Toeg's Blog

Macworld Art Expo - Call for Submissions!

Dave Toeg — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:41:00 GMT

Hello everyone!

I thought I'd share this with you. If you're a Mac user, this is a great opportunity...

Attention Digital Artists!

The Macworld Conference and Expo Digital Art Gallery is now accepting artwork submissions. Images chosen will be exhibited at Macworld being held at Moscone Center in San Francisco January 6-9, 2009.

This competition is open to all Macintosh digital artists over 18 years of age that are citizens of the United States. The cost to enter is $20.00 per artist with a 3-image limit.

Artists may enter in either the Student or Hobbyist/Professional category.

The entries will be reviewed by 2 panels of experts from the digital art and technology community such as: Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder, Pop artist icon Peter Max and Rudolf Frieling, Media Arts Curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Don’t delay, the deadline to enter is October 31, 2008!

For more information, rules and regulations and to access an on-line entry form, please see the Macworld Conference & Expo Digital Art Contest and Gallery web site at http://www.macworldexpo.com/gallery. (The page shows one of Chet Phillips' pieces :-))

Memories of //ADAPT 2008

Dave Toeg — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:19:00 GMT

I had the awesome pleasure of attending this year's Advanced Digital Art Production Techniques (//ADAPT) conference in beautiful Montreal Canada.

Amongst the many memories I will take with me, here are my top 3:

1. The bright eyed, bushy tailed art students: It's so amazing to see that talent that is coming out of the art colleges and schools these days - what's more is their comfort and ability in using digital tools and techniques. After a 30 second introduction to Painter, and then being egged on by her friends, one particularly talented grade 10 student mesmerized her fellow classmates by drawing a beautiful Japanese anime-styled Warrior in 10 minutes! Unfortunately I don't have a picture, but I do have a photo of some of the students that dropped by our booth:

2. The art exposition: Adding to the amazing and talented students was their reactions when you showed them what could be done in Corel Painter... and that's where the art exposition came in. Student after person after professional, we kept being asked the question: "Was this done in Painter!?" while pointing to one of the art pieces, to which we smiled and nodded to their disbelief. The best were when people followed-up by saying: "But that looks so real!" to which I usually replied "That's what makes Corel Painter... Corel Painter." Thank you to everyone who submitted their art pieces!

3. Jason Manley & Andrew Jones: I was also fortunate enough to be able to attend some of the presentations, and by far one of my favorites what that of Jason Manley and Andrew Jones from Massive Black. With Jason and Andrew gave a fantastic in-depth presentation on colour theory. One of the highlights was Jason, getting off his chair and walking around the theatre asking loudly: "What's that colour?" while pointing at various points on the wall, "Can you see the green? It's everywhere."

Thanks you to everyone I met at //ADAPT in Montreal this year, and to the organizers of the event. For those of you who are in the neighbourhood next year and are thinking of going, don't hesitate, it's definitely worth it!

Lenovo introduces new laptop with built in Wacom tablet

Dave Toeg — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:42:00 GMT

I was wondering when they'd come up with something like this. I mean, sure you have a track pad, by why not have a mini-tablet that you could use your digital pen on. Well, looks like the folks at Lenovo thought "hey, that will work for those on-the-go graphic designers", and this is what they came up with:

17-inch Display
Intel Quad Core Extreme CPU
nVidia Quadro FX 370 graphics chipset with 1GB of video RAM
up to 8 GB of memory
dual hard drive bays configurable as RAID 0 or 1
and an optional Blu-ray burner

and the cool part:

a built-in Wacom tablet
an on-board color calibration system

The fully loaded system is around $3000, but that pretty much matches any mobile gaming systems that are out there too.

Check out the Engadget write-up about it.