MyPaint 1.0 for Windows and Linux

MyPaint 1.0 is now available for Windows users.  This is still an experimental build but seems to be quite stable.  There have been a lot of changes including dockable menus.  For full features, changes and download go to MyPaint's home page HERE. You can thank tumagonx for the Windows build. For those on Linux that want to try the newest build with the latest features, a PPA as been created. Just copy and paste the commands listed below that were posted by David Revoy:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:achadwick/mypaint-testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mypaint

I will have a short video on my workflow utilizing GIMP 2.7 and MyPaint 1.0 hopefully before the birth of my son. After that, all bets are off.

Thank you,
-Steve

Tree Study

  

Here are a few drawings of trees I did for fun recently.  They are done with a mix of graphite and charcoal on smooth Bristol paper.

-Steve

Quick Tip: Why Calibrate My Monitor

Calibrating your monitor.  What can I say?  We all try to get away with calibrating our monitor by eye, but that only works for so long and unfortunately our eyes change.  Not just over the years but throughout the day.  We get use to seeing a certain way and we adapt in different lighting situations.  In the end our paintings, photos or what have you suffer.  Our darks are too dark, the colors are to saturated or the hues just don't look right especially when we go to print.  So we are left to buying hardware to calibrate our monitors.

Synfig Studio: 2D Animation Suite

This one is for anyone interested in 2D Animation.  Synfig Studio is a open source, cross-platform animation package.

Quick Tip: Launchy + Dexpot

Just want to introduce some free applications that I was introduced to the other day.  These are great little utilities that can help speed up ones work flow. Launchy is cross-platform while Dexpot is for Windows users who like the virtual desktops that is found in Ubuntu.

COMING SOON! - Blender 2.5 Video Sequence Editor

This is a snapshot of a new tutorial that is on it's way.  In the past few months I have been working on moving from commercial applications to FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) and Blender has been one I have been working with since 2.48. One feature is Blenders Video Sequence Editor (VSE), which is also refered to as the Sequence Editor.  I have done some extensive testing changing options and working through some issues.  I want to show how to set up Blender's interface, add video files, edited them within Blender, add image overlays for titles, watermarks etc, and how to animate some of the properties.  These tasks maybe broken down into multiple parts so you can pick and choose what you need and to minimize the duration of the tutorial.

I hope to have it out within the next week or so,
- Steve