' to see what new things people were doing. I noticed quite quickly that my YouTube hosted screencasts are there in all their glory but no mention of my blog at all. I didn't expect it to see it under the 'posts' tab since I haven't tagged anything 'inkscape' in the last few days, but I do have probably 20 or 30 posts tagged 'inkscape' on my blog so I kind of expected it to show up under the 'blogs' tab.

Hmm. I thought the Blogger(tm) labels were like any other blog tagging system and that they'd be picked up by Technorati. Maybe I've got to add Technorati specific tags to my posts like Kent does?

I signed up and 'claimed' my blog there a couple years back, but maybe I've got to be doing more to be visible there?

Anybody care to educate me on this?

Someone please tell me how this is supposed to work.

My Most Narcissistic Post Ever.. so far anyway

Like many avid photographers, I've got thousands of photos on my hard drive, of which, I'm in maybe 5 or 10.

I just wasted 30 minutes trying to find a decent photo of myself to use for my Twitter badge. I quickly remembered that I generally hate photos of myself. It is very rare that I like any of them and that's why the photo in my blog profile has never really changed.

I did manage to find a couple passable ones. The first one I chose I happen to like quite a bit, but it looks far more serious and contemplative than I actually am. I would feel like I was pretending if I used that one. It was actually taken with my 50mm F1.8 lens at arm's length while I was looking out a nearby window.


I finally found one a little more in character for me. Of course it was taken when I'm at my absolute happiest - when I'm cuddling my daughter.


So until I go get the glamour shots done at the mall, that's the one I have to settle on for my Twitter badge. ;)

Of course the backup plan is to do some very very minor touchups to my blog profile photo using Inkscape... can you tell which one's the original?

Inkscape Screencast 9 - Glass Button Redux

My 9th Inkscape screencast is up. This one shows a simple way to achieve a pretty convincing high-gloss candy look to various shapes.

This one was created in record time for me too. From the moment I fired up ffmpeg to start recording, through the intro recording, sound and music mixing, until starting the upload to YouTube took about 90 minutes. I didn't take a lot of time creating the intro for this one (and it shows), but overall it's still decent I think. Hopefully you like it.

I haven't had a lot of time to spend using Inkscape lately, simply because I'm currently buried at work (which has absolutely nothing to do with Inkscape or graphics at all ;-< ). But I did read on the mailing list somewhere that the most recent builds incorporate gradient editing right on the object (not in a separate dialog). That feature would have been useful for this screencast, but no sense in demonstrating a feature that few people can use right now. Here's the link to my other screencasts up on YouTube. You should also check out my friend heathenx's screencasts. I've learned quite a few good tips from him too.

Sketching, Creativity and the Design Process

I'm a big fan of the design process. Almost more than the result itself.

I remember when I first got my hands on the wonderful book Driving Ambition, and I found myself quickly drawn not to the high quality photography, but to Gordon Murray's initial sketches and the drawings involved in developing various ideas. It's something that has always fascinated me - how people create the things we see and enjoy. If you're at all into car design I can't recommend it enough.

Recently, David Airey had a great post on logo design where he made the point that sketching was a vital ingredient in the design process. He also posted many design options for a project he was involved in.

While reading that post, I was in the midst of posting logo submissions for the Xmms2 graphic contest. And I was, in fact, doodling ideas in a hardcover notebook I keep for jotting down ideas and sketches. So after reading it, I decided that after I was done submitting logos, I'd post up the various doodles and sketches.

Now, I'm far from an accomplished artist, but I had fun generating ideas and transforming them into digital form with Inkscape. Hopefully this will encourage others to post things that illustrate their design process (whatever process that might be). It's something that I don't see enough of on the web (if you know where it is, then point me to it). There's a lot of inspiration in seeing how people create things, even if they're just pencil sketches on a knapkin.

Here are the various ideas I played around with. You can see a fair number of my xmms2 logo submissions that come directly from these sketches. Others never quite went anywhere....

[click on the image(s) to see larger versions]

Inkscape Screencast 8 - Perspective

My 8th Inkscape screencast is now posted. This one involves the perspective effect in Inkscape. I tried to just illustrate the basics of using it. With a little imagination you can achieve some neat things with it. I've been using it for a few of my entries in the xmms2 logo contest.

I had a bit of trouble using the effect on my linux machine. It would work fine, but always popped up a warning dialog. Not great stuff for a screencast. A developer named acspike helped me out by creating a fix to suppress the messages. Good stuff!

The intro as always, was fun to make, and while speeding it up achieved what I wanted, I had a little trouble joining it up to the main screencast portion because they differed in frame rates. However a little playing around with avidemux let me match the frame rates and all was well in the end.

Hope you like it and find it useful.

[Update: Thanks to Joe H in the comments. He pointed out, quite correctly, that you don't have to combine paths into one before applying the perspective effect. You can just group them. This lets you 'perspectivize' paths with differing fill, stroke and colour properties without losing those properties. - Thanks Joe! and check out the sample book and cup image he posted in the comments - awesome!]



Click right here to see the other screencasts I've posted.

Indefatigable?

I've been called a lot of things in my 39 years on this planet, but indefatigable hasn't been one of them - until now. That's what I was called on the XMMS2 Logo contest blog today. While I assumed (correctly) it was a compliment, I am nothing if not honest about the fact that despite what my daughter might think, I do NOT know everything, and that includes the definition of indefatigable.

Did I ever mention that the Google search keyword "define:" is one of my best friends? Well me and the Google define: keyword have been intimate for quite some time.

A quick search yielded "showing sustained enthusiastic action with unflagging vitality". Not bad. Quite nice actually.

While not really wanting to toot my own horn, it is quite remarkable how a single word compliment can raise your day.

Check out the XMMS2 contest blog for the slew of great entries so far.

Develop your Inkscape chops (and maybe win something too!)

Seems like everybody and their grandmother are holding a logo contest these days:

create.freedesktop.org is a project whose aim is to facilitate the sharing of things like code, media and infrastructure between various free and open source creative applications (think Inkscape, GIMP, cinepaint, scribus, Audacity and the like). They're going to be holding a logo competition. It's supposed to start soon. If you're looking to improve your Inkscape skills and stretch your creative muscles at the same time, then have a go when it starts. It'll accomplish both things. The contest is supposed to have started, but I see no confirmed details posted about it yet, but there are some tentative details over in the  openclipart.org wiki.

Xmms2 as you might imagine is a project aimed at providing a followup to the venerable xmms media player application. They're holding a logo competition too. And in this one, they're offering a $400 Amazon Gift Certificate to the winner! This one has already started and entries are being accepted until the 13th of April. Drag your butt over to the Xmms2 Logo Competition page for details.

If you think you haven't got what it takes, I've got a small piece of advice for you:

Just drawing *something*. Anything. Don't go into it as something you have to submit on the first go-round. Once you come up with something, go get a coffee and stare at it for a while. Play with it. Before long you'll see what you like and don't like about it and you'll refine it (or even scrap it). But by that time your creative juices will at least be flowing. You'll then likely see off-shoots or completely different ideas. And even more importantly (IMO) you'll figure out different way of achieving the results you want. All the while, you'll be building your chops bit by bit. What is the worst thing that can happen by trying?

I am absolutely killer at throwing up obstacles to getting unappealing work started. I can be extremely creative in finding ways to avoid scary or potentially daunting tasks.  But if I just summon up the willpower to do something (usually the easiest, shortest portion of the task), I quickly find myself achieving more and more progress. It's getting the boulder rolling that's tough. Once it's going you'll find it's a lot easier to keep it moving.

Cheers and good luck.

Inkscape Screencast 7 - Funkified Text

My 7th Inkscape screencast is up. This time I used inkscape to produce the "Funkified Text" [ patent pending ;) ] you see above.

Like all the others, I had a fun time doing it. I hope somebody, somewhere finds it useful.