2009 July | Taterboy.com: Graphics, Multimedia and Such

Illustrating in Illustrator Better Faster, The Happy Frog – taterboy
July 27th, 2009 | Filed under: Digital Art, Illustrator, Tutorials

The Happy Frog Illustrator Tutorial Video (HD)

Here is my first screen cast with an introduction to illustrating in Illustrator. Included are some very important tips in creating great illustrations in less time as well as an overview of the illustration process. We will create a Happy Frog character almost completely using the ellipse tool.

There are 5 rules to Illustrating in Illustrator, Better Faster. They are mentioned in more detail here, including four reasons for cleaning up strokes in your final artwork.
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Technorati Tags: Adobe, Divide, drawing, happy frog, Illustration, Illustrator, Paths, Tutorial, Unite, video

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Try WorkWatcher Free for 1 Month – taterboy
July 21st, 2009 | Filed under: Flex, General Info

WorkWatcher is the application we use at HD Interactive to manage our business and virtual workforce. WorkWatcher will be completing beta very soon and we are offering a free 1 month subscription for a limited time. Anyone interested in giving WorkWatcher a try, to see if we can save your company and employees much time and money, send an email to info@workwatcher.com today.

A Hosted Solution with an AIR Application Client:
We are web developers by day, but wanted to give WorkWatcher the feel of a desktop application. Something you keep open and use throughout the day, but still have the portability of a web application. Just download WorkWatcher to any computer and you can pick up where you left off.
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Technorati Tags: Adobe AIR, business management, linux, mac, management software, payroll, project management, windows, WorkWatcher

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Tiled Skin Effects in Flex – taterboy
July 21st, 2009 | Filed under: ActionScript 3, Flash, Flex, Tutorials

One of the greatest advantages of creating skins in Flash opposed to Illustrator or Photoshop is the amount of control over how the skin looks and functions. In Flash you can export all your skins as Flex components in a swc file which allows you to use those components as both classes or artwork. The flexibility comes in handy when building custom working/looking components. Button skins can be applied using the skin property with all of the states included in 1 skin class instead of four different images or symbols. You can even add transitional animations in between states.

The WorkWatcher Header:
We developed WorkWatcher, a business management AIR application, in Flex with all the skins designed in Illustrator and Flash. One of the interesting skins is the header bar with the stripes also needed to be able to stretch. The stripes are added or removed as the header width changes without distortion, creating a true tiling effect.

For the header, we used 1(stripe) as a Flex component class and another as a background image with scale9grid turned applied. It took a couple tries to get things working purfectly, so the flexibility really helped and opened up possibilities that are not available to image files.

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