Graphic Design Hero Tells Off CraigsList

Advice to Young Men from an Old Man

FIRST - Take a look at the above. This is Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs. It will help you be the best unique and focused individual you can be.

NEXT - Begin at the bottom, if you've got a solid foothold within a category move up to the next tier. Rinse and repeat.

FINALLY - How close are you to the top?

I know many intelligent folks who are endlessly trapped in Safety and Love/Belonging, and so this brings the question - how smart can they really be? Solve your own damn problems first. No one else can fix you. Now you know where to start.

You give your relatives a lecture about color spaces and profiles when you email them your vacation photos. Seeing someone use Lens Flare or Comic Sans adversely affects your blood-pressure. You maintain a grid system for your refrigerator magnets. You organise your CD collection according to the Pantone chart. You sit at work for eight hours straight just looking at your monitor, waiting for a spark of inspiration that doesn't come. You're up 'til 5am because you came up with the best idea ever while brushing your teeth.

Enter Yep. It is going to play the part of your new best friend or maybe just librarian. We could call it "iPhoto" for your documents, but that sort of insults Yep because it is hell of a lot more. Unlike iPhoto, it allows for clear tagging at instant speeds and it defaults with a convenient magnifying glass to review before you dive in. And it sinks with iDisk, so next time you are away from home you can easily access your best information. Yep's creators seem to want yep to be a receipt and business doc manager, and it completely could be, but I can't help but seeing something quite a bit more interesting inside.

One last note - did I mention it was free? Download the last free version of Yep at the link below (and thank the software Gods for such a beautiful piece of handywork). Yep is transitioning to pay software, but at only $35 they may get some of my cash very soon. Now to go scan in all of my favorite books...

DOWNLOAD YEP!

I will try my best to see how truly awkward I am at everything I hold dear. I will also look deep to understand how remarkably unimportant I am versus even the most mundane of common house-hold objects. Sincerely, a tiny speck of dust on a spin-y rock.

The smartest folks I have ever met mirror William.

Sit your ass down today and DO something that makes humanity regard you with anything more than a whisper. If you look at your life, and anyone else could have taken your place, you have failed.

But enough rambling, the point here is that I think this is a great thing for all other forms of entertainment.

So after nearly twenty years on television the Simpsons are moving to the big screen. Please, keep the thunderous applause to a minimum folks.

The point here is that the trailer released on Sunday looks awful. Hell, awful is being nice. I felt ripped off watching just a minute long trailer.

I can live with one of the best animated television shows refusing to die. Fine. But does the name of 2D animation need to be dragged kicking and screaming through the mud too? Was this part of some unholy animation union pact I missed? This promo goes out of its way to say that it is 2D, only to lie in the very next scene.

- Homer drives some sort of 3D construction equipment. A fluke?
- Nope, the whole world is 3D.
- The ground, the construction ball, the trees - all 3D.
- Even the truck!
- (...)
- It may be safer to list the things that aren't 3D. :(

Now, the irony here is that ten years ago I may have cared about a Simpson movie. Maybe even eight years ago, but that would be sort of pushing it. Today the series' episodes appeal to the very troglodites (who dance in creepy unison) which the show once went out of of its way to scorn. The bigger issue here is that the movie has been in writing for that long as well. After all of this time in the making Time magazine's "Greatest Show of the Century" better make up for a crappy decade...and quick.

A simple dare for a lazy Saturday:

For everyone else who is interested in the art of moving stories then buy Robert McKee's "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting" right now. Please, the world would be a better place. Do it now. I've learned more from a few hundred pages about strengthening my books then by a lifetime of writing. It is a gifted, inspiring, and exacting book that changes the life of almost all the writer's hands it touches.

Fortune Small Business has a recent article highlighting Character, a studio helmed by David Altschul in Portland, Oregon.
 

The studio is only six people strong, and relatively fresh since their birth in 2002, but yet I can’t imagine many people who aren’t familiar with their work. Character specializes in creating brand mascots ( or “critters” ) that help directly impact sales. Their work can be seen in the swagger of Tony the Tiger, or in the charm of the Pillsbury Doughboy. All told they’ve worked on nearly all of the memorable corporate creations worth your time. And they take in over $2 million in annual revenue.
 
What I found most compelling about Character’s interview was the great secrets they let slip out of the bag. Below you’ll find an abridged catalog of their wisdom as siphoned by Fortune. I'm really taking the ball and running with what they said, so take this as half article and half high-school philosophy:

1) “[People] connect emotionally with characters whose struggles are familiar to them, not with characters who superficially look or act like them.”
 
2) Most characters which aim to tell a story are emotion-based characters. All emotion-based characters have flaws grounded in desires. (Example: Lucky is crazy for Lucky Charms cereal to the point of obsession and self-humiliation. The Pillsbury Doughboy loves to serve even when it is hard due to his size and environment. Simba desires to become a great king of the jungle like his father before him.)
 
3) Emotion-based characters are more commonly anthromorphic. These critters tend to wear clothing, have a human “attitude”, and adopt certain human-like mannerisms (ex. stuttering). This similarity to humans ends at their motivations. An emotion-based character’s motivations and goals should be in line with those of their species/culture.

4) If you have a character that doesn't aim to tell a story but instead acts as a "mascot", you have a mystery based character. These critters are highlighted by a distinct lack of information outside of their appearance. Viewer interest is now driven by NOT knowing a character’s desires and flaws. If the character is compelling enough they will work to find or create a back story. Good examples are the creepy Pringles dismembered head or the Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.
 
5) Mystery based characters' only voice is their visual appeal. They need to emote uniqueness and ask viewer participation through how they are displayed. The benefit of this style of character is that they don't need to be close to humans visually. A disembodied floating head or a pack of gravity-defying cheese crackers will do.


6) Critters that don’t fall into either of these categories tend to be bland and uninteresting which don’t engage viewer attention. These characters imply false intentions as their motivations seem confused. These “fake” characters are commonly referred to as cartoon-ish, while emotion-based characters rarely have this dilemma because they are seen as human. Mystery-based characters don't fall into either the cartoon or real categories because their lack of context allows them to bend to a viewers needs.

-Josh
 

Today I made my very own toy, and below you'll find how you can do it too for only $25 US and some free time. Now the fun thing here is that the only limit is your imagination. Relax, have fun, and be patient. Those beautiful McFarlane toys weren't built in a day so try not to rush it. That said, I rushed the hell out of mine and it still turned out fairly well.

Why would anyone do this?

Be a Good Little Consumer

Choose Your Adventure

Baked

Paint Shop Pro

I don't think Mickey Mouse ever died. Like many a world leader he simply faded away with time. His influence stands, but he is too busy trying to exist to really care.

But Mickey and Bugs Bunny, and anyone of the many "classic" animated greats are in place where death would be a relief. Board rooms and execs control the fate of these characters now. And we all know how efficient machines businesses are, most can barely restock supplies let alone take a chance on a creative or entertaining story. So it is with a heavy heart that I see Mickey and fellow Disney pals being re-branded to be "hipper". The re-branding is under the name of VAULT 28, an excuse for Disney to unleash designer clothes under the pretense of nostalgia.

I need to start off by saying that I'm not against change in the slightest. I want these characters to live again, and they would need some clear format and content adjustments to work better. Change is essential here.

What I object to are changes of a character's values. When you change a character's dreams, desires, and motivations, you don't have an "improved" character - you have a new character.

These same changes could be made for format, pacing, length, or a million other factors that can adjust a property for an audience. But changing Huck to a hard-nosed 2nd grade teacher and watch the entire story collapse.

When I was growing up we had no money.

I don't mean in the common sense that "times they were tough" I mean we didn't have enough to live on. I spent most of my life watching my mom two or three jobs a day to pay for the crappy one-bedroom apartment we were trapped in. She'd come in for a few hours of sleep and lie down on the floor. We couldn't even afford food. We had $30 a week to survive. If I was hungry I needed to deal with it.

Today, this haunts every part of my daily life. I turn lights off of rooms obsessively and I find every dime I can for saving. And I can't eat more than two meals a day without feeling stuffed. In many ways, I can imagine how it would feel like growing up in the depression. The only thing I had back then was free time and the prayer of talent at anything - I needed a way out.

My mom must've found Animation by Preston Blair by accident. The garish color cover and oversize format were clues to me that it was something special. I studied the drawings all the time and tried my best to match Blair's style. I learned so much about cartooning from that book that I decided it was what I wanted to do when I grew up. Blair convinced me in 40 pages that "character" animation was worth a 5-year old's time. Later on I heard that it was the inspiration for many, many other cartoonists and animators as well.

Oh, and I noticed that the ASIFA - the Hollywood Animation Archive Project had released most of the book free online. Enjoy! :D

I'm going to be tossing up a PDF version of this into the library sometime this week. I photographed and retouched my old copy but these are so much cleaner!

-Josh

I just had to say sincere thanks to all of the new folks stopping by lately. I hope you enjoy the mish-mash of comics, animation, and design! If you like what you see, I have a big favor to ask - please help spread the word. I'll buy you a Cherry Coke.

This little blog is currently being featured in Design Melt Down's "Beautiful Blogs" series, the Realmac Software's RapidWeaver gallery, and the wonderful CSSTux site. Sincere thanks for the kind mentions everyone! I'm a pretty iffy web designer so it means so very much to me.

-Josh

This post is about a lie that we are told each and everyday. As a matter of fact it is a lie humans invented and have tried to spread, but it just ain't catching on in nature. Here we go: There is no such thing as a straight line within nature.

Now, I'm not suggesting that many people actually draw like this. But I am trying to prove a point. Trees, grass, even rocks, they all are wonderfully imperfect filled with subtle curves and imperfections. They breathe and roll creating unique living rhythms. But people hate random imperfections because they're hard to predict, so humanity adopted the straight line. It is simple enough to remember. But it is simply terrible at representing things filled with Life.

Why does this matter? Many artist's art are based on nothing but straight lines. Straight line art gives me the feeling of overpowering death, because it ignores everything else in the universe for a human concept of perfection. Beginning artist's don't even try to hide their bias, the classic stick figure is a living breathing human viewpoint. But even skilled artists try and apply "perfect" lines to natural objects. Whether applied to bones or horizons, straight lines (and any other ideas of perfection) are man made and don't belong in your art.

Ground-breaking, probably not. But I never hear these fakers called out for what they are. Down with man-made perfection! Up with your living breathing imperfect art.

- Josh

How did you do? Being able to find mistakes in flow and design will make or break your own comics. Chances are if you are missing a major flaw in this piece, you are also missing this idea within your own sequential art.

Carson Von Osten - Comic Strip Artist's Kit Famous Artist's Course - Composition Famous Artist's Course - Distribution of Space Glen Keane - Notes Illusion of Life - Natural Forms Marbury Hill Brown - Curves Mark Kennedy - Appeal Mark Kennedy - Attracting the Eye Mark Kennedy - Twins & Tilts Preston Blair - Rhythm Rowland Wilson - Layout & Light Rowland Wilson - Painting Willard Mullins - Character Exaggeration Wally Wood's 22 Panels

In this guide Dave Sim says that the most important thing for a comic artist is to be able to draw one page comfortably a day. This was his benchmark for barely existing. If you couldn't reach this limit you might as well stop right now.

Today's point is that momentum is about forcing your weak monkey mind to do things it doesn't want to. It wants to be lazy and full and content, but it is your job as a human to find ways to force the weak flesh towards it's next goal. If you can lead the monkey one day it gets easier the next, until a few months in you have him scooting around wearing a tuxedo and serving cleverly named drinks.

While we'd all love to create powerful stories that resonate with readers on every page, as people we have deadlines to meet. David's question is an important one but it is one that I see uniquely echoed throughout the gaming community. In "Game Creation and Careers", a book that features interviews from over 150 of the videogame creating aristocracy, this topic is mentioned over and over again. Sid Meier (creator of the Civilization games) says:

"A game has to have a great first 15 minutes."

"There are two factors which affect how much fun people have while playing your game [or reading your story!]: the frequency in which they can have exciting and memorable moments and the infrequency with which they are genuinely stuck and have to decide whether to keep trying."

Back again to the "Power of Pacing" article - it goes one step further and looks at the sales numbers as well. They give examples of Grand Theft Auto and God of War as games with interesting hooks that give the player reason to keep playing. In Grand Theft Auto's case it is the realization that the player is in absolute control of their actions. With God of War it is a mixture of unique setting, storytelling, and fun gameplay. An example David uses where a game failed the 15 minute rule, and went on to low sales was the acclaimed Xbox, PS2, and PC title Psychonauts. The first ten minutes are spent listening to dialogue. (Though Psychonauts later sections are among the finest that gaming storytelling and character design has ever seen.)

What is most interesting about this comparison is that Psychonauts went on to win many "Game of the Year" awards. It was regarded among the finest platformer games ever created - but even with all these medals and accolades it couldn't pull the average Joe in. While Psychonauts is one of my favorite games ever made it is clear that this 15 minutes rule caused it to go from a potential "classic" to a cult classic. And that is just a damn shame...

Note #1:
If you are even vaguely interested in compelling character design I recommend checking out THIS POST where I link to a speech by Psychonauts creator Time Schafer. It is packed with A+ info.

Note #2:
Would you like a free subscription to Game Developer Magazine? Click here!

-Josh

If info like that isn't enough to put a bullet in your head I don't know what is.

1. The comic strip has a writer.

2. There are multiple people working on a strip.

3. This is a day job for them.

4. It feels like someone crapped on face after reading this comic.

UPDATE: Microsoft announced free repairs for all Xbox 360's made in 2005. I get free repairs all on their dime. Finally a reason not to revolt against our evil monkey overlords.

Drawn! &

Temple of the Seven Golden Camels

With all of that weighty confessional said, Making Comics is the real deal. Go out there and pick this up right now.

The point here is that in every dream you are willing to hold onto, there comes a point where it changes paths. All of your heart goes into fueling a project and once you make it over the crest you know that it isn't what you expected to see.

It was a fun ride. While there I coined the phrase "Be a forever learner, not a forever student.".

Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him."It's you -- Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist."So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art."It's perfect!" she gushed. "You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?""Five thousand dollars," the artist replied."B-b-but, what?" the woman sputtered. "How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!"To which Picasso responded, "Madame, it took me my entire life."

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

The truth is, conversations are sequential art's blindspot. It takes a gifted writer and artist to mold a scene that is natural, because people can spot a fake hobbling their way. A well paced and illustrated scene can free up the burden of the writer. In other words, good conversation art equals less focus on talking heads more focus on highlighting interesting characters or plot.

1) AppZapper

2) WhatSize

3) Monolingual

4) Youpi Optimizer

I was a production assistant to Paul Horschemeier while he created books 2 and 3 of the Forlorn Funnies "Mother, Come Home" graphic novel and Forlorn Funnies 6. I scanned, prepped, and added colors to nearly each and page. I also worked on scanning, coloring, and preparing Jefferey Brown's artwork for print in the "Project: Telstar" and "Unlikely".

SnatchEm - FREE

iClip $19.95

Screenshot Plus - FREE

Basecamp Widget - FREE

Pandora Widget - FREE

Cyberduck Widget - FREE

iRate - FREE

iStat Pro - FREE

Watchmouse Widget - FREE

Package Tracker - FREE

Stop Dashboard - FREE

1. Build a Desert Island.

2. Haven't drawn in a month? STOP.

3. You have one month to live.

4. Publishers? Meh.

5. You are your audience.

Oddly enough we missed the mark by a long-shot. Barely making our pushed back November launch date, we had already committed to a $5,000 ad in the Winter 2005 1up Holiday Buyers' Guide. We scrambled and had two sleepless weeks of cobbling together a functioning site and an entire library of creative Xbox 360 adhesive skins. We were the first to the market and over the months it didn't even seem to matter that our biggest differentiator was still being heavily worked on. We were quickly featured in Game Informer, interviewed by Gamertag Radio, and had the buzz of thousands of blogs.

The Facetags tale continues, but I'll save the guts for another day. The point of this post is that I learned so much about starting and managing a business that it terrifies me. As I embark on a new self-funded start-up venture I'm trying to implement one of the best thing that I've learned from Facetags.

That would be: A good product/service sells. A great product/service tells compelling stories that the user wants to participate in.

November 2003:

Interior 2003: I'm pretty sure I was blind in 2003.

Redesign 2004:

I like this one. I took my wierdness and channeled it into something palpable. The right was animated gifs of the characters moving and looked pretty swift. The right nav bar expanded with rollover menus that flowed towards the main image area. But the interior was where I tried to be more "creative". Creativity and user friend-liness never go hand-in-hand.

Interior 2004: All pages were divided into two main halves, with 4 navigation buttons on the right side. The thought here was that by forcing the navigation to similar content I could push people to similar content I thought they'd enjoy. Silly puppy!

Clearly my split personality's are showing up even in navigation. The medication was quickly reinstated. :)

Fall 2004:

The graphic novel "Nothing Left to Lose" was finally being released October 2004 at SPXPO in Maryland, and I needed to add in PayPal functionality. Why not redesign?!

Notice how I begin to accept that while I'd love to make giant buttons and corral the user through the habitrails of my site, I soon gave up and started to lower the hierarchy on my navigation. The interiors used Dreamweaver templates for the first time and allowed much freer navigation from any page. That said, the moving from one second level immediately to another second level page type was nearly impossible. As I addressed these problems the world took suit with shocking immediacy. (Or the successful companies had been along this hierarchy movement since 1999. Whatever.)

No interiors to show on this one kids. Sorry. But Santa is real, so don't fret.

Redesign Summer 2005:

The new site was great. We were picking up in pages, and traffic, but it was very green. Very especially green. Plus, I was in desperate need of updating the site to show more of the design skills I'd honed on the job. Take interesting photos + plus rainbow palette + a heavy dash of time = A pretentious comic art site that came off as more humorous than interesting. Good times.

Interior 2005: The template wins. I give into the homogeny of the computer. Almost all pages are immediately accessible. Many community options are added to no avail.

The 2006 Why's & How's:

Why the new look? The truth is the pages that accounted for 90% of my traffic needed an update maybe once a month. This meant a good drop in interest and the lack of motivation for me to build out any extra areas.

The design was heavily inspired by the very non-web looking site for the Delicious Monster. I enjoyed their approach but felt it my take could brighten things up. The hodgepodge images are an attempt to show what this site will cover. As much as I'd love to release a comic or two a day I can't. Much of this will be ramblings about things I find exciting, amusing, or entertaining.

This release leads in with the blog style page to show interesting designs, comics, and many other items in a way that is easiest for the reader to acknowledge. And when it best for you, it encourages me to keep sharing.

As much as I love to design and tweak, I can't hand code. My pages were excessively uncompliant and I had no real desire to learn why. As I'd experienced first-hand, these items change too quickly to waste your time with. Thus, a fully compliant xhtml and css editor was brought in to do the dirty work.

The 2.0 push is bringing some communities together much more than ever before. Not only does each page support some sort of community based link, but you can always click any of the links at the bottom of this page to subscribe to the digital tomfoolery.

And now a promise: I, STATE MY NAME, WILL NOT REDESIGN FOR AT LEAST A YEAR. You can sleep with ease folks - RefreshingContent lives again.

Heh, heh, seriously - thanks so much for stopping by. We are still getting all of the old functionality back up, and tweaking things on an hourly basis, so please stay tuned! :D