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哇呀呀……

一叽咕

-clarifications

By digital painting I mean paint the traditional way on a computer, excluding the way you would use MS Paint, that is you have pencils, watercolors, albeit all digital version.

–Photoshop
So far my own experience with Photoshop is limited to amature level photo retouching following some random tutorials step by step, but I’ve already felt the unlimited freedom and how both beginners and masters can enjoy it.

Previously the main use of PS is photo editing, but apparently Adobe tried to extend this territory. From recent version (Since CS5 or earlier?) PS added a brand new digital painting perspective, together with the assortments of brushes (i.e., draw media and wet media) to simulate traditional media, PS is becoming a more and more suitable and pleasant environment for digital painting.

-Tip: if you want to learn digtial painting, STOP trying different fancy brushes! Stick to one (like chalk) and learn all thing define the word “painting”: perspetive, value, composition, through that single brush. Trying different brushes at the begining is same as steping at the same location – you feel you are learning but you aren’t!

I haven’t started using PS yet, but for anyone want to take digital drawing/painting seriously, I think PS is a must-have. And please see some videos of masters’ using it before you give it up (for its price).

-Tip: classic ways are always crucial, although there are no undo-redo, no layer mode, but these ‘deficiencies’ simply can never undermine its value. It is the way has been followed by great artists all over the world, all through the time. Besides, this is no distraction from modern electronic device, believe me, it feels really ‘quiet’ when you are holding a pencil and draw traditionally.

-Tip: you can’t have your laptop and tablet everywhere with you, but it’s possible with a pencil and sketchpad, I think the first step towards an artist is to start carry your drawing tools with you when you start a trip.

–Corel Painter
Simply, it is not suitable for my needs. The reason is I have mypaint and Photoshop already. I once tried Painter but felt it’s user-unfriendly, and the softwere is slow on my machine. So I don’t think I’m going to use it, though the brushset is more complete than any other software and many artist like it.

–MyPaint (http://mypaint.intilinux.com/)

MyPaint screenshot (work by David)

Free and powerful, that’s my impression of this software. Mypaint is a free, open source software that I with to recommand to everyone. Everything was designed to be as simple as possible (GUI is the simplest of all I’ve seen, also there are many single-key shortcuts calling the most-used functions like eraser, canvas flip, color pick, etc.), so when you work, there is no need to look for any functionality (whick is distractiong, by the way) – they are right under your left hand (assuming that you are right-handded and your right hand is holding your digital stylus.

The are also many choices of papers and brushes. Personally I like David’s brushset a lot, which is embeded in mypaint by default, along with other well made brushes.

-Tip: as to paper, I would suggest you NOT to stay on the default white paper for ever. Try something else, like the yellow-tinted paper which some professional designers use to show their production level work. Sometimes, a change of paper do give you a ‘pro’ feeling :-/

Another thing worth mentioning is this is a fast evolving software. On youtube and its offical website, the number of artworks created with mypaint is steadly increasing. The development is very active too (you can check their git commit log if you wish to look into the code), and new funtions are being added. The next big step to take for the developers seems to be layermode, some of which are already implemented. I havn’t chekc that out because currently I only use pencil, but for people working with colors, you may want to download the source code and compile the newest version.

Simplicity does not mean function limited, you can create professional drawings with this software.

–One Great Resource

Please Google Fengzhu if you don’t know about him, you can find his blog and the school of design he tutors. Also search him in YouTube for about his 46 free video tutorials (http://www.youtube.com/user/FZDSCHOOL).

Fengzhu is not only great in his art skills, but also in that he shares all his experiences, including how he use certain tools and the real-time working process. There are ~40 videos in his YouTube channel and new upload generally comes every two or three weeks. I can assure that you can learn a lot.

-Tip: all videos are accompanied by vocal explanations, so many tips are ‘hiden’ in a random minute of a random video. For me, as a beginner, I would watch them all so nothing would be missed.

场景设定，临摹朱峰的作品

艺术和完美

The Thinker (From Wikipedia)

在Slashdot上看到这样一段评论：
”My wife spent some time in serious art-school mode. One of the profs that she greatly respected told her that making great art requires two people — 1) the person capable of making the piece, and 2) someone else to shoot the first person when they’re done. This is because most folks can’t leave well enough alone and keep futzing until what was great (or at least on the cusp of it) is munged beyond the pale.“ （A comment quoted from Slashdot）
基本同意这个观点：任何艺术家在创作最开始的时候很容易完全处于忘我的境界——也是创作的最高境界。
可是后来即将完成、再次审视自己作品的时候，不少人恐怕已经脱离了这个境界。
——失去了一鼓作气的激情和灵感，而戴上了刻意审视的眼镜，如此心境下的修改，效果（还是叫“后果”？）可想而知。

开源的Project

The Gnome Project (From Wikipedia)

又在上面看到：
“When you get to the phase where your new features all involve renaming things, rounding corners, or improving “user experience” then you know it’s done and you should pick a new project to work on. I’m sort of serious here. Early on in a project there are lots of important changes and each release has some big improvements. Later on though the devs/company wants to keep up having recent releases so they start reaching deep in the barrel to find things to keep the feature list full.”（A comment quoted from Slashdot）
这是关于一个开源Project（Gnome3?）的看法，的确如此。
一个Project是有尽头的，它的Feature list不可能永远激动人心。
因为它是人造的：
——就如一个雕刻，刚开始大刀阔斧到后来的精雕细琢，终究有放下刻刀的一瞬。
软件虽然会随着时间不断演化，可是演化的幅度肯定也越来越小

新月认为其实这也是科学吸引人的地方
——没有完美，也没有终点
没有完美，所以拥有自由！没有终点，所以没有遗憾！

至于我就一直用gnome2下去了，kde/xfce/lxde/openbox一大干人等就是听听说而已，基本不知道是什么东西。

版权？真无语！

圆环套圆环的封闭（From Wikipedia）

20th Fox不让一个游戏公司使用dice age的名称，原因就是ice age是它自己生产的电影名。
这是我至今关于此类消息（专利、侵权云云）中看到的最恶的逻辑。
——连科学词汇都想据为己有，以后对这公司的产品恐怕有心理纠结了。
不过电影公司既然是商业公司,那么竞争的属性就决定它们很多情况下和道德搭不上边，大多数人不会想到背后的林林总总，所以可以心无芥蒂的欣赏艺术。
（打个不怎么恰当的比喻，就像吃餐馆的人很难看到那些食物是怎么准备的，眼不见心为静）
不过把各种文化霸为己有，什么东西只要版权是他们的，别人碰都不可以碰，即使是一些流传很广、在公司创始人没生的时候就存在的东西——
着实让人很很–很不爽啊！

#为啥，因为一个好的题材可以生金啊，怎么能给别人……