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I read a short story, The Dragon by Ray Bradbury, to my son over breakfast. We then talked about superstition vs science and technology.

How do we view the unfamiliar?

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comic

Originally uploaded by EricHolsinger

My son brought home the book Adventures in Cartooning: How to Turn Your Doodles Into Comics from school. He was so inspired that he said we should have a comic contest today. He started working on his before breakfast. This is my entry in the contest.

Mom is to be the judge with the allowance that she can choose both.

avatar headshots

Originally uploaded by EricHolsinger

Here are some naked-mole-people style avatar headshots from the paper-doll avatar catalog which I’m building for my game.

So far I’ve made a few layers for different body colors, eyes, eye colors, and a few noses. Only one mouth so far.

I may need to browse through Foundation Flash Cartoon Animation(amazon) from the Apress Friends Of Ed imprint for some more ideas on how to layer the pieces.

For example, I made one Anime style hair piece but the facing ear was under the hair because I have the whole body in one layer organized by fill color. This is going to be a problem when I add layers of clothing. Obviously the hands and facing ear will need to come forward and be in another layer.

If I add something like headphones, the far ear will also need to be in it’s own layer and one earphone will be in a layer covering it but under the shape of the face.

Oy vey!

Illustrator, I’m not a-scared of you anymore.

Originally uploaded by EricHolsinger

I’ve been wanting to make a paper-doll (wikipedia) style avatar selection for my game, but I’ve been baffled and overwhelmed by Adobe Illustrator in the past. Illustrator, or some vector based program, seems like the best choice because of the … well … vectors.

Being too timid to use Illustrator was obviously a problem. One option was to have someone else make it for me, or maybe I could borrow/buy one from some other person. In the end I realized I would need to buck up and get over my fear of Illustrator.

I’m happy to report that Illustrator is now my bitch. I am able to bend it’s anchors and paths and make it do my bidding. I can select groups and paste them front, send them back and forth in the layer as I will.

I owe it all to this fine, fine tutorial on how to make Killer Chainsaw Bunnies.

A professor friend found himself in a bind and asked me to do some technical illustrations for his research paper. It was a fun change of pace from my usual programming lifestyle.

Golf poses