Oh, deer.

IMG_0871
Originally uploaded by normdwy3.

This morning we had one of our first snows of the season. I hurried out to the street to warm up my car and brush off the snow. When I was done brushing off the car I started back to the house, as I rounded the bushes in our front yard I was greeted by these two deer calmly laying under the tree in our front yard. I don't know who was more startled, them or me.

Chris Ware New Yorker Cover

http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/11/02/091102_warer18964.gif

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/11/02/091102fi_fiction_ware

well.

Chris is perhaps 'the' genius graphic artist of our generation. His comic book work is legendary. His graphic design work singular. His paintings stunning. His sculptures amazing.

But while he always is noted for his craft and attention to detail, its his concepts that propel it all. The work of a true genius.

iPod/iphone paint programs

At the moment I have 13 drawing, painting sketching apps on my iPod Touch.

- Alias SketchBook Mobile - The best for my needs. A nice simple interface that gets out of the way. Not perfect but a good starting point. It tries to emulate a few natural media tools; pencil, marker, brush, airbrush.

- Brushes - a simple painting program. Feels like a vector based Flash painting program.

- Inspire - The closest thing to Ambient Design's Artrage on the iPhone, but be warned it has the most god awful 'start-up' screen i have ever scene on an iphone app.

- Eastern Drawing - very blobby dynamically varied line weights. Kind of like an overly loaded chinese caligraphy brush, but not really. :-)

- SketchPad - very useful simple straight up doodle pad. Not for painting or rendering

- Inkiness - similar to SketchPad, nicer superficial treatment. The Moleskine look is cute, but functionally its lacking. I don't see a way to zoom in or out, pretty much a required for a drawing/painting app on such a small screen. But still fun and interesting... i'm undecided about the visual/virtual fountain pen you draw with... i'm not liking it. Someone makes a drawing app that offers a virtual pencil as well, but that looks even more awkward.

- Renoir - Similar to Brushes it attempts to mimic a paint brush and other 'natural media' tools. Very image.

- Colors - very much like a Flash based painting app. Apparently vector based.

- Layers - a 'natural media' paint programs. Visible hairy brush strokes. Probably the best user interface, along with Alias Sketchbook Mobile.

- Petit Peinture - the interface is VERY OLD SCHOOL CGI. Seriously. If you used graphics systems in the late 1980s this might have a very nostalgic feel for you. One thing it has that i do like is a blurring tool, similar to Photoshop's, called Cloud, that you can use to selectively give parts (or all) your drawing a softer, almost water color feel.

- Doodle Swakker - this apps big selling point is that it has an online social component, "draw with friends." a great idea. Otherwise it, like Colors, very much like a Flash based painting app. Apparently vector based.

- VanGo Photo - like Colors, very much like a Flash based painting app. Apparently vector based.

- Photoshop mobile - super duper limited version of Photoshop. Not a drawing or painting app, just a photo cropping rotating tool, really. Useless for my needs... one day it might prove itself useful, but for now i have no idea what to do with it.

- Animations - isn't a drawing or painting program per se, but an animation program. I have yet to give it a shot. It sits there collecting pixel dust begging for me to use it.

- Musophobia - not a drawing program, more of a digital Spirograph or Spin Art app. Nice for zoning out.

Cloudy Mountain Lake

Originally uploaded by normdwy3.

Sketch using Eastern Drawing App on iPod Touch.

Mecha Rebecha

Mecha Rebecha
Originally uploaded by normdwy3.

Mecha girl inspired by Donie Odulio. Alias Sketchbook pro mobile on iPod touch

Cattails

Cattails
Originally uploaded by normdwy3.

Sketch using Alias Sketchbook Pro on an iPod touch using the pogo stylus.
I just got the iPod Touch about 2 weeks ago and have been going nuts buying and trying every painting and drawing app out there. So far i've settled on 3.
Alias Sketchbook Mobile for general purpose concepting and color work.
Inkiness for simple pen and Moleskine style sketches.
Eastern Drawing for that liberating lack of control and degree of serendipity.
The apps that strive for natural media look and feel just don't cut it on the iPod Touch since the Touch doesn't support pen pressure.

There are a few more simple examples at my Flickr account if you click through.

Microsoft Opens it's first Apple Store Today

sad.

Apple Tablet to Offer Comic Books

According to long time tech pundit Andy Ihnatko.

When I first read that Disney was purchasing Marvel Comics I saw it as a stroke of genius and I saw it as a move driven by Disney's board member Steve Jobs (and largest shareholder). It just had his finger prints all over. I haven't posted about it before because anyone who knows me knows I'm an Apple fan-boy totally in the thrall of Steve Jobs fabled reality-distortion-field™ and would write off my idea as the fever dreams of an Apple addled brain.

Disney has spent decades trying to capture the male tween and teen market with no success. If you are a boy in America, when you hit 10 years old, Disney is just not 'cool' anymore. It's the brand. Not the properties. Trying things like Atlantis were doomed to failure because the Disney brand was attached. This is why Mr. Jobs wisely insisted that Pixar would remain a separate and equally billed brand as Disney on all Pixar movies even after Disney acquired Pixar – and why Disney clearly bills Miyazaki san's movies separately as Studio Ghibli films as well. What Disney needed was a separate brand, just as they created Touchstone when they ventured into more adult film fare in the 1990s.

For whatever reason, they have chose not to, probably because creating a new brand is notoriously expensive and is a long term effort. So, solution? Buy an existing brand that says adolescent male more than perhaps any other brand in the world, Marvel Comics.

At the time, i suspected that Mr. Jobs had an ulterior motive that had nothing directly to do with Disney... I suspected that he wanted the Marvel content for the long rumored Apple tablet computer. Its a grossly simplistic assumption that once Marvel is under Disney's control that its a slam dunk to get that content onto an Apple branded tablet computer, but it certainly brings it closer under Mr. Jobs influence. Now with Mr. Ihnatko's column spreading the rumor of Marvel comics coming to Apple's mythical itablet computer, it all begins to come together... at least in my paranoid, feverish fanboy brain.