While generating the initial image sequence for a knob can be a lot of fun, concatenating them into a vertical knob image isn’t something I look forward to. I’m Mac-based and couldn’t find a decent tool for doing this. As it’s a bit tedious and overly manual to do with actions in Photoshop I’ve written a script called StackSpreader that automates the process dynamically. I know there are a lot people doing similar skinning work for Reaktor and Max etc., and this has uses beyond knobs, so I thought I’d share it.

You can grab it here:
http://nkurence.com/dev/tools/StackSpreader.jsx.zip

First load your image sequence into a stack with Scripts/Load Files Into Stack…
Then execute StackSpreader.
That’s it.

StackSpreader will prompt you for a canvas expansion direction, Top, Bottom, Left, Right.. if you’re making knobs, progress bars etc., you want Bottom. I think every knob stack I’ve ever seen goes the same direction but I figured the script would be more useful if you could build in any direction, so now it can. The script executes dynamically based on the initial canvas size (for iteration distance) and layer count (for iteration repeats).

If you want to streamline things further you can create a new action in the Actions palette that captures both steps:
1. create a new action
2. hit the corner menu and select ‘Insert Menu Item’; then select Scripts/Load Files Into Stack…
3. hit the corner menu and select ‘Insert Menu Item’; then select Scripts/StackSpreader (assuming you’ve copied StackSpreader.jsx into your Photoshop/Preset/Scripts directory)
Then you can run this one action to build the stack and offsets it one swoop.

I commented out the script so if you want to customize it or poke about its guts, feel free.

cheers,
n

More information on Ochre’s site here: http://ochremusic.com/2011/08/01/early-learning-now-available-for-download/
Get the album here: http://ochre.bandcamp.com/album/early-learning

Your average best friend by kaneel

proving grounds by nkurence

Installation files are here:
NKS3CS5_Install.zip (right-click, save link as..)

If you’ve got the CS4 version, simply load those presets into Photoshop CS5 and grab the updated .zxp file here:
NKS3CS5.zxp (right-click, save link as..)

If you have no idea what NKS3 is read this.

Sadly, Installation will still be manual. The NKS palettes rely almost entirely on a custom set of user presets (tools, actions, brushes, gradients, patterns, etc.). Adobe requires that these each be added manually to prevent rogue brushes from making international collect calls with your credit card. So in that regard, I see no way to avoid it. However, all assets will be local this time around. No more dynamic GUI loading – which will be great for those looking to work offline.

Since NKS3 was released there’s been nearly a thousand downloads. Seems only fair to start a public feature request thread for the next version. So if there’s a specific tool, or function that you’d love to have added drop me a line or add a comment to this post. Any requests I’m unable to accommodate I’ll make mention of in the comments, and try to address the rationale.

NKS4 is a third-party tool palette being developed for Adobe Photoshop CS5 on Macintosh and Windows operating systems. NKS3 will continue to be available for CS4 users.

First draft

Work-in-progress thread, including snapshots of the production at various stages:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=82693

+ if you haven’t heard it — http://ilkae.bandcamp.com/
Support what you love or else it may cease to exist

d/l the uncompressed 44.1kHz/24-bit AIF here

Download it HERE (right-click, save-as)

NKS3 is a custom tool palette built for Adobe Photoshop CS4 using Adobe Configurator. The purpose of NKS3 is to provide a fast and realistic natural media drawing experience within the Adobe Photoshop environment by facilitating an excellent array of custom-built tools in a compact, centralized palette.

NKS3 is not aimed at creating fast or cheap effects, but at providing universal, quality tools that can be used in any number of situations, but primarily geared for concept designers, industrial designers, illustrators, and general sketch making.

The NKS3 palette is divided into 5 sections, broken down as follows:

Document Utilities
1. New Document: opens a new document, fills the background with a hi-res scan of a sketch pad, locks the layer, creates a new layer for drawing, notches on the left and bottom edge are aligned at 1/4″ increments with the documents grid
2. Color Bar: intended for use within a document created via. the ‘New Document’ tool; loads a complimentary color bar into a locked layer for sampling
3. Rotate 90°: rotates the current document 90° clockwise
4. Flip Horizontal: flips the current document horizontally

Natural Media Tools:
1. Lead, Sharp: newly tipped lead
2. Lead, Dull: used and dull lead
3. Lead, Blue: 0.7mm Pentel Blue lead
4. Ball Point: standard issue ball point pen
5. Ball Point, Dirty: very well used ball point pen
6. Ink Pen: standard issue gel-ink pen, with slight falloff from ink buildup
7. Ink Brush: hard-edge, dynamic brush
8. Stipple 1: single-dot stipple tip, for feathering
9. Stipple 2: multi-dot stipple tip, for main shading
10. Marker, Round: round-tipped marker, based on Copic N1
11. Marker, Wedge: wedge-tipped marker, based on Copic N1
12. Grease: grease pencil
13. Bristles: simple comb-tipped brush with falloff
14. Pastel: soft, crayon tip
15. Spray Paint: wide, noisy spray paint (no drips, sorry)
16. Wash: light, pigment build-up tool
17. Water: dirty water

Texturing Tools:
1. Grain: fine grain
2. Grit: fine grain with chunks and rubbish
3. Fibers: wide paper fiber
4. Banana: organic texture, sampled from a scan of banana skin
5. Powder Coat: basic powder coat texture

Blending Tools:
1. Blend, Fast: finger-paint with scatter
2. Blent, Fine: click-hold, and agitate quickly across desired path
3. Smedge: could also be a ‘smoke’ brush, blends but also drops an initial splotch of paint

General Utilities:
1. Glow: basic dodge brush with feathered nozzle
2. Radial Gradient: gradient tool, set to radial, foreground -> transparent
3. 1px Line: basic line tool for drawing out guides

In addition to the new NKS panel, I suggest everyone check out Anastasiy’s custom color picker panel for Photoshop. Check out his site here.

Installation instructions included in the zip.
NKS3 is a freeware offering, and is compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS4, on Mac OS or Windows machines.

>Download NKS3

(ZIP 11.6 MB) (Right-click + Save-As)

If you’re using Adobe Photoshop CS5, please download the updated version here.

NKS3 by NKURENCE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The entire text of Miyamoto Musashi’s ‘A Book of Five Rings’ set into a graphical poster. The poster is divided into five sections, Earth, Water, Wind, Fire and Void, matching the structure of the book. Each chapter of the book is set within it’s own element. The poster is set with varying weights of Univers at 11 points on an 11 point baseline. 27″ x 36″ on a 192 gsm matte finish paper.

Send $30 USD Paypal to (nreeves@tracewerks.com), subject ‘Five Rings’, with a postal address if you’d like one.

A higher-res version of the poster can be seen here.

Christopher Barnes – Five Song EP
Deru – Genus
Kettel – Myam James Part 2
Luke Vibert – We Hear You
Lusine – A Certain Distance
Ochre – Like Dust of the Balance
Patrick Watson – Wooden Arms
Philip Glass – A Madrigal Opera
Proswell – Konami 2009 Remaster
Shugo Tokumaru – Rum Hee
Yagya – Rigning

The greatest opportunity to increase speed in anything is by approaching the most common/repeated tasks and looking for ways to reduce the amount of steps involved/energy expended. I’ve decided to start creating some brief screencasts to document some of my own approaches to these types of process enhancements, starting with Adobe Illustrator. I’m going to start with very simple procedures. I should start with my implementation of keyboard shortcuts, but that’s quite bland, so we’ll begin some actions mapped to hotkeys (just slightly less bland).

These actions are certainly not flashy. At the same time, please consider their implications. Due to the frequency with which these processes are implemented (often in sequence), their capacity for speed enhancement is great. Procedures covered are aligning, pathfinding, and mirroring.

View Alignment Screencast

1:01 / 2.4mb
The primary action, X and Y centering, is by far the most universal. The individual axis commands are quite useful, however, and mapping them as an F-key variant (shift/cmnd) allows them to be implemented quite naturally.

View Mirroring Screencast

1:42 / 4.1mb
If it’s not completely obvious, two actions are created to allow for a mirror with welded or unwelded anchors as needed. In addition to the MirrorY actions covered here, I also use a MirrorX action (mirroring across the horizontal axis). I still do the lions share of mirroring manually, using the reflect tool, as it’s commonly necessary to select an arbitrary axis.

View Pathfinding Screencast

2:32 / 6.1mb
Extremely basic, but that’s what makes them simply indispensable.

In the end it’s prudent for everyone to keep a channel of observation open to what tasks are performed with the most frequency, and to scrutinize all practical measures by which those processes can be optimized.

After quite a long slumber I’ve started fiddling with noise again. Got a new track up on SoundCloud, East on a Golden Wind, mastered by the savvy & sublime Christopher Leary @ Melograf Mastering. Super pleased with the results and speed, prices are extremely reasonable as well.

In other news I’ve come across what looks like an amazing book, America’s Film Legacy by Daniel Eagan, a guide to the 500-odd films in America’s National Film Registry via. the Library of Congress. From what I understand, it’s the first such attempt of it’s sort and is garnering some high-level acclaim from the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Leonard Maltin. If you’re a film buff, it’s likely worth a look. According to the publisher it’s being slated for a November release, and is currently available for pre-order. More information here.

There’s a good chance this could be a case of new to me, old to you as often happens with web content, especially with things that are years old. But this was so cool I couldn’t resist…

Jake Mandell, proprietor of Love Songs For Machines (an IDM legacy in it’s own right) has made 3 full length albums and 3 eps available for free on his site, including Parallel Processes and Quondam Current. If you’ve never heard of him, which I suppose is vaguely possible, check it out, it’s free–how can you go wrong with free??? If you like it, make sure you pick up Love Songs For Machines (just writing this is making me feel all kinds of nostalgic).

Some really interesting info in his bio too–definitely a guy who’s passionate about his work, and it really shows. Would love to hear him releasing again. I think he and James Horner could have done an insane collab on the new Tron score :-\

Otherwise noteworthy I discovered Kashiwa Daisuke last week. He’s got a really interesting style going- for example on his album 5 Dec. I hear influences including Steve Reich, Juno Reactor, Venetian Snares and Proswell to name a couple – all sort of riveted together with a bubbling acid jazz vibe. Definitely worth a listen, 5 Dec. is his most recent release, but in my current state it’s somewhat jolting (I’ve been digging into Program Music I mostly, which is a gorgeous album–far more melodic than his newer works).

Ochre’s new album arrived today–I already knew it was amazing, Acrid Avid Jam Shred is a staple of my life, Clarence Park is still my favorite Clark album, and between Gridlock’s Formless and Speedy J’s A Shocking Hobby I think there’s enough static energy to spark some sort of small fusion reaction.

http://ochre.spreadshirt.com

That being said we’re less than a week away from the release of his new album Like Dust of the Balance. You can preview the entire album on his site, or at last.fm. Preorder it here. This is an awesome release and should not be missed! If you’re not familiar with his work, there’s no better time to get acquainted.

*edit*
Like Dust of the Balance is now available for download from Bleep and Amazon. Also, there are new logo hoodies available at the shop.

IdN 10th Anniversary

A 10-ton anvil of design ga-ga. IdN held nothing back with this one-we’re talking varnishes, metallics, stickers, vinyl, even an injection molded hard plastic carrying case (and a couple CDs in typical IdN fashion). The book explodes in aesthetic value, and does not let up when it comes to content. Huge variety of designers, medias- and taste aside, you’re gonna find something you like (very likely a great many). If you’re into graphic art and you buy only 1 book…

Amano

I know we’ve crossed over into the realm of fine art with this one, but I’m not much into categorizing any way-the principals of color, value and composition are relevant across all visual art disciplines. fine art, graphic art, still, or motion. That being said this book is one I turn to pretty consistently, as Amano has a control and style that seems quite unreal at times. Imaginative, highly stylized, ornate, gritty in places and polished in others. If you like the image on the cover even a little bit, the rest will not disappoint.

Sketching

Product design is rad. It’s not a field I frequent, but it’s one I would like too. This book is a candid look at the ideation approaches of a number of product design studios and internal corporate design groups. Products are all over the place, which keeps it interesting. Sketching walks through the entire creative process, and offers up some great tips along the way. A great book if you’re into that kind of stuff.

The Skillful Huntsman

is to entertainment design what Sketching is to commercial concept design. TSH documents the concept design of a Brothers Grimm by 3 Art Center students, in parallel. In a way this book picks up where Sketching left off, and walks you through the development of an entire world- characters, props, vehicles, buildings, environment. All while discussing the considerations involved in each case. Being able to see it done in parallel by multiple people is really enlightening as well. I wish they’d continue with it, releasing future installments with different artists working on different stories. Another must if you’re at all interested in product or concept design.

Other notables:
Narita Inspected (hard to find, but excellent graphic design book)
The Art of Darkwatch (game concept design process)
Los Logos (should go without mentioning)
Fusion (another IdN release, like a mini-me of 10)
FontBook (the best font reference ever, browsing online is ok but nothing beats printed samples)
StyleFile Blackbook Sessions (any of them, graf)
10×10 2 (architecture, #3 looks hot)

and some publishers to watch:
IdN
Design Studio Press
Rotovision
Phaidon