D*I*Y Planner Hipster PDA Edition v3 Released
Whew. That was a tough one. Life can get to normal now.
1 comment May 6th, 2006
Posts filed under 'Design'
Sketchbook: Japanese Woman
Young Japanese Woman, Pencil sketch, 1997
Another quick sketch from memory, taken from the same documentary source as the laughing Japanese man. This woman was “attending” to a rather plump drunkard, if I remember correctly. He was reeling around to various other businessmen at the table, wheeling and dealing for units of a pinball-style gambling machine, knocking on the table to punctuate each sentence. Two blonde Western women stood within easy grasp of his groping hands while this young lady served his tea, washed his hands, fetched various papers, and sat quietly with her hands folded waiting for orders. I think she was his wife.
I’m not sure if I drew the hair and its elaborate decorations correctly. I was more concerned with capturing the look on her face.
3 comments September 19th, 2005
Sketchbook: Laughing Japanese Man
While I have nowhere near my wife’s artistic talent, some semi-recent rifling through my sketchbooks have made me think about spending a little more time with a pencil and paper again. In tripping across a lot of half-done sketches, I came across this little piece, which still makes me smile.
Laughing Japanese Man, Pencil sketch, 1997
This quick drawing of a jolly old Japanese man is from a television documentary: he could not stop laughing while being interviewed, as he talked about the strange influences of the West between mouthfuls of octopus. It was rather hastily completed from memory just a few minutes after watching this interesting program about the cultural clashes in Japan, a result of the encroachment of the “modern” Western world upon such a very traditional society.
5 comments September 13th, 2005
Inkscape 0.42.1
Well, colour me impressed. After a few months of feverish activity, the Inkscape team have released version 0.42.1 of their Open Source illustration program, and it’s quite a decent piece of software. I hear you: “0.42.1, that’s like a really unfinished and buggy product, right?” Well, normally, yes. But in the Open Source world, the motto is “release early, release often” to solicit as much feedback and developer support as possible, and occasionally you’ll find something ready to use — albeit with the occasional bug or instability. The early version number usually gives you an idea of how many features (scheduled for 1.0) haven’t been implemented yet.
For a while now, I’ve been considering releasing a D*I*Y Planner kit for use within OpenOffice.org Draw 2.0. Those of you following OOo2 will no doubt remark that the final 2.0 release is pretty late (it was originally supposed to be released in March, from what I remember), and the latest beta snapshots still seem to be rather buggy to me — especially the Draw application. This is not a complaint; I’m still glad that OOo2 will exist, I’m still impressed with its features, and I’ll certainly make it my office suite of choice, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t look around for another quality drawing program to construct the kit. My criteria: 1) it should be free (so everybody can use it without paying); 2) it should be cross-platform (so everybody can use it, no matter what OS they use); and 3) it should be user-friendly enough for beginners, yet powerful enough for me to use without resorting to my minimal and rarely-used cussing vocabulary.
I’ve only had an hour of playtime, but it looks like the newer versions of Inkscape might actually fit that bill.
It’s still a little clunky, especially on OS X, and the refresh isn’t the speediest, but it’s entirely usable. While it’s no Adobe Illustrator, it certainly has some powerful features, and it’s accompanied by some great tutorials for both beginners and more advanced users. See the screenshots for a taste. Version 0.42.1 can be downloaded at the SourceForge Project Downloads page.
My only concerns:
- The big one: it doesn’t appear that it supports exporting to PDF (at least until version 0.45, according to the roadmap), which is the format most people prefer. While I have a number of geeky or expensive toys to do this, I need an effective and user-friendly way of outputting work into PDF files for the average computer user. That is, no Perl scripts, no nagware/commercial software, no geek-only command line tools, etc. It would help if it was cross platform. Any suggestions, people? Yes, we can import Inkscape’s SVG files into Scribus, but that’s not very easy, nor particularly cross-platform-friendly at the moment — the fewer impediments, the better.
- I much prefer a layers dialog instead of a drop-down chooser. Perhaps there is one (or it’s in development) but I don’t see it.
- There’s no obvious way to do multiple pages. This isn’t a deal-breaker (Illustrator, my usual app, doesn’t have it either), but it would make it easier for newbies. This is one of the reasons why OOo Draw was so attractive: the tabs at the bottom would take you to different pages (à la CorelDRAW), and so you could easily work on multiple designs at once.
For those interested in obtaining more SVG files (an industry standard supported by Inkscape), you can find more than 4000 pieces of vector clip art at the Open Clip Art Library, a community-developed site. Needless to say, some graphics are better than others….
3 comments August 20th, 2005
Considering DIY Planner v2 Designs
Had a sleepless night last night, so I started thinking about a few elements of the existing DIY Planner templates that still bother me. One aspect is the design: it’s solid and non-offensive, but it’s also very staid and blocky. I need to pursue a more modern design, but something that’s classic enough to not feel out-of-fashion in just a few short months. It also has to feel fairly professional. (That is, I’m not stringing daisies, dandelions and dancing bears across the top. 
) I had a few spare minutes during breakfast to do a quick mock-up. Any feedback?
By the way, I’ve now added a direct link to the DIY Planner to the sidebar at right. That will always point at the most recent release.
5 comments January 6th, 2005
R.I.P. Will Eisner 1917-2005
I know I should be more concerned about other events in the world, but this man’s work has meant so very much to me over the years. From his ground-breaking work on The Spirit in the 1940’s, to the graphic novels he was producing till nearly the day of his death, you can never understimate the impact Eisner has had on the comic, illustration and film industries. His book on sequential art is considered by many to be required reading by anyone contemplating anything from storyboarding to animation to graphic novels. And some of the covers and opening spreads for The Spirit and other works have not only inspired and intimidated generations of artists since, but have even found their way into prestigious galleries and art history books. Dubbed a “national treasure”, he was the recipient of hundreds of awards (including several Eisners, named after him) and the creator of the graphic novel. His legacy of gentle humour, nonconformity, innovative graphic techniques and powerful storytelling will forever place him among the most influential artists and illustrators of the past century. And yet few people even know his name.
It’s going to be one of my great regrets in life that I have never personally met the man. Rest in peace, Mr. Eisner: you’ve worked long, hard and well, and you’ve earned it.
Links: Newsarama: Will Eisner Dies. His official website is at www.willeisner.com, but the regular content is currently hidden in memoriam (”back door” here. A biography (along with pieces of his work) can be found at Denis Kitchen’s site. Also see a recent article in the Washington Post.
Update : Further coverage of his death: Washington Post, a shorter piece from BBC News, and a nice in-depth article from the New York Times that tags “The Spirit” as the Citizen Kane of its genre.
January 4th, 2005