Beadle’s About no more :(

man! I just found out that Jeremy Beadle has died last January, on the 30th, at the age of 59, suffering from pneumonia.

This is sad news indeed, as I really enjoyed his practical jokes tv shows while I was living in the U.K. during 1990-96 for my uni studies.

“Beadle’s About!” was a top preference on my tv watch-list back then. And I really sympathized Jeremy,

Photoshop: non-destructive Layer Merge

Here’s a marvelous shortcut for merging a number of  different layers into a new single layer, without loosing the original ones! This is a very useful technique for when you are not sure of the outcome of a layer merge, or when -for some reason- despite merging them, you still need to keep some layers separated for later use. Furthermore, the technique expands the horizons for more experimentation with various layer blending modes.

The following technique works from Photoshop 7 onwards to the latest versions (thank you for the info liverbones!) , for older versions please check and let me know

Diving in the depths of web design

One of the many things that I want to do in my life is to be able to design those nice websites that we all see from time to time and say: Wow! That’s an awesome web!

And I know that I’m only half-way there since I got the artistry going right, what I lack of, is knowledge of the mechanisms that make these things work. I can design nice website templates on Photoshop, slice them up, make buttons etc, but when coming to putting them all together to make the nice web it is supposed to be, KA-BOOM… the end complete.

Design is…

I saw this somewhere but, I really can’t remember where…

Anyways it said: “Design is… dead! Just do what they tell you.“

Fabulous! And so true! 1000000% correct! Every boss feels like being a designer!

I’m going to make a t-shirt with this on!

There were more sayings about design like this one, but this one was the most pragmatic of them all!

Think out of the box

Now that’s a phrase that one of my x-employers used to say occasionally: “Think out of the box!” – another one was “You’re fired!!!”

I was reading an interview with Brian Pulido (he’s the president of Chaos! Comics – see: Lady Death) and I particularly noted his answer on a single question.

I quote:

“Q: Most aspiring comic book artists only think about drawing, but in this new, entrepreneurial, high-tech world, what else should they consider?

Brian PULIDO: We should all be thinking out of the box. That’s where the path of most success lies. What else to consider? Business training. Financial training. Marketing training. Sales training. You can’t get there without a little marketing. Make that a lot of marketing.”

It couldn’t be said in any better way really. If you want to make it, anywhere, whatever your field of expertise is, start smart-bullshitting about how good you are, in whatever you are doing. People love meals that are served with cosy cutlery and lots of a ‘witty’ sauce with juicy garnishes! And the are always prepared to pay higher prices for them.

(quotation came from Christopher Hart’s “Drawing Cutting Edge Comics” -excellent!- book by Watson Guptill Publications, New York, 2001)

A pack of Luckies

Today was my name-day. Usually when you have your name day, which by the way is a religious thing; a specific saint is celebrated that day and all the people with names same as the celebrated saint’s, have their name-day (at least that’s how it works in orthodox christianity), so people that celebrate get presents from friends and relatives sometimes, along with the usual wishful blah blah.

All I got today was a pack of Luckies from my mom! lol! The tag under the logo says in Greek “Smoking is harmful for you and the people around you!” but it probably would seem the same to you, even if it was the recipe for cooking mousaka! It’s all Greek in the end

Anyways I’m not used in my mother buying me cigarettes, since I’m