some doodles from my hand

in between the odds and sodds i m doing i thought i d just wack out some doodles for you to see

swatch palette art gallery 50's pin up

 evening all, I, on my day off have made another swatch palette art gallery piece to hang in your photoshop, specially for mr s greenwood and leake who requested it.


it s available for download here


also included in today's post is a clearer swatch file so that if you want to make you own swatch palette piece you don't have to spend 20 minutes deleting all your current swatches. (yep it only took me three pieces to work out that might be a good idea)


the clearer file is available here.


same as usual use replace instaid of load and drag your palette to the right number of swatches

toodleoo

swatch palette art gallery pop art double bill, Warhol's soup

pop art double bill here's Warhol's soup, available here

all rights to the warhol meister still i m just pasticheing
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swatch pallete art gallery, Roy Lichtenstein's Whaam

another piece to hang in your swatch palette, it's a wide one so maybe more for those with duel monitor set ups
.aco file available from here (for those using safari ctrl or right click to download the linked file)

once again copyrights belong to the lichtenstein estate.

gunna make a smaller portrait one next for those with only one monitor to play with. also will make a blog to dump these all in, if you fancy getting involved or want a comission let me know.
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my latest creative nonsense, I present the photoshop swatch art gallery

want to bring a bit of class to your photoshop workspace, want coworkers to thing you're a bit of something classier than what you actually are? Then i give to you my friends the photoshop swatches art gallery. Miniature masterpieces reformatted to fit into your swatches palette so you can hang your favourite artwork on your screen to look at all day whilst retouching, scamping, designing or merely pretending to work.

download the .aco file here, load it into your photoshop swatch pallete using replace, and then drag your palette to the correct width, et voila, swatch buckling awesomeness if i do say so myself.

more coming soon and open to comissions
and yes that blue pixel is supposed to be there (for those who know me too well its C100 M0 Y0 K4, that should explain it)

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p.s obviously all rights still belong to photoshop with regards to my use of their name

portrait videos on vimeo

i saw this portrait video on awesome solitaire
embedded from vimeo and portrait to make a really good screen visualization,
intrigued i made a test and by the looks of it you can pretty much create any aspect ratio of video for vimeo, which is nice to know.
heres my test,


testy testicles from joncg on Vimeo.

hackday 3: The hack fights back or the difficult birth of HoleRunner

This weekend held the third hack day and what will most likely be the last one in the house of mister kufluk. Worked out with  Kenneth Kufluk,and Andrew Mason, the concept sounded simple on the surface of it. We wanted to create an online multiplayer game that had a mechanic dependent on the number of players. It would need to be made in SVGs and in HTML so that in firefox it could be played with extra plug-ins.
How hard can that be I hear you cry, actually If you're keeping up with the talk of html 5 and svg s you ll be one of the few.


So anyway in the pub the night before andy and I cracked the idea of a demolition derby style version of a micro machines style game where you have a surface and each team is struggling to push vehicles from the other team off into space for points. This was promptly sold into Kenneth the next morning at his house. Things we d forgotten but added awesomeness were added and HoleRunner was born.


Over the next 8 hours I got to happily play with vector drawing, which I love, so was in a happy world of my own, while Kenneth and Andy battled against box2d and node to make things happen. I'll leave the explanations of exactly what went on there to them but it seemed hard. Radians and advanced trig and moments and torque forces had to all be worked out, leaving me exceedingly happy I was the pixel monkey on this one.


SO after 8 hours of struggle and trial and tribulations it became clear we were fighting a losing battle. And thus like any mighty army in need of a regroup we went to the pub. We decided to call it a night at about 2 am.
The next morning Andy and kenneth went about coding the mechanics from first principle rather than continue to try to bang their heads against the desk (fair call I say).
SO long story short HoleRunner is still coming soon, we have based mechanics and base graphics and base internet fuynctionality but this one is going to take more time.
However this is kind of what it will look like, (click to make it full screen)

hopefully I'll be posting more about this soon
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ftwinnebago

yet another quick brain fart to keep me entertained. came up with the idea of the ftwinnebago in a brainstorm for a different project and liked it so much that i figured i d make it, now I've started a blog based on it. It is here to satisfy my desire to make bad puns. hopefully like a punsink my work should now be a little freer of such nonsense
ta
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a to z of dead celebs, g is for gainsbourg

g is for gainsbourg,
7 down 19 to go
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f is for fawcett, a to z of dead celebs number 6

f is for fawcett
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the A to Z of dead celebs, E is for Wyatt Earp

e is for wyatt earp
5 down 21 to go,
hopefully f will be done tomorrow
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moretrackslikethis.com continues to spread, now found on feber.se

moretrackslikethis.com continues it's roll to world domination as we've now been featured on the cool swedish blog feber.se I'm still trying to get a translation to find out whether they re actually saying nasty swedish things about us, but still woop woop more coverage.





also the coolness goes on  it was written about by this guy willie wilhemsson (what an awesome name)
so thank you willie for writing about us. Grinning like a loon again now.

RUFTPBIG - random universal fluctuations that people believe is god

I hate the fact when i swear i say god a lot, idont believe in a single god, i m not a christian, I'm agnostic, i find the fact that out of habit i use the word god actually quite embarassing and annoying, so i invented this
Ruftpbig a bit of a mouth full but once you ve got it its very satisfying
give it a whirl
also interested to see how far it ll spread as it still stumps google and gets no results
say it loud say it proud RUFTPBIG
isnt that better

image borrowed from here all rights to them

twitter praise for http://moretrackslikethis.com

look at all the praises we're getting. spotify tweeted about us and over 4000 site views later across 70 countries its still going. SO get involved http://moretrackslikethis.com
and check out the twitter search for yourselves
full write up coming soon

spotify have tweeted about http://moretackslikethis.com

check it out spotify tweeted about our hack day project woop woop

a to z of dead celebs progress so far A,B,C,D

4 down, 22 to go

Hack Day 2: return of the hack: More tracks like this .com spotify recommendation engine

So in the last 24 hours and 24 minutes the feverishly deranged imaginations of one Kenneth Kufluk, one Andrew Mason and myself, created a new engine of terrifyingly awesome proportions. A spotify recommendation engine based upon an individual track rather than spotify's dodgy artist based system (which is all that is out there right now for spotify).

HERE IT IS Y"ALLL

a full blog post will follow, bit too tired right now.

Oh yeah it also contains thousands of simple HTML5 tutorials (incredibly innacurate description)

a to z of dead celebs : D is for Dean

d is for dean, 23 to go

a to z of dead celebs ; c is for john candy

24 to go
i love john candy but every time i got busted by a girlfriend's parents i thought of this moment

NEW PROJECT ALERT: a to z of dead of celebs

so with the demise or hiatus of the end of the world blog, I needed a new project to keep me out of trouble and to keep my vector drawing skills in check.
SO i'm drawing an a to z of dead celebs, not sure what the output of this list will be but here is the test  frame and also the first letter completed b for belushi (also as it's my list of dead celebs i get to choose celebrities i give a damn about and not neccessarily the most famous - on that note watch this space possible spin off projects coming soon)

time for some vector drawing

so it's been fucking ages since i did any vector drawing. also i've never felt comfortable recreating faces, i find it hard and i find it unrewarding and most frustratingly i never get them to look like the people i m recreating. so, because i find it al those things i m going to force myself to do it some and see if i can improve myself
. Can you see who it is?

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something of mine goes live

lookee lookee my 360 icon is on the vauxhall site.
small win but still makes me happy

putting things live

experiments

i drew on a polaroid years ago, always like the way it looks surreal drawing over real world shots. my mam took this picture of a blue bell woods and it just felt right. I know lots of other people have done other things and some very similar, so before you decry plagiarism, I'm not claiming this is my invention, that would be ridiculous, i still like doing it tho, after all these years

the departure of the mase, my technical concepting team mate

So the mason has departed for pastures fresh and green, thus the chances of coming up with wonderous tech ideas and bending his ear about every stupid idea I have is gone (well until the usual time spent in the white horse). Also the chance of being mased is significantly decreased (again until time spent in the white horse).

I think there should be space in this industry (especially digital) for a new type of creative team. The tech and the creative (I don't agreee with those terms as discussed further down, but they get the idea across for now). One with a more technical knowledge but creative in outlook and use of technologies and executions as well as big ideas and the other with a more generalised knowledge of technology but  a more visual eye and approach to problems. I think this is why I enjoyed concepting and proofing stuf with the mase. I'd come up with left field ideas, he'd suggest a better use of that idea and then we'd try it out. That's the same reason I enjoy doing the hack days with dhrubo and kenneth, working with them and their expertise makes me a better art director/creative/designer, and gives me a deeper knowledge of our medium.

I'm still horrified by how much more designers and art directors could learn about digital. If this was print, we would understand paper weights, established grid systems, typography and all sorts of craft knowledge to make us the best creatives/designers, but in digital do many creatives know the difference between HTML and ruby on rails? API details? The list of stuff I guess is endless, but I don't understand why more of us aren't striving to find out and learn about this medium we are concepting/designing for. It makes us better in our field and makes our ideas sharper and better suited to our medium, without having some poor long suffering coder having to redo our work. (and then worse we come over and art direct and complain when all our drop shadows and layer effects are misisng- ok not in html 5 but you get the point).

Ok so that ended up as a bit of a rant, but fuck it, it's my blog
anyway adios mase,  i'll see you in the horse

N.B. I don't agree with the tech and the creative terminology, as anyone down the pub who has had their ear bent on this subject can testify, there is so much wrong with the idea that only a visual designer or art director or copy writer is creative. I'm not going to rant about it here as it's a sunny day and life is to short. grab me in a pub and buy me a pint and I'll lay it all out for you

testing embedding with specific start point

more tron related fun stuff from flynn lives

fun stuff from flynn lives came as part of the online search for kevin flynn, as part of the tron launch propaganda.

my encom i d badge complete with qr code that takes you to the intranet of encom complete with email and everything.

all the easter eggy fun

woooooooop

beta squnkey

after years of making other people's paper art toys i finally made my own.
so here is the squnkey
you get it one of many fun flavours C M Y K or blank
or get your laughing gear round the raw files and hack it up how you want
raw ai or blank ai
so heres the beta version for  people to play with
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holy code

after some tech friends tried to explain the difference between ruby and php to me (they were good and kept their despairing looks to a minimum) they told me about a type of code language that is written in haikus. check it out here. So chuck and i were laughing about the resourcing of a project and how the only coders hired were a pair of french nuns and a dog.
this got me thinking...
Holy code, everything must be in psalm form, with plenty of eths and holy writ. also things must start with alpha and end with omega. also everything must comprise of three parts.
if  only i knew how to create coding languages and it d be amazing.

sorry random brain fart there
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a playlist for an absent friend

you know who you are
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scribbler2

click to make it large
if youve got 3d specs that makes it even more wweirdly


check out scribblertoo

dan showed me this earlier and it s fucking incredible i love it.
its like the easiest and most bizarre drawing tool ive ever used.
it makes everything look awesome.
get involved and have a play y'all
it also has full save and over drawing fun to play with
do it now
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save 6 music

so i n my sleep addled state this morning i had an idea. It was an idea to save 6 music. you d have to be blind, deaf and have no internet connection not to have heard about the proposed closure of 6 music.

So whilst trying to drag my corpse from bed i had an idea. If i had the money i'd by six music outright from the BBC. Granted i don't have the money but for those who do, now is the time.
Have you ever seen a radio station with so much publicity? The bbc never gave 6 music this much oush but at the moment the name of 6 music is everywhere. Famous twitter feeds (like phill jupitus), to mainstream news, social media and more. If that hasn't boosted listening figures, I don't know what could.

The second benefit for this would be the PR for which ever rich lucky bugger could afford to buy 6 music. They would be seen as the saviour of independent music, the protector of what the bbc should be saving. Whether this be for one-upmanship, taxable deductions, or simply instead of their advertising budget on other projects, they should do it.

So come on Sir Richard Branson, give it a go.

anyway
just an idea but had to chip in my two pennys worth


get your voice

live stream from multiple source experiment

just to explain I came up with an awesome idea earlier about using multiple mobile streams, this is just a first phase test, and the reason that both boxes are dead is that neither of the phones are live streaming at this second. hopefully you ll see an output here soon
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my week of mouspaths

i'm going to keep recording these everyday and see what i can do with them. click here for the big animated one. generated by mousepath.jar by anatoly zenkov
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Verbatim monster

how cool is this. the most boring subject and one of the most fun sites of the year

check it out

new illustration for beebzteez

new mailer illustration for beebzteez to go out promoting their donkies tshirt
same deal as the last two.

oh and for those like me who didn't get the reference a donkey is a crap poker player that other more experienced players take to the cleaners (can you see the reference coming) or eat for breakfast.

location alarm / iM DRUNK AND WANT TO GET HOME

FLASH DEMO CLICK HERE CLICK HERE CLICK HERE FOR THE LOVE OF SOMEONE ELSE"S GOD CLICK HERE






so i ve debated putting this up for a long time, because before i was worried about someone making my idea and making their fortune, now i m just worried about this never being made.

This idea came to me after talking to my flat mate after he fell asleep on the bus and missed his stop for about the forth time in as many weeks. The concept is that your set this app/web page running on your smartphone (works best on non iphones as they allow background processing) you set a location on a google maps like map and when you get within a pre programmed distance of that place (be it your house, nearest pub, kebab shop, bus stop or whatever) your phone sets of an alarm. simple concept and there are other apps that do similar things, but at last check and on project commencement none designed for your London drunk taking a bus home.

the app is in alpha stage and the design was knocked up to explain the concept. cash made me the lovely flash test and the partner in crime mason thought up the actual technical workings.

if i can mobilize 2 grand it ll get made but chance is a fine thing.
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pixel masters

Following a conversation with rakesh the other day about the concept of a pixel in the real world (hopefully new work on that theme coming soon) i remembered that i d done a couple of investigations into classic masters paintings and trying to reduce them to the fewest number of pixels possible whilst maintaining their iconic look and leaving them recognisable.

one day when i have some money i d like to frame them all at their relevant size and have set them all on one wall with an indesign links pallete with all the links brokens as an inside joke that no sane person would get or care about.