Someone Should Go Work Here

Here are job listings for Bethesda. Makers of Fallout 3 n' Oblivion.

FINAL!

Final Critique is Monday, June 8 at 5:30 p.m.

JOB for you graduatin' types

Good morning SOU Art Dept!
This is Megan Holmes - I graduated from SOU (finally) last March. The Agency I've been working at for the last eight years is looking for a new designer (my husband Jeremy is finally leaving to start his own agency - yey!). I know you have students that will be graduating in the next week or so.

Could you send this out to students in the design program, or if you know of any especially talented students that may be interested, can you have them contact me? We will be interviewing next week. The job description is listed below. Hope you all had a great term. Thanks!


megan angele holmes
agency director of marketing and client services
the maentz agency inc.
541.857.8443 • 541.618.0502
megana@maentz.com


Looking for creative artist to work at fast-paced, full-service advertising agency. Requires proficiency in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat at CS2 or higher. Experience with Quark, Corel Draw and PowerPoint and other Microsoft Office programs a plus. Applicants experienced in Dreamweaver, Flash and the latest web-design technologies will have an advantage.

Experience is not necessary, but skill and creativity are a must. Send resume and 3 examples of your work (print or web) to the email below. Have portfolio ready for review. We will be interviewing qualified candidates starting July 6th. Full-time position available.

Creating An Online Comic - Arms and Ether Style

Oft, I start with a scrappy sketch done in the doldrums of a faculty meeting or while fidgeting about the Beanery in caffeine-stoked reverie. Here's the initial sketch for a recent strip.


With some strips, I'll scan the pencil sketch first, then bring it into Flash and draw over the top of it. Here's my first Arms and Ether strip. You can see the pencil sketch scans, my first "ink" lines drawn in Flash, and some Kaz and Achewood strips I brought in as references for setting up my template and comparing the visual quality of my work with theirs. Since Underworld and Achewood are popular on-line strips I figured they'd be good guides to getting my stuff "internet-ready."


Sometimes I start a strip without a preliminary drawing. Here, I just laid out the text (utilizing my award-winning Miles Inada 3000 font, of course) and made a quick sketch directly in Flash. The screen cap shows my template with pre-made panels and layers. The color layer contains the color swatches for the characters, so I can just grab 'em with the eye-dropper.



When I'm "inking", I'll take at least three passes through the strip. The first pass is to get the main idea blocked in. The second pass is to adjust proportion, composition and detail. The third pass is to clarify and simplify the lines. Here's a strip somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd pass.

After finishing up the inking, I do color passes. I'm a funky fellow, so I do this all in Flash. I like Flash because it's vector-based--a.k.a. resolution-independent. With a vector drawing, I can scale the drawings up and down to my heart's content and do big prints later on. For the most part, I make a quick outline of a color area and fill it with the paint bucket (don't do that in Photoshop--it'll be lousy). I find working in Flash much less fussy than working in Photoshop. In my first pass I go through and color in the main characters. I then make a few more layers and add in the background colors. If you look at the last panel, you'll see that I still haven't finished drawing in the students, even though I've proceeded with the coloring. Shirker.



Somewhere along the line I draw in the balloons, adjust text as needed and add any goofy marginalia. Yes, I just draw the balloons in Flash. No tricks. It looks better. I color them in using the ol' paintbucket. Here's the finished strip in all of its glory.

Illustration Gig

The folks below are looking for someone to work with them on illustrations for a picture book/comic book. If you're interested, email Jacqueline Sa at the following email address.

sixarcenciel@yahoo.com.

STORY LINE:

Through the twists and turns on the paths of lifetimes of two people who are committed to their spiritual work for humanity, they finally came together to serve a bigger cosmic cause than they could ever imagine… Mystical encounters, spiritual entrainment, overcoming dark forces, journeying to the underworld and the overworld, guided by the living Earth consciousness.

SCOPE OF WORK:

Looking for a student illustrator who is interested (hopefully passionate) about environmental issues and consciousness shifts, who has a refined sensitivity with the likes of Hayao Myasaki or Satoshi Kon (examples of their movies available on www.youtube.com and www.video.google.com such as : Howl’s Moving Castle, Millennium Actress) without the expectation of their mastery or over-complex drawings. We don’t want cute or dark gothic kinds of drawings.

The project is for the entire book; though we can start with a few pages on a trial basis. The work is ready immediately, and it will last this whole summer, full time. We need a serious person who is committed to focus and to take pride in delivering a quality book with us, and not abandon midway. Our budget is modest, and we are open to discuss various ways of compensation, as we fully intend to publish this book as soon as it’s completed, that will be of substantial contribution to humanity.

We thank you in advance for your help in finding such an ideal collaborator. Any questions or clarifications that might be needed, please contact me by email or phone. Look forward to hearing from you.

Warm Regards,

Jacqueline Sa

Job Opportunity

Web design types
part time job opportunity:
Hi Miles,

My name is Erin and I am an SOU alumni. I am working for Sunday Afternoons, a great local company in Talent, and we are looking to hire a part-time web designer. I noticed that you are teaching a Capstone class in graphic design, so I though some of students might be interested in this opportunity. Please forward this any students who are interested. Please feel free to contact me if you would like more information.

Thank you!
Erin @ Sunday Afternoons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Opportunity with growing company in Talent, Oregon


Job Description:
Maintain an e-commerce web site (using X-Cart).
Update content on web site (inventory, product photos, copy, pricing, etc.).
Create and send email promotions.
Use 3rd party email marketing service (e.g. Constant Contact).
Work collaboratively and under the guidance of Graphic Designer.
Possibly edit/retouch/manipulate photos.

Requirement/Skills:
2–5 years relevant experience.
Familiar with Mac OS X Operating System.
Proficient in Adobe Photoshop (preferably CS2).
Strong understanding of web technologies (particularly HTML and FTP)
Proficient in GoLive or other WYSIWYG editor
Basic knowledge of ImageReady
Detail-oriented with excellent design sense
Organized

Starting as a part-time position. 16-24 hours a week. Photo editing is a plus, not required. If the person is proficient with photo editing, extra hours may be available.

Detail-oriented and organization is very important.
Hours can be somewhat flexible for student.

Please emial resume and a sample of your work to: lauren@sundayafternoons.com

Ashland Independent Film Festival starts THURSDAY!

Ashland Independent Film Festival student tickets are only $6 per screening--so GO. A unique opportunity to see things you likely won't see anywhere else. April 2-6. This is perfect material for you to write about in your blogs. Anyone even vaguely interested in film/video should go and check this out.

Art 450 & 496 Critique Schedule

Critique Schedule for Spring 2009

Thursday, April 9, 2:30.
Thursday, April 23, 2:30.
Thursday, May 7, 2:30.
Thursday, May 21, 2:30.

Final Critique is Monday, June 8 at 5:30 p.m.

Art 450 Special Projects & 496 Capstone

Okay kids--
We'll meet next Thursday the 9th at 2:30. Here's your to-do list.
1. Create ein blogue if you don't have one already.
2. Post your name and your blog URL as a comment to this post. I'll be posting the links this Friday, so post your comment before then.
3. Post links to your classmates' blogs in a sidebar.
4. Use your blog to work out a project proposal that you will present to the class on Thursday.

A project proposal must include the following:

0. A working title for your project
1. Project goals (personal? professional? exploratory?)
2. A project description.
3. Specific products of study or deliverables that you will be creating for your project.
4. Visual and/or written research for your project. Stuff done by other people.
5. Treatment visuals for your project. This is stuff done by you. This can consist of links, a bibliography, images, etc.
6. A written description of specific technical and research issues you will need to address during the course of your project.
7. A timeline of your project. When you will be doing all of this good stuff. You must include specific DEADLINES (for example: "January 27th", not "some time in January."

Final Projects, Final Blog Assignment, & Final Critique

The Art 351 Interactive Studio final critique will be Tuesday, March 17, 3:30 in the Digital Studio.

Your final blog assignment is to go to the Art Dept. web site and write a critique on your blog.

Primitive Paddle Love

Here's the latest version of Primitive Paddle Love. Cherish it as much as I have.

ARt 450 and Art 351 notes. Art 450 Final Crit.

Ashland Independent Film Festival Talk Friday, 11:00 Meese Auditorium!

ART 450 Final Critique will be Monday, March 16 at 6:30 p.m. in the digital lab.

Whitney Biennial 2008 site
Here's a nice image from the 2002 Biennial. It's Gilles Barbier's Nursing Home.

The Classic Artist's Programming Error

Here's a self-inflicted error you're likely to hit upon as the quarter comes crashing down upon your head. Hey, I just made this same mistake twice in the past hour. I am not Spock, clearly. Let it forever be known to us as, "The Equal Sign As Used In Programming Does NOT Equal The Equal Sign as Used in Math Error."

In other words:
= ≠ =

Ah ha ha ha ha ha!

We're used to saying things like "5 = 5," or "2 + 2 = 4." Ho hum. In a math context, "=" could be translated as "is." "5 is 5," or "2 + 2 is 4." In ActionScript, however, when we want to make plain old "is" statements we use the "==" operator, as in "5 == 5."

Here's the rub. In ActionScript, "=" is an active command, not a passive statement of fact. In programming, we can translate "=" as "gets" or "is now assigned the value of". For example, in ActionScript, the simple line of code written as

dx = 5;

is a command to the computer to, "under pain of death, drop whatever you were doing before and hold on to the value 5, you little maggot."

If you don't understand the difference between the two meanings, this will destroy you when you start working with if statements.

For example, here's a perfectly innocent looking function that is buggy as the day is long:

function checkLives (){
if (lives = 0) {
gameOver;
} // end if
}

In this trashy code, the computer will interpret "lives = 0" as a command to stop whatever the hell else it is doing and set the lives variable to 0. The effect is that the computer whilst innocently checking the "if"condition freaks out (pain of death, remember) and set the "lives" variable to 0. This makes the "if" condition true and so the gameOver function runs constantly. The game ends before it begins and you, the programmer are puzzled.

What you want to write instead is something like this:

function checkLives(){
if (lives == 0) {
gameOver;
} // end if
}

Our translation is now in line with what we actually want: "If lives equals 0, then run the gameOver function."

Nifty Bit of Bloggery

Here's a cool Blogue from Graham Annable (that's his "Kodiak Mary" image above). He's a story artist, animator, and "comic fellow" who works for Laika up in Portland and recently worked on Coraline. Most importantly, he's a hockey teammate of SOU's own Jill Bruhn. Some very nice stuff; this guy's good. Check it out and get inspired.

Midterm Madness & Flash Demos

On Wednesday, Feb 18, we'll take a look at your midterm projects. . . so . . . get to work!
You can present one grand project or several smaller ones. It's up to you.

On Monday, Feb 23, you'll present pseudo code, concepts, and a work schedule for your final project.

Here are the .fla demo files we covered today:
sound01.fla
sound02.fla shows how to add a dynamic text box
sound03.fla shows how to place a movie clip on the stage with ActionScript
alarm.wav

Time For Tanklin

Click on the image at left to play Miles' first Flash game. It's retro and kind of difficult. Try to break 500.

Consider it an ode to the Atari 2600, the obscure Roosevelt Franklin from Sesame Street, his grandson "Franklin" from Arrested Development, and Vladimir Tatlin, Russian Constructivist. Actually, it's just a crappy third-rate beginner's video game, but I do like to prattle on. The base code comes from Andy Harris' outstanding Beginning Flash Game Programming for Dummies. This book is a fine intro for the coding impaired (like your truly).

Click here to download the tanklin.fla file for the game.

Click here to download Tanklin to play at your unconnected leisure.

Heads You Lose Part 2

The evolution continues.

Art 351 Audio in Flash

General Sound Notes
0. Wear headphones.
1. Flash accepts .wav and .mp3 directly.
2. Pre-edit your sounds as much as possible in an audio program such as Garage Band or Audacity. Only import the parts you need. Flash is a clunky and inefficient place to edit audio.
3. Flash will recompress your audio file unless you tell it not to. The recompression can make the file sound lousy. Again, you'll have more control doing this in your editing program.
4. Keep all of your sound files together with your .fla files.

Here's how to bring sound into Flash
1. File > Import > Import To Library
2. Right click on the new sound symbol in the Library. Choose Properties.
3. Set your compression choice. Raw will stop Flash from compressing any further. This is usually what I'm after.
4. You'll see a dialogue box (pictured above). Hit the "Advanced" button at the bottom right of the dialogue box.
5. Check Export for ActionScript. Export in first frame will be checked too and an identifier name will also be added. Without this step, your ActionScript won't be able to refer to this file and nothing will work.
6. Many folk recommend 24 khz for music and even 11 khz for spoken words. Lower quality sound = lower bandwidth = faster load times. Mono is often just fine.

Here are the flame.wav and crash.wav files from Andy Harris' Beginning Flash Game Programming For Dummies. It's a great book.
Here's the basic sound.fla file taken from Harris' book.
Here's the Audrey.fla demo we did in class (where Miles accidentally wrote the code on the movie clip instead of the frame). Thanks to Melissa B. for letting us mangle her work!

Here's the code for the basic audio:
// ActionScript 2.0 Basic Sound handling based on Andy Harris' Beginning Flash Game Programming For Dummies. Adopted by Sir Milesicles

// Creates a movie that plays a sound. Yay.

// declare a new sound object named sndFlame using the new and Sound commands.
sndFlame = new Sound();

// fill the new sound object named sndFlame with an instance of the library symbol named "flame.wav"
sndFlame.attachSound("flame.wav");

// start the sndFlame sound object
sndFlame.start();

Heads, you lose

We'll critique your jump pieces in class on Wednesday. A quick note: 400 pixels wide seems to be about the maximum width for embeded .swf files in the blogspot blogs. Bigger widths wreck the layout. If you're working on a bigger piece you can either:
1. Not embed the swf, but post a still with a link to the .swf file.
2. Make a mini-version using the edit multiple frames onion skin option. (Save a copy BEFORE you do this--it can go hilariously wrong.)

Here's a link to the headsy.fla file above. And here's the code:

// headsy.fla ActionScript 2.0 by Miles Inada
// demonstrates how one button can control several movie clip timelines.
// the head movie clips have stops on frame 1 of their timelines.
// the body movie clip is looped and has a still rest frame on frame 40.

but01.onRelease = function(){
head1Ani.gotoAndPlay(2);
head2Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head3Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
bodyAni.gotoAndStop(40);
}

but02.onRelease = function(){
head1Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head2Ani.gotoAndPlay(2);
head3Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
bodyAni.gotoAndStop(40);
}

but03.onRelease = function(){
head1Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head2Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head3Ani.gotoAndPlay(2);
bodyAni.gotoAndStop(40);
}
//this button is placed over the figure's head to reset all movie clips to 1
clearButton.onRelease = function(){
head1Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head2Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head3Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
bodyAni.gotoAndPlay(1);
}

Doors of Perception

Head on over to Inadaville to check out a moving advent calendar solution.
Click here for the .fla file for the little door above.
Click here for the full moving doors .fla file o'er at Inadaville.
If you download the full moving doors, make sure you download this Door.as file and put it in the same location as the .fla file--otherwise the .fla file will not work.

Here's the code:
//Actionscript 2.0 doortestAS205.fla by Miles Inada

// Declare a boolean variable named shut, whose value (true or false) will indicate whether the door is currently shut (true) or open (false).
var shut:Boolean = true;

// Define the function openShutDoor. This function will check to see if the shut condition is true or false and act accordingly.
function openShutDoor() {
//check to see if the door is open or shut
if (shut) {
//if it's shut, open it
theDoor.gotoAndPlay(2);
//tell the program the door is now open
shut = false;
}else {
// if it's open, shut it
theDoor.gotoAndPlay(1);
//tell the program the door is now shut
shut = true;
} //end else
} // end function openShutDoor

// When theButton is clicked, run the openShutDoor function we've defined above
theButton.onRelease = openShutDoor;

// theDoor is a movie clip with a stop command on frame 1