Weblog of A Designer

Flickr is one of the most popular on-line platform to showcase and share your images with millions of users from various corners of the world. Though, primarily Flickr is meant for sharing Photographs (and now video, too), however many artists, painters, calligraphists, print makers, and designers share their artworks, illustrations, paintings and other non-photographic images on Flickr. If you visit specific groups dedicated to non-photographic visual art, like paintings, graphics, digital art, illustrations, you will find thousands of artists showcasing their artworks and providing an amazing spectrum of visual culture, across the globe.

Here is a list of 20 Flickr groups dedicated mainly to non-photographic art, which I find very interesting:

1. Art and Artist »
2. Art is Art »
3. Art Directory »
4. Art District »
5. Art - Drawing and Painting »
6. Art Now »
7. Art Vision »
8. Artists Without Borders »
9. contemporary fine A R T S + Culture »
10. Digital Art »
11. Global Urban Art »
12. Graphic Design »
13. Illustration »
14. Illstration Now »
15. Obsessive Drawing »
16. Painting »
17. Paintings from you… THE ARTIST »
18. Sketches »
19. Urban Artist Collective »
20. Your Art - Not Photography »

While working online, sometimes it really helps to have a handy web tool that allows the users to try and match different shades, design color palettes, pick up the hexadecimal or RGB or CMYK values of the chosen colors and so on. Following are few online color matching tools and sites dedicated to color matching and color palette design, which I find very helpful. The sites and tools listed below, are arranged alphabetically and does not express any qualitative differences between them.

Adobe Kuler
http://kuler.adobe.com/

Adobe Kuler is an amazing color palette generating tool from Adobe that allows the users to explore various color schemes created by hundreds of other users, create their own palettes and share the same with others. One can upload any image or photograph from hard disk and create color palette based on that uploaded image. Adobe Kuler also allows the users to get images from Flickr and create color scheme from them. Flickr members can also login to their Flickr account and their own images to create color palette with Adobe Kuler. The online version of the application is built with Flash, so before trying this tool one should  make sure to have Flash player installed in the system and the browser supports Flash. Once registered, members can save their color schemes and download then as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator file.

Apart from the online version, Adobe Kuler has a desktop version, as well. The desktop version can be downloaded from this location and it requires Adobe AIR. The site also has a very good Links section, where various useful articles on color theory can accessed.

ColorBlender.Com
http://www.colorblender.com

ColorBlender offers a free online tool for color matching and palette design. It allows to create and edit a 6-color matching palette (which is referred on the site as a “Blend”) in two editing modes – Automatch and Direct Edit. In Automatch mode, once the first color is selected, the ColorBlender will calculate the value of all 5 other colors and display them on the palette itself. Again, each of these 6 colors of the palette could be edited individually, in Direct Editing mode.

Once the color palette has been created and/or edited, ColorBlender allows its users to download the color palette, as Photoshop Color Table (.ACT) or Illustrator Colors (.EPS). It also allows the user to send the palette or “Blend” by mail. The “Blends” could be saved also saved online, and could be accessed whenever the user returns on the site from the same workstation (provided the user’s browser accept cookies).

ColorBlender has recently won the WEB 2.0 Award for 2008, from SEOMOZ.ORG!

ColorHunter.Com
http://www.colorhunter.com

ColorHunter is an online tool that allows the user to upload an image and create color palettes from the uploaded image. It can also generate color palette from any image available online, once the URL of that image is provided. For each image, ColorHunter can generate two palettes – vibrant and dull and the user can toggle between these two palettes to view them. One can also view the color palettes generated by other users and if the user is registered with the site, it will enable them to share his/her color palettes with others, as well.

Colour Lovers
http://www.colourlovers.com/

COLOURlovers is color and design community for creative inspiration It store thousands of color palettes generated by the members. Designers and color strategists can register on the site to explore various color swatches and color palettes and also share their color creations, color palettes, color swatches, and patterns with other members and non-members.

According to the site, COLOURlovers is a resource that monitors and influences color trends. This community is regularly updated with information and examples of the way colors are used in the real world.

Color Palette Generator
http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

DeGraeve.com’s Color Palette Generator is another online tool that allows the users to enter the URL of an image and get a color palette that matches that image. Unlike ColorHunter, this color palette generator tool does not allow the users to upload an image to get a matching color palette. This tool is very helpful for coming up with a color scheme of a web site that matches any key image chosen for the site.

Color Picker
http://www.degraeve.com/reference/color.php

Color Picker is an online color matching tool from DeGraeve.com. Once the hex code of a particular color is provided, the Color Picker generates 4 different 5-color palettes, based on the main color (the hex color that has been provided in the beginning). Clicking on any color swatches will replace the main color with the color clicked and generate another set of 4 different 5-color palettes, based on the new main color. The only problem with this tool is that it understands only hex code and does not accept or provide RGB or CMYK information.

Color Schemes Generator
http://www.wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html

Color Schemes Generator is a full-fledged color matching and color scheme generating tool from wellstyled.com. This is one of the most advanced color matching tool that are available online and free of cost. It has a color wheel that allows the user to choose a color as the base color. Once the base color is chosen, user can choose the type of color palette from Mono, Contrast, Triad, Tetrad and Analogic and define the relationships between the colors in the palette. This tool also allows the user to fine tune each palette type, by changing the angle between the colors on the wheel, adding complementary color, reduce the palette to web-safe color. User can also generate variants of the scheme, like Pastel, Dark Pastel, Light Pastel, Contrast or Pale.

The most amazing feature of this tool is the color blindness check option. Once the color palette is generated, this tool allows the user to check how the palette will look, if viewed by people suffering from various types of color blindness, like Protanopy, Deuteranopy, Tritanopy, Protanomaly, Deuteranomaly, Tritanomaly, Full Colorblindness and Atypical Monochormatism.

STOCK.XCHNG
http://www.sxc.hu

STOCK.XCHNG is one of the leading FREE stock photo sites that allows users to browse a huge image gallery containing 350000+ high-quality stock photographs, permits sharing of personal photos and hosts more than 25000 photographers from across the world. The site also features a very active and useful forum on photography and stock images.

While most of the images are free for download and personal use, there are many photographs distributed under hundreds of categories that are free for commercial use. Though users are encouraged to upload their images on this enormous pool of stock photographs, however one needs to be extra sure about the visual clarity and aestheticity of the images. Unless the photo represents excellent creative and technical skills, it is hard to get selected in the pool. The quality ranking process of the images and their respective ratings ensures the visual, creative and aesthetic qualities of the stock-pool.

STOCK.XCHNG also runs STOCKXPERT (www.stockxpert.com), an online shop that allows users to buy and/or sell high-quality stock photos photo at a great price!

MORGUEFILE
http://www.morguefile.com

MORGUEFILE is an archive to store post-production material for reference, an inactive job file, as the term is explained on the home page of the site. MORGUEFILE contains hundreds of free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use.

The website says, “The term morgue file is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues flats, although the term has been used by illustrators, comic book artist, designers and teachers, as well.” The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits. MORGUEFILE is the world wide web’s morguefile repository.

MORGUEFILE allows the users to browse and download large stock photographs for personal as well commercial use. It also allows the users to contribute images to the site’s stock photograph pools. Registered users can access lightbox, create their online portfolio and submit photos. Once submitted pictures are approved by the editors/admin, the user is considered as a contributor. After the user is verified as a contributor, his/her account will forever remain within the archive of Morguefile.com as <username>@morguefile.com and the user will be given an access to this mail account as well as few other additional features at http://www.morguefile.com/horde.

Recently, MORGUEFILE has launched Morguefiles Shop (http://morguefile.com/store/index.php), with collaboration with Amazon.com, which enables their users to buy cameras, prints and other photgraphy related stuff in a secured and safe manner.

OPEN STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY
http://www.openstockphotography.org

OPEN STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY (beta) is mashup created to help designers find free stock photography (or public domain photography). Much like Wikipedia (and Wikimedia Commons), Open Stock Photography, is a multilingual system and allows the users to search for stock photography in virtually any language!

The Wikimedia Commons, a central media archive operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, contains more than 2,402,261 images, uploaded by over 30,000 registered users. Each of these files is available under a free content license or in the public domain; there are no restrictions of use beyond those relating to use of official insignia. Licenses which limit commercial use are considered non-free. The website OPEN STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY enables its users to search, browse, view, and download these images and also encourages photographers to submit their photographs to this unique pool of free stock images.

This site offers various features and functionalities that enables the users to browse, search or download images in a more effective manner, like Search (by term, tags or colors), light-boxing, implicit tagging, search translation, Public or private image commenting, and many more. Apart from these online functionalities, OPEN STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY also offers few exclusive off-site features like, image resizing, image cropping and image printing.

STOCKVAULT
http://www.stockvault.net

STOCKVAULT is a photo sharing site that enables its users to browse and search their photo gallery of over 8.000 royalty-free, high resolution stock photos, templates and logos to use in personal and educational design projects. Users can also share their own photos and participate in the revenue sharing program.

The users can register themselves on the site as members and access the photos, lightbox and other features. Once registered as member, the user can sign up for a photographer’s account. On activation of the photographers’ account, users will be allowed to share their images with other members. STOCKVAULT is a photo sharing site and does not allow the users to sell their photos, but it does offer a unique revenue sharing program, powered by Google AdSense, to the photographers. STOCKVAULT also organizes online photography contests quite often.

Apart from a huge gallery with over 8000 stock photos, STOCKVAULT also offers a section dedicated to various tutorials related to photography, photo editing, HTML and CSS. They run a separate site with various Photoshop, CSS and Dreamweaver related tutorials at http://www.tutorialvault.net. They have two other sites featuring stock templates and stock textures, available respectively at following locations - http://www.templatesfeed.com and http://www.texturepacks.net.

STOCKVAULT also has a very useful link section that features multiple websites offering free stock photos, images and other graphics.

AMAZINGTEXTURES
http://amazingtextures.com/textures
[Please Note: The site available at http://amazingtextures.com, does not seem to work properly, but http://amazingtextures.com/textures runs perfectly fine]

As the name suggests, AMAZINGTEXTURES is a site that provides hundreds of free, high-resolution textures, images, backgrounds, wallpapers and texture maps for personal use. All images are intuitively categorized in 19 separate categories for the users to search them easily. The site also has a separate section especially built for Tiled Textures.

One can visit the “Free Sample” section to access larger images without being registration. The users need to register to download high-res files and to get access to their Lightbox feature. Lightbox enables the users to gather up to 10 textures and download them at once, as a zipped file. The registered users are also allowed and encouraged to contribute textures to this pool. If user uploads 10 high-resolution textures in 15 selected categories and/or 3D image textures, the user can get “Full Access” to the site.

To use these textures for commercial purpose one needs to contact AMAZINGTEXTURES. Please do not forget to read their Terms of Use and Disclaimer before using any images from AMAZINGTEXTURES.

ALTERED STOCKS
http://alteredstocks.blogspot.com

ALTERED STOCKS is an archive of free stock images, conceptualized, developed and being maintained by Altered Black - the one-stop creative design agency providing business-intelligent design solution for your organization and your brand.

Altered Black, as a part of their endless effort to distribute and disseminate design assets and design knowledge among designers and design-users of the world, proudly presents - ALTERED STOCKS [alteredstocks.blogspot.com], a manually updated archive of high-resolution, large stock photos and images. Anyone can download these free images and use them for personal or professional, non-profit or commercial usages.

Though, ALTERED STOCKS currently offers only high-resolution stock photographs, however other design assets like icons, illustrations and graphics will be made available soon .

Boipara.com - Online Archive of Bangla Literature has launched a blog as an extension of their effort to archive non-mainstream Bangla literature and little magazines on Internet and make these rare and marginalized literary works accessible to everyone. This extended archive is called Boiparar Blogpara - A Bengali Literature Archive Blog and can be accessed at following location:

http://boipara.blogspot.com

Few important archived materials on this Bangla Literature Archive Blog:

• Bangla Poems of Falguni Roy
• Short Story of Amiyabhushan Majumdar
• Biography of Sandipan Chattopadhyay (part)
• Writings and Portraits: Works of Hiran Mitra

Boipara, being the first and probably the most viewed online Bengali Literature Archive, focusing on Bengali Little Magazines and marginalized literature, is constantly putting their effort to add more and more content to the archive. This Bangla Literature Archive Blog [http://boipara.blogspot.com] is a new initiative taken by Boipara.com as a part of their endless effort to make alternative Bengali Literature and Little Magazines available and accessible to everyone and anyone.

It’s a good news for all aquascape artists and planted tank enthusiasts, who cannot read Chinese! Creative Aquascapes Union has launched the English Version of their amazing website and online gallery - www.cau-aqua.net. Thanks to these great aquascape artists for sharing their works and experiences with hundreds of planted tank enthusiasts of the world, who have been inspired by the works from CAU.

On 1st May, 2007, members of CAU have announced the launch of the English version of Creative Aquascape Union’s website, celebrating their first anniversary, on various major Aquarium forums, like, www.plantedtank.net, www.aquaticplantcentral.com and other related sites.

Justin Law of CAU said,

“..1st May 2006, A Chinese version of CAU launched, we hear a lot of voice request us to translate this site into an English version. We also aware that this international language could help more aquascape lovers around the world to know us. However, from our limited resources and English is not our first language, the progress is very slow, first we have to solve the system issue, then translation, reformat….”

Thanks, Justin! You guys have done a great job! Congratulations!

Two of my most recent writings are published on Natunkabita.com - an online Bengali Literature magazine, which is also the online presence of ‘Natun Kabita’ (New Poetry) - one of the most promising Bengali Literature and Poetry Magazines of the time.

I am a regular reader of their printed issues and now I am really excited to see one of my favourite magazines, easily accessible on internet. ‘Natun Kabita’ (New Poetry) is probably one of the very few literary groups in India that consciously tries to question the conventional mode of writing, denies the supremacy of main stream literature, supports non-conformist literary initiatives and regularly publishes strange text pieces; labelled as ‘New Poetry’, like mine! Jokes apart, ‘Natun Kabita’ has been publishing my experimental writings in Bengali, regularly, since 2004 and allowing me to play with language as well as the form, denying all lingustic and literary conventions of mainstream Bengali Literature.

I was reading their ideas about this so called Bengali Natun Kabita or New Poetry and how it was evolved in the last decades of 20th century and thaught it would be helpful for the inquisitive readers if I post few excerpts from their manifesto here,

“In every language and time a conventional main stream of poetry is cultured, it is observed, with nurturing supports from institutions and establishments. … During late eighties through early nineties of last century, young poets from Bengal, … wound up their own magazines under banner of Kobita Campus and initiated the quest for New Poetry. … It was decided to identify the signs of mainstream poetry, then called old poetry, and discard use of those (signs) … Thus came generation of alternative poetry by creation of new space and style, language, centripetal observation from resource point by zeroing subject. They called this NEW POETRY … “

By Barin Ghosal (On behalf of Natun Kabita Online)

The original article “In Search Of Alternative Poetry” can be viewed here »

Another interesting feature on this website is the Video section where they feature video recordings of poetry reading sessions by prominent contemporary Bengali Writers. This issue features, veteran Bengali poet and one of the main conceptualizers of this Bengali “New Poetry” idea - Barin Ghosal.

For inquisitive readers:

• Pronoydhwonir Software - Poetry E-book by Barin Ghosal
• Ku Jhik Jhik - Recent writing of Barin Ghosal »
• Proteekbaad (Symbolism) by Barin Ghosal »
• Amar Somoyer Kabita (Poems of My Time) by Barin Ghosal »

When I landed on the home page of Creative Aquascape Union (www.cau-aqua.net) I have almost closed it without even clicking on a single link, because the entire site is in Chinese (Well, I am not very sure about that, too!) and there is no English version. I can’t read Chinese, but still, I can see images and I was amazed when I saw their gallery.

The CAU gallery features a series of incredible aquascapes and aquarium photographs by the members of this award winning group of creative aquscape designers. Even if this is a non-english site, the images do not require any text. Each set up has a poetic title (mostly in English), given by the artist himself.

I came across this group called Creative Aquascape Union (CAU) on the Aquatic Gardener’s Showcase while checking out the result of AGA Aquascaping contest for 2006. I immediately noticed Creative Aquascape Union (www.cau-aqua.net) as they have 6 stunning entries including the ‘1st place‘ and ‘Best of the Show‘ title holder in Small category, 4 in medium , ‘2nd place’ in large category, 3 nominations including the one which got the ‘3rd place’ in x-large category and each one has a creative touch on it. Incredible works!

My personal favorite is this one: Green Morning by Harry Kwong. Awesome work! Kudos to you, guys!

I have also found their Maintenance Knowledge and Setup Guide sections very good and helpful and even if they are in Chinese, they have very detailed step-by-step photo documentation of those award winning projects – setting up and care.

[Originally posted on SamitOnline.net on 2007-04-04 and later shifted to SamitRoy.org]

While surfing on the net, I came across this site - dafont.com and almost immediately after I landed on the homepage, it was saved in my Favorites menu. As the name suggests, dafont.com offers hundreds of fonts for various moods, personalities, textures and temperaments. All fonts are available for PC as well as Mac OS X and more excitingly, almost all of them are either Free or Free for Personal Use. The site offers a nice feature - ‘Custom Preview’ which enables the users to type their preferred text to see previews of that in all available fonts.

A thematically categorized list of fonts is available on the site in ‘Themes‘ section. It also offers various font tools for PC and MAC OS and few of them are free, too. I am trying to download and install few of the tools. Especially the ‘The Font Thing’ by Sue Fisher. It says that it will allow me to preview all the fonts in my PC even if they are not installed! Sounds great!

Fancy pant 2 (Demo version) comes out with the same funny stick figure in a pair of fancy orange pants and a fancy hairstyle with tremendous acrobatic skills, but in a fancier world with fancier abilities, effects and items. Brad, the creator of the game, says “This is why this game is taking so long! Enjoy the demo!” and releases the demo of the Fancy Pant’s Adventures World 2, for the fans of Fancy pant to have a glimpse of the forthcoming version of this popular online game. Thanks Brad! We understand your point! Take your time! We will wait for it!

In the Fancy Pant’s Adventures World 2 demo, the first thing you would notice is the colors of the Fancy Pant’s World 2 – an ‘enhanced’ world with green grass, blue sky and purple rocks and more variety of creatures and items to interact with. The more you move into the game, you will notice the small effects like the dust cloud at the feet of the character when he is jumping, running or moving around. You might also notice the small ‘Z’s around the head, when he is sleeping. Fancy Pant  2 also comes with new items and objects - colorful and interactive. I am also fascinated by the new abilities of our character and liked the way he learned to climb a rope or cling on steep wall.

Those, who have never interacted with Fancy pant before, can visit Fancy Pant’s World 1, here at armorgames.com

Fancy pant 2 Demo is available here at game.co.in site.

Myst V – End of the Ages is the fifth and the final version of Cyan World and UBISOFT’s popular game series - ‘Myst’. The game was released on September 20, 2005 and immediately it was a great hit.

Myst V – End of the Ages is a first person adventure game with a strong storyline that takes you to 5 different worlds (ages) beyond our known environment. It is a story of a quest where the player controls the main protagonist (not visible though) and seeks for audio visual clues, deciphers them and solves the puzzles to reach the climax of the game. Being the last one, Myst V is probably the best game among all previous Myst releases – from storyline to graphics to audio effects. Starting where the previous Myst ended, the players of Myst V are presented the privilege, challenge and responsibility of restoring the lost empire of the D’ni - an ancient civilization of people who thrived for thousands of years but later met with a great catastrophe.

One of the great features of Myst series games is it’s classic point-and-click control system. Simply click on an area and your character will walk there. “Whether it’s 3D or not, they don’t care,” says Rand Miller, co-creator of the Myst series, referring to the traditional adventure audience. “They want to play with one button of the mouse, so we accommodated that. So now, even my mom can play a real-time 3D game.”

Myst is a game about adventures and puzzles, carefully watching the environment looking for clues, listening carfully, deciphering coded messages - in the unknown deserted worlds of loneliness, pain and fear! It is not a game of skill but a game of intellect!

Recently, they have launched the the Online version of the game - Uru - Ages Beyond Myst.