Lawrence Ipsum

Winter Coat

2008-11-04T19:57:00.000-08:00

It's that time again!

New Threadless design, another thing to vote for, yay!

YAY!

On Flash CS4

2008-09-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

The image above is from a tutorial made by Lee Brimelow demonstrating the Bone Tool (giggidy), just one of Flash CS4's many great features.

You would have to watch the tutorial to see some of the other cool features it has because my head will explode with excitement if I try to list them here. Bottom line is, the new features are more designer friendly. It seems that finally Flash has truly become an Adobe program, as opposed to that Macromedia program owned by Adobe. Flash CS3 was like the transition phase where it still has the layout of Flash 8 and below but it has new more intuitive features. Being able to make your own panels is the only one I can think of right now (but I'm pretty sure not a lot of people know that you can do that).

So what can we expect to see from this newfangled program with regards to future Flash creations? Well, no more 12 FPS banner ads I hope. I think that 12 FPS is always used because it's the default setting of the old versions and people just don't bother to change it even though it's ugly, but not anymore! *geek snort* The default is 24 FPS now! *geek snort* I can also see nicer and maybe more complex animations. But I know, visually, there is still going to be awesomely stretched out type in some shiny gradient doing some sorta bounce motion on the screen announcing that you can win a free iSomething. It's going to be a really nice bounce motion though.

As my good friend Kaz said (just minutes before I started writing this blog): "we can be designers again". Referring to, of course, to me and our other fellow designers (all over the world). But I also think there are going to be people who will get this program and think that they can be designers too. I'm not saying that they can't be, there's a lot of talent out there. I just hope to see a lot of good quality work from designers now that there is less of a barrier between the designer and what they want to accomplish in Flash.

Ok putting the Geek Mode on sleep now.

Sketching

2008-09-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

It's that time again! My submission for the Threadless Love's contest is finally ready to be voted on.

Used some of the drawings from the crazy bunch that I drew (see last post). I made it a little fancy and added a glow-in-the-dark element to it.

So put a $5 on it!

Doodles

2008-09-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

I got another idea for a Threadless submission! This time it's for one of those "Threadless Loves" challenges.

These doodles are just the first part of the design, just a sneak peak of what's to come. Here's another one:

Wallflowers Update

2008-08-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Here you go kids! It's submitted and ready to be voted on by YOU. It's a Flash thing, so if you press that button on the lower right, you can see the design placed on a shirt.

Thanks!

Some Inspiration

2008-08-22T12:18:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, a friend of mine twittered a link to a video that I did not get to look at until recently. Honestly, I don't watch a lot of videos that are posted on twitter by my friends (sorry guys) because I did not have the time, and if I did I would have forgotten to look back at it. But I am really glad that I watched this one, because it was very inspirational. I wish I could use a combination of words to better describe what it felt to watch it, but that is the first thing that came to mind.

Honestly, at first I had no idea who this Ira Glass was. Until he started talking about This American Life. I've listened to the show before and finally, I had a face (and a name) to put with the voice. I know I should have recognized the name being mentioned on one of those episodes, but I was just focused on the meat of the information.

And now for the meat of this information (w00t segue). It's nice to know that it is natural to feel like you are not doing the best work. The key is to know what is good, and through a lot of work, you will eventually get there. For me, it means getting more clients to do graphic design work, for you, I don't know. You figure it out. Jeez, what do you think I am? Some sorta magic blog?

...

Sooo, if knowing what is good is what we need to be good, then I pose a couple of questions to all the other Graphic Designers out there: What is good taste in graphic design? How does one look for good tasting graphic design? You know, the delicious kind. Think about it, write it down, and then leave your answer on the front table when you're done.

Thanks for the link Vy!

The Wallflower

2008-08-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

I think I'm about ready to submit this new shirt design for Threadless. But before that, I submit this design at the mercy of whoever happens to read this post.

The background color will be the shirt color, and it can be changed. Below are the selections of shirt colors that I can use.

Thanks!

Update 2008!

2008-08-14T12:22:00.001-07:00

Have not posted in a while because I really have no idea what to post on this thing. Probably because I have nothing special going on in my life worth blogging about. Any suggestions? I could document my adventures in illustration, post weird crap that I find on the internet, talk about the eclectic selection of music that I listen to, or all of the above.

Is anybody even reading this anymore?

Music Video Mockup

2008-03-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

Since the acquisition of this powerful Dell XPS (thanks again Kaz), I'm sad to say that the only time I used the full power of this machine was to play games. My original intention for wanting to use this machine was to be able to do stuff on After Effects. I've always wanted to use the program to create simple music videos hoping someday to be good at it, but I was afraid that my laptop would explode upon running AE. But nowwith a more capable computer, I am finally able to play around with the program.

I'm not really planning on doing this to be able to make money making music videos for bands...although I'm not ruling it out. I see this more as a hobby and a form of practice. I've always created images and events in my head whenever I listen to music, it's just something I tend to do. This is a way to see what I see in my mind's eye and how it would translate with the music. It would also be nice to share what I see in my head. The other use of this exercise is to get acquainted with AE, for I might someday use it to create my own videos for integration with flash.

So this post is more of a documentary on my first foray into After Effects. I will be doing tests and putting together a mockup of a music video from a song by The Decemberists called "The Mariner's Revenge Song." I'll also be showing the resulting footage that comes out for every piece of progression that I make.

The Waves Test

Basically, this test is just to get acquainted with the tools and the techniques that I need to build this thing. I immediately discovered that After Effects 7.0 (the program that I was working on during this test) cannot import SWF files. I was planning on directly putting a SWF of an image of wavy water just moving in a circle, but discovering that I can't I had to convert the SWF into a MOV with alpha channels on. But the video is basically just a few of these wave movies that are flatly stacked on top of each other. The only type of depth generated in this video is made using a bunch of drop shadows.

Ah, but this is not what I wanted to do. I wanted to add two-dimensional objects into a three-dimensional world. And in order for me to do this, I would have to go to the step: the camera.

The Camera Test

Creating a three-dimensional setting is as easy as clicking a button. Virtually each layer that you add to the composition can be turned into a 3-D layer. And once you've designated a layer a 3-D layer, you can then adjust it's z-position. With the camera, the chosen image or video footage can will be interpreted according to it's position. So objects that are really far from the camera will look small and closer ones big, add a depth of field and you get some blur to the objects who are in within the area of focus. It seems pretty simple, until you start moving the camera...

Moving Camera Test

I had a lot of trouble working the camera mainly because I know nothing of actual movie cameras. There are a lot of things you can adjust in terms of camera settings, and I jumped right on it. I basically adjusted every setting that I could and got really bad results. I learned that the most minimal adjustments are all I need after a whole lot of frustration. All I finally did was adding depth of field and adjusting the aperture along with the zoom and position of the camera.

I added the music so I can match the length of the animation along with it. Ultimately, the only animation that I did was the movement of the camera and the slight movement of the boat. Moving the boat was another choking point and a whole heap of trouble. I had to animate the man and the boat in the program because I wanted to be able to control when things started moving. It would probably easier if I animated the movement of the man and boat in Flash and imported the SWF to After Effects. I thought that having the camera so close to the object would be troublesome if that object was moving independently from the camera. So I just used a motion path for the man and boat layer to follow and I can adjust when and how fast the animation can occur. Even in the video test above, I still don't know why at certain points the object just remains stationary even though it's supposed to be following the motion path still.

I think I've thought of this before, but I realize now that doing the actual animation in After Effects should be minimal (at least maybe only for me.) The program shines more in putting different types of media together seamlessly. So finally, I came up with something in the last minute.

Conclusion

After finishing the moving camera test, I took that composition and blended it with this footage of a film leader. And the best thing was it was just like blending images in Photoshop. And it made it look old and dark.

So there it is, it seems like a ton of work just for that simple movie, but I learned a lot from it. Next time I will do more experiments that involve more of After Effects' more advanced features. I was thinking of some of them already when I was working on this one.

Fin.

Makes the World go 'Round

2008-01-15T14:46:00.000-08:00

Quick post. I submitted another design for Threadless. For those with an account for it, please vote for it.

!!!

Cock-A-Doodle Dandy

2007-12-12T14:07:00.000-08:00

My first shirt design submission for Threadless is up! If any of you's have an account there, vote for my design. If you don't then get one. Please? Bleep.

RSS Stronger than Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and The Hulk Combined

2007-10-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

There's a small piece of problem but i've successfully added an RSS Feed to my portfolio site designbylaw. And now i'm going to explain what I did in detail for future reference.

Step One: Creating the RSS file

THIS helped me a lot in doing this. Just follow it and you're done.

The RSS file can be in .rss or .xml; I used XML so I can talk to it in flash. The .rss might work in flash too but just in case.

You'll learn that the minimum amount of tags you need for each RSS item is three: title, description, and link. Link tag is supposed to be the permalink address for your RSS entry. Now it would've been fine if that link just directed people to the index page every time; just like what gotoandlearn's RSS Feed did (which i dissected and butchered to make my own Feed.) But I wanted to directly open the specific work that I might be addressing. So...

Step Two: Direct HTTP Linking

The hard part was finding some way to pass variables from the browser via http address to the flash.

I immediately thought of using the '#' with the address [ www.designbylaw.net#print1 ]. And from there I would find some javascript to read that part of the http after the '#'. But then I remembered a certain feature of SWFObject, which was what I was using to embed the flash to the browser. This way would be easier because it would use the javascript that I already have for the flash.

The feature uses FlashVars which let's you pass a variable from the browser to flash. The variable will then be present at the _root timeline where it can be used for anything.

Adding the variable directly from the browser works but I had some trouble reading the variable off the address bar. I was using SWFObject function called getQueryParamValue(). It probably didn't work because I was using AS3.

With a little searching through the internet I found this , which the made the AS call getQueryParamValue() instead of the browser.

Now I can open any of my works through the address bar by adding [ ?skipTo=print1 ] next to my index address. The question mark (?) has something to do with javascript; the [ skipTo ] is the name of my variable; and [ print1 ] is the name of one of my works.

I got that [ print1 ] fortunately through my already implemented actionscript. That is the formatting that I used to search my several thumbnail objects, an internal instance name, if you will.

It's a good thing that I broke down my Actionscript into different sections. I broke it down enough that it would be easy to reuse some functions more than once. I was hoping to use just the function that loads the work for this but it didn't fit, but a little copy & paste and a little augmentation and I got the function that I needed.

Here is the little code that I added:

var theExternal:String = ExternalInterface.call("getQueryParamValue","skipTo"); target2(theExternal);

target2() is a modification of target() a function that I used in my news section to directly open a specific work.

Step Three: THE END GAME

Now I just had to put everything together and put those direct addresses in the RSS Feed.

I also added an RSS button in my flash

And this my the browser: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="My RSS feed" href="http://www.designbylaw.net/test/law/news.xml"/>

This will put that RSS button direction on the address bar for some browsers.

That's it! Easy! Just remember to have a well modulated actionscript structure...and eat your greens.

International Photography Awards 2007

2007-10-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

It was a typical Saturday.

Just looking at the great images at FFFOUND when I came upon the image above. I clicked on it's source and ffffound out that it was an entry for the International Photography Awards. It's part of the series called "Intersection" by Greg White, 3rd place.

The source is actually from a blog that showed all the winners of the contest. I'm not going to do the same (otherwise, I would've just posted the link to blog somewhere). I just wanted to show some of the images that I liked and thought were interesting. It's not all of them, because there's a lot of them and it would take too long to set-up. Which brings me to my other purpose for the post, lightbox. I wanted to implement the lightbox script in this blog, and thought this would be a good enough time to do it.

It would also be great to find out what you people (meaning the special few who read this blog, special special people) think. Maybe put a link to your favorites in the comments section.

Advertising - Food / "Fruits" / Chris Turner / 1st

Advertising - Music / "My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade" / Chris Anthony / 1st

The album is alright, I just like the art direction more.

Advertising - Music / "Musicians" / Markus Klinko & Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri / 2nd

There's actually more to this series, but it's this image of Bowie that I like the most. I think it's his eyes, they're crazy lookin'.

Architecture - Buildings / "Gdnask Shipyard" / Michal Szlaga / 1st

Architecture - Buildings / "The Repertory" / Jeffrey Kroeze / 2nd

It's like from another planet.

Architecture - Buildings / "New Orleans Nightscapes" / Frank Relle / 3rd

It's something about long exposures that makes the image really crispy. It makes night-time images look surreal.

Architecture - Cityscapes / UNTITLED / Alex Hill / 2nd

Are they miniatures? or are they real? Tilt-shift Photography.

Books - Nature / "Africa" / Michael Poliza / 2nd

HUGE.

Blue Bath Products

2007-10-07T17:55:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning all blurry-eyed and I noticed this collection of bathroom products. I did not arrange these objects together in any way.

Ah, good ol' product design.

Titlebar 3.0

2007-09-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

HA!

Finally updated the titlebar of this blog to Actionscript 3.0!

New stuff that I changed:

It's in Actionscript 3.0!
It's easier for me to change the song now
The SWF reads the MP3's ID3 tag (LOL) for the artist and title
The SWF also tracks the song's left and right amplitudes during runtime
Because of the above, my barcode animation is divided into two and they move independently

Here's the code. It won't work if you just paste this flash by itself because I also have the movieclips on the stage. This is just for reference on how to use the different new soundChannel class properties. I just placed this code on the first frame of the timeline in an actions layer:

import caurina.transitions.Tweener; import flash.events.*; import flash.net.*; import flash.media.*; import flash.display.*; Tweener.init(stage); //XML stuff var myXML:XML = new XML(); myXML.ignoreWhitespace = false; var XML_URL:String = "http://www.designbylaw.net/blog/stuff.xml"; var myXMLURL:URLRequest = new URLRequest(XML_URL); var dataLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader(myXMLURL); dataLoader.addEventListener("complete", xmlLoaded); //initials Tweener.addTween(bars, {alpha:1, time:6, transition:"easeOutExpo"}); longTxt.text = 11010199091001; shortTxt.text =1010; //xml..load function xmlLoaded(evtObj:Event){ myXML = XML(dataLoader.data); var numOfItems:Number = myXML.element.length() - 1; var rand:Number = Math.ceil(Math.random()*numOfItems); quotes.text = myXML.element[rand].@word; } //home theTitle.buttonMode = true; theTitle.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, goHome); function goHome(e:Event){ navigateToURL(new URLRequest("http://www.designbylaw.net/blog"),"_self"); } //hit hit.buttonMode = true; hit.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER,hitOver); hit.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT,hitOut); hit.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,hitPlay); function hitOver(e:Event){ Tweener.addTween(bars, {scaleY:0.1, time:1, transition:"easeOutExpo"}); } function hitOut(e:Event){ Tweener.addTween(bars, {scaleY:1, time:1, transition:"easeOutExpo"}); } function hitPlay(e:Event){ var soundUrl:String = "http://www.designbylaw.net/blog/MySound.mp3"; var soundFactory:Sound = new Sound; var channel:SoundChannel; var theEnterFrame:Timer; playHit.visible = false; hit.visible = false; soundFactory.load(new URLRequest(soundUrl)); soundFactory.addEventListener(Event.ID3, id3Handler); function id3Handler(e:Event){ quotes.text = soundFactory.id3.artist + " - " + soundFactory.id3.songName; } channel = soundFactory.play(); theEnterFrame = new Timer(50); theEnterFrame.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, perMoment); theEnterFrame.start(); function perMoment(te:TimerEvent){ bars.barsLeft.scaleY = channel.leftPeak; bars.barsRight.scaleY = channel.rightPeak; longTxt.text = Math.round(channel.position/120) + 11010199091001; shortTxt.text = 1010 + Math.round(channel.position/1200); } channel.addEventListener(Event.SOUND_COMPLETE, soundCompleteHandler); function soundCompleteHandler(e:Event){ bars.barsLeft.scaleY = 1; bars.barsRight.scaleY = 1; bars.scaleY = 0; Tweener.addTween(bars, {scaleY:1, time:1, transition:"easeOutBounce"}); playHit.visible = true; hit.visible = true; quotes.text = "Thanks for Listening"; theEnterFrame.stop(); } } //right-click var theMenu:ContextMenu = new ContextMenu(); theMenu.hideBuiltInItems(); var theCopy:ContextMenuItem = new ContextMenuItem("designbylaw",true); theMenu.customItems.push(theCopy); this.contextMenu = theMenu; theCopy.addEventListener(ContextMenuEvent.MENU_ITEM_SELECT, goToSite); function goToSite(e:Event){ navigateToURL(new URLRequest("http://www.designbylaw.net/"), "_blank"); }

...if anyone cares.

Still Working On It

2007-08-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

Still working on it.

Soft Opening

2007-06-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

My new website portfolio will be having a soft opening starting today.

Soft opening you say? Yes just like in Ocean's 13, it's an opening but not a grand opening (not that the site will have a grand opening.) The site is made in flash using Actionscript 3.0 and is filled with javascript. This is a way to test out the kinks, so comment if you encounter problems.

Hopefully I can fix them.

Certain Shade of Blue

2007-04-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to share this thing I found. Great book covers from Pelican paperback books. Here are three of my favorites.

Graniph: T-Shirt Design Contest

2007-01-13T17:42:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all!

This is just a small post for all those that are bored right now and are in need of some creative release.

It's a t-shirt design contest!

I might enter something if I find some time, but i'm sooo busy right now. I could sure use $9000 though.

The Attic

2006-11-28T20:00:00.000-08:00

I just finished updating and adding a few things to my brother's site. Artist, illustrator, photographer, musician, etc.

He's available to do illustrations or any artistic ventures that'll get this kid paid (or not.)

Oh yea, that's his song on this blog.

35 Magazine

2006-11-14T18:28:00.000-08:00

Here's something interesting that I found while in the interweb. I think it would be a nice place to show off some layout, writing, and maybe even illustration skills.

It's just starting out right now, so there are no submissions yet.

Make Yourself

2006-10-31T18:52:00.000-08:00

Alright kids, now that we got all that identity stuff settled, it's time for us to do something.

Presenting: READYMECH. These babies are small, easily created, paper toys. Ultimately, the task is to create your own. But first, I suggest that you make the ones already on the site to see how it's done. As you can see, I made one myself, it only took me like 10 minutes--eventhough I had to improvise on some materials. So if I can do it everyone can, since we all know: law can't craft.

Ah but there's the rub. Making one yourself that is easy to make is going to be hard. And that is the challenge, to create your own Readymech. Like the ones on the site, it should fit on one 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper. Get creative with the shape of your creature while making easy to read instructions. Everything should be well presented, from the Readymech itself to the instructions.

As for the Readymech itself, it would be nice if you can make something that relates to you (alter ego, certain design style, your dog, etc.) This project is going take some time to do, no pressure, we don't have due dates! (...at least I don't think so) Have fun with it.

Competition: Stereohype Button Badge Design

2006-10-28T16:56:00.000-07:00

Just looking around the net and found THIS. It's a design competition for badges. "Deadline to create and submit lovely, humorous and/or witty artworks for those cute little mobile canvases is Friday, 24th November 2006". Something fun to do if your bored out of your mind.

I guess this is one of the things that i'm going to be contributing to our group.

First

2006-10-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

We'll see if I use this blog. Lawrence Ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Cras eleifend libero ac dui. Aliquam sed mi. Vivamus elit purus, condimentum a, fermentum vitae, rutrum quis, augue. Nunc auctor. Duis gravida, lacus vitae condimentum egestas, mauris sapien bibendum odio, non condimentum sem nisl ut est. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos. Pellentesque eu dolor. Phasellus eu felis ac neque ornare suscipit. Nunc ornare, pede sit amet iaculis faucibus, odio orci ullamcorper pede, a aliquet lacus mauris ac risus. Pellentesque vitae erat sed mi mattis tempor. Aliquam vitae dolor. Vestibulum porta purus a enim. Cras at nisl non est venenatis varius. Integer euismod. Curabitur dui.