Tips

ArtCast Network

| George Coghill

Just a quick post to let all you artists out there know about an up-and-coming new website from the amazing illustrator Dani Jones — the ArtCast Network.

Dani loves to share her extensive illustration technique knowledge via live streaming videocasts on Ustream, and decided there needed to be a website that brought together all the talented atists out there who do live streaming webcasts on Ustream or other similar sites.

I have a Ustream cartooning & illustration channel, but I am just getting started. The ArtCast website has inspired me to do much more of this, so keep an eye out for future live video stream where you can watch me sketch & draw live in Adobe Photoshop, and work on cartoon-style vector art illustrations in Adobe Illustrator. And all videos will be recorded and saved to my Ustream channel for those of you who aren’t able to watch live.

The ArtCast Network is still in the ‘under construction’ phase right now, but head on over at the link above if you are an artist and want to participate.

Adobe Apps: Backup Your Prefs

| George Coghill

adobe-preferences-mac-osx-screenshot

It’s happened to all of us digital creatives. The dreaded day when you just cannot get one of your Adobe applications to launch. Usually there’s a deadline looming (of course). You’ve restarted your computer (three times) and still you cannot get Photoshop to launch. You’ve tried a few tips from some Google searches, but still nothing. Your geek cred is showing it’s limitations. And your deadline isn’t getting any further away.

What if I told you this could be avoided, virtually forever? And also, that you can get back to work with all your settings just the way you like them?

Continue reading →

Zen Of The Pen

| George Coghill

Vector pen tool icon artSharon Steuer’s free “Zen Of The Pen” PDF is an excellent introduction to the inner mysteries of the vector pen tool in Adobe Illustrator.

Update: Sharon has kindly asked me to remove the link to that PDF, she’s working on an updated version. I highly suggested you head over to her website and sign up for updates. Sharon is the mastermind behind the excellent Illustrator WOW! vector tutorial books for Adobe Illustrator.

The pen tool is one of those obscure graphics programs tools that everyone tries once, and then gets so confused by that they never get any further with it. And understandably. It looks like a fountain pen, but it doesn’t act like one. Click and “draw”, you get weird “handles” sprouting out from a dot. Ignore that, and some annoying rubber band line gets stuck to your pen tip, all distorted out of — not even a straight line! Right there most Illustrator users think to themselves “this program sucks”.

But they couldn’t be further from the truth…

Continue reading →