Lost & Taken

Free high resolution textures from Caleb Kimbrough. Click here for awesomeness.

Graphic Design speak

YouTheDesigner.com has a great article which shares graphic design terms.
http://www.youthedesigner.com/2007/09/22/design-terms/

Here are some of my favorites:

Ear The rounded part of the lowercase letters such as ‘g’ and ‘q’.

Feathering A tool used in graphic design software that makes the edges of an image appear softer.

Hue One of the three primary attributes of color. A hue is a variety of color, such as, red, blue green or yellow.

Kerning Modifying the horizontal space between letters.

Layers A tool within graphic software that permits the user to gather, organize and re-edit their artwork.

Page Layout Deals with the setup and style of content on a page. An example of a page layout is the pages in magazines or brochures.

Sans Serif A style of typeface that means "without feet." Usual sans serif typefaces include Arial, Helvetica, AvantGarde and Verdana.

Vector Graphic Vector graphics allows the designer to expand or reduce the vector graphic in size without any loss in quality using curves, points, lines and polygons.

WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get. This is an approximate screen representation of what the final printed image will look like.

Animal Planet shares their thoughts on Declawing

Dock enjoying the balcony

I was going to post my comment on their website but they are only accepting FaceBook user comments, so I'm sharing my thoughts here.

Thank you, Animal Planet, for posting this statement about declawing on your website!
Animal Planet - CatSource - Declawing

My husband and I had always declawed our cats front paws, until recently. A little more than a year ago we adopted a homeless kitten that was found in a loading dock, hence the name, Dock. Before he reached the declawing period, we did research and talked to people about declawing vs. not declawing.

We tried using Soft Paws to cap his claws but they didn't always last as long as we would have liked them to, and sometimes Dock would get stuck in curtains or other items. Eventually we stopped using them (although they are still a good alternative).

We decided not to declaw Dock. We did not want him to have this painful surgery. We raised him so that trimming his claws became a natural occurrence. (Invest in a cat claw trimmer, it's much better for them than a human finger nail trimmer!) Dock is very nice with his trimmed claws, we have had no problems with furniture, and he and the other cats get along very well.

We will NEVER declaw another cat again knowing that cats with claws are not a problem, and knowing that we are saving them from a painful surgery! We are against declawing and share the facts whenever possible.

Wouldn't you rather trim your fingernails than cut off your fingers?

- Declawing is illegal or considered inhumane in many countries throughout the world, including over 12 European nations, Australia and Brazil.

- Declawing was outlawed in West Hollywood, California, in 2003, the first such ban in the US.

- In 2009, seven other California cities, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Berkeley, Burbank, and Culver City, passed ordinances banning declawing on the basis of animal cruelty.

My Online Portfolio

Infinirock Productions and my online portfolio website each have their own look now. Infinirock hasn't changed but my portfolio site has. You can take a look by clicking here.

Orangy

Here's our Marvel 12 foot, Native Watercraft kayak, also known as "Orangy".

We had to bring him into the garage for a bit, and during that time we decided to tweak him out with an extra paddle, a bilge pump, waterproof storage container, and rope. You can also see one of the nice, new kayak skirt fitted around the opening.

Here is something Dan and I have been working on - time lapse photography. It's more his expertise than mine, however I do my best to be involved by pointing out subject matter and suggesting ideas for framing. I also set up the photos in Final Cut Express so that they can be viewed in a video file format.

This shows 3 separate clips featuring a sunset and stars.
No sound available.

Another beautiful sunset

I just finished mixing together everything for our falafel dinner.
It seemed like a good time to take a break and share some photos and videos I've been hanging on to for a little while.

We always enjoy watching sunsets from our balcony. Here's one from July 21st that quickly went from purple to orange and then faded away.

Next post, time lapse photography!

Happy Birthday Dock!

"The Littlest", our cat Dock, is now 1 year old. He's sometimes called "the littlest" because he is the smallest of our 3 male cats...so far. I'm sure he still has some growing to do!

Here's how he started out as a fuzzy kitten.

Check out the milk mouth on this little guy!

Okay, now lets compare. Here he is at 8 weeks old.

 Here he is today! Same little, orange monkey toy, but a bigger cat!

One of Dock's favorite hobbies includes going out on the 2nd floor balcony.

Happy Birthday Dock!  Ma-Rewr-A-Rewr!!!

Viva la Chica!

Chica has passed on to the great kitty litter box in the sky. There are many that will miss her.

I found some pictures of her, some I haven't seen in a long time. I thought they were worth sharing.

I know the one on the left is a little blurry at full size but how could I pass up a picture of Chica on the stove. As far as the one on the right goes, what is it with cats and drying racks? Determination to show their balancing skills and the idea that they can go anywhere? I think so.

She would be really annoyed with me taking her picture after awhile but she always looked so good, even in a pile of socks or Christmas garland!

 

Sometimes she had this Garfield attitude like in the photo on the left, or maybe she was just annoyed with all the picture taking again. The photo on the right proves her constant desire to go outside and snack on the lawn. She didn't care if you were on the 2nd floor and she was on the 1st floor, she would sit down there and wait for you to let her out!

 

More Chica.

Jedi Master Chica with her Padawan, Bob.

Chica, Bob and Chuck.

I remember the first time I woke up to Chica laying on my chest in the middle of the night. I couldn't focus and I didn't know why - she was that close to my face! I'll miss her wet nose, those cool green eyes, and her cuddling up to my belly at night under the blankets.

Poster designs

During some of my free time I have been submitting poster designs to a website called Creative Allies. It's a place where artists and designers can share their ideas for posters, CD covers, t-shirts, and other items for musicians, and have a chance for their work to be selected and printed, and win a prize as well.

Here are two of my latest poster designs. The image on the left is an 11"x17" poster created for the music festival known as Electric Forest. The image on the right is 1 of 3 designs that was created for the Ellie Goulding summer tour poster (16"x20"). You can find the other 2 designs on my website or in my portfolio.

I've included my website at the bottom of these images for display purposes - this text was not featured in the original designs.

Over the weekend

Dan made a tasty fish dinner on Sunday.
We had Mahi-Mahi cooked with mango rum.
We also had green tail onions and lettuce
fresh from the Monona farmers market,
which turned into to an easy tomato and
cucumber salad with olive oil.


After dinner, our cat Dock napped at
one of his favorite places, our porch.
You can see him in the image on the left
through the legs of the chair, and if you
click on the photo on the right you can see
one of his little teeth poking out!

Just thought I would mention it

Jeffrey Brown from PBS NewsHour always wears the most detailed and beautiful neck ties I have ever seen. HD television I love you!

Infinirock.com Update!

Yes, I've updated the website again and it has a whole new look! You'll notice an updated introduction on the home page, new mini-bios on the about page, and some new images on the design and photos page. I updated the site because I felt it needed to be cleaner and a little more professional looking. The new look will help me out during my job search too. Now I just need to add some pieces from my portfolio to the site!

Enjoy the new format of Infinirock Productions!

Rainy Day Wisconsin

Yesterday we had a great sunset along with a bit of pouring rain. In between showers we stepped out on our back porch to see a nice big rainbow. Enjoy!

Separating hair from a photo

Separating hair from a photo's background can be a tricky thing in Photoshop. I thought I could use practice with this for work and personal pieces, so I found a tutorial to help me out. The tutorial comes from: http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/handy-techniques-for-cutting-out-hair-in-photoshop

I found a couple of images of people that had fine hairs poking out here and there, and then I tried the techniques suggested. The first tutorial helped me out with this image. You'll see the original photo, and then you'll see my version with the new sky background. My version could use more work since I lost some of the finer hairs, but it was worth a try.

 

 

The second tutorial was good, but I didn't follow it too closely for this image. Here's the original photo on the left, and then my version on the right with the gradient background.

Infinirock.com Update!

We have added some new items to our website, infinirock productions! Take a look at the background image used throughout the site - it's a nice sunset photo by Steve. On the Design page you'll see some captions for the images. You'll also see a new video of the band Jerry's Dawg and a Mr. Blotto video on the Video page. These couldn't make it to our YouTube page since they were longer than 10 minutes, but one of the advantages of having them on our website is that the videos are available for download.

Abstract

Another piece inspired by a Computer Arts tutorial. The Photoshop tutorial can be found here.