Brushmen Blog

SPX 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 14 Sep 2014 17:18:00 -0400

Time to volunteer at SPX again! Hooah!

What I really liked, of the new additions this year, was the red letter balloons that float in the room to help guide people to the artists. Because honestly that first-name-alphabetized floor map is hard to read as heck (YMMV).


map of "where to eat what" is very creative!

my swag for the event

This year I got to meet Tom Siddell of "Gunnerkrigg Court" fame. It was a surprise when he posted on his website that he's going to SPX. And I was already quite excited. I'm glad that he practically cleared out his inventory for the trip. It's no small ordeal to fly overseas when he has to draw all the time to make a living.
Met with author Carla Speed McNeil again. She treats me like an old friend at SPX, though I've barely talked to her in any intellectual capacity. But I think she treats most of her readers that way. :) Next year I might sound different than now. What's going to be her reaction, I wonder? :P

Learning Risus and "Roll for Shoes" RPG systems

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 1 Aug 2014 23:28:00 -0400

Recently a gaming group introduced me to a modified D&D3.5/Pathfinder campaign. I enjoyed the performance aspects but struggled with the math and the rules. Due to my anxiety problem that got out of control (it worsened over the years), I had to quit the game after five sessions. But I'm still interested in playing.

How do I play more tabletop RPG? And what system should I play? For that I looked into rule-lite systems, and found Risus (core rules fit on 4 pages), and last week, "Roll for Shoes". These indie systems are all borrowing ideas from each other, so at some point any game mechanic you see in one will sound familiar.

If I am the Game Master, I would probably set up a first session using "Roll for Shoes" rules:

Say what you do and roll a number of d6s.
If the sum of your roll is higher than the opposing roll (either another player or the DM), the thing you wanted to happen, happens.
The number of the d6s you roll is determined by the level of skill you have.
At start, you have only one skill: Do anything 1.
If you roll all sixes on your roll, you can get new skill one level higher than the one you used for the action. The skill must be a subset of what happened to you in the action (Say, Athletics 2 if you were climbing a wall, or Teeth of Biting 2 if you were eating a cake).
For every roll you fail, you get 1 XP.
XP can be used to change a die into a 6 for advancement purposes but not for success purposes.

I'll modify it to keep the rolling to a minimum, set XP-to-skill-levelup cost at 5 for 1, and cap the ranking per skill at 10- or just let the player succeed at doing that specific task. The goal should be to encourage the player to try different things, not power-game the system.

Players would come in to the first session with only a name and a look of their character. By the end of the first session, they'll have gotten a feel of the game world as well as what they tend to do the most. I think by then they could make better "informed" choices of which cliches help them. At that point the players can choose among their "things tried" list and generate the cliche list for their characters. Maybe cap it at 4 cliches, 4 rank maximum per cliche, and 10 total rank maximum per character. No need for a backstory just yet, and no need for alignment. Each character will be defined by their actions.

If the players want to continue the story, the next session(s?) will definitely be played in Risus rules, since "Roll for Shoes" has a dice-inflation problem. But even then, I may modify the core Risus rules to simplify the difficulty scale to be 1-5 and that rolling 4, 5 or 6 are successes, with 6 being critical/exceptional success.

Risus favors one-shot comedy stories. So if I want to play a Firefly/Cowboy Bebop flavored story, I'll have to explicitly ask the players for approval/collaboration.

If the game was a bust, only 1 or 2 sessions (~6 hours for a group of 3 to 4 players) were spent. Not too wasteful.

/justsomethoughts

pencil draft overview of Castle Panic: a fancomic

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 3 May 2014 21:12:00 -0400

The more things change...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 20:33:00 -0400

It's been over a year since I last posted here. There's not much art stuff to show for my efforts (or lack thereof?) over these months. The dream is not completely axed. Just have to lower my expectations. Lower, lower, keep going...

(I'd like to stream a drawing session some time, using Hangout. But I haven't found the best setup. The video shown is done with a light-weight webcam strapped to my forehead - together with 2x playback speed - may cause headache/seizure for the viewer. Caution.)

To end on a positive note? According to Sycra, one's drawing ability and one's critical eye progress at different rates; so an art-slump tend to occur when the critical eye overtakes the drawing ability in terms of improvement.

This animation by Ricky Cometa is so good... and so true:

T-Mode 2013 convention quick report

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:50:00 -0400

2 sketches, a self-published game by someone, and a badge

This is the sixth year of T-Mode (an Anime&Gaming convention), but is my first year attending/volunteering (or even hearing about it). There is one and a half room set aside for tabletop games. I got to play some board games that I've heard of but never played (King of Tokyo, Roll Through the Ages, Flash Point, Smash Up, Zombie Dice), as well as games that I've never heard of (Space Dealer, Lexicons of Dueling). As a side note, several people don't know Luca and Soli when I drew them on one of the whiteboards (while one person forgot where they're from)... :P Yup, this is a different crowd than the one for IntervenionCon.

SPX 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 20:07:00 -0400

Finally:

comics I traded for

and...

comics I bought

The room size has increased by about 1/3, so with more walking space between tables the room was not as hot as last year, and people were able to stop and chat longer with artists at their table. There were quite a few "upgrades" made by the new SPX staff: more signage, more cash registers as well as Square to do their credit card transaction; dedicated ATM in the room; dedicated SPX-merchandise table... The artists in the room were already familiar with Square and are using it at nearly every table.

They ran out of exhibit badges on Saturday because there were more extra badges requested/bought by the original signup exhibitor. They ran out of programs (the map and panel listing) by 1pm on Sunday. I did not stay for the Saturday night party but I heard there were more people attending.

So I'm thinking, it was a decent business day for all. Unfortunately I could not spend more money, for good reasons. ;)

Oh and thanks for a few people who said nice things about my work. Appreciate it!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 4 Jul 2012 11:58:00 -0400

Bought a KOI pocket watercolor sketch box which comes with a water brush- where the body is filled with water instead of ink. Makes sense for the watercolor medium. Trying it out for the first time... :P

Made a digital sketch, printed it out, then tried putting the colors on a tracing paper. Tracing paper is not suitable for watercolor, but I just wanted to see how it looks... This is a closeup, with a purple paper underneath it.

I also tried the water brush with Chinese calligraphy ink. What used to be painting from light (a brush filled with water) to dark (drying up, getting more ink), now it naturally favors painting from dark to light (because the continuous presence of water dilutes the ink in the brush). A different way of work.

The Meek trailer, fan-made

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 19:59:00 -0400

The Meek (c) Der-shing Helmer
voice over by Ty Konzak
music by Kevin McLeod
trailer by me

Software: Toon Boom Studio 4.5, Pencil (pencil-animation.org), Anime Studio Pro 7, Adobe Premiere Pro

No feedback regarding errors, so public it goes. >:P

Death of a Stylus

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:33:00 -0400

Rest in peace, my friend.

A messy minicomic-making process

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:32:00 -0400

Scrap paper (with printing on the other side), index card, moon palace calligraphy paper (all cut-up in pieces), copy paper (cut-up in pieces), some other kind of paper (in pieces)... A mess.

My original plan was to make a "fancy" folding booklet for this minicomic. One panel per page for 12 pages (limited by the particular assembly process). But I realized it may be difficult for some readers, or even me for putting it together. So I made a staple version too, with 14 pages.

A short digital preview of the 12-page version.

Gunnerkrigg Court 1 trailer, fan-made

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 08:54:00 -0400

Gunnerkrigg Court (c) Tom Siddell
Ghost Dance (c) Kevin McLeod

Made in Toon Boom Studio 4.5 (I re-learned its basics, and figured out during the process how to do certain things better, making it a productive use of my "spare time")

From 8am to midnight, for 2 weeks... OY. But it's here.

Apologies for the garish colors. I eyeballed them all (except the title page, which was scanned from the comic), and without overlaying a color layer to unify the color scheme it is rough on the eyes.

(would love to hire semi-pro British voice actors to do the voice over, but I can't justify the expense right now, if you know what I mean)

Gunnerkrigg Court 2 Arrived

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:58:00 -0400

(this one printed in China, not Korea; the quality may be low in comparison)

Hooray! I saw it at Archaia store and decided not to wait any longer.

Today's GC update post seems to suggest that Tom has quit his dayjob to work on GC full time. Not sure if it's a joke or not (considering Tom's trickster nature), but if it's for real then it certainly has come full circle (ask me why, if you don't already know)! :D

Hope he does well. Over 1000 pages, three books published, and don't know how many true fans he already has... It's not trivial, regardless.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:35:00 -0500

Done these while listening to podcasts. Last two done just a few minutes ago while listening to NinjaMountain's latest critique episode. It's a bad habit actually - really splits up my concentration. Anyway. Just let my subconscious do its thing. If I end up making 54 of them, they'll become a deck, obviously. :P

Custom Playing Cards by The Game Crafter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:34:00 -0500

Soon after trying SuperiorPOD for making custom playing cards, I tried the same deck at The Game Crafter (another POD company). To be honest I found out about both of them at the same time - when the latter was printing through the former - but was hoping SuperiorPOD would be a much better choice.

The proof copy arrived today, so let's do a quick comparison:

SuperiorPOD version on the left, The Game Crafter version on the right

The Game Crafter's tuckbox is not as thick

Size-wise TGC's version is closer to ideal, even though it is still not ideal.

It can still fit about 6 more cards. And they print their own logo inside the box.

This deck does not come in shrink-wrap, and the tuckbox is already squished/bent by TGC's own packaging staff. But otherwise the quality of the paper and ink appear to be the same as that from SuperiorPOD.

Final assessment:
Pros:
* for some reason, slightly cheaper shipping (from WI) compared to SuperiorPOD (from NY)
* much easier online user interface
* easier to set up and get going without needing to give a ton of information about "my company"
* customer can buy without setting up an account

Cons:
* tuckbox not a snug fit for the deck of cards
* relatively sloppier trim job (compared to the proof copy I got from SuperiorPOD)

Neural:
* TGC takes 30% commission
* No shrink-wrap

Sculptris Test

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 7 Feb 2012 11:31:00 -0500

Saw someone linking to Sculptris, and figured it doesn't hurt to try. It looks like ZBrush and that one's been on my wishlist for a long time...

My computers are not powerful enough to handle really complex models, and it still crashes once in a while. But fortunately it saves my progress and restores last state when relaunching. So I just change a tool, try a different angle, then continue.

New and Improved Two-Page Comic Reader

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 6 Feb 2012 14:30:00 -0500

The one-page view on most comic CMS or hosts has not been very satisfying to use. I used them because coding requires a large chunk of time and energy. At one point I did write some code for a quick demo of my Twin Stars fan comic (Figure 1 & 2). It was functional but incomplete. This week, while my macbook goes on vacation, I decided to tinker with the code again (Figure 3).

The main inspiration was due to seeing how even a tiny bit of understanding about YAML and the use of spyc.php library have made a flat-file database so easy to create, manipulate and maintain - as compared to MySQL.

Coding aside, the important thing in the planning is how to organize the data entries in the YAML file, as in how detailed you want entries to be, and how much redundancy you want to allow. Redundancy may incur more human-editing cost as well as introducing human errors, but it can reduce PHP processing time. From what I've learned, file operations generally take more (CPU) time than database operations, such as using a SQL command to search for data. MySQL (or any form of databaes) is a series of files too, but because countless number of smart programmers work to improve the package, it's bound to be more efficient than something cobbled together by a washout (:P).

So after all that mumble jumble, what have I accomplished?

Now the two-page viewer will take into account which page is the focus, by "dimming" the neighboring page (Figure 4). In the case where the left and right side pages should be viewed as a single spread, the YAML data file has a variable that lets the code know to not dim either page (for this comic, it happens 3 times).

Today I finally wrote the first version of code to generate RSS (Figure 5) based on my YAML data file (Figure 6), such that I no longer need to depend on Blogger or ComicCMS to generate RSS feeds for the comic. Freedom!

I suspect the code is inefficient and will tax the server somewhat. (Not that I feel WP/CP install makes any difference in that regard.) But it will only become a problem when there are serious traffic to the site.

Pros:
* Image files can be named whatever! Doesn't have to be tied to a date/time format. So I just drag and drop with a FTP application, instead of uploading through a web interface with a bunch of properties to fill in for each page.
* The database is one text file. Or several, depending on your need to keep multiple book data separate.
* It doesn't use complex database setup so no more database errors! (only PHP ones, but if it works during launch day it should remain workable, until the server runs out of memory. No setup can survive that)
* It doesn't use Cron to handle future posting. (For the longest time I wasn't sure how to deal with that without Cron...) The posting date is specified manually in the YAML data file, and the PHP script dynamically (yeah, that's resource-intensive) checks whether an existing file should or should not be accessible through the reader interface.

Cons:
* My code, my responsibility.
* It's not WP/CP (I don't care anymore, but maybe you do).

Note:
* Remember to disable "hotlink", and disallow direct linking to images too. There is no obfuscation on the image file name like many comic hosting sites do, so it is very easy to guess what the next page will be named, allowing eager readers to peek at pages you uploaded ahead of time.

Figures:

Figure 1.

Figure 2


Figure 3.

Figure 4. the requested page here is 2, so page 3 is dimmed; if 3 is requested, 2 will be dimmed

Figure 5.

Figure 6. First part is about chapters. The rest are info on individual pages.

Custom Playing Cards by SuperiorPOD

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:35:00 -0500

EDIT: May 9, 2012, I only - cautiously -recommend them for small and non-emergency orders. They may not be the best at timely (if at all) correspondence.
============== original blog post =============
So I tried this company out to print some playing cards.

The shrink wrap packaging is nice, but...

The turn-around time for a single deck of 54 cards and a single tuckbox is not very fast. Initially I received an instant "status change" email regarding my order plus a scheduled print date, and then there's nothing. 12 days after the scheduled print date there's still no update in the online account, nor email. So I emailed them instead, asking for a status. No reply. A few days later it's shipped. So okay, at least there's no scamming going on, which shouldn't be the case since they have a bunch of loyal customers in their forum.

Anyway nobody cares. How does the product look?

Oh man it can fit another 10 cards in there! It's not a snugly fit, thus if packed against something else the box will be bent. OCD is acting up again... My guess is they left that much space on purpose, in case it's not for a regular poker deck but for a custom card game with special instructions. But then the creator will have to remove the shrink wrap to stuff it in don't they? Which business-minded creator would do that?

The black ink is not guaranteed to stay deep black (not very clear in this photo, but the left card's ink is lighter and more reddish than the pure black on the right). The variation in the blackness is not helping my OCD. It's fine to save money on their end, just like CreateSpace doesn't print the black in my comic in pure black.

For a positive note, the ink either dried very well or there was some varnish treatment (guessing). The ink did not rub off my fingers, so I may try to go for more black in the design next time.

Overall, it's not promising as a viable helper-business route, but for personal use it's good enough.

Toshiba Thrive, Nomad Brush, and Sketchbook Express

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:28:00 -0500

There's not many artist using Thrive, or their video demos are not searchable through Google. So, here I am, making one myself.

Video Demo

It's not for the pros I guess? Sketchbook Express/Pro on Android platforms are different than on the iOS platform - for example, cannot change canvas size (not even the Pro version). With that in mind, perhaps the free Express version (3 layer max) is good enough. I won't even consider Photoshop Touch, because this hardware combo (tablet plus no-pressure-sensitivity styluses) is not that precise to take full advantage of pro level graphic apps - made worse by someone with unsteady hand and a sloppy drawing spirit.

Battery Strength:
for a 2.5 hour figure drawing session (disabled variable screen lighting), it went from 97% to 62%. Not too bad.

Nomad Brush Compose (dual tip):

the tips are easy to ruffle, and the metal base of the tip(s) attracts dust due to static electricity

no case, but might's well make your own because their case design requires the tips to be detached

The smaller tip on the other end, made with the same material as the brush tip, doesn't really replace a hard tip stylus though. I'll budget for one later.

All in all, I'm fine with this entire purchase. Just not thrilled.

To end on a positive note, I quickly looked over the ePub, Mobi and PDF versions of my comic on this tablet, and found at least one problem that I overlooked. Now I have a clearer idea about what needs to be adjusted.

Oops, trim size different

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 6 Jan 2012 14:36:00 -0500

(Snark is not meant for ka-blam, but general frustration with "printing standard" that's not standardized everywhere IN THE SAME COUNTRY; a local printing service is also ignoring my request for a template, so it's just frustration all around. Ka-blam printed my proof copy quickly and shipped it out quickly in December~January, so I appreciate that.)

With my eyes set on printing with ka-blam.com 182 pages of sweat and tear ago, I followed their instructions (might have missed their definition of "size" because I'm thinking "trim size") and chose to do the 5x7.5 manga size for the comic. I was expecting the book to be exactly 5x7.5. But...

My book is bigger than Shilin's manga and Hong Kong version of Gundam the Origin

aligned on the outside margin, but the binding side is definitely not lining up, Shilin's book is more 5x7.5 than mine

Shilin's book line up with Gundam the Origin, width-wise, ~5 inches

this version of Gundam the Origin is not 7.5 inches high

my book is bigger than this "official" manga width-wise and height-wise (see that white edge)

Shilin, the author of that gorgeous book to the left, went with a "traditional printer" that prints novels. So aside from confusion with images, they probably says "trim size" and meant it.

Now I wonder what CreateSpace mean when they say "trim size". I hope they, also a printer that favors novels, mean the actual physical size, not the part of the book that's not in the binding.

In the end though, it seems I won't be able to produce a book at the same size as that Gundam the Origin book without adding more complication to my workflow. Oh well. Live and learn. :P

First Experience with Printing and eBook Publishing, part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:41:00 -0500

Continuing from part 1, part 2 is about preparing file for the Barnes & Noble Nook store.

Using Sigil and Calibre To Prepare ePub file for Barnes and Noble PubIt!

Relevant Links:
Michael Jasper's guide on preparing comics for ePub-friendly eReader
Sigil
Calibre
Nook reading App
Creating NCX File

Premise: Barnes & Noble PubIt wants an ePub format file under 20Mb size. Frustrated? Tough!

Start from a template
Again, Michael Jasper's guide was a good starting point. And again, I wrote a PHP script to do mindless labor, such as generating 172 xhtml files (he had 22 in the example).

Download software
I used Sigil to start the ePub building process. Later on I found out Calibre can convert between different ebook format, so I downloaded it again (it feels bloated so I didn't like it in the past). Lastly get Nook reading App for testing purposes.

Import necessary files
With Sigil I quickly looked over the example ePub template, deleted their content xhtml files and images, then included my 172 xhtml files and 172 image files. The user interface does not allow multiple-select-delete (so you have to delete one file at a time; make a backup copy!), which is annoying.

Important Edits
Edit the toc.ncx file based on suggestions from this article. Sigil is more tolerant about customized data. Make sure to edit the meta data (you can use the Meta Data editor through the software, instead of editing the xhtml file directly). Another important edit is the image size of all comic pages. At dimension 684x1026, 172 grayscale images caused the ePub file to be over 20 MB. So I had no choice but to shrink the JPGs. Be aware how that could affect your dialog's display size.

Double-Check
Use Calibre to double check your ePub file. I converted it to Calibre's ePub format just to be sure. Most of the settings I left as is, except for the Table of Contents section. This time I tried to tackle this puzzle that drove me nuts while using Mobipocket Creator:

Suffice to say this version worked for me.

Side-note:

Convert ePub to MOBI
MOBI is another ebook format the Kindle can read, so I tried to convert the ePub format to MOBI, then test on the Kindle Previewer. This time accessing NCX file worked!

...But I liked the PRC version of presentation for the Kindle, so I didn't re-uploaded a converted MOBI file to Kindle Direct Publishing. I also didn't like the converted ePub file from the PRC format (every image on the same page doesn't work well using the Nook reading device - better to have one image per page). So I used this independently generated ePub file for online stores.

If you need clarification on anything mentioned above, feel free to leave a comment.

First Experience with Printing and eBook Publishing, part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:32:00 -0500

For a few days now I've been struggling to get my finished comic pages ready for print and ebook publishing. This is probably a good subject to blog about, so I'll try to summarize the end results.

Using Mobipocket Creator To Prepare PRC file for Kindle Direct Publishing

Relevant Links:
Michael Jasper's guide on preparing comics for Kindle
KindleGen and Kindle Previewer
Mobipocket Creator
a forum post about adding TOC in Mobipocket Creator
Creating NCX File

Premise: Kindle Direct Publishing wants a PRC format file and not PDF. Frustrated? Tough!

Start from a template
Michael Jasper's guide was a good starting point. If there had been better templates out there for comics I would have used them too, but this is what I got. The first hurdle is to edit the content of their HTML file to match my own comic. What's the difficult part? Well, they only had 22 pages to list in the HTML while I had 176. So I wrote a PHP script to do this mindless labor, just because I'm not very savvy with automation scripts such as Automator or AutoHotKey, etc. Now you can keep this HTML file as "IMAL_01.html", but after failing a few times (not the fault of this file name), I decided to rename it to a simpler "book.html", according to some post.

Important Edits
Do you want to add chapter markers or other segment markers such as page 10, 20, 30? In Michael's template above, those "a name=''" tags are used for this purpose. Mark them now, so that later on you can refer to them in a TOC.

Download software
You might not use Mobipocket Creator, but that's what KDP suggested. I resisted at first, tried KindleGen, but could not find enough information to clear all the warnings/errors. The other thing to download is Kindle Previewer (KindleGen is on that page too), which is useful to test out the PRC file if you don't have access to an actual Kindle.

Play around With Mobipocket Creator
...or not if you're impatient. You might have to redo some work after messing up. The software is strangely touchy.

Import necessary files

import "book.html"; I tried importing a pre-made PDF of the comic, but it ended badly
click on "Table of Contents" option and add one, so that a "Table of Contents" file appears in the "Production Files" list. (I tried to eliminate this step but then the Kindle Previewer's "TOC" button fails to work)
import all image files except the cover (or include it if you really want)
cover page is added separately as "Cover Image"

Book settings and Metadata
Easy.

Three main Kindle Previewer buttons to implement
When you open Kindle Previewer, you'll see three buttons that:

access "cover" (got it working!)
access "table of contents" (got it working!)
access "NCX file" (no, I'm a total failure!)

Access "Cover"
This is easy to implement, just make sure you add "Cover Image", and click "Update" at the bottom of that dialog panel.

Access "Table of Contents"
This is trickier. My entire HTML file is full of images and nearly no text (other than a TOC, which I moved to the beginning, instead of as the last thing). When the software finds all the "a name" anchor tags in the HTML file it has no text to use as link text, so you will see a bullet list of nothingness. My workaround is to disregard the generated "Table of Contents" file (mbp_toc.html) and use my own. See below for visual demonstration:

(just keep this file alive and error free, but don't let it generate confusing text/lnks)

(I crossed out that title because it might be generated by the software as a side effect, not intentional)

(if you move these links to the beginning of the HTML, it will be near the front; the template has it near the end)

Access NCX
I tried to follow this guide, but my efforts keep getting overwritten by the software during rebuild, so I gave up. If you know a solution, feel free to share with us newbies! :)

Or if you need clarification on anything mentioned above, feel free to leave a comment.

Continue reading part 2.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:38:00 -0500

(original work)

(The crude insignia of "Inuyama" and "Sugura" are in two of them, if you care to know. :P)

Since I've been looking at a bunch of references (including 4 Kurosawa films) for the recent art challenges, this is a natural outlet... Done in Chinese ink.
Maybe for sale at shows, if I go to them.

And more...

(original work)

First Capture: an 8-page Mini Comic

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:56:00 -0500

my first real 8-pager mini comic, yay!

You can read it here. I emailed it to my Go teacher and he emailed it to his network, and the editor of the American Go Association asked if they can post it to their eJournal. That's good news if the pros didn't think the comic misrepresents the game. :D

First Edutainment comic a success.

Learning Sikuli to automate image resizing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:55:00 -0500

Hey haven't posted here in a long time. I've been busy elsewhere and not have anything of high quality to show on this blog. But the following may be helpful for some people who wants to automate some processes in Seashore, which is a very basic graphic software (a primitive GIMP that runs natively in mac) that doesn't have action capabilities.

Recently I learned about Sikuli: "A visual technology to automate and test graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots)." It's not as precise as Mac's Automator or some other batch action process, simply due to the variability of how the interface elements look in different environments (i.e. your menu bar might be blue, gray, brown, etc.). But with a different way of thinking about repeating your onscreen action, you may be able to solve tricky automation puzzles. For example, I never figured out how to make Automator do the following (even tried letting it record every step, but it's not generic enough to handle all cases).

Below is my Sikuli script cobbled together within 24 hours after learning about it.

The automation script looks at all currently opened image file in Seashore, then for each one, proceeds to:
1. change image mode to Grayscale
2. change resolution to 72 dpi
3. change width to 500 pixel, make sure height is automatically recalculated
4. save image
5. close current image

InterventionCon, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 18:25:00 -0400

This was my base of operations/reassignments.

The table setup in the Artist's Alley or dealer's room at InterventionCon is definitely smaller than at SPX, which is already small.

Anime/Manga style is less prominent here than at dedicated Anime cons, but still more than at SPX, relatively speaking.

This same artist went to SPX too. I was tempted to buy some MLP cards for some cartoonist friend who's into MLP, but then thought they can draw MLP already.
I myself want to sell art cards like this (actually, more like in playing card decks) in the future. Don't want to make any buttons.

Dealer's room early Saturday morning, before the artists have returned...

Still not enough sales for some vendors, but overall the feeling is still optimistic, since the crowd did increase from last year.