Ramblings of a Failing Mind

After my post of the little illustrator monkey that I made, a friend of mine requested that I make a picture he could use as an avatar. We went over the details of what he would like to see so last night after raiding I wasn’t quite ready to go to bed yet and decided to pull up Illustrator and give it a go.

After a LOT of frustration @ midnight of trying to get a gradient to work exactly like I wanted over text, I finally decided to start fresh in a different program. Yes you guessed it… Photoshop. Very quickly I was able to churn out a “beta” of the picture and although I wasn’t as happy as I would like with it, he was. I made a point to revisit it in the morning when I woke up and start a new. I’m now retrying my work again in Illustrator and changing the look of the character a tad bit but here’s a copy of the one I made while blinking myself awake @ 1am.

A blog’s theme is supposed to relate to the author and/or the subject matter right?  I think it’s very difficult to find a theme that matches me perfectly.  I’ve been browsing themes off and on this morning and found a few that I like but none that I love.  I found some that are colorful but end up being a little too girly, some with some very nice images or backgrounds but end up being too goth or emo.  Found some that have some nice pictures but just bad layout.  Some nice layouts but too spartan.

Nothing can match as well as what you can create in your minds eye.   Putting minds eye to paper (so to speak) is the real trick and takes finesse, patience, and dedication.  Between my addiction to world of warcraft and seeking to raise a few more ranks in call of duty 4, it’s some time before my mental theme becomes a realization.  I’ve imported a few themes to try out, if you see one you hate or one you love, give a shout as I cycle through them!

I first learned what the “pen” tool was in Adobe Photoshop, I believe it was version 8… maybe 9. This was a good thing because it introduced me to what might be possible to create with such a tool. It’s also bad because I learned to love it in Photoshop instead of where it’s home is… in Illustrator.

Photoshop works with rasterized images and Illustrator works with vector images. What does this mean? Well, having spent a few months interning for a local design place I picked up a few things. A raster graphic or image is made up of pixels, much like the video images we watch on television. If you have ever taken a photo and tried to zoom in, you notice that it becomes blurry or pixelated. This is a result of working with a raster graphic. How does a vector image differ? Vector graphics work based off of math and geometry to create the visual results you see. Vector art uses geometric objects like curves and polygons to display an object. This is extremely important to create high definition work. Since vector imagery uses math the image will retain the same sharpness regardless of magnification level as it can recalculate to an infinite amount the angle, arc, swoop, etc of the pattern it was told to represent.

Why is all of that important? Because having learned how to use a vector based tool in a raster program (pen tool in photoshop), I’ve developed a love and unfortunately habits that need to be relearned in the proper home. With the creation of the image below, a copy of a graphic on a new t-shirt I purchased, I’m just beginning to create the groundwork for relearning how to use the tool properly. Here you’ll see a very basic yet amusing drawing that is my first attempt at the new process I’m working on. There’s 3 more images in this set that I’ll be uploading soon. Please leave feedback

Have you ever met those people who are all or nothing?  Anything in between just doesn’t satisfy them at all?  When having a discussion with my wife this weekend it occured to me that everything she’s involved in is 100% or 0%.  For example this weekend we started some early spring cleaning for some company coming in, and it didn’t stop with just some cleaning, it became an entire house overhaul.  In conversation I think I illustrated this point perfectly.

 ”So it doesn’t matter if you are 10 -0 or 0 -10, you just have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad?”

She agreed. 

Which made me wonder… are there many people like that out there that can’t accept a “imperfect” record?  Also, what drives someone to be like that?  It’s actually quite hard for me to comprehend as I’m normally very laid back about things in general and accept them as they come.   There are things that everyone is passionate about, and I’ve met people who need to be perfectly good at the things they do, but this is certainly an interesting personality quirk.

I’ve had this website in one form or another and always get fired up and excited… only to fall flat on my face because I stop trying or caring.  With a flurry of new ideas and concepts to design and work on brings new energy and desire to see old things reborn.  Welcome to the rebirth of purplepulp in it’s new form of .net instead of .com and the cowboys have retired their feelings of quantum physics to now lie in green pastures staring at the puffy white clouds passing through a sharp blue sky in perfect contrast.

 I hope to bring to this site all concepts my addled mind concocts, be it in art, design, coding, or general pointless discussion about things only equally tainted minds such as mine may fully appreciate.  In total I hope to bring completely unfiltered creations to you.  If they stink then so be it.  If they bring forth a following in youthful exuberant procreation of your own interpretations then all the better, just don’t ask me for procreation protection.