My contribution to the retirement gift for Glen and Judy Felch, originally uploaded by gserafini.

I had the pleasure of being a student under both Glen and Judy Felch at Principia College during my Studio Art BA program (1994-1998). As part of their retirement, the Art department is organizing a gift, whereby students and alumni are being invited to contribute a 4″ square piece of artwork that will be mounted on a square block. This is my piece, which shows the pen, notebook and computer that has led to my career as a designer.

In 1996 Judy Felch gave me a piece of advice that has stuck with me ever since. She said, “You should do something with computers and your art.” At the time, all I could imagine was doing something maybe with video games, or Macromedia Director CD-ROMs. The Web was still in its infancy. Shortly after receiving this advice, I typed this into Yahoo’s search box (this was pre-Google): “HTML tutorial”. I read through one the first night, then the next night went through another and actually built my first web page. I trace my subsequent career as a web and user interface designer directly to that excellent advice.

When I first decided to be an art major, I didn’t think that there was anything that I would be able to use my degree for to make any money. I decided to do what I enjoyed the most, however, and I’m happy to say that by embracing not only analog but also digital art I’ve been blessed with a very satisfying and financially rewarding career.

I am very grateful to the Felches, and wish them all the very best as they retire and focus on their own fine-art careers. They are both outstanding teachers, and I am very proud to call them friends.

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Description

oil on canvas
by Robin Kibby
(c) 2006
4 in. x 4 in. (1.5 in. deep)

About the Highway Paintings:

This series celebrates my commute to and from the Oakland studio - landscapes created by layers of cement, Oakland shipyard, distant San Francisco, and the Marin Headlands. The highway undersides are from a part of Oakland that’s been recently redeveloped. A swath of roadway dubbed the Bay Trail passes right under an intersection of highways giving the Vespa rider (me) an impressive view of cement and metal overhead.The smallest Kibby Original Oil Painting offering to date!The petite size makes them very apartment-friendly. Can be hung on the wall or sit on a shelf - ideal for nooks in in need of sprucing, or office-desks in wont of color and pep.Each painting is finished with a light wax varnish, and a small hanger on the back for hanging.

Etsy :: Highway 880, number 9 - Teeny Oil Painting

You can see more of her paintings and artwork here: Robin Kibby on Flickr and buy some of her work at her Etsy shop or check out her other artwork on her main site: http://www.robinkibby.com/

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DiddleBug Extractor 2.1

Drawing pictures on your Palm

I use an excellent free Open Source program called DiddleBug on my Palm Treo 700p for doing small black and white drawings. The latest version of DiddleBug creates 320×320 pixel size drawings. These are referred to on their site as “high-res” pictures instead of the 160×160 pixel size drawings that older versions of the software created.

Getting DiddleBug pictures off your Palm

I used to use a nice converter on my Windows laptop called WindleBug but wanted to be able to just use my Mac laptop by itself instead.

The DiddleBug FAQ mentions using a Perl script called Didcon on Windows, Linux and OS X which hadn’t been updated yet to extract the new 320×320 pixel sized images. When I ran the Didcon script for the first time, it saved out a 160×160 graphic that had weird lines running throughout it, due to the fact that it wasn’t reading out the data for a 320×320 pixel sized graphic.

After hacking at it for a little while, including researching how to correctly indicate the pixel size of an image in a Windows bitmap in the header of the file, I managed to get a working script that correctly outputs a 320×320 .bmp file.

This is the modified script, and I’m also including a second script that you can double-click in the Finder to run the extraction process.

(more…)

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Download full-size panorama (4370 x 972 px)

I made this video with my new camera (Canon SD800-IS) tonight at the St. Louis Art Museum. There was a show called “Art in Bloom” going on and we went with Kathy for dinner and to see a jazz singer.

And here are some of the pictures I took:

See more of my pictures from the museum here.

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I finally ventured down to explore the new Metrolink train station undeground at the intersection of Skinker and Forest Park Parkway (right near Kayaks and Washington University.) This is some video I took using my Treo 700p.

Train arriving:

Train departing:

You’ll notice in the second video the neat light changing artwork along the walls, as well as a soothing soundscape. Quite nice, I thought.

More pictures from the excursion:

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Space Invaders pixel art, scarf and moleskine, originally uploaded by gserafini.

Just created a set of space invader related pictures.

See them all here: Space Invaders

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So, I finally got my packages of 300 LEDs (ordered on Ebay from a Chinese manufacturer) and 100 watch batteries for the purpose of experimenting with the concept of the LED throwies today.

I made my first one with scotch tape and an orage 10mm LED. It was so exciting when it lit up. Silly, I know, to get excited about such a small thing. By the way, I had ordered the parts for my LED throwie kit earlier this week, before the city of Boston came to a screeching halt due to freaking out about a street art promotion for a cartoon show made of LED lights that caused a bomb scare. Because, well, gosh darnit, those lights must be… a BOMB! In my opinion what happened in Boston was the same result as crying FIRE in a crowded theatre. Except the theatre is the United States of America, and the person crying FIRE is the Bush/Cheney White House. Somebody is winning when our response to new promotional art is to call in the bomb squad. Somehow, though, I don’t think it is Osama bin Laden who has instilled this fear in the American people. Who wins when everyone in the country is afraid? Who gains more power?

Anyways, I was very excited to open the packages and construct my first LED throwie. The magnets haven’t arrived yet, so it’s not quite a true throwie but it is still fun to play with. Then it was time for my nightly dog walk with Kuma, going to Tower Grove Park. Tonight it is about 14° F out (pretty cold) and the park still has a light covering of snow and ice from yesterday. As I was walking along, holding my ever so precious glowing orange LED and playing with it, it occured to me that it might be neat if I attached it to Kuma’s leash so that it would track her movements as she ran around sniffing different squirrel tracks.

This is a short movie I made of her dancing movements with her own personal LED throwie light tracer dog leash modification.

It’s kind of neat to see Kuma’s movements captured by light. I took the video using my Treo 700p cameraphone. You can hear the crunch of my footsteps on the snowy pavement.

More pictures from the walk are here.

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Tonight we gathered to celebrate Kristin’s latest work — a series of gorgeous paintings of Mozart and his times on canvas. The exhibition opened and was well attended by many of our church friends.

Kristin’s paintings look wonderful in the space at Northwest Coffee (a fabulous coffee shop by the way) and will be displayed through the end of February. So drop by if you are in town and have a moment.

Northwest Coffee
8401 Maryland Ave
St. Louis, MO 63105
Google Map Directions

See the rest of the pictures from the opening here:
Kristin’s ‘Mozart on Canvas’ Paintings - a photoset on Flickr (slideshow)

Find out more about Kristin’s Letters to Mozart project.

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Going from pen and paper scribbles to finished Photoshop paper prototype

I’ve been working at Vibe Solutions Group again for a couple of days on Photoshop screenshot comps for some enhancements to their cool new video aggregator product called VibeTV.

You can see an example of the current version of VibeTV here: http://vibejournal.com/gabriel/tv/

The process that we’ve been going through is something like this:

1. New features are conceptually developed (this was mostly done before I came in earlier this week.) This probably includes whiteboard drawings, vigorous discussions and figuring out business requirements.
2. Pen and paper sketches of how the new features might work are done to provide an overall direction. This shows proposed locations of buttons, tabs, general layout. It is very loose and free-form. Often times a template page is scribbled out and then is photocopied many times to allow rapid drawing of design variations without having to re-draw the same elements over and over again.
3. Photoshop work begins, fleshing out the concepts developed in the whiteboard and paper drawing stages. This is a critical step in the paper prototyping process that allows final design decisions to be made and where the ‘rubber meets the road’ — concepts that looked good on paper get realized in pixels and reality begins to happen.
4. Screenshots are printed out to a color printer and are shown and iterations are done, moving and tweaking elements until the overall design feels right and fits together.
5. Once the screenshots are finished and approved, final graphics can be prepared and delivered, ready for the developers to implement into code.
6. The final screenshots are also used in the Product Requirements Document (PRD) to show everyone what the final application is actually supposed to look like. This can serve as an invaluable reference tool for everyone during the application development process because everyone is able to look at the finished picture of what they are trying to build.
7. Photoshop source files are provided to allow further refinements to be made as necessary
8. Eventually after the developers have had time to build the application functionality, the new application is released! Celebration time.

I’ll post a link to the updated application once they’ve finished coding the new features and there’s something new to look at.

You can hire me to do this for you too

If you need Photoshop screenshots showing what a web application could look like that can be used for final production-ready graphics, drop me a line. I charge reasonable rates and enjoy the process of collaboration and helping people achieve their design goals.

I can work with you wherever you are with your idea, whether you have just a blue-sky idea or a back of the napkin sketch or detailed use-flow diagrams or even an existing product that you want to freshen up or redesign for better usability.

If you would be interested in my services, don’t hesitate to email me at: gserafini [at] gmail.com

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Good resource for the aspiring isometric pixel artist:

The Complete Guide to Isometric Pixel Art

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