The iBod is a new kind of computing device, one that takes you off the couch and allows you to truly interact. All of your iPad apps will still work with the iBod, but you will notice that they are just a little fuzzy because they’re just magnified, but apps made natively for the iBod will reach new heights of usefulness and a full body computing experience. Now, with the iBod, you can have a boxing match with a full sized partner, play chess as a king, dance your way to stardom, and have full body length videoconferencing. Preorders now available!
The iBod was inspired by Dan Wadlinger who suggested that I should focus on the next iteration of the iPad, and this is what I came up with. In Inkscape, I got a picture of a jumping person, a picture of the iPad, and bitmap traced both, in this case using the color tracing function of the bitmap trace dialog for the iPad. I added the tether and the background, and called it done.
Phoenix Tattoo for autism awareness - lemasney.com
Phoenix Tattoo for autism awareness – lemasney.com
I often call suggestions from the Facebook group for this site “requests” because I like to think I’m providing a service, (join us at https://www.facebook.com/365sketches to help with the project) but in reality, most of my suggestions from friends are not so much requests as beneficial inspirations, little hits of creativity that had nothing to do with me. It’s one of the most amazing parts of this project for me, the way that people have helped me to grow with their suggestions, because they are often surprising concepts, sometimes quite difficult from a research and organization perspective, and always a learning experience. But this one here was an actual request, and likely one of my most challenging and interesting pieces.
Fred Housel, who has been a good friend of mine for about 10 years, asked me to do this sketch by submitting the following post to the 365 Sketches FB page.
I would like to see a sketch of a Phoenix contour to the shape of my back black n white with a colored ribbon of Autism in it’s mouth . Strong and powerful ,passionate ,wise , heroic,gentle compationate , & loving … This ink should show a three dementional layer of my muscle on my back on to the shape of the Phoenix …, wide at the top and tappered down at the bass of my back … Symetry is key … Thanks my friend …
And so, I did some research, finding a few great phoenix tattoos, looking at a few images of the musculature of the back, and studying how the often three quarter views of the fiery birds could be made into a symmetrical image. After a while, I had a good idea of what I wanted, but the design definitely evolved as I went. The Autism symbol is a puzzle piece, and as many ways as I tried, I had difficulty getting the ribbon to look right. I left it as a sort of halo for the phoenix. The pure symmetry that Fred is looking for wasn’t something that I stayed absolutely true to, but I think that enough symmetry exists there to satisfy him. We’ll find out!
Thanks for the inspiration Fred, you’re a great friend, and I only hope I can talk you out of the hundreds of dollars this work would likely cost. 😉 I do have the image in a far larger size than this, and just black on transparent, if you’re interested. 😉
What do Pi and Pie have in common: A delicious coincidence by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #poster #math #food
What do Pi and Pie have in common: A delicious coincidence by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #poster #math #food
In case it’s not obvious, notice that the mirrored numbers under the piece of apple pie could be read as the letters P,I,E. I had never noticed that before, and I’m guessing you hadn’t either. Anyway, I thought it would be a fun way to show off a fun new interesting Inkscape feature.
I had a lot of fun painting the piece of pie, building it first with the Bezier tool, and then building it out with the pencil and calligraphy tools. In order to find and place the Pi symbol, I used the brand spanking new glyphs palette feature in the upcoming version of Inkscape, 0.48. I want to personally thank Jon Cruz, one of the many amazing developers who work on Inkscape every day, for taking what was essentially a spontaneous wish for me and making it a reality in Inkscape literally overnight. I’m no longer surprised by the responsiveness and feedback by members of the Inkscape team because it’s amazingly consistent. Making connections in an open source community is a great way to influence and help to improve upon software. It requires open-minded, talented, and generous set of developers. Jon Cruz, Scislac, and ~suv are all part of a vocal great team of just those kinds of developers. Thanks, Inkscape devs!
pi, pie, inkscape, gimp, open source, design, lemasney, typography
I imagine everyone reading this has had the weird common experience of using disposable bandages, like the pain of removing them, the sort of icky fascination with the uncovered transformation, the rules and practices of how to prepare the cut and the strange way in which the color of the bandage is not really the color of anyone’s skin, but is closer to some people’s skin color than others (excluding character band aids, clear bandages and other movements forward in this respect). At any rate, the whole thing is kind of weird, culturally speaking, and I like to focus on weird stuff here.
This is one of the more complex scenes I’ve done in Inkscape. The bandage was made using a few overlapping and tweaked rectangles. I made the circular perforated breathing layer by making one ellipse, duplicating it, then duplicating those until I had a row, then duplicating those into an offset row, and so on. I built the thumb and finger with rectangles. The drop of blood has the candy coating effect applied. The most fun weird part is the armhair, which I created with Inkscape 0.48’s new spraypaint tool. I made a thin line of multidirectional hairs, then randomly duplicated them with the spraypaint tool. One of my favorite new tools, for sure. I moved the hair that was in the path of the bandage to the adhesive parts of the bandage. Finally, I created some abstract blurry, overlapping low opacity shapes for the dried blood on the bandage.
Weird, I know, but it was a lot of fun to make for you. Thanks for checking it out!
With just a few minutes to spare to get in today’s sketch (Easter) I’m thrilled to share this portrait of Oliver Giller. Oliver is the person to first introduced me to the concept of Open Source. He is easily the largest philosophical influence on my life, and helped to form what I list amongst the most important beliefs that I have. I lost touch with him after he graduated from Rider University about 9 years ago, but always remembered the things that he introduced me to, including the GNU Image Manipulation Program, Linux, and the GNU General Public License.
Withing the last 2 years or so, though, we’ve reconnected, and I’m happy to say that we are even doing a project together, which I’m doing this sketch for. I’m less happy to report that Oliver had to undergo brain surgery recently which left him with a scar, and in Oliver’s work to recover he donated a picture of his new stitches and asked that I do something creative with it for our project, essentially a journal of his recent health issues.
In Inkscape, I did a bitmap trace of Oliver’s face, in which you could clearly see the scar and stitches, but without explanation, it looked only as though he had a bad haircut on one side. I decided in the interest of clarity and also of not offending anyone with the graphic nature of the subject to take a highly stylized approach to the scar and stitches. It was fun to stitch a pattern using the Bezier tool, and I think I may use this technique again.
I’m of the firm belief that Oliver has all the best chances to make a full recovery, including a beautiful wife and family, parents who have supported him forever, and a strong network of friends. Thanks, Oliver, for all you’ve given me in life, now go kick this thing’s ass, so you can get back to the important stuff.
Hey, all. This is one of the simplest sketches ever, but I think often about how much I appreciate the humor, culture, music, and exports from our northern neighbors. I really loved the way that they hosted the winter games, too. One of my favorite Canadian exports by far is one JanieH who’s been helping me a lot lately, and so it all came together as a need to say thanks to Canada for putting out some really great stuff. I hope to go someday.
In inkscape I took a morguefile image of a maple leaf, a clear Canadian symbol, imported and bitmap traced it in edge detect mode, changed the fill to red, and performed the candy coating effect on it, which is more or less just some visual trickery with the gradient tool and an inset, duplicated path. For a final touch I placed a metallized paint filter on the background rectangle to give it a bit of shine.
