Looking for Adobe books
I’ve decided it’s probably best to find good books for both Illustrator and Flash, since I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by them at the moment. My Inkscape drawing technique doesn’t seem to port to Illustrator very well at all. My usual strategy of drawing a rough sketch version then overlaying it with a highly vectorised shape that I hand mould into the right proportions doesn’t seem to work very well in Illustrator, as I haven’t found a functional equivalent to the node tool for manipulating shapes at the most fundamental level. I’m sure it can be done, as Illustrator artists make art like that all the time, but I haven’t yet figured out the best strategy for doing that yet. Hence my desire to hunt down some good instruction manuals to help speed up the learning process.
Unfortunately my local bookstores don’t seem to have many of the newer CS3 books yet, so I’ll have to wait for Amazon to ship some to me. I guess I’ll using online tutorials for now. I’m a bit perplexed with where to begin with Flash, so I’ll probably be taking baby steps for a while. It’s like being a total beginner all over again.
As an aside, I’m starting to be overwhelmed by the number of projects I’ve got running at the moment. Apart from my postgrad study (which is taking up a lot of my time and will continue to for many months more) there’s Adobe products to learn, cartooning practice, work on Ice Slider and the game library, the MAGIC contest, and more work on this website. Something’s going to have to give. I’ll have to review what I’m currently doing and see what needs to be on hold. I don’t think any of these projects will be axed, but some may need to be put on ice while I work on other things.
Leaving the PC upgrade race
While I was in the shopping centre I briefly checked out the local game store, and I noticed the prominently displayed Bioshock boxes. I had a chance to check out the requirements on the box, and my PC sadly is not up to scratch. My processor isn’t fast enough, and my Radeon 9700 Pro doesn’t quite meet the specs. My usual practice is to wait until there’s a couple of games my computer can’t run before thinking of upgrading, but to be honest, I’m not sure I really care that more about the PC upgrade race. While I’d like to play Bioshock (I loved System Shock 2), I’m no longer keen on upgrading a computer purely to play games.
With computer technology so cheap these days, I find that my budget Windows PC does everything I need it do, save play the latest games. Even game development is fine; with my focus on 2D I honestly don’t need to play with the latest and greatest shader technology, and I frankly find all that a distraction from the fundamentals.
And these days I’m using my MacBook Pro for more and more of my work, including game development. I’m finding Mac OS X to be a more productive work environment than Windows, although that’s most likely due to the jillions of ways to distract myself with WinXP than any fundamental difference between the OS.
When it comes to games, these days I’m finding myself playing either console games on the Wii, classics from the 90s, or small indie games. I’m finding it hard to devote a huge amount of time to learn and play a traditional cutting edge PC game.
Thus I’m not really that keen on buying a new PC with a fancy-pants graphics card. My next computer purchase is likely to be something like a Mac Mini when Leopard comes out, so I can have a Mac desktiop working environment too (although I do want to keep a copy of Windows around; I haven’t yet found a proper Mac replacement for ModPlug Tracker yet!).
And for games, the Xbox 360 is looking better and better. Maybe in a year or two I’ll get one and be able to play the console variants of all those PC games that ask for high spec systems.
But for now, I’ll do without Bioshock. It’s not like I have the time to get addicted to a game anyway. Well, except for Super Mario 64 - accursed Wii emulation allowing me to play all those console classics I missed!