Clearing the Decks - Album of the Year (so far . . .)

In anticipation of thrashing the shit out of the new Grave album 'Endless Procession of Souls' which comes out at midnight tonight (NZ time), I'm clearing the decks and declaring an early leader for my album of the year. Based objectively on amounts of plays in iTunes, subjectively on the fact I've had a copy in the car since it came out and the kids are sick to death (or grind) of it and the fact that it just plain fucking rules Terrorizer's brutal 'Hordes of Zombies' is at a very easy number one.

Close behind Suicidal Angels' 'Bloodbath' album. Surprisingly only second because they've been a favourite band for a few years now.

... and a newer album that's still getting plenty of plays and may well end up being the top album, Prong's 'Carved Into Stone'.

Honourable mentions: Zombiefication's 'Reaper's Consecration' ep, Everlast's 'More Songs for the Ungrateful Living' ep (sweet acoustic versions of some old classics), Ministry's 'Relapse', Asphyx's 'Deathhammer', Corrosion of Conformity's self titled album, Torture Division's free download ep 'Satan Sprit och Vald', KMFDM's 'Amnesia' ep and Overkill's 'The Electric Age' (ruling speed metal since the 80s).

Sadly missing the mark was the new Testament album 'Dark Roots of Earth' despite the addition of drum legend Gene Hoglan and the return of Alex Skolnick and a great video for Native Blood. Too much power metal balladry, not enough thrash and the cover songs are weak.




Inspired by the guru's of metal over at Angry Metal Guy blog

Angry Metal Guy himself

and Steel Druhm

Carry on.

I'm back - and now come with goals. WTF?

Yeah I know! First time for everything. So much for the concept of a 'freeform' life.

These are goals for a website project though. Not life goals.

I'd rather stab myself in the face than get any of those.

Anyway goals for my personal portfolio website:

TECHNICAL

• Learn to embed audio and video into my website and create popups of said art.
• Learn some basic coding. Duh.

DESIGN

• Aesthetically appealing final look (harmony of colour).
• Bridge the gap between massive scale and slow-ass web.

PERSONAL

• Legacy web presence - leave a record.
• Leave behind graphic design and move towards art/animation as a way of getting through the week.

Out for Marking

Blog is out for marking for two weeks - no new posts over that time. Sorry.

New Orchid album next month

If you are into old Sabbath, or any rock from that era, check out the new track from Orchid. New album next month. They're hardly reinventing the wheel, but just writing damned sweet rock. Looking forward to this one. My mate Paul C introduced me to Orchid a year ago and I've found myself really getting into this band ever since. Wicked stoner/doom rock and great drinking music.

Sorry honey, I've shit my pants again

One of the benefits of modern day big flatscreen TVs is that I can now read all the fine print on those medicine, hair regrowth and give up smoking ads.

Without naming names, one product for erectile dysfunction will give you diahorrea, make you lightheaded and sweat profusely. "Mmmmm, I'm horny babe, but I just fell over and cracked my head on the coffee table and shit my pants. Wanna do it?" Classy.

One of the give up smoking medicines will give you insomnia and a rapid heartbeat. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the middle of the night is the WORST possible time for a smoker with nothing better to do than think about giving up smoking. This kinda shit should knock you out for about a month, not keep you awake.

The hair regrowth one will lower your sex drive and give you mouth ulcers. So now I'm scoring chicks with my beautiful hair but can't get it up or even kiss them because I've got bleeding gums? I want some of that one.

Which leads us right back to the erectile dysfunction pills.

"Whoops, sorry honey, I've shit my pants again."
Somebody at the drug companies has got a mean sense of humour.

Easy Photoshop productivity increase

I realised today in Animation class that I hadn't programmed some of my favourite Photoshop commands, things I've gotten so used to over the years that I often forget where the hell stuff is in the pull-down menus.

Any command or function you use commonly that isn't already assigned a Quick (or Hot) key is easily done. Most used by me would be to 'Convert to Greyscale', 'Convert to RGB', 'Convert to CMYK' and to flatten a layered image. You'd be surprised how often you will use the pulldown menu and how much time ends up being consumed on simple commands that Adobe should have assigned anyway.

Just thought I'd share the process.

Under the 'Edit' pulldown menu, near the bottom is 'Keyboard Shortcuts' (or Ctrl-Alt-Shift K). Simply look through the different pulldown menus as follows:

Pull Down Menu location

This will give you access to any of the commands available in Photoshop.

From here it is a simple process to assign new QuickKeys for any of your favourite or most used commands.

For example, I would assign the following:

CONVERT TO GREYSCALE - Ctrl-Alt-Shift G

CONVERT TO RGB - Ctrl-Alt-Shift R

CONVERT TO CMYK - Ctrl-Alt-Shift C

FLATTEN IMAGE - Ctrl-Alt-Shift F

Obviously you will have your own most used commands, but along with the benefits of learing the QuickKeys anyway, having your own sets will make your life and productivity that much easier.

Launching a gallery and introducing a conundrum

  I work in pretty large scales (up to 12,000 pixels wide x 300dpi) so I have always had an issue getting my art online. It works best as massive framed canvas prints, but cost being what it is I only print on request for these.

  In the past few years I have taken to HD animation of my work to get it across (another reason I am at WITT - self-teaching will only get you so far). Using this method I can zoom into work to get the detail out, the RGB works great with the colours and the pieces  move, flow and coalesce . How I see them in my mind's eye anyway.

  Working in HD digital animation also has the advantage of making my art accessible, culminating in three shows at various "Festival of the Lights" at Pukekura Park, some gallery exhibitions, Sticky Filth use one as a moving backdrop and I've done trippy animations for a couple of nightclubs in AK and Welly.

To get around the scale issue I have included details of the works.

Enjoy.

GALLERY LINK

SEO - sell yourself for rankings (abatnz, digital art, digital art, digital art, digital, art, art digital, art, digital .....)

In Forza setting a fastest time will get you up the rankings. On the web it's a whole different story.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a method of making sure you are as close as possible to the top of the first page of any search engine (google, bing etc). Why is this important? Well, essentially, you have a web page to get noticed don't you? Duh! Being first doesn't hurt.

There are many, various, cunning ways to do this. Just search 'basic SEO techniques'.

For me, alongside some of the more obvious named ones, I think I'll be organising a sitemap and I'll definitely be trying ALT Tag Optimization in my images from now on, being a digital artist and all.

Business Insider website defines the importance of a sitemap as:

Adding a site map -- a page listing and linking to all the other major pages on your site -- makes it easier for spiders to search your site.
"The fewer clicks necessary to get to a page on your website, the better," advises marketing vox.

ALT Tag Optimization is embedding information into the html for your pictures - useful as the bot things like to look for text and still struggle with images - being a digital artist means that pictures are important for me. The better I have them linked, the higher up the SEO rankings I'll be.

Why WITT? Why Now?

After over two decades in typography and print and design I had basically had enough of doing the same old stuff, day after day. That and I could see the end of a lot of print firms coming faster than retirement.

New media and especially the advent of tablets has brought a massive change to the print industry over the past few years. More and more businesses are moving to web based ways of getting their brand and message across. Why print a DLE brochure which is out of date the moment it is printed when you can have a web page that looks better, will never be out of register and can always be updated with new information?

The writing is no longer on the wall, it's on the screen.

That's why I'm at WITT.

The choice to learn and educate myself, the first time I've been at school since I was in the Sixth Form, has opened up new options and gotten me interested and reinvigorated in design. Film and TV and animation are a blast. Definitely something I'm pursuing with glee.

I've seen myself as a digital artist for some years now. This is just the next step.