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Adobe Ideas for iPad gets feature boost
Adobe updated Ideas, its vector-based sketchbook application for the iPad, earlier this week. The 1.2 version of the iPad application is available for free and lets users grab a capacitive stylus or their finger to create a drawing or add annotations to images. This latest version adds a new premium layer functionality that lets you add up to ten drawing layers and one photo layer for each sketch. You can also change the layer order and opacity as well as rotate, move and scale each layer using this new tool, which is available as an in-app purchase. Originally introduced in April 2010, the Ideas application lets you zoom and pan as you create so that you can focus on selected areas of your sketch. As a bonus, you can output your creations to an external VGA display using the Apple VGA adapter. Other new features include the ability to move the toolbar from the left to the right side of the drawing canvas and improved stroke smoothing. If you are looking for a basic sketch application, check out Adobe ideas on the App Store.
Fred Armisen gets caught in a technology loop, discovers MiND-Fi
Sometimes our modern life can feel overwhelming. Sometimes it can feel like it's all too much -- like everything is happening at once, and you've got no control over anything. Sometimes, the gadgets we buy to make our lives simpler end up making them a lot more complicated. We suspect that similar sentiments drove the brains behind the new IFC sketch comedy show Portlandia (Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein) to come up with the bizarre, hilarious video in this post. Just a word of warning -- once you see it, you can never un-see it. Watch at your own risk... after the break.
BBC comedians ridicule tech naming schemes, make us laugh along the way (video)
They say all good comedy has a modicum of truth to it, and there's no denying that the jargon that's built up around technology is littered with opportunity for mockery, fun-poking, and general satire. Leave it to two old pros from the UK, then, Harry Enfield and Ronnie Corbett, to summarily dispatch Apple, BlackBerry, Orange, Microsoft and everyone in between in one of the better tech-related sketches we've seen. See them do their thing after the break, but be warned: the video contains (a lot) more than your recommended daily allowance of fruit puns. [Thanks, Thanasis]
BMW Megacity EV gets sketched out in more detail
Admit it, you've been desperately refreshing this page in the simple hope of learning more about BMW's first all-electric vehicle. Originally announced with nary a visual clue to its appearance, the Megacity has now been fleshed out in the above futuristic sketch, which gives us an inkling of the car's design direction. Don't expect it to have too much bearing on the final product, though -- we do anticipate the real deal to have, y'know, tyres. BMW is also putting together an all-new chassis specifically for this battery-powered city transporter, and has already begun crash-testing the carbon fiber-equipped shells. In spite of its compact dimensions, the Megacity is being described as a "premium sustainability" vehicle, meaning its 2013 launch will be relevant to a somewhat select group of people.
Holiday weekend giveaway: Type Drawing for iPad
There's a lot of great drawing apps for the iPad out there, but Type Drawing puts a unique spin on things. With Type Drawing, you can sketch anything your mind can conceive of, but your brush strokes are made up of words instead of lines. I've been playing around with the app for a while now, and it's really quite fun. Enter the word or phrase you want to draw with, choose the font and color, and then sketch away! There's even a Flickr group where you can show of your Type Drawing skills (some drawings are very impressive). Type Drawing is the brain child of Hansol Huh and sells on the App Store for the low price of $2.99, but we've got 10 copies to give away to TUAW readers. To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post. Ten people will be chosen at random (sorry, readers outside the US; app promo codes are geographically constrained). Good luck everyone! Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia. To enter leave a comment on this post. The comment must be left before Wednesday June 2, 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. Ten winners will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: One (1) promo code for Type Drawing for iPad per winner. Retail value $2.99. Click here for complete official rules. Update: Replaced original image with current Type Drawing icon.
Found Footage: Creating manga on the iPad
In the video above, artist Yoshitoshi Abe uses LiveSketch HD [$0.99] to sketch one of his characters named Ain. Yoshitoshi's normal medium is pencil and paper, but you can see that the detail he achieves in the sketch on the iPad is almost in parity with his pencil sketches. What's even more impressive is that he does the sketch in under four minutes and uses only one hand. As you can see in the video, his other hand is busy holding his iPhone 3GS, which he is using to record his creation. Ah, when talent and technology meet. [via ZanyPickle]
Aikon 2 robot sketches the human face, uses its talent to meet girls
Yes, that's exactly what it looks like -- a robot that can look at a human face and make a pretty reasonable sketch of it. Featured at London's Kinetica art fair last week, the Aikon 2 project boasts an "inexpensive" robot arm and software developed by a research team at Goldsmiths University of London. As you might have guessed, building a device with rudimentary artistic ability is no mean feat -- leading the developers to try and understand and simulate the processes by which artists sketch the human face, including: visual perception of the subject and the sketch, drawing gestures, cognitive activity, reasoning, and the influence of training. The project's website emphasizes that "due to knowledge and technological limitations the implementation of each process will remain coarse and approximate." In other words, the robot "is expected to draw in its own style." Which is, quite frankly, better than we can do. We look forward to seeing these things in the cafes of the future, where robots not only fetch us drinks but chat up girls with offers to draw their portraits. Video after the break.
Pour one out for Halo 2 and the original Xbox with Bungie on April 14
The plasma party may be almost over for those of you still gripping tight to your Xbox 1 and copy of Halo 2, playing game after desperate game before Microsoft shuts the online servers, but Bungie is looking for fans to join staff members in a last hurrah on April 14. Community manager Brian "Sketch" Jarrard proclaims on Bungie.net that, "We're all saddened at the realization that an era is coming to an end," before asking fans to "mark your calendars now - on April 14th let's all rally to go online for one last hoorah." And sure, he might not explicitly mention the emptying of various malt beverages from 40 ounce glass bottles, but that's why we read between the lines. It's right there, people!
The 12-hour iPhone app
Gizmodo has an interesting story from David Quinlan, a coder who decided to sit down over a weekend with a few friends to crank out an iPhone app. It's an excellent read, not only for the little quirks and tips about organizing a collaborative project very quickly (they sketch out features and then prioritize them, and use Dropbox to keep all the files in the right places), but for the sheer push of how you actually go from idea to concept to code and finally to released iPhone app. I won't say it sounds easy -- these guys had a good amount of experience at development and releasing software even before they started work on this app, and if you sit down with Erica's book [Amazon link to the 2nd edition, PDF downloadable version] and hope to release your very first piece of code after just a weekend of solo work, it's not going to happen. But it definitely sounds possible -- the iPhone's development platform is relatively easy to pick up (especially if you're already experienced with coding in other languages), and Apple's release process is open to anyone willing to spend the $100 to become an official developer.
The Whitest Kids U Know answer the Call of Duty
Everyone knows that the most important element when attempting to pick off virtual, foreign combatants is immersion. However, in an online age characterized by 1337speak and decidedly un-1337 bigotry, immersion's a tough commodity to come by. We can't remember the last round of Call of Duty: World at War (or any online shooter, for that matter) we played where we didn't want to climb through the expansive internet tubes to choke the life out of one of our half-baked (or, in some cases, totally baked, brah) teammates.Sketch comedy troupe Whitest Kids U Know recently exposed this infuriating phenomenon (NSFW) to those who've never experienced it firsthand. You can watch their sketch after the break -- we warn you, it may invoke such strong feelings of familiarity that you might just call up the DABEARS in your life, and congenially tell him to die in a fire.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Pogo Sketch stylus turns your touchpad into a tablet
We never really knew anyone intrigued by Pogo's iPhone stylus, but the company's newest writin' stick puts that capacitive touch-compatible tech to a way more interesting use -- turning touchpads into large digitizer tablets. That'd be particularly useful for new MacBook owners who're rocking those gigantor buttonless trackpads, but we'll have to see this $15 accessory in action before we say Wacom's got anything to worry about.
It's-a Mario World: Fan Art
This week has been relatively quiet in terms of Mario-related news, but should that deter us from our regularly scheduled plumber fanfare? If you answered "yes," you're wrong. It was a trick question. Today is Friday and we are going to damn well talk about Mario. We don't take this feature lightly. In fact, each Friday the WiiFanboy offices are rife with Mario cosplay and Mush Kingdom decor. We even release various species of turtles and name them after the Koopa Kids to keep us company during the course of the rigid blogging workday.* This blogger is presently sporting his sweet denim overalls, beneath of which are a pair of Goomba boxer briefs that he probably grew out of years ago and a Toad tank top that reads, "I'm the best!!" So! All things considered, let's dive into this thing. Today we're admiring Mario fan art, and our new gallery is comprised of what we feel to be the outstanding work among so many scribbled Mario atrocities on the Internet. We kept this collection mostly limited to hand drawings, digital renders and photographs, which means you won't be seeing any wedding cakes. Now kick back and click through!*No turtles were harmed during the making of this blog. It's-a Mario World is a weekly feature in which the ubiquity of Nintendo's flagship character is celebrated: We'll incessantly ruminate about mustache wax, debate the curious whereabouts of the princess and covet the luminous power stars strewn about the galaxy. Check back here every Friday to find out what strange and wonderful thing has got us tipping our caps.
The trials and tribulations of Dr. Wily
We love playing Mega Man games, especially on our DSes (both officially and unofficially). Awesome skits like this just make us yearn even more for a classic Blue Bomber title, though, as the original Rockman is the one we fell in love with.Despite our wishes and wants, we really enjoyed this hilarious take on the Mega Man series by Old Rich People. We couldn't help but laugh at Dr. Wily and all the hoops he has to go through just to kill our favorite robot. Oh, and the ending? Priceless. We expect a DS homebrew version of the game to be made asap. (Not really.)[Via Destructoid]
GDC08: Hands-on Inchworm
Bob Sabiston, creator of the rotoscoping software behind A Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly wanted to draw and animate on his DS. So he wrote his own application, Inchworm. He says, "[It was] sort of a passion project, something we really want to see on the DS." In between his GDC meetings to find a publisher, I sketched through the latest build of the tool.Even though Inchworm is closer to Painter than Mario Paint, it's still fun for dabbling. Artists use the stylus to scribble out stills or cels. Top-tier tools that I'd expect in Photoshop even filter down to this level, including layers, opacity settings, alpha channels, selections, and onion-skin animations. Sabiston also intends to add smear brushes to blend paints and sound effects for animations.
Robotic artist does portraits, hoping to get into nudes
A totally ingenious robotics researcher named Sylvain Calinon has created what might be the perfect storm of art and science -- a robot that can recognize and then draw portraits of human subjects. The bot, named HOAP-3, is able to distinguish a human face, take a still frame of that image, and then create a drawing by (robotic) hand based on what it sees. The demonstration is a part of designer Calinon's research into creating robots which can learn through imitation, or in scenarios where they must react to humans. Unfortunately for us fleshpiles, it's only a matter of time before this thing starts doing hilarious caricatures accentuating our worst features. Watch the robot work in the amazing video after the break, and check the read link for a lot more information on the HOAP-3 project. [Via technabob]
Really long PS3 ad highlights system features through sketches
We're fond of this new "This is Living" promo video for PS3. It highlights all of the system's features in some pretty clever ways. With an inspired sketchbook look, the PS3 comes across as something artistic. Our favorite part has to be the segment where Remote Play is demonstrated. The PSP talks to the PS3, and they're sent further away from each other. Even with an ocean between the two, they're still able to talk to each other. It's sort of romantic.Hopefully, this ad will be chopped into bite-sized bits for television use. The aesthetic is great, and certainly does a great job at explaining the many things PS3 can do. [Via Digg]
Super Paper Mario ... on paper!
YouTube user twistednerd has given us an excuse to talk about how awesome Super Paper Mario looks, and we're indebted to him for it. Check out his drawing of Mario as he appears in the new game. The Paper Mario art style is so clean and nice. We wish it would become the default character model for the Mario characters. Not that we have anything against the 3D models they use for all the other Mario games, but the PM look is perfect.The video of twistednerd sketching out Mario onto paper is embedded after the post break. Play it in reverse so it looks like he's sucking the lines back up into his pencil![Thanks, Nikki!]
Today's sketchiest game video: Real Life Mario Kart
Real Life Mario Kart, created by Panda Smash, is our pick for today's video. While this comedy short runs a little long at six minutes, we laughed at this group's Mario Kart race staged with tricycles. Our favorite part was finally recognizing one of the players as Fishin' Lakitu, resetting the racers after the many times they tipped over.See the video after the break.
Found Footage: SNL - Post-It-Notes
It's always nice to see Apple parodies, especially when they: a) have nothing to do with an existing product, or specifically: the iPod, and b) are from the mid-90's. This is a decent SNL spoof that quickly rose up the digg ranks yesterday evening, parodying a fictitious Apple product that's a bit too much disposable overkill for its own good. Enjoy.[via digg]
Curio Basic offered for free until midnight, August 7th
Remember Curio from Zengobi, that unique brainstorming and project management app we found a couple weeks ago? As a thanks to all the publicity they've been getting lately the company has decided to offer Curio Basic for free - but only until midnight, EDT on Tuesday, August 7th. All you need to do is enter some basic information at the promotion page, and a license (a $39 value) will be emailed to you. Definitely note, however, that one of Zengobi's terms is that they can cancel this offer at any time (probably in case they get slammed with too many requests), so I would recommend you run, don't walk, to snag your copy. After all: you can't beat 'free'.
