Strange Biros

Sketching a Seadog

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 10:57:00 +0000

I thought I'd test the video on my iPod Touch to see what sort of quality it produces...
This is me sketching Captain Whelk...

iBooks Authoring - Robot Pirates

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 08:52:00 +0000

Up at 6.30 to walk the dog means I've had a good start at sketching the characters in for my iBook.
I've got a number of sketches of the main Ninja Dinosaur, so I spent a short time sketching out the Robot Pirates.
3 nasty seadogs:
Buttery Jack, Captain Whelk and Salty Pete.

iBooks authoring

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 20:35:00 +0000

I have four days off, four days of typical bank holiday rain and cold. Perfect weather for working on an iBook.
I aim to produce a 28 page children's story about the battle between ninja dinosaurs and pirate robots. I have plotted the story out, and have a copy of tumult hype which allows me to add some rather nice interactions.
I don't expect to finish in just four days, but will be pleased if I can get some of the pages inked up and the interactions and animations tested.

Dev8ed

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:34:00 +0000

Just back from a couple of days of nerding out...
Dev8ed ran at Aston Business school, and saw about 90 developers and learning technologists join up and talk about and work on projects. I was presenting my coursedata stuff, and we had talks from Moodle developers, LTI developers, HTML 5 stuff... all fascinating.
... and I did the logo:

Sketchbook ink brushes

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sat, 26 May 2012 21:05:00 +0000

There are a number of different brushes in ink, and they are all as unpredictable as each other. They remind me of the brushes in Manga Studio, but without the precision.
Anyway this is the sort of style they exhibit. I got quite excited at the Steadmanesque look of a couple of them, but there simply isn't enough control.

Sketchbook ink

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Fri, 25 May 2012 22:04:00 +0000

Autocad who make the sketchbook pro app, have launched a new app today. I'm not quite sure where it fits in the line up. In theory because it seems to use some vector like formula, and can export at really high resolution it should be the sort of thing that is useful for preparing sketches for print. In fact the export to Dropbox option means it could usefully form part of a reasonably sensible workflow, but... To my mind It's not fully baked.
Too many random artefacts caused by the active brushes, these manifest as diagonal lines.. Sometimes these can be undone, sometimes they append themselves to strokes way back in the undo stack, and the undo is slow. Maybe on a iPad 3 you'll be ok , but stuff takes a while on my ipad2.
The killer for me is the lack of fill... You can do some sort of job using the brush but not great. Zooming in and out takes time and renders lines strangely when compared to their final output.
At £1.49... It's probably worth it for simple sketches, but it's not quite ready for anything serious.

Amalgam

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Mon, 21 May 2012 21:11:00 +0000

I had another go at the 10 tone sketch challenge entry tonight, determined to take the opportunity to draw giant killer nazi robots... I ended up with a rather small nazi robot.. will try harder next time...

Payne's Grey

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Fri, 18 May 2012 22:14:00 +0000

I used to paint everything with payne's grey, now I'm not so sure...

...also Dark Claw's face mask looks a bit like the rabbit from Donnie Darko... quite silly.

Dark claw

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:21:00 +0000

Who knew there was a marvel DC. Mash up, amalgam comics... With a batman/ wolverine character ... Darkclaw. Anyway it's this weeks 10 ton sketch challenge...

Don't believe the Hype

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:59:00 +0000

I've been playing around with Tumult Hype, which provides a simple almost Flash like interface for building HTML5 animations.
I have followed the basic tutorial, and created a couple of "scenes" which show the flow of the development of a sketch.
http://wychwolf.com/wolverine-sketchbook/wolverine-sketchbook.html

I might even be able to embed the code here...
but I'm not sure...

Invasion in colour

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:44:00 +0000

all done,
my scanner is suffering, it gets stuck on overview, and I can't set the colour correctly..
it's fine for b/w... if it initialises...
but getting a bit cranky about colour.

The Invaders

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sun, 13 May 2012 19:47:00 +0000

This weeks 10 ton Sketch challenge is Avengers look-e-like-ees - the Invaders...
I did a very quick pencil scribble, and then thought I'd ink it up just for laughs.
This is the inked version.
I'm colouring it now

two brains

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:09:00 +0000

If you have been following the Wychwolf saga then you'l recognise this fellow. He is professor GlasKopf, and returns for a brief interlude in Monday's strip, as Adam hasn't had time to get the script written.

Of course if you aren't reading the weekly effort, then I'd love you join us... a page a week, zombies, werewolves, tentacled space monsters, and Alan Turing.

More ComicBook fun

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:17:00 +0000

Busy day, thought I'd relax with a little sketching on the iPad. Sketch of spidery in sketchbook pro, followed by another attempt to understand ComicBook... Stuff is still quite janky, but getting better

ComicBook app

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:48:00 +0000

Impressed by the use of comicbook app at work recently I bought it... Chiefly to see if I could use it to add some structure, panels and speech bubbles to pics drawn in sketchbook pro. ComicBook is by turns fascinating and infuriating, the UI is inconsistent, and whilst things like image positioning are really flexible, trying to get text to sit well in the bubbles is a nightmare.

iPad sketchbook pro

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:42:00 +0000

Had half an hour on my hands so thought I'd have a bash with the stylus... Based on a Mignola batman...

Noggin

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Mon, 07 May 2012 10:32:00 +0000

I've been hearing a lot of stuff about Squarespace on a number of podcasts... and it's made me think it may be worth moving this blog to Squarespace to benefit from the shiny designs. I used to have a squarespace site a couple of years ago, for the Becta Interactive Whiteboard work, I posted sample files, and assets...like the dragon above.
I seem to remember I was writing a story for use on the Interactive whiteboard much like the noggin the nog stories I enjoyed in my childhood...and it strikes me now that it would work just as well on an iPad.
Unfortunately when I stopped paying the site closed, and all my stuff with it... that doesn't happen with Blogger. In fact Blogger has recently reminded me of a number of blogs I'd started in Blogspot days that needed to be updated or lost.

Last wolverines

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sat, 05 May 2012 18:24:00 +0000

So...
coloured pic for the 10 ton sketch challenge...

same pic with a bit of photoshoppery...

and finally all sepia'ed up, as is my won't.

inked up

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:09:00 +0000

All inked up, and ready for some colour... going to try and get a nice bright clean look, but may end up with a more muddy effort involving Payne's Grey...

Hungry like the wooool-verine

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sat, 05 May 2012 14:54:00 +0000

Pencils all done, just about too ink up...

Wolfie

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:10:00 +0000

This weeks 10ton sketch challenge is "wolverine", so I thought I'd have a bash. Pencils done, inks tomorrow

Gallery

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 15:28:00 +0000

I'm getting to a point where I may be thinking of switching Strange-Biros to another platform... I've been trying to make a Gallery page, but just can't get what I want... and that's strange as the very thing I want appears as part of the Picasa "organise" function... Basically I want something like a mosaic of the images in folder, BUT only on one page. If anyone knows how to do this, of can suggest a more flexible platform, then I'm interested.

Pirate hats

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:16:00 +0000

Pirate hats, in fact almost any hats are a bit of problem to draw for me, so I thought I'd try a few in the sketch book...

Wordwork

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:10:00 +0000

Found a stack of "Collins Primary Wordwork" books, and think the crocs picture must be from one of them...

Apparently you can still buy them on Amazon, from 1p... "This invaluable textbook course for 5-11 year olds is written specifically to provide all National Literacy Framework Word Level requirements throughout the whole school. Clear and straightforward activities give a lively and highly accessible way to learn essential phonics, spelling and vocabulary skills."

Something old something new

noreply@blogger.com (Rob E) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:01:00 +0000

Bought a new sketchbook, Daler Rowney 150gsm acid free cartridge paper, it's got a good surface, and takes pencil well... anyway, I was scribbling on it over lunch, and ended up drawing a stumpy crocodile.

I was sure I'd drawn something like it years ago, so had a quick rifle through some old boxes in the basement and found a page with a couple of crocs... I've no idea what it was for, but from the squiggles it looks like it was part of a huge series of books I did in the 90's for Harper Collins Educational. What's weird is that I probably work with people who learnt to read using these things...