Wringing Blood from the Cloud

Cloud services of various types are getting more and more common but not all that popular as the news that Adobe will offer its software only in the creative cloud option from now on. 

A few years ago, cinema 4d began offering a subscription service allowing customers to pay a fee per year or month to keep constantly up to date as updates came up,without having to buy each update as a new purchase. No one was talking about this as any sort of cloud service but its pretty much what Adobe and soon Microsoft (for Office Suite) are offering with some differences.  The Adobe plan does give you access to all their software and updates but you must pay your monthly fee or the software is disabled. The C4D  set up stops your updates but the program still functions. Apparently the Microsoft plan will be similar to the C4D one. 

The creative cloud is, in my assessment, a terrible way to treat your customers and those customers are already looking for replacement software. You are paying quite a bit, more than most do buying upgrades when they need them but only renting the programs on a monthly basis losing the ability to keep working if you stop the subscription. Many pro printers don't update their software often and Indesign, for example, is not very backwards compatible so your constantly updated software makes it impossible to actually get work out. Adobe doesn't seem to know the old 80s model,where companies bought software and most designers/artists who used them worked for companies is almost gone, replaced by a system where companies hire contractors (like me) who don't want, need or can afford to be paying them ungodly amounts of cash to rent the software they need every day. This cloud plan will bleed us dry and make keeping our heads above water harder, not easier. And if there is a server issue at Adobe, and there have already been quite a few, you suddenly can't work.... at all. 

Using the cloud to share data among a team, or even software within a company can be a very useful thing but companies should not be forcing their customers to fulfill their accountants wet dreams of steady cash flow. Nothing, especially software, is really irreplaceable or indispensable. This  could be a short term money grab that leads to all those other smaller competing developers to take away Adobes dominance and actual choice. I imagine if Apple decided to come up with a full featured photoshop alternative on both platforms at a decent price even Photoshop... the unstoppable flagship of Adobe would quickly fade from view.

So while Adobe may think it has us all trapped in the cloud bleeding us dry, in the end you can't really squeeze blood out of a cloud. 

Ray Harryhausen 1920-2013

The innovative puppet animator Ray harryhausen dies this week, it's a huge loss to classic film effects fans and marks the end of an era of physical effects artists that started with Willis O'Brien in the silent film era. 

On personal level, Mr. Harryhausen was a hero of my childhood. While other kids wanted to be fireman and later astronauts... I wanted to work in a small room alone animating puppets to life for films. Films like "The beast from 20 000 Fathoms" are still in my list of top ten films to watch over and over for not just entertainment, but inspiration. 

Right up until his death, this pioneer was still working on new projects. These varied from new puppet animations based on Poe's works to colourizing his earlier films for a new audience.. something I normally would abject to but after meeting him a couple years ago and hearing his reasons for doing, I was convinced he was doing the right thing. They were, after his films to decide what was best for their continued enjoyment by fans. 

Ray never wanted to go the computer route with animation, he liked the physical models and the not so real quality of mixing them with real actors and sets. He did develop techniques used by others, including a way to move the models while clicking the shutter each frame to give them a motion blur.. making them look hyper real. He never used this in any of his films, however, thinking it would take away from the fantasy look. 

No one ever made films like him... and likely never will. he was a genre of film making unto himself. Luckily his monster films, Sinbad series and others are still around to remind us of his greatness and still give that spark of creativity to future artists. 

New portrait

Unlike some of the last few drawings (flickr page)  with people, this one is a real portrait, that is recognizable as a specific person. In this guess my boyfriend of 10 ten years, Robin.

I tried to mix several techniques to make a sort of hybrid of traditional and digital styles and I think it works out nicely. The face is painted in greyscale with a slight hue added to give it a skin tone and the rest is digital pen and pencil.

How many email addresses do you need?

As part of my constant battle to have less, not more things to maintain on the computer, I've been trying to reduce the number of email addresses I've accumulated over the years. I have one "official" one for Behemoth media I've had since the early 90's, plus personal ones, gmail and Yahoo versions for behemoth and the personal ones, plus an ever growing number of Apple emails thanks to Apple's constant adding and then abandoning of online "cloud-like" services, each with it's own email address attached.

All the passwords and remembering what email was used for where is a huge pain in the ass. No to mention every mobile device has to be set up for so multiple accounts and in the end, no one knows which one to use to get in touch with you.

So I'm trying to cut back and finding it practically impossible. Apple has no way to remove old email addresses but they do send everyone one to the same account so it's less a burden administratively. I am seriously thinking of getting rid of the dedicated Behemoth media account. It's not like I'm a big company (It's only me) and at this point I think the gmail version will work just find and be easier to manage. I'll keep a personal gmail for buying stuff. The yahoo account I had rid myself of years ago, but then I needed a flickr account and as flickr and yahoo are the same now, I had no choice but make anew mail account.

My ultimate goal will be to get down to 4 including the never to be looked at yahoo one. Wish me luck!

NIK plugin collection

I have had several NIK plugins for Photoshop (they also work for Lightroom and maybe other software I don't use) for a couple years now. I REALLY like them. Everything but the price which I always though was high for plugins. So imagine my surprise when Google (who bought NIK recently) sent me an email to download ALL of the 6 plugins in one free collection today! No strings, and even Color Efex Pro is the complete collections of filters, I  previously had only the limited version they came with my Wacom tablet. The entire collection is now one suite you buy at once for less than the price of a single one before. As a current owner of multiple plugins, they gave me the new collection for free.

If you have never tried them, now is the time. There is a deal going on you should really take advantage of. 3 of them I had never tried out and I have to say the results are amazing.

Kudos to Google for not only making them affordable finally, but also giving those who already laid out cash for them the collection for free. This is not something I see Adobe or any other company doing very often. In a way, it's simply the fair thing to do, but as well know, fair is not the norm with software sales anymore.

Paul in crow

I am thinking of making this into a series. I'll need a nude male model who can do all sorts of yoga positions,  however.

Flash Gordon site from the past

At one time, the use of Flash was considered more cool than it is today and the ability to interact with animations was fun.. it got out of hand pretty quickly. This might be an example of that. But it was fun to do and that was point… to make the site fun. Sound isn't exactly in sync as it was on the site originally. Being obsessed with Buster Crabbe… I had to do it.

3 Plays by Michael Z Keamy

Michael Z Keamy's new book of plays is out on Amazon.com
I did the cover art and design and the typography for the interior.

The 3 plays are disturbing… funny at points but very intense and at points, shocking.

Drawing of Paul

Trying for a natural on paper look with digital tools. I really like the look of sketches on rough paper, especially when ink is combined with light and dark pencil to make it pop more. I find I use Sketchbook pro for almost all the drawing now and Photoshop for more of the effects work, not that some of it can't be done in Sketchbook but it's just easier and I think better implemented in Photoshop. The skin is almost all stipple work so this took quite some time to finish.

Click image for more detail if you wish.

Koch

The film "Koch" has been released.. Coincidentally on the day he died. I worked on the restoration and retouching of photos throughout the film. It's been a tough couple years, I only hope I get more good work like this soon!