Mischief for Mac Desktop

Mischief is an app that I have been playing with lately; it's a very fast and

inexpensive drawingapplication that has an infinite canvas and is neither

vector or raster, but a hybrid. I have been using it for making annotations

on edits while working on UX and modeling concepts.

I've also started to use it on concepting; it's taking me some time to

appreciate its simplicity, mainly due to my reliance on Photoshop...

which is such a swiss army knife that you can get distracted or slowed

down by its features. 

Arguably you can use other apps for a similar purpose, but on a Cintiq,

 t’s very fluid for drawing; my hands seldom leave the screen/keys.

I have just started to experiment with using it for more robust drawing. 

I came across this excellent video of illustrator Ryan Dening on Mischief

which makes it pretty clear that it's not a shortcut to talent, but a way

to keep from getting bogged down in deep software. Mischief is fairly

simple, clean, and elegant. 

https://youtu.be/vHudyA4QdP8

My Touchboard landed in DC

All, right, minds out of the gutter, folks- I mean that the fascinating Kickstarter project that I backed a while ago finally shipped my k it, and it arrived a few days ago. I didn't go for one with a project pre-built; rather, I have a few ideas for how I can use the interactive paint. Yes, I said interactive paint. So far, I am still putting together my scribbles, but the Arduino board works fine, and I went through the tutorials on-board.

3d App Icon Template

Warming up a Maya scene at this stage, as I know I need to make some redesigns for iOS8...and that shape is still underway, so I have a placeholder for now to get the lighting down for a 3d template for future icons.

My aim is to build a setup with 3 lights and 3 cameras, where the front camera will be the actual app icon. 

While I realize that the trend has been for icons to become flatter, build them in 3d gives them a throwback

feel that I can't help digging...

The most recent update modifies the format to represent the cleaner rounded edges of iOS8, with a less 3d 

perspective to represesent the 'app state' of an icon. 

GIFs for retouched images and wireframes

working on a very simple test of retouched images in a GIF format for presentations. It needs a transition back state...but it made me think that I may have some other uses for GIFs in my portfolio:

Modo 801 testing

Though the rest of the world is going crazy over whatever Apple may be saying on the keynote tonight, I am knee-deep in learning a new piece of 3d software, Modo. I was really on the fence when the Foundry purchased Modo, as I felt like 3d software keeps getting gobbled up by huge companies, but I was pretty impressed with what I had seen out of Modo, and the 801 updates looked very strong...especially in modeling and rendering. It's been a few years since I learned a new 3d package, and it was time- I find it to be a great way to evaluate your own status quo in terms of working methods, and to see whether you can make your life a little easier. Modo feels uncannily familiar, enough like Maya that I can navigate around, but a bit easier to get up and running. It seems like 3d beginners will have a much easier time with Modo.