Friday October 26, 2007

Good evening all! It's Halloween next week, so I'll share more of my favorite scary stuff. In comics, you can't do much better than the truly haunting horror to be found in EC comics 1950's triple shot of titles consisting of “Tale from the Crypt”, “Vault of Horror”, and “The Haunt of Fear”. The EC comics were anthologies rather than the more common continuing tales found in other comics of the time. The stories were often centered on revenge or a kind of shocking justice, delivered with a brutal twist. The artwork was always a cut above (no pun intended), providing the right blend of atmosphere and graphic gore. The comics were well remembered enough to inspire a feature film and sequel, and a TV series, as well as being reprinted by various publishers. Check it out!

The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.

click on the image to get a full-sized view

The book of the moment is still Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The website of the week is the Pinhole Gallery; an amazing collection of photos taken using pinhole cameras.

The PC game of the week is Supreme Commander, which has consumed way too much of my dwindling free time.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.

Bye for now!

Friday October 19, 2007

Greetings and welcome back! It's another warm Friday night in the midst of autumn and I've finally found the time time make another post. The topic for this week is web design. I'm going to try to update my aging web site to better reflect my current interests. I don't have any sophisticated tools for development, and my budget is nil, so I'm going to make use of free or open source software. There are a number of decent applications available, but I've settled on a program called NVU to create my new page. NVU is an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor that scores bonus points for simplicity. Right now the I'm at the road-map and rough draft phase of the project, but I'll post further information as it progresses.

The book of the moment is Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The PC game of the week is Dungeon Siege, an oldie but goody. DS is one of my favorite fantasy games.

The other distraction of the week was Sudoku.

And that's about it for this week. I'll be back in roughly a week with more good stuff to share.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.

Bye for now!

Wednesday September 5, 2007

Good evening! I'm back with more info and fun for this fine late-summer night. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on music theory. I recently got a refresher course on musical scales during my weekly piano lesson with my niece Anna, and that reminded me of how useful the simple scales can be. The C major scale can be played on a piano or keyboard using all the white keys. Most of us are familiar with the 7 note sound of the major scale. You can also play an A minor scale by using the same white keys and starting on “A”. The tone changes from cheery and bright to dark and serious when you change modes from major to minor. If you play up and down the black keys on a piano/keyboard, then you're able to play a major or minor pentatonic scale. The pentatonic scale is so called because it has just 5 notes. One use of pentatonic scales is in Blues/Rock improvisation. An aspiring lead guitar player will often learn a set of “box” patterns for playing major/minor pentatonic scales, which can then serve as the basis for creating guitar riffs or solos. This has just been a brief taste of the scales. Scales are a topic of sufficient breadth and depth, that entire books have been written about them. I'll leave off until some future post to discuss more about the humble yet oft-employed scale.

There's no picture this week. Instead I've uploaded a short video from a summer day at the beach.



The loops of the week are still on hold while I search for another place to store them. Let me know if there are any good hosting services to recommend.

The site of the week is a gallery of 3D computer generated artwork at the CG society.

And that's about it for this week. I'll be back in roughly a week with more good stuff to share.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

Tuesday August 28, 2007

Hello and welcome back! The days of late August and the tail end of summer have been filled with heat and high temps. I've been staying cool and chugging lots of cool water, and other drinks. The topic for this week is graphics, and the program of the moment is Project Dogwaffle. I've written in past posts about this nifty free program but I've only really scratched the surface. This time out I'll talk more about creating a simple picture from scratch. For this example we'll make a green vine with flowers over a background that looks like stone. I started with a new blank page, at 800x600 resolution. From the “Filter” menu select “Render” and then “Plasma Noise”. Keep the default setting of 7 iterations and press “Go”. You'll get a nice pattern ranging from dark to light with slight variation. Now we'll copy the pattern to the swap buffer. You can think of the swap buffer in PD as a holding area that is the same size as the picture you're working on. From the “Buffer” menu select “Copy to Swap”, to copy the current picture to the swap buffer. Now select “Clear” from the buffer menu to clear the current screen to white. The white color is a bit too light, so we'll make it a more appropriate gray. In the tool panel, right click on the paint brush icon, and select “Simple”, and “Single”. Now we'll select a nice dark gray color from either the the black-to-white gradient or the tiled colors in the tool panel, by left clicking on it. The black rectangle in the tool panel will change color to whatever shade you selected. Now select the fill icon in the tool panel, and left click anywhere on white expanse of the current screen. If all went well you'll have a solid gray rectangle instead of the white one. At this point we're ready to apply a bit of texture, and make it look more like rock than a flat wall. From the “Filter” menu select “Emboss by Swap”. Press the “Top Left” button and press “OK” and a nice texture will be applied to the flat gray surface. The plasma noise pattern that we made back at the top has been used as a height map with the white or dark regions representing different depths. The result is a cool looking bumpy surface. Now we'll draw some vines and leaves and flowers over the background. Select a green color, by left clicking on the palette in the tool panel. Now we'll choose a paint tool by right clicking on the paint brush icon in the tool panel and select “Pastels”, and “Soft pastels”. Use the mouse to draw some gentle green curves. Now right click on the paint brush icon in the tool panel, and select “Organic effects”, and “Leafy 2”. This brush produces a variety of small leaves with each stroke. Add some leaves to the green curves to make them look like vines. We're almost done with the picture now. The last step will be to add some flowers. Select a contrasting color from the palette in the tool panel. In this case a red or orange or magenta will work well. Now right click on the paint brush icon, and select “Organic effects” and “Flowery”. The flower brush works in a similar manner to the leafy brush. Draw some flowers on and around the green vines using the mouse and holding down the left button. There we go. A finished picture in less time than it takes to make hummus. You can save your completed painting in TGA or BMP format by selecting “Save” from the “File” menu. We'll try out some other features of PD in a future post.

Here's my finished PD painting:
Click on a picture to get the full-sized view.

The loops of the week are still on hold while I search for another place to store them.

The website of the week is a Czech Radio page featuring MP3 and FLAC recordings of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos performed on period instruments. Go there and get your Baroque fix.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it. Bye for now!

Wednesday August 15, 2007

Belated greetings once more! I've been away from the blog dealing with a few personal issues for a couple weeks, so I hope that my meager readership hasn't lost interest and jumped ship. The last time I was here I was in the midst of a big computer game programming project. I felt that project was breaking too far away from my original intent to keep the focus of this blog on the arts. It seems that Mark's Digital Arts had strayed too far into the realm of technology. I've decided to launch a separate site that will deal with Game Programming in Euphoria, since I'm a devotee of that language. I'll find some more music, art, and writing related topics to share in future posts, and save the programming topics for the other page. In the meantime I have another true story to share that transpired during the last week.

Bella is a red parrot of the genus Eclectus, who lives with my good friends Frank and Martha. She has become something of a celebrity in my apartment building and she is an unofficial mascot to all the tenants. She's only 3 years old, and has never had her wings clipped, preferring to stay near home and eat sunflower seeds and fruit. On the evening of August 1st Bella flew the coop, straight over the gate and into the wider world. It might be that her instinct to fly overrode her need for the security and comfort of home. Any caged bird must feel the pull of the skies and tall trees and wind. With Bella's departure, a kind of dark cloud settled over the apartments. Nothing seemed to work out right and Murphy's Law prevailed. I was already fighting a bit of depression and I found myself threatening to founder. They say that the one best thing about hitting bottom is that the only way to go is up. Hope was restored when a single feather was found on her cage, which had been left out in the courtyard with food and toys. That Sunday, August 5th I got up early, and went down to the courtyard and was greeted by the most beautiful sight in the world. Bella was home after her 4 day odyssey, tired and hungry and worn, but safe. She found a kindly couple a couple of towns away, and literally landed on the shoulder of the man. It took a call to the shelter and then a relieved family was reunited and whole again. The story might well have ended there, but for an almost incredible change in personal fortunes. The restoration of Bella to her perch brought luck, prosperity and balance. I don't know if it's Karma, providence or the Force, but something clicked back into place the moment Bella was home. For now I'm simply basking in the good vibes and pulling my own life back onto its path. It takes a little loss to realize what truly is important in life and what we can or can't do without. The most important are the family and loved ones that fill our lives and enable us to get on with whatever else life requires.

This is Bella!
Click on a picture to get the full-sized view.

That's about it for this week.. I'll be back next time with some fresh content and a renewed focus on art and the other oddities of life.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

Friday July 13, 2007

A slightly belated Good Evening to all! I've been away doing a bit of reorganization, and preparing more content for the game project. Yea, yea, it's an excuse, but life if full of those and I'll try not to exploit them too much. The topic for this week is audio and focus will be on sounds and a short musical loop for our computer game project. Last week I went over the creation of some graphic elements, and in keeping with the theme and genre (simple puzzle game), I'm likewise going to stick to only a few choice sounds and a very brief bit of background music.

I used the Audacity sound editor for the sound effects. Audacity lets you generate a number of different tones, including saw, sine, or square waves, plucked string sounds, or random noise. You can then trim the sample down to a suitable length (I made mine about half a second), and apply a few effects and export it as a WAV. I made 3 samples to use as sound effects in the game and saved them as WAV files.

Click on the picture to get a full-sized view.

Right click on a name to download the WAV file.
---- Blip ---- Boop ---- Bump -----

Now let's see about a quick musical piece. My favorite “all in one” application for making music is Orion Pro. I created a series of patterns, little one-measure musical snippets, for 4 different chords; C, Em, Am, and F. I assigned 4 different software synthesizers to the each of patterns; A drum machine, vintage additive engine, bass emulator, and plucked string. I slowed the tempo down to about 110 BPM (beat per minute) to give it a less frenzied pace. Effects were applied, and the patterns were strung together (sequenced) into a short song of roughly a 1 minute duration. This rough mix was then exported using the “Stream to WAV” option.

Click on the picture to get a full-sized view.

We're almost through now. I used Sound Forge Studio to do the finishing steps on our song file. The main steps were adjusting the volume level using the “dynamics” and the “normalize” functions. I also applied a small amount of “reverb” to the song and exported to OGG (OggVorbis) format.

Click on the picture to get a full-sized view.

Right click on the song name to download the OGG song file.

----- Chroma -----

The name of the music file is also the name I've settled on as the title of our demo game. Chroma. That has a nice ring to it. And that's it for this week. Next time we'll have a look at the initial programming steps in Euphoria.

This game project has turned into something far larger than the original scope of this web log, and I'd like to know if my few but loyal readers find it the height of tedium or think I'm onto something. Would anyone want to see a more detailed version as an HTML document, going into the nuts and bolts of each of the steps I've briefly covered in the blog? How about a regular feature on a separate web page that exclusively delves into the in and outs of game design and implementation using free/cheap tools? Gimmie feedback folks and tell the old gray cat where next to go!

You Would Be a Pet Bird

You're intelligent and witty, yet surprisingly low maintenance. You charm people easily, and they usually love you a lot more than you love them. You resent anyone who tries to own or control you. You refuse to be fenced in. Why you would make a great pet: You're very smart and entertaining Why you would make a bad pet: You're not interested in being anyone's pet! What you would love about being a bird: Flying, obviously What you would hate about being a bird: Being caged

What Kind of Pet Would You Be?

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it. Bye for now!

Friday June 22, 2007

Greetings! The topic for this week is graphics and the focus will be on creating graphics for a computer game. Last week we started the the project and made some initial decisions about the type of game we'll make. The game we're working on is a simple puzzle game, so the graphics will likewise be clear yet limited. To begin with I created a gray background using Project Dogwaffle. Start by creating a new blank 32x32 square buffer, then use the “bumpy toy” tool from the filter/render menu. Then shift the picture, apply some noise and brush strokes, smooth it using “median”, and finally emboss it slightly. It takes a bit of effort, but if done carefully you can create an image that tiles nicely.
Click on the picture to get a full-sized view.

Now that we have a basic background we'll create the game pieces. It was a relatively simple matter to use Bryce to render a series of shiny colored balls. Create a sphere, then change the attributes (size and position), and material. Then move and rotate the camera to frame the ball and save the pic as a BMP file
Click on the picture to get a full-sized view.

Those graphical elements should suffice for our simple game. Next week we'll continue the game creation thread and make some sounds and music for the project.




The loops of the week were created using Orion Pro
Right click on a loop name to download it.

----- Bass 1----- Bass 2-----
----- Drums 1 ----- Drums 2 -----
----- Synth 1 ----- Synth 2 -----

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it. Bye for now!