So.

I’ve been messing around with a new project from Three Rings called, Whirled.

Essentially, Whirled is an open, community driven, flash world. It’s made up of games, rooms, furniture, and various other things, created, uploaded, and sold by users.

It’s a nifty little project. I was lucky enough to get into alpha testing, but it is now open to the public for beta testing.

Up until now I’ve only been testing it’s capabilities via playing the games, interacting with people, and using other users’ creations. That will all change once my new computer arrives (which should be tomorrow) and I can once again work from my home studio. If you do end up joining, stay tuned to see seanoconnor.info themed creations peppering the “whirled”.

stay tuned.

I devoted pretty much all of my Sunday this week to try out a couple of ideas that I had recently. First up was a shirt with a bleached design. I went with a simple coy inspired design. It wasn’t completely successful, but it came out well enough to encourage me to try it again (perhaps combining it with screen printing in some way). Next up was a business card holder made with those cool melty beads I used to make my nintendo themed ornaments. This was also not entirely successful, but I was really just testing it out. Turns out it is not very easy to fuse together a box made of these beads. Next go around I’ll probably use some sort of glue or epoxy to bind together the sides. All in all, these were really fun things to try out! (Click the thumbnails for the whole gallery of images).

Also, Saturday night I went out to see a friend of mine and his band Vinny Vegas play at The Ottobar. I highly recommend, they put on a really great show.

Hey all, I’ve made a new illustration, you can check it out here, or go over to the illustration section. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

Also, I’ve purchased a new program called “VectorDesigner” so expect to see plenty of other drawings as I play with this new tool to see how I like it.

My business cards and stickers have come in and both look really great!

I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t get the stickers die-cut, but I was trying to do it on the cheap.

I also made a few “super” themed christmas ornaments for our soon-to-be tree. Check them all out!

As a graphic / web designer, dealing with low-quality raster images sent by clients as logo files, or artwork they would like to use in their various designs can often be a huge pain.   I can’t tell you how many times a client sends me a small .jpg image of their logo on a gradient background, and then stares at me perplexed when I ask if they have an eps file, or at least a vector version, of their logo.

The truth of the matter is that most clients have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to raster vs. vector graphics, pre-production, or any of the fun things we designers deal with on a daily basis.  Rightfully so, that’s why they come to us in the first place right?

Well, a tool has come along that may very well ease some of your woes.  http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

This vector magic tool allows you to upload an image, which it then tries to convert into a complete vectorized image that can be tweaked, resized, color matched, etc.  It even lets you convert fully photographic images into vectors, with some interesting results.  I’ve tested it out with various different qualities of images, and was very surprised with how well it handled conversion of some files.  Of course, there are limitation, and it won’t work very well for really small images with a lot of fine detail, but it’s already saved my behind a few times.  Best of all?  IT’S FREE!