Inkling from Wacom records what you draw on paper and creates vector graphics, complete with multiple layers, that you can transfer to the computer in a variety of formats. It is also extremely portable and well-designed.

WANT. Watch the demo.

/via TechCrunch.

Continued from Day two: The shell.

The warmth of the egg startled him at first. He never expected, in this cold, for the egg to be as warm as it was. Putting his hand back on the egg he tried to gauge the temperature of this massive, greenish egg that had suddenly appeared in his backyard. He figured it had to be near body temperature. It wasn’t hot to the touch but it was more like holding your own hand.

Putting a little of his own weight into it, he pushed the egg with one hand. It didn’t budge.

He looked around it quickly to see if might be sunk into the earth in such a way that it would prop itself up some. It didn’t seem like it. It was setting nicely in some sort of grass. It couldn’t have been his grass because his grass was covered by at least a few inches of snow.

Snow. Snow usually meant tracks. He hadn’t noticed any tracks in the yard that looked abnormal. A few from him, walking back and forth to the barn since the last squall. A few from Rufus, his 50lb. collie-mix, that seems to go right under the egg. Where was Rufus?

That dog was always on the go. Ted couldn’t remember the last time he saw him. Probably around breakfast on the day he found the egg. That was almost 48 hours ago now! Rufus’ tracks went directly under the egg and out the other side towards the back of the barn. It didn’t look like he was injured by, well, whatever might have left (or, laid?) this egg here.

Anyway, Ted Arnold was no tracker. Even in snow. He never picked up that trait. Whenever his brother would show him deer tracks during a hunt and say “See, this is a doe and she was moving pretty quickly through here towards the river. She left some poop right here, which means she’s definitely a doe by the way the stool doesn’t clump like a male deer’s does.” Todd would just nod his head and mumble something about figuring that himself. In truth, Todd had no idea what they were looking at. Sure he saw the tracks, he saw the poop, but he didn’t know if they were coming or going, made by a female deer or a sasquatch. The only thing he could think about when they were hunting was getting back to the cabin to warm his freezing toes by the fire.

His brother’s skills might have come in handy today if there was a single track out of the ordinary here in the snow. It hadn’t snowed since the day before the egg appeared. So if anything was here that could have left tracks, they’d be clearly visible. And they weren’t. What could have possibly laid such an egg and not leave a single track? What could have built a small nest for the egg without moving so much as a snowflake? Maybe Ted was just so bad at tracking that he couldn’t make out the tracks. Who knows?

He decided to call his brother and ask him to come over to have a look. Ted Arnold made for the house pretty quickly once he had made up his mind to call his older brother David. Ted had David’s number on speed-dial. They talked often to coordinate fishing and hunting trips.

David’s phone just rang and rang. Weird. Ted was sure that David had an answering machine. He decided to try David’s work number at the shop. David’s day job, now that he wasn’t helping out at the farm anymore, was a mechanic for the local GM dealer. Since GM wasn’t getting a lot of work lately David was usually only there in the morning. But Ted thought he’d try it anyway.

“We’re sorry, but this number has been disconnected.” was what Ted thought he heard the voice say over the phone. Disconnected?

Looking out of the window at the egg, which sat about 25 yards away from the back door, Ted noticed that it had begun to snow. Well, that’d mean that his brother’s tracking skills were no longer of use. He’d try him again later.

Hanging up the phone Ted walked outside into what seemed like an amazing squall. The flakes were coming straight down and were the size of half-dollars. Everything was getting a fresh coat of snow, and quickly. Everything but the egg, of course. The egg was way too warm to let snow sit on it for very long.

Ted began to wonder if the egg was in danger of getting too cold. He thought back to the hen house. How all of the mother hens would cover their eggs to keep them at a constant temperature. Why didn’t this egg need to be protected? Was something going to come back and sit on it? Why was it so warm?

Then Ted thought about what could make the egg so warm. Something must be warming it from the inside of the egg, rather than the outside of the egg. There was nothing underneath it that could be heated it from below. So there was only one answer that he could think of.

Life.

To be continued…

“NaNoDrawMo is a personal challenge to push would-be artists beyond the bounds of comfortable “when I have time” practice for one month and see what happens.” All of my drawings are being done using the incredible Acorn by Flying Meat.

Continued from Day one: Discovery.

NaNoDrawMo – Day two: The Shell.

The appearance of the object was such that it was almost undeniably an egg. The shape, the texture, the way it sat upright on its bulging bottom in amongst some well-placed blades of grass made it quite obvious.
Wait. Well placed? What placed this egg here? Whatever it was it must have been something pretty big. Ted Arnold spent the next few minutes guessing the size of the egg from a few feet away. It was about as tall as him, he figured. Perhaps a bit more. Although he hadn’t yet tried, he guessed that he couldn’t wrap his arms around it. That meant it was at least 7 ft. around. Wow, 7 ft. around!

Just then an odd odor sprang into his nose. Had the wind shifted? Did he just pick up the scent now after standing near this object for so long? He looked around to make sure there was nothing in close by that could be producing this odor. It wasn’t a bad smell, he thought. It smelled like someone had just taken a long hot shower. Not quite like soap but a lot like hot water, if hot water even had a scent. The barn, which was only about 15 yards away, had a very distinct smell. Wet hay. Because of a few holes in the roof and it being late fall the barn always smelled this way. The scent Ted was smelling at this moment was most definitely not the barn. In any case he didn’t see anything that could be producing this scent besides the egg.

He took a few steps towards the egg. Standing this close he could see the texture much more clearly now. The surface was anything but smooth. Bumps, divots, pin-hole sized craters covered the egg from top to bottom. Just like a chicken’s egg, he thought.

Growing up on a farm meant that Ted had tons of chores as a child. One of those chores, which he still does to this day, was to clean out the chicken coop and collect the eggs every single morning. Looking at the egg’s texture now it immediately reminded him of how a chicken egg felt in his hands. From a few feet away though, chicken eggs seem relatively smooth with hardly any texture at all. If you look closely at a chicken egg the texture becomes obvious.
This reminded Ted of the moon. The moon, shining brilliantly in the night sky, looked flat as a quarter. Sure there were shades of grey that he now knew were enormous craters, valleys, and shadows produced by large mountains that covered the surface. He thought back to the first time he saw man step foot onto the moon. He was about 12 years old when his father was watching a program on TV chronicling man’s achievements in Space.

Space. Could this egg be from outer Space?

Stepping even closer to the egg Ted outstretched his hand, which at this point was fairly cold due to the wind, and held it an inch from the shell about halfway down the egg. He knew from reading up on eggs that typically the yolk of the egg is suspended in the middle with a pocket of air on the bottom and the “egg white” on the top. He wasn’t sure what made him think of that but at this point everything he knew about eggs was flashing through his mind. He placed his hand on the egg pretty firmly as a way to also gauge the weight of it when immediately he noticed something he didn’t expect…

The egg was incredibly warm.

Continued on Day three: Life.

“NaNoDrawMo is a personal challenge to push would-be artists beyond the bounds of comfortable “when I have time” practice for one month and see what happens.” All of my drawings are being done using the incredible Acorn by Flying Meat.

NaNoDrawMo – Day one: Discovery.

Ted Arnold, a farmer from New England, notices what appears to be an egg just outside of his barn. Cautiously he approaches the object wondering where it may have come from.

As he stares at it for a few minutes from about 10 feet away he remembers a distant memory from when he was younger. Long before his father died and left him his corn-feed farm that he had run for over 40 years. Long before his mom died when he was 8 during one of the hardest winter storms in the history of Vermont.

This memory was from a time when his father used to tell him and his sister stories around the fire. Stories from when he was young. Stories like the time when his grandfather brought his father and his aunts and uncles on a boat from Wales and immigrated to the United States. Coming through New York City, trying to find work, slowly building up enough money to get to Vermont and ultimately building the family farm. The story that was coming to mind now, however, was a story of the time they thought they found something outside of the barn and his grandfather made his father and the rest of the family stay in the house for nearly an entire month! His father explained how he had no idea what happened after they found, whatever it was, out by the barn. His grandfather wouldn’t say anything. He barely ate, slept, or talked to them for the month. The children just went about their business of doing their school work, playing card games, and doing some of their chores that they could do – indoors.

When the month was over, his father told him while staring at the fire, his grandfather came back into the house nearly sulking. He had never seen his grandfather, or his father for that matter, cry. But when he described the way he held himself he knew that this was about as close to that as possible.

That was all his father told him. That was all he knew! And now, could it be, whatever had happened so many years ago is happening again? A strange object has appeared in the same spot his father described in his story. But now, there was no one around to tell him what it was. No one for at least 4 miles, actually.

He decided to get a little closer to it.

Continued in Day two: The shell.

“NaNoDrawMo is a personal challenge to push would-be artists beyond the bounds of comfortable “when I have time” practice for one month and see what happens.” All of my drawings are being done using the incredible Acorn by Flying Meat.

I’m thinking of participating in NaNoDrawMo an art initiative that takes place through the month of November. The inspiration comes from Steven Frank (whom I interviewed a few months ago) and he was inspired by NaNoWriMo the month-long annual writing initiative that happens every November.

It seems like a big challenge. 50 works of art in 30 days. But, I’ll give it a shot.

Update: NaNoDrawMo now has an official URL: NaNoDrawMo.org.

Drawn into the bottom of a sink in a Rest Area bathroom in Maryland. Odd.

Although the sketches only tell part of the story I really like to see this sort of process where the artist slowly brings the character to life. Each sketch is a character onto itself but finding Carl through all of these is the challenge/reward.

I think my favorite tweak from the first Carl drawn to the final Carl is the length of his neck. Oh, and the sideburns Carl sports near age 50 are super.

I’m embedding part one “Initial lay in” here. You can watch part two “Laying in light and shadow shapes”, and part three “Finish and refine” on Viddler.

My latest challenge to myself has been to figure out my own style. I’ve been doing small exercises in sketching to, besides simply practice, figure out how I want to approach a specific project. For instance, I have a card from Hawai’i with a lovely, classic style woman on the front wearing a grass skirt. I tried redrawing the picture as I see it on the front of the card. I failed miserably. I then tried a ridiculous rendition. It was, well, ridiculous. I then tried something of my own – something I could do rather quickly without a lot of thought or erasing. It turned out better.

I have no idea if this is the proper exercise to figure out what style I want to follow. But I’m hoping to one day stumble across a particular style that I can get comfortable and succeed in. Something that makes me happy with the project that I’m working on, is relatively easy to do (for me), and ends up being me. I realize this could take years but I think I will find just as much enjoyment in trying to find my style as I will in actually finding it.

My feet hurt just thinking about it.

That is why I decided to make a Thank You card instead of buying one. In late-December Eliza and I stayed at my brother’s house in North Carolina. We enjoyed ourselves and they were more than gracious hosts. I thought that reason enough to send them a Thank You card for everything they did for us.

At first I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to create. I did some simple Google Image searches for inspiration. After paging through countless results, refining my search over and over, I finally came across this image. The idea is simple enough. One animal per letter. Neat. Then it hit me… instead of an animal per letter what about an activity that we were grateful to have done with my brother and his family?

That is what this Thank You card attempts to represent. Although, I look at it now and wish that I spent a little more time on the alignment of the circles but, save that one minor detail, I’m happy with the way it came out.

The card was created using a three-step process. Pencil sketch, color with crayon, and then outline the objects using a marker. After I asked Eliza to quickly trace some quarter-sized circles (she actually used a 25-cent piece) I made some simple pencil sketches of the things we wanted on the card. In order from left to right: playing basketball, visiting wineries and enjoying wine, watching football games, making soup, Eliza and the kids building a gingerbread house, taking photos, the cozy fire, and making cupcakes. There were many other things we enjoyed doing during our visit, but hey – I only had 8 letters.

After the sketches were more or less in the form you see them now I crudely colored the entire thing in using crayon. I haven’t colored in years so this was sort of interesting. I’d like to work on coloring a little more but I’ll get back to that at a later date.

After I finished the coloring I redrew all of the outlines using a fine tipped black marker. This helped to define the objects, bring the coloring to some focus with hard edges, and make the card stand out a bit more.  I also then drew in the letters at the bottom of each circle.

Oh, the photo represented on the card was inspired by a real photograph we took though I changed the color of our shirts to make each person stand out a bit. Eliza’s favorite color is yellow so that is why her shirt is that color. You’re welcome babe!

This was a fun project to put together. Whenever there is a purpose and a little bit of thought behind something it is a much more rewarding experience to create it and give it away. I’m looking forward to the next excuse I have create something like this again.

I figured I might as well look the part.  Have you talked like a pirate today?

This post is made possible by Skitch… one of my most favorite Macintosh applications.

I’ve been subscribed to Koren Shadmi‘s Livejournal titled Paper Feast for a long time.  This morning, while sipping my coffee and reading his latest entry called China Rocks, I did a quick search for his name on my site and was surprised that I’ve never mentioned him.

I’m rectifying that right now.

Koren is an amazing illustrator. Paper Feast is a behind-the-scenes look at his work for newspapers and magazines when they ask Koren to provide an illustration for their articles.  The process is as amazing as the results.

Here are some of my most recent favorites; China Rocks, What’s Driving Toyota?, Daddy’s New Job (pictured), and well, I could go on and on.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a must-subscribe.

Source: Paper Feast by Koren Shadmi.

Why, oh, why did I ever stop reading John “RobotJohnny” Martz’s blog?  Somehow in my efforts to slim down my number of feeds, his site got the axe, and hasn’t returned – until today.

John recently redrew his mother’s entire yearbook from 1968.  Or, at least the portraits therein.  I like how he described his process to cartooning:

“Good cartooning, to me, is all about simplification, and this was a fun experiment in distilling each person’s likeness down to a simple cartoon version and learning to draw efficiently, with both speed and as few details as possible.”

I don’t see how he could have approached such a large project otherwise.  All-in-all John drew over 1,000 faces for this project, and they all look really great.

Source: Yearbook Project: Excelsior 1968 – RobotJohnny.com.
Flickr set of all faces: Excelsior 1968.
Store: Buy the book for $7.00! 

(via Luxo)

[tags]blue sky studios, pixar, drawing, art, animation, pixar[/tags]