screaming red ass sock monkey

On the test page, only one page turns. The cover opens on click and then closes on click. There's a long way to go, but what I'm seeing is so promising that I wanted to post something this rudimentary. It works. Damn.

Adobe Edge is in pre-release version 4 now, and includes much of the interactivity of early Flash. With html 5 manifests for off site use, could this be a fast and open way to distribute educational resources? Not sure, but I am sure that ignoring it is a mistake. I think development would benefit from stronger javascript skills, but for now I can muddle through. I think I'd be willing to spend time on beefing up javascript skills; it makes more sense for me than re-learning actionscript.

The page turns! Yay! Takes three weeks to load, but it loads.

I'm looking for the right format and layout for a Plato dialog I've been wanting to illustrate. I wrote about it once before when I was first fishing about for a delivery method. Web based now seems fine. I have three pages roughed, but the standard strips on standard pages just don't seem too interesting. The WormWorld Saga is beautiful stuff with a single chapter presented as a long scrolling page. Lieske cuts his artwork into smaller horizontal images without regard for content and pulls all of the slices together with his code. I love everything about his story, so I looked at his code. I couldn't get his exact code to work, but his idea is excellent, and I managed to recreate it with minimal styling. For my experiment, I took some images that I already had (from istudy 11) then colorized them (as in 'colored LOC image') with more of a painterly feel in the process. I think the style works, I think the layout works, the final loads in a reasonable amount of time, and I like it on my iPad.

From this I can see that I need to draw better—working at this large of a size, all of my paint overruns and bad anatomy really stand out. I need to be clearer about a light source and pay attention to the saturation. Drop shadows seem like an interesting way to provide another way of ordering the information: there can be dimensional depth within the portrayed scene, but there can be layout depth as well, implying a top down or rather top "in" order.

It could be fun. It will take a lot of time, I'll learn a lot, and in the end at least it won't gather dust.

These links are here for my easy access. If you want, you can read the articles too, but my experience so far is everything I would expect: Discussions have been predictable. I have found that most people see team work and collaboration as a way to improve their work.

• The Secret Power Of Introverts by: Jenna Goudreau, Forbes.

"Cain is not seeking introvert domination. She acknowledges that big ideas and great leadership can come from either personality type. What she wants is a better balance and inclusion of different work styles. "In most job interviews, people say they are looking for people skills and emotional intelligence," notes Cain. "That's reasonable, but the question is, how do you define what that looks like?"

• The Rise of the New Groupthink by: Susan Cain, New York Times Sunday Review.

"To harness the energy that fuels both these drives, we need to move beyond the New Groupthink and embrace a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning. Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to work with others, but also to work on their own for sustained periods of time. And we must recognize that introverts like Steve Wozniak need extra quiet and privacy to do their best work."

• Power by Design by: Rick Poyner, Print Magazine.

"Most graphic designers are not driven to grasp the reins of power. Their first motive is to design, and they are highly focused on the craft of the work. Historically, they have often been solo operators or happiest working in small teams focused on a common goal. They might be perfectly sociable (though many are insular), but they are unlikely to be compulsive mixers, social networkers, and glad-handers constantly maneuvering to extend their influence into fresh territory. Most designers are far removed from the labyrinthine intrigues of politics and 
policy-making. They don't often count people in high places among their friends and acquaintances, and they show little desire to involve themselves in design organizations, let alone other kinds of groups where worldly power and influence reside."

• Quiet, Please: Unleashing 'The Power Of Introverts' Susan Cain interviewed on NPR.

"Introverts are much less often groomed for leadership positions, even though there's really fascinating research out recently from Adam Grant at [The Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania] finding that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes when their employees are more proactive. They're more likely to let those employees run with their ideas, whereas an extroverted leader might, almost unwittingly, be more dominant and be putting their own stamp on things, and so those good ideas never come to the fore."

Before I was employed at Penn State I tried developing a line of cards. I enjoyed working with this pastel technique, but the cards never went anywhere. I used the style in several magazine illustrations, and some of the actual cards were folded and given away. This last remaining set of four, done with pastels on heavy paper, has been knocked around quite a bit and barely survived the past 17 years. I'm thinking that putting them here might be a way to save them without having to worry about the originals anymore. I have too much junk laying about, and pixels don't gather dust (that we know of.)

I set the cards up with the pastel front image and the hand drawn text on the same sheet, in opposite corners facing in opposite directions. I rearranged everything to display here. If printed, the one sided print job could be folded to display as a typical greeting card. The layout was called a French-fold, but I think that term would be fairly meaningless to most people now. It let me easily get color Xerox copies that I could fold and send as demo cards to card companies. I had a nice rejection letter from Hallmark that came with their suggestion to try their more quirky subsidiary. I kept that letter with others, including a much less than nice rejection from Camel cigarettes: I'd sent them a prototype pack that was a regular pack turned sideways with 25 shorter cigarettes. I called them Short Breaks and they'd fit current machines without re-tooling. They said they had their own development team and I should keep my ideas to myself. Oh well.

Last week Design Taxi had an image collection from an Artist [who] Adds Color to Iconic Black and White Photos. Colorizing has come a long way since the early days of Turner's Ruined Film Classics. I don't necessarily recommend doing it, but there are times when the technique is useful. Sanna Dullaway turned it into a business, and it's worth looking at the work.

The Library of Congress has quite a few photos of Lincoln, so I grabbed a copy of the same one Dullaway used and tried it myself. I thought that a stylin' guy like Abe couldn't have done better in the middle of the Civil War than to show some patriotic zeal.

If you try it yourself, keep the color on separate layers, and set them each to the Color blend mode. If you use a separate layer for each color, you can fine tune the effect of each with the Hue Saturation dialog box. It's pretty easy…

Deena was especially grating to me in this dialog. As a returning adult student, she has a few experiences and insights beyond those of her younger colleagues, and it's easy for someone in that position to come across to the rest of a team as bossy rather than helpful. But how does Deena tone it down? What do you do in a collaborative situation when your experience with a specific topic is beyond your colleague's to the point where they can't see that you're right? The project turns out better than the majority would hope, but somewhat less than a very small minority.

International symbol for "Your friends are on my computer when I'm not home."

International symbol for "Don't tell anybody I downloaded this."

International symbol for "Come on girlfriend, what's your ANGEL password?"

I've drawn Fraser Street a few times before. The affect the view has intrigues me. Now, with the sweep of the new street layout and the fancy lights and sidewalk, it's more remarkable.

I was determined over the past holiday break to do a large pastel based on a few sketches. I went out in the cold and rain looking for a motif, finding things I liked and wanted to be sure to include: Lines and shapes that formed an evocative composition. Working from sketches and memory, I was looking to develop something that caught the feeling more than the exact layout. I did the same thing recently with an interior view and thought the technique could be expanded.

Working from these sketches, I created vector shapes that I could adjust and rearrange repeatedly without degradation. It helped a great deal, and I did a final drawing on a large sheet of dark gray Mi-Teintes based on that output. With time remaining in the break, I started to add color and texture, looking for the motion created by the strokes.

It just felt tedious though, not at all satisfying. The craft of pastel has always attracted me. I keep them arranged by value to eliminate some of my groping, but still. I was coloring. It was just a chore. The drawing, I realized, was already finished- in vectors and fills on my computer. I can see the finished pastel right there on he inside of my forehead. To execute it now (execute possibly being a freudian choice…) would be just a process to give it "thingness". If I want to mat it and frame it and stick it on a wall or more likely in a stack in the bedroom closet I can execute it. But really, I have no motivation.

It's somewhat embarrassing; scary certainly. I'm trying to figure out what it is in the entire process that's fulfilling. Seeing it on my screen, after having generated it, feels like enough. The understanding that I have after the analytical seeing is definitely satisfying. I've tossed more in the trash the past few months, but here I am putting it on my blog. Well, I did think it would make a good post, and my intent is to again move away from facebook, twitter, and yammer. So here ya' go:

Penn State Libraries will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday Jan. 16 with two films. The first, Freedom Riders is also available on line as part of PBS' American Experience series. Just in case you can't get to the library.

Ben Novak is running for the Board of Trustees. The membership of the board should be important to all of us. Novak published reflections on his experience in and with Penn State's Board of Trustees and they resonate strongly with me. So strongly that I felt I should reopen this tired old blog.

By resonate, I mean that something Ben Novak describes sounds so similar to things I've witnessed that they seem to be moving with the same vibration. Please, see if what he says resonates with you:

Reflections of a Former Trustee:
How the Penn State Board of Trustees Really Works