From the Typekit website:
“Just add a line of JavaScript to your markup, tell us what fonts you want to use, and then craft your pages the way you always have. Except now you’ll be able to use real fonts. This really is going to change web design.”
Sounds pretty cool. Simple, flexible, and cool.
_____
The clipping mask is one of the myriad of tools that Adobe Illustrator sports. And I never really got the hang of it or understood where it would come in handy.
Until last week.
I’m putting together a new comic strip called The Winchcombe, and I’ve just saved myself a ton of time and headaches by finally figuring out just what the clipping mask can do for me.
Long and short: I’ve drawn several “set pieces”, background images of locations that will be used frequently in the strip, places like an office, an exterior shot of the restaurant, and the break room.
I can slap the full-sized backdrop down on a layer, scale it to fit the specific shot I’m composing, and then use a clipping mask to trim it to fit the panel, quick and clean. It’s much better than erasing or slopping big blobs of white ink down to cover the unwanted portion.
Thanks to Jay Hilgert of bittbox for making it so embarrassingly clear how easy clipping masks are to use.
How to Make a Clipping Mask in Illustrator | BittBox
The Winchcombe
As I lose 15 minutes here and a half hour there fighting with my Wacom tablet’s 10.6 compatible drivers, I have to ask myself, why did I upgrade from the stable 10.5?
And whenever I feel like that, I glance through this review of OS X 10.6, and I remember that a few frustrations are par for the course when you enjoy technology as much as I do.
I just wish that these problems would crop up when I’ve got the time to spend fiddling. Not at 5:15am when all I want to do is spend the 45 minutes before kids wake up drawing a few panels.
It’s a very good review. And thorough.
November is National Novel Writing Month, and because they want you to succeed, a couple of Mac software developers are going to cut you a deal on their writing software.
Firstly, Storyist Software is beefing up its free trial period to allow you to use their software for free through the first week of December. And, if you decide that you love it, you can use the coupon code NANOWRIMO at checkout and get 25% off of the download-only version ($59.00) or the boxed edition ($79.00). Check it out.
Secondly, Literature and Latte, the makers of Scrivener (my personal choice for several years now) are offering a very similar free trial period, extending through Dec. 7. And they are offering NaNoWriMo winners a 50% discount, and all other participants a 20% discount on the price of Scrivener ($39.95) by entering the discount code “NANOWRIMO” in the coupon code text field of their store. Go there.
Great software, great prices, and now you should go write great novels.
Links
