Tom Ray's Weblog

Bucky Ball Snowman

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:31:42 PST

The greatest achievement yet. Sure my co-worker Mark is the one that made it. But I did the scarf.

Man-girl kindle sketch

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:21:28 PST

Another sketch I did on my kindle fire. Working on my figure drawing. Did this one based on a random photo I saw.

Cartoon background painting on my Kindle Fire

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:41:52 PST

Trying out painting cartoon backgrounds on my Kindle Fire.
Not necessarily easier but at least I can paint out an idea when I'm just sitting around.

Girl Running Inkscape Drawing

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 23:32:51 PDT

Girl running - inked in inkscape and colored in gimp

I've just been doing some sketching with my wacom tablet trying to get better at working paperless.
After a while I took one of the sketches and just wanted to see how inking it using inkscape would work.
I have to say that Inkscape's inking capabilities have gotten a whole lot better since I tried it a year or so back.
Then I colored it using gimp.
Who says you need Photoshop and Illustrator!

Original wacom sketch in gimp

Inked image from inkscape

Opps. Accidentally posted a pick of my pianist online!

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:03:05 PDT

Pianist's Hands, originally uploaded by Stephen A. Wolfe.

Scandalous!

Am I the only one that sees this similarity?

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 21:57:24 PDT

When Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland" came out I saw the promotional poster and thought it looked like Elijah Wood. Now I'm watching an episode of "Wilfred" and really it's all I can see!

Is it just me?

Dog Pooped sketch

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:37:49 PDT

Just a sketch I did while I was on the phone.

Typical situation, dog pooped and peed and son pretends not to see it and asks to go play.

PXLPNT - 8-bit drawing tool

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:23:59 PDT

PXLPNT

I could spend hours drawing stuff like this on the site. It works on the phone too so now I have even more stuff to waste time with while I'm on the can.

Gorilla +1

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:25:47 PDT

Waiting for my AVLinux distro to install so I painted a picture of a gorilla on my laptop in GIMP

Muppets, Inc., 1963 | Source Muppets, Inc. later became Henson...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 06:40:53 PDT

Great new blog that collects interesting letterheads from over the years.

Published on Letterheady | shared via feedly

Muppets, Inc., 1963 | Source
Muppets, Inc. later became Henson Associates (letterhead here), then Jim Henson Productions, and finally The Jim Henson Company.

Another doodle from my phone.

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 09:03:26 PDT

Another doodle from my phone., originally uploaded by tmray02.

I don't know what the hell it's supposed to be. Looks like an arrogant ancient roman maybe?

How We Talked Amanda Palmer Into Releasing Under Creative Commons

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:07:14 PDT

Thought I'd share this story from my band Lorenzo's Music website.

Published on Lorenzo's Music - Madison, Wisconsin | shared via feedly

As you may know, we're fans of sharing music and creative commons and I just wanted to share a story about how I talked someone into doing the same.

The best part about this story is just the simplicity about how it happened. It wasn't a big ordeal it was just a simple conversation I had on twitter with Amanda Palmer. So here's the story...

Ben Folds, Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, and Damian Kulash released an album recently on bandcamp called Nighty Night under the band name 8in8. The concept was to write and record eight songs in eight hours at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass. It was for the Rethink Music conference that took place April 25th - 27th. And they were selling it for $1, with all the proceeds from the first week's sales going to Berklee City Music. Which I have to say, everything I just wrote about in that paragraph is very cool.

The conference was described as :

a solutions-focused conference, bringing together all sides and viewpoints on the subjects of creativity, commerce, and policy to engage in critical dialogue examining the business and rights challenges facing the music industry in the digital era, and to formulate ideas for the creation and distribution of new music and other creative works.

I watched some of the conference streaming online that day and liked the concept behind it. But I was a bit surprised when I saw the album they released and it was under a regular copyright. I thought from the description of the conference that they were missing an opportunity to showcase the need for artists to use creative commons to represent their art.

So I just briefly posted a message on twitter to @amandapalmer

I was delighted to find that later that day she had responded:

I was kind of confused by this second post but figured she was reading up on it and considdering it.

Then some other people viewing the conversation also asked about this move.
One was for it:

Another was wondering if it would hurt the donation they were asking for if they were allowed to share it:

I responded just by stating how I thought with the spirit of the conference that it should be offered as a medium for being re-mixable and and built upon for other artists. And that if fans wanted to promote it they would know that they were allowed to do this with permission from the artist.

The next day I got a message from the person in the previous conversation letting me know that the album was indeed now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License or CC BY-NC

So, in brief, this means that under this artist license you could Remix or adapt the work as long as you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). And you may not use this work for commercial purposes.

And soon after that people were talking to Amanda about wanting to make videos for the songs and other uses for artistic purposes on her twitter feed.

That's really what I/we think it's all about, using art to make art and to share the things you like freely and openly. So thanks to Amanda for considering it and acting on it. I hope it's a step in the right direction to show artists how to own their own work and let the fans know that they own it too!

Hump Day Posters: The Curse of the Werewolf

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Wed, 25 May 2011 09:27:23 PDT

Awesome werewolf posters!

Published on The Cathode Ray Mission | shared via feedly

Fans Crack Twitter Code for Sneak Peek at New Batman Film

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Mon, 23 May 2011 07:15:20 PDT

Get the hell out. Who in the world would have figured this out. C'mon.

Fans Crack Twitter Code for Sneak Peek at New Batman Film: "Hardcore fans of Warner Bros.’s Batman trilogy undertook code cracking of epic proportions Friday after the site for the next film, The Dark Knight Rises, hit the web.

When you first visit the site for the film — now in production for a July 20, 2012 release — you’ll land upon a black screen accompanied by a track featuring eerie chanting. Fans were originally baffled by the site, but one intrepid SuperHeroHype Forums member named “Riskproduction” used an audio program to discover that the spectrum in the audio spells out “#thefirerises.”"

Do have to say that it's cool that it really is a teaser campaign since the main link the photo comes from is just a blank page.