If I’m drawing or animating digitally for an extended period of time, generally my wrist starts to hurt because the barrel of the Intuos pen is so thick. I’m not sure how common this trick is, but it’s worth sharing because it might spare you a pain in the wrist.

This goes for all pens from Intuos 2 on up to Intuos 4– I believe the Cintiq pens are about identical to the I3′s/I4′s.

1. Unscrew the tapered tip, right below the gel grip.
2. Pop off the clicky button by gently lifting the edge of one side; the whole button should pop off.
3. Slide off the grip.
4. (Optional)– pop the button back in (seen here). It will stick out, but you can keep it out of your way depending on how you hold the pen.

Now the pen’s barrel is roughly the same thickness of an ordinary pen. Huzzah!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 100-pack CD/DVD spindle CLEAR cover
• Sharpie/marker of Sharpie-standard-ness
• Ruler
• Black paint
• 1/2″ or so paintbrush (I used a bristle brush, they’re cheap)
• Needle
• Dental Floss
• Seamstress measuring tape (optional, most CD/DVD spindles are roughly the same size so you can probably use my measurements).
• Xacto knife (optional)

And here’s the plan:

Figure out exact amount of frames; figure out the spacing for those frames and draw slits onto spindle cover. Paint everything but “slits” black, let paint dry, then hang the zoetrope from dental floss.

Let’s get started!

1. Find a clear CD/DVD spindle that can be sacrificed for the good of animation.

2. Flip it upside down and figure out its circumference. My Memorex DVD spindle came out to 15.25″.

3. Hopefully you’re mathematically-inclined than I am; for the next part, I figured I wanted to have 7 frames, each 2″ wide. That left me with 1.25″ for my viewing slits around the zoetrope. As I am planning to have 7 frames, I will need 7 viewing slits, preferably all of equal width.

Again, with the seamstress measuring tape, I made a mark with a Sharpie every 2″ (frame size) with an added� 3/16″ after for the viewing slit. I measured this pattern around the entire circumference.

4. Next you’ll extend these marks clear up the spindle. It’s important that you try to keep them as straight and parallel as possible! A trick I found (that seemingly worked) was taking the edge of my ruler and putting it against one of the ledges of the spindle cover (the ledges for locking it in place).

By now, it should look something quite like this:

5. Take a look at your zoetrope-to-be and determine how high you want your animation to be in comparison to your viewing slits. I made my viewing slits 1.5″ high, which felt like a good height. I measured these out again with a Sharpie.

6. Paint time! Bust out the black and paint everything BUT the slits. I gave mine two coats with black Liquitex Basics. (The cheaper the better for this job!)

Paint only the outside! This will keep the inside looking nice and crisp, plus exchanging animations will go smoother. Painting the base is up to you. You may want to leave it unpainted to shine a light through it, and you may want to paint it white to allow for reflected light.

7. Once the paint’s dry (if you’re impatient, go ahead and use a heat gun), you’ll be poking 3 holes like so by twisting the tip of an Xacto knife into the plastic:

Next you’re wondering– but 7 isn’t divisible by 3! Isn’t this contrapion going to be off-balance? No– not as long as you measure your dental floss just right. There’s actually a beauty to it being asymmetrical. You’ll have one huge gap (when it’s hanging) which is easy access to exchange your zoetrope animations! So go ahead and punch a hole in one viewing slit; skip a slit, poke a hole through the next one; skip another slit and poke through the next slit. Be sure to poke the holes through the top so they don’t interrupt your animation viewing space! You’ll be left with two empty viewing slits.

8. Finally, you get to hang it with dental floss! (Dental floss is tough stuff, I’ll have you know– I’ve sewn together bookbags with it and it has yet to fail me). Sew some dental floss through one of the holes and make a tight knot. Make a sort of “end” (mine was 7″) from which all three strands will meet. Make all three as equal as possible and tied up in this one central knot 7″ away from the edge of the zoetrope. (This is easier said than done– I used one long piece of dental floss and made it go through all 3 holes, tying knots as I went along, constantly measuring/testing to make sure it was as even as possible). When you’ve got it hanging from the “central knot”, thread another piece of dental floss below the knot and up around, so it’s got a strand to hang off of. (This way, when you spin your zoetrope, it’ll spin the strand holding the central knot– this way the strands coming from the zoetrope itself won’t get all tangled up and change the balance).

Yippee! You’re done!

There you can see the three holes I made to hang it from, which also demonstrates the ample amount of drop-in space for the zoetrope itself.

I’ve made a zoe-template in .pdf format, which you can download and print here! Enjoy!

I figured I wanted to animate and clean up in comfort, so I scavenged around and found a backing to an 18×24″ Biggie pad that was sitting around, waiting to become useful. I came up with this contraption, which requires no more than said piece of cardboard (non-corrugated, this is really tough stuff!), a box-cutting knife, packing and duct tape (though you could probably get away with just good ol’ duct tape).

1. Here’s how it works. Take the cardboard and cut strips approximately 2.5″-3″ thick strips down the long way.
2. On one side of these, make a light cut into both ends, approximately the width of the packing/duct tape you’re working with. Fold the board on these light cuts; now, turn over the board and make a light cut exactly in the middle of the strip. Fold the board back on these new cuts. You should have your strips shaped as you see in the following illustration, by the massive “x2″ (as you’ll make two strips like this, one for the left, and one for the right).
3. Get your packing tape ready! line up the “feet” of the strips vertically with one of the long edges of the remaining part of the board that you originally cut the strips from. Tape the feet on flat. Now, with the strips bent in an upside-down V, place your disc on them and figure out a distance (with the board pushed to the edge of a table against a wall you plan on working against) that you’re happy with your disc being propped up at. Translation: figure out the angle that you want the strips to be bent at; an angle that you’re comfortable with. Once you’re happy with the angle, make sure the remaining “feet” are about lined up and tape them in place… when you tape the feet, tape them on the front of the board and wrap the tape to the back. (Hence the overhang in the illustration).
4. Now, get a little sliver of duct tape and fold about half an inch of it over itself and tape it down lined up with the start of the angle of the bent strips. This piece of duct tape will hold your disc in place.

That should be it! You’ll work with the entire “contraption” pushed up against a wall so it doesn’t slip away, though I’m sure you could tape it down to a desk instead. There’s plenty of room for a desk lamp to be used as a backlight as well, which also helps weight down the entire setup.

Improve on it as you wish; this is the first thing that popped into my head and it’s working so far (though I’m only on day 1 with it!) Feel free to post comments and suggestions– I hope the instructions are clear!

“But Tahnee! That’s ART, not MATH!” you exclaim.

True, dear reader, in the academic sense– but here’s how I like to look at this. I may be a lousy mathematician when it comes to numbers, but not when it comes to visual algebra.

X = Y.

You’re trying to make both sides equal. Look at this equation in a life drawing session. X = the paper in front of the artist, Y = the model on the stage. The artist is trying to make the page in front of them resemble that model on the stage; trying to make it equal what they’re seeing. When the page’s drawing = the model, or when X = Y, the equation is balanced.

I now declare myself a proficient algebratician.

This is a drawing I made on the wall across from my cube. So much is to be learned in the Character Animation department! And watch out, those Animators suuure look like zombies!

On a side note, I should mention that I’m back to school– watch out, Semester 2! Looks like I’ll be at about 19 units this semester (which still has a possibility of changing, depending on homework loads). I’ve got two films boarded out and timed in Flash animatics (those of you animators who don’t know how to use Flash, FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF! They’ll have a few workshops soon, it sounds like– go to these, and then think of the ways that you can use Flash to board out your films! In fact, I may even make a post dedicated to that because it’s been extremely efficient for me). Don’t expect me to go uploading these full animatics to this website– you won’t get to see anything until the finish product is submitted for the Producer’s Show (deadline = April 20th)! I’ve still got some quirks to work out about these films, and I’m now starting to think that I may completely focus on one and then work on the other with whatever free time I may have. (“Fail fast, fail offten”– words of wisdom from Don Hahn; I plan on working as fast and efficiently on my film(s) to get the best product in the end)!

Anyway, it’s good to be back at school. The dorms still smell the same, though I swear that the dorm water got grosser over break (morning tea would be the primary indicator of that). Thankfully, the work order to fix Niagara Falls went through, as the shower isn’t leaking anymore. So far, no one’s been stupid enough to open those @#$%^& refrigerators in the cubes!!! (They haven’t been plugged into a wall… in… I’m going to guess, over a year. And there’s food in them. One second of open Cube refrigerator = half an hour of Lysol and crying olfactory senses).

Good luck to all the kids that submitted their portfolios for 2013– may I suggest that you start NOW on stocking up sleep (and eating delicious home-made food and taking showers in the privacy of your own bathroom). And stock up on your sanity too, you’ll need lots of it when you get to CalArts

After reading an article on Smashing Magazine, I thought I would try my hand at making an animated Favicon. And guess what– it worked! However, there’s a slight handicap to having an animated Favicon: only newer browsers will recognize its animated nature and decide to display it. Older browsers, however, will take one whiff of the .ico file and instantly reject that whiff that is of animation. For those users who are on older browsers, they’ll get a general� page logo, as opposed to a site-specific Favicon.

But let’s promote newer web browsers (like the recently-released Firefox 3.0) and allow ourselves to make animated Favicons! Often I find a simple solid color with a logo/letter is not unique enough to each site…. (Facebook, Myspace and now Google all share blue-and-white Favicons). If we’re able to animate, we can change color– which further means greater diversity in Favicons, hence giving YOUR site more individuality!

The programs I used to pull this off are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe ImageReady and Dreamworks. I’m sure you can pull it off with other programs, but due to their popularity I’ll demonstrate with these.

For one, you don’t want your Favicon to be too distracting. A fast-paced, obnoxiously-flashy and convulsion-inducing Favicon is, in the end, more likely to be a quick identifier for your site, but may give your design skills 50 un-cool points for annoying your visitors. So keep it simple!

First, make a 16×16 document in Photoshop. Hopefully you’ll have in mind something that you want to animate– say, a static image with its hue changing, or perhaps your site’s name scrolling marquee-style.

You can scale down any previous image you have and� work with that, if you want. But I’ll make a marquee in this demo.

My bottom layer is a simple vertical green-dark green gradient. I have a text layer on top which says “Tahnee.com”.

Once you’ve got your layers set up for all that you want to have incorporated/animated in the final icon, hit the export to ImageReady button:

Once ImageReady opens, make sure your Animation timeframe is open. (Window>Animation). This is what we’ll be dealing with:

Arrange your layers so that the composition is how you want it to look for your first frame. As this is a marquee, I’ve set it up so my text is not visible– but for convenience purposes, I have it set up centered, just to the very right of the ‘scene’ (or whatever’s visible in this frame). Once you have your first frame looking like you want it to, hit the new frame icon at the bottom of the Animation editor; it’s to the left of the trash can, it looks like a page with its bottom corner turned up. This creates a new frame. So long as your current frame is selected, you can re-edit your composition to what you want it to look like. Using the arrow tool, I have my “Tahnee.com” text layer selectedand using the left arrow key, I nudge that whole layer to the left by a pixel. (Remember, we’re only on a 16×16 pixel canvas, so moving things around won’t take too much time and effort). I want my “Tahnee.com” text to scroll to the left, so after I nudge it to the left by one pixel, I make a new frame, then nudge, make a new frame, nudge, make a new frame….. and so on.

Here’s a progresion of what my frames ended up looking like.� Remember, this is only ONE way to go about making an animation– you could speed up the scrolling process (and hence save yourself on download time) and nudge each frame two or three times, instead of just one. But this offers a slow, not-too-distracting(yet interesting) Favicon.

Once you’re happy with your animation (you can hit the little play/stop button to test it out in the Animation editor– watch the actual image itself because that’s what animates)� you’re ready to export! Go File>Same Optimized As and then save your file as a .gif.

Next, copy and paste your .gif into your website’s main directory. I opened up Dreamweaver and in the file manager, found my favicon.gif file and renamed it to favicon.ico . That’s really IMPORTANT! I’m not sure if a browser will quite read a .gif as a favicon, because they expect a .ico file. So make sure to turn that .gif into a .ico! (However, some browsers do read .gif and .png files, so you may be able to leave it as a .gif and try working with that).

And then, upload it to your site’s root.

Now, so far as I know, browsers magically discover the favicon.ico file and automatically display it. However, it doesn’t hurt to throw in some code in the event that doesn’t happen.

<link REL=�SHORTCUT ICON� href=�http://www.yourdomain.com/favicon.ico�>

Copy and paste that code in between the <head> and</head> tags of your html document(s) and you should be good to go.

Apparently IE won’t recognize .png and .gif favicons (and my old IE6 doesn’t like the current animated favicon.ico), but other browsers may catch onto these alternate codes:

<link rel=”icon” href=”/favicon.png” type=”image/png”>

<link rel=”icon” href=”/favicon.gif” type=”image/gif”>

Then, view your site– be sure to hit the refresh button on your browser to get the new favicon into your cache… or else go directly to the favicon itself (www.tahnee.org/favicon.ico, for instance) and then try viewing your site. Hopefully all goes smoothly with a new, animated favicon

–Do note that for tahnee.org’s new favicon, I chose to duplicate my original image layer, and then modify the hue on the second layer. In ImageReady I adjusted the opacity by 10% for every frame, allowing it to ‘settle’ five frames on each extreme (blue and green). You could move elements around, you could draw out new frames. But let’s put some animation into our bookmarks and tabs!

Here’s the plan:

Take your artwork and scan it in up to four “pieces”.

Using layers, masks and gradients, move and mend the pieces together until you have a complete whole in Photoshop.

NOTE: Some pieces of art are simply too large to fit onto a scanner. Open your scanner and hold your piece over it, matching orientation (portrait or landscape). If the scanner’s area is more than halfway as long and deep as your piece, this process will work. Otherwise, you’ll have to photograph it. Also, this only works with non-solid artwork (so no paint board or canvas pieces, sorry!)– the reasoning behind that is your scanner focuses only on what’s ON the surface. If your piece lays on top and is lifted even the slightest on one edge due to the scanner’s contour, you’re going to end up with a blurry picture.

Rambling aside, let’s get started!

Decide in what direction your piece is too large for your scanner. In this case, there’s a slight overlap seen at the bottom, or the left side of the piece.

In order to capture the entire piece, we’re going to have to turn it 90 degrees and scan it in twice, once capturing the top, the other capturing the bottom. So long as we pick up all the edges, we’re good. (And when scanning, the shorter the area to ‘mend’, the better. In this case, I’ll be mending in a portrait orientation. I *could* mend landscape, but matching it up will ultimately be more difficult in the end).

Next, scan in “piece 1″. Please note that even though your piece may be on a flat paper, it’s still important to hold down the scanner’s flap in order to ensure any buckles in the paper don’t result with a distorted scan.

Flip, rinse, repeat! (or– flip it around and scan it in the other direction).

You should now have two pieces.

Duplicate the original layers by dragging them onto the button. Hide the original layers.

Flip the pictures (Image>Rotate Canvas>90 degrees CW/CCW) if needed. And, zoom in 100% and look atthe edges. Some scanners (such as mine) don’t scan in every nanometer of data, and sometimes leave a white edge.

That extra whitespace needs to GO! Thankfully, there’s the Rectangular Marquee tool that will take care of that. (OR the magic wand tool).

Using the rectangular marquee or magic wand tool, select all your whitespace and delete it.

Repeat this on your other piece(s). Now we get to mend! CTRL+click on the active layer of one of the pieces. (Mac users, I believe Apple-click is the alternative). This will select everything on that layer. Edit>Copy to copy your selection. Go File>New; chances are, Photoshop’s presets will make the size of the new document matched to what you have on your copy clipboard. In my case, it wants the dimensions to be 2694×2517 at 300dpi. I already know that the width of the piece will not change when I add my second piece; however, the height will. I’m going to put 4000 pixels in as my height– yes, I know that’s way too much, but that’s far better than too little. I’ll trim it back later.

Edit>paste in your copied layer, and use the move tool to bring this piece all the way to its edge– in my case, I’m going from the top down, so I snapped it to the top of my new document. There’s still a little white space on the left side because the scan was at a slight angle (as often happens).

Zoom in again to 100% and observe your “mending” edge.

Oh no!! There are blurry pixels at the bottom! We’ll keep that in mind so we know that needs to be masked off– or we’ll use the other piece to mend with instead.

Speaking of which, copy the other piece’s layer into this document…

and align it as best as possible. (This often involves lots of zooming). There’s often a slight rotation difference between the two pieces, so Ctrl+T to transform your selected layer– this allows you to rotate them. Sometimes, putting one layer’s opacity down will allow you to better align your two pieces.

With the arrow tool selected, you can nudge your current layer by using the arrow keys. With your layer’s opacity brought way down, (40% in this case) you can easily spot when the layers are matched, hence ready to blend.

<bad blend

< good blend!

Looking at these blending photos, it’s obvious that this second layer also has an unfocused edge. We’ll keep that in mind for the next step, which is masking. Create a layer mask by clicking this:

Set your gradient tool to the black and white gradient (set your foreground/background to black and white first).

Drag a gradient starting just after the blurry pixels, and going in a bit into the crisp pixels of the current layer.

…The result should be a seamless connection between both layers!

All that’s left is cropping… then you’re done!

For a larger piece, here’s an alternative mapping/piecing map/method. Just make sure to line up your pixels with your opacities down, then crank up your opacities and add masks with black/white gradients.

Hope this tutorial is helpful! I tried to make it as detailed as possible… if you have any questions, please feel free to comment. Thanks!

Guess what! You found it!

MATERIALS YOU’LL NEED (or will likely want to emulate as closely as possible):

-Resealable, airtight palette (these can be found at just about any art store; Masterson makes ideal palettes). Also, a large, FLAT tupperware container would work, too.

- Paper towels (absorbent ones). A flat sponge would also work, and a washcloth would probably do the job (but will have a bumpy texture). Sponges can get moldy so I advise against them.

- A water faucet

- CLEARPRINT 100% new cotton fiber Design Vellum pad (or a single sheet, but a whole pad will probably last you……. forever). There are no other substitutes for this, so far as I’ve heard; you can purchase this in art stores, though it may be a little difficult to find in craft stores.

First, get your paint palette ready… and write your name on everything in the event it should get stolen out of a locker (as that happened to me recently).

Next, take some paper towels and line the bottom of it. Generally I use 6, overlapping 3 on both sides, with more overlap of all 6 in the center.

…Just add water…

(and SOAK it– dump out excess water but make sure it’s completely damp and spongey)

Now, take a sheet of that 100% new cotton fiber Clearprint Design Vellum and lay it over the soaked paper towels.

Press it down to let the water absorb through this, and you’re done!

Using this, your paints will stay wet for weeks at a time. So far acrylic paint and gouache work fine on this palette. Be sure to completely seal it when not in use. And be sure to add more water every week or every two weeks, just to keep it moist (as that’s the key to keeping your paints wet). You may notice that as you mix your paint in small quantities, you may get watered-down results. Also, over time your palette will start to stink. That’s because, as disgusting as it sounds, mold will start to develop in there. You may want to “air out” your palette outside for a few minutes when this happens, before you start painting. Or, you may decide that mold is absolutely unacceptable, disgusting and unhealthy and you may want to change out your palette then. Trash your vellum paper and paper towels, clean out the tray and start over again for a fresher painting experience

Kudos to Chris for this everlasting palette technique!

Looking at a work for so long can eventually make you unable to see what’s “wrong”, as you’ve been working towards perfection, and, as you feel, it has to be perfect so far.

But, take a step back from your work. Actually, take a few steps back and hold it in front of a mirror. Then see what happens…

My my my! That might not be what you’d anticipated it to look like at ALL– this is off, that eyeball’s out of place, that arm’s waay too big…

What viewing your work in front of a mirror does is it allows you to see it from “fresh eyes”. You haven’t seen it in reverse yet. And looking at it in reverse, you will see a whole new composition. Critiquing your own work in front of a mirror will help you see what’s on your critiquer’s minds. You’ll be able to spot your own mistakes and will be able to fix them much easier than if you hadn’t viewed it in a mirror before!

Always do this when you’ve gotten most of your general sketching of a piece done. That way, you’ll be able to fix any problems before you set out to work; and after you start working, it can be very challenging to remedy your mistakes (especially when working with ink!)

Happy arting!