The new fairx

I'll be launching Myfairx.com in a day or two. Still under heavy testing and adding new features.

meanwhile if you're interested, please visit http://www.myfairx.com/main to test the links and report if something not working. All the posting are gibberish at the moment. I'm still tweaking the template to see if it can goes any better.

my own Myfairx.com

My new site still on heavy testing. You can visit http://www.myfairx.com to see the archive (actually theres only 3 strips lol) there.. I'm testing many features mainly Joomla! CMS and Gallery2 and I was hoping to finish the site template by this weekend. Mainly I use the standalone server to test the feature and update them to my webhosting.

It took a while to figure out joomla! template building and content placement. you can take a peek here at http://joomla.myfairx.com . I f anyone can help me with the configuration you are most welcomed to do so!

See you soon, by weekend the new site will be open to public. Yay!

Few change here, big change soon

As you regular visitors notice up there, theres a change in the blog title. I change the "The Proximity" title into "download Addict" to better suit the content & the strip theme.

Another big change coming soon. I'm quite busy with my dayjob and preparing for my own domain & new hosting. Hopefully they'll be ready in a week. If theres someone who could help me install Drupal CMS & configuring the modules, you are most welcomed.

I'll keep the blog intact and updated for as long as I can, so visitors can gradually migrate to the new site & update their bookmark.

See you again soon. No new strip I'm afraid, but who knows?

3rd strip and finally, chicks!

I don't hate the word chicks, but sometimes worried about girls idea on how the words offended them.

Finally, the 3rd strip is up.. sigh... took me 6 hours to finish (again using mouse). Still no tablet (sigh.. small company small budget - actually theres no need fro me to use tablet in my line of work anyway).

The main reason for the longer hours are.. guess what? Girls (or awek, chicks, onnanoko.. ) always a primary concern to me when drawing comic or cartoon. Often I took longer to draw and refining them. Even when using traditional media, I often used 000 (tripple 0) brush to slowly paint the fine lines compared to other character. Somehow to me, girls needs extra care and respect both in arts and of course, in real life too (lol).

But this time, since the character are more exciting I decided to capture a couple of screen during the process. Perhaps they'll show you some idea on my own way creating comic strip. I used Xara X to create vector comic as a hobby. but most of the time I use Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw in my everyday job. Soon, I was hoping to add a few tutorial and tips on vector illustration & computer arts that I used. Not much fancy stuff but more of a beginner guide to vector arts, fairx style. Not a professional level tutorial though, but nevertheless, something new and rare... (surprise surprise..).

Here are some of the screenshot for today's strip:




As you can see in the screenshot, the software I'm using is Xara X , old version, not the latest Xara Xtreme. Its kinda dull right? Some might question why didn't I upgrade to the latest version. First of all, they cost money (Xara are wayy cheaper than any Adobe suite, but it still cost me), and secondly, I'm using Xara X personally (not using company's software) for the sole purpose of drawing vector comic / illustration and the latest Xara X haven't introduce much new components that I might use.

Everything still almost identical except the icon cosmetic and few optimization here and there. Don't get me wrong, latest upgrade of Xara X does worth it, losts of new picture editing features and compatible with existing Photoshop plugin, but I don't need them. plus I really hoping for a Linux version soon!

Please.. enjoy the strip and the screenshot (?? lol). its 3 am here and I'm a bit sleepy. maybe I'll edit this post next time. Plus I got a wedding ceremony to attend tommorow afternoon. I need my good looking face in place and ready... chicks.. here I come...!!!

Enjoy!

*edit: aded 2 new screen capture. HQ Preview mode vs LQ Line mode:

Graphic students and lazy design method

Today, just before I get back from my whole week holiday, I noticed 2 banner & bunting order that been sitting on my desk. Its due yesterday (lol). I called my partner and he said that its been reschedule for delivery early next week. I was concerned earlier because the design that costumer provided still isn't reviewed.

The customer was a couple of art & design students at local U who came to the office just before the holiday. . It seems that they're doing it for paper project or something. They already show me the design before. At a glance, I noticed that the design was beautifully rendered in my Illustrator 9. The file was originally created using Illustrator 10. Luckily the AI10 import into AI9 aren't that problematic compared to importing a CS version. I couldn't resist asking question about the Adobe Illustrator as the industry standard and their implementation in various subject in Art & Design courses, like why are they still using AI 10 and not CS for example.. or do they (Adobe) really have a "constrain proportion" features when transforming objects.

Afterall, not many customer I've dealing with, use Illustrator. Most of them brought me design in MSword, Print Artist, Photoshop and even sometimes.. MSpaint BMP (in a diskette).

It was fun, even I learned a trick or two. ..Until I opened their design (2 of them). Its supposed to be ad banner for cappucino cafe or something. Fine.. the design was expected from a graphic / A&D students. Nice styling and glamorous font design. But when I tried to resize the illustration to match their desired final output, the design was stretched. Selecting all the elements again reveal that those students actually using a large jpeg picture, uncropped, masked using clipping mask. In a simple word, they're using a lazy method to make the design look good and convincing on computer screen but really bad for printer output.

Don't get me wrong. I don't really mind bad design or inappropriate filetype brought by customer. Its my job to fix them and make it look good both on screen and for final printing. But a bad & lazy design coming from a graphic / Art & Design students? man..

It took me 10 minute to masking / clip the picture properly and import them using CorelDraw 12 to clean the problem on the fly. Problem solved (amazing but true. Why Corel you ask? I don't really understand the reason, but most SME printer company seems to prefer Corel over Adobe, at least here in Malaysia)

what's really bugging me is why this thing happens in the first place. Who's fault is it? The student, the lecturer, or the educational system itself? This is not the first time something like this happened. Once I bump into a 2nd year graphic student who tried to color a scanned artwork in photoshop. Over and over only to find that every color that he picked ended up as greys when painted. Did he even understand the how rgb/greyscale color working from the start? Not to mentioned countless of student sending me colorful Powerpoint design in A4 size and ask me to print them as 10' x 3' banner.

Today's educational system does create a creative society, but do they really made people more savvy?

I'mm baaaacckkk...!!

Sigh............~

I'm back..

Its a week holiday I guess. I'll start te optimization of the page starting tomorrow. I've been reading much about SEO and keyword optimization. It's time for blog contents revamps and new css layout. More content, more info (I hope) and more serious blogging.

Hope to see you all again soon.

Ah.. almost forget.. NEW STRIP! hopefully a new strip a day onwards!

Cheers..!

Missing Image?

A friend of mine complains about the comic strip been missing for quite some time. I realized that only when using firefox. Internet Explorer seems to cache the image instead. It seems that ripway.com only allocate 15 MB bandwidth per day for its free account. I'm rather surprise that I had around 100 - 500 page view everyday. Too bad everybody ignored the Google Adsense LOL..

Maybe I should consider using another image hosting. I'm a bit hesitate to use imageshack coz I need a close track of the image bandwidth regularly. Hell, I even consider a web hosting lately. Is there any good free hosting out there with unlimited bandwidth? Please suggest.