Over the last few years, I have always kept an eye out for collections of free Photoshop brushes. Today – after epic amount of time thinking about it – I actually started to make my own.

Here are some things to lookout for as you setup your custom brushes:

• Use a grayscale image. The background must be white and the stroke tip black. This image illustrates the kind of thing you want to setup, before you make your marquee selection and select Edit/ Define Brush Preset:
  
• There’s scant info in the Help, but it does uh, help. You probably already realize that if you are running an older version of Photoshop, the Adobe knowledge base tends to wither and die on the vine for the older versions (such as CS3). The basic steps ought to remain the same.
• Save your brushes in your own collections. By saving your custom Brushes to an external .ABR (Adobe Photoshop Brush file), you’ll be able to reload it in case you need to delete your preferences (where the built-in set resides by default). And you will need to delete your preferences.
• Options in the Brush palette allow you to flip along the X, Y, or both. This allows one Brush to perform multiple duties for variety – you don’t want too much of a rubber-stamped look (unless that is your intent creatively) – but neither is it necessary to save multiple brush orientations.

I was able to quickly put this image together using the above Brush, plus one other similar to it:

For inspiration, make sure to check out free Photoshop brushes at Brusheezy and get cracking!

It is with a certain amount of disgust that I announce after debating my new computer, that I went with Windows7-based Dell over the formerly beloved Apple, Inc. options.

I have certainly owned PCs in the past – both Gateway and Sony VAIO, so I am way past that whole tiresome Mac vs. PC debate. In fact the VAIO is still hanging on, and it is not uncommon for me to buy new PC hardware to experience the latest Windows UI (although admittedly I skipped over Vista this time).

It simply saddens me.

I’m sad that for the the same price of hardware and the upcoming Adobe Photoshop CS5 software release, I could get merely hardware from Apple and nothing more.

I’m sad that as a professional graphics designer for nearly twenty-five years, Apple has turned their backs and are more interested in selling computers at the mall. I’m saddened that the Geek (oh sorry, “Genius”) at the Apple Store would not step aside so that I could peruse the price list. He was too busy schmoozing a handyman and looking at digital photos of installed toilets, up-selling “now you can make a website of your sample bathrooms”.

We gave an iMac to my son two years ago, and I have been running a Photoshop trial on the Windows7 partition and it was not without hitches.

And don’t even get me started on the whole “Repairing Permissions” nonsense. How could I not have the right privileges to my own computer? It used to be simple.

When I started this blog a few years ago, I aspired to do film reviews as one of the features of my content. The trouble with that is, as every parent of young children will tell you – you don’t get out too often to see current films.

But this one was good enough to merit a few impressions:

Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is based on the wildly popular books by Rick Riordan. The Greek gods of Mt. Olympus have sired demi-gods on earth and a plot is hatched to cause the gods to war among themselves.

What I Liked

• The effects from Digital Domain and others were top notch; in particular the CG shots of Pierce Brosnan’s Centaur character artfully blended human and equine anatomy, and the Hydra scene (whose heads grow back in pairs when decapitated) was extraordinary.
• Uma Thurman’s performance as Medusa. Is she our generation’s Queen of Camp? Her head of snakes was mesmerizing (and completely plausible), pity the fool who looked upon her.
• Besides NYC looking glorious on film as always, locales like Nashville and Vegas were also brilliantly photographed for film.
• Rosario Dawson as Persephone. Appears towards the end, and worth the wait for the Dads.
• Brandon T. Jackson was funny throughout as Grover, the “Protector/Satyr”

What I Didn’t Like

• I liked it more than I probably should have. What I thought was merely a night at the movies with my son turned into a rather diverting entertainment. Greek mythology has always held a fascination for me, and credit where credit is due for Rick Riordan. I didn’t like that I liked it so much!

Best LOL Jokes (Spoilers!)

As I aspire (and struggle with) writing jokes for my comic, I am impressed when something in a film makes me laugh out loud. Here are the LOL Spoilers:

• In one of the earliest dialogs, the satyr character Grover (still incognito) is walking through the rough and tumble halls of school with Percy (played by Zac Efron look-alike Logan Lerman) when he proclaims it is “like High School, without the Musical”
• Later, Grover (the African American/Satyr) explains demi-gods are living all around us; some even famous – “I mean White House famous”.

Parental Watch-outs

Once in Vegas the three principal actors consume lotus flowers which induce a drug-like effect on them; I was uncomfortable with their stoned behavior in the presence of my eleven year old.

Overall Grade: A-

Points taken for drug reference and Persephone’s sexual innuendo. Rated PG.

Sketched from his Larry King appearance, where he was in the odd position of defending himself against allegations not yet made.

Can’t the media give this guy a break from political witch hunts and let him concentrate on the business of fixing New York’s budget crisis?

You have obviously seen – or seen enough of – James Cameron’s “Avatar” that you have formed an opinion, and regardless of what your take is of the movie – there is no disputing the fact that the bar has been raised for digital acting performances.

Notwithstanding that the process of motion capture has animators worried for their jobs (as well it should), I was struck by the disparity in Avatar’s work compared to the cut-scenes in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Upon unlocking the Poison Ivy villain (who was green way before it was fashionable), it becomes quickly apparent that the mo-capped performance of Zoe Saldana as Neytiri is light years ahead of the current state of character animation of video game cutscenes.

Batman himself in dialog-based cutscenes is a rigidly stiff, expressionless character who stands in a military pose while his lips move in a simple opened or closed manner. Clearly all the animators were assigned The Joker character, and when Batman’s eyebrows move it all, it is as mechanical as can be. Batman’s cape is more expressive than the Dark Knight himself in this title.

As long as video game budgets rival (and sometimes surpass) Hollywood films, why isn’t there closer quality? There will be day when James Cameron’s advancements in film-making technology begins to crossover into video games. It may not be possible in the current-gen of consoles, but we’ll get there. We have far to go, but make no mistake – the video game industry will get there.

Then we will all be able to suspend disbelief and be the Caped Crusader.