This is the first time since I was 10 years old that I decided not to do resolutions. Way big deal. Instead, I thought that since I am now into visual planning, stick figures, sticky notes and graphic problem solving, why not draw my life instead of trying too hard for resolutions? Maybe if I draw what is going on with me, inside my head, what I am doing and who I am with, maybe it will make sense of it all. Maybe I won’t have to try for goals so hard. I will just sit back and observe my life as I live it, only I will be watching it unfold in stick figures on a sticky.

I invite anyone to join me in this right-brained adventure. I will sketch every day in 2010. I’ll try and post them so you can see.

So here’s the idea if you need to really “get” it:
Once a day
on a bus
on a train
in a mall
in a meeting
in a cafe
in a cubie
in the morning
at noon
at the end of your day
tell sticky all about it.
The sticky cares. Once a day.
Save them, toss them, share them. It’s up to you.
This is your sticky journey.
This is your sticky life. Your life, your mood, your moment.
Draw it.

There it is.
You. A stick figure. On a sticky.
Find yourself in a sticky.
Let’s do this….

(Photoshop.VN) -

..

Kid Galahad film It seems like the big thing to do these days is play handmade objects and ideas from the physical world into graphic and web designs, so in this tutorial you’ll learn how to add pencil drawn elements into your designs. Urban Cowboy release Stick It hd But what if you’re person who can’t draw a stick figure to save your life? Do you always loose at Pictionary? No problem! I’ll show you how to cheat your way through to awesome results even if you’re crap with a pencil! (*note: If you’re going to play along at home, you’ll need a printer and scanner.)

Step 1

So how about I stop pointing out your stick figure shortcomings, and lets get started. Trigger Man dvd The Family Man movie download The Order hd First things first… you’ll need to decide what sort of hand drawn element you want to add to your design. Whether it’s a simple bit of handwritten text or a complex drawing, knowing what you want is the first step. I’ve decided to draw an old banner style element, but like you I’ve spent too much time with a mouse and too little time with a pencil lately, so here’s what we’re going to do: Open up a new Photoshop document by pressing Command-N (PC: Ctrl-N). When the New Document dialog appears choose US Paper from the Preset drop-down menu, change the ppi setting to 150 and click OK.

Step 2

Bad Boys II hd With this new document we’re going to create a graphical version of what we want to be drawn into our design. We’re doing this because we’re going to take a step back to high school art class and do some tracing in the next step. The Full Monty rip I’m going to use one of the custom shapes from my popular Heraldic Shapes custom shape set, but you can use anything you’d like. Feel free to add text, shapes, even photos if you’re feeling ambitious. My only pointer here would be that this is easiest if your design is in black and white. Make your design nice and big so it’ll be easy to trace (you can always shrink it to fit your design). I also rotated my canvas so that I could work horizontally by choosing Image>Rotate Canvas>90° CW from the main menu. If you do this, don’t forget to rotate it back before moving on to the next step.

Step 3

When you’ve got your design all done, choose File>Print from the main menu to print out a hard copy. With the printed out design in your hot little hands, grab a blank piece of paper and some tape and go find yourself a window that has light coming through it (unless of course you’re one of the cool kids that has a light table at home). tape the paper with your printed design onto the window at a level that will be easy for you to draw then tape the blank paper over the top and SHAZAM! you’ve got a light table of your very own! The Dark Knight download Tristan + Isolde movie Sharpen up that #2 pencil and get to tracing! When you’re done, pull your mess down from the window, remove the tape from the edges and move on to Step 4.

Step 4

Ok, now take that beautifully traced page over to the scanner (I told you you’d need one, remember?). Scan the page using the scanner’s “Photo” setting, this will ensure that you capture all the levels of gray that your pencil put down and will give the depth to the final result to be convincing. Save the scan as a .jpg or .tiff at at least 150ppi.

Step 5

Now back to Photoshop where you’ll need to open the design you want to place your pencil drawing into as well as the pencil drawing we just scanned. Since I want to be able to show you a full scale version, I’ve created a small file with an aged paper background. If you’re interested in how to create one of your own, check out my Creating Old Paper With Custom Brushes Pretty in Pink psp tutorial. Arrange your two photoshop windows so that you can see them both, press the V key to switch to the Move tool, then click and drag your scanned pencil drawing into your design document.

Step 6 Ladder 49 download

It’s quite possible that your drawing is way too big when you get it into your design document so press Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T) to activate the Free Transform tool. Holding down the Shift key to constrain the dimensions of your pencil drawing, click and drag from the corners until you’ve got it sized correctly then commit the transformation by hitting the Return (PC: Enter) key on your keyboard.

Step 7 Crazy Animal movie download Edge of Madness ipod

Obviously all that white background needs to be dealt with now, and this is the easy part. Make sure that the layer with your pencil drawing is active in the Layers palette and change the Blend Mode of the layer to Multiply. Depending on your background you may want to lower the layer opacity a little as well. (*note: The Color Burn and Linear Burn blend modes can also produce good results depending on your background.)

Step 8

And there you have it! You’ve just added a pencil sketch into your design AND you’ve made people think you actually know how to draw!

Source: Pencil It In

Christians have the Spanish Inquisition to apologize for.  Secular humanists have Marxism, Maoism, and Nazism (few people today realize that “Nazi” stood for “National Socialist German Workers Party”) to apologize for.

The Inquisition – which Christians recognize was a terrible wrong – led to the execution of approximately 5,000 people over its 300 year history.  It stands as an ugly reminder of what can happen if “Christians” allow political and temporal power to dominate their thinking to the exclusion of the teachings of Jesus.

Communism alone resulted in the murders of more than 100 million human beings at the hands of their own officially atheist governments during peacetime.  But a) it is rare indeed to find the political left apologizing for the despicable sins of leftist ideologies; b) pure political and temporal power are at the very core of their ideology; and c) there is nothing even remotely close to the teachings of Jesus to guide them or tell them when they have gone too far in their all too often fanatic pursuit of pure political and temporal power.

History ignored, of course, is doomed to be repeated.

One of the favorite methods of dealing with dissent in the Soviet Union and the socialist system generally was to use the power of psychiatry to demonize dissenters.  You weren’t just incorrect in your thinking.  You were crazy.  And the “fact” that you were “crazy” was used as a propaganda tool as a means to advance the statist agenda.

In the Soviet Union, psychiatry was used for punitive purposes. Psychiatric hospitals were often used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally; as such they were considered a form of torture.

Christians in the Medieval period feared demons and the evil influence of Satan.  And fanatic and cynical temporal leaders alike harnessed that fear into a tool of repression.  Their secular humanist counterparts have no such fears, of course.  They have only power, and the determination to crush any who oppose them.  And so rather than see demons in their opponents, they see madness.

If you don’t think that leftists still embrace the power of psychiatry as a means to advance their own political agenda, please think again.

I write the above because of a frightening thing that emerged today.

From WBC Newsradio 1030:

Image courtesy Taunton GazettePosted: Tuesday, 15 December 2009 1:56PM
Child’s Christmas artwork deemed ‘violent’
M.L.

Taunton (AP/WBZ Newsroom) — An 8-year-old boy was sent home from school and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation after he was asked to make a Christmas drawing and came up with what appeared to be a stick figure of Jesus on a cross, the child’s father said Tuesday.

Chester Johnson told WBZ-TV that his son made the drawing on Dec. 2 after his second-grade teacher asked children to sketch something that reminded them of the holiday.

Johnson said the teacher became upset when his son said he drew himself on the cross. Johnson, who is black, told WBZ he suspects racism is involved. He said he thinks the school overreacted and wants an apology.

Johnson told the Taunton Daily Gazette, which first reported the story on Tuesday, that his son gets specialized reading and speech instruction and has never been violent in school.

An educational consultant working with the Johnson family said the teacher was also alarmed when the boy drew Xs for Jesus’ eyes.

A call to Johnson was not immediately returned.

The boy was cleared to return to school on Dec. 7 after the evaluation found nothing to indicate that he posed a threat to himself or others. But his father said the boy was traumatized by the incident and the school district has approved the family’s request to have the child transferred to another school.

“They owe my family an apology and the kid an apology and they need to work with my son (to) the best of their ability to get him back to where he was before all this happened,” Johnson told New England Cable News.

The father said in the days before the incident the family had gone to the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro, where there are crucifixion statues.

“That was fresh on his mind,” he told NECN. “And that was a good thing that he saw.”

Superintendent Julie Hackett said she could not discuss an individual student and did not address the drawing specifically or the teacher’s reaction to it, but did say the school has safety protocols in place that were followed.

Hackett did not return multiple calls from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

In June 2008, a Taunton fifth-grade student was suspended for a day for a stick figure drawing that appeared to depict him shooting his teacher and a classmate.

Let me just assure you that none of the teachers, principles, and “experts” who were so alarmed that a child would draw Jesus on the cross with “Xs” for eyes to show that Jesus had died were anything even close to “Christian” in their worldview.

We live in an time in which the government pays for an “artist” to drop a crucifix into a har of urine and label the creation “Piss Christ.”  And now that same taxpayer-funded NEA is blatantly part of the left’s political agenda as a propaganda tool.  But a public school child who draws a picture of Jesus on the Cross in response to sketch something that reminded him of Christmas is suspended and forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation.

When it is the adults who SENT that poor, innocent child to the psychiatrist who desperately need psychiatric help.

A few days ago I read an article in the LA Times on the need to protect the free speech rights of children who use internet technology to bully and humiliate fellow students.  And the ACLU is at the forefront of such legal action.  Nobody on the left even thinks that children who publish pictures of their naked co-students has mental issue.  And yet nobody is protecting the rights of a child TO DRAW A PICTURE OF JESUS AT CHRISTMAS.

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Oil on linen, 6″ x 6″.

Are you ready for Halloween? Do you have your costume picked and ready to go? My kids are almost ready – My daughter wants to be a Wizard Witch – that is a cross between a Wizard and a Witch obviously. She is wearing a very sparkly Witch costume we bought on clearance last year and will carry a wand. It is what she wants – so I am all for it. My son wants to be a stick figure – is that funny? It is so easy to make. I got him a Black Shirt and Black Sweat pants – cost me $11.  Now I have to find the Glow in the Dark Masking Tape and then just tape it on the shirt and pants and he is done. Seems too easy for me this year – but I am so not complaining.

I still have yet to carve or paint my pumpkins. The picture you see above is my Painted Dog Pumpkin I made last year – isn’t he cute? I wrote a Hubpage all about Pumpkin Carving Alternatives you can take a look at to see some of the other ones we made last year.  I have not decided which approach I will take this year. I did grow my own Pumpkins for the first time this year and got a few good ones in some fun shapes.

I am guilty this year of not taking out my Halloween Decorations – I have been so busy I just have not found the time. I do have some festive fall decor outside my home, but usually the inside is filled with decorations. The kids have not said anything so I do not see the urgency of going in the attic at this point to get them out. I did make a great Squidoo page all about Halloween Window Decorations and was hoping to get some myself, but sometimes life can be too busy – so I guess next year. In my area the kids do not trick or treat at my house because it is too rural so no one will be coming to see them anyway.


I do have to share my favorite Halloween Costume I have seen this year – I am not sure why I like this one, but it really made me laugh. Have you seen the Toilet Costume? I think this is great and so wrong all at the same time – so for me it is the perfect costume if you have it in you to wear it. Was that a Pun? I have to say if you want attention at your Halloween Party then this is one that will no doubt bring it on.

Halloween is that time of year that tells us once we get through that – Thanksgiving and Christmas is right around the corner and to me that is the scariest thing about it. Those holidays I am totally not ready for at all!!!

Here are some other Halloween Pages I have Written you may like to see:

Halloween Cupcakes

Halloween Party Games

Halloween Party Pinatas

I just ran across a great organizing idea from Amy at her blog, The Idea Room.  It just goes to show, you can organize your family while also keeping your decor attractive (and inexpensive).

Check it out:

The Idea Room: Kids Organizing Bulletin Board

Here’s another fun blog I found via Amy’s blog.  I especially like how you can create a silhouette family or stick figure family for your own blog.  (You may remember how much I like silhouettes…).

Widdly Tinks

Here is a video of some of our animations so far.

It’s only natural that my love for drawing and my love for music would come together as a love for animation, and – - - Oh… I didn’t mention that I dabble in animation…?  And I forgot music too? Huh – weird…

Well, I guess I just figured that the Opening Sequence for KatiesOpinion made that kind of obvious… I mean, you do remember KatiesOpinion – right…?  What… NO…?!? Why that’s preposterous!!! EVERYONE knows KatiesOpinion!  On what planet do you spend most of your time?!?  I mean seriously – WTF!?!  Why don’t you try pulling your head out of your – - - !!!

I know, I know… of course I’m just kidding. I know KatiesOpinion was never THAT big… But it was kind of popular… back in the good old days… waaaayyyy back when in the olden times of 2006-2008

. . . cue flashback . . .

Back in those days - which I like to call ”The Time Before YT Sucked” - YouTube was really an exciting space.  It was the time period just before–and right after–the Google buy-out of YouTube in the Fall of 2006.  The world was fascinated with YouTube–which translated into something like 100-million views EVERY DAY–but the corporate media giants hadn’t gotten a fix on how they could control this new communications channel just yet.

As a result, there was this all-too-brief window of time where YT was like a Wild-West Gold-Rush Town.  Everyone and ANYONE had a chance of capturing the eyeballs and imagination of the globe, and that could lead to… well, anything… or nothing… nobody knew for sure, but it was exciting to be in the mix.

And we were in the mix… at least at a certain level.  KatiesOpinion gained notoriety (or maybe a better word is “infamy”) among a certain segment of “The YouTube Community” that was very active in creating and criticizing (I’d say “critiquing” but it really was mostly “criticizing”) original content.  We collaborated with (and/or battled with) some of the biggest names on the Tubes… and we always felt like that big “POP” was just around the corner… as if the next video might be the one that would make us all rich & famous…

Well… the “pop” never came, and we never got rich & famous… though we DID make “some” money (very little money) and we DID amass a respectable audience – the KO YouTube Channel is still active, and at last count was up to 27,628 subscribers and 6,535,890 video views – yes, that’s right… over 6-1/2 MILLION video views!  But it certainly wasn’t enough for any of us to quit our day jobs… well, except for when Katie quit her job (technically a night job) moved to LA, ended up landing some voice-over work on certain primetime TV cartoon and then – - – but that’s a different story…

. . . end flashback . . .

So now that you’re up to speed on KatiesOpinion, let’s move on to what I meant to talk about in the first place… one of my very favorite pieces of work ever… the Opening Animation & Theme Music for KatiesOpinion.  

I’m really proud of this one… all 22 seconds of it.  Yes – short, I know… but keep in mind, it was meant to appear at the start of every episode of a weekly webshow series… so short was the idea.  It was even criticized (more than a couple of times) for being “way too long.”  My goal had been to get it down to less than 15 seconds… but I just couldn’t bring myself to cut it down any further.  To those critics… “Meh – bite me”

Historical Note:  I’ve been told that the KO Title Sequence was the first ever Animated Theme Song intro of any YouTube Channel… And while I’m not at all not sure how true that really is… it’s still really cool that I’ve been told that!

 CLICK THE PICTURE TO VIEW THE VIDEO

The KatiesOpinion Theme Song may be the best piece of music I’ve ever created.  If not the best, then certainly my personal favorite.  The tune was composed while walking around whistling and snapping my fingers (I wonder if that comes across in the finished piece?) And the actual music production I did on my PC using an awesome program called Acid Pro.

The animation I produced in Flash (yes - Flash is awesome too) as a timeline sequence of individual scribbles done on my Wacom digital pen tablet.  And as crude as it is… it’s the only animated sequence I’ve ever created that has been viewed millions of times by people all over the world!  Not too shabby for a bunch of doodley neon-colored stick-figures!  

Animator’s Note:  I’d originally intended the stick-figures to just serve as a rough storyboard/animatic while I figured out the sequence… but as I went along, I actually started to really like the style.  And yes–I’ll be honest–frame-by-frame animation can be a grueling and time-consuming job… so when I realized I might not NEED to redraw everything… I was plenty happy with that!

Now if you hadn’t already experienced the unique brand of entertainment that is KatiesOpinion… well then I’m glad that I had this opportunity to introduce you. 

WARNING:  KO can be an acquired taste… and is not always family- or office-friendly. 

It’s nothing obscene or anything like that… but depending on how easily-offended your co-workers, your kids, or possibly your parents are, it might be best if you just put on your headphones first.  So check your sensitivities at the door… and enjoy!

P.S. – keep your eyes open… there could be a new KO video on the horizon… you never know!

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PM Today stays in the #1 spot this week on our top FFM top 10. Special Ops moved into the #2 spot with their smash track ‘Pressure’

Make sure to check out the newly posted polls on our blogs and vote this week for your favorite tunes here on FFM! The Arkanes and Stick Figure break into the Top 10 this week!

Scott from ‘Stick Figure’ has been so kind to send an original track – ‘Hawaii Song’ and his ‘2AM(Slightly Stoopid Remix Contest 2009) Dub.’  Check both out right here on FreakinFM!

FreakinFM

Hey look at this video I made!

Having a barbecue, cookout, picnic, family reunion or other party this summer where food will be cooked on a grill? This card makes a cute colorful invite.

Stick Figure Family Clipart

Nine cute and happy stick figure family designs. Includes mom, dad, baby, todder, boy, girl and teen girl. Pets too! Simple shapes and illustrations.

Great Uses:

• Address Labels
• Notecards
• Totebags
• Thank you cards
• Moving Cards
• Post Cards
• Embroidery
• Memo pads
• and so much more

Do you like what you see? CONTACT ME and give me suggestions on other stick figure collections!

Technically not a 4th of July greeting card, but many people do throw a pool party or barbeque party during the holiday (red, white and blue Jello desserts ring a bell?) I really like this stick-figure card by the appropriately named Stick Figures – the flamboyantly raised hot dog, the wide smile, the little crown are very cute! This card could also be used as a Father’s Day card for your very own BBQ King.

Make your Stick Figure Family at FreeFlashToys.com