I’m really at a loss as to why this is happening. Everything is blurry when I use the Mac shortcut to take a screenshot. If I do the same thing with Skitch I don’t have any issues. I’m going to try and duplicate this on other Macs around the office. Has anyone else ever had this problem before?

Larger Comparison

I was trolling about the interwebs for some inspiration when I stumbled across an interesting contest over at Flockey. They are giving away some pretty nice packages as a means of promoting their business. If you need a little design help and are on a limited budget you should check it out. They are giving away everything from logo design to a full website design.

Overall I am very happy with it. I’ve also begun to put my portfolio back online. I developed a new Expression Engine backend driving all the thumbnails and imagery. It’s still a bit more manual than I’d like but I’m pretty happy for the most part. My next step is to get a few more sites up along with some of my print, illustration and identity work. After that I plan on moving on to my logo. The fleur-de-lis will stick around but I’ve got some ideas for some interesting twist on it.

Let me know if you find any bugs. I’m also very open to suggestions and criticism.

I traded in my other MMO addiction for Warhammer Online. So far I’m loving it. I am playing a Black Orc named Glarg on the Volkmar server. Any game where I can stuff a dwarf into a barrel and kick it off a wall gets two thumbs up from me. Now bring me my choppa so I’s can git to slash’n and bash’n stunties and humies! WAAAGH!!!

Sam and I have a thing for underwater creatures. First it was the Enterprise Octopus. Then it was Norman Naysayer. Now we unveil Mr. ROI himself, Ricky Revenue. Sam had this idea for a new character. Someone who’s eye is always on the numbers. He won’t approve something unless the ROI can be proven. To him it’s all about metrics and analytics. He loves Excel.

With that in mind and the undersea theme as my guide it wasn’t long before the good old angler fish came to mind. At first we we were thinking of someone with a sort of glazed, zombie like stare. All he can see is this glowing orb of money in front of his eyes. After some consideration it dawned on us that this person isn’t just a corporate zombie. He’s someone who legitimately has financial concerns about the business. You just have to get him on your side.

Drawing Ricky took about 2 hours in Photoshop once the initial sketch and direction had been decided on. This was my first time drawing at 300 dpi. The brushes are nowhere near as forgiving. You can see that it took me a while to get warmed up. Overall I’m pretty happy with how he turned out. I’m working on my line weights and smoothness. I like a bit of wave to my line but I’d like to be a lot smoother. I need to start forcing myself to use my whole arm for the movement rather than just my wrist.

Be sure to check the Vimeo page so you can see it in higher res, “HD”. Also be sure to check out Sam’s more in-depth explanation.