hamilton.likes.to.draw...

I started going to a figure drawing group that meets every Monday. I went at first because I'd never done it before, but after one day of sketching in pencil, I realized that it was the perfect time to push myself artistically. I started painting on my Slate, and it felt amazing. I've always been afraid of painting, because everytime I tried, it felt slow. But with only 5 to 20 minutes each pose, there was no time to pout. I got confident fast, and I haven't felt this good about my art in years.

I did 3 caricatures last weekend, and ever since then, I've been pushing as much high quality caricature rendering as I can push. It's been a lot of fun to try. I did an entire series of Community caricatures, and on a wave of confidence, I have now started into Game of Thrones. This work is some of the best work I've ever produced, and I hope I can keep up the pace, and work through all 5000 Game of Thrones characters.

Here are the Lannister family caricatures that I've finished so far.

My brother has been in town recently, and we have been doing a lot of web coding work. There are a lot of projects coming that I can't talk about just yet, but we've been working in AngularJs to make a framework for developing website prototypes. Things like json readers, to sidestep sql setups and allow for more flexible data models, and a bootstrap-like base css system which gives us more forward thinking css applied to html5 elements.

What I can tell you about is my friend Sam Hiti's website, which has soft launched recently on a code base created entirely by my brother and me. It's been super exciting to work with Sam, who really knows what he wants, and it's been great to dive into these technologies with my brother. At this point, I think it would be amazing to make a company based in the idea of just prototyping out websites for companies to have a working pitch.

I have also been doing a lot of art, and I suppose I should show some of that here. So here's some art for your ass that has been uploaded semi recently.

I started learning a bit about deferrals and promises today, and I don't like it. I think, mainly, because I can't quite see where I'd use it yet. It's ok, though, I'll figure it out when I have to.

I watched all that's available for Doctor Who Series 7. Doctor Who is pretty incredible. And If you've never given it a chance, I would suggest that you hop into Series 2, and Enjoy the wonder that is David Tennant, even though technically, my favorite Doctor so far has been Matt Smith, the latest. It's a combination of attitude and style.

Doctor Who is one of the few shows that can make me laugh, cry, and be in utter awe in a single episode. I hope it never ends.

I went through my site and decided to pull things down and push things around and take a couple hours to bring my code into 2013. I've always preferred stark simplicity and information to wild and crazy design. I'm using bootstrap a lot these days for rapid prototyping, and so I stuck with a default bootstrap layout. This pleases me, but it also describes the way I'm moving now. I've learned to modularize my css into classes. Individual items don't get so much individual attention anymore, but broad structured classes are used to define the overarching design of a project. It's been a learning process. I also went in and simplified some of the code in my archive, to better represent the simplicity of the site in general. I also added a few new things into the codes page, including an updated chess script. There is also now a calligraphy section in the portfolio.

I'm working on a lot of things these days. I'm really excited by the prospects of prototyping with bootstrap and angularjs. I've been really digging into angular and I find it to be really really promising. I'm jazzed to share more and more as I move along. For anyone that sees this, thanks for coming along with me and checking out my journey.

I have added some previews for my fonts. I make fonts for fun. It's actually super relaxing and enjoying for me to kern for hours. Just pushing letters around in a font family. I enjoy making the letters as well. But I especially enjoy seeing my text written out, and the font comes alive. It's just like the feeling when one of my scripts works for the first time. When it goes off and becomes its own thing. It's awesome.

I could also potentially make a font for you. I'm just sayin. You have an idea? I have the know how. I'm going to continue working on these. Maybe yours will be next. Give me a ring.

A long time ago, in a website far away, I used to keep a repository of all the little coding things I would make. Some people know me for my art, but I kind of love to program more than draw. I love them both, but programming is something I think I'm actually very good at. I love to make things that people can interact with, and these days, I'm getting into making things that can interact with themselves. That's exciting to me. A drawing is set down, but a program is alive.

I have made a small list of some of the cuter things I've made recently, and even some not so recently. Most of these are unfinished, and most of them will remain unfinished, as much art tends to be in the eyes of its creator. I hope you enjoy perusing some of the things that make me happy.

The Ouya was announced yesterday. Announced, mind you, not released. It is heralded as a cheap, open source gaming console for the television. It used kickstarter to gauge interest in the project and within 24 hours they had doubled their initial funding goal making it the fastest rising kickstarter project ever.

This system will change how games are made, and it will change how media is treated on a tv.

There were immediate naysayers a couple hours after announcement. The system specs were not exactly anything amazing. The CPU will be little better than your smartphone. The storage is dismal. The games all have to be free (isn't free bad?). People just couldn't understand it.

But all of those points are actually in this system's favor. You see what console makers forgot about, in their pursuit for the biggest tech, was how to make games fun. When given limitations you can't even bother to focus on migs and megs of memories and just have to go back to fun. There has been a big surge of FUN games on the computer, in the form of flash games. Flash is a small form factor, no nonsense platform that makes you forgo 3d explosions in favor of slick gameplay. This Ouya gaming system will mean a return to focusing on games as games.

It's also targetting independent developers. The tagline is "Anyone can pick up this console and develop for it." It's also built on the android operating system which means that it already has an established developer base. Made a game for android phones? Why not make one for an android console? Being open source and android based might not mean much to the average consumer (although that brand name is picking up steam steadily) but it is a big deal to developers. Switching languages is hard, but if you can keep the same code and just switch controllers, that's huge.

Some people are confused by a console that doesn't strive for as many triangles as possible when it comes to graphics. But graphics don't make a game. In fact they have distracted the big developers for years now. The arms race for graphics started slowing around crysis and has pretty much stagnated since then. We don't need better graphics we need better games, and independent developers have been quietly honing their craft, just waiting for this moment.

The final nail is free to play. This word has become dirty recently. Some developers have abused it. They've created games where you can essentially pay to cheat, or you just can't ever win without paying, or the game is tedious and unfun without paying. But there have been big wins as well. Plenty of games have succeeded with demo versions, paid expansions, and paid silly extensions. But above and beyond the developers, making Ouya a free system will give the Ouya creators immunity in the lawsuit sector. The reason everyone else has had to play nice with big media is because they want their fingers in all the pots. But if Ouya can manage to stick to hardware, they're completely immune as a company. Let other companies worry about how they handle legality, we only charged for the hardware.

I don't think I can fully articulate how important this will be to the industry. The movie industry has stagnated so long now because they have put a hold on anyone who tried to horn in on the "cable" movie industry. They have tried to say that tv and internet are separate areas, and so that's why hulu has movies and tv shows that are "only available online". The Ouya has the potential to blow that out of the water by being completely user funded, by being completely open source, and by not charging admission. Everything is free, and it will free your tv from the shackles of the movie industry.

This has the potential to be the ultimate device. Hardware without shackles. And the game industry will flock to it, but so will other developers. I've seen a lot of naysayers asking where all these independent developers are. "Where are they hiding?" They are shackled to the big media companies, and this system will free them from those shackles.

The Ouya should have branded itself as the Independence, because that's what it will mean to developers. Three guys in a basement can now make something for a console. It's going to be amazing.

Because You're commenting on a post made 4 years ago on Livejournal that I just added into my Wordpress feed. Maybe I won't notice it, Wordpress spammer. Maybe I'll think you totally read my blog and that's why you're commenting. Maybe I'll totally let your comment through, and you'll get all that sweet, sweet trackback love. But I won't, Wordpress spammer. Because you've given yourself away. You're naked, and I've seen everything. I've seen it all. Keep commenting on my old posts, Wordpress spammer. Maybe it will work this time.

I started trying to figure out how to convert my flash hackeysack game into an html5 game using the canvas. It's been a big learning curve figuring out the major differences in the two processes. Canvas is a big wide open frontier, whereas flash is a solid fixed playbox. I ended up using a jquery api called Jcanvas, because I knew that I needed to be able to click canvas items, and I knew from experience that this a concept far from being built into the canvas.

Jcanvas ended up being really amazing, and the creator even took some of my input to help improve the API.

Hackey Sack

So we finished up day 3 of our flash class today, and over the last few classes, I have built up a nice little day 3 programming example of a hackeysack game. If you are interested in learning how to do something like this in flash, come take our 4 day flash class at Learn iT!