The Machine
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The Machine

by James on May 7, 2013 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Comic

The Machine I have yet to understand how such a simple game as Minecraft can engross my kids and me, but it does and I’ve lost many hours to building fantastic in-game structures that have absolutely no value.

I guess it could be likened to traditional time waster activities such as solitaire, flicking cards in a hat and such; except with those you can “win”, or at least increase your accuracy.

To be fair, Minecraft requires that you search for a variety of resources and depending on what you find, you can build tools, more advanced building materials, weapons, … so I probably shouldn’t describe it as “simple”. But it’s looks are deceiving in that regard, especially when you compare it to other first person, free roaming games of today–at least from a graphics standpoint it pales by comparison.

Naturally the idea for this comic came to mind when I’ve reflected on the number of hours I personally have wasted. Also, once again, special thanks to Scott Biddle who helped me with the dialog–the man has a gift for words!

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Pencil Drawing of Boy Setting-Up Tent

by James on April 7, 2013 at 1:19 pm
Posted In: Blog

My son got a tent for Christmas which he was so eager to set-up, but it was winter and he had to wait almost a month before it was warm enough. On the first warm day of the year he set-up the tent in the backyard.

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Soccer Shirt

by James on March 23, 2013 at 11:33 pm
Posted In: Blog

I’m coaching U8 soccer. The boys chose the name “The Lightning Lizards” and so I decided to draw a team logo. And then I made me a coach shirt with the logo on the front. Turned out really nice.

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Kindergarten Project 2013

by James on March 11, 2013 at 12:42 am
Posted In: Blog

My youngest is in kindergarten this year and my wife is helping the class with an art project. She painted some gradient grass and sky using acrylic on canvas. She added the trees and then asked me to paint grass and leaves and and to eventually touch up the thumbprint animals (each child put a thumbprint on the painting which is an animal). I think it turned out really well!

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Little Rock TechFest T-Shirt Designs

by James on March 6, 2013 at 6:19 pm
Posted In: Blog
Front-Shirt
Back-Shirt


Among my other responsibilities, I was fortunate enough to get to design the t-shirts for the Little Rock TechFest 2013.

This turned out to be a much bigger task than I originally thought. For one, designing the shirts was a bit of a challenge in that I needed to appeal to a large variety of software developers. This wasn’t so bad–I’ve enjoyed the new popularity of classic robots which is the theme I think all lovers of technology could appreciate.

Then there was the issue of the shirts being printed using a silk screen process which required the artwork be a single color bitmap image. Had I gone the digital printing route this would not have been a problem, but since we needed 300 shirts, the screen printing method was a much cheaper method. I was sent home with my artwork after my first visit to the t-shirt shop because the quality of the logos I was working with and the low resolution robot drawings. I spent four hours redrawing the front, and about four hours redrawing the back to get the artwork ready for the screens. It was worth it–I’m very proud of these shirts!

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The Chicken Sandwich Maker

by James on February 3, 2013 at 11:18 pm
Posted In: Blog

As a drawing exercise I decided to draw a machine that would turn chickens into sandwiches. Well… as if drawing this contraption wasn’t enough, I made a video detailing the entire process. Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

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If Microsoft Made Hammers

by James on January 29, 2013 at 9:35 pm
Posted In: Blog

If Microsoft Made Hammers

My family and I were hunkered down in my office waiting out a storm that was blowing over. Tornado sirens were blaring in the distance and I got a hankering to draw a comic, and so I did, why not?

It was on my mind as I’ve listened to people struggling with Windows 8 that there seems to be a pattern with changing operating systems and software we depend on. This pattern involves an initial whining and complaining about the new tools only to later become so comfortable with them that we can’t see ourselves going back.

Windows 8 was no exception for me. Certainly it was a big change from Windows 7 and the start screen was difficult to adjust to. That is until I learned a few keyboard shortcuts and now I really like Windows 8–I don’t want to go back to Windows 7.

So I thought, what if Microsoft made hammers, and thus this comic was born.

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New Phone (Nokia Lumia 920)

by James on January 12, 2013 at 11:35 pm
Posted In: Blog

Nokia Lumia 920

Though it might be a little early to make the call, I’m really digging this phone. I’ve used hand me down phones since my Palm Treo 650 finally gave out in 2010. Though my last phone ran an old version of Windows Mobile, nobody would give me the benefit of the doubt that I had a “smart phone”.

This phone is brilliant! The interface is incredibly intuitive and it syncs smoothly with my Microsoft account. I’m still using gmail for e-mail, contacts and my calendar which is no problem.

I felt inspired to draw this comic and then post the pic from the new phone.

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Scott Biddle’s Book 2 is OUT!!!

by James on December 3, 2012 at 10:25 am
Posted In: Uncategorized

I’ve really enjoyed the story that is unfolding in the fantasy world Scott has created. He’s allowed me the honor of designing his book covers for the first two books as well as a map in the appendix of the second.

I totally recommend it for a good fantasy read (available at Amazon):

Scott Biddle's Second Book

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Dell XPS One 27 installing Windows 8 NIGHTMARE

by James on November 16, 2012 at 12:13 am
Posted In: Uncategorized

I’m sharing this information because it was such a nightmare for me and hopefully this will help someone else. Considering all of the problems that I ran into, the best way I can think of to log this is to just go through my procedure and record how it went.

1. I received my new computer from Dell with a home version of Windows 8. Naturally I wanted to wipe the drive and install Win 8 Professional because I want to be able to join a domain.

2. So, I made a bootable USB with Windows 8 on it and off I went.

3. First, it kept failing to “upgrade”, even though I requested to “keep nothing”. So finally I went into the BIOS and changed the boot sequence to check for USB first.

4. Well, after fooling around with that, it finally booted up on the USB, but when I tried to choose a partition to install to, I would receive an error:

Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk of the GPT partition style

5. So after much googling, I found where this just wasn’t going to happen off of a USB drive, so I burned a DVD and tried that route.

6. Mind you, this was the first DVD I’ve put into my new computer, so I didn’t realize that there is NO EJECT BUTTON!

7. After fiddling with the BIOS, turning UEFI on and off, turning secure boot on and off, and all combinations with legacy support on I finally go the DVD to boot up. But still got the error above:

Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk of the GPT partition style

8. Amid all of the attempts, and by this time I had spent a few hours, I decided that perhaps the partition was just goofed up; after all, what is this GPT style anyway? right? So I removed the partition, added it back and formated it.

9. Oh boy! Now my DVD is stuck in the computer, there is no eject button, and after fiddling around with the bios settings I started getting an error:

A media driver your computer needs is missing…

An no drives or partitions were showing.

10. So naturally I assume that indeed a driver is missing, NOT SO, but any way I tried to use the dell drivers disk, but don’t forget, I can’t get the DVD out. (I even opened the all-in-one computer and took out the drive to look for a force release button and there’s nothing!)

11. I copied the dell drivers to the USB, booted up on the DVD and got to a command prompt. I tried installing all sorts of things but none of that worked.

12. So here is what finally worked: First, I restored the BIOS to default because by this time there is no telling what I’ve jacked-up. Next, I still had Windows 8 on my USB drive, but I booted-up on the [UEFI Optical Drive (DVD)]. I got to the repair screen, then got to a command prompt. Navigated to my USB drive and started Setup.exe manually from there. This time I got all of my partitions without the warning about the GPT style. I was able to install just fine.

13. Now for the worst part. After all of this, I still had the Home edition of Windows 8! I didn’t realize that all I had to do all along was click the link “Upgrade to a newer version” and enter my Win Pro key and windows 8 automatically adds the additional features like any other windows feature.

This was an awful experience! I hope this helps somebody else.

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Making Simple Fireworks in Photoshop

by James on November 11, 2012 at 9:29 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

I saw a photo on flickr of some fireworks off in the distance above the silhouette of a landscape and decided to try to recreate the image in Photoshop.  I liked the results. Here’s how I did it:

Completed Image

Completed Image

 

1. Create a square image at whatever size you want.  I think I did 800 x 800.

2. Apply a gradient fill from a dark, almost black, blue to a lighter blue
Step 2

3.  I wanted a little more saturation in the blue, but didn’t want the top part of the sky to change so I added a blue layer and applied a layer mask.  On the layer mask I applied a radius gradient fill to make the richer blue closer to the horizon only.
Step 3Step 3

4.  The silhouette was kind of tricky at first, but was simple once I found the right brushes.  Unfortunately I don’t remember which ones I used, but I started with a bold section for the ground, and then chose a sponge type brush to make the trees.  I literally spent maybe 20 to 30 seconds clicking around to make the random leaves for the trees
Step 4

5.  Then I just put it all together
Step 5

6. Finally, using a similar brush as I did for the leaves, I put some solid streaks as if bursting from a center point.  I then lowered the opacity on the same brush and reduced the fill to create the smoke trails… and that’s it.

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