multiple media
Archive for the ‘Steve’ Category.
here’s the third and possibly last painting post for 2008. This is a tryptic. Each piece is 24″ square, for a total of 72″ x 24.
I’m not sure of the title yet. I… have some ideas. I also have a full timelapse movie in the works for this piece as well. So when I get that done and figure out the title, I’ll post ‘em up.
Technorati Tags: 2008, abstract, acrylic, art, painting, san jose, stevecooley
Here’s the second painting I’ll be showing at uproar ‘08. I’ve been working on this one all year, so it’s nice to finally figure it out and finish it up.
Ah, finally.
Technorati Tags: abstract, acrylic, art, painting, stevecooley
Since my son was born ~6 months ago, I’ve been trying to cram in as much of what I used to do before he was born into my nights after he goes down for the night. I’m glad there are outlets for getting your work shown in the south bay area like Heart of Chaos and Works/San Jose because their events are good motivators to get some artwork finished.
So, here’s a new piece:
I have a tryptic and another piece that I’m wrapping up for Uproar 08.. posting soon…
Technorati Tags: 2008, abstract, acrylic, painting, stevecooley
Hey, come check out my arduino project box that I’m working on! That’s what the post about the SPDT switches was all about. 
Here’s a video I made of some of the construction steps:
arduino project box construction timelapse from stevecooley on Vimeo.
I’m working on my arduino project box, specifically the wiring. I ran into a really strange problem with the blue Single-pole-dual-throw (SPDT) switches I had selected for my digital i/o pins. Strange to me until I thought about it, and then I realized how not-strange it is
The problem is that all of my toggle switches were working backwards to my expectations. (If you’re reading this and have already learned this lesson, you know where we’re going. )
Here’s a photo of the switches I’m using (thanks to banzaieffects for having a really nice photo of this component online)
Miyama is the manufacturer… Anyway! Here’s the deal:
I wired things up to what I thought would be a logical way. Wire this to that, just like the slide switches I’d also been using without incident.
Then I had my epiphany about how these toggle switches work. I tried to imagine cutting one in half to visualize how they worked based on the scientific research that had been forced on me. My slide switches work great, but my toggle switches are all working backwards.
Aha, so based on what would now make a lot of sense, if I wanted to have my switches indicate directionality on my panel, I would need to switch how they’re wired on the back of the panel in order to emulate the behavior I want!
And now, look at that. Switching the wires will in fact give me the results I had originally intended, even though it seems like a trick I have to pull on my brain in order to get it to do what I want. Not really, but.. without being able to actually see inside the switch, visually it looks like the opposite of what made sense.
Sooo… yeah, now I have a lot of clean up work to do on my project. Recut and strip a bunch of wires, desolder and remove a bunch of work I’ve already done… sigh… Oh well. Such is the price of Doing It Yourself. my hard lesson learned will hopefully translate into less of a mystery for you.
Technorati Tags: arduino, componentry, design, DIY, diy, electronic, howto, panel, programming, wiring
well, as you can tell from parts 1, 2, and 3 of my comparisons of Zazzle and CafePress in regards to their print-on-demand services on black and dark t-shirts, it was kind of a toss-up as to which one was “better”. Now in part 4, I can show you the effects of one washing in a normal day-to-day kind of situation.
First up is Zazzle, since they were 7 whole days faster delivering my order:
If you click through and view these photos, you’ll see that the solid red color in the “sidescroller” t-shirt is not consistently covered with the original color that was there when I got the shirt. Kind of a disappointment to me. Still not a bad looking t-shirt, but not even close to the quality you would get with silk-screening. The “tea”-shirt (haha) actually fared better, probably because it’s a continuous tone image versus the relative solid color vector image in the first shirt. These shirts are actually being shown after two washes.
And now for the Cafepress shirt:
Uh oh. Now here’s a big problem in my opinion. After ONE wash, every solid area of color is cracking. This is totally unacceptable for a product that I would sell to people. So, at this time, I really can’t recommend cafepress for black and dark color shirt printing. I’m not totally sure Zazzle has the right action going on their game, but at least their shirts (which feel nicer to me, and are tagless) are free from the cracking problem that cafepress’ shirt is doing already… I would expect this cracking to happen even in silkscreened shirts after 20-30 washings, but after only one wash seems to indicate that there’s still significant room for improvement. This cracking problem certainly isn’t going to get any better from here on out, so this really isn’t the kind of product I want to promote.
So, the 2008 print-on-demand showdown winner is: Zazzle.com
* faster order fulfillment
* customizable
* nicer shirts
* no cracking after 1 wash
Technorati Tags: cafepress, zazzle
here’s a sneak peek at a font I hope to release later this year. it’s a block letter wildstyle. I’ve been wanting to do this kind of typeface for a long time, and fontstruct seems to be one way to get it done. It’s a little stiffer than I’d prefer it be, but I’ll see it through and maybe take another stab at it later in life.
Technorati Tags: fonts, fontstruct
So after receiving my order from Zazzle and from Cafepress I came to some very inconclusive conclusions. The chart above outlines my findings. Overall, both services have their plusses and minuses. Next time I need to design a black or other dark colored shirt, I’d probably make a decision based on the graphics, and the number of shirts i was going to purchase, and if they needed customization at all, and what my budget was, and possibly time of the year the shirts would be worn primarily.
zazzle has a pretty nice interface, lots of customization options. They were definitely was faster… 7 whole days faster. Zazzle’s print quality didn’t suck, it just wasn’t “awesome”. They offer customization options and a wide array of garments to print onto. They give you tools to help promote the products you’ve designed, but they were more expensive.
cafepress’ print quality is bordering on awesome, crisp and clean. But the overall color coverage seemed to be less dense. You can set your own prices at cafepress, and the thoughtfully sent washing instructions. If price is a concern when doing a print on demand black t-shirt, cafe press wins here.
Overall, I’m not terribly confident on the longevity of these shirts from either vendor. I think they’re both fine, but they’re probably best as a prototyping device. If you have a client that you want to demo a shirt design to, either service might work fine, I just probably wouldn’t bet my branding budget on these as a final product.
In part 4, I’ll wrap up with a comparison of post-washing results from both services.
Technorati Tags: cafepress, zazzle
Well, fully 7 days after my zazzle.com order arrived, my cafepress order finally showed up. Now I have something to compare and contrast to the first order.
So my first reaction was to the relative thinness of the shirt relative to Zazzle’s black shirts. It really does feel like a lighter weight shirt. As my wife rightly pointed out, “if you’re layering, that should be ok.” The second thing that I noticed was how much nicer the quality of the print is versus Zazzle’s output. It looks like a very similar process where they take the alpha value from the png file and print a white ink first, then do a CMYK inkjet print over the top of that… and presumably do some kind of heat treatment to set the inks. I’d have to go back and check my source files for resolution, but its *extremely* unlikely that I would send low res files off to zazzle and really high res files off to cafepress, even on accident. I just don’t roll that way. It’s high res all the time for me. So when I see the nicer quality print from cafepress, it really makes it hard to declare either one of these services as “the winner”.
So on to cafepress’ commission policy. They let you set your commission to any value you want, even to set it to $0… which can reduce the price of the item to a more palatable number. I’ll be honest, zazzle’s prices are kind of a shock considering you’re buying a t-shirt. cafepress isn’t much better, but at least I can optionally set the price for my customer if I want. Cafepress wins here, imo.
In part 3 I will outline a chart of some of the pros and cons of each service.
One note about cafepress’ print on demand for thing like this bib… they’re using a heat transfer process that does not use transparency data in your graphics… so the first time something like this bib gets dirty and you send it through the wash, the un-printed-on portion of the transfer absorbs some color and it becomes apparent that it’s a heat transfer… which sucks. I think they’re using a newer process to print directly onto light/white shirts that doesn’t employ this technique… which is good. This old method really blows. Cute design, though! Baby’s first turntable!
Technorati Tags: cafepress, zazzle
Back in 2007, I did a painting I ended up titling “balance/imbalance”. I also photographed myself painting it at 1 frame per second as I painted. Here now, in full vimeo glory, is the video I’ve been sitting on for over a year.
timelapse of me painting balance/imbalance from stevecooley on Vimeo.
The general rhythm is “mask, mask, mask, mask, mask, mask, paint” over and over and over.
Technorati Tags: painting, stevecooley, timelapse
Works/San Jose