Bindweed

*...is trapped on the Onion server, wishing they'd merge the darn EU and NA server lists already!!!!*

I haven't tried Dreamweaver, but it's certainly been going for a long time, in various versions. And, as Carni says, you do have to pay an awful lot for it (Dreamweaver CS4 is over £300, I think). You can get a demo from here.

The full version of NetObjects Fusion is $200, but they have a basic "essentials" free version that you can download from here.

There are plenty of other free html editors around, and some free wysiwyg packages. Not all of them are great, but worth a look if you want to make sure you don't waste your money. I guess this is as good a place as any to start.

Good luck!

The Tories and Labour never have, nor ever will, reform a pre-Victorian practice that has regularly enabled them to claim a substantial majority in the House of Commons when they receive barely more than a third of the vote. I very much doubt we'll see anything like a single transferable vote, for example, in my lifetiime. We'll end up fannying about for 6 months while the Conservative machinery takes steps to undermine Clegg's credibility before calling another election, which will probably deliver them a small majority. Then Cameron can point to his 35% of the vote and claim he has a "mandate from the British people". And to think we join wars to fight for democracy... It would be nice to try practicing that form of government at home. You know, just for the novelty.

And while I'm in mid-rant, it occurs to me that if the media want to treat the office of Prime Minister as if it were a Presidency, then we should have an option to restructure the institutions of government, not just the mechanisms by which we elect them. We shoudn't do it just because it makes for big TV audiences every 4 or 5 years though.


*goes back to grumbling incoherently in the corner*


PS: The fight to the death thing worls for me as well, though. But surely if anyone can get us out of this economic mess, it'd be Johnny Ball..!

We had ours (Mothering Sunday) back in March. Seems in the UK it's roots go back to a pre-Christian festival celebrating the Roman goddess Cybele, which was then co-opted (like all the other pre-Christian stuff ) by the early Christian church, and devoted to the Virgin Mary. Apparently your (USA) Mother's Day was conceived by a woman in West Virginia who pestered Woodrow Wilson until he made it a nationally recognised holiday.

Of course, this all comes from Wikipedia, so take with a substantial spoonful of the white stuff...

Like this piece too - she could almost be from one of the Saturday Morning Cartoons that peppered my childhood!

Plus - lovin' the name "Janet Planet" !!

Oh no - I'm certainly not of that intention, Attache - I was only commenting on the variety of sources he seems to use. Different artists' various processes always fascinate me. I'm always on the lookout for tips!

His work is so reminiscent of the airbrush stuff I remember from days gone by. Honestly, if he didn't say it was digital, I'd have easily believed it was airbrushed the old-fashioned way!

And for my money you're absolutely right: that's easily the best face in his gallery.

I've looked at a few more pieces since I posted before, and, like lots of other people, I can see what FD might have been getting at, and what other people have said, too. I'm also curious about the process - he seems to use several methods - in some cases does he suggest that he traces the outline and then paints in the rest? And like Bayani points out, for this piece he links to an Ed Benes Black Canary illustration that served as reference/inspiration. So he seems to use all kinds of reference in a lot of different ways.

I'm always curious about the processes different people use to achieve their results - sooner or later I'll find a way I can comfortably achieve the results I'm looking for in my stuff! Although it's not a technique I'm remotely competent enough to attempt, I'm sure several people I've come across on DA talk about building poser/daz models and then painting over them; I just can't rremember anyone specifically.

And after all that rambling nonsense, this is still a nice piece with a great retro look. If I didn't know it was digital, I might have guessed he was working with an airbrush - it seems to have that 80s airbrush pinup retro thing going. I'm guessing he uses the airbrush tool in his painting package, which seems uncommon.

But I have so very, very much to learn about digital painting!

I do agree - his work is uniformly excellent, but he's really come up trumps with the face. It's all in the mouth, I think. I think mouths are quite hard to do, and he's really nailed this one! Congratulations on a top piece!

As a spectacle, however, it was, really, pretty dull.

Having Mourinho as England manager would have been a laugh and a half, though!

James Cameron might make it, but subs would have to go up to $1000 a month...

FD: I doubt Marvel (for example) could get away with that kind of practice (or would even want to); editors and artists have professional pride, by and large, and would reference another work if they felt there was some use in it (tapping the cultural weight of an earlier iconic cover, as in my examples, maybe, or for satirical purposes, perhaps), but probably not willy-nilly. And because of the relatively tightly-knit community of creators and many readers with the shared understanding such a, er, tightly-focused and often singularly committed group* posesses, this all works quite well, I think. Although it might seem to happen more often than in other media, the community is such that it often seems able to more effectively police itself than, say, Hollywood.

Marvel may own the comic book, and the likenesses of the characters, but the original art belongs to the artist. I don't want to even think about how you'd untangle that in court, were it ever to come to pass. It puts me in mind of the story of how DC once tried to sue Time for using Superman on its cover. The legal wrangle was bitter enough and important enough it was eventually escalated up the legal chain on both companies, until both files landed on the desk of the senior corporate lawyer for Time-Warner, who realised he was suing himself.




*Are we talking geeks or nerds? Or both? And is there really a difference?

They're both beautiful - I absolutely love that Carole Lombard piece - he really caught her persona in that expression. You can see why Gable fell so hard for her.

As for the other picture... I stared at it for several minutes, swearing to myself that looks nothing like Katherine Hepburn...



Just shoot me now.

I was just looking the link that Juggertha provided, leading to the "Death of Supergirl" cover for Crisis on Infinite Earths. I, too, have seen several covers and promos that have borrowed from the George Perez original, and to be honest, when the original is that iconic, the subsequent piece is really an homage, isn't it? Art in the comic book industry is consistently self-referential, possibly because it is shared by a body of consumers and creators quite unlike any other medium I can think of. For example, I would have assumed that, aside from younger readers who have yet to be exposed to Marvel's "first graphic novel", Jim Starlin's original 1984 cover to The Death of Captain Marvel would have been instantly recognizable as the source for Sana Takeda's 2010 cover to Ms. Marvel #50. In situations like this, artist and editor are inescapably as one with their readership when it comes to referencing the 1984 piece in homage to Starlin and the iconic image he created.

I remember that during the 1990s, however, there was something of a hullabaloo over Rob Liefeld persistently "referencing" other artists' work - he defended it by citing "homage", but his detractors far outnumbered his supporters, and they labelled it plagiarism.

The line between homage and plagiarism can be a fine one. In my opinion there has to be a reason for homage - iconic comic book covers have attained their status because of some landmark in a character's or the company's history, so editors (and it's usually the editor, not the artist, who will call the shot) will want to draw on some of that cache to promote their latest "landmark" issue. That's what the Ms Marvel guys were trying to do when they drew on Starlin (heh.. see what I did there?). And, if you want to tease your audience that inside these covers is a book of monumental importance that you will want to buy one copy to read and one copy to collect, what could be more iconic than Action Comics #1 - possibly the most referenced comic book cover in history? You can call it cynical and unimaginative marketing, but it probably still counts as homage.

If, as an artist or editor, you choose to reference a less famous piece, possibly cross-media (I remember a very effective Kevin Maguire pointilism cover for Justice League Europe which paid very nice homage to the promo poster from The Exorcist), then the onus is upon you to declare what you have done. Most editors and artists do this as a matter of course.

When you use unfamiliar sources, and don't declare what you've done, especially if there's no apparent contextual reason for the reference, then you certainly do lay yourself wide open to claims of plagiarism. The act of reference itself is the same as if you draw Goofy as the Mona Lisa, but one goes without saying, the other doesn't.

I know this terribly long-winded drivel doesn't respond to the wider question posed by the thread, but in this specific area, I just wanted to chime in on this particular aspect, regarding comic books.

As for photo and other sources... If I use stock photos, for example, I credit the source (especially as there are so many good people on DA who provide such things), because although I would be creating a piece to represent something entirely different, it's at the very least common courtesy to do so. If I had Megan Fox come and sit on the end of my bed in lingerie and stockings for $10,000 an hour whilst I photographed her (I made that rate up, in case you're wondering... ), would the proper etiquette be to credit her when I offered my portrait to Sotheby's for auction? I don't think it's common practice for live models to get credit in the same way. Had Megan Fox offered me her own photos of herself in lingerie and stockings, then I should credit her.

To recap:
1. This is a long post, offering no wise insight to this difficult discussion, and you've probably given up reading some time ago, anyway.
2. No, I'm not going to PM you with Megan Fox's phone number, or e-mail you any photos of her in lingerie and stockings.
3. Time for my medication, obviously...

If you're looking for a rendition in a Golden Age style, does that mean you're looking for the coloring to be done in period fashion, too? Presumably it ought to be quicker and therefore cheaper to emulate a flat 4-color look than digital painting, but you'll have to ask someone better versed in digital painting to be sure.

If you were to ask me, for example, I'd tackle flat "4 color" quite happily - the reason I don't generally offer to color commissions is because digital painting takes me a long time because, after more than a decade using Corel Photopaint and a mouse, I'm still relatively unfamiliar with Photoshop and a Bamboo tablet.

Back in the day, however, I did make up color separations using letratone and a ruby acetate the name of which escapes me. Whilst I love my old 4-color books, I would offer burnt meat on the altars of Adobe and Corel to never have to fanny about like that again!

And the votes from the Yokel jury are in. They are as follows:

1. Frost - ahh, this brings back memories. Love the method. Love the innocence and joy it conjures.

2. Bubbawheat - lolly-stick men! Excellent idea! Sooo aged 4!

3. ChristopherRobin - far more mature than anything that decorated my patio when Junior and pals were 3; I get all fuzzy when I remember these chalks!

I would have liked to vote for everyone, to be honest, but because I had to narrow it down to 3, I applied my own personal filter and went with entries that employed techniques I remember my son and heir getting involved in at Nursery and Reception (that's probably more or less equivalent to US Kindergarten, I'd guess).

Indeed it is. I was rushing to do a last moment thing, which is why I wasn't thinking clearly about the term 'marker', but, as CR has pointed out, Wassy also specifically mentions 'pens' in the OP. not that it's necessary - I interact with American English more than enough to understand you colonials . My real problem is that I didn't read the post properly, because I'm a lazy pillock.

I don't know why these pens ended up looking like crayon - they don't to me, I have to admit. The scanner really has zapped the thing, though - it looks like a victim of a Dalek extermination gun, it's so bright...

I have to say, too, there are some fantastic entries this month. The novelty of the materials has really sparked people's imaginations, and it's all really quite excellent!


EDIT: Don't fret Tartyr - there will always be more boobs...