Let’s Talk Creativity.

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Mark “Crash” McCreery's Baby Raptor

Via: http://creativejuus.com/

Do you remember where your first dose of creativity came from? Was it from a song? Was it from a movie or cartoon?

One thing I recall from growing up is that movies were my source of inspiration. It was film that taught me how to draw and tinker with film making.

This dialogue is especially timely since Jurassic Park is back in theaters but this time in 3D (I feel old). Just seconds after the movie started, I got chills from the dark opening score by John Williams and I found myself smirking throughout the rest of the film. Not only did I see Jurassic Park approximately 20 times in the theater as kid in Arizona but I believe my older brother brought me every little piece of Jurassic Park merchandise.

But to this day, I remember one thing and that was Topps’ Jurassic Park trading cards. These cards sparked my love for drawing. It was here, my love of not only drawing, story boarding  and truly understanding the power of pre-visualization started.

I wanted to learn how to draw like Mark “Crash” McCreery. To this day, I can’t listen to the Jurassic Park soundtrack without being transported back to the simple days of drawing baby Velociraptors as well as everyone’s favorite, the T-Rex. Thanks for the memories, inspiration, and art lessons Mark “Crash” McCreery.

Manga Studio 5 Is Perfect for Comic Illustration

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Adobe Photoshop is used in many industries, but it can be expensive and it’s primarily designed as a photo editing tool. Photoshop doesn’t have the tools and features that are ideal for comic illustration, but Manga Studio 5 does.

MangaStudio5_Box

10 Advantages Manga Studio 5 has over Photoshop:

1. Preset pen sizes that behave like real Japanese manga pens. (In Photoshop you have to set the sizes yourself and they are not specifically designed for inking and coloring.)

2. Support for pen tablets, ie Wacom, and high-quality pressure sensitivity that really mimics drawing on paper.

3. Huge variety of screen tone patterns from basic dot tones to fancy backgrounds and effects. (In Photoshop, you’d have to make/draw tones yourself.)

4. A panel tool designed specifically for comic creation. You can also make a panel extend past the bleed point as well as set the panel border thickness for emphasis to certain scenes.

5. Perspective rulers – you don’t have to draw your own perspective lines like in Photoshop.

6. Premade word balloons in all kinds of styles and fully customizable.

7. Tons of included content that will speed up your comic creation process.

8. Import a variety of 3D formats. Manga Studio 5 also includes 3D characters that can be manipulated for the ideal pose.

9. Supports both raster and vector layers, and includes specific vector tools giving you amazing control.

10. Manga Studio’s tools are based on real world comic and illustration tools such as inking pens, and rulers. There are many different pen tip types to choose from, unlike Photoshop whose primary design is for painting and digital editing.

For more information and a video tour of Manga Studio, visit: http://manga.smithmicro.com/manga-studio.html

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

The Hero’s Journey

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Hero's Journey

Over years, my art (primarily photography) has matured over the years due to one thing: A good story.

It sounds simple right? Just find or write a story.

I remember making little digital video shorts with my buddies in high school. I absolutely loved the creative process from start to finish but there was always something missing…

You guessed it, a good story.

My camera movements were smooth, my edits where clean, and my lighting was ok but after I made my final rendering export, I still really had nothing.

This is when I started doing some simple research about what it takes to make a good story. Since I was a huge Star Wars fan, I have always heard about the influence writer Joseph Campbell had on George Lucas’ work (especially episodes IV-VI). I soon discovered the path of the hero and the overarching storyline that has transcended various cultures and religions for hundreds and hundreds of years.

The story is simple; a hero sets off on an adventure. Along the adventure, the hero encounters many friends, mentors, and villains that test our protagonist. Through the adventure, a key revelation and transformation happens to our hero. This revelation forever changes our main character. The adventure soon ends and leaves the hero forever changed from by their experience.

In a nutshell, this is the path of the hero. When examining Star Wars, Lucas simply added new characters to the traditional hero storyline and set them forth on the path of the hero to fight the evil empire. However, this time, there were Wookies, Jawas, Lightsabers and sadly, Ewoks.

So before you start on your next piece of artwork, do some research. Delve deep within the history of your project, art piece, or animation and uncover hidden truths, conspiracies, and untold stories.

Joseph Campbell’s book The Power of Myth assisted me in my quest to find a simple yet effective storyline. Perhaps you too will gain some powerful insight into your next adventure! Check out YouTube for segments of the brilliant 1988 PBS interview with Bill Moyers.

The Name of the Game is “Theme Month”

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Brace yourself for some good clean fun and get ready to showcase your creativity!

Start sketching, rendering and animating – This month Smith Micro is looking for you to create your best image or video inspired by the theme of RAGE.

Artist Credit: Rocky Bracero

Artist Credit: Rocky Bracero

Give us your finest visual interpretation of rage. Just think of the last time your neighbor left you a nasty note on your car, demanding you quit parking in their “private” spot, even though you share parking on a public street. Think back to your body’s reaction: blood boiling, body tingling with RAGE, your fist clamping down like a Rottweiler’s jaw on the note your neighbor wrote you. Don’t let the the rage virus from 28 Days Later come over you… Just step away from the computer and come back to it.

At the end of the month, we will select 5 submissions from Anime Studio, Manga Studio, Poser, and MotionArtist entries.

All image and video submissions must be submitted here: http://my.smithmicro.com/gallery/ Deadline to submit is April 30, 2013.

Selected artwork will be featured in an upcoming blog post in May!

Chose your program wisely and get ready… get set… GO! 

 

MotionArtist is Here!

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MotionArtist

Our Newest Software Launches, Bringing Animation to Comics and More

Looking to add some movement to your comic creations? How about animating your photos shows? Whether you are looking to complete these tasks or other endeavors such as spicing up a presentation, our recently launched software, MotionArtist, is the tool for you.

MotionArtist enables users to add motion to their comic creations, as well as create interactive HTML5 presentations and make animated photo shows with ease. From graphic novelists and comic creators to photographers and public speakers, users of all skill levels are able to utilize the highly versatile MotionArtist software solution to enhance and share their artistic creations and presentations.

Check out what others are saying about MotionArtist:

“Create Moving Comics With MotionArtist” – Bob Al-Greene, Mashable

“MotionArtist Comic Creation Software Emerges From Beta” – Jackie Dove, TechHive

“MotionArtist for Animation Offers One-click HTML5 Export” – Monish Bhatia, MacNN

For more information on MotionArtist visit

motionartist.smithmicro.com.

Manga Studio 5 Continues to Dominate

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Manga Studio 5
January’s Manga Studio 5 launch is continuing to make waves and grab headlines!

Check out some of our recent Manga Studio 5 news:
“Review: Manga Studio 5 levels up with new tools and a fresh UI” ­– Karen Luk, PC World  

“Manga Studio 5 Release Celebrated with Axe Cop Print and Wacom Cintiq Tablet Giveaway”– Neil Raymundo, ToonBarn        

“Smith Micro Launches Manga Studio 5” – Stefan Blitz, Forces of Geek   

Contest Update:
In celebration of the Manga Studio 5 launch Smith Micro hosted a giveaway during the month of February for a Wacom Cintiq tablet and one of 25-signed prints created by Manga Studio artist and Axe Cop creator, Ethan Nicolle. The contest drew in over 21k entries.  Did you enter?  We will be announcing the winners soon! Stay tuned.

What are thoughts on Manga Studio 5 (please comment below)???

For more information on Manga Studio 5 visit manga.smithmicro.com.

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Poser Expo | Runtime Live

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We’re extremely pleased to help support the first ever Poser Expo | Runtime Live event which kicks off on March 22nd, 2013, with a keynote from Steve Cooper, Poser Product Manager. There are limited seats still available for the 3 day, online event. Runtime Live will host a series of 10 informative and interactive webinars featuring a collection of Poser experts sharing their desktops and techniques. This event will provide a deep exchange of expertise, helping Poser artists and fans alike improve their craft, with a blend of inspiration and information. Looking forward to seeing you in there!  Register Now!

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

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PA060252.jpg

We have these two new “friends” in need of clever and creative help, big time. They are both looking for suggestions from some helpful, creative people. Being the uber-helpful people that we at Smith Micro are, we figured that all of the creative people (you know who you are) who follow our blog might be able to help us to help those friends.

Basically, our friends are in need of two unique, cool first names, one for a man, and another for a woman. Locking down names they can be proud of, names they can share at cocktail parties and have monogrammed onto their socks, names that people will remember is their goal. The needy couple is open to hearing new crowd sourced names, in spite of the risk they face being pinned with something archaic like Archibald and Esmeralda. They are excited to hear what name suggestions you come up with. And so are we.

What we can do to make this process simple is publish a form where you can share your name ideas. We’ll go through and flag the ones that seem to fit and then let you guys vote on the names. Our friends are willing to live with this, and are actually quite intrigued about how this will ultimately work out.

Don’t let our friends down. Help us help them. Two new first names, that’s all we’re asking for.

Experience Anomaly

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Anomaly

Witchblade co-creator and longtime Poser superstar Brian Haberlin, has just released Anomaly, an epic in proportion coffee table book, steeped in sci-fi fantasy themes with some extremely seductive augmented reality to help tell the story.

When Brian first demoed Anomaly to us at Comic-con in mid-2012 we were truly blown away. He starts out telling a little about a technologically advanced race that gets marooned on a planet where a virus destroys all their tools, forcing them to revert to their primitive side to survive. This is all very interesting, and then he breaks open the book. It’s glorious; impressive in both size and the volume and quality of artistically enhanced Poser illustrations.

P7120096.jpg

But then he cranks it up a notch or ten when he breaks out an iPad 2 and points the tablet’s camera at a page of the book. On the tablet screen we see animated 3D jump off the page; warriors, robots, ships and solar systems. Each interacts when you click at them. An armed guard jabs his spear at you, a drone shoots and cracks the screen when it gets irritated enough, a virtual spider like creature finds a resting spot in the palm of your hand.

Anomaly delivers on the promise of augmented reality. Even experienced 3D pundits like Jon Peddie shard that Anomaly was the most impressive thing he’d seen at SIGGRAPH 2012 after Brian demoed it for him.

Now you can get your hands on Anomaly the book and the accompanying iOS and Android app to experience what 3D magic Brian and his team have been cooking up.

OctaneRender for Poser

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product page

Paul Kinnane has made a name for himself in the Poser community. He’s a talented developer who has released two versions of PoserPhysics in partnership with us. The latest iteration, PoserPhysics 2012 can be found here on Content Paradise.

Not a guy to just sit around once he’s finished a project, Paul dug in deep to build support for Poser in the highly acclaimed Octane Render engine. Octane Render, what’s that? Fair enough, here’s what the folks that develop Octane Render have to say: “Octane Render is the world’s first GPU based, un-biased, physically based renderer. It uses the video card in your computer to render photorealistic results fast…really fast. This allows the user to create stunning works in a fraction of the time of traditional CPU based renderers.”

v4skintest

What do we have to say about Poser content in Octane Render? “Wow”. Every rendering we’ve seen from Paul and his users has been stunning. Photoreal. Goosebumps. Magical.

Enough hyperbole. Let’s head back to Paul’s work to enable this integration of Poser into Octane Render. One of the best places to get started would be his Facebook page with lots of amazing sample images from OctaneRender for Poser.

winebottles

Once you’ve decided to give OctaneRender for Poser a closer look, head over to Otoy’s website for all the nuts and bolts. Note – you’ll need to have either Poser 9 or Poser Pro 2012 installed, with Service Release 3.1 (SR3.1) applied. On this page, you’ll find links to videos, technical requirements and a detailed FAQ.

OctaneRender for Poser is currently in public beta. If you’re the kind of Poser user that likes to experiment and push rendering settings to how close to photo-quality your images can be, this is right up your alley.

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