The day I have waited months in anticipation for is finally here, Adobe CS5 is officially public. While it does not hit shelves until the 3rd of May, you can do what I did and download a copy of the entire Master Collection off of the Adobe website. You can use the demo for 30 days or enter a license once you have purchased it, no need to reinstall.
There are so many wonderful improvements in CS5 that I can’t even begin to scratch the surface. All of the programs run natively in 64 bit mode for one thing, making them far more responsive and able to render nearly all effects and filters in real time. Photoshop also added some amazing features like content aware fill , 3d brushes / paint mixing, and puppet warp. Plus Photoshop now has better built in HDR processing… which I just HAD to play around with first thing today. Below are some pictures I took downtown using multiple exposures and the new HDR features.
Even while quickly slapping together these photos I found all the new features greatly sped up my workflow. I can’t wait to dig into the rest of CS5′s Master Collection to see how my illustration, video editing, and audio editing workflows will be affected. Oh and just in case any of you missed out on the launch video, here it is. It covers quite a few of the new features in all of the programs included in the Master Collection.
So this is it, the new site has finally been launched! Many of you have been waiting a long time for any change to my site, let alone a complete remake. The old site was dated because it did not show my current web designing skills and no longer represented me the way I felt my online portfolio should. I started working on this revision of my site a couple months ago and have not looked back at my old site since.
Some of you might notice that new site resembles Apple.com, and you are correct. I took much of my inspiration from Apple because I like the style and minimalist look of their site and wanted to challenge myself to duplicate it as a study for future web development. By studying or replicating another artist’s work, one can learn new ways to think about their own methods, techniques, and workflows; I definitely learned a lot doing this project.
I wanted to give the site a more professional feel by not having my blog be the first page you see. The homepage now highlights one of my articles as the main content. I thought this would be a good way to direct people to a new piece of artwork or a important event in my life. Below that is a series of four smaller boxes that highlight four main categories of my blog, My Life (news form my personal life), My Work (new artwork or tutorials), My Freetime, (media reviews and gadgets), My Goodness (random articles or awesomeness).
The blog has become easier to use in a lot of different ways. The entire blog is now driven by ajax, which means much snappier loading of content without having to reload the entire site. The new search feature highlights the words you search for in the articles it returns. I have also added a blog navigation bar that can be used to filter the posts in my blog by their categories and dates. My sidebar now contains more dynamic information like my Facebook/Twitter status, recent Flickr pictures, my Pandora activity, and my latest run using Nike+. This way even if I don’t update my blog for a while, the content on my page never gets completely stale. I plan to add more sidebar features in the future as well.
The portfolio and résumé sections of my site have changed quite a bit as well. The static way my old portfolio was displayed drove me nuts, so I designed a much more interactive and colorful way to display my work. I also added descriptions and dates for the majority of my work to let people know more about it. My résumé was also in desperate need of some style, so I tried to add some color and even some humor by incorporating images into a new layout.
Anyway, enough talking… cruise around the site and let me know what you think. I will be adding more features and doing some tweaking over the next couples weeks so let me know if you run into any issues. Glad to be back!
This past weekend Becca, Sam and I went to back to Oak Openings to take some pictures of the Evergreen Trail. I have to say that this trail contains one of my new favorite places in Ohio by far. The place I am referring to is a small area of the trail that contains some stripped evergreen trees, which we now dub the “magical forest.” Anywho, I thought I would share some of the photos I took along the trail. I hope when Didier and Rachel come home for Christmas that we can all make another trip there with snow on the ground.
Working on a few new characters at the moment. I will post more pics of new characters as the other models come along. Any crit and comments are more than welcome.
First off I would like to extend my thoughts and well wishes to the friends and family of today’s horrible events at Virginia Tech. I am very sorry that this kind of thing continues to happen and I hope that this does not start some new trend. Again, you are all in my thoughts.
On a lighter note, I finally have my computer up and running without any kinks. I made some final renders of a few of my latest projects which can be found under the Models section. I have also been working on a website for my former highschool art teacher Mr. Heaton. I am having a lot of fun with it and I hope it turns out to be something they really enjoy. More updates will be coming soon as I start to finish up my current projects and demo reel.
