I had a reasonably productive morning. I slept in a bit, since I was up until something like 1am reading Ringworld’s Children last night, but I jumped right in this morning to finish up a commission. (Hey, skirtman, it’s done!).
Then I struggled with a Sunday strip that wasn’t coming out right. Turns out it needed an extra row of expositional action. That’s easy enough. So I added a row, reprinted the script, and pencilled it.
(Allow me to remind you guys that Schlocktoberfest this year will be darker than usual. Oh, and Book IV is going to be dark, too. But if you stick with it ’till the end you’ll be happy.)
Then I got frustrated with Photoshop. The tools I thought I learned how to use in class are not working here at home. I’ve either forgotten a step, or there’s some configuration change between Photoshop CS here at home and Photoshop CS in the classroom. Oh well. It’s not like this grade is going on my permanent record. Screw the homework — I’ll tell the teacher about the problems I had, and we’ll figure out how to fix them. And with THAT decision made, it’s time for me to go to the gym. I’m in dire need of some exercise.
Oh… one of the things that came up in this mornings trawl of the business-related traffic was a proposal from one of my commercial customers. So I’ll put it to this group: Would you be willing to spend $20 for a 12-month calendar featuring 12 single-panel gags that do NOT feature Schlock Mercenary characters? The artwork and writing will all be mine, and because of the nature of this particular contract, all of the gags will have handheld devices (Palm, PocketPC, Symbian phone, etc) as an element. (No, this is not a commercial for PDAs. It’s just PDA-related humor.)
I’m not 100% sure on the price, but I figure that with shipping, that’s about what you’d spend.
–Howard
Did you say Sybian phone???
Loxley
Calendar
You mean nothing goes HUMMMMMM? Honestly, $20 / 12 jokes = not worth it for this particular fanboy. Now a page-a-day calendar….but of course that’s a lot more work.
No, I would not pay that amount. But then again, I don’t own any handheld electronics (unless you count an electric razor).
Not particularly interested in a calendar, _especially_ not one targeted to PDA humor. I like calendars, generally for the art (escher, geiger, umm… kittens, poisonous frogs…), but… well, I never got around to getting one for _this_ year, for instance. I think I generally paid around $12 for the above mentioned calendars.
I am curious what inconsistencies/problems you’re having with CS. Not that I have CS myself, but always _wanting_ to be helpful, at least. 🙂
In class they showed us how to lasso an area and then use the quickmask to add to the selection with a paintbrush. When I try it at home, I end up with a selection that I cannot a) use most of the color adujustment tools on, and b) cannot save as a selection.
I suppose I could RTFM, but in a few hours I’ll just go ATFT. 🙂
–Howard
Just a couple of checks:
1.The image is in RGB mode.
2.You are on the layer you’re trying to adjust and not just an empty layer above/below.
Mine varies a bit, it being a Photoshop 6 but those are the main reasons I can think of why it might not work. I must upgrade to CS at some point.
The calendar wouldn’t be worth it to me, because I get tired of looking at the same gag all month long. Gag calendars need to have more gags in the same space. Artwork of a non-gag nature? Different story, because usually artwork has its own story behind it. But only 12 gags, no. I didn’t buy Dilbert or Far Side 12-month 12-single-panel calendars for the same reason. 🙂
a bit much for an unknown…
I like handheld devices, and I like your humor, but $20 is a bit much to shell out for an unknown product (i.e. no schlock characters). If the price were less, and I had a better clue of what to expect, then maybe. But like somebody else kinda pointed out, humor works better with page-a-day. Not many jokes can be funny every day for a month.
I’d pay $20, I think, but it’s not an automatic decision. Then again, most calendars aren’t a lot less expensive than that. Will the PDAs have OFBs?
I can see that we’re in for a rough, BLAM-filled two weeks between now and the end of the month. Three against a substantially larger force is not a recipe for sweetness and light. I will be interested to see where Tagon’s Toughs stacks up on the galactic mercenary scale.
Fair enough.
Fair enough. I realize it’s something of a stretch for this crowd. The customer wondered if the popularity of Schlock on the web could be leveraged to bring unit costs down (double the print run, sell the surplus, pocket the savings) so I figured I’d ask.
Symbian. With an M in it. Sorry.
–Howard
A wall calendar has to have very nice artwork for me to spend more than $12 or so on one. I could see maybe spending $20 if each month had three or four strips, but not a one-panel gag.
Hey, another Niven fan! Slammin’.
Hated “A Gift from Earth”, though. Stupidest thing I ever read.
complexity
$20? One gag? Depends on the complexity and the subtlety of the gag. If it’s something I can look at all month and come up with something new each time I look at it, it’s worth that and more. If it’s too straight-forward, then no, not worth it. I think you’re more than capable of amusing me for a month at a time in a single panel, but I’m not sure the level of detail and subtlety required would be worth YOUR time…
I AM a handheld user/slave (depends on the moment)…not comfortable without that bit of weight in the pocket. 🙂
Bryan “techjunkie” Paschke
I would buy it for my sweetie in a heartbeat!
One Word: Page-A-Day Desk Calendar! I’d pay $20 for that kind of karma!
Seriously, this time of year all the malls have those annoying calendar kiosks and you can just mosey on through and compare your idea to what really sells. I don’t think many people would pay $20 for 12 PDA related jokes. And you really need to weigh the potential sales against whe value of your time to create the calendar. It might not even be worth your time to do it if only 3 or 4 people will buy it; if the return does not out-weigh the investment.
I’m just sayin’
That’s not the point. The calendar is going to be made ANYWAY under contract as a gift from my client to HIS clients. If any of you are interested in ALSO having a copy of it, you’d need to pay for it.
Shipping is from the UK, so it’s a little pricier than what I’d typically offer you folks.
–Howard
Calendar
Oh yes, and as xmas presses too!
I’ll do a bulk purchase if you will ship them to God’s Country
All the best
T
If you haven’t already gotten the quick-mask thing figured out… have you made sure of whether your quick mask is set so that colored areas show _selected_ areas of the artwork, or unselected areas.
You can adjust that, of course, by going to the “channels” palette, and double-clicking on the “quick mask” channel. There should be a dialog that pops up asking if you want the selection to show masked or selected areas.
If it’s set to the opposite of what you need, then when you return to the normal view, it will have selected areas that you _don’t_ want to work with, probably including an an ant-border around the whole edge of the window. It can _look_ like you’ve made a selection, but it’s actually a _reversed_ selection. (If you accidentally do this, you can always choose from the menu Select > Inverse).
IF you accidentally select incorrectly like this, you’ll see an ant border around what you _think_ is your selection, but it’s actually a huge selection around _everything else_. If the “everything else” is all transparent areas, then when you perform color changes or filters or whatever, the problem may not be obvious.
Coyote