Computer Arts (December 2004)

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EDITORIAL

WELCOME I’m sure you’ll agree that this month’s cover image is a corker. It’s beautiful, arresting, detailed and doesn’t it just make you want to boot up your copy of Photoshop and start creating amazing images of your own? The feature tutorial on page 24 gets down to the nittygritty of how you should go about creating such an image, and our Photoshop experts will show you how to produce perfect illustrations using 3D shading techniques. Our cover disc is pretty special this month, too. We’ve teamed up with Xara to bring you an exclusive 60-day trial of its illustration software, X1. This great piece of software is used by designers all over the world to create intricate diagrams and add detail, such as lighting and reflections to automotive illustrations. Now you can use this 60-day, unlimited demo to test it out for yourself. Turn to page 104 to find this month’s in-depth CD tutorial, written by leading automotive artist, Kane Rogers. As usual, you can pick up top tips from our vast panel of experts, find out how they produced some of their most intricate images, and learn some great techniques along the way. Enjoy the issue!

EDITORIAL 01225 442 244

GILLIAN CARSON SENIOR EDITOR [email protected] DOM HALL DEPUTY EDITOR [email protected] RODDY LLEWELLYN SENIOR ART EDITOR [email protected] VICKY MITCHARD DESIGNER [email protected] SARAH ROBSON DESIGNER [email protected] SOPHIE EMBLEY PRODUCTION EDITOR [email protected] JOSEPH RUSS NEW MEDIA CONTENT EDITOR [email protected] MATT GALLIMORE SENIOR CD EDITOR [email protected] SIMON HOLLAND CD EDITOR [email protected] CD PROBLEMS 01225 822 743 [email protected]

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM Jason Arber, Graeme Aymer, Alistair Dabbs, Christian Darkin, Mike de la Flor, I Love Dust, Chris Kenworthy, Anthony Kyriazis, Ian Naylor, Ed Ricketts, Kane Rogers, Chris Schmidt, Studio Liddell, Transistor Studios, Connie Wilson

GILLIAN CARSON SENIOR EDITOR [email protected]

PHOTOGRAPHY Jon Hope PRINT William Gibbons REPRO Radstock Reproductions Ltd

SUBSCRIPTIONS Computer Arts magazine, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW 01225 442 244 ISDN 01225 789 293 SUBSCRIPTION QUERIES 0870 444 8455 OVERSEAS SUBSCRIPTIONS +44 (0) 870 444 8455 EMAIL [email protected]

ILLUSTRATION IN THE MAG JON LIDDELL

ADVERTISING 01225 442 244

ROSA SMITH advertising manager [email protected] GEORGE LUCAS senior sales executive [email protected] REBECCA BELL-ROBINSON classified sales executive [email protected]

Jon Liddell used a Wacom tablet and exceptionally subtle Photoshop layer and filter work to create this issue’s highly characterful cover illustration. We’ve never had so many passers-by salivating over our art editor’s monitor! INFO: www.studioliddell.com

DIGITAL DIVISION

DOM BEAVEN publishing director KELLEY CORTEN publisher FIONA TULLY marketing manager CLARE TOVEY production manager PAUL MCINTYRE group art editor SARAH WILLIAMS software copyright co-ordinator

PRODUCTION

EMILY MOUNTER ad production co-ordinator KATTY PIGOTT production co-ordinator MIKE THORNE commercial print buyer

CIRCULATION & LICENSING

JASON COMBER circulation manager PETE STOTHARD head of international licensing SIMON WEAR overseas licensing director Computer Arts has licences in China, France, Italy, Poland, and Spain

UK DISTRIBUTION Marketforce Ltd 020 7633 3300 Kings Reach Tower, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LS

THE FUTURE NETWORK

ROGER PARRY non-executive chairman GREG INGHAM chief executive ROB PRICE managing director UK JOHN BOWMAN group finance director T: +44 (0)1225 442 244 URL: www.thefuturenetwork.plc.uk Computer Arts is a member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations Jan-Dec 2003: 22,888 Computer Arts is the registered trademark of Future Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved. All trademarks and copyrights in this issue are recognised, and are acknowledged where possible. If we have failed to credit your copyright please contact us – we’re happy to correct any oversight. Material submitted is accepted on the basis of a worldwide right to publish in printed or electronic form. All contents © Future Publishing 2004. Future Publishing is part of The Future Network PLC. The Future Network produces carefully targeted specialist magazines for people who share a passion. We aim to satisfy that passion by creating titles offering value for money, reliable information, smart buying advice, and which are a pleasure to read. Today we publish more than 90 magazines in the UK, US, France and Italy. Over 80 international editions of our magazines are also published in 28 other countries across the world. The Future Network PLC is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FNET).

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CONNIE WILSON

I LOVE DUST

Connie’s sassy illo reveals the 3D power of Photoshop. INFO: www.hardcawillustration.com

I Love Dust used Photoshop to design each distinctive face of this box’s artwork. INFO: www.ilovedust.com

GR/DD

ANTHONY KYRIAZIS

GR/DD’s design perfectly captures the confusion surrounding print protocols. INFO: www.grdd.co.uk

Anthony’s extreme multi-layer manipulation in Photoshop yielded truly startling results. INFO: www.onyro.com

KANE ROGERS

SCOTT HANSEN

Xara X1’s Direct Action tools helped Kane refine this classy Aston Martin image. INFO: www.kanerogers.com

How to illustrate DV editing software? Scott comes up with an inventive illo. INFO: www.iso50.com

IAN NAYLOR

123KLAN

Ian’s energetic pinball model makes full use of Cinema 4D’s photo-realistic rendering. INFO: www.aircrew.co.uk

123Klan’s ultra-cool illo boldly captures our lead news story’s illegal pirate theme. INFO: www.123klan.com

CONTACT Computer Arts, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW PHONE: 01225 442 244 EMAIL: ca.mail.futurenet.co.uk SUBSCRIPTIONS: 0870 444 8455 OVERSEAS: +44 (0) 870 444 8455

December 2004

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068 REVIEWS

TUTORIALS

WHAT’S HOT AND WHAT’S NOT?

LEARN THESE GREAT TECHNIQUES

P76 POWERMAC G5 2.5GHZ

P40 DVD MENU DESIGN

Apple’s liquid-cool aluminium marvel zips through work like a dream – but at a price

Bring your DVDs to life with stunning animated menus and audio effects

P78 VUE 5 ESPRIT

P54 ABSTRACT GLOW

The ever-popular landscape editor now delivers even finer rendering

Add punch to your 3D renders with Photoshop’s impressive layer functions

P80 CARRARA 4

P58 3D ANIMATION

New and exciting animation functions bring extra power to this modelling giant

Create and animate a 3D pinball model with C4D’s impressive physics engine

P81 FLASH STUDIO PRO 2

P64 PACKAGE DESIGN

Convert your Flash projects with the minimum of fuss or technical know-how

Construct the ultimate eye-catching CV – in three dimensions

P82 MACROMEDIA APPS We put innovative screen-capture app Captivate and content management solution Contribute 3 to the test

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FEATURES WHAT’S HAPPENING IN YOUR INDUSTRY?

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P83 IOMEGA REV DRIVE Iomega unveils its new portable hard disk storage system – and we’re impressed

P84 HP DESKJET 6540 HP gives it to you straight – forget hidden costs with this no-nonsense printer

P87 BOOKS The tome to leave open on your coffee table when designer pals are around

GROUP TEST

030

WE ROAD TEST FIVE OF THE BEST

P30 CA INTERVIEW

Nicholas Da Silva: “I don’t see it as work. You’re just in the zone, you start working on something, and from that you go on to the next thing”

P48 ICON

Eric Gill: We profile one of the 20th century’s most enduring designers, responsible for the classic Gill Sans

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P68 GET STARTED WITH... P88 DV EDITING SOFTWARE Edit, copy, lay simple effects and title your home video with these five DV editors that come in at under £100 each. But which one will prove the best of the bunch?

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Printing: Ensure your hard work outputs as intended when it leaves the studio and hits the presses

P114 CURRICULUM VITAE

Tom Arthur Opasinski: The brilliant LA art director who has no guru

SUBSCRIBE TURN TO PAGE 45

Subscribe today to take advantage of our special Christmas offer – and ensure you get an exclusive collector’s copy delivered straight to your door. Visit www.computerarts.co.uk or call the subscription hotline on 0870 444 8455

DECEMBER ISSUE 103

Á PAGE 104

BOY RACER

Kane Rogers makes full use of this month’s exclusive 60-day Xara X1 trial to add extra definition to this classic racing image

104 058 ON THE CD THIS ISSUE’S SOFTWARE & RESOURCES XARA X1 (PC) Calling all technical illustrators! Use this 60-day trial to follow the excellent tutorial starting on page 104

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CINEMA 4D 9 (MAC+PC) Check out all the new features with this 30-day demo

POWERDIRECTOR 2.55 VE (PC) Capture, edit and add effects to your DV footage with this feature-rich DV editor

FLASH STUDIO PRO 2 (PC) Animators eager to export their projects as standalone pieces will love this trial

MAC RHINO FONTS (MAC) Five free fonts from fontmeisters MAC Rhino See page 102 for further details!

ÁPAGE 24

3D EFFECTS

Add solidity, depth and texture to your illustration work with the help of Connie Wilson’s Photoshop masterclass December 2004

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EXPOSURE

EXPOSURE Send your work to Computer Arts and be seen by thousands!

KARIN KUHLMANN

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JOB Commercial artist CONTACT www.karinkuhlmann.de SOFTWARE Photoshop and Painter 7.0 “During the last two years I have worked on two series of illustrations. The first , “Faith, Love and Despair”, was created against the backdrop of my husband’s illness. I shared his terrible experiences until he died of lung cancer in June 2003. During this time it was very important for me to find an outlet through some of the works shown here, including Burning Patience, and Dust to Dust. The second is a series of poetic, lyrical contemplations, a kind of trip into myself, reflecting my thoughts, feelings and perceptions.”

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1. Burning Patience 2. Dust to Dust 3. Inflammable Matter 4. Liberty 5. Moony 6. Symbiose 7. Autumn

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December 2004

EXPOSURE

To find out more about this section, please go to www.computerarts.co.uk/gallery/

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ABOUT KARIN KUHLMANN Karin Kuhlmann was born in 1948 and currently lives and works in Verl, Germany. She originally studied photography and graphic design and has been a commercial artist for many years, working on a freelance basis and for firms such as Bertelsmann and Nobilia. Kuhlmann discovered the computer as a personal artistic tool in 1994 and her digital work has since won her a range of awards including the 1996 Corel World Design Contest and and other international awards. Drawing inspiration from the early surrealists and abstract artists, Kuhlmann describes her work as, “a series of inspiring and associative organic shapes on transparent layers, reworked and combined to form subtle arrangements of glowing, transparent areas of colour and light” and says that the final image depends entirely on coincidence. “ Kuhlmann works with fractals, which she describes as “the visualized solution of a complex mathematical problem”, and her fondness for this technique has led her to work with FraxFlames, a form of fractal that has the quality of natural paintings, like crayons and watercolours.”

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EXPOSURE

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TOMI LAHDESMAKI JOB Graphic artist CONTACT [email protected] SOFTWARE Photoshop and Illustrator 1. Pilot “She is one bad-ass, retro, future chick-pilot.” 2. Urban Rock “This piece was a collection of random pictures of musicians I collected. I then formed them together as a band and wanted to portray their passion for rock music.” 3. Beaute “The text in this piece translates as “Beauty within darkness”. The piece has a gothic feel to it. The two women are taken from pictures I took of two beautiful mannequins at a thrift store.” 4. Ladies’ Man “The man in this illustration is the ultimate ladies’ man. This piece aims to celebrate him, and his company.”

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EXPOSURE

BEN MCLEOD

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JOB Freelance illustrator CONTACT www.giantillustration.com SOFTWARE Photoshop 1. Decade Blending “I used a photocopier for this piece to overlay different images and create the idea of merging, then used Photoshop to add colour.” 2. Mint “I created this image for a burlesque night club called mint. I used a solid mint stripe in the background to juxtapose against the imagery.” 3. Reflexology “This image tries to convey the idea of energy moving around the body via the feet. I use a photocopier to create my images, but to compose and add colour, there’s nothing better than Photoshop.”

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4. McJob “Here I used photographs, a photocopier and graphic symbols to illustrate low pay, low prestige and dead-end jobs. To bring the image together, I used Photoshop to add a typical “fast food” colour scheme.”

GET EXPOSED

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Send your work to us, along with an explanation of your techniques and software, the titles of each piece, your website details and email address. Images should be sent as PC or Mac TIFF or JPEG files, on CD or DVD. A hard copy is also a great help. We will endeavour to return all entries that provide an SAE. All contributions are submitted on the basis of a non-exclusive worldwide licence to publish, both in print and electronically. Post hi-res files for print to: Exposure, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW.

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STAR LETTER: FULL SOFTWARE DUPLICATION First, I would like to say that I love Computer Arts and have picked up some very useful information from it. I am writing about the content of the magazine’s cover mounted CDs. I subscribe to both Computer Arts and 3D World, and find it really annoying when the two magazines have the same cover software in consecutive issues. Computer Arts issue 102 proves my point. Your full CD product was Amapi 6, which was previously given away in 3D World issue 57. I understand that both magazines are published by the same company, Future Publishing, but would it at least be possible to stagger them by a couple of months so that readers

of both don’t feel like they’ve been cheated? Malcolm Kenworthy

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Computer Arts: The full software on our cover disc is sourced by a team of Computer Arts disc editors who also work closely with other Future Publishing titles. While we understand that the same

software appearing on similar magazines must be frustrating for readers such as yourself, we can’t deny Computer Arts readers the opportunity to use a really great application such as Amapi. We’re taking a look at our CD schedules and will try to stagger cover disc software across the magazines to avoid this happening again.

PRIZE: free training at Space, London As the Star Letter winner, you can choose a day’s training at Space. Co-founded by Bridget Riley, Space is one of the largest visual arts resources in the Capital, and offers a variety of courses ranging from Photoshop and Final Cut Pro to how to sell your work, tax and selfemployment, and marketing strategies for designers. Space also has a large range of high-end equipment including videoediting facilities, technical support staff and exhibition spaces. For more information go to: www.spacestudios.org.uk

* MATERIAL EVIDENCE

I’m planning to send some work to an online T-shirt company. If I email the same images to myself, will this act as proof of date for copyright purposes in the same way that posting a letter does? Could you please tell me of any recommended approaches for sending illustrations to an online company as opposed to one with a postal address?

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FORUM COMPETITION WINNER Congratulations to Fiona Sloane, who wins a Lomo Supersampler for her entry into the weekly forum competition. The brief was simple: create a short story in four panels, and Fiona came up with the storyboard pictured above, influenced by the work of cult writer Irvine Welsh. Visit the Computer Arts Forum, a thriving online community, at forum.computerarts.co.uk. 10

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Own It, an intellectual property advice service responds: In answer to your first question, sending designs to yourself by registered post is a way of providing yourself with evidence of the date upon which you create a design. But it is important to realise that this is only evidence of the date of creation, and does not confer copyright on the sender. The problem with email is that the system for recording the date may be open to abuse. Clocks recording the dates on computers can be changed, and as such, the date recorded by sending

material to yourself by email is less authoritative. Further, the absence of any other human contact with the material means that there is no independent third party involved. Make sure that your housekeeping is up to date. You should keep and date each document you produce in developing your design or concept, including sketches, drawings, images and specifications, as these will be essential if you ever need to prove that you created a particular work. Evidence of date of creation will add further strength to your claim. This could be obtained by sending yourself an email, but for the reasons given above this will usually be far from sufficient evidence of date of creation. Posting the material to yourself by registered post and keeping it in the sealed envelope would be an improvement, but the best level of proof would be to submit your designs to an unofficial copyright log managed by an independent third party. With regard to your second question, if you are planning to send your designs to an online company you should make sure that you find out as much information about the company as you can. In addition, you should mark each of your illustrations with your name plus the copyright logo like this “© Your Name 2004”. This will show you are the creator, the date of creation and the fact that you are asserting your copyright, and will also put others on notice that they are not entitled to copy your work without your permission. You could also ask the company to enter into a confidentiality agreement with you which will help to prevent them from passing your illustrations on, and which could also include a term making sure that they return your illustrations once they have finished with them.

* NIL POINT

I don’t believe it! You said in Computer Arts Projects (issue 63, page 11) that Jaga Jazzist were Danish. They are Norwegians, as is the fabulous Kim Hiortøy. Stop messing with Norway! Other than that, thank you for a great issue! It’s the first time I’ve bought this

NEXT ISSUE IN magazine and it’s great! I really loved it all – the wonderful David Carson, the great “Creating a dirty magazine”, and the very useful InDesign CS shortcuts. I’ve introduced many people here in Norway to the magazine, so keep up the good work. Did you hear? Norway... Fredrik Jensen Graphic design student

PHOTOSHOP • SOFTWARE • TUTORIALS • NEWS• REVIEWS

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Computer Arts: Although we are all keen fans of the work of the ten-piece experimental jazz act Jaga Jazzist, it seems their nationality was wrongly attributed, sorry. But we are glad to hear that you’re enjoying the magazine in Norway and promise we won’t unfairly represent Norwegians in future.

* RE: SPEC

DESIGN AN ICON FONT

Ever wanted to build your own font? Well now you can. Substance shows you how to sketch, outline and refine your own icon font. From drawing the glyphs to perfecting the kerning and leading, it’s all covered in our in-depth tutorial next month.

I was hoping that Computer Arts could provide me with some assistance regarding the ideal spec for creating and manipulating images in both Photoshop and Illustrator? I would imagine that you will recommend the fastest chip with huge amounts of RAM as best, but are there any definitive numbers for these elements that I can try to adhere to when I purchase my next PC? Any guidance that you can provide would be greatly appreciated. David Reade

FREE CALENDAR ISSUE 104

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Computer Arts: While we’d generally recommend that you do choose a powerful PC for creative work, there is a law of diminishing returns with the latest hardware – past a certain point, those extra pounds spent on squeezing the last few megahertz out of a processor won’t be of great benefit to you. So set yourself a budget and stick to it. We’d recommend you purchase a Pentium 4 HT (Hyperthreaded) or Athlon PC running at 3GHz or equivalent. RAM is more important, buy as much as you can afford, as it will make working with big files much faster. Finally, although most PC graphics technology is driven by hardcore PC games fanatics who require the power for games playing, don’t be tempted by expensive graphics cards because you will see little benefit in your 2D work. Instead, opt for a good mid-range card with a decent amount of dedicated graphics memory (typically 128MB). And don’t forget to invest in a decent display and mouse or graphics tablet.

ON THE CD... FULL SOFTWARE

BRYCE 4

Create stunning landscapes that are out of this world with this full 3D landscape tool

All contents are subject to change

FULL SOFTWARE WORTH $199

ON SALE 25 NOVEMBER December 2004

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ILLUSTRATION :123 KLAN

ONLINE HEAVEN THIS MONTH’S ROUND-UP OF THE GREAT AND GOOD ONLINE HONDA

www.honda.co.uk Following Honda’s hugely successful “Cog” campaign, Nexus short has produced a surreal little short that recalls the psychedelic style of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine for its new range of “Whisper-quiet” diesel engines. Check out next issue for a more in-depth look at the site. FILE MAGAZINE

www.filemagazine.com This site showcases a collection of oddball photographs that treat their subjects in a highly unusual way. Highlights include “Graveyard Caravan” and “Times Square Hairspray”. File invites you to submit your own photos. SCRATCHDISK

www.scratchdisk.org Welcome to the resource-packed homepage of (possibly evil) genius programmer Jürg Lehni, co-creator of Hektor, the graffiti-spraying robot. Jurg is also behind www.vectorama. org, the multi-user vector playground. HEXSTATIC

www.ninjatune.net/hexstatic/ Video DJs, musicians and all-round superstar knob-twiddlers Hexstatic launch a new site to promote their latest CD and DVD, Master-View. Merely clicking on the link makes us want to dig out our old ViewMasters and revisit those quaint picture disks. ADIDAS Y-3

www.adidas.com/y-3 Now this is the way to sell clothes… Adidas’ brilliant microsite makes full use of stunning full-motion Flash video to display the latest collections from its new sub-brand Y-3. You can even zoom in on the details. DESIGNWISE BY EXPERIMENTA

www.experimentadesign.pt/ designwise A brilliant showcase for novel product designs by Portuguese designers. We liked the “juicy boobs” lemon squeezer and the shelf with built-in spirit level.

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Buyers beware PIRACY Unscrupulous counterfeiters are flogging dodgy software abroad to get their hands on your credit card details, warn bona fide manufacturers A series of too-good-to-betrue software deals currently being emailed to millions of users around the world, claiming to offer huge reductions on Adobe, Macromedia, Corel and Alias software, has been slammed by the manufacturers and anti-piracy organisations as a “cheap scam”. The emailed details, originating from a number of websites registered in areas such as Russia and Romania, offer discounts typically 75 per cent below list price. This is because the companies claim to be selling OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) software, usually bundled by the vendor with hardware or with another package and sold without boxes or manuals. But Najeeb Khan, anti-piracy manager for Adobe Europe, says the offers are likely to be a front for something more sinister. “It’s a scam. Adobe hasn’t made any OEM software for around three years, and even if we were we wouldn’t sell it through strange organisations like these. This is a way for criminal gangs to harvest credit card details and billing addresses,” he says. Khan says Adobe and the anti-piracy group the Business Software Alliance has had some success in stopping the OEM

scam, but is largely powerless to close the sites down because of the rootless nature of cyber-crime. At Macromedia, Denna Slocum, EMEA director of anti-piracy, says infringement notices are routinely sent out to errant ISPs, but that policing is difficult. “Having sites such as these removed is like the “whack-amole” game,” she says. “The site invariably comes back up the next day, even if we’re able to shut it down.” Despite the warnings, such offers are obviously being taken up in large numbers by those willing to take the risk. But Siobhan Carroll, regional manager for Northern Europe at the Business Software Alliance, urges potential customers to think again: “Users of illegal copies automatically forfeit their right to technical support and patches,” she explains. “And the utilities used to remove the licence protection may affect the stability of the product.” While it may be difficult to sympathise with the plight of multi-billion dollar software giants losing a percentage of revenue to counterfeiters, it’s also easy to see that deals that look too good to be true are often just that. INFO www.bsa.org

NEWS

THE MONTH IN BRIEF

Pencils at the ready AWARDS Prestigious design awards invites entries for 2005

This month’s winners and losers, and how the humble font took centre-stage in the run-up to the US presidential elections

Those much coveted D&AD yellow and black pencils are up for grabs again. From the middle of November, submissions to the 2005 Awards will be accepted on the Design and Art Direction website at www.dandad.org. All entries must be in by 4 February 2005. At the same time, the organisation is launching the 26th annual Student Awards in its push to recognise and promote the work of the best student and graduate talent. Briefs for this year’s competition include designing in-store promo material for Topshop and coming up with an interactive installation for Wembley Stadium. Again, you can submit entries via the website. The deadline is 26 March 2005. INFO www.dandad.org

› GOOD MONTH Apple shares up! They’re going from strength to strength on the back of the new iMac and the ubiquitous iPod, hitting a year high of $37. Buy! Buy! Buy!

Reach for the sky

FILM Retro sci-fi thriller relishes CG makeover US box office smash Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – a retro-futuristic thriller starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie – should be doing brisk business in the multiplexes this month, partially assisted by some stunning digital content created using Softimage|XSI. Breaking new ground by incorporating computer graphics-based imagery into every single frame, much of the film’s footage was shot against blue screen, then passed onto visual effects houses such as Hybride, Pixel Liberation Front and R!OT. Although hyped in the mainstream media as the bleeding edge of CG effects, not everyone has been blown away by the on-screen visuals, with online news service Need to Know sniping: “The film’s “groundbreaking” new technology isn’t new at all. It is a unique combination of Adobe After Effects plug-ins.” You can’t please everyone…. INFO www.softimage.com

ADOBE PROPOSES UNIVERSAL CAMERA FORMAT DIGITAL IMAGING Graphics heavyweight aims to simplify RAW material with new DNG standard

Adobe has introduced a universal format for digital photography files in a move to unify the proprietary RAW formats used by professional and consumer digital cameras. The Digital Negative Specification (DNG) aims to draw together a standard for files containing the original

information captured by a camera sensor before any in-camera processing has taken place – something which has, until now, been impossible because of the different ways in which camera manufacturers process the information. Adobe is backing up the new DNG format by releasing a DNG converter,

a free software tool that translates many existing RAW files into the new format. Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of Digital Imaging at Adobe, said the company was talking to camera manufacturers at present to persuade them to adopt the new standard. INFO www.adobe.com

Quark and the Punjab The software giant is sinking $500m into a new Indian HQ and “integrated township” in Mohali, India, called QuarkCity, and creating 25,000 jobs in the region to boot.

fi BAD MONTH Macromedia ousted by Monster The software giant has just lost out on a sponsorship deal with the San Francisco 49ers that would’ve seen the baseball team’s ground renamed Macromedia Park. That honour now goes to speaker company Monster Cable Productions. Oh dear.

Freelance rates plunge If US web marketplace Scriptlance is anything to go by, freelance web designers are pricing themselves out of the market. One tender for a “minimalist web design” project went from $2,000 to $125 in just two days. $125?!

Kodak closedowns Mass migration among professional and consumers to the digital format has finally caught up with the camera giant, which is cutting 600 jobs in the UK and closing down its factory in Nottingham.

‹ AND FINALLY End of the New Roman road? There were red faces all round after the humble font took centre-stage in a big US election story about George Bush’s supposed 1970s stint in the National Guard. Turns out the memos “confirming” Bush’s much-debated tour of duty were actually fakes, because they contained Times New Roman – a font not used by typewriters at the time the documents were supposed to have been written. Oops.

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NEWS

SOFTWARE FONTS

WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET

Sowing the SE3Ds COMPETITION Hewlett Packard and Alias invest in home-grown 3D animation talent

Font management specialist You Software has updated its You Control:Fonts package. You can now create What You See Is What You Get font menus that work with Mac OS X and support for Extensis Suitcase X1 is included. Price? $29.95. URL www.yousoftware.com/fonts

3D giant Alias has teamed up with HP to nurture UK animation and design talent under the SE3D (seed) banner. The two companies, alongside Bristol-based arts centre The Watershed, are offering ten groups of animators free access to HP Labs’ experimental Maya rendering service in order to create a 3D short for the Animation Encounters festival in April. Mark Cass, entertainment business manager at Alias UK, says that SE3D will provide a “fascinating insight into the future of animation production.” INFO www.dshed.net

ICONS

BUILDING ICONS CursorArts has released series 7 of its IconForge icon and cursor-editing software. The new iteration includes a wide array of icon and image-editing tools for creating and modifying Windows icons. It’s available now for $37.95. URL www.cursorarts.com 3D

SMOKE WITH FIRE Discreet has released new versions of its non-linear editing and finishing systems, fire 6.5 and smoke 6.5, aimed at the high-end postproduction market. Mostly used in 2K film and high-definition TV projects, the packages will be available later this autumn. Prices have yet to be announced. URL www.discreet.com GRAPHICS

COREL PAINTER 9 ARRIVES Corel has updated its portfolio with Painter 9 – a new and faster package that the company says sports improved productivity features enhanced brush control palettes and more life-like paint behaviour features. Buy it now for £249 (or upgrade for £99). URL www.corel.com 3D

FREE DAZ DAZ Productions is doing more to open up the 3D market by launching a free version of DAZ|Studio, giving users the chance to load and render a preconfigured scene or get to grips with posable characters, accessories and environments. Click on the link below to download the app. URL http://3D.daz3d.com/free

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LEARNING CURVE

And the winner is...

Short and long-term training across the UK

COMPETITION Vancouver Film School Scholarship winners announced

ESCAPE STUDIOS LONDON This leading training facility for 3D animation and 2D visual effects skills is giving away a Wacom tablet to anyone signing up for its Digital Compositing Comprehensive course. Introduction to Modelling in Maya 2-5 November, evenings, £349 Introduction to Character in Maya 16-19 November, evenings, £349 URL www.escapestudios.co.uk INSIGHT TRAINING WEST YORKSHIRE Ilkley-based training group, specialising in a wide range of MAC-based courses. It offers small group and tailor-made training in areas such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash and 3ds max. URL www.designtraining.co.uk MEDIA TRAINING LONDON Authorised Apple, Adobe, Macromedia and Quark centre, offering a range of courses for the design, publishing, internet and multimedia industries. Media training currently has over 100 courses on its schedule. Macromedia Dreamweaver 2004 MX: Dynamic App Development 8-10 November, £764 Adobe InDesign: Advanced

9-10 November, £476 URL www.mediatraining.ltd.uk METRO NEW MEDIA LONDON A range of intense and flexible courses in graphic design, 3D animation and video and multimedia. Training is delivered by industry professionals and includes plenty of hands-on workshops. Introduction to MX Director 2004 25-26 November, £558 Illustrator CS: Advanced 29-30 November, £676 URL www.metronewmedia.com DESIGN COMPUTER TRAINING BIRMINGHAM DCT offers courses in image-editing, graphics and web design software, Adobe Photoshop, QuarkXPress and Macromedia Dreamweaver – either one-to-one or in small groups. Adobe InDesign: Page Layout and Design with Adobe InDesign One or two-day course for beginners or intermediates, £360 (one day), £710 (two days) Macromedia Flash Training: Introduction to Design and Animation with Macromedia Flash One or two-day course for beginners, £360 (one day), £710 (two days) URL www.combined.f9.co.uk

Congratulations to London-based Keith ChinGandu (pictured below), winner of the Computer Arts competition to win a scholarship for the 2005 Vancouver Film School Digital Design course. Congratulations also go to John Leigh, Marco Morales Aburto and Seth Powell, who all win half scholarships for the same course. VFS’s digital design course is a one-year programme covering the full scope of digital art, from 3D and motion graphics to interactive marketing, and provides students with a thorough grounding in design theory, cinematic montage and interactive design. INFO www.vfs.com

NEWS

Smile please

HARDWARE

TRADESHOW Megapixels on the rise at world’s largest digital imaging exhibition

ALL-IN-ONE FROM EPSON

The biennial Photokina imaging fest – the largest exhibition of its kind in the world – kicked off in Cologne at the tail-end of September with all the major camera manufacturers claiming a range of firsts in terms of file size, megapixels and speed. Among the big announcements were Canon’s pro-targeted 1DS Mark II 16.7Mp digital SLR, which can produce files as large as 50MB, Olympus’s EVOLT E-300 digital SLR, an 8Mp

camera aimed at a wider market, and Fuji’s FujiFilm FinePix E550 digital compact. Also present were the likes of Lexmark, Brother and HP, all showing off the latest printing technologies. But muscling-in for the first time this year, and generating a lot of interest, was Nokia; showing off hybrid devices such as the 6670 megapixel smartphone. INFO www.photokina.de

PRINTERS

Epson has released the Stylus Photo RX420, which enables you to scan, copy and print photographs as large as A4 in size. The company says the RX420 is capable of producing 24 borderless snaps in under an hour at “competitive” prices. The all-in-one is available now for just £99. URL www.epson.co.uk PC

TEENY WEENY POCKET PC After two years’ delay, the ultra-diminutive OQO model 01 “ultra” PC is ready to hit the shops Stateside. Measuring just 4.9 by 3.4 inches and including 20GB hard drive, 256MB RAM and colour display, as well as wireless and USB ports, the OQO is certainly feature heavy. Price to be confirmed. URL www.oqo.com

Media Elements

GRAPHICS CARD

EVENT Holland plays host to this two-day conference Supported by Macromedia, the event features presentations and seminars on everything from Flash to technical, business and marketing sessions. A number of high-profile speakers such as Glassworks’ Bruce Steel and Flash Guru’s Guy Watson will be presenting recent work and discussing industry topics. Tickets for Media Elements, which runs from11-12 November, cost 119 euros (one day) and 169 euros (two days). INFO www.mediaelements.org

ATI ON THE UP Visual processing giant ATI has extended its range of Radeon cards to improve performance for gaming and graphics. The X700 includes some of the features from the higher spec X800 units, but at a price below the £150 mark. URL www.ati.com FLATBED SCANNERS

35MM SCANNING MARVEL

GLOBAL EVENTS Our round-up of design events worldwide 1. FLASHEUROPE COMTE BORRELL, BARCELONA 3-5 November 385 euros, 244 euros (students) Three days of workshops, seminars, showcases and receptions alongside an ActionScript contest, a Flash Video Jockey competition and the ever-popular Flash Film Festival. URL www.flasheurope.com 2. FREEWAVES LOS ANGELES, USA 5-27 November Film, video and digital media festival showcasing innovative independent new media from around the world, addressing the question: How Can You Resist? URL www.freewaves.org

3. BD4D (By Designers For Designers) CARDIFF, UK 15 November, free A night where designers come together to share their work, experiences and offer advice. Speakers include Brendan Dawes from magneticNorth. URL www.bd4d.com 4. MAC EXPO BUSINESS DESIGN CENTRE, LONDON 18-20 November £5 in advance, £10 on the door Have a butcher’s at the new iMac, browse the digital music, video, photography and design areas and watch the sparks fly during the InDesign vs QuarkXPress debate. All Mac addicts should attend. URL www.mac-expo.co.uk

5. FUTURE FACE THE SCIENCE MUSEUM, LONDON Until 13 February 2005, Free Major exhibition exploring the human face and digitally constructed faces. URL www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ exhibitions/futureface 6. DOORS OF PERCEPTION 8 NEW DELHI, INDIA 21-26 March 2005, Prices TBA Design conference exploring the design of IT-related services of the future.

Canon’s 9950F super resolution flatbed scanner promises hi-res output, and the ability to scan an entire roll of 35mm film in a single swipe. The 9950F is capable of 4800x9600dpi output and super-sharp results, courtesy of its spherical lens. Price? £339. URL www.canon.co.uk KEYBOARDS

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX US peripherals specialist Think Outside has unleashed a Bluetooth version of its innovative portable keyboard – a fold-up, compact, fullyfunctioning keypad designed for use on the move. The Bluetooth version will support Pocket PCs, Symbian-based smart phones and PDAs. Available for just $150. URL www.thinkoutside.com

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NEWS

DESIGNER TALK

ROB CORRADI We talk to the creative director of Preloaded, the company behind Spy Academy 2004 – a suite of Flash games designed to accompany the new series of BBC spy drama Spooks Computer Arts: How does the second Spy Academy differ from the original? Rob Corradi: This year’s site isn’t actually set within the Spy Academy, but within the GRID itself, the nerve centre of MI5’s counter-terrorism unit. Last year, the key idea behind the creative was that visitors trained for a prospective position with MI5. This year, the player has graduated and is working as a new recruit. They have their own desk and computer, with complete access to the MI5 intranet and a suite of MI5 tools and applications. Each assignment (we avoid the word “game” to maintain the sense of

CA: You’ve used loads of 3D and rich photographic assets this time around. Do you think microsites of this nature are becoming more ambitious? RC: No. Last year everything was designed to “look” real (rendered lovingly in 3D). This year we’ve concentrated on everything “feeling” real. Dispensing with 3D for the assignments themselves has allowed us to develop much more sophisticated ideas. The hard bit has been coming up with believable applications that don’t look too gamey, but remain engaging and challenging to “play”. That was a real challenge.

“The BBC introduced us to a former MI5 operative. It was strange as he couldn’t tell us much – one of those ‘if I told you, I’d have to kill you’ situations” reality we’ve tried to achieve), involves the use of applications that assist the recruit in getting their job done. They get video briefings from the head of department, Harry Pierce, which were scripted and shot for the site. There are also two routes through the experience. “Story” mode, which features a dramatised narrative linking one task to the next, and “Quick” mode, in which recruits are free to do the tasks in any order, but miss out certain parts of the site, in particular the final assignment. We did this to allow the hardcore gamers to have a real challenge, and give those that prefer to dip in and out the ability to do so.

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CA: You built your own faux operating system. Could Microsoft or Apple learn from you? RC: Don’t try and design an entire operating system to fit in 640x400 pixels if you have any choice at all! We had to be careful not to be too Mac OS or too Windows orientated, and do something in between. CA: What makes a good online game? RC: Spooks has been squarely aimed at a broadband audience, although we’ve accommodated dial-up users too, so we’ve been able to assume that visitors don’t mind spending time on the site. This has given us much more freedom to develop an

experience that requires time and dedication to do well, and in which players are rewarded with tailored content and hidden extras. I think it’s these things that make our games stick out from the crowd. CA: What’s it like working with the BBC? Were they fairly accommodating? RC: Last year’s site did very well for us, and the BBC, which obviously helped. We were confident that we could produce an even stronger experience, and the BBC wanted to focus on broadband, which to them meant video, but to us meant immersive. Developing ideas took several months of brainstorming, planning, scrapping, and brainstorming again. Getting the ideas down on paper was only part of it though, sometimes once the ideas went into production we’d find out what worked and what didn’t, which games were too hard or too easy. What we could never account for though was what the BBC would think, and fortunately most of the time they liked it. All in all, it was a pretty smooth process. CA: Any real life “spooks” get involved? RC: In the early stages, yes. The BBC introduced us to a former MI5 operative. It was a little strange though, as he couldn’t really tell us much – one of those “if I told you, I’d have to kill you” situations. INFO Why not test out your undercover skills at www.bbc.co.uk/drama/spooks/spy_ academy.shtml or find out more about Preloaded at www.preloaded.com.

OPINION

Attack of the clones What can be done about the “designers” who make easy money passing off your work as their own? Sadly, very little. So it’s time to tell your clients that creative design doesn’t come cheap A few years ago, everyone was getting worked up about pirating websites. Unscrupulous “designers” were copying website designs for themselves or clients, and in some cases even stealing graphics from the original site. Combating such blatant plagiarism can be fun: a friend of mine found his site copied, including the graphics, so he replaced the images on his site with duplicates and turned the original graphics into hardcore porn. Cleverly, he managed to find the IP address of the culprit and put some IP detection in place so that the thief never knew his graphics had been replaced. But everyone else visiting his site was confronted with somewhat, shall we say, unnatural acts. Websites such as Pirated-sites.com are full of examples of creative theft, including a Knots Landing website that completely ripped off Pixelsurgeon’s interface. Thanks to the site’s Whois database information, which included the mobile telephone number of the owner, the site reverted to a different design in a matter of hours. Owners of Flash-based sites used to sit pretty, safe in the knowledge that they were apparently impervious to the asset theft capable of doubling bandwidths for innocent designers or clients. But as technology marches on, even Flash sites aren’t safe. Cheap applications such as ActionScript Viewer can, in the wrong hands, reverse 18

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engineer an .swf movie to produce a .fla movie, which can then be edited and republished as a new .swf. The repercussions are obvious. It’s possible for clients to ask for a cloned site together with a pocket-friendly price tag of as little as $50 a pop. But copyright and IP issues aside, why is this happening? And can anything be done

“These talentless amateurs perpetuated some of the worst crimes against good taste” to stop them? For the client, creative theft is a dirt-cheap way of getting a good design, and for the “designer” it’s easy money. The broader reasons for these acts are complex, but part of the basic problem is that everybody thinks they can be a designer. TALENTLESS AMATEURS Let me explain. When the dot.com boom looked like an unstoppable economic force, everyone wanted a slice of the action. Web designers were thin on the ground and snapped up to work for ridiculously inflated wages. But filling the vacuum at the lower end of the scale were people with little creative talent who thought that they could

FORUMS Do you agree, or disagree? Tell us what you think. Post your

do what the professionals were doing, with little more than a copy of FrontPage under their belts. In fact, these talentless amateurs ended up perpetuating some of the worst crimes against good taste… Luckily the web’s dip in fortunes sorted much of the wheat from the chaff, but it still left many believing that they were good designers. Colleges and universities pumped out students of variable quality who had enrolled during the internet boom, but then found themselves struggling for work. Nobody has a problem with hobbyists who rustle up websites for fun, but when they start charging for their services it’s a different ball game. This diatribe perhaps makes me sound like a design fascist, but that’s a position I’m happy to take when talentless hacks can make a living cloning sites and stealing the ideas of real designers. On the issue of what can be done, the truth is very little. Individuals can be caught out, but the wave of designer wannabes will continue like the relentless undead. If you have an ounce of talent, you’ll spend your time nurturing and developing it and trying to put some distance between yourself and those who have no qualms about stealing your ideas because their own skills fall short. But we can educate clients not to accept cheap design that, in some instances, might even break the law. Real, thoughtful, creative design doesn’t come cheap, and the sooner clients understand that, the better it will be for those of us who try to answer a client’s brief in deliberative and imaginative ways.

views at http://forum. computerarts.co.uk.

Jason Arber is a designer and co-founder of www.pixelsurgeon.com.

ILLUSTRATION: twelve:ten

NEWS ANALYSIS

IN DEPTH

Royalty-free images fight back Previously written off for their poor quality and cheesy subject matter, royalty-free stock images are in the ascendant and the suppliers of more expensive rights-managed material are on guard WORDS BY DOM HALL Although once seen as the poor relation of the stock image market and traditionally blighted by quality issues and un-naturalistic subject matter, the demand for rights free (RF) images has exploded over the past two years. As a result, the low cost alternative to expensive and complicated-touse rights managed (RM) photos has become more important to both creative users and the companies who supply them. Design industry analyst TrendWatch has tracked the use of RF images in the US and

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found that typical use among creative, design and production companies has risen over the last year from an average of three images to up to seven images a month – a trend the company’s director Jim Whittington believes has been mirrored in the UK and Europe. “There has historically been a higher demand for royalty-free images over licensed images because of costs. Not all projects require licensed-use stock, nor do all projects have a budget for purchasing licensed-use images,” he says. “Many RF images are used on websites where, due of copyright control, it doesn’t make sense to use licensed images. Another reason, perhaps, is that there are simply more royalty-free images available. From what we see, the over-riding reasons are price first and availability second,” says Whittington. Louis Ingram, director of UK-based stock library Ingram Publishing backs this up. He says the industry will open up the use of stock images, particularly RF, to smaller companies previously deterred by costs and contracts.

“We feel the market is opening up to smaller and smaller graphic design agencies. There is no way a small business would spend $300 on a single image when royaltyfree images are cheaper and can be used again and again,” he says.

FORUMS Visit http://forum. computerarts.co.uk to share your views on this topic and more with other readers.

PRICE WARS But is it really as straightforward an issue as price? After all when it comes to creative projects, design agencies typically strive to produce the best work they can using quality source material, regardless of cost. Not so, says Ben Brown, creative director at design group The Creation Agency, who says clients are often driven purely by price. “We use RF images because of the price – it’s cheaper and image use is easier to manage. We try and push clients towards RM when we can because the quality is higher. “Quality was always a problem with RF – the photography was usually of cheesy business shots and compositions, but that’s changing and we are having to re-programme

NEWS ANALYSIS

ourselves to look at royalty free,” he says. For Russell Glenister, CEO of UK-based royalty-free library Image 100, the quality of images is now “on a par with most RM images in circulation,” something he believes is causing a fundamental shift in the image library market and the way those companies that have traditionally dominated the space, such as Corbis and Getty Images, operate. “The extended use of RF has led most big producers in the industry to switch emphasis from RM to RF production in order to service the high demand, which has in turn

“[Producers of] RM images are worried, and so they should be. The threat of RF is not going away” led to fewer quality RM images being produced,” Glenister argues, adding that he believes the RF sector will continue to grow and “cannibalise RM sales”. “[Producers of] RM images are worried, and so they should be. The threat of RF is growing and is not about to go away. There may be a coming together of the two models at some point – but the logistics of how this will happen are the underlying reason why it hasn’t happened so far. RF producers are having to spend more and more money on

production, and returns per image are a lot lower than they were last year,” he argues. Patrick Donehue, vice president of commercial photography at Corbis – an image library owned by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and second only to Getty Images in terms of global size and reach – claims Glenister’s argument is flawed, perhaps not unsurprisingly given his estimates that around 70 per cent of his company’s revenues come from RM sales. “Rights managed is still strong and royalty free is growing, but not at the expense of rights managed. Most royalty-free images are used on inside quarter pages – they are just collateral and not used in prominent places. The strength of RF is not price, it’s ease of transaction,” he argues. Far from seeing the growth of RF images as a threat to Corbis’ massive RM business, Donehue believes the industry is close to achieving a balance between licensed and RF images and will eventually throw up new ways of selling digital stock that will strike a balance between the two. “We are watching new licensing developments and expect to see more use of new models. There are experiments offering a broader use of images with a rights-managed license that has the same ease of use as a royalty-free image but with some limitations. We’re also seeing more use of a subscriptionbased approach,” he says.

DO IT YOURSELF The Creation Agency’s Brown, suggests that smaller design groups are bypassing picture agencies altogether, instead opting to generate images themselves. “Sometimes it’s cheaper just to hire a studio and shoot everything yourself. If a rights-managed image is going to cost you £600, you could hire a studio and shoot all day for £400,” he says. “We once spent the cost of a day in a studio to create an image that would have cost £12,000 to buy.” When it comes to the supply of raw materials, the creative industry has a strong track record of dictating its own terms. In the case of unlicensed stock images, quality has been driven by demand to the extent where it is starting to seriously challenge the dominance of the rights-managed sector. If stock libraries want to reach a wider market and continue to expand their reach, they will need to make sure they can supply images to their customers in the cheapest, most straightforward and flexible way. It is likely that design agencies buying images will do more to set an agenda on how and at what cost that process is achieved. INFO http://pro.corbis.com www.image100.co.uk www.creationagency.co.uk www.trendwatch.com December 2004

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FONT SHOWCASE

INFO Web: The Delicato font family is distributed exclusively through the Fountain Type Foundry at www.fountain.nu. Price: $229 for the entire collection. For more on MAC Rhino Fonts, visit www.macrhino.com.

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MAC RHINO FONTS

Delicato MRF has fashioned a well-designed literary typeface, equipped with all the appropriate weights and ornamentation Delicato, by Stockholm-based typographer Stefan Hattenbach, is a fine example of a consistent and subtle book typeface. Hattenbach paid particular attention to the kerning, weight, inner spaces and other optical effects of the three basic uprights (Regular, Medium and

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Bold) to ensure legibility when the different types are juxtaposed. He built the italic variation in a traditional way, with different angles on the upper and lower cases to more clearly differentiate it from its upright relatives. Small caps had extra space built in, to

make them easier and more convenient for graphic designers to use. For further details on Delicato – and a freely downloadable PDF detailing all of its impressive variations – check out MRF’s newly opened website at www.macrhino.com.

TUTORIAL

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TUTORIAL

3D EFFECTS IN

PHOTOSHOP By combining the versatility of Photoshop with a range of rich, home-made 3D textures, it’s possible to produce some truly original 3D effects. The secret is in the textures...

While we were hard at work putting together this month’s striking cover, created by the brilliant Studio Liddell, someone walking past our senior art editor’s screen stopped and said, “Can I just ask you how you created that image?” “It was all done in Photoshop,” we replied. “Wow!” he said. This is the kind of reaction you want when you’ve spent the best part of a week perfecting an image. It’s all in the detail you see, and this month’s Photoshop masterclass will teach you techniques that will enable you to build a detailed 3D effect from just a simple sketch. You’ll be using the wide range of tools available in the Filter drop-down menu and Toolbox palette to create an image that has depth, solidity and character. Whatever your style, scanned photos, objects and digital photography are

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brilliant elements, that will add an original third dimension to your work and leave people puzzled about what you’ve used. Make use of scanned fabrics, buttons, kapok, bacon, hair, leather, maps, skin, wallpaper, paper, or anything else you can fit in your scanner to get just the right skin texture. There really are no rules. Open your mind up, and if you see a texture or pattern you like, scan it, because you’re sure to find a use for it some time. These rich textures will add a depth to your images that would otherwise be tricky to achieve. Turn the page for a full tutorial on how to create realistic 3D effects in Photoshop. Cover and main illustration by Studio Liddell www.studioliddell.com Tutorial by Connie Wilson www.hardcawillustration.com

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TUTORIAL

PHOTOSHOP LEARN 3D SHADING TECHNIQUES DOWNLOAD

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Select the skin layer copy, paste it five times and allocate a tone and colour to each using Brightness/Contrast and Colour Balance. Starting from the top layer, use a dark greyish brown (#221A29), a dull red (#841A2A), a dull blue (#1F4A75), a fleshy peach (#BD6B52), a dull yellow (#E7C198), and an almost white tone (#FFFFF7).

TIME LENGTH

20 hours INFO Connie Wilson originally trained as a painter, but found that working digitally more suited her style. She now works as a freelance illustrator. Call 07792 692658, email [email protected] or visit www.hardcawillustration.com to find out more.

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First make a sketch of the image you would like to use, or use my original sketch, included on the cover CD. Your scanned sketch will be the base for your image, so now is the time to make any alterations, large or small, to the image and its composition. Scan your sketch and open the image in Photoshop.

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Roughly place the skin texture from the cover CD within its selected area, leaving a little excess outside of the lines. You can neaten this off once the area has been “painted”. Now add registration marks at the top left and bottom right-hand corners of the image. This will allow you to align the skin layers when they are copied and pasted.

Use the eye.jpg from the CD to create the iris and make adjustments. To alter the reflection, use the Selection tool to Cut and Paste another area onto that reflection and use a hard round brush to create a new one. You can also rotate the eyes to show where the light source is coming from using the Move tool. Create the whites of the eyes using a greyish tone and add both highlights and colour to the eyeball to indicate veins using a dark pink tone, and a fine, hard, round brush.

TUTORIAL

ON THE EDGE If, like me, you find using the Lasso tool frustrating, use it to roughly select your outline, then click on the Quick Mask mode to load the semi-transparent mask and use a Rubber/Brush to either remove or add areas of the mask. Use the Navigation tool to get right in to those areas of detail that may be missed and you will easily achieve clean crisp outlines.

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Hide the skin layers 2, 3, 4 and 5 and start to erase layer 6. Give layers 1 and 6 a transparency of 50 per cent. Then, using the Eraser at 25 per cent Opacity, choose a brush and start to erase the darkest areas of each layer from top to bottom where you want lighter areas to show through.

Add the red layer, give it a 75 per cent Opacity and remove the dark areas. Continue this process with the remaining layers. The white layer must remain intact.

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Now return to the eye and add the fleshy parts of the inner eyelids. Select a fleshy pink tone from the Colour palette and choose a hard round brush to apply it using various size strokes from nine to 30.

STAND OUT

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Once you have removed all of the unwanted areas, and are happy with the image so far, merge all of the skin layers and make adjustments where needed. This is your opportunity to add tone, lighten areas, change colour values, or correct the shape of noses, cheeks and eyes.

When trying to give solidity to an object within your image , try and use some perspective. If you are placing a button onto an image, for example, don’t just place an unaltered scan. Use the Move tool to select it, and then in the Edit drop menu select either the Skew, Distort or Perspective tools to change its shape. This way it’ll look like it’s sitting on the surface you assigned it to.

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You can now add freckles and random black dots to the face on a separate layer using a Brush of your choice. Change the Blending Mode from Normal to Overlay. This will allow the dots to blend and the texture to come through from underneath.

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Try to remove as much of layer 6 as you can. Most of this layer should be removed by the time you have finished, leaving only creases, nostrils and fine lines.

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TUTORIAL

PHOTOSHOP

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When you are happy with the tones and shading, use the Eraser tool and a brush to clean up the edges. Make sure that the brush is set to 100 per cent Opacity.

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Once you are happy with the colours and tones of the hair, merge the layers and blur the edges as they move further away. You can then start to lightly desaturate the edges using the Quick Mask mode and a brush.

MATCH THEM UP If using different elements (scanned photos or objects), ensure that they blend together within the image. Use the Hue/Saturation, Colour or Filter palettes to get the right light, shadow, colour tones and texture qualities. Your objects will soon look like they were meant to be together.

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Import hairtexture.jpeg from the cover CD. Create three layers and use the Selection Marquee to mark the area in a circle or oval shape. Select Inverse, delete any extra unwanted hair and assign a dark, medium and a light tone to the image. Work in the same way as you did for the skin (step 5), but ensure that the middle tone is more vibrant.

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Choose a round hard brush and apply a colour to the lips. Try to give the lips a glossy, plump look. Select the colours you want to use, the choice is up to you, but it’s best to keep it fairly neutral.

TUTORIAL

TIME TO REFLECT If you need to create a face, use either a mirror to view a reflection of your work or flip the image horizontally. You will see things you’ve never noticed before when the image is reflected back to front.

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Now place a screen to the left-hand side. Use the Perspective tool from the drop-box menu to transform the perspective. Drag the corners in so that the end furthest away from you gets smaller. Add a Gradient to the screen to make it darker at the top (and contrast with the background), and add a Gaussian Blur to give the image depth of field.

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Use a Selection Marquee to roughly select the lens areas of the sunglasses and then use the Eraser, diffused at 50 per cent, to delete the lower edge of the lens. This will give you a “faded out” look. On separate layers add high and low lights where required and use another layer to create the frame.

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Model the hand using the techniques you used for the face. Bring all of the elements together if you have created them in different files. Merge all of the layers and Copy and Paste them into your final image. Make any necessary colour adjustments and add eyebrows and a diamond earring and shadow to the ear lobe (provided on the CD). Make any last minute tweaks until you are happy with the image and you’re done.

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Import silk.jpg from the cover CD – a texture made from scanned brocade. You can now create the shirt by drawing a plain black and white shirt and darkening it using the brightness/contrast mode. Overlay the imported texture with a Blending Mode set at Hard Light. This will automatically provide you with a purple colour.

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For the background, use a plain backdrop of your choice and add a contrasting gradient to make your figure stand out.

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CA INTERVIEW

WORDS BY ED RICKETTS PHOTOGRAPHY BY JON HOPE December 2004

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CA INTERVIEW

ABOVE AND RIGHT: The Cave Dudes and prehistoric pinball are back as Da Silva gears up for the second Greatest Story Never Told competition.

Under Occupation, Nicholas Da Silva lists “graphic designer, Flash media developer, filmmaker, author, publisher, independent producer and musician”, and this is no idle boast. Da Silva is the founder of Zoolook, a new media studio that boasts clients such as TechTV, and the brains behind FlashTV, a web and TV showcase for Flash artists that runs in his adopted home of San Francisco. He’s also the curator of The Greatest Story Never Told, an ongoing digital storytelling competition, and writes the Dread & Alive and Hitless comic book series. In his spare time, he composes music, programs 3D games and somehow still finds time to help his wife raise their young daughter. Such restlessness may be a product of an eclectic background. Having travelled the world with his family, he eventually settled down on the east coast of America and

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COMPANY INFO Call Zoolook on: +1 415 775 9549 Email: [email protected] or visit www.zoolook.com FlashTV: www.flashtv.com The Greatest Story Never Told: www.tgsnt.com Dread and Alive: www.dreadandalive.com Hitless: www.hitless.com

CASE STUDY 1: DREAD & ALIVE

lot of artists out here. That just blossomed into defining myself as a professional, and it took off from there.” “A kid in a candy store” Founded in 1996 and named after a Jean Michel Jarre album, Zoolook Studios is Da Silva’s bread-and-butter. “I also work for TechTV, a group called Front 242, which I’m the official graphic designer for, and for a lot of big companies.” he explains. “I’m doing DVD authoring, Flash websites and presentations. Over the years, Zoolook has been able to create a business model out of its own stuff, so right now I’m like a kid in a candy store, just having fun.” Since his wife is also an artist – on the non-profit side – Da Silva tries to work complementary hours in order to keep some semblance of family life. “I usually work until one or two o’clock in the

“I usually work until one or two o’clock in the morning, in order to keep some semblance of family life” When Cultural Anthropologist Philip McIntosh is summoned to the marooned village of Accompong, Jamaica, to investigate a series of unexplained deaths, he brings along his wife and seven-year-old son, Drew McIntosh. Once inside the forbidden Cockpit Country, their visit is anything but tranquil as they soon find themselves in the midst of a supernatural battle between good and evil.

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attended a Catholic high school. It was there that Da Silva discovered his talent for sport. “I had options to do that in college, so I decided to do that and try to be an architect, too,” he says. An engineering degree followed. “I wound up leaving the east coast and coming out to California. I was a skateboarder and a musician, and I met a

morning, though I don’t see it as work. You’re just in the zone, you start working on something and from that you go on to the next thing.” Right now, he’s gearing up for the second annual instalment of The Greatest Story Never Told (TGSNT). This online competition encourages storytelling in Flash, with awards in a number of

CA INTERVIEW

CASE STUDY 2: HITLESS HITLESS™ Series ... Now you see me. Now you don’t.™ A mysterious government agent, code-named “HITLESS,” is sent on an assignment that goes awry and suddenly finds himself on the opposite side of the law, double-crossed by his employer. With no-one to trust, he must now rely on his chameleon-like abilities to stay one step ahead of his relentless pursuers, who will stop at nothing to stop him from revealing the truth.

categories and entries judged on artistic talent, storytelling and vision. Although last year’s event was successful, Da Silva is determined to make this one even better. “I was a little nervous at first, because you always are when you create something for the very first time,” he says about the first TGSNT. “You try to create something a little bit different and you want to see how people respond to it. The only negative thing about last year’s event was that a lot of people didn’t find out about it until two weeks before the deadline. So this time we’re making sure people are aware of the competition, and it looks as if it’ll be bigger than ever.” In tandem, version 2.0 of FlashTV is in development and a November launch is planned, featuring an animated host named Flavia. “I wanted to feature what’s going

on in the Flash world, not just movies and storytelling,” he says. “So games, a bit of wireless work, and so on. I want to make it a site for independent artists that produce any sort of Flash content, somewhere where they can showcase their work.” FlashTV now features more than 500 movies from artists all over the world, although quality is more important than quantity. “We want to be recognised for having really high-quality content from serious artists who have a passion for telling a good story,” he says. So just what is it about Flash that gets him going? “What I really like is the cross-purposing. I like the fact I can create something for the web and use it elsewhere. I produce a TV series for FlashTV entirely in Flash; we export to DV, and they say it’s the best thing on their network [AccessSF

LEFT AND ABOVE: FlashTV’s Flavia, Nick Da Silva and Serena Guidobaldi host a virtual world of Flash entertainment. All genres are covered, including comedy, adventure, action, horror and sci-fi/fantasy.

CA INTERVIEW

Da Silva spent seven years researching Jamaican religions before penning his first Dread & Alive strip. Myalism and Obeahism became the “good” and “evil” forces battling against each other in his stories.

in San Francisco]. There’s a lot of interest in taking FlashTV to a 24-hour network, which will be great. I want to create a business model where artists can be paid to create content. “I’m hoping Macromedia will spend a little more time on the storytelling for animators, and the sound features [of Flash]. I’m working on a template to create content for HDTV [high

a great deal of other software for his creations: ToonBoom, 3ds max, LightWave, combustion, and so on. And unsurprisingly, given that his logo of “Tink Diffran Mon!” is a cheeky homage to Apple, he’s a die-hard Mac user with a genuine zeal for the machine. “I started on the PC first, on a 286. I used to work in a reggae club and I’d design T-shirts,

The sinister ShadowCatcher, here seated at his throne inside Windsor Cave, Jamaica, ponders his next move.

“With the comic books, I write the story and come up with the concepts. A great team in Brazil breathes life into the characters” definition television]. I think that’s critical and I hope that Macromedia will start thinking in those terms, too. You think a couple of years ahead so the artists can do these things now.” Mac addict While Flash remains his app of choice, Da Silva has dabbled with, and indeed still uses, 34

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the poor man’s version with one colour. I wanted to do a four-colour design for the tenyear anniversary of Bob Marley’s death, so I called a couple of design places. At the one I chose, a woman was working on a Mac 2si and I watched her take what I did by hand, traditionally, and do it on the computer in two hours. I bought a 2ci, and my first job paid for

Cuffee standing outside Windsor Cave in the Cockpit Country, a rugged and inaccessible area of inland Jamaica.

CA INTERVIEW

ZOOLOOK A HISTORY: From there to here, and all points in between... Da Silva’s labour of love – more passion, in fact – has grown so much and so rapidly, he no longer finds he has to pitch for work. “My background is advertising – I worked for an agency for three years,” he says. “It was a food service company, so we were working for people like Nestlé and Garden Burger. I started another company in 1999 called Paper Motion, which was a motion graphics company, and I got to know a lot of people in San

Francisco. So you’d be handing out your business card and, next thing you know, you’re getting calls from someone who has seen your work. That’s what usually happens. I try not to turn down any projects, but sometimes you have to. I tend to have three to four client projects going on at one time.” Even The Greatest Story Never Told has produced its own spin-off in the form of the Cave Dudes, animated characters that have become the mascots of the

competition. Da Silva intends to add a new Dude each year – the next will be female – and hopes to turn them into an animated series. “Travelling the world actually opened my mind,” he says. “Not just to understanding other cultures, but other mediums, art from around the world. Embracing all the different cultures, that fuels my vision. I try to create a multicultural experience. That’s what I’m all about – doing things that everyone will want to be a part of.”

Gronemeyer, a “very talented” Flash author based in Spain, as well as Floating Pear Productions in Rhode Island. “With the comic books, I write the story and come up with concepts. I’ve got a great team in Brazil who do amazing work breathing life into the characters. It makes things a lot easier when you have a small group of people who can think alike.” ABOVE AND RIGHT: The Cave Dudes Miniball Game, part of The Greatest Story Never Told website, was officially selected at the 2004 CINEME International Animation Festival.

the computer. I’ve never turned back. I love Mac,” Da Silva admits. Far from finding his myriad projects distracting, Da Silva prefers to juggle several jobs at once. “I spend half a day, four or five hours, working with clients, and the rest of the time working on Zoolook properties. Sometimes when it comes to creative processes, you get stuck writing a chapter for the comic book, so I think, well, maybe I’ll work on some ideas for FlashTV. “It seems chaotic, but it really helps you when you move on to the next thing. I have a ton of sketchbooks, which I use all the time. Every one of those will get produced – that’s how I am. Nothing’s wasted.” Not everything is produced solely by Da Silva, of course. He works with Sebastian 36

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“Be original” Innovation and independence, it soon becomes apparent, are Da Silva’s watchwords. He cites Pollack and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as influences: “That’s what drives my passion – independence. Ola Bergner from Sweden, Kirk Millett, they produce their visions in Flash, and that inspires me to do the same.” But as the two sides of Zoolook demonstrate, Da Silva’s also aware of commercial pressures amidst the creativity. “Right now, everyone is trying to figure out what the next big thing is on the web. During the dot.com bust, I saw young upstarts with great ideas living a fantasy lifestyle. No-one had business plans, which is the foundation of any business. They had these sugar daddies just keeping the company afloat.” He tells a story of a company that hired the whole of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty for a launch back in those dark days. “They’re out of business now,” he adds somewhat unnecessarily. “If you can’t show that you can turn a profit in four to five years, then it’s not a successful business. A lot of

Name Nicholas Da Silva, a.k.a. the Dreamer Role Designer, producer, author, animator and musician From USA/Brasil (currently based in San Francisco, California) Inspired by My daughter – Mariana Mai “M&Ms” Da Silva, Bob Marley, Jean Michel Jarre, Kitaro, Moby, TCM and BT. Also Computer Arts Projects (because, just because), snowboarding at Whistler/ Blackcomb and Lake Tahoe and directors Michael Mann, Sam Raimi and Luc Besson for their incredible vision. I love Dean Koontz (the amazing storyteller) and all the artists worldwide who “tink diffran mon!” Favourite designer/illustrator David Martin, Fantasy Interfaces and Rodney Buchemi of Bigjack Studios Favourite website FlashTV.com, FavouriteWebsiteAwards.com and Google.com

money was spent wastefully back then; I’m hoping people learned from that mistake.” Anything else upcoming artists should learn? “I would teach them to be original,” says Da Silva. “I get a lot of resumés in and they’ll include a link to a website that’s just a copy of some popular site. You need to be original, to push the limits of what you can do. I’d also teach them to be independent, and learn the laws of the industry. By that I mean trademarks and copyrights. My father taught me how to copyright my own art when I was ten years old. “If you learn to work in that way, you can control your own destiny. I love that word: independence.”

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FEATURE

PHOTOSHOP • AFTER EFFECTS • DVD STUDIO PRO

DVD MOTION MENUS It’s easier than you think to create animated DVD menus, so why keep them static and uninspiring? Jared Plummer shows you how to reinvigorate your DVDs with smart animation and audio

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TIME LENGTH

2.5 hours INFO Jared Plummer is creative director and co-founder of design company Transistor Studios. He resides in Brooklyn, NY, but floats between the East and West coast offices. See more of Transistor’s work at www.transistor studios.com.

If you know the basics of After Effects, Photoshop, and DVD Studio Pro, then you’re well on your way to creating a fantastic-looking DVD. Static menus can be boring and don’t look as professional as motion menus, so why not take your disc to the next level using motion menus and motion transitions? This tutorial takes you step by step through the process of setting up menus and menu loops in After Effects and then preparing those files for import into DVD Studio Pro. Your finished DVD will contain an intro animation that seamlessly transforms into your main motion menu. This main menu will loop perfectly, and you will create buttons that link to other menus and/or video clips within your DVD. You’ll be using After Effects to animate graphics for your menu loops, Compressor to encode your After Effects renders into MPEG2 video clips, and A.Pack to encode your music or sound effects into AC3 audio. Both Compressor and A.Pack come bundled with DVD Studio Pro. Next, you’ll create simple overlay images in Photoshop and import them into DVD Studio Pro to be used as menu buttons. Of course, there are other ways to build menu buttons for use in DVD Studio Pro, but if you’re working with motion menus, overlay images – sometimes called sub pictures – are the only way to go. Finally, you’ll import your MPEG2, AC3, and overlay images into DVD Studio Pro, which will be used to link together and test all of your elements. Once everything is working, you’ll be able to output and burn a final DVD master of your project, make a bunch of copies and take over the world!

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Illustration and tutorial by Jared Plummer www.transistorstudios.com

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Copy the folder DVD_MENU_TUTORIAL from the cover CD to your computer. Now create a new project in After Effects so that you can import these files.

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You can now add elements to the open comp. To save time, most of the IntroToMain menu has been pre-rendered, but the loop transitions have been left for you to complete. From the MOV folders in your project window, drag the file IntroToMain. mov into the open timeline window.

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Doubleclick in the project window to open the Import File window. Select the AE_PRJKT folder from the DVD_ MENU_TUTORIAL folder, then click on the Import folder. Double-check the Footage Interpretation of both video files in the MOV folder. Select IntroToMain.mov, hit Cmd+F and check Separate Fields is set to Off. Save.

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Scroll through the timeline to see how the graphics are animated. Note that once the type is on screen, it remains stationary for the entire loop; it needs to do this to remain stationary so that the menu buttons line up properly for the duration of the video loop. Buttons cannot be animated.

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Create a comp for the first element, the Intro to Main menu. Go to Composition >NewComposition (Command+N) to create a new comp using the Preset NTSC DV, 720x480. Name the comp IntroToMain and set the duration to 0:00:49:00. Click OK.

When an animated DVD menu reaches its end, the screen freezes for 2-3 seconds to give the laser time to scan for the next piece to be played. In our case, it’s back to the start of the loop, so the last frame must be identical to the first. We’ll use a dissolve to solid colour. In the project window, expand the SWATCHES folder.

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FEATURE

PHOTOSHOP • AFTER EFFECTS • DVD STUDIO PRO

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In the timeline window, go to time (0:00:48:00) and choose Layer>New >Solid to open the Solid Footage Settings window. Click the Make Comp Size button and use the Eyedropper to select the pink colour of the file PinkSwatch.pct. Click OK.

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COPY AND PASTE An easy way to get all of your buttons from the MainLoop menu to the IntroToMain menu is to use Copy and Paste. With the MainLoop Menu Editor window selected, you can quickly add these buttons to your IntroToMain menu by selecting all (Command+A). Then you can just Copy and Paste into the IntroToMain menu and all settings except the button colours will be transferred.

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Create an opacity key frame on the first frame of the solid (0:00:48:00) and set it to 0 per cent. Next, create another opacity key frame at 0:00:48:25 and set it to 100 per cent. This will create a fade to pink at the end of the motion menu. Now, to finish the loop, create a pink in-point for the main menu.

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Drag the file LoopInTrans.mov into your timeline so that it starts at 0:00:10:00. Be sure it’s the top layer. Set your Work Area in-point by pressing B. Now you can do a Ram Preview (Composition> Preview>RamPreview) and see the loop in all its seamless glory!

The next step is to convert the renders into DVD-compatible MPEG2 video and AC3 audio files. Open Compressor and it will start up with an empty batch window. Drag the two files you’ve just rendered into the Batch Window. For each clip, select MPEG2 60min High Quality Encode by clicking the arrow in the Preset column.

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Now set up some renders for output to Compressor and A.Pack. First, double-check that the Work Areas for both of your comps are set to 0:00:00:00-0:00:48:29 for IntroToMain and 0:00:10:00-0:00:48:29 for MainLoop. Next open the Render Queue by choosing Window>RenderQueue and drag both of the comps into it.

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In the Project window, select your IntroToMain Comp and choose Edit>Duplicate (Command+D). This will duplicate your comp. Rename this comp MainLoop and then open it. Go to 0:00:10:00 – this is where you will insert the Loop In transition.

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Now to merge all of the figure layers, but don’t panic if strange things start to happen. Copy and Paste this layer into a new document and then, using Brightness and Contrast, create a black silhouette shape.

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Set a Destination to encode both clips to. Click the arrow in the Destination column, choose Other from the available options, and then select the folder: /DVD_ MENU_TUTORIAL/DVD_PRJKT/AV-ASSETS/. Click Submit. This will send your encodes to the Batch Monitor and you’ll be able to see the time remaining for your MPEG2 encodes.

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To encode your audio into AC3 format, open A.Pack; this should automatically open the Instant Encoder window. If not, go to Window>InstantEncoder (Command+1). There are three tabs in the right-hand panel – Audio, Bitstream and Preprocessing. In the Audio tab, change the Audio Coding Mode to 2/0 (L,R), the Data Rate to 192kbps, and the Dialog Normalization to -31 dBFS. Leave the settings in the Bitstream tab unchanged and in the Preprocessing tab, change the Compression Preset to “None”.

FEATURE

ALIASED OVERLAYS

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Now import the audio from the After Effects renders into A.Pack. Drag the file IntroToMain.mov onto the Left rectangle in the Input Channels pane. Do the same for the Right channel. Click Encode, name the file IntroToMain_Output.AC3, and save it to the folder /DVD_MENU_TUTORIAL/DVD_PRJKT/ AV-ASSETS/. Do the same for the second file and save it as MainLoop_Output.AC3.

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The audio and video is now ready to import into DVD Studio Pro. But you’re still missing the overlay image that will be used for your menu button highlights. Again, to save time, a layered PSD file has been created, but you’ll need to prep it for DVD Studio Pro. Go to the folder DVD_MENU_ TUTORIAL/Extra-Goodies/OVERLAY_PSD/ and open the file OVERLAY.psd.

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Turn on the White layer and you’ll be left with a pure black and white image. Choose File>SaveAs, save the file as a Pict and name it MainMenu-Overlay.pct. Be sure to save it to the folder DVD_MENU_ TUTORIAL/DVD_PRJKT/OVERLAYS/.

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You’ll now have both of the After Effects render files encoded to MPEG2 and AC3 and your overlay image is ready to go. Open DVD Studio Pro and make sure you have all the right windows open. Go to Windows>Configurations> Advanced. Next, select the Outline view tab instead of the Graphical view.

Turn on the Buttons layer set. See how the black bars line up with the directors’ names. You’ll change the colour of these black bars within DVD Studio Pro.

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You can now create your menus using the prepared materials. In the assets window, select the files IntroToMain_Output. AC3 and IntroToMain_Output.m2v. Drag both of them at the same time and drop them onto the Menu 1 icon in the Outline window. Rename Menu 1 IntroToMain.

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Select MainLoop_Output.AC3 and MainLoop_Output.m2v and drag them together onto the Menus folder icon in the Outline window. This will automatically make a new menu. Rename this menu MainLoop. Select both MP_TRNS_DEMO. AC3 and MP_TRNS_DEMO.m2v and drag them onto the Track 1 icon.

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The buttons you create should be aliased, as DVD Studio Pro does not treat anti-aliased overlay images very well. If your buttons are anti-aliased, some of the image pixels will end up a grey instead of black or white. DVD Studio Pro keys out the pure white as an alpha and enables you to fill the black area with any RGB colour. If your buttons are anti-aliased, the key will look poor.

Click the Import button in the Assets window. Navigate to and select the DVD_MENU_TUTORIAL/DVD_PRJKT/ folder and click Import. Provided you have been saving all of your files in the proper place, this will import all of the files you have prepared so far.

In the Outline window, doubleclick MainLoop. Go to the Menu Property Inspector window and make sure the General tab is selected. Drag the End: slider from its default 00:00:30:00 to 00:00:39:00. Click on the Overlay File button in the Property Inspector and select /DVD_PRJKT/OVERLAYS/ MainMenu-Overlay.pct. Repeat these steps for the IntroToMain menu, too (its End: slider out point should be 00:00:49:00).

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FEATURE

PHOTOSHOP • AFTER EFFECTS • DVD STUDIO PRO TAKE NOTE When the simulation begins, you’ll notice that the first button is already selected. To avoid this, create a very small invisible button above button 1 on the menu. With this button selected, go to the Advanced tab in the button Property Inspector. The Navigation settings for up, down, left, and right should all be set to Button 1. For the Function setting, Invisible should be checked. Since DVD Studio Pro automatically sets the button Navigation according to where the buttons are placed on the menu, you will also need to reset the button Navigation settings for the top button, Button 1, and for the bottom button, Button 8. Lastly, set the invisible button’s Target to the MainLoop menu. If you do not do this, and the user clicks the invisible button that has no target, it will bug out and mess up the menu. You will not be able to select any other buttons until the menu resets by looping. If you are really ambitious, an even better way to control button highlights can be found on www. tfdvd.com. Here you’ll find a program called TFDVD Edit, which enables you to set the time that button highlights become visible and accessible.

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Now that everything is set, click the Simulator button in the Toolbar. This enables you to test the disc before you burn it. It should loop properly and the Matt Pyke button should take you to the Matt Pyke track.

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To create the buttons, double-click on the MainLoop in the Outline window. This will open the Menu Editor window. Click the Start/Stop motion menu button in the lower right-hand corner: the circular “walking person” symbol. While the menu is playing, click and drag to create bounding boxes that will define the active button areas. Start at the top with Justin Harder and work your way down to Transistor Info.

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Set the button’s actions by selecting the Matt Pyke button in the Menu Editor. In the button Property Inspector, click the Target selector and navigate to TracksAnd Stories>MP_TRNS_DEMO>[Track].

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To alter colours, click the Colours tab in the Property Inspector window. Leave the Normal Colour and Opacity at its default setting, then choose new colours for the Selected/Activated states. If you don’t like the defaults, define your own via the Edit Palette. Repeat for the IntroToMain menu.

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Finally, set the menu end actions. Select the IntroToMain menu in the Outline view. Go to the Property Inspector and choose the General tab. Set the At End: setting to Timeout and the Action setting to Menus>MainLoop>[Menu]. By default, the MainLoop menu’s end action should be set to Loop. Set the end jump of the MP_TRNS_ DEMO Track to the MainLoop menu.

If everything looks good, close the Simulator and click the Build/Format button in the Toolbar. This opens the Build/ Format window. Name your disc, choose a destination for the DVD file, then click Build & Burn. This will multiplex all the files and burn them to a DVD-R.

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Test your disc on as many different DVD players as you can. If everything looks good, and there are no glitches, start burning copies. World domination awaits!

NEXT ISSUE IN METAL MICKEY How to create convincing metallic effects in Photoshop

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WORDS BY GRAEME AYMER

Eric Gill was one of the 20th century’s most creative and charismatic figures. He was a freethinker, sculptor, engraver, artist, essayist and type designer. These days, his familiar work adorns BBC Broadcasting House and Westminster Cathedral and has been exhibited across both the UK and the States. The man himself was a bundle of contradictions: a Luddite with a love for machinery, a free thinker who loved rules and authority, a converted Catholic family man with a thing for sex. Some of his activities would break even modern day taboos. But Gill’s greatest legacy is his letter design. Perpetua and Joanna appear among the many typefaces he created – dear to many as successful, modern fonts. But his most popular and widely used type family is the sans serif, dubbed Gill Sans.

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Creative connections To understand Gill Sans, you must first understand Eric Gill. Born in Brighton in 1882 Gill grew up in a strict, religious household. But he relocated to Clapham, London, in 1900 to study architecture under the wing of respected architect WD Caröe. Gill didn’t take to this new world, instead favouring functional, crafted, hands-on design. His architectural apprenticeship was anything but, so Gill enrolled himself on two courses: one in masonry, and the other in writing and illumination, then taught by Edward Johnston. Johnston and Gill shared a similar outlook.

Johnston meticulously designed letters based on ageold calligraphy techniques using sharpened quills. Gill and Johnston became friends and later worked together on a font for London’s blossoming public transportation system, the London Underground. But Gill had been professionally cutting letters into stone since 1903, and had developed a style that involved embellishments and elongations. In 1912, he was moved to convert to Roman Catholicism after a visit to a French Benedictine monastery. By the following year, he had moved his young family to a remote location on the outskirts of Ditchling, Sussex. In 1914, he met another recent convert to Catholicism, Stanley Morison, who was then working for a small Catholic publishing house named Burns and Coats. Gill went on to create a series of wood engravings for them. In 1920, Morison became Monotype’s typographic advisor. He wasn’t a designer as such; but he did have a devotion to type design and the ability to get ideas set into action. It was a good appointment for Monotype, which was at the time undergoing something of a post-war expansion. Morison commissioned Gill to create a serif font in 1925, and Gill delivered the classically based, but entirely original, Perpetua. Morison was moved. “Those Perpetua capitals – the tilting so called – I suppose are the finest capitals ever done since

Although slightly updated, Gill and Johnston’s original font is still used by the London Underground, which has been hugely influential for Gill Sans.

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ICON

Sixtus the Fifth – 1589,” he said in a 1969 BBC radio portrait, that discussed the font’s italic version. Built on favours Morison had a friend in Bristol, a book dealer and aspiring publisher named Douglas Cleverdon. Cleverdon met Gill during the mid twenties and, again, the two became friends. Gill went on to help Cleverdon publish a set of essays and in return Cleverdon published Gill’s own work, Art and Love. In 1927, Gill redesigned Cleverdon’s shop signage, for which he used sans serif lettering. When Stanley Morison visited shortly after, he was stunned by the shop front and decided that Monotype could use a similar typeface. He got onto Gill, who between 1927 and 1931 completed the complete Gill Sans font family. Morison himself went on to work for the Times newspaper,

Monotype was thrilled when Gill Sans was chosen as the font for the 2004 Athens Olympics. In the late twenties and thirties, Gill didn’t design letters for the Greek alphabet, but the font was extended to include Hellenic character sets by Athens-based Cannibal Fonts. 50

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where he eventually commissioned the now famous Times New Roman. At the time, sans serif fonts weren’t widely used. But this was the era of mass production and modernisation and Gill Sans bridged the gap between old and new. The font was clearly free of serif, but because it was based on Gill’s letter-cutting technique, it evoked a sense of classical art, even as it adorned London and North East trains and KLM timetables during the mid 20th century. “Ageless versatility” “Gill Sans was one of the first truly modern sans serif faces,” says Pixelsurgeon co-founder Jason Arber. “Depending on the context it can look like 1930s typography or this week’s cutting edge. I think it’s that ageless versatility that’s the secret to Gill Sans, helped by its combination of geometric and humanistic curves. It’s almost all things to all people.” As well as gracing the font sets of most modern computers, Gill Sans works remarkably well on screen – both the BBC and Carlton use it. It even got the nod, in slightly modified form, as the font of choice for the 2004 Olympic games. “Gill Sans is equally at home on the computer screen as it is on the printed page,” commented Allan Haley, director of words and letters at Agfa Monotype. “Characters are easy to read and are visually appealing – just as they’ve always been.” “We build our entire knowledge on traditional typefaces, they are our starting point,” adds Jonas Hecksher, partner at Copenhagen’s e-types. “Gill Sans has a number of purposeful errors that give it personality. The letters are very different from one another, yet they’re held together by geometry. It is built on Capitalis Monumentalis, which gives it an air of royalty among typefaces. It is still a reference point, even though it’s slightly outdated now. It brings the Second World War to mind and symbolises industrialisation and the fascination of technology and progress.” “Gill Sans is grid based; for an aspiring type designer that’s a good place to start,” adds Jens Kajus, a fellow e-types partner. “It gives you a firm ground under your feet and the courage to play and experiment.” “I try to stay as far away from it as

possible,” dissents Nick Shinn at Toronto’s Shinn Type. “Shinn Sans was a humanist sans face, but intentionally more calligraphic in treatment than Gill Sans.” For the inexperienced, however, Shinn adds: “One should be thoroughly conversant with the classics, in order to do work that is original.”

When the BBC underwent its Lambie-Nairn makeover in the late nineties, Gill Sans was the font of choice. London ITV franchise Carlton also used the font, although in a less literal manner.

ESSENTIAL READING In her auto-biography entitled Eric Gill, Fiona MacCarthy rifles meticulously through Gill’s diary entries and accounts of friends and acquaintances to provide a complete, no holds barred representation of the artist, from his birth in 1882 to his death in 1940. Although it lacks depth throughout its look at Gill’s actual creative process, this title does provide valuable background for those interested in Gill’s sometimes-eccentric lifestyle. Furthermore, there’s enough scandal to keep even Heat readers happy! Eric Gill by Fiona MacCarthy Faber and Faber (1989) £20 0-5711-4302-4

LEARN MORE ONLINE www.ericgill.com www.shinntype.com www.e-types.com www.pixelsurgeon.com

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TUTORIALS IN THIS ISSUE Photoshop continues to amaze this month… Our tutorial, starting on page 54, demonstrates how you can accentuate depth and “motion” in a complex 3D render simply by using layers more creatively. See for yourself how designer Anthony Kyriazis rises to the challenge… Cinema 4D enthusiasts, meanwhile, should turn to page 58 for our 3D modelling and animation tutorial. Construct your

PHOTOSHOP 2-3 HOURS

ABSTRACT GLOW own virtual pinball machine, then complete a ball-ricochet animation that brings out all the flavour of a genuine multi-coloured table-tilter. And if you’re fed up of your CV ending up on the slush-pile, why not get yourself noticed with our handson box-building exercise, starting on page 64? It could turn your jobhunting fortunes around – with the proviso, of course, that your CV is worth touting in the first place…

By altering the Layer Blending modes or adding an adjustment layer, you can add real vigour to your illustration work. ON THE CD Tutorial files on CD

TURN TO PAGE 54

CINEMA 4D 3-3.5 HOURS

3D ANIMATION Hone your modelling and animation skills with our pinball animation how-to, complete with advice on professional file organisation. ON THE CD Tutorial files on CD

TURN TO PAGE 58

PHOTOSHOP 1 HOUR

PACKAGE DESIGN Two-dimensional is so last year… Use our eye-catching box design to ensure your CV reaches the right people every time. ON THE CD Tutorial files on CD

TURN TO PAGE 64

TUTORIALS FROM 99P

Did you know you can buy Computer Arts tutorials from just 99p via our website at www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials? There’s everything from Photoshop and FreeHand poster design, typography in InDesign and vector drawing in Flash MX, plus more general tutorials on Dreamweaver and Flash. You’ll also find tutorials that make the most of 3ds max 4, Bryce 5 and After Effects. August 2004

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ABSTRACT GLOW Take 3D renders to another level using extreme multi-layer manipulation and achieve some amazingly complex effects. You might get some surprising results, but that’s the best bit, says Anthony Kyriazis

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TIME LENGTH

2-3 hours INFO Anthony Kyriazis is creative director at Athens-based creative design agency, Onyro. Find out more at www.onyro.com.

Illustrators are often required to produce magnificent and complex images within short deadlines and tight budgets. These images need to be flexible and allow for unexpected client intervention – colour variation, etc. Photoshop makes this easy, not only through its magnificent adjustment layers, but also by offering options for multilayering techniques and folder use. Most abstract illustration requires the use of a 3D package at some stage, but it’s impossible to imagine that one could achieve the exact look you’re after solely within a 3D application without any image manipulation applied to the final render. The difference between the initial render and the final image produced for this tutorial effectively shows the benefits of minimizing the time spent on modelling and rendering and instead focusing on reworking the image within Photoshop itself. Making slight changes to the Layer Blending modes or adding an adjustment layer may result in a huge visual change to your image and send your creative results on a completely different tangent. So Photoshop becomes an integral part of the design/illustration process and enables you to present more options to your client. For this tutorial, you’ll start by importing a rendered image created using a 3D application of your choice. For this image, I used Softimage|XSI 3.5 and the result underwent two days of modelling, shader development and final rendering. Do bear in mind that rendering times for this sort of high-resolution image are extremely high.

Î

Illustration and tutorial by Anthony Kyriazis www.onyro.com

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Create a low-res polygon sphere, deform it using the Point tools and Noise Deformer, then select individual faces and extrude them to create connecting branches. Select a face on the second polygon and the end face on the extrusion and bridge them. Repeat until you have created structures you are happy with. Subdivide the object and apply a generic shader with lots of Incidence Transparency. Render the image out as a high-res .tga file, which will create an Alpha Channel you can use within Photoshop.

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Duplicate “Background copy” twice. Apply a Gaussian Blur of 15 to one copy and set its Opacity to 60 per cent. Now set the other layer’s Blending Mode to Screen. Draw a selection around the main cell on “Background copy” and Copy and Paste it into a new layer. Scale it until it fits the full page and apply a Gaussian Blur of 20.

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Alternatively, in Photoshop, open ca_onyro_tutorial.render.tga, provided on the cover CD, duplicate the background layer and fill it with black. Click on the Channels tab, Ctrl+click on the Alpha Layer to create a selection and inverse it. Finally, click on the Layer tab and press Delete to delete the black around the cells. You’ll now have the rendered image as a transparent layer above a black background.

Open assets.psd from the cover CD and drag its “stars” layers into the tutorial file. Apply a Screen Blending mode to them. You can now duplicate some of these layers and apply a Soft Light blending mode. Rename “Background copy” “Render clear”.

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Create a colour balance Adjustment layer and set the Midtones to –23, +84, –11. Duplicate “Render clear” and move it above the new Adjustment layer. Duplicate it and apply a Gaussian Blur of 15 before changing the Blending Mode to Soft Light. Duplicate this layer twice. Now duplicate “Render clear”, move it above the blurred layers and apply a Screen Blending Mode.

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Using a 300-pixel Airbrush Eraser, remove the middle of the cell so that just the outline shows. Also remove the outside leftovers. Duplicate this layer, blur it by ten pixels, set its Opacity to 45 per cent and merge it with the parent layer.

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Repeat steps 8-10 for the other cells within the image to give their outlines a striking flame-like appearance. This will add more depth to the image.

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Duplicate “Render clear” again and set its Blending Mode to Overlay. Create a new layer and apply a black to transparent gradient from the bottom to the middle. Do the same from the top to the middle and set the Blending Mode to Soft Light.

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With a 200-pixel Smudge tool, move the brush around the cell’s outlines using a slightly uneven motion. This will start to distort the image. Duplicate the layer twice and scale the first by about 105 per cent. Duplicate the second slightly to the left and set its Blending Mode to Overlay.

Drag Render 002 and Render 003 from the assets.psd CD file into your Photoshop file. Set their Blending Modes to Screen and move them into the centre of the two largest cells. Place a duplicate of both on top of each other within the largest cell.

LAYER UP Use as many layers as you can for this project as this will enable you to create a very flexible file that has extensive options for tweaking. If you want to change the colour of one of those layers, use an Adjustment layer with a Mask.

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Using the Lasso tool, make a selection of the biggest cell on the “Render clear” layer. Copy and Paste this selection into a new layer. Move it to the top of the layer stack and name the new layer “Smudge Clear”.

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Duplicate “Smudge Clear” and blur using a Gaussian Blur of 25. Set its Transparency to 45 per cent. Duplicate the layer once again and set the Blending Mode to Overlay. This will enhance the layer’s clarity.

Create a new layer on top of the stack, and, using a 200-pixel Airbrush, draw roughly around the cell’s outlines. Blur this layer with a Gaussian Blur of about 40 and set the layer to Overlay with 30 per cent Opacity.

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Create a Brightness/Contrast Adjustment layer and then set its values to +14 (Brightness) and +11 (Contrast).

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Create a new layer, fill it with black and choose Filter>Noise>AddNoise> 6Pixels>GaussianMonochromatic. Set the layer’s Blending Mode to Screen. Create a new layer, choose Filter>Render> LensFlare and move the centre to the space where the white hits the second large cell. Desaturate the layer, apply a Screen Blending Mode and reduce the Transparency to 49 per cent.

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Make a selection around another smaller cell and repeat steps 8-10. Move the resulting layer into the centre cell. Repeat this process for as many cells as you like, but for the best results alter the cells within the image’s focal point.

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Drag the “Bubbles” layer from the assets.psd CD file, place it where you think is most appropriate, duplicate accordingly and set the Blending Modes to Normal, Hard Light or Soft Light.

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Create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer and set its values to 0, 100 and 0 respectively. Set its Blending Mode to Screen, open the Channel palette and Ctrl+click on the Alpha channel to create a selection. Invert the selection, then click on the Layer Mask thumbnail and fill with black. Apply a ten-pixel Gaussian Blur to the Mask and duplicate the Adjustment layer.

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Make a selection around one of the bubble layers and Copy and Paste the bubbles into new layers. Arrange the layers so that the bubbles form a circle and place them around the small cell, which is within the main focus of the screen.

GET GLOWING If you duplicate a layer, add a Gaussian Blur of ten pixels and set its Opacity to 50 per cent, you will add a subtle glow and shine to your object. Duplicate this layer and set the Blending Mode to Soft Light or Screen, sit back and view the results.

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Drag the “Ripples” layer from the assets.psd file onto the tutorial file and scale it to fit on top of the smaller cells. Duplicate this layer numerous times and transform accordingly around the other cells.

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Add a new layer, set its Blending Mode to Soft Light and use an Airbrush to add some black around the cells. This will give more contrast to the colours and dampen down the brightness of the glows around the main cells.

Final touches are always a personal preference, so play around with subtle changes to all of the Adjustment layers. Sometimes, changes push you onto a totally different tangent, enabling the image to evolve one step further.

NEXT ISSUE IN BUILD AN ICON FONT From sketch to fine tune, follow our font design tutorial

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BUILD AND ANIMATE 3D IMAGES Ian Naylor makes full use of Cinema 4D’s powerful time-saving functions to create a realistic render of a pinball machine before transforming its basic shapes, shaders and lights into a brilliant animation

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3-3.5 hours INFO Ian Naylor has been a commercial illustrator for nearly 20 years and is represented by London-based agency Illustration Ltd. He also delivers tutorials on computergenerated and traditional illustration at the Blackpool & Fylde College. Visit www.illustrationweb. com/IanNaylor or www.aircrew.co.uk to find out more.

Organisation has always been the key to successful 3D work. It’s essential that you keep track of the changes you make at each stage and clearly label files for import to avoid confusion, especially when it comes to animation. This tutorial uses the powerful tools within Cinema 4D to work through the image-making process step by step – transforming a simple 2D image into the amazing 3D pinball machine you see here, using shaders created in Photoshop to enhance the geometry you have created. Using an image provided on the cover CD, you’ll be shown how to model a pinball table and its moving parts using basic extrusion, pipe extrusion and creative lighting to create an output for print, before producing a simple, short animation. Although you’ll need a basic knowledge of Cinema 4D to get to grips with this project, you’ll soon take on board tips and tricks that will develop your 3D skills and improve your planning and accuracy – saving you time and effort as you move through this increasingly complex task. The geometry may appear fussy and technical. Indeed three decimal place positioning is more at home in nuclear physics than illustration. But a careful, accurate approach will save you any trouble. We’ll look at file naming conventions and shader application as well as simple lighting and lens effect combinations, motion blur and target expressions, some of Cinema 4D’s most impressive functions.

Î

Illustration and tutorial by Ian Naylor www.aircrew.co.uk

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First set your render settings to a Resolution of 463 pixels wide by 497 deep. This is not the finished size, but a proportional version. Set Anti-aliasing to Geometry, which will also help with the render speed in the early stages of this project.

Call up a rectangular spline for the 01Table base extrusion with dimensions of 8m wide by 16m high. This is a 2:1 proportion, which will make shader application easier later on. Set the Position of the spline in X Y Z to zero, add to an extrusion object and set the Y axis to 0.5 m. Save the file.

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Add the 02-Table side, the 03-Inner ball run and the 04-Table side mask. This will stop the background showing through. Here, this is “L” shaped but could be made from two rectangles. All the elements are constructed with vertical extrusions, like the table base.

Make the 05-Ball Run top spline (or use the one supplied) and extrude Y to 0.1m and move it to the top of the table edge. Copy and bring it down halfway between the table base and the top. Label it 06-Ball Run Middle.

Using the 07-Thumper plate, choose a rectangular spline 2.9m wide by 6.7m deep, a Rounding of 0.2 and set in the XZ plane. Extrude to 0.2 on the Y Axis and add a Fillet Cap on the top edge of 3 Steps at 0.02 Radius. Position at X:4.8, Y:0.7 and Z:2.4.

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Create two Axle supports, the Axle and four screw heads for the thumper plate’s corners. You can adjust the position later. Group all of the Thumper elements.

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Construct a bumper block from a cube – a size of X:2, Y:0.3, Z:1 (2:1 pro) works well – and move it into position on the Axle. The bumpers will flip over in the final image so make sure you position their datum points to the centre of the axle. Duplicate the bumper block to make four and give each a different name. This will help with shader organisation later on.

8 GEOMETRY COLOUR When modelling, geometry can become confusing when in Wireframe mode. To assign display colours to any objects choose Attributes>Basic> UseColour> Automatic and then specify a colour. This will be overridden by the renderer as soon as an actual shader is applied.

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The curved 08-Ball guide is made from another vertical extrusion. A spline is supplied on the cover CD, but you could make your own by choosing a 90-degree arc. Go to Structure>EditSpline>CreateOutline and select your desired width. Extrude Y to 1.3.

Now add the shaders, the pinball table base first. Set up a new material and call it Table. In the colour channel import the file Table base.jpg, set the Specular channel to default (Width 50, Height 20) and apply to the 01-Table base in the Object menu. Set the Projection to Flat and un-check the Tile box.

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There are two wire ball guides to make. 09-Wire guide is made from a rectangular spline with edge rounding. Once you’re happy with the radius, convert to polygons (Objects>PolygonObject in the top menu) and un-check Close Spline in the Properties dialog. This will allow you to delete the excess points and leave you with the correct shape to use in the pipe object.

You can now use some of the finished geometry from the CD. The 10-Ball guide comes complete with its shaders added etc. Place this as desired at the top of the table at X:0.5, Y:0.5, Z:5.3. You will notice that its shaders appear in the Materials box, too. Position the other free geometry, 11-Star plunger_01, level with each of the Bumper blocks. Add the ball – a sphere with a Radius of 0.5 – in a position near the Bumper block you want to activate.

Choose a pipe object (09-Wire guide_ 01) and drop the spline (09 Wire guide) into it. Create a circle spline (09 section) of 0.045 Radius and drop it into the pipe object. This must be above the 09 Wire guide spline in the hierarchy. You’ll need two of these, so duplicate the object and move it into position. Shorten the spline along its Z axis if required.

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Ensure that the shader is highlighted in the Objects dialog and change its orientation to Rotation>P>-90º. Select Objects>Texture>FitToObject. This will place the shader onto the table. Change to Display>QuickShading mode and take a look at the effect.

You can now set the main light parameters by choosing Attributes> General>Type>Omni and Shadow>Soft. Set Attributes>Shadow and Bias (Abs) 0.1 as default. This will confine the shadow spread and give a tighter soft edge.

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Apply a chrome shader to the blocks, in front of the graphic in the hierarchy, and then reduce the size of the graphic to keep it away from the edges. This way (without tiling) the chrome will show through. The Chrome shader can be left in its default projection, UVW mapping. Create a shader for all the yellow parts (Paint) and apply.

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You can now add the Bumper plate graphics in the same way. Note that there are four graphics, one for each block. Name the shaders logically, ie, BB01 – Bumper block 01. The rest of the block will need to be chrome but if you leave the shader fitted to object the sides of the block will appear white so you’ll need to make a chrome shader.

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Place a camera (Objects>Scene> Camera) into the scene. For a close crop effect use the position X:0.228, Y:4.396, Z:-6.884. Set Projection to Perspective, Focal length and Aperture width to 25 and Field of View to 53.13 degrees. Link the main view to the Camera_01 in the main view window by choosing Cameras>LinkActiveObject. Make sure your new Camera_01 is the active object and complete a test render.

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Select a new material. I have called this Chr1 (Colour>15 per cent, R:168, G:209, B:255, Reflection>100, Colour> R:238, G:240, B:255, Reflection Dispersion> 60 per cent, Accuracy>50 per cent). The Reflection Dispersion and Accuracy will make the render slower, so set them to 0 per cent if you’re just checking.

WINDOW RE-SIZE When you have zoomed in and left your image borders way behind, hitting the “H” key in any view will bring everything back to fit within the modelling windows.

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Add more light (Glow light_01). In order for the lens flare to work you’ll need to point it at the Camera_01, so add a Target Expression (select Light, hold Command down and choose NewExpression >TargetExpression). Highlight the Expression in the Attributes dialog and drop Camera_01 into the Target Object box. In the Lights Attributes set Type>Omni and check No Light Radiation. In the Lens dialog choose a Lens Flare (Sun 1) and add more light to taste.

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For some of the lights try un-checking Use Light Parameters in the Lens section. This will intensify the Lens Flare effect and burn more of the image away. Try different colour and flare combinations, but don’t go mad!

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It’s best to light the scene two ways – with an actual light and some effects lights. The actual light is placed right above the table, this will give smaller shadows and illuminate the front view. Here the light is placed at X:-0.455, Y:8.116, Z:-3.462, but you don’t need to be so accurate! December 2004

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Now focus on the Thumper blocks and call up the Animation Timeline. Highlight Bumper block_03, and while holding the Command key down choose New Track>Parameter>Rotation>B. At zero frames, Command+Click on the B timeline and add a new key. Go to frame 5, add another key, and give it a value of 180 degrees, which will bounce the block over.

23 FASTER RENDERS To speed up your rendering, try setting the Chrome Shader’s Reflection Channel Blur Dispersion to 0. Although this will remain pretty much unnoticeable on your animation, the output will be considerably faster.

Add Motion Blur to the block. This will only work as part of an animation output, so now the block is moving pick a frame, in this case Frame 01, and use this for your still output. In the Objects dialog, select Bumper Block_03, hold down the Command key, choose NewTag>MotionBlurTag and give it a value of 60 per cent.

Set Render Settings to General, Antialiasing to Best, and Filter to Still Image. Next, set Transparency to With Refraction, Reflection to All Objects and Shadow to Soft Only. Go to Output> ChooseASizeInPro and set the size to 300ppi. Keep it small and enlarge the final image in Photoshop. Effects required are Object Glow, Lens Effects and Object Motion Blur, which should be set at 60 per cent. Render the file.

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You’ll also need a movement track for the Ball on the Z axis. Add a new track for this by choosing Timeline>Ball>New Track>Parameter>Position>Z. In the Object Browser, move the ball to just above the Thumper Group in the hierarchy, this way the animation tracks will be viewed closer together in the Timeline window and save scrolling. Duplicate the start key, move to 25 frames and enter a value of -7. This will move the ball to the base of the table.

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As you preview the ball moving down its Z axis you will notice that as it runs over each Star plunger the Bumper Block will flip over. Adjust the key-frames for each block (1 to 4) to correspond with the forward movement of the ball.

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When the Bumper Blocks flip over you’ll be able to see the back of the block shader projected through – back to front. This can be remedied. Select the block shader in the Objects browser and in Attributes>Basic>Side select the Front option. This will now only map to the front face of the geometry.

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Open the timeline. You’ll already have a track for the Bumper Block in the Rotation>B track from the still image. Duplicate this and apply it to the other blocks in the timeline. Make the movement act over 25 frames, ie, one second. Experiment with this length of time if you wish.

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Your timeline should now look like this; with tracks assigned to the components you wish to move – the four Bumper Blocks and the Ball.

Once you are happy with the movement, render it out to an animation format. Choose RenderSettings> Output>Resolution>384x288PAL. Set the Frame Length to the length of your animation in frames, the Frame Rate to 25 (QuickTime fps) and save it as a QuickTime movie.

NEXT ISSUE IN 3D GLASSES REQUIRED How to perfect that classic 1980’s ‘3D specs’ look

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PACKAGE DESIGN It pays to be original when selling your work, first impressions count after all. So get back to basics and use your design skills to create a simple but effective package design that’ll catch the eye of those that count TIME LENGTH

1 hour INFO I Love Dust is a design agency, based on the south coast of England, that specialises in brand identity, illustration and web design. Recent clients have included Hugo Boss, Charlotte Hatherley, 20th Century Fox, Ash, Double Dragon Music, sneaker artist Dave White and Marks & Spencer’s exclusive Per Una range.

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Packaging is a key factor in design these days. It’s so crucial on so many levels – practicality, protection and, of course, design. In many cases the design of a package is the first thing we see when confronted with any type of product. So if you’re considering sending out examples of your design work to potential clients or employers, it’s essential that you do something different to make your work stand out from the rest. Consumers react immediately to package shapes, textures and colours and we’re all influenced by them when making decisions. So sending your work encased in a cleverly designed package will give it an exclusivity that shows you’ve made the effort to go that little bit further. This tutorial shows you step by step how to create a simple package that can be personalised to showcase your work or CV in a professional manner. All you need is card, scissors, a printer and, of course, some sticky-back plastic – very Blue Peter!

Î

It’s best to make a few net diagrams first so you get a feel for the spacing of your design. We’ve provided a net file on the cover CD, but feel free to play around with your own designs. Although the net we’ve provided is an eps file, you can still work on it in Photoshop, simply by pasting it on to a Photoshop (A4) canvas. It’s important to remember how your illustration will work on the box. Again, we’ve provided an illustration on the CD but you could use your own. Whichever image you use, it’ll work best if it’s simple and repetitive. We suggest you print out a few mock-ups first to see how the package looks and works physically. If you already have an illustration you’d like to use, you may need to rearrange the image – something that is 2D works differently when transferred to 3D. So bear that in mind. Stamp your own mark and use an image that you think delivers the most impact for your individual project.

TUTORIAL

Packaging and tutorial by I Love Dust www.ilovedust.com

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First choose an illustration or use the image provided on the cover CD. When printing out your illustration it’s a good idea to mark the way the paper feeds through and prints out, just a little pencil arrow will be fine. This will help when printing on the reverse side and lining up the image and its orientation.

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Here’s where the marks you made come in useful. Next print the net diagram (from the cover CD) onto the back of your illustration by sending your printed illustration (from step one) back though the printer. The marking will now indicate which way to place your paper so that it all lines up.

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Cut along all of the solid lines using a scalpel and metal rule. If possible use a cutting mat or other flat surface to keep your shapes as precise as you can. This will also protect any furniture. Make sure that you take extra care around the curved edges. Presentation is paramount!

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Now score along all of the dotted lines using the reverse side of your scalpel or a biro that has run out of ink. This will ensure that you achieve a clean score without cutting through the card and weakening the box.

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Fold the four main score lines A, B, C and D outwards. Folding away from the score will give a much truer fold. You can now start to take an ordinary print to the next level.

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Next, fold all of the remaining tabs (1-8, including tabs E and F) outwards and gently guide them into position. Tabs 5 and 6 should fix snugly inside score lines A and B.

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The mechanics of the box should now start to take shape. The separate sections at the front will act as the openings to the box, showing how you can produce a more creative package.

TOP SCORE At school I was always told that scissor blades were best for scoring paper or card. But I’ve since come to realise that the best method of achieving a successful score is to use the reverse side of the scalpel blade. This enables a nice clean score without cutting through your card. Remember to use the reverse side of the blade as the cutting blade will go too deep and weaken the box. Alternatively you can use a ballpoint pen that has run out of ink.

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Your box will now start to take shape and you’ll get a clearer idea of how the finished product will look. You can now start to the fix the edges together using double-sided tape.

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With all the tabs fixed in place your box is almost complete. Fold the two openings inwards, again making sure tabs 1, 2, 3 and 4 slot inside. Your two openings should come together when closed and sit flush with the depth of the box.

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Place a small square of double-sided sticky tape on tabs 5, 6, 7 and 8. You’ll find that tape works better than glue for this project as the adhesive is instant and less messy. The tabs should fix inside the box.

Working methodically around the box, you can now start to fix the tabs together. Be firm, but try not to damage or bend the card. Once you have stuck the tabs together, hold them in place for a few seconds.

TUTORIAL

SAVE TIME Removing the backing from doublesided sticky tape can be both frustrating and time consuming. So here’s a top tip. Once fixed in place, use your scalpel blade to carefully lift the backing away from the tape. You’ll be amazed how much easier it is.

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At this stage we added a finishing touch to the box by adding a band, created on another printed sheet, that wraps around the box. This is an opportunity for you to exercise some creative license. Play around and see which finishing touches best complement your design.

14

Slide the band over the box. A nice tight fit will help to secure the box openings more effectively. Again this is where your mock-ups are useful. The band could finish your design perfectly or just as easily compromise it, so choose carefully!

READ THIS Despite the pretty dull title, there’s tonnes of inspiration to be found in this brilliant book, which runs you through the design of what seems like every package shape known to man. The book provides net diagrams for a range of package designs ranging from basic structures through to the more complicated “double lined slide box” and “trapezoid package with reverse tucks”. The mind boggles!

15

It’s as easy as that. You now have the perfect opportunity to package your work and get it out there. Why not experiment with different materials. It’s possible to use anything that will fit though your printer. Your local art shop will be a great source for a range of interesting materials and textures.

Structural Package Designs, Haresh Patak, Pepin Press, 1996, £9.99, ISBN 90-5496-051-5

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Experiment with a few mock ups to see what works best and to test out the dimensions. Follow the same construction methods as you did for the box. You don’t have to go for the same thing we have, so try out a few ideas.

NEXT ISSUE IN SUPER 8 ON DIGITAL How to digitise and add audio to your cine camera footage

December 2004

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FEATURE

ILLUSTRATION : GR/DD

GET STARTED WITH...

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FEATURE

GET STARTED WITH PRINTING G If the terms litho, gravure and flexography are alien to you, get yourself up to speed with our essential guide to prepress and printing and make sure your next print job runs problem-free Unless you have the luxury of a printing press hidden under your desk, as a print designer you’ll need to output your work externally. Complex jobs with long runs can be sent to large print factories with large presses, but simpler jobs and shorter runs may be better directed at local print bureaus. Either way, knowing how to prepare your layouts appropriately and deal with the printers positively will speed up turnaround, improve quality and cut your costs.

Ë

Printing systems A great deal has changed in print and prepress over the past couple of years. Poster printing and low-volume colour copying is no longer exclusively available from bureaus. Many one-off or short-run jobs can be handled inhouse using wide-format inkjets and colour laser printers. But when the print run increases, it’s time to turn back to the bureaus. When you do, they are likely to offer a choice of printing methods to suit different kinds of print job. The most commonplace printing technology for commercial colour paper output is offset lithography, usually referred to as “litho”. The

printing plates are flexible and relatively inexpensive, imaged photographically through separated page films mounted in “foil” sheets, or digitally in a process known as “computer-to-plate” (CTP), which cuts out the film stage altogether. CTP plates are more expensive than conventional plates but a CTP system shaves days off your schedule. For ultra-high print runs, you could consider sending a job through a gravure press, which uses long-lasting metal plates. But gravure presses are only found at specialist sites, and the colour reproduction looks markedly different to that of a litho press. Because of the high runs and expensive plates, the system is mostly used to print magazines with high circulation, such as women’s weeklies and TV listings titles. When printing onto packaging or unusual media such as plastics, labels or envelopes, you are likely to be offered flexography. This is roughly akin to the old letterpress system in making use of plates with raised type and images, except that the raised surface is formed from a flexible, rubbery material. Flexography Ë lends itself to use on nonDecember 2004

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FEATURE

DOS & DON’TS DO • Provide your bureau with hardcopy print-outs as a guide. Cheap mono laser copies will do. • Check proofs for reflowing text, font substitution, object positions and image resolution. • Send all required fonts with your job (as a backup, not as piracy) or embed them into the PDF. • Send all required pictures with your job or embed them into the PDF. • Ask your bureau to give you PDF settings, especially for image compression and resolution. • Establish a colour management workflow with your printer; otherwise, switch it off. • Use a logical naming policy for documents so that any lost files can be identified quickly.

Ë

The black outline in this stylised chromaticity diagram represents the colour gamut visible to the human eye. The sensitivity of other media is represented as follows: colour film (orange), computer display (red), offset press on coated paper (blue) and newsprint (green).

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• Adhere to your printer’s technical specifications for hairlines, bleeds and maximum ink. • Accept advice from your printer. They know how best to get the job done well on their equipment. • Run a preflighter.

DON’T • Approve hard-copy page proofs under office light. Use a proper light cabinet. • Use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint for page layout and print graphics. • Try to create multi-page layouts with Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia FreeHand. • Apply fake type styling to fonts such as Bold, Italic or Outline when using QuarkXPress.

Experiencing blurry images with your PDF printouts? Here’s the culprit: the PDF Export Options have been left set to Downsample Images to 72dpi.

Pass work through a preflighter program (or run the preflighter built into some graphics apps), to identify problems before your files go to print.

• Submit pictures in web formats such as GIF or PNG (although JPEG may be acceptable). • Save TIFFs with compression. This will slow down output, and TIFF is slow enough already.

• Take it for granted that last-minute changes after submitting a job are free – or cheap. • Include transparency effects using Adobe Creative Suite without running a trial output first.

absorbent media, so it’s also popular for printing newspapers because the ink dries neatly on the surface instead of spreading into the cheap paper. The modern alternative to these principal systems is digital printing. Not all digital presses work by the same technology – some are like huge digital photocopiers, others apply wet inks, and a few are a bit of both. Today’s digital presses are geared up only for short runs of up to a few thousand copies. Digital prints are not necessarily cheaper than litho, although the price-per-copy becomes increasingly competitive as the print run reduces. Digital presses have no plates, nor do you need to waste hundreds of start-up copies, but the big selling point is personalisation – every print out is imaged individually, each can be personalised with customer names, addresses and even content preferences.

common error is font substitution, where your intended font is entirely replaced by another when the document is printed. This is normally caused by missing fonts at the printers. Maybe the bureau or printer forgot to activate them, or maybe you used a new font for the first time without telling them. It’s also possible for there to be differences between your copy and that of the printers, or the font files could be corrupted. The only way to solve these issues is to talk to your bureau directly and ensure they have everything they need. Picture files can be problematic, too. The most common error here, according to bureaus, is designers who fail to send over all of the image files required for the job. The second most common problem is designers who use images that have too low a resolution for the page. For example, an image correctly scanned at 300dpi might end up enlarged on the page, so reducing the effective resolution. Scans often look fine on-screen and on desktop inkjet print outs, but the

final press copies reveal the full horror of the resolution nightmare. Submitting layouts in PDF format can solve the problem of missing fonts and images. This way, you no longer need to send loose source files. However, be sure to use the correct PDF export settings in your design software: your bureau will be able to tell you what these should be. Print bureaus regularly receive PDFs containing images that have been down-sampled to 72dpi, which again look fine on-screen but ghastly in commercial print. Generally speaking, image resolution should be roughly double the intended line screen value of the final print job. So a typical colour job output at 133 or 150lpi should contain images with a resolution of at least 300dpi. Thankfully, it’s possible to tackle these potential pitfalls before submitting your files by running them through a preflighter program. Preflighters check for problems and report back on what it has found, warning you about missing fonts, low

Submitting files Few elements of page layout cause more problems than fonts. The most

FEATURE

RGB, CMYK AND SPOT COLOUR BASICS

Forget about Adobe’s default Europe Prepress Defaults – the CMYK working space ought to be that of the printing press you intend to use. • Convert all images to CMYK unless your printer provides you with the correct profile settings. • Assume you know more than your printer. You probably don’t. Respect them and they’ll respect you.

The primary colours of light are red, green and blue (RGB). These are known as “additive” colours because adding one to another and increasing their strength makes them brighter and lighter. The primary colours of print are cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY). The logical negatives of RGB, the CMY colours are known as “subtractive” because adding them together makes the result darker. They form the basis of the “process” colour printing system, adding black (K) in order to reduce the amount of ink required for dark colours. “Spot” colours are ready-mixed inks, most often used for reproducing special colours that are not achievable with CMYK alone.

image resolution, spot colour usage in process colour layouts, and so forth. Colour management Different computer devices define digital colour in different ways. This is not just because scanners detect RGB and printers output CMYK. Each device manufacturer defines digital colour in its own way; that’s simply the nature of electronics. Colour management is an attempt to compensate for these variations so that a blue in a scanned photo still looks blue on screen and appears as the same blue again when printed out. Every colour device has a specific colour capability unique to itself, and this capability can be tested against industry standard definitions of colour. The variances are then recorded to a computer data file known as an “ICC profile” (as defined by the International Colour Consortium). Colour management software runs in the background of your computer, or as part of the graphics programs you run, to ensure that the colours in a digital

The additive primaries of light: red, green and blue. Note the cyan, yellow and magenta and white overlaps.

The subtractive primaries of reflected light: cyan, magenta and yellow. Note the red, green, blue and black overlaps.

document are interpreted appropriately for each device it passes across. With the current approach to colour management, you work and edit within a wide-gamut “working space”. This is delivered to your computer display through the display’s ICC profile. Any images brought in from an external source (scanner, camera, picture library are immediately interpreted through “source” profiles. When you go to print, the colours in your layout are interpreted from the working space, plus any source profiles still attached to images, through to the ICC profile for the printing press – the “destination” profile. All these profiles should be set up in your graphics program settings, and be the same for all apps you use. For the greatest accuracy, it’s best to ensure that your cameras, scanners and proofing printers are calibrated and profiled rather than relying on factorymeasured profiles. Windows PCs and Macs famously default to different gamma settings, but calibration and profiling will eliminate this. You will also find colour management more flexible if you keep your artwork in RGB mode, since converting images to CMYK mode effectively uses the assigned destination profile to make the conversion. This is fine just as long as you don’t change your printing press. Despite all this, many bureaus and printers ask you not to submit documents with embedded ICC profiles, and the popular PDF/X settings are not yet geared up to deal with colour management. But they will probably still want to know your monitor’s gamma setting and maybe which working profile you’ve been using.

DESIGNER TIPS “We always run our PDFs through the preflighter inside Acrobat 6, choosing the ‘List all potential problems’ profile. It’s great for identifying images that are at the wrong resolution.” Dominic James, Director, Deep Creative www.deep.co.uk “Use the right jargon when dealing with a printer – ask for saddle-stitching instead of stapling, for example. It makes them feel confident that you are a professional, and their quote will be cheaper.” Steve Caplin, Freelance graphic artist www.stevecaplin.com

FURTHER READING… Pocket Pal: A Graphic Arts Production Handbook Michael H Bruno ISBN 0-88362-488-5, $19.99 International Paper (19th Edition) January 2004 Sized to fit in your pocket, this is the best quick reference on the planet for print designers and production managers. It’s difficult to get hold of copies in the UK, though, so try direct from International Paper at www.ippocketpal.com.

Special colours Almost everyone dabbles with “specials” at some point. These are extra inks printed in addition to the standard four-ink process set (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). Popular examples include fluorescent oranges and greens, metallic inks and even onthe-press varnish. The first rule with special colours Ë is to let your printer know what December 2004

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JARGON

PAGE SIZE VS PAPER SIZE

• dpi: Dots per inch, a very common unit of measurement to indicate the dot resolution of printers, scanners and computer displays.

When layout objects run to the edge of the printed sheet, it is known as a “bleed”. It’s important to continue the bleed beyond the trim of the cut paper, otherwise any slight misalignment of the guillotine may leave unprinted areas at the edge. However, not all high-street bureaus support full-bleed printing on their presses. Be sure to discuss this with the bureau beforehand, as it is likely to determine the press the job runs on. When proofing small page layouts in-house, check your printer drivers for a Layout feature, which makes it possible to print multiple pages on each sheet. Otherwise, most page layout programs support a feature for printing double-page

• ICC: International Color Consortium, a body established in 1993 to standardise colour management on digital systems (www.color.org). • Paper weight: Paper types are usually identified by their weight, measured in grams per square metre (gsm). Heavier papers tend to be thicker and a little stiffer, but not always. • Profile: A valuable data file that describes the measured colour capability of a digital device according to the ICC’s industry definitions of visible colour. • RIP: Raster image processor (pronounced “rip”), the software engine used to convert PostScript page data to a high-resolution bitmap, which is then sent to an output device. • Screen: The mesh pattern of printed dots that reproduce pictures and colour shades under 100 per cent. Measured in lines per inch (lpi). • Trap: The area where adjacent coloured areas on printed matter are made to overlap slightly, so preventing ugly white gaps from appearing in the event of printer misregistration.

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Ë

you’re doing, well in advance. Popular specials may be held in stock, but a printer may need to order them in from ink manufacturers, which can take weeks. The printer will also want to book your job onto a press with enough units to accommodate the job. No matter which page layout and graphics programs you use, specials can be treated on-screen just like spot colour inks. As long as you are consistent in the names you give to the colours, or, better still, use the ink libraries provided within the programs (usually Pantone will do), you can use the spot in an Illustrator graphic, a Photoshop image or on the page in QuarkXPress, and they’ll all output to just the one spot-colour separation instead of three. A big limitation with special colours is that they’re difficult to proof. On-screen spot libraries, such as the Pantone set built into graphics programs, can’t match metallic or fluorescent colours. Printed proofs

Acrobat enables you to output this poster-sized London Underground map as overlapping tiles to four sheets of A4 on a desktop printer, complete with cutting guides.

spreads onto wide-format printers At the other extreme, you may be designing pages that are larger than the sheets in your desktop proofing printer. You can either shrink the layouts to fit your paper

will be even less accurate. Harder still is designing with spot varnish because it will always appear as a solid colour on-screen and in proofs. A good idea is to put spot varnishes in their own document layer, so you can switch them on and off as you work. Finally, spot varnishes must be set up in your page layout software to “overprint”; otherwise, they’ll knock out any colours behind them. It’s quite common for bureaus and printers to override all of your trap settings, so ensure they know this spot separation must overprint in its entirety. The ultimate tip Talk to your printer. After all, costly mistakes tend to arise from misunderstandings at the bureau and undisciplined file submission on your part. But as long as you deliver what they expect (in the format they ask for, using the settings they provide), the chances of your print job running smoothly are greatly increased.

or tile each document page across two or more sheets at actual size. Tiling features are found in the Print dialog windows of most page layout programs, including Acrobat 6 Professional, InDesign and XPress.

Note how the different processing systems affect the colour of your proof.

REVIEWS DUAL G5 2.5GHZ

WELCOME With two 2.5GHz G5 processors purring under its anodised aluminium bonnet, Apple’s latest PowerMac powers around the test circuit like a top-specced Ferrari. Find out how it fares on page 76. Rendering is the key word with Vue 5 Esprit (page 78), courtesy of a new Global Illumination engine and HDRI functionality. 3D modellers should also check out the latest iteration of Carrara (page 80), which

This slick, dual-processor powerhouse blitzes through tasks at mindboggling speed delivers improved motion paths and timeline support. Flash Studio PRO 2’s suite of FSCommands will alleviate most code-phobic animators (see page 81) – as will Macromedia’s two web-savvy apps Captivate and Contribute 3 (page 82). Finally, we pass the hardware verdict on Iomega’s “son of Jaz” REV drive (page 83) and HP’s refined desktop printer (page 84).

TURN TO PAGE 76

VUE 5 ESPRIT

Enhanced rendering power breathes new life into e-on’s top landscape generator

TURN TO PAGE 78

CARRARA 4

Eovia’s latest update incorporates a terrain editor, improved motion paths and 3D motion blur

TURN TO PAGE 80

FLASH STUDIO PRO 2

Converting Flash projects is now easier than ever ON THE CD Trial version

TURN TO PAGE 81

MACROMEDIA APPS

We screen-test Captivate and put content management solution Contribute 3 through its paces

TURN TO PAGE 82

IOMEGA REV DRIVE

Iomega’s removable hard disk system is effective, reliable and fast – but expensive

TURN TO PAGE 83

HP DESKJET 6540

An easily upgradeable printer, cleverly streamlined for today’s cost-conscious consumer

TURN TO PAGE 84

GROUP TEST

DV EDITING SOFTWARE

ON THE CD Power Director 3

Five DV editors undergo the CA assault course

TURN TO PAGE 88

VERDICT OUR RATING SYSTEM EXPLAINED:

All our products go through rigorous testing to get a rating in our verdict 2004 and only truly outstanding and essential pieces of kitSeptember receive five out of five 77

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REVIEW

MAC Yes

PC No

PRICE

£2,199 CONTACT

Apple UK 0800 039 1010 www.apple.com/uk FEATURES

• Dual Power PC G5 64bit 2.5GHz processors • 1.25GHz frontside bus per processor • 8x SuperDrive • Up to 8GB of DDR SDRAM • Up to 500GB internal storage • 400MHz memory • Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire and USB 2.0 • PCI-X expansion • Hassle-free upgrade • Full complement of software FOR

• Super fast • Steady as a rock • Easy to expand

PowerMac G5 2.5GHz

AGAINST

• Power comes at a price • Extra RAM costs far too much • Gives off a lot of heat

VERDICT If you never run high-end software, you might get by with an iMac G5. But if you run video software, music editing apps or work in 3D, the G5 reduces frustration and saves time. You will need to spend a fair amount on RAM, screens, PCI cards and additional drives, though.

+++++ 76

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SUPER-COMPUTER HEAVEN COMES AT A PRICE, BUT GENERATES A LOT OF HEAT

T

he new Apple G5 2.5GHz is quick. Forget the figures, benchmarks, test results, claims and counterclaims – just try it out in a real-world environment and you’ll find that the system response is so lightning fast that you’ll get work done in less time than you ever thought possible. Six months ago, a dual 1.8GHz G5 felt pretty nippy. But time marches on and that machine was blitzed by the new G5 in every video, imaging and 3D test we carried out. No surprises there. After all, it’s officially 1.4GHz faster, but in reality it feels nearly twice as fast. 3D animation renders, which would have been impossibly slow on an iMac, and overnighters on an early G5, were finished in a couple of hours on the new model. For apps such as Photoshop, speed isn’t an issue; everything you do happens in moments, and most of it happens instantly. 3D, as always, takes time, but considerably less time. Apps that support real-time previews, or RAM previews, such as Photoshop and Final Cut Pro, soar on the G5. One disappointment is Apple’s Motion, which, despite claims of

real-time previews, lagged when we applied more than one or two effects at once. Generally, however, you can expect everything to move

working fine, and there were no issues with the computer itself, but a cold room had been turned into a sauna. This might not be an issue if

YOU CAN EXPECT EVERYTHING YOU WORK WITH TO MOVE FASTER THAN YOU’VE EVER EXPERIENCED RESOURCE The G5 boasts four discrete thermal zones, monitored by 21 sensors. These dynamically alter the speed of the built-in fans to redistribute the heat transferred by the liquid-cooling system. This minimises noise for super-quiet performance.

faster than the figures would suggest, and faster than you’ve experienced before. A machine with this much power is bound to create a lot of heat, and Apple has turned to water-cooling to keep the processor chilled. Although this system works efficiently enough, no matter how many fans, watercooling systems or airflow zones you put into a computer, the heat can only ever be moved from the box into the room. This G5 produces so much heat, you’ll certainly notice temperatures rising in your immediate work environment. Following an overnight render of a complex 3D animation in Vue 4.0 Professional, the processor was

you’re only running one computer, but if you’re setting up a render farm, or working in a hot climate, you’ll need good air-conditioning. Mac users have come to expect rock-solid stability from OS X, and the G5’s apps perform happily under pressure. It’s quite plausible to render out from two 3D applications, while working in a third and running iTunes, Mail and Safari with no hint of instability in the system. If you want to use the new 30-inch screen, you’ll need to cough up an extra £449 for the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics card. It’s worth the money, though, as you’ll also get state-of-the-art graphics processing with 256MB of the world’s fastest

ABOVE: Superb design keeps the hardware out of the way and enables air to flow freely with the help of water-cooling technology.

DDR memory. The downside? Due to the sheer bulk of this card, you lose access to one of your PCI slots. If you do have a bit of spare cash and want to expand your G5, it’s easy to access the various slots. Flip open the side and you find the legendary clean interior, with more air than machine. There’s not a stray wire in sight, and loading PCI cards, extra RAM or even hard drives is simplicity itself. With up to 500GB of internal ATA hard drive storage, even video professionals can get away without using an external drive. A minimum system plus a 20inch flat panel display will set you back £3,198, but a fully bumped-up model with all the RAM, the best graphics card and a 30-inch screen will cost around £8,500. Given that

many users will also need a second screen, the price can easily get out of hand. If RAM were cheaper, the machine would be more appealing. OS X software is no longer difficult to find, with all the major third-party applications optimised for the G5 dual processor. All Macs come with a host of software including iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Mail, Safari, AppleWorks and more, so that if you’ve no cash left, you’ll still be able to use your machine. The 8x SuperDrive is bundled, and burning DVDs and CDs is effortless. USB, FireWire and headphone jacks are available at the front, but all the other connectors are hidden at the back. There you’ll find Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 400 and 800, USB 2.0 and optical digital and analog audio. It’s also worth noting that you can reduce desktop wiring issues by using the USB ports in the back of the screen to connect your keyboard. The G5 isn’t over-large, but looks unremarkable. There are many

ABOVE: Don’t be fooled by the G5’s unassuming, grey exterior; the tiny holes facilitate the cooling process.

converts to the G5’s style, but this may be more to do with Apple hype rather than a genuine fondness for its appearance. It’s a grey box with mesh holes, and not a patch on the design of the G4. But you shouldn’t spend this sort of money for the sake of looks. If you want the fastest, most elegant desktop supercomputer, with a stunning OS, forget the looks and enjoy the power. If money’s no object, there’s no better machine – and, given the time it’ll save you, it will quickly pay for itself in a pro environment. For video editing, post-production, visual effects and 3D, you couldn’t ask for a better place to work.

RAM PACKED

Your new PowerMac G5 will arrive with a measly 512MB RAM, which isn’t enough for anything except word-processing. If you’re running high-end apps, you’ll need more. For 3D, you should add as much RAM as you can. The fantastic news is that there’s room for a full 8GB, which is enough for the most demanding environment. The problem is that RAM costs a fortune. Put in the full 8GB and it’ll set you back an additional £3,099, so to get the machine you’ll actually need, you’ll have to pay out far more than the basic price.

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REVIEW

MAC Yes

PC Yes

PRICE

£171 (upgrade £102) CONTACT

e-on software 877-972-7345 www.e-onsoftware.com FEATURES

• 3D landscape design • Animation tools • Extensive materials and texturing tools • Instant atmosphere, lighting and weather conditions • Plants and trees • Import a wide range of 3D models • Render at a range of image qualities • Output of terrains for import into other packages • Radiosity, global illumination and HDRI rendering • Procedural terrains SYSTEM

MAC: OS X v10.2, 1.25GHz G4+ processor or faster, 256MB of free RAM (512MB recommended) PC: Windows 2000/XP (Pro and family), 1GHz Pentium III processor, 256MB of free RAM (512MB recommended) FOR

• Easily mastered • Extensive features • Excellent results AGAINST

• Plants can’t be edited • Modelling tools lack flexibility

VERDICT Vue has always been capable of producing beautiful images; it’s easy to use and fast at rendering. Although restricted plant creation tools give its rivals a headstart, many will feel that the realism generated by the new rendering technology more than compensates.

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ABOVE: With Vue 5 Esprit’s new rendering options, you can create incredibly subtle lighting effects. LEFT: The interface is uncluttered, but the detail is there if you need it.

RECOMMENDED

Vue 5 Esprit E-ON’S LATEST OFFERING TAKES REALISM TO AN EXCITING NEW LEVEL

Y

ou can create landscapes in 3D using any 3D package, but for realistic atmospheres, clouds, terrains, water and plants, a specialist package like Vue Esprit or its long-time rival Bryce offers instant, and highly controllable results. Now in its fifth update, Vue Esprit offers a range of simple presets as well as in-depth, but generally intuitive, tools. The package enables you to build landscapes at blinding speed – one click raises a mountain, while another sets up the weather conditions. You can also personalise landscapes, sculpting terrain using a simple set of painting tools, or the material editor, which, although complex, is based on some pretty straightforward rules. Atmospheres and clouds aren’t as convenient to edit as they are in Bryce, but they are more detailed. The plant editor isn’t as complex – you have to buy Vue Professional if you want to build your own plants, although the choice of ready-made flora has been extended, and you can buy extra species as add-ons. The big news for Vue 5 Esprit (apart from the fact that e-on has

dropped the d’ from the title) is the increase in rendering power. A new Global Illumination engine simulates

THE BIG NEWS IS THE INCREASE IN RENDERING POWER RESOURCE e-on Software’s online Tutorials section features Vue techniques provided by a host of generous Vue users. For further details, visit www.eonsoftware.com/ Community/ Tutorial.php.

wide-spread light, while High Dynamic Range Radiance Imaging (HDRI) enables Vue to “light” a scene with far greater realism. HDRI is especially useful for compositing – it lets you re-create lighting conditions in a Vue scene as if in a photograph or video shoot. If that’s not enough, there’s also radiosity rendering – a calculation that simulates the way light bounces around a scene from one object to another. E-on has managed to make this work quickly enough to render the hugely complex models needed to build landscapes. Other new modelling tools in version 5 include metaball modelling and quick and easy 3D text tools for

the all-important logo market. However, if Vue is going to allow users to model with the package, we think a simple subdivision surfaces tool would have been more useful. Landscape creation has been given a boost with new procedural terrains. These are created in exactly the same way as ordinary landscapes, but are calculated fractally, so you can render them at a resolution of your choice, and zoom in as close as you want, without losing any detail. Animation is more streamlined and flexible. Thanks to an automatic animation feature, you can now specify a movement path and motion type – such as plane, pedestrian or speedboat – and the package calculates a motion based on the terrain and handling capabilities of your vehicle, providing you with an instant and realistic animation. You can also cut between cameras. In terms of compatibility, you can import static Poser figures directly into Vue. We don’t see a reason for the lack of animated import capability, but perhaps a plug-in will follow.

REVIEW

MAC Yes

PC Yes

PRICE

Standard £199 (upgrade £89) Pro £399 (upgrade £132) CONTACT

Eovia, Inc 00 +33 (0)556 137153 www.eovia.com FEATURES

• Improved Terrain Editor and new Realistic Sky Editor • Improved inverse kinematics • Enhanced morph targets • Chain Network Rendering • Sound support • Improved motion paths • Redesigned timeline • Alpha channels in textures and alpha transparency • LWO, COB, BVH and FXB support • Global Illumination, Sky Light, HDRI and Caustics • UV mapping SYSTEM

MAC: 266MHz G3, 128MB RAM, 300MB HD space, MAC OS X 10.1, 16-bit colour display PC: 300MHz Pentium II, 128MB RAM, 300MB HD space, Windows 98/2000/XP/ ME/NT4.0 (with SP3 or later), 16-bit colour display FOR

• Affordable and easy to learn • High-end rendering • Improved animation AGAINST

• Unfamiliar interface • Modelling tools need improving

VERDICT Carrara’s shallow learning curve makes it ideal for students or amateur designers, while its comprehensive modelling and texturing tools, along with improved animation and prolevel rendering, make it great for full-time illustrators, animators and architects, too.

+++++ 80

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December 2004

ABOVE: Carrara 4 delivers longawaited improvements to animation, as well as enhanced IK, a revamped timeline and improved morph targets.

LEFT: Although the Vertex Modeller now sports better Booleans, most of the new tools are geared towards animation, so the modelling side still lacks more advanced features.

Carrara 4

RECOMMENDED

EOVIA DOES IT AGAIN – NEW TOOLS, BETTER ANIMATION AND STILL AT A GREAT LOW PRICE

E

ach new Carrara release reaches unprecedented heights by delivering new 3D technology, improving existing tools, fixing bugs and enhancing usability without sacrificing that trademark pricepoint and shallow learning curve. Previous versions have been lacking in the animation department, but with Carrara 4 Eovia introduces professional-level animation tools that are nothing short of remarkable. The package features improved morph targets for facial animation, revamped inverse kinematics (IK), complete with a Create IK Chain tool for quickly building IK relationships and enhanced motion paths. Even the timeline has been redesigned and is easier to use. But the real show-stealer is the animation toolset, which boasts full support for BVH and FBX files, so that you can create complex character animation. As if that wasn’t good enough, consider the slew of enhancements to its award-winning render engines. Carrara 4 Pro introduces the Eovia Chain Network Rendering feature, which greatly reduces rendering time by redistributing the task

among up to five computers. To heighten realism, Carrara also features blurry reflections, 3D

THE ANIMATION TOOLS ARE NOTHING SHORT OF REMARKABLE RESOURCE Eovia offers a range of add-ons and plug-ins that will help to add extra functionality to your Carrara product. To find out about CADstyle, TransPoser, VectorStyle and Power Pack visit www.eovia.com.

motion blur and the less realistic, but faster rendering, vector motion blur. Modelling has never been one of Carrara’s strong points, but version 4 sees some improvements. The Vertex Modeller’s Booleans now actually work, while a new Untriangulate function will appease the quad-fixated. In early versions of Carrara, the Vertex Modeller was strictly a polygonal modeller. In its current iteration, however, it sports such modelling tools as Subdivision Surfaces, Tessellation and Dynamic Extrusion. To compensate for the lack of more advanced features, Carrara 4 Pro is bundled with Amapi 7 Designer, the prized NURBS and polygonal modeller.

With Carrara, there’s never been a need for plug-ins for environmental modelling, because it’s always come with a robust terrain modeller and sky generator. However, version 4 provides a much-improved Terrain Editor, with a more intuitive interface and real-time feedback. While still retaining the old Sky Editor, there’s also a new Realistic Sky Editor that creates stunning – and fully animatable – clouds and skies. With the improved Terrain Editor, new Realistic Sky generator and plant modeller, there’s no need to buy separate programs such as, Bryce or Vue d’Esprit for your environments. Carrara can do it all. Other innovations include 3ds max-like scene manipulators, and, in the Pro version, support for LWO and COB files. You can also add sounds to an animated scene (there’s a soundtrack in the timeline) and output to movie formats such as QuickTime and AVI. Welcomed improvements to the shader tree include the new terrain channel, for easy texturing of terrain meshes, and the long-awaited alpha channel for realistic masks and fades.

REVIEW

MAC No

LEFT: The Flash Studio PRO 2 interface is clean and stylish, and indicates clearly how to configure your Flash conversions.

PC Yes

PRICE

£129.99 (upgrade £49.99) CONTACT

Multidmedia 0871 750 2127 www.multidmedia.com FEATURES

• Improved GUI • Form-based development • Pixel perfect transparency • Build installers and trial-protected projectors • Projector transitions • Projector skins • Burn directly to CD/DVD • Extendable FPS Script architecture • Over 600 FSCommands • Export to Windows and Mac OSX SYSTEM

• Pentium III 500MHz • 64MB RAM • Windows 98SE or later FOR

• Ease of use • Export to Windows and Mac • Extensibility AGAINST

• Windows only

VERDICT Flash Studio PRO is an essential Flash utility for designers who know their technical limitations – now there’s no need to restrict your work or rely on coders to complete tasks. The clean and logical interface is perfectly complemented by easy-to-use Help files and tutorials.

+++++

ABOVE: PRO 2 can prepare content for burning to CD and DVD – a new feature that is sure to improve your workflow.

Flash Studio PRO 2 OVERCOME FLASH’S TECHNICAL LIMITATIONS WITH THIS ESSENTIAL SWF2EXE APPLICATION

M

acromedia Flash continues to be one of the most creatively flexible web-based applications available, attracting designers who are keen to tweak and tween their latest creations in the quest for the ultimate SWF file. But even designers have their limitations, and the software’s ActionScript coding element tends to reveal the average pixel-pusher’s Achilles’ heel. Flash Studio PRO 2 may not claim to take over such tasks, but it will certainly help to alleviate the tedium of the routine techy tasks necessary to convert your final Flash projects. With over 600 FSCommands, compared to the four provided by Flash itself, you’ll soon start to realise how effective an addition to your Flash toolkit this studio will become. Naturally, you’ll need to create your initial SWF file within Flash before importing it into Flash Studio PRO. The software is stylish, well organised and gives plenty of guidance when first launched. An initial welcome screen prompts you to decide if your exported file is intended for Mac or Windows platforms and gives various

common options for quick access to output such as desktop applications, screensavers, projects and multiple form applications. A cross-platform option is recommended; this will

THERE’S ENORMOUS POTENTIAL FOR THE CODE-SHY DESIGNER RESOURCE Don’t know what an FSCommand is? Want to see how professional designers are exploiting PRO 2’s latest features? Then check out the FAQ section on the official site at www.multid media.com

create a single project file for both Windows and Mac platforms before compiling both EXE and HQX files. There’s support for FSCommands, the native FSP Script and now Forms – enough to handle even the most demanding project. The new Extensions feature provides unlimited expandability for developers creating their own custom FSCommands based on existing or custom DLL files. You can also build installer and trial protected projectors, while simple touches – being able to include icons as ICO or ICNS files, for example – will provide a professional touch to

your final project. You can also burn your work direct to CD or DVD from within Flash Studio PRO itself. There’s enormous potential here for the code-shy designer. The program eliminates the need to restrict yourself to simple animations or rely on dedicated ActionScript programmers to take over a task, such as connecting your work to a MySQL or Access database, or an FTP server. You can even mask your projectors and move away from the default rectangular result to create more organically shaped displays that change in real time using a single FSCommand. The clean interface and intuitive controls enable the designer to carry out such tasks with relative ease. And if you’re still unsure how particular effects work, detailed Help files provide all the advice you need to master new techniques as you develop your Flash projects beyond the browser. There’s support for SWF files created in Flash 4 upwards, LiveMotion 1 and 2, as well as Swish 2 and MAX, so there’s no need to change or upgrade your core SWF authoring application.

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REVIEW

The familiar Macromedia welcome page allows access to a range of introductory videos, which will have you up and running in no time.

Macromedia Captivate MACROMEDIA REVEALS A NOVEL APPROACH TO CAPTURING SCREEN ACTIVITY

MAC No

PC Yes

PRICE

£269 (Upgrade from RoboDemo 5 or 4 £159) CONTACT

Macromedia 0131 458 6766 www.macromedia.co.uk FEATURES

• Intelligent capture methods • Breeze integration • Flash SWF export option • Integration with existing Learning applications • Edit results in Flash • Template support • No programming necessary SYSTEM

Pentium III 600MHz,128MB RAM, Windows 2000/XP

VERDICT Captivate’s novel screen capture approach provides streamlined, professional-looking results via an easy-to-master interface.

+++++ 82

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December 2004

C

aptivate, the latest Macromedia title, has been developed from the recently acquired RoboDemo package, and although still in the development stages, we’ve managed to get hold of a final beta copy. The software will appeal to a broad range of users, but the primary audience will be those involved in the creation of distance learning applications, but find titles such as Director or Authorware just too complex. Essentially a screen capture device, the application integrates elements of Breeze and Flash. Rather than recording screen actions through memory-intensive video, Captivate captures key visual changes to your presentation in a series of snapshots. These are then brought to life through emulated mouse movements determined by start and end points and animated in a similar way to objects within Flash. The software is incredibly easy to use. Short and informative videos help you get started with full motion recording should you need it, for example, to illustrate video. Figuring out the editing methods, traditionally a more complex task, may take a moment, but once you’ve grasped the concept you’ll soon be impressed at how intuitive such options become. Audio support allows you to add sound effects for mouse and keyboard actions as well as a narrative, and the program’s ability to export to the Flash SWF format will ensure your audience can easily view the results.

The Contribute interface remains familiar and easy for both new and existing users. CSS attributes are recognised through a drop-down list at the head of the page.

Macromedia Contribute 3 THIS CONTENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE HAS MORE TO OFFER THAN YOU THINK

MAC Yes

PC Yes

PRICE

£99 (upgrade £49) CONTACT

See contact details, left. FEATURES

• CSS-P support • WebDAV connectivity • Advanced admin controls • Content approval system • Direct image editing • Enhanced Mac support • Improved integration with Dreamweaver and MS Office SYSTEM

PC: Pentium II 300MHz, 128MB RAM, Windows 98SE/2000/XP MAC: G3 300MHz, 128MB RAM, Mac OS 10.2.8 or 10.3.4

VERDICT Contribute is an essential app that frees up time for site managers and returns control of content back to its authors.

+++++

F

or the benefit of those people who find themselves too busy making routine content updates to their websites to research new titles, Contribute provides a boxed content management solution at a fraction of the price of a bespoke system. Once installed, anyone with even the most basic word processing skills can update their website while you, as the site manager, effectively determine the appropriate permissions so that only relevant data is updated. Plus, with Dreamweaver template recognition it’s possible to lock page regions so that no nasty surprises appear in the navigation bar. The new support for CSS-P (cascading style sheets positioning) is one of the most appealing reasons to upgrade – so long to those annoying ‹font› tags. Content authors can add video content and have the ability to edit imagery to the same degree as in Dreamweaver, while Mac users will find solid support for QuickTime and Safari. A new approval system has also been introduced, which means that new content can be delayed before it’s applied to a site. FlashPaper has been updated, too, so such content can be created directly from MS Office. Such enhancements merely scratch the surface of what’s on offer here. There’s no denying that the third generation of Contribute continues to deliver crucial tools for today’s busy site manager.

REVIEW

MAC Yes

PC Yes

PRICE

£279 Single disks £44.99 Pack of five disks £169 CONTACT

Iomega 0207 216 0003 www.iomega-europe.com FEATURES

• 25MB/second transfer rate • 35GB REV disk • Iomega Automatic BackUp Pro software • Norton Ghost for REV drive software (PC) • Two-year warranty • Dantz Retrospect Express CD (Mac) • Quick install guide • 6-pin to 6-pin 1394 FireWire cable SYSTEM

MAC: System running Mac OS X 10.1.5 and above, FireWire 400 PC: 333MHz Pentium II or faster, compatible with 1394/ FireWire/i.LINK connection, Microsoft Windows XP Home and Pro, Server 2003 FOR

• Fast storage and back-up • Removable disks • Durable and secure AGAINST

• Expensive • Can’t swap Mac and PC disks around • Previous similar product strategies relegated to legacy status

VERDICT The Iomega REV drive is expensive and relies on pricey, replaceable media, but it’s still an effective, reliable and fast back-up system that delivers an innovative storage solution. Useful if you’re upgrading, but not so good if operating in a multi-platform environment.

+++++

Iomega REV Drive

The 35GB Iomega REV Drive is incredibly simple to install, connect and use.

A GENUINELY INNOVATIVE BACK-UP AND STORAGE SOLUTION – BUT WILL THE PRICE DETER YOU?

A

lthough now synonymous with innovative storage systems, Iomega has also been linked to difficulties with proprietary products and previously high-profile solutions that have been quietly relegated to legacy positions, such as the once heavily promoted Jaz drive. The big Jaz push of 1998 is now a distant memory, but the company has recently been trumpeting a new removable hard disk drive system, named REV, which has, unfairly perhaps, already been labelled a “son of Jaz” product. The idea itself is pretty neat: Iomega has developed a system that separates the 2.5-inch hard-disk platter and spindle motor from the rest of the hard drive components and sealed the disk and motor in a rugged clear plastic armour. This gives you a removable and easily stored or transferred data package that leaves expensive heads and electronics in the drive unit. Iomega has clearly listened to criticisms aimed at Jaz and ensured that reliability, data loss and damage are no longer an issue. But the problem with taking something as

RESOURCE To encourage Jaz and Peerless users to upgrade to the new REV system, Iomega is offering buyers a free REV disk when they trade in their old drives. For details, visit www.iomegaeurope.com/REV/ upgrade/landing_ en.aspx

sensitive as a disk drive and putting it into a removable medium is clearly the risk of contamination. Iomega claims to avoid this by eliminating the need for a spindle hole in the drive armour; the unit is also sealed when removed from the base unit. So far so good, but with a proprietary device such as this, aimed at small businesses and storage-hungry users, the product must be effective, user-friendly and fast. The REV drive scores highly on all counts, but to varying degrees. In terms of speed, the native transfer rate of around 25MB per second can’t be faulted. We also found the back-up process quick and easy using the drivers installed on our Mac. However, shifting between Mac and PC proved problematic, requiring us to load and reload drivers each time. It’s also not possible to read Mac REV drives on a PC, or vice versa. However, the inclusion of Iomega’s own BackUp Pro software and Norton’s Ghost – both of which provide ample backup support – balances this out. The REV drive’s main drawback is its price. At £279, it’s not cheap,

The removable 2.5-inch disks allow users to store and share data easily.

especially when compared to other storage options. Granted, it’s more flexible than tape drives, and likely to give better results, but with a unit cost of around £45 for its main removable storage media (or £169 for a five pack), this is a high price to pay, even if the cost comes down with increased sales. The other worry, being tied into a single manufacturer platform, is a tougher one to call. But given Iomega’s clout, and the fresh approach the company is taking with REV, this is certainly one to watch.

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REVIEW

MAC Yes

PC Yes

PRICE

£118 CONTACT

Hewlett Packard 0845 270 4142 www.hp.com/uk FEATURES

• Printing of up to 30ppm for black and 20ppm for colour • Up to 1,200-rendered dpi black • Up to 4,800x12,000 optimised dpi colour • 150-sheet input tray • One-year limited hardware warranty • Additional front-positioned USB port • Ink status alert • 5,000 pages per month • Bundled HP photo printing software • CD-ROM users guide SYSTEM

MAC: G3 processor, Mac OS v9.1 and v9.2.2, OS X v10.1.5, v10.2.3 or v10.3.x, 128MB RAM PC: Intel Pentium II, Microsoft Windows 98, 98 SE, ME, 2000 Professional or XP, 64MB RAM FOR

• Great looks • Good results for a low price • Easy to customise AGAINST

• There are faster printers available • Draft quality results are a little disappointing

VERDICT The HP 6540 Deskjet may not be as packed with features as some printers, but delivers good results in core colour and black-andwhite and can be customised through a number of optional extras such as the six-colour cartridge and Duplex tray.

+++++ 84

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December 2004

HP Deskjet 6540 A BASIC, LOW-BUDGET, BUT HIGH-QUALITY PRINTER WITH LOADS OF OPTIONAL EXTRAS

D

eskjet printers have come in for some bad press of late and as a result, consumers are wising up to vendors’ tricks and approaching the purchase of essential kit with more foresight and knowledge. Printer manufacturers such as HP, Brother, Lexmark and Dell have responded to this closer scrutiny with a new, refreshing honesty about running costs and now give users a more basic product that acts as the starting point for a series of optional add-ons and upgrades. Of course, this is more expensive for the user, but at least it sets out from the off what will be needed rather than leaving you digging into your pockets months down the line. One such machine is the HP Deskjet 6540 – a small and very stylish printer that offers core functionality in a well-built package. For a printer of this price, HP has really come up with the goods in terms of product design. The 6540 feels solid and the metal finish gives it a classy look and an expensive feel. Print monitor and progress buttons are positioned on the front of the unit and the printer accepts

paper feeds through the standard HP front-feed system. With basic black and white text printing the 6540 performed well at around 9.8 pages per minute, not

CONSUMERS ARE WISING UP TO VENDORS’ TRICKS RESOURCE Hewlett Packard offers a range great moneysaving deals for small-business users. Check out the latest offers at http://h41166. www4.hp.com/ catalogue/uk/en/ and see how much you could save.

quite the top speeds available to laser users. Lowering the default settings to draft quality increased the speed to 30 pages per minute, but this caused some obvious knock-on effects in terms of quality. In best and normal quality settings the results were crisp and clear. The colour print performance of the 6540 also produced pleasing results at a slower 5.7 pages per minute in normal print mode or 2.1 pages per minute in best quality mode. Colours were true, if a little dull in places, but impressive enough. The 6540 also delivered great images from digital photo files, especially using the optional six-

Colour and black cartridges come as standard, but a six-colour cartridge comes as an optional add-on.

colour cartridge. Our prints took some time to arrive, but the results were grain and smudge free with vivid colours and great definition. A standard 150-sheet paper tray, 16MB of memory and USB and USB 2.0 connectivity are included and there’s also a socket positioned at the front. HP is pushing this as a “walkup laptop” connection but we suspect it’s nothing more than another USB port that’s easier to reach. At £118 the Deskjet 6540 is well priced for either the small business or home user, but a little more cash spent on extras such as the HP Duplex unit would add functionality.

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BOOKS

BOOKS Get your hands on this great design read

GRAFFITI WORLD – STREET ART FROM FIVE CONTINENTS AUTHORS::Nicholas Ganz and Tristan Manco

PRICE: £19.95

In 1984 Thames & Hudson published Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant’s seminal title, Subway Art, which documented the work of New York’s graffiti artists and the subway trains and basketball courts that acted as their canvas. This was a first worldwide glimpse of a most vibrant and revolutionary urban art form. Move forward 20 years and German graffiti artist Nicholas “keinom” Ganz has set out to produce the

PUBLISHER: Thames & Hudson

ISBN: 0-50051-170-5

mother of all graffiti books in the shape of Graffiti World – Street Art from Five Continents, which brilliantly charts the developments and trends of what has now become a truly global phenomenon. Profiling writers and crews from graffiti’s birthplace, New York, to far-flung outposts in Australia, South Africa, India and Russia, Graffiti World seeks to showcase the staggering range of styles that fall under the “street art”

banner. The book demonstrates how the medium has moved on from the days of tagging subway trains to a variety of methods far beyond the spray-can such as stickers, posters, stencils and – in the case of French designers 123Klan – solid plastic models and sculptures. With over 2,000 full colour illustrations and 180 artist interviews, Graffiti World is an invaluable resource and brilliant overview of the global state of spray-can art.

December 2004

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GROUP TEST

88

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December 2004

GROUP TEST

LET’S EDIT P90

STUDIO PLUS 9 P90

GROUP TEST

DV EDITING SOFTWARE

VIDEO STUDIO 8 P91

Low-cost video editors were once used only for home video, but with consumer demand, technological advances and the addition of powerful new features, creating high-quality video on a budget is now easier than ever

L

ow cost editors have come a long way in the last few years. Despite price tags of between £50 and £100, many are now well up to the task of producing polished video productions and authoring for DVD and the internet. Today’s computers are fast enough to produce text overlays, effects, transitions and picture-in-picture shots in real time, and the rise of domestic and semi-pro DV camcorders has put video material into a format that is accessible to most. In addition, the wider availability of DVD burners, and the development of VCD and SVCD, has enabled users to burn video CDs playable in domestic DVD machines.

Consumer demand, and the introduction of free alternatives such as Windows Movie Maker, iMovie and Avid Free DV, has forced cheap editing packages to raise their game, with features and workflows from higher-end products filtering down in the form of cutdown versions, such as the brand new Adobe Premiere Elements. In short, many sub-£100 video editors that started out as programs to chronicle baby’s first steps are now powerful apps in their own right. If you need to create video quickly and efficiently, there’s a lot more to these packages than you might think. Illustration by Scott Hansen. www.iso50.com

POWER DIRECTOR 3 P91

PREMIERE ELEMENTS P92

December 2004

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GROUP TEST

Studio Plus 9

Let’s Edit

A FUNCTIONAL BUT FEATURE-HEAVY PROGRAM THAT MIGHT JUST SURPRISE YOU MAC Yes PC Yes PRICE / STREET PRICE £98.99/£98.99 CONTACT

et’s Edit gives the impression of a program devised by an enthusiast rather than a sales team. It doesn’t feature textured panels, or rounded buttons, there are no wizards or presets, and it doesn’t install with a guided tour, or load up with a splash screen featuring a beautiful woman fondling a camcorder. In fact, Let’s Edit looks as though it’s taken its design cues from a spreadsheet package. Once you start using it, however, you soon realise that, although it doesn’t shout about it, Let’s Edit has quite a lot going for it as a video editor. For a start, there’s the audio. You can have five tracks playing at once and control the volume of each with a simple rubber band. You can also add a graphic equaliser (among other practical effects). Then there are the numerous transitions. Not only are there nearly 100 basic ready-to-use wipes; there’s also a wipe designer, which enables you to

VERDICT

create your own keyframed 2D and 3D transitions. Effects filters can’t be keyframed, but they can be blended to make them alter over time. A good range is provided, and they produce solid results. You can layer the filters to create sophisticated effects, and playback – even with several running at once – is very smooth. Titling is great, too, and you can add motion with a range of options. High-end features abound. The package even has a vectorscope and a waveform monitor. You can’t author DVDs directly from the timeline, but a standalone DVD authoring package (Ulead DVD Movie Factory) is supplied. Let’s Edit does take a while to master, and it does have a few odd idiosyncrasies – not being able to load many common AVI files, for example – but it’s a useful and powerful tool for the demanding yet under-funded editor.

+++++

This package groans under the weight of its feature-set. Every dialog or menu boasts an impressive range of options and controls. However, Let’s Edit’s workflow is functional rather than intuitive, and likely purchasers in this price range demand the ability to work with their editor from the moment they install it.

|

CONTACT

01189 210150 www.canopus-uk.com

L

90

MAC No

December 2004

PC Yes

01895 44 20 03 www.pinnaclesys.com

P

RESOURCE Pinnacle’s aftersales care extends to a regular newsletter, which you can subscribe to via http://apps. pinnaclesys.com/ cdb/registration/ enterEmail.asp. Here you’ll find tips and tricks that’ll help you make the most of your purchase.

PRICE / STREET PRICE £59.99/£29.99

innacle’s Studio is probably the easiest package to get to grips with in this test. It’s well laid out, and a tabbed display keeps everything you need at your fingertips. Capture and output is smooth and almost completely automated, with some clever tricks available for making the most of your hard drive space. You can capture at a range of qualities, even through a FireWire card, and Studio will automatically re-capture from your camcorder just the footage need for your final cut. In practical terms, this means you can fit 10-15 times more video onto your hard drive. Outputting to disk, DVD, web or tape is simple, too, and almost reduced to a one-click job. However, Studio’s simplicity hides some surprisingly advanced tools. You can remove camera shake from a hand-held shot with just a couple of clicks – a feature traditionally only available in packages starting at the £1,000 mark. There’s also an

VERDICT

automatic colour corrector (just in case you’ve shot your footage with poor exposure or incorrect white balance) and a video noise removal feature for restoring old analogue tapes. You can also take out audio noise or add a graphic equaliser. Studio Plus 9 is the latest update, and features an extra video track for picture-in-picture effects and chromakey, which enables you to superimpose objects shot against a plain coloured backdrop. Pan and Zoom for still images provides a way to brighten up slideshows. If you want to bung a montage together in a few minutes, you can create a musical soundtrack, or even a whole edit, by picking the shots you want and selecting a style, although you would probably want a little more control for most tasks. If, on the other hand, you want to work more finely, you can create complex edits – cuts where the audio overlaps between shots, for example.

+++++

All in all, Pinnacle Studio Plus 9 offers offers the the fastest fastest way way you’re you’re likely likely toto find fi tond get tofrom get from raw footage raw footage to a fitonished a finished production. production. However, However, it’s also it also got provides some incredibly some incredibly sophisticated sophisticated tools, which tools, quietly which get quietly on with gettheir on with work their without work thewithout user having you having to understand to understand them.them But editing fully. But tools editing and tools and effects effects keyframing keyframing aren’t aren’t quitequite as smooth as smooth as Premiere’s. as in Premiere.

GROUP TEST

Power Director 3

Video Studio 8 MAC No CONTACT

PC Yes

PRICE / STREET PRICE £49.99/£34.99

MAC No CONTACT

+49 2131-512-5850 www.ulead.co.uk

V

ideo Studio is extremely clear and easy to use. It offers a large monitor right in the centre of the screen, a storyboard view at the bottom (which becomes a traditional timeline at a click) and a library on the right-hand side where you can store video, transitions, audio clips and any effects. The editing process takes place through seven tabs arranged along the top of the screen. Moving back and forth through them enables you to set the screen up for capture, editing, titling, effects, etc., and the program will present only the tools you need for each process, keeping the interface clutter-free. Presets are included, so you can add one-click animations and layouts for titles or overlays. Effects filters (of which there are a good range) have presets, but they can also be customised, and keyframed. This enables you to produce animated effects such as turning a

VERDICT

shot gradually from colour to black and white, or creating a whirlpool effect. Additionally, you can layer effects, with as many layers as you like on a single video clip. Video Studio’s Pan and Zoom function is a useful addition. With this, you can take any still image and enliven it by moving a virtual camera over the surface of the image, picking out details and zooming in and out. If your video work includes stills, this is a useful little tool. However, the package doesn’t seem to retain the detail in high-resolution images, so if you zoom into a shot taken at 12 megapixels, it’ll still look as blurred as if you’d magnified a standard video clip. Picture in Picture effects are also surprisingly easy, with a special track that’s provided for overlayed video clips. You can add transparency and borders to overlayed video, and command it to move into, out of and around the screen.

+++++

A well laid-out video editor with a wealth of flexible presets and effects filters – all of which can be customised and keyframed. Output of your finished project is pretty painless, too, but the everyday editing tools don’t lend themselves to fine adjustments or sophisticated cutting.

PC Yes

0031 (0) 42/306-0797 www.gocyberlink.com

P

RESOURCE A trial version of Video Studio 8, weighing in at 138MB, is now available to download from www.ulead.co.uk/ vs/trial.htm. For user info on this or any other Ulead app, check out www.ulead.co.uk/ tech/forums.htm.

PRICE / STREET PRICE £49.99/£24.99

ower Director 3 is the cheapest package in our round-up and, as such, you wouldn’t expect it to have the bells and whistles of more pricey programs. Editing and capture are straightforward and the program’s effects are useful, if limited. The 24 effects range from colour balance and spotlights to grids, but disappointingly there’s no bluescreen keying and no audio filters. Power Director also lacks an effects keyframing facility, but each filter does have a set of controls and you can use sliding markers under the monitor window to set up how the effect fades in and out. Effects are given their own track on the timeline, which has both advantages and disadvantages. As a result, you can set an effect to work on a whole sequence of shots just by dragging it to cover them, but this also means that you can only ever have one effect working at a time. You can’t, therefore, alter the colour

VERDICT

balance in a shot while you’re zooming in. The real star of Power Director is its titling. There are more than 60 imaginative ways to animate your text, on and off screen, and you can set them up with a single click. Producing professional titles is effortless, and you can control the speed of your animations with the same simple sliding markers used to control effects. When it comes to outputting your finished movie, you can play it back to a DV camera, save it as a file, create a streaming internet movie, or burn a DVD. But whichever route you choose, the process is simple. With disk output, you can create a DVD, VCD or SVCD (lower quality productions that reside on a CD, but which are playable in a standard DVD player). However, since authoring is non-existent, there’ll be no menus, chapters or buttons – just a video that plays when you insert the disk.

+++++

Titling in Power Director is very strong, thanks to those 60 options, and this package is certainly going to get the job done if you’re on a budget. But DVD authoring is about as basic as it could be, and the effects tools are a little too thin on the ground for comfort.

December 2004

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GROUP TEST

MAC No

PC Yes

PRICE / STREET PRICE

£69.33/N/A CONTACT

0870 606032 www.adobe.co.uk FEATURES

• • • • • • • •

One-click capture Real-time previews to TV Moving graphic/tile effects Drag-and-drop presets Title and credit templates Full audio editing Automatic DVD creation Exports to DVD, VHS, WMV and QuickTime • Workflow-sensitive palette SYSTEM

• PIII 800MHz or AMD Athlon XP • 256MB RAM • 1.2GB HD space • DirectX 9-compatible sound and display drivers • 1,024x768 16-bit XGA display • Windows XP Pro, Home Edition, Media Center Edition with Service Pack 1 FOR

• Great range of effects • User-friendly operation • Professional toolset • Simple DVD authoring AGAINST

• No graphic equaliser or audio mixer function

VERDICT You won’t find the quick fixes or one-button effects found in the likes of Studio here, so you’re likely to take longer to produce your work. But if you want your projects to be limited by your imagination rather than your software, Elements is a great choice.

+++++ 92

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December 2004

RECOMMENDED

Premiere Elements CREATE COMPLEX ANIMATIONS AND EFFECTS WITH THIS PROFESSIONAL EDITING TOOL

T

he brand new Premiere Elements is a cut-down version of one of the most popular editing packages on the market – Premiere Pro – and uses the same layout, tools and workflow. Out of all the packages we’ve looked at, Premiere Elements feels most like a professional editor. In fact, looking at Premiere, it’s difficult to see just what’s been taken out and what’s been added. There’s still a great range of effects filters and transitions, and they can be adjusted and keyframed in the same way as they can in the full package, but it’s also possible to produce picture-in-picture and animation of still images (or videos) in the same way as Premiere Pro. These tools are incredibly flexible and enable you to create very complex animations and rostrum effects. Elements contains some nifty speed effects, which can be applied

BASIC EDITING TOOLS ARE SIMILAR TO THOSE IN PREMIERE PRO RESOURCE Premiere Pro, the professional iteration of Adobe’s DV editor, boasts a rack of high-level 3D effects tools and superior project management controls. The full app costs £616.88. Check out www. adobe.co.uk for further details.

easily using a clip in the onscreen timeline to create dramatic slow motion or accelerated sequences. The program also enables you to combine filters and create a lens flare flash across the screen while the image turns to black and white. In the same way that Photoshop Elements took the tools of Photoshop and made them more accessible with presets, templates and simplifications, so Premiere Elements does the same for Premiere Pro. This package is more user-friendly, yet there’s no significant loss in power. There is still a strong suite of audio effects (although the useful

graphic equaliser and audio-mixer functions have disappointingly been removed) and in contrast to the rest of our test packages, you can run as many audio and video tracks as you like, making it possible to create complex audio and video sequences. The basic editing tools are similar to those in Premiere Pro, and you can treat the audio and video of a clip separately to create overlap edits, but in line with Elements’ competitors, there are limited trimming tools for fine cuts. Surprisingly, keying tools have been left in, enabling you to superimpose objects shot against a blue screen, or create chromakey or lumakey effects. DVD authoring is present, too. But while the templates included do cover a lot of excellent ground, you can’t build your own buttons and menus – the ability to import your own would’ve been a welcome addition.

GROUP TEST

CONCLUSION

E

very package featured here will enable you to capture, edit and output full quality DV productions, or lower quality files for DVD or the internet. Each one also offers an acceptable range of transitions (pros often only use simple cuts anyway), titling and effects. But once you get past these basic functions, there are some major differences. Premiere Elements, Studio Plus and Let’s Edit offer excellent audio tools, and unless you plan to shoot your video with quality microphones, you’re going to need them. Power Director gives you smart titling and caption animations, so if your work involves a lot of on-screen information, it’s worth a look. Video Studio and Studio Plus both give you instant one-click tools, which automate laborious jobs but inevitably sacrifice flexibility. Premiere Elements and

PRODUCT

Let’s Edit on the other hand give you every tool you’re likely to need, but consequently demand a little more work to achieve the best results. In the end, the choice comes down to two packages – Studio Plus 9 and Premiere Elements. Pinnacle’s app is fast, combining unusually powerful tools such as image stabilisation and enhancement with the ability to maximise disk space. Elements, despite being a cutdown version of Premiere Pro, didn’t leave out anything significant, but kept the powerful editing tools, great audio and video filters and multi-track timeline, adding to them serviceable, if basic, DVD authoring. In the end, Premiere came out on top. Despite a lack of automation and a steeper learning curve, it’s the only app that we felt users would never outgrow.

LET’S EDIT

STUDIO PLUS 9

VIDEO STUDIO 8

POWER DIRECTOR 3

PREMIERE ELEMENTS

VIDEO TRACKS

2

2

2

2

Unlimited

AUDIO TRACKS

5

4

3

3

Unlimited

DVD AUTHORING

Yes

Yes

Yes

Limited

Yes

VIDEO FILTERS

26

16

38

24

72

126

128

122

71

TRANSITIONS

96 standard wipes plus a customisable wipe designer

AUDIO FILTERS

9

6

5

0

16

CHROMAKEY

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

SCENE DETECTION

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

REDUCED QUALITY CAPTURE

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

VCD PRODUCTION

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

INTERNET VIDEO

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

COMBINE EFFECTS

No

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

TITLE ANIMATION

Yes

Yes

Yes

Excellent

Yes

EFFECTS KEYFRAMING

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

VOICEOVER RECORDING

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

December 2004

| 93

BUYER’S GUIDE Graphics and layout software

WELCOME

P96 PHOTOSHOP CS

The industry-standard image editor Welcome to the Computer Arts Buyer’s Guide – an indispensable resource that summarises popular products we’ve tried and tested in previous issues. It saves you flicking through your back issues to find out how we scored a particular product; here you can simply see at a glance what we thought of it. Every month, we update the section with our latest reviews, ensuring that you’re always up to date when it comes to making that vital buying decision. Note also that the price we print is the

RRP suggested by the manufacturer, so you could pay less if you shop around. Indeed, when it comes to locating the best bargains, the internet should always be your first port of call. Whether you buy directly via an e-tailer, or use a dedicated website’s search facilities to snap up a brilliant deal, there’s no better way to make your money go further. RECOMMENDED URLS: www.ebay.co.uk, www.dabs.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.kelkoo.com

Plug-ins P96 NIK COLOR EFEX PRO Terrific set of colour filters

Mobile hard drives P97 LACIE MOBILE HARD DRIVE Low price and great features

Digital SLRs P97 CANON EOS 10D

Superbly featured digital SLR

Scanners and printers P97 EPSON PERFECTION 4870 First-class scanner

Graphics cards P97 FIREGL X2 256T

Top-end, pro-level performer

Digital video P98 FINAL CUT PRO HD

The latest version hits the mark

3D software P98 ZBRUSH 2

Truly stunning 3D modeller

Graphic tablets P99 WACOM INTUOS2 A4 REGULAR PLATINUM

Web, animation, CD/DVD P99 DVD STUDIO PRO 3

Creative heaven for DVD writers

DVD writers P99 ADOBE ENCORE DVD 1.5

Superb features and great authoring options

VERDICT ★★★★★ OUR RATING SYSTEM EXPLAINED:

All our products go through rigorous testing to get a rating in our verdict and only truly outstanding and essential pieces of kit receive five out of five

Monitors

P99 BENQ FP23W

Enjoy top images with this well=specced monitor

BUYER’S GUIDE

GRAPHICS AND LAYOUT SOFTWARE NAME

MAC PC?

DESCRIPTION

MANUFACTURER

PRICE

WEBSITE

ISSUE

VERDICT

STUDIO ARTIST 3

Mac

Image processing and real-time video effects in this, the latest edition of the world’s only “graphics synthesiser”.

Synthetik Software

$379

www.synthetik.com

95

★★★★ Not the easiest graphics package to get to

ILLUSTRATOR CS

Mac PC

Industry standard vector graphics software – a vital tool for anyone who needs to design for print or the web.

Adobe

£511

www.adobe.co.uk

89

★★★★ Offers smaller improvements across the

PHOTOSHOP CS

Mac PC

The design daddy, the creative king, and the industry standard professional image editor.

Adobe

£605

www.adobe.co.uk

89

★★★★ Improvements across the board

FREEHAND MX

Mac PC

An easy-to-learn graphics environment for designing illustrations and organising data for print/web or Flash.

Macromedia

£299

www.macromedia. com

82

★★★★★ A rock-solid release that

QUARKXPRESS 6

Mac PC

The tried-and-tested publishing tool of yesteryear plods into the present. Better late than never…

Quark

£1,095

http://euro.quark. com

87

★★★ A comfortable and familiar upgrade,

INDESIGN CS

Mac PC

Adobe’s DTP upstart comes of age as QuarkXPresskiller InDesign approaches industry-standard status.

Adobe

£716

www.adobe.co.uk/ products/indesign

67

★★★★ InDesign now simply amazes – and

FIREWORKS MX 2004

Mac PC

Create, optimise and integrate great web graphics, from simple buttons to sophisticated rollover animations.

Macromedia

£249

www.macromedia. com

71

★★★★ No crass effects and gizmos; just smart

SKETCHBOOK PRO

Mac PC

Fuss-free paint and drawing application with customisable markers, pens, brushes and airbrushes.

Alias

$179

www.alias.com

100

★★★★ A well-designed app that focuses on ease of

PAINTER 9

Mac PC

The number one natural media tool now delivers an Artists’ Oils system, a batch of KPT filters, and more.

Corel

£249

www.corel.co.uk

102

★★★★★ If you want realistic digital paint,

JAWS PDF CREATOR 3.4

Mac PC

PDF creation utility; its Jaws virtual printer drive enables delivery from any program.

Jaws

FLASHPAPER2

PC

Enables you to create cross-platform electronic documents (SWF and PDF files) from any program.

Macromedia

£49

www.macromedia. com

102

★★★★ A slick way of creating high-quality versions of your documents. Customisation options are limited.

CLICK TO CONVERT 5.3

PC

A mini-publisher of two file formats (PDF and HTML), which you can output simultaneously, if required.

Click to Convert

$89

www.clickto convert.com

102

★★★ Ideal for churning out documents in the two formats, but keeping file sizes down can be tricky.

PDF CREATE

PC

Complex and sophisticated PDF creation utility, reminiscent of Adobe Acrobat itself.

Scansoft

£40

www.scansoft.co.uk

102

★★★★ Not a one-click solution – but when precise configuration matters, PDF Create! is a godsend.

PDFFACTORY PRO 2.27

PC

This PDF creation utility offers pre-conversion document preview, batch processing and a virtual printer driver.

FinePrint

£59

www.fineprint.com

102

★★★★ For overall flexibility, speed and compact files size, this conversion utility is a must.

NIK COLOR EFEX PRO

PC

Fantastic set of digital photographic filters for Photoshop and Paintshop Pro.

Nik Multimedia

£280

www.nikmultimedia .com

94

★★★★ You could create the effects for

MODELSHOP

Mac PC

Enables you to add one of thousands of 3D models to your Photoshop document.

Digital Element

www.digi-element. com

92

SYMMETRY WORKS

Mac PC

Adobe Illustrator plug-in for creating eye-catching surface pattern designs in seconds.

Artlandia

$241

www.artlandia.com

N/A

N/A Fast and effective way to create patterns. An effective time-saver when up against deadlines.

PRIMATTE 2.0

Mac PC

Photoshop plug-in dedicated to ultra-clean, blue-screen compositing.

Digital Anarchy

$299

www.digitalanarchy. com

97

★★★ More powerful than Cinematte and cheaper than Multimatte. Results are impressive.

SAPPHIRE

Mac PC

Generate superb effects with this 175+-strong suite of movie-quality plug-ins.

GenArts

$1,699

www.genarts.com

98

★★★★ Without a doubt, the best plug-ins you can

PARTICULAR

Mac PC

Neatly integrated After Effects plug-in suite, comprising natural and technical effects.

Trapcode

£199

www.trapcode.com

99

★★★★★ Stunning, beautifully put together and

FURNACE

Mac PC

Two After Effects plug-ins for stabilising (Steadiness) and speeding up/slowing down (Kronos) footage.

The Foundry

£350

www.thefoundry. co.uk

101

★★★★ Excellent, easy-to-use plug-ins – the

Mac PC

Ten Photoshop plug-ins, including Fur, Brick Wall, Diamond Plate, Marble, Reptile Skin and Swirl.

Alien Skin

www.alienskin.com

102

grips with, but persevere and it comes into its own. board, but not exactly what you’d call a huge upgrade. make this a more versatile tool than ever. offers a plethora of invaluable tools.

RECOMMENDED

RECOMMENDED

but InDesign still has the edge, design-wise. utterly trounces QuarkXPress. changes to improve an already praiseworthy app.

use rather than unnecessary extra features.

there really is no other option. £62

www.jawspdf.com

102

RECOMMENDED

★★★★ Equally adept at outputting pre-press quality PDFs as everyday office documents.

PLUG-INS

EYECANDY 5: TEXTURES

$149

yourself in Photoshop, but they’d take longer.

RECOMMENDED

★★★★ Plenty of potential as a tool for compositing 3D in 2D scenes in Photoshop.

buy – but they come at a professional price. boasting endless creative possibilities.

$99

high price shouldn’t dissuade professionals.

RECOMMENDED

★★★★ A fun, versatile and (mostly) useful set of filter effects that’ll suit pros and amateurs alike.

IMAGE EDITING SOFTWARE PHOTOCLEAN

96

|

December 2004

Mac PC

A quickfire photo clean-up application designed with the beginner with the absolute in mind. beginner in mind.

Shortcut

95 Euros

www.trulyphoto www. trulyphotomagic.com magic.com

101

★★★★ Easy-to-use and intuitive photo-editing tools that should interest pros and enthusiasts. enthusiasts alike.

BUYER’S GUIDE

MOBILE HARD DRIVES NAME

MAC PC?

SHORT DESCRIPTION

MANUFACTURER

PRICE

WEBSITE

ISSUE

VERDICT

LACIE BIG DISK EXTREME 500

Mac PC

500GB FireWire hard drive

LaCie

£420

www.lacie.com

97

★★ A stylish, powerful and versatile hard drive – let down by potentially disastrous reliability issues.

MOBILE HARD DRIVE

Mac PC

20GB, 40GB, 80GB hard drive

LaCie

£85£200

www.lacie.com

97

★★★★★ Swift auto-installation (without drivers), top transfer rates, and a great low price!

RECOMMENDED

DIGITAL SLRS NIKON D70

Mac PC

An upgrade of Nikon’s D100, but at half the price – and a capable answer to Canon’s 300D.

Nikon

£800

www.nikon.co.uk

97

★★★★ Superbly kitted out and built to tough and reliable specifications, the D70 betters the D100.

OLYMPUS CAMEDIA E-1

Mac PC

Smart design enables Olympus’ first foray into the digital SLR world to accommodate smaller lenses.

Olympus

£1,400

www.olympus.co.uk

97

★★★★ A cracking build and a vast array of features make the E-1 a highly attractive proposition.

FUJIFILM FINEPIX S2 PRO

Mac PC

Competent digital shutterbug with Super CCD that can capture 12MP images (with interpolation).

Fujifilm

£1,500

www.fuji.co.uk

97

★★★★ A bulky, weighty SLR that delivers crisp, clear, colour-

CANON EOS 300D

Mac PC

The first genuinely budget SLR to hit the market – with easy-to-use controls and limited functions.

Canon

£900

www.canon.co.uk

97

★★★ An average SLR that’s unfortunately showing its age – now

CANON EOS 10D

Mac PC

Critically acclaimed digital SLR that’s exceptionally well put together.

Canon

£1,400

www.canon.co.uk

97

accurate images time after time. superseded by Nikon's better-specced D70.

★★★★★ First class images, superb magnesium alloy body and great features.

RECOMMENDED

SCANNERS AND PRINTERS CANON I990 BUBBLE JET

Mac PC

Colour photo printing with the world’s first six-colour printer. An additional red greatly enhances quality.

Canon

£299

www.canon.co.uk

95

★★★★ This superb printer earns its place in any graphic or

CANON I965 BUBBLE JET

Mac PC

Fast (full A4 photo in under a minute) and economical printer with borderless photo printing facility.

Canon

£255

www.canon.co.uk

96

★★★★ Superfast photo printer that simply trounces the

HP DESKJET 9670

Mac PC

An attractive A3 device aimed at the graphics professional – and at a decent price, too.

HP

£399

www.hp/com/uk

93

★★★★ Admittedly, not as fast as one of Canon’s devices, but it

CANOSCAN 8000F

Mac PC

Entry-level scanner with FARE Level 1 auto-correction technology. Can scan up to the edge of the bed.

Canon

£175

www.canon.co.uk

98

★★★ Good capabilities at a very good price, but none of its

HP SCANJET 8200

Mac PC

4800x4800dpi resolution A4 scanner with 48-bit colour sensitivity and good software package.

HP

£449

www.hp.com/uk

98

CANOSCAN 9900F

Mac PC

Professional scanner offering 2400x4800dpi resolution and FARE Level 2 technology.

Canon

MICROTEK ARTIXSCAN 1100

Mac PC

Showing its age, but this faithful stalwart's colour fidelity is second to none.

Microtek

£938

www.microtek.co.uk

98

★★★ Valuable as part of a colour-critical environment, but slow

PERFECTION 4870 PHOTO

Mac PC

Proficient scanner with Digital ICE image-cleaning technology for the ultimate reproduction quality.

Epson

£349

www.epson.co.uk

98

★★★★ So slick, this wouldn’t look out of place in a

BROTHER HL-3450CN

Mac PC

A3/A4 colour laser printer (size: 615x420x540mm), offering maximum resolution of 2400dpi.

Brother

£2,349

www.brother.co.uk

101

MAGICOLOR 7300

Mac PC

A3/A4 colour laser printer (size: 628x594x564mm), offering maximum resolution of 600dpi.

Konica-Minolta

£2,606

www.konicaminolta printers.co.uk

101

OKI C9500DN

Mac PC

A3/A4 colour laser printer (size: 666x626x460mm), offering a maximum resolution of 1200dpi.

Oki

£4,869

www.oki.co.uk

101

XANTÉ CL30

Mac PC

A3/A4 colour laser printer (size: 665x589x462mm), offering a maximum resolution of 1200dpi.

Xanté

£4,463

www.info-tec.biz

101

★★★★ Expect colour-accurate and precision output every time –

XEROX PHASER 7750DN

Mac PC

A3/A4 colour laser printer (size: 644x715x493mm), offering a maximum resolution of 1200dpi.

Xerox

£5,779

www.xerox.com

101

★★★★ Fast, high quality printer that’s perfect for both every day

Top-end, pro-level graphics card tailored for power-hungry users (engineers, architects, etc).

ATI

$899

www.ati.com

98

★★★ An amazing performer, but it comes at a prohibitive price that may put off many prospective buyers.

Extensis

$200

www.extensis.co.uk

100

★★★★ Nothing can touch the power of this long-respected

photo studio. Great quality prints thanks to the extra red ink. competition. Another winner from Canon. easily holds its own in terms of print quality. features are market-leading or particularly state of the art.

★★ Specs-wise, this sounds a dream; in practice, it's a nightmare... The poorly conceived drivers really impair workflow.

£299

www.canon.co.uk

98

★★★★ A competent performer at a great price. It can scan all media types and is easy to operate with its programmable buttons. and expensive, considering its age. pro environment, let alone a home studio or small office.

RECOMMENDED

★★★ Seems more at home with business graphics than commercial digital artwork. Could do with more memory, too.

★★★★ High quality results. You can’t ignore the low price and running costs, either – and that useful 256MB RAM.

★★★★ A fast and accurate printer for both high-end graphics proofing and every day office documents. designers who demand fast and reliable proofs need look no further. proofing and mission-critical design.

GRAPHICS CARDS FIREGL X2 256T

PC

ASSET MANAGEMENT PORTFOLIO 7

Mac PC

Leading asset-management software, now expanded to include direct-to-web publishing feature.

and valuable asset management solution.

December 2004

| 97

BUYER’S GUIDE

DIGITAL VIDEO NAME

MAC PC?

DESCRIPTION

MANUFACTURER

PRICE

WEBSITE

ISSUE

VERDICT

VIDEOTOASTER 3

PC

A complete post-production and video mixing suite. Supports live internet streaming.

Computers Unlimited

£2,500

www.newtekeurope.com

95

★★★★ Budget studios will find VideoToaster 3 an

FINAL CUT PRO 4

Mac

Emmy Award-winning tool for editing and finishing in SD and HD formats. Used to produce many TV shows.

Apple

£699

www.apple.com/uk/ finalcutpro/

86

★★★★★ Final Cut Pro 4 is nothing short of superb. Excellent bundled applications, too.

AVID XPRESS PRO

Yes

Sophisticated video editing tool aimed at the higher end of the mid-range market.

AVID

£1,527

www.avid.com/ xpresspro

91

★★★★ Twice as expensive as Premiere––but butnot

AUDITION 1.5

PC

Pro audio editing/mixing environment that delivers advanced mastering and effects-processing features.

Adobe

£246

www.adobe.co.uk/ products/audition

N/A

N/A An excellent tool for home users serious about audio. Superb features and easy to use, too.

FINAL CUT EXPRESS 2.0

Mac

Apple’s flagship consumer video-editing app strikes a careful balance between features and affordability.

Apple

£199

www.apple.com/uk/ finalcut express

94

★★★★ The best low-cost editing solution for DV,

AFTER EFFECTS

PC

Adobe’s industry standard tool for adding visual effects and motion graphics to film footage.

Adobe

www.adobe.co.uk/ products/aftereffects

95

Consumer-friendly DVD authoring software with many professional features, including real-time previews.

Ulead

www.ulead.co.uk

97

DVD WORKSHOP 2

PC

£664

£259

ideal all-in-one solution for theirproduction needs.

RECOMMENDED

not different enough to warrant the difference.

although effects may frustrate Pro users.

★★★★ Well-designed app with many features not available in rival software sold at the same price.

★★★ Easy to use, but much of the (cheaper) competition has caught up since the release of v1.

MATCHMOVER PRO 3.0

PC

A sophisticated yet simple-to-operate solution that will meet all your camera-tracking requirements.

RealViz

11,280 euros

www.realviz.com

97

★★★★ RealViz’s incredibly flexible app delivers

VEGAS 5

PC

Capable audio-visual editor with real-time effects rendering and 3D clip animation.

Sony

$699

www.sony.com

98

★★★ The most powerful audio editor on the

FINAL CUT PRO HD

Mac

The professional editing application with broadcast quality credentials is now HD compatible.

Apple

£699

www.apple.com/uk

98

★★★★★ Pro features and top interface

AFTER EFFECTS 6.5

Mac PC

Adobe’s industry standard app now includes better motion tracking and grain management tools.

Adobe

£664

www.adobe.co.uk

99

PREMIERE PRO 1.5

PC

Video-editing app with improved project management and broader support for industry formats.

Adobe

£616

www.adobe.co.uk

99

★★★★ Premiere’s allegiance to Windows ensures superior integration with related titles.

PFTRACK 2

Mac PC

3D motion-tracking software that supports tracking, zooming, passing and tilting shots.

The Pixel Farm

£3,000

www.thepixelfarm. co.uk

100

★★★★ Fast and efficient, PFTrack 2 completes

MOTION 1.0

Mac

Apple’s entry-level motion graphics software comes with Behaviors and stacks of effects filters

Apple

$299

www.apple.com

102

★★★★ Simple and intuitive to use, with many

accurate results time after time. But it ain’t cheap. market now sports compositing tools. ensure this pro-level app always delivers.

RECOMMENDED

★★★★ A number of new and improved features make this an indispensable tool for the video pro.

(Standard)

what can be a dreadful job simply and quickly. advanced features, Motion 1.0 delights on all levels.

3D SOFTWARE SHAKE 3.5

Mac PC

Small but effective update for Apple’s industry-standard compositing and visual effects application.

Apple

3DS MAX 6

Mac PC

Acclaimed modelling, animation and rendering solution used by 3D artists worldwide.

Discreet

MAYA 6

Mac PC

Academy Award®-winning 3D animation and effects software that’s become the film industry’s favourite tool.

VUE 4 PROFESSIONAL

Mac PC

SILO

PC

|

www.apple.com/uk/ shake

99

£2,814

www.discreet.com

92

Alias

£1,645

www.alias.com

97

Natural 3D scenery rendering package that enables you to generate lush landscapes at the click of a button.

e-o n Software

£419

www.e-onsoftware. com

91

Affordable polygon-modelling program that aims to be a cheap yet powerful alternative to its pricier peers.

Nevercenter

www.nevercenter. com

93

★★★★★ Excellent colour correction tools from Apple’s pricey but powerful app. 3ds max popular in the games industry.

★★★★ Alias has made major improvements, although the app remains as tricky to master.

$109

★★★★ A cut above other 3D packages – and soon-to-be leader in its field.

★★★★ Professional-level modelling tools at your fingertips for a fraction of the cost. Great value.

Mac PC

Powerful yet accessible 3D modelling and animation application, widely used in the film industry.

Maxon

£499

www.maxon.net

97

MOJOPACK

Mac PC

Compendium of planets, plug-ins, terrain maps and tutorials for planet/landscape-generator MojoWorld.

Pandromeda

$99

www.pandromeda. com

97

★★★ An interesting collection, but hardly a substitute for a full-on MojoWorld update.

ZBRUSH 2

PC

V2 of this innovative 2D painting/3D modelling hybrid is faster than ever and boasts hi-res mesh support.

Pixologic

$489

www.pixologic.com

98

★★★★★ A stunning 3D package that sets

LIGHTWAVE 3D 8

Mac PC

A long-awaited upgrade of this highly competitive industry standard 3D modelling and animation package.

NewTek

£699

www.newtek.com

93

N/A Brand new bones and dynamics systems make LightWave 8 a force to be reckoned with.

SOFTIMAGE XSI 4.0

PC

This world-leading 3D modeller comes in three flavours: Advanced, Essentials and Foundation.

Softimage

$1,995 -$8,995

www.softimage.com

100

★★★★ Manipulating curves and NURBS is

AMAPI 7 PRO

Mac PC

Latest iteration of Eovia’s classic app now comes with a new NURBS kernel and Dynamic Geometry.

Eovia

$799

www.eovia.com

101

Mac PC

Ninth iteration introduces 100 new features, including cloth simulator, the Point Slide tool and Ngons support.

Maxon

December 2004

RECOMMENDED

★★★★ Vertex Painting should keep

CINEMA 4D 8.5

CINEMA 4D 9

98

£2,099

★★★★ Create realistic images with ease. New features include extra shaders and better Booleans.

a new standard for detailed polygon modelling.

still a little inadequate, but the rest makes up for it.

RECOMMENDED

RECOMMENDED

★★★★ A powerful NURBS modeller for the professional designer, modeller or animator.

£499 £2,199

www.maxon.net

102

★★★★ Not quite as feature-rich or complex as 3ds max, but capable of some equally good results.

RECOMMENDED

BUYER’S GUIDE

GRAPHICS TABLETS NAME

MAC PC?

SHORT DESCRIPTION

MANUFACTURER

PRICE

WEBSITE

ISSUE

VERDICT

NISIS EASYPEN G3

Mac PC

USB-friendly tablet: active area 152 x 114mm; tablet dimensions: 234 x 232 x 10mm

Nisis

£30

www.nisis.com

99

★★ More of a consumer toy than a professional device, but that’s reflected in the low price-tag.

NISIS EASYPEN G6

Mac PC

USB-friendly tablet: active area 304 x 228mm; tablet dimensions: 385 x 347 x 12mm

Nisis

£90

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99

★★★ Nearly there in terms of features and usability, but there

GRAPHIRE3 CLASSIC XL

Mac PC

USB-friendly A5 tablet: active area 209 x 159mm; tablet dimensions: 276 x 257 x 18mm

Wacom

£200

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99

★★★★ A great all-round performer from Wacom, although not

INTUOS2 A5 PLATINUM

Mac PC

USB-friendly A5 tablet: active area 203 x 162mm; tablet dimensions: 334 x 258 x 14mm

Wacom

£300

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99

★★★★ An incredible, feature-rich tablet that’s hard to fault.

INTUOS2 A4 REGULAR PLAT

Mac PC

USB-friendly A4 tablet: active area 305 x 241mm; tablet dimensions: 456 x 361 x 14mm

Wacom

£400

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99

WACOM INTUOS3

Mac PC

Redesigned A6, A5 and A4 tablets with scroll and Express Key functions, and new Pen Tablet System.

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are irritating signal issues that impair ease of use. quite yet in the Intuos league. A5 tablets don’t get better than this.

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RECOMMENDED

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WEB, ANIMATION, CD/DVD DVD STUDIO PRO 3

Mac

Create a complete DVD in under 15 minutes with the latest iteration of Apple’s pro DVD creation tool.

Apple

£349

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99

GO LIVE CS

Mac PC

Adobe’s website design application is sometimes hailed as the Pepsi to Dreamweaver’s Coke.

Adobe

£394

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89

★★★★ A competent web authoring tool. Adobe has refined both the look and the feel of the app so it’s better than ever.

DREAMWEAVER MX 2004

Mac PC

Build and maintain websites and applications with this powerful set of tools.

Macromedia

£339

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91

★★★★ Good integration with Contribute; fully embraces

TOON BOOM EXPRESS

Mac PC

This complete 2D animation software is a cut-down version of Toon Boom Studio 2.

Toon Boom

$144

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92

★★★★ Great introduction to 2D animation: excellent

STITCHER 4

Mac PC

Create high quality panoramas and 360-degree QuickTime VR animations in minutes.

RealViz

499 euros

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95

★★★★ Not the cheapest “sticking together” app around,

JUGGLOR V2

PC

Builds standalone applications that deliver interactive Flash content with a professional look and feel.

3rd Eye Solutions

$249

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97

★★★★ A great step forwards in terms of offering developers

TOON BOOM STUDIO 2.5

Mac

2D animation package that covers everything from scene-planning to preparing output for delivery.

Toon Boom

$374

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98

OPUS PRO 04

PC

Tempted by multimedia, but daunted by Director’s complexity? Then try this out!

Digital Workshop

£300

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98

★★★ If you’re only looking for occasional access to multimedia tools, Opus Pro 04 is up to the task.

FRAME FORGE 3D STUDIO

Mac PC

Professional quality storyboarding 3D software – import scripts, pose figures, set up cameras, and more...

Innoventive Software

$349

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100

★★★★ If you can’t draw and need to visualise your film

AUDITION 1.5

PC

Syntrillium’s former sound editor Cool Edit Pro, supports VST, ReWire and enhanced video.

Adobe

£246

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100

★★★ The established and respected audio tool benefits from simplified features and better integration with other Adobe apps.

IN-A-FLASH 3 ANIMATION SUITE

PC

Create flexible Flash results without the need to master the Macromedia Flash timeline.

NetGUI

£36

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101

★★★ A great beginner’s app – and pros will find the

SWIFT3D

PC

The latest version of the Flash 3D app has matured – check out the enhanced modelling environment.

Electric Rain

$189

www.eran.com

102

★★★★ Stacks of creative features make DVD Studio Pro 3 perfect for the professional environment.

RECOMMENDED

Cascading Style Sheets. scene-planning and drawing tools. but anything else would be a false economy. a way of distributing content effectively.

★★★★ A fantastic all-round package for anyone interested in the vagaries of 2D animation.

before you shoot, this is a quick and easy low-cost solution.

FlashLab browser and PowerPoint add-in a boon.

★★★ Beginners will find it approachable and easy to master, while experienced users will warm to its modelling environment.

DVD WRITERS SONIC DVDIT 5

PC

DVD writing app that sits between Sonic’s entry-level MyDVD and the more advanced ReelDVD.

Sonic

£171

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100

★★★ A useful introduction to the media for savvy creatives,

AHEAD NERO 6 SUITE

PC

A repackaged DVD version of the oft-bundled Nero burner, complete with NeroVision Express 2.

Nero

79 euros

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100

★★ An effective entry-level application aimed solely at

ROXIO CREATOR 7

PC

Complete with pro authoring component DVD Builder and a host of useful DVD-authoring features.

Roxio

£70

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100

★★ A comprehensive suite of tools that challenges the options

APPLE DVD STUDIO PRO 3

Mac

Features include render-free transition preview, alpha transitions and Photoshop integration.

Apple

£349

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100

★★★★ There’s no alternative for Mac users serious about creating DVD content. Load it up and weep!

ADOBE ENCORE DVD 1.5

PC

Features include DV menu previews, QuickTime file support and integrated/background transcoding.

Adobe

£452

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100

★★★★ This superbly usable and fully featured app provides a strong range of design and authoring options.

23-inch A quickfiwidescreen re photo clean-up LCD can application display 1920x1200 designed with the beginner pixels and boasts in mind. a contrast ratio of 500:1.

BenQ Shortcut

but a little limited in terms of features.. consumers, but a no go for professionals. of the Nero bundle. Boasts a more effective toolset, too.

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MONITOR PHOTOCLEAN BENQ FP23W

Mac PC

www. £1275 95 Euros www.benq.co.uk trulyphotomagic.com

101 102

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ON O N THE TH CD EXCLUSIVE 60-DAY TRIAL PC ONLY

Xara X1 Learn the art of technical illustration with the exclusive trial version of this graphic illustration package

WELCOME On this month’s disc we bring you something a little bit different in the shape of an exclusive 60-day trial of Xara X1, an innovative vector illustration package that’s set to upset the apple cart with its speed and expansive feature-set. Check out Kane Rogers’ automotive illustration tutorial on page 104 to see just how good this package really is. Also this month, we have PowerDirector 2.55VE, a full video editing application, and a trial version of Cinema 4D 9.

Tired of bloated graphics software? Sick of having to upgrade your computer for every new release of your favourite image-editing package? Want a graphics package that keeps pace with your work? Then check out Xara X1, an alternative to heavyweight illustration packages that, unlike rival products, isn’t weighed down by its expansive feature-set. In fact, X1’s greatest asset is its speed… X1’s vector rendering engine sets it apart from the competition. With relatively light system requirements, the app is even snappy on lowly machines. It doesn’t skimp on features either. A number of its unique vector tools are ideal for creating complex illustrations; in particular,

its transparency options are great for creating subtle reflections and glass effects that would normally require a Photoshop filter. Also unusual is the option to generate a feathering effect. This enables you to composite objects with soft edges, and is particularly useful when blending bitmaps.

As well as providing a range of vector tools, X1 is also a competent bitmap editor. Again, speed is the watchword; because of the way it deals with JPEG files (embedding the original JPEG data in the native file format), large files can be handled without hogging vital RAM. The program also offers a range of functions for creating web graphics. The Navbar and Button tools can create rollover buttons for the web, and generate all the necessary HTML and JavaScript. The app can even create SWF files that you can import directly into Flash .

SEE PAGE 104

Joe Russ [email protected]

GET TECHNICAL WITH THE XARA X1 60-DAY TRIAL

NEW MEDIA CONTENT EDITOR

EXCLUSIVE READER OFFER

Buy the full version of Xara X1 within 60 days of installation and you’ll benefit from a special offer price of $129 (normal price $179). To take advantage of the offer, click the Purchase button within 60 days of first installation. Note that there will be a shipping charge of US $5. Prices are also subject to VAT at the standard rate for orders from within the EU.

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MAC Rhino Fonts MAC ONLY

ON THE CD

FIVE FULL FONTS FOR MAC USERS

30-DAY TRIAL MAC AND PC

Cinema 4D 9

FULL LISTING

Get to grips with the latest version of this popular modelling app

XARA X1 (PC ONLY) EXCLUSIVE 60-DAY TRIAL Create stunning technical illustrations.

CINEMA 4D 9 (MAC+PC) 30-DAY TRIAL Get to grips with this heavyweight 3D package.

FLASH STUDIOPRO 2 (PC ONLY) TRIAL Create stand-alone apps from your Flash movies.

POWERDIRECTOR PRO 2.55 VE (PC ONLY) FULL VIDEO EDITING PACKAGE Create your own MPEG movies with this complete video-editing solution.

POWER2GO (PC ONLY) TRIAL Burn DVDs, video and photo-discs with this suite of CD/DVD creation tools. Cinema 4D remains popular among the professional artistic community for its combination of ease of use and fast rendering. For version 9, Maxon has revised its core modelling engine and added several new features including support for “ngons” – it’s now possible to create smoother meshes using fewer polygons. As with previous versions, you can expand the core of Cinema 4D 9 with a number of modules. The MOCCA (MOtion Capturing and Character Animation) character animation

POWERDIRECTOR 3 (PC ONLY)

module features the acclaimed Clothilde engine for creating dynamic clothing. Output options have also been improved in the Advanced Render module to include HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imaging), Global Illumination and Subsurface Scattering. There ‘s a new rendering technique, too, called SPD (Sub-Polygon Displacement), which interpolates the geometry of an object to add detail to a render with a relatively low polygon count. This results in faster render times and lower memory consumption.

TRIAL Brilliant, fully-featured video-editing suite.

POWERPRODUCER GOLD 2 (PC ONLY) TRIAL Create DVDs from your home videos and photos.

MAC RHINO FONTS (MAC ONLY) FREE FONTS Five free fonts, courtesy of MAC Rhino Fonts.

BBEDIT 8.02 (MAC ONLY) TRIAL Test-drive the new version of this HTML-editing app.

FULL VIDEO EDITING PROGRAM PC ONLY

TUTORIAL FILES (MAC+PC) To find this month’s supporting files, navigate the interface to “In The Mag” and select Tutorials.

PowerDirector Pro 2.55 VE Edit your movies with this feature-packed video-editing package INFO

PowerDirector Pro 2.55 VE is a full video-editing package that enables you to capture DV video from a camcorder, edit the scenes, include transitions and effects, and then export an MPEG copy of your movie. A complete solution for creating your own home movies, its timeline editing matches that of many professional packages. PowerDirector can even recognise breaks in your DV videos to assemble scenes on the timeline automatically; this makes it ideal for managing your movie’s edit points and inserting transitions and fades. Please note that this version of PowerDirector is restricted to MPEG-1 video output only.

To get your serial number for PowerDirector Pro, enter your name and email address at www.gocyberlink.com/eng/press_room/cdkey. jsp?nEventID=1178 UPGRADE TO POWERDIRECTOR 3: The latest version of Cyberlink’s video-editing package includes a new DV Quickscan feature, which enables you to preview an entire DV tape at up to six times normal speed. New features include a Picture-in-Picture Designer, for adding video or still images to another video, and a Title Designer for creating movie titles, credits or text introductions to scenes. 57 animation effects add a professional touch. There’s also support for standard features format, from MPEG-2 and WMV to MOV, RM and DVD-Video.

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CD TUTORIAL

XARA X1

REFINE YOUR IMAGES A streamlined Aston Martin DBR1 with Stirling Moss at the wheel is a great subject for an automotive illustration. Kane Rogers uses Xara X1’s Direct Action tools to seamlessly reveal the true beauty of this classic racing car

ON THE CD You’ll find two files in the folder named Tutorial\CD to help you with this tutorial. Use basic.xar to work through the tutorial and final.xar to aid your progress and compare results.

TIME LENGTH

1 hour INFO Canadian automotive artist and consultant Kane Rogers is the creative director of Race Legends.com and uses Xara X1 for digital illustrations, website and commercial graphics. Visit his website www.kanerogers.com for more info.

The secret to an exciting automotive illustration lies in leveraging the subject’s visual strengths. In some cases the goal is to emphasise the car’s physical beauty, while in others it’s a matter of imparting a sense of motion, suggesting not only speed but grace too. This tutorial aims to achieve all of this. Most modern racing cars are ambulatory billboards, their drivers’ identities and personalities hidden by safety devices and full helmets. Their ground-hugging dynamics, when viewed in a still image, actually belie their speed. In contrast, the visage and relaxed manner of the man piloting the vehicle featured here is instantly recognisable around the world. But while the basic rendering may be adequate, it can be made much more appealing, even exciting, with some extra work and attention to detail. This tutorial will show you how to transform a well-rendered image into a fully realised illustration that’s suitable for use in both web and print. You’ll use X1’s Graduated Transparency tools to emphasise the contours of the car’s curvaceous bodywork, create volume by adding subtle reflections and shadows, and further refine the image using highlights to portray the sun’s light reflecting on the car’s surfaces. This exercise will also introduce you X1’s many other strengths, such as vector anti-aliasing, instant colour selection, lightning-fast redraw and on-screen interactivity. You will learn how intuitive and flexible these tools are and how their considered use can take your illustration work to another level.

Ë

1

3

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Open the CD file basic.xar. Go to Utilities >Options>General. Set the nudge size to 200 pixels and the duplication distance to 0 for both the X and Y-axis. Set the magnification in the drop-down menu to “Drawing” and take time to look at the various elements you’ll be using.

Delete the upper front bodywork element in the main image. Next, select the main bodywork element outlined in red, nudge it down into place using the arrowdown key, and then remove the outline by right-clicking in the cross-hatched “No Colour” area in the lower left-hand corner of the X1 window.

With that element still selected, click the Transparency tool (F6). Two arrowed lines at right angles will appear over the selection. The word “ellipse” appears in the Transparency shape drop-down menu. The squares at the arrow points and at the centre point are handles that control the shape, size, location and percentages of the transparency.

Nudge the rest of the bodywork elements down into place and observe how their placement starts to accent the contours of the vehicle. As you select each element, use the Transparency tool to view its Properties. Experiment with moving the handles and watch the changes occur in real time.

Illustration and tutorial by Kane Rogers www.kanerogers.com

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CD TUTORIAL

XARA X1

5

Delete the headlights from the car. Marquee-select the left headlight components, go to Arrange>Group, then nudge into place. Repeat with the right headlight and green trim ring. Select the trim ring and click the Fill tool (F5). You’ll see that this tool works in the same fashion as the Transparency tool.

DUPLICATION It’s easy to duplicate drawing elements on the fly in Xara X1. Simply click on the object or group you want to duplicate, drag it to a new point in your drawing and right click. An identical object will appear at that point. You can then manipulate it without affecting the original object. This means that you can experiment with, and compare the results of, different effects without making any alterations to your original drawing.

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8

Select the large orange body-side element on the left. Click the Transparency tool, select “Flat” from the drop-down menu and move the slider to 68 per cent. Nudge into place. Marquee-select the remaining orange elements. Click the Transparency tool, select “Flat” from the drop-down menu and move the slider to 28 per cent. Nudge into place along with the small dark green element.

Select the small black ellipse on the left and click on the Fill tool. Select “Elliptical” from the drop-down menu. You’ll now see a white ellipse appear inside the black one. Move the upper arrow-handle downwards to reduce the height of the ellipse and nudge into place behind the wires on the front wheel.

11

6

Zoom in on the screened air intake on the right, select it and choose Arrange>Ungroup. Nudge each element to the right to examine its construction, noting its transparency and fill properties. Reassemble the elements, select Arrange>Group and nudge this group into place with the other elements on the right.

10

9

Now select the green lower body-side element on the left. In the colour bar at the bottom, click on 90 per cent Black. Click on the Transparency tool and select “Linear” from the drop-down menu. Finally set the transparency as shown in the screen shot, with 100 per cent at the arrow end and 0 per cent at the line end. Nudge into place.

Now nudge the remaining two elements onto the front tyre-tread to define that area and move the group of elements that form the screened air intake on the left into place below the headlight.

12

7

Delete the rear fender and left door. Nudge the replacement elements into place. Select each element and click on the Transparency tool to see how it affects it. Don’t be afraid to experiment; X1’s Undo tool will return you to your original place.

Select the green dashboard element. Click on the Transparency tool. Select “Elliptical” from the drop-down menu. Next, click on the centre point of the arrows and move the transparency slider to 100 per cent. Click on one of the arrow handles and move the slider to 20 per cent. Click and drag the centre point of the arrows down to the bottom of the dashboard element.

CD TUTORIAL

BITMAPS

13

Select the windscreen and click on the Transparency tool. Select “Linear” from the drop-down menu. Click on the arrow handle and move it to the left of the windscreen. Move the slider to 100 per cent. Click on the other handle and move it to the right before moving the slider to 75 per cent.

14

Now Marquee-select the windscreen, the white reflection element and the rest of this grouping and nudge them down into place. Select the white reflection element below the windscreen. Click on the Transparency tool and select “Flat” from the drop-down menu. Set the transparency to 70 per cent.

15

Select the yellow stripe below the front grille. Click on the Transparency tool and select “Linear” from the drop-down menu. Move the arrow handle so that the stripe becomes transparent toward its lower edge.

Many of the advanced features pioneered by Xara, such as transparency, live action and real-time anti-aliasing, can be applied not only to vector illustrations but to the full range of bitmap images, too. Open a favourite photo and experiment. You’ll be surprised by how easily X1’s range of effects works with bitmaps as well as vector images.

16

You can now start to introduce more shadows and highlights to the front of the vehicle by nudging those elements up from below. Move the horizontal grille bar and the jacking pads up into place, too.

17

Try sampling a couple of other features to finish. Select the autograph element and nudge it into place at the front of the car. Find the orange colour “LM59” in the colour bar and right-click on it. This will change the line colour of the autograph element.

19

With the Shadow tool still selected, move your cursor over the shadow; the crosshairs will change to four directional arrows. Left click and drag the shadow in any direction. Again, you’ll see the results in real time – no dialog boxes and no redraw time.

20

Your illustration should now be finished, having used just a couple of X1’s active toolsets. Now that you’ve experienced the flexibility of the program’s Transparency tools, why not experiment with X1’s full range of vector and bitmap capabilities.

18

With the autograph still selected, click on the Shadow tool (Ctrl+F2). Click the “Wall Shadow” button in the Shadow toolbar above your screen, move the “Shadow Blur” slider to ten pixels and the “Shadow Transparency” slider to 60 per cent.

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THE CREATIVE DIRECTORY CD DUPLICATION DB Masters

• Short and long runs • Competitive prices • Fast turnaround • A-Grade CDR • Thermal or screen print Tel: 01795 597 755 Fax: 01795 597 766 Email: [email protected] Website: www.dbmasters. co.uk

ILLUSTRATION, 3D ANIMATION & VISUALISATION Arcana Digital

Animation, imaging and post production for broadcasting, interactive and print. Folio available online or call for a CD sampler. Studio 15 minutes from Victoria. Clients include: Bray Leino, Citigate.A.F, DDB, Grey, JWT, Lowe, Masius, Ogilvy, OWN&P, Proximity, Publicis, RKCRY&R, Saatchi, TBWA, WTCS, WWAV. Tel: 0208 466 0655 Email: [email protected] Website: www.arcanadigital. com Contact: John Fox

PRINTING SERVICES

Wellington Press The Wellington Press Group has been established for over 70 years, offering a complete design, printing and finishing service encompassing all forms of printed and electronic communication. The Group has expanded and kept pace with the rapid developments in graphic communication and

printing technology, and now leads the industry in many new techniques. From conventional to digital offset to large format printing and finishing, through pre-press, design and studio work, to electronic media and the internet, the Wellington Press Group are your complete solution providers. Tel: 0800 7833241 Fax: 0208 5583722 Website: www.wpdigital.co.uk

LARGE FORMAT PRINTING Display Print Services Ltd (dps)

It’s a big world out there and competition is fierce, so how do you create super-strong visual impact and really get noticed? By thinking big. Big graphics, big messages –and big pictures. As a specialist in large-format print and display, dps has all the know-how to transform your ideas into high quality reality. We can produce anything from point-of-sale items up to posters, banners, exhibition stands or even wrap up whole buildings. Call us for more details of how we can help you to make a big impression. Tel: 01373 225555 Email: [email protected] Web: www.dps.eu.com Contact: David Wooster

RECRUITMENT Corps Business

Corps Business is the most established and professional recruitment agency in the design, advertising and media industries. Since 1989, we

have been recruiting the top freelance and permanent creatives and developers. Our strict testing and screening procedure ensures that the people we supply can do what you want, when you want. Tel: 020 7222 8484 Email: [email protected] Website: www.corps.co.uk

TRAINING SERVICE Corps Business

Corps Business is the leading UK authorised training centre for the top software houses, including Adobe, Macromedia, Apple, Maxon, Media 100, Extensis and Quark Systems. You can choose either a group or a tailored course, depending on your needs and abilities. Our consultants are all very knowledgeable in the software and can advise you on which course would suit you best. Tel: 020 7222 8484 Email: [email protected] Website: www.corps.co.uk

Escape Escape offers world-class training in 3D computer animation and 2D VFX for the creative industries and serves as a centre of creative excellence for both individuals and companies alike. The course programme has been designed in consultation with leading industry professionals. Escape is the UK’s only authorised training centre for Alias’ OscarR-winning 3D package, MayaR. Website: www.escape studios.co.uk Tel: 020 7524 7570.

Falmouth College of Arts Are you passionate about the future of digital interactivity? The MA in Interactive Art & Design at Falmouth College of Arts, taught by renowned net artist Kate Southworth (www. gloriousninth.com), offers radical new ways of working in Web design, digital sound art, net art and interactive installation art and design. Tel: 01362 211077 Fax: 01362 213880 Email: admissions@falmouth. ac.uk

Metro New Media London’s leading training centre for Web design, 3D, animation, multimedia, project management and programming • All trainers are professionals in their field • State-of-the-art studios • All levels from beginner to advanced • Specialists in customised training • Discreet accredited

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Tel: 01624 612948 Fax: 01624 623385 Email: [email protected] Website: www.inetc.net

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WEB HOSTING Dedicated Servers The UK’s leading hosting company provides: • FREE and UNLIMITED phone & email support (24/7/365) • Service level agreement • State-of-the-art data centres • Dedicated Control Panel • Partner Programme

TO FEATURE IN THE CREATIVE DIRECTORY, EMAIL [email protected]

CV

CURRICULUM VITAE

TOM ARTHUR OPASINSKI LOCATION: Beverly Hills, LA JOB TITLE: Art director DATE OF BIRTH: Born in Poland on 30 May1975 TRAINING: In 1999 I took classes in Photoshop at the Advanced Techniques in Publishing Institute (Poland). Two months later I became one of the instructors there. One year later, I was certified as an Adobe Certified Expert. SOFTWARE: About 95 per cent of my work is done in Photoshop for design and Illustrator for vector data, Cinema 4D for 3D elements and QuarkXPress for output and print. I’m now trying to learn Maya. HARDWARE: At work: Dual 2.5GHz PowerPC G5 with 2GB of RAM and almost 400GB HDD, 19 and 23-inch monitors – and a Wacom tablet. At home: Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 with 160GB HDD, a 20-inch monitor and a Wacom tablet.

“This project was created as a part of a storyboard presentation. It’s just one piece from 12 or 14 originally created and was digitally painted and designed in Photoshop.” “This piece was originally designed for an artist who works with glass. Her most popular glass forms are represented here. I like this piece a lot and the textures and colours used by me inspired her to start a new line of glassworks.”

INFLUENCES: I’m trying to be an inspiration for other designers and artists. I never had a guru. I like to create my own style with my own unique techniques – colour palettes, themes, textures, sizes and type. I’m also trying to publish my first book of designs and mini-tutorials (with a DVD). STYLE: I specialise in key art (movie posters), but also do some mattepainting, textures and graphics. My style has been described as “very dark but very emotional” and is rich in detail (large formats mostly) and abstract in form. WHAT IS YOUR IDEAL JOB?: I would love to do more mattepainting as poster design can be quite limiting. I’d also love to work with Drew Struzan (www.drewstruzan.com). I work best in an open environment with loads of people around, that keeps my mind fresh and creative – even when I have to work late hours. CONTACT: Visit www.tom-arthur-opasinski.com or email [email protected].

EMAIL

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WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Send us your CV, in the format shown, to ca.mail@futurenet. co.uk, with the subject line “CV”.

December 2004

“About a year ago I began working with Cinema 4D and this was my first 3D project. It was exported as just a plain grey render and then treated in Photoshop.”

“Both of those projects were created at my present job – The Ant Farm – for the Los Angeles independent film festival. They weren’t chosen by the client as a final/ official project, but for some reason I like them a lot.”