While I love this idea and think it’s perfectly the right direction for any television studio or network to go, I can’t help thinking about rural Canada’s under served Internet service. It’s 2012 now and there are lots of places in Canada still using dial-up because the monopolies deem it too expensive to bring broadband. Even where I live —a hop, skip and jump away from Toronto— I can only get 3Mbps on a good day.

However, fortunately, digital media doesn’t only mean live streaming Hockey Night In Canada. There is a wealth of possibilities to take advantage of: apps, games, video digest clips, buffers, you name it (but proper broadband would be nice).

This idea of CBC TV going totally digital reminds me alot of the Al-Jazeera English channel’s use of Youtube to connect with viewers (started up by a former CBC head honcho). Particularly, their show, The Stream.

CBC Radio has done a great job in embracing digital media in recent years. From posting videos of their radio shows like Q to fully integrating social media like my favourite show, Spark.

The video above is part of a national, grassroots campaign of CBC TV fans brainstorming ideas.

Stutter Social is a new organization I recently co-founded with my friend, David Resnick. It connects our fellow stutterers all over the world through group video chats. Using Google Plus.

Why would we want to do that? Because it’s often difficult to meet other people who stutter in your geographical area so you end up facing your unique social challenge alone. It is said that only 1% of the population stutters. We are faced with many prejudices including bullying at school, losing job interviews and worse of all, stuttering is misunderstood as a character flaw. Science continues to prove that it is neurologically based.

So meeting other stutterers online is the next best thing! In fact, that is our goal with Stutter Social. To spread the message of the National Stuttering Association – if you stutter, you’re not alone.

Why Google+?

We decided to use Google+ Hangouts because it’s free to use, pretty easy to use and a lot more stable than Skype. When David, myself or our other Hangout hosts starts a chat, we post the link to the Stutter Social Google+ page. As well as the Stutter Social Facebook page, Twitter account and right on the Stutter Social website homepage via a great big green button. You can’t miss it.

We host three to four Hangouts per week right now and momentum is growing to include more in timezones around the world (stuttering is taboo in some geographical locations while others do not even have speech therapists!). On average we get about five to nine people hanging out at one time and our Hangouts last about 2 hours. Sometimes longer! Topics of conversation include stuttering, of course, our experiences and off topic stuff like, well, whatever happens to be on our minds at the time!

Hangout Hopping and going viral

Thanks to a brilliant Chrome plugin named Hangout Canopy, which allows users to go “Hangout Hopping”, Stutter Social even played a role in spreading awareness about stuttering. In fact, one night, David suddenly found himself educating a large number of Hangout Hoppers. The next day – blog posts about our unique use of Google+ Hangouts started popping up in G+ Streams. Such as this article written by Peter McDermott. And David being interviewed on Sarah Hill’s KOMU News program.

New website

Initially, we used Google Sites to host the Stutter Social website. But as momentum and media attention grew, we knew it was time for a new home for our organization. As creative director, I designed the new Stutter Social website with a simple user interface consisting of only need-to-know information up front and center to bring users to our Hangouts as quickly as possible. Or to find future Hangouts via an embedded Google Calendar.

David and I really like using Google+ Hangouts for Stutter Social and now with the arrival of “Hangout with extras“, we have a few more features to engage participants.

David and I chatted about Stutter Social on a recent episode of my podcast, Stuttering is Cool. You can also listen to a few snippets of typical conversations in our Hangouts.

Stutterer or not, I hope to see you in a future Stutter Social Hangout. I’d also love to hear how you are using Google+ Hangouts in unique ways. Please share your story in the comment section below.

Angry Birds is the digital cultural reference for this release. In case you aren’t familiar with Wells’ classic, Martians resembling octopi invade Earth. The vision of Martians dropping from the sky made me think of the birds being sling shot into the pigs in the Angry Birds game.

However, I initially worked on a totally different idea for this cover. Email spam. Well, it’s like an invasion. My concept had many cans of Spam (the food item) —with an octopus on the label— invading the Earth.

Fortunately, I thought of and proceeded with the Angry Birds concept. I like it very much! Not sure was Wells would think, though!

I had also originally planned a companion release. The script of the famous radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles (no relation). I had planned to continue with the Angry Birds theme but using a caricature of Orson. Alas, I had discovered that the script is in fact not in the public domain.

Anyhoo, here’s the pencil sketch of my Orson Welles caricature.

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells is available for free in both .epub and .mobi format.

My 4th Sketchbook Video has me flipping through my watercolour Moleskine sketchbook from sometime in 2008 or 2009 (I really should add dates in my sketchbooks).

In spite of having grown up frustrated with the medium, I was inspired by the beautiful watercolour work by Calvin & Hobbes creator, Bill Watterson. I thought perhaps I should give watercolours another try. Plus, it gave me an excuse to buy the watercolour Moleskine.

Also featured in this video is a wordless comic strip mystery. Can you figure out what is happening in the story?

My latest sketchbook video features the sketchbooks I used to draw my Snert Oh No web comic in 2010.

I’d draw a one-panel comic during the 1.5 hour wait for my Toastmasters meeting every Wednesday after work. Then I used my iPhone for photographing, post-processing and posting (until a suitable app came along) it on snertohno.com (I wanted to use my laptop as little as possible). You can read all about it on my blog from way back when.

I enjoyed the challenge of drawing in ink without means to erase any mistakes. It sharpens your drawing skills. You’ll see evidence of that in the video – I call them retakes.

I mentioned my 2007 trip to Paris in my last Sketchbook Video. So the sketchbook I used during my trip is featured in my latest episode (I like how that sounds. I guess I’m a video podcaster now).

It’s a Paris Moleskine City notebook. I highly recommend these little things. They are the tour guide you create yourself!

You’ll see quite the strange colour palette I used in this sketchbook. That’s the fault of some Japanese markers I bought in a Japanese store in Pairs (go figure!). They came in weirdest combination. Though frustrating, it did provide some creative ideas on its own (as seen in my previous video).

My second sketchbook video features my followup pocket Moleskine from 2007ish (unlike the first one, I didn’t date my sketches).

I remember this time vividly. I loved the idea of having sketchbooks full of colourful works of art however I ended up forcing myself to create works of art for each page as quickly as possible.

So naturally, that hampered creativity. You’ll see a lot of unfinished pieces among some gems that I am really pleased with.

Lesson learned.

Well, thanks home video technology in my DSLR, iMovie and Vimeo, it can happen a little more than often. I’ve begun making short videos of my flipping through my sketchbooks. So, if you want to flip through them, you’re saved a trip!

Above is my first video which features my Moleskine sketchbook from 2006. This was a time where I was trying different mediums and techniques other than my usual pencil. You’ll see how some methods worked while others didn’t. I further developed those that did work and learned a lot from what didn’t.

The third release in my “tech joke” cover ebook series is 1950s short sci-fi story, The Stutterer by R.R. Merliss.

My goal with the series is to create ebooks with illustrative covers of literature in the public domain. I design the covers using comparable references to today’s digital culture.

My preceeding releases featured the Twitter Fail Whale on the cover of Moby Dick and steampunk on the cover of Wired Love.

The Stutterer is about a stuttering robot from another planet. So naturally, I chose to parody the Android mascot. The robot has a message for the people of Earth. Hence, the RSS logo. Earth in the book has some sort of telepathy P.A. system (Internet, anyone?).

I went for a bit of the Saul Bass style and lots of negative space to reflect the atmosphere of loneliness which the robot endures in the story (not to mention us stutterers have to go through).

You’re going to have to read the ebook (epub, mobi) in order to figure out what the Tesla coils relate to :)

My workflow

First I sketched my designs on paper and planned out the layout. I scanned in the chosen drawings and went straight to work with the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. Made the background black and all the objects white. That’s it!

This cover was the fastest of the three for me to create since I didn’t need to work with strokes or many different colours. Only black and white.

Most of the Illustrator work was playing with the bezier curves until I achieved the look I needed then proceeded with the fonts.

The right font for impact

I used Impact. Nice and blocky. I find it fits in very well with the overall design and layout. And it’s very readable. I placed the author and my illustration credit at the top right corner to prevent it from interfering with the negative space above the robot and RSS logo and underneath the book’s title.

This look is a lot of fun to create as it’s playful, wild and comes naturally to me. I enjoy designing with this look and will definitely use it again in the future.

Stuttering

While the book has nothing to do with stuttering (nor does it explain stuttering accurately), I chose to work on this book to coincide with this year’s International Stuttering Awareness Day happening on October 22. I stuttered all my life and produce a successful podcast on the topic at stutteringiscool.com.

You can download my ebook for The Stutterer for free in both epub and mobi formats.

If you’re interested in pulp fiction sci-fi, check out my friend, Glenn Schmelzle’s podcast, Science Fiction Afterlife where he reviews golden age sci-fi books.

The second book I illustrated and released as an ebook in my “tech joke” series was Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer. First published in 1879, it’s about a female telegraph operator who falls in love with a male telegrapher over the wire.

Yup, chat room romances existed in the telegraph days.

My tech joke series consists of illustrated coves I recreate for classic books in the public domain. Then I assemble them into ebooks and release them for free. My first release was Moby Dick illustrating the whale as the Twitter Fail Whale on the cover.

For Wired Love, I went for a steampunk design since I couldn’t find a suitable related tech joke. Plus, steampunk covers the telegraph era.

The look I had in my head required real 3D software. Since I was using Adobe Illustrator, it would have taken way too long for me to achieve a photorealistic 3D look. So I went for a 2D cartoony style instead.

The drawing combines steel (or is that pewter?), brass, wires and wood. That’s morse code running through the wires. I’ll leave it up to you to decode it ;)

How I created the cover

I consulted a few tutorials on creating the metal look. I won’t reinvent the wheel by including a tutorial on that here since you’ll find plenty on Google (I highly recommend the Vector Tuts site). However, I had to come up with my own method of creating a heart shaped piece of metal.

Google (or Vector Tuts) search for blending objects as well and then you’ll see how easy it is to create a heart shaped metal thingy. Any shape for that matter. It just takes a little time and patience to get the photorealism right.

Really, all I did was create two circles side by side, overlapping each other.

I then made a copy of them in another layer above, shrunk them a bit and then blended them together.

Then I used the pen tool to create the rest of the heart and made a copy of that, too. Guess where I pasted it? Yup, on the other layer with the larger circles. And yes, I increased the size of it, too.

Back on the layer with the smaller circles and rest of the heart – I blended that with the circles. I added a texture to make it look metallic (that’s another search for applying textures to vector art).

Back to the layer with the larger circles: I applied a radial gradient to each circle (at opposing angles for each) with many colours (in shades of grey. You’ll see why in the tutorials you searched for).

I also added a gradient for the rest of the heart.

The straight lined grooves

Just two lines on top of each other with a film grain effect applied to the bottom line. Same with the nails. They are simple circles with a gradient and a film grain copy underneath.

The bright morse code effect

Same method as the grooves except the bottom dots have a blur and glow effect applied to them. Like I did with the other objects throughout this non-tutorial, I kept playing with the settings until I achieved the effect I was looking for.

The joy of creative challenges

This is what I enjoy about creative challenges. Especially when using a challenging program like Illustrator. You have to plan out how you will achieve the look you are trying to achieve. Then achieving it!

One word of warning

You will need lots of RAM when using all these gradients and effects. I didn’t even get into shadows (just for the wires and to separate the heart from the wooden background) and font (another search for 1900s fonts. At the time, I forgot that Wired Love was published way before that).

Wow, after writing it outlined is, the cover totally doesn’t seem the hours and hours and hours and hours of work that it took to perfect it.

You can download my ebook for Wired Love in ePub format viewable in most e-readers or mobi for the Kindle.