Friday down in flames

Sometimes you expect big things from a day and it doesn't deliver. I thought this would be a big day to get some Arms and Ether goin.' No such luck. Meetings. Yay. Grumble. I did eat a lot of pizza though. Ugh. For the love of . . . Here's some of what I'm cookin' up.
1) I want to sell shirts and books on the site. I'm looking at cafepress.com, but I think I'll also get the fine young men (Alex Falkenstein and Jess Gleasman) at basement-ink to do a run of higher quality screen print shirts as well.
2) Fontlab with Scanfont is looking good so far. I just need more TIME.
3) Arsenal's playing Wigan at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow. Don't think I'll be up for that one. Darn.

Fontlab

More techno-babble. I ordered Fontlab for the lab today. I'm going to take a stab at making a font based on my "lettering." I figure even if I make a hash of it, it'll be nice for the students to give it a go. I've had some pretty studly students this quarter, so hopefully some of them will take up the challenge. Should be a cool tool for the motivated.
Well, I'm not on the picture-magic computer, so, uh here's a picture of my son with his young Beatles hair-do.

Frag It

Okay, my last post was so lame, I went ahead and ordered the damn Cintiq. It'll be here in a week or two, so I'll let "you" know how it goes. I don't have my drawings on this computer, so, uh. . . here's a picture of the studio I built this summer with help from the genius of Scott "8 Bit Ghost" Raedeke and Nick "24 Bit Color Depth Plus 8 Bit Alpha Channel" Oredson. I still haven't finished the interior, because I have a job and a family, etc. etc, but this picture makes me laugh. Lots of funny compositional angles along with that splendid dog and birds' nest. Kinda like a Breugel landscape.

Wacom Cintiq - To Buy of Not to Buy

Real tired-like. So I'll babble on about techno-crap.
I'm thinking about getting a Wacom Cintiq tablet. A Cintiq let's you draw directly on your screen (as opposed to the Wacom Intuos tablet which is more of a fancy pen-style mouse). As you can see from the picture above, I already work wonders with the Intuos. Imagine what I could accomplish with a Cintiq!
Here are the issues:
Le Cintiq is freaking expensive. As in, "Dang, dude, that is really expensive." The 21" Cintiq is $2000. $2000 is a lot of money. As in, "Dang, dude, that is a lot of money." The 12" Cintiq is $1000. This is still spendy, and most people say, "I love the 12," but if I had the money, I'd get the 21."
Hrrghl.
Buying hardware can be a big disappointment. You've probably been there. "Wow, this new Macintosh laptop allows me to open files and run programs. Unfortunately it has not made me more like Ghandi, Einstein, or the Dalai Lama. Hell, I'm not even more like John Lennon or Yoko Ono. Damn their sexy industrial design and black and white advertising campaign."

Some hardware purchases are good, however. I've liked my 22" Acer flat panel monitor, though a big part of its appeal is that it was only 230 bucks. No Apple Cinema displays for me. My Intuos tablet has been the most trustworthy piece of computer hardware I've owned--I've used mine for about 6 years now. It's outlived numerous computers, scanners and cameras, plus I use it every day. So, I think I'll stop annoying myself (and more importantly, you, dear reader) and just get the damn Cintiq.

Grrr

Annoying day. Meetings and obligations from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Grrr. All for a good cause. Just not mine.

Lettering--sweet god, save me

Here's a stab at hand lettering--compare it with the image in the previous post. I did several versions of the text on bristol with a Hunt 102 nib, and some Micron pens. The version I used here was done with a .05 micron.

I had to make some of the balloons bigger and adjust some of my word spacing once I got it into the computer. Screen readability is much more of an issue with hand lettering. I do think I'm liking it better than the Digital Strip version.

Seeing as it is going to actually be a pain in the @#$% and probably double my production time to hand-letter, I think I'm going to have to make/commission a custom font based on my lettering. Only thing is, I think I'm going to need to hand letter quite a few strips first before I get a decent sample of my lettering to start creating a font with. Sigh.

T-Bag Special

Not that anyone's listening, but I'm going to commit to daily posting again as a "ramp-up" to "launching" the Arms and Ether web strip. Above is a panel from a 4-panel strip. Three issues:

1. Color.
Advantages: It's in color.
Disadvantages: Color is not essential to the story, it takes longer, and it could suck.
Right now, I'm leaning pretty heavily towards color. I think it looks better to indifferent strangers.

2. Periodicity. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc
Right now, I'm leaning towards "Quasi-Daily," though we'll see. I'm not going to launch until I've got 10-15 strips "in the can." After the launch, I'll then see how efficiently the reserve fills back up and adjust accordingly. If it doesn't fill back up, I'll just get into model trains or something.

3. Is this "it?"
Of course, it's stupid to predict what something will become. But my XXX fantasy is that this strip will be my primary creative focus--that I can channel my many-splendor'd djinn into this form. The hook is that this inter'web thing is tres flexible. I don't have to stick to the 4-panel structure (though I'm currently enjoying working with those creative limits). I could throw in animation or more elaborate drawing as the mood hits. It's "a whole new world" as the marvelous Disney people have told us.

We'll see. Like I said, model trains might be pretty cool. They are, actually.

Herodotus!

Getting the Arms and Ether characters together. . . here's Herodotus. Funny that he doesn't know how to draw togas either.

Quelque Minions

Character studies for Arms and Ether

God help us all. It's milesinada.com

Yes, I finally got my URL act together. So type milesinada.com, inadaville.com or armsandether.com into your preferred web browser, and you will be magically transported here. The reason for all of this foolishness (and my web silence) is I'm gearing up for an internet invasion and an online Arms and Ether comic strip. Ultimately, those URLs will link to a new Arms and Ether "web site." More to come as things develop. I'm pretty manic depressive about the whole thing right now. It's great! It's horrible! Yes! No! etc. More as the creative cycle sputters on. Oops, time for a critique with "the kids."

Jeff File for Animation Class-- lip synch with phonemes and flash symbols

Animation students, click here to download the Jeff.FLA file (if you dare). It's a 9 mb zip file, so it might take a bit to download. Patience and all that. Anyhow, you can analyze to see how I worked with nested symbols and "swapping" for the phonemes. Quality. Regular folk, can click the picture to see the swf file.

Web URL

For DMF folk--here's how you enter a hot url:
The Miles Site

Phonemes

For the animation class--here are some cruddy phonemes (with a beautiful model)

Platon

Here's the url for the contemporary photographer, Platon. We've been looking at his work in our Digital Media Foundations class. He also has a photo essay entitled Service in this week's New Yorker. Click here to check it out online.

Bald Power: Cal Ripken Jr. and Glenn "Divine" Milstead Unite!

This connection must have been made somewhere before as both Cal and the late, great, "Divine" are prominent Baltimore figures. Nonetheless, it bears illustration. Thanks to my brother for drawing this to my attention.

Comic Class--Roughing in the Story

Here is a .png of the template I used to rough out Arms and Ether.
Download and enjoy. The other images are side by side scans of my roughs next to my finished artwork.

I wanted to illustrate two points for my comic/picture book class.
1. Don't let artwork hang up your writing and your ideas. Get the flow going. REFINE artwork LATER.
2. ROUGH your pages in quickly so that you are able to establish the flow and feel of your story. Make edits in the rough stage before you've dropped a day's work on drawing a page the story would be better off without.

Picture from DMF demo

There's a right way to rock
And a wrong way to roll
You should just listen to your soul
Just remember that life is number one
You could be having so much fun.

From Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

DMF Sample Poste

I make picture. It is good.

Fallen Summer

Summer dies to fall. Dang it. Back to work.

Been a bit

And a good summer. Building a shack in the back yard, riding bikes with Sam, all-night Battlestar Galactica and Spore jags, working on an animation with Casey and Jennifer, on-going mid-life crisis--sorting through death and personal-cultural responses to it. Good times. School looms, but bring it on. Also, I haven't checked blog or email for about a month. My apologies. This is a background in progress from the in-progress animation. Silky. Me want draw more landscape outside, but me too afraid to tremblingly confront me inadequacy before pulsating expansive nature.