ARIA DJ VJ and Karaoke software open house party

Holiday open house party with lots of music DJing, and Karaoke!

Hey Tampa Bay your invited to the Aria Party open house karaoke party.

This is the first of many karaoke parties to come from Digital 1 Audio, the makers of ARIA consumer entertainment software.

If you are in the Tampa Bay area of Florida come on out for this fun event.

Learn more about ARIA software with these links:

1. www.ariaparty.com the ARIA software website.
2. ARIA mobile Karaoke for iPhone.
3. ARIA mobile Karaoke for Android.

Happy holidays!

ARIA Karaoke bar sign

For this graphics art project, I used photoshop to make a photo realistic marquee sign for Aria.
If ARIA was a karaoke bar, and not karaoke software, they would use this!

If you are looking for fun and easy to use karaoke software, to replace the old machine, check out: ARIA Karaoke Aria has three modes: Karaoke mode, DJ mode and Scratch mode! It works with audio and video and does all kinds of stuff that iTunes and Windows media player can't!

Own an iPhone or Android os phone? Check out the mobile version of Aria karoke for these mobile devices!

Apparently there is one person who does not like Karaoke!

   Apparently there is one person who does not like Karaoke!

Aria Logo

Rabbit in the Moon logo icon on a Playmobil toy?

I was at Toys R Us looking for a cool gift for my kid, when I saw this!

Being from  Florida and a big fan of Rabbit in the Moon, their icon rabbit logo caught my eye!
If you look close it is clearly used on the bongo player? Clrh20 did you have anything to do with this?

I will have to go back and buy this, too funny!

Dinsoarur world visit

 

This is a mobile phone upload from our first visit to Dinosaur World off of I4 in Florida.

I have driving by it many times en route from Tampa to Orlando, and my kid always squealed when she saw the big dinosaur on the side of the highway. Well we finally went, and it was pretty cool. The park is big and spacious and easy to get around for even those in wheel chairs.

The exhibits are very well done, and the gift shop had cool stuff.

FYI they don't serve food, so bring your own, but there is nice pic nic areas, and tons of great dino photo ops!

This little guy caught my eye. Being that he is a much smaller dinosaur, he seemed more realistic to me.

There are many creatures to see. Including huge T-rex's and the really big long neck dinosaurs too.

pixelmator MAC based graphic design project

Today I wanted to put together a new image for my facebook default photo.

Here it is:

Next I will show how I did it.
I used a MAC only design program called Pixelmator. It is not an online photo editor or graphic design program- I cover those in another post. This one is for Mac's only. Pixelmator is similar to photoshop and very powerful, and has some unique features. First it 'runs' off of the graphics card, so it does not use up a lot of processing power and resources. This makes it a fast program great for multitasking. It can do most of what Photoshop does, but not everything. It is lacking "page comps" and groups.

However if you are looking for a powerful and affordable photo manipulation and graphic design program for your Mac- I would definitely recommend it.

Images used:

Ok. So I took an image of a jungle scene, a statue head, and a girl blowing a bubble.

First I started with the statue head. I downloaded the file and then right click opened it in Pixelmator. Using the erase tool, I erased all the white background leaving only the statue head. 

Next I opened the bubble blowing photo, and using the lasso tool, I traced the bubble section of the image, and then copied it and pasted it onto the statue head file.

I then opened the image file of the jungle, and placed it as the bottom layer of the statue head and bubble file. I sized the jungle image to match the statue head, so it would make a nice native backdrop.

Finally I adjusted the bubble layer by making it a little bigger, and moving it into place.

To finish the image I made a layer copy of the statue head, and added one of the many default effects available from Pixelmator, to style it a bit. I adjusted the layer positioning and opacity level of these files, until it looked how I like. Pixelmator has lot's of effects to experiment with. I recommend you make a copy of a layer and then experiment until you find a style you like.

See the Pixelmator site for more information, and great tutorials.

dragon

sculpy madness

u wanna piece of me?

creative design: sculpture.

The bad bunny! Anyways, I hope everyone enjoys these cool hand made models. It's a fun project with your kids, but does take patience and practice. I recommend using aluminum as filler as you can't make them to thick with super sculpey. Be prepared to sand them, and paint them in layers to get them just right.

For design inspiration I suggest these links:

The Sculpey website.

The Mojizu website.

and Chuck Ferrell's Youtube page is good, as well as having lot's of variety of suggested video viewing for those just starting, all the way up to expert level sculptors.

All in all, working with this stuff is fun, and took me back to my old hippy days of hemp necklace bead making. 

Have fun everyone!

creative design: sculpture.

This is another more advanced model. This one is also inspired by a vinyl toy maker. I started with an aluminum foil shape, and added the sculpy to it. 

Do a google search for: super sculpey, and you will see tons of inspiring models and ideas. Super sculpey comes in a nude or pink/ flesh tone. This model was baked, sanded, primed and painted. The cigarette in his mouth, was a little piece of paper clip inserted into a sculpy tube, and baked. I then glued it in, after were both painted.

This one is called bad bunny and was the one everyone seemed to like the best.

creative design: sculpture.

This is a pair of photos from a cool looking futuristic dog. This one is inspiration from Mojizu, the "contemporary character design community". The cube dog looks to have been done as a drawing or sketch, or directly in Illustrator. The artists name is Tituz. 

Anyways, I really like his art, and it inspired me to replicate it as best as I could in a new medium. I used plain super sculpy wrapped around a small aluminum foil ball. After he was "baked" and cured, I sanded him, and painted him. I then used a paint maker to add some shading effects to the bone, and his one eye.

creative design: sculpture.

Here was another colored sculpy based design. The inspiration from this one, also came from my daughters, coloring book projects. Simple and cute. Ava put on the black spots on this one as well. If you look close you will see a smiley face on the creatures belly! 

creative design: sculpture.

Ava and Mrs. Laylannie inspired me to make some sculpy characters. This is the creature that started it all. Ava put on all the purple spots! We had some left over colored sculpy from some refrigerator magnet projects.

Ava had some prints of things to color from her school coloring books, and I just referenced those for the design inspiration of what to sculpt.

Kapok Tree Pavillion

Photo of Ava and a "creature" statue from the Kapok Tree.

While there she played with snails, water in the fountain with a fishin' pole, and more.

The garden is nice with lots of shade, and access for Ava to get around.

The back section of the garden was under construction but we'll come back one day to see the bamboo and rest of the garden.

picture perfect.

My daughter the little artist

Ava the lil' artist enjoying spring break in Florida out on the lanai.

Rapid Weaver, NCD themes

I had a great customer service experience from Nick Cates of NCD Themes.

I needed help with some Mootools Jquery scripts, and Nick sent me an old tutorial video to get me back in action fast.

If you are a MAC based web designer and use Rapid Weaver like me, you should should check out his site.

Using the combo of his themes and Rapid Weaver and some good design techniques, you can crank out great looking sites like the one I made here really, really fast!

Rapid Weaver, NCD themes

I had a great customer service experience from Nick Cates of NCD Themes.

I needed help with some Mootools Jquery scripts, and Nick sent me an old tutorial video to get me back in action fast.

If you are a MAC based web designer, like myself and use Rapid Weaver like me. You should should check out his site.

Using the combo of his themes and Rapid Weaver and some good design techniques, you can crank out great looking sites like the one I made here really, really fast!

Valentines day graphic design project

 This graphic design project, is actually quite simple, but can yield great results. So it's Valentines Day, and you need to do something romantic. How about a custom wine bottle? Well the bottle itself, isn't custom, but by applying your own label it is! I created a custom wine label badge for my better half, and she thought it was thoughtful and creative. The label had her name on it, in a nice serif font, and even showed the date range we have been together for, similar to how wine has a date. I added an emblem or a crest and some fleur-de-lis style effects. It was finished off with a label which said, "open only for life's finest moments", and it was made to look like a tag, complete with a hold punched in it, for a ribbon to tie it to the bottle. The finishing touch was stating it was a "Classic Reserve", as if that was the name or brand, and it sounded good to me, and we both enjoyed it. So if you're a graphic designer and need a fun and easy idea for a little romance, this is a great project, just make sure you can print full size label paper on your color printer, and your all set!

Latest Good Book

The last book I recently finished was called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

There are really only two characters, a young man on a journey to discover how to "solve man kinds problems" and well, for sake of not spoiling the book, another character.

This one took me back to my late nineties reads such as: Celestrine Prophecy, Tales of Power, and The way of the Shaman.

This is a read all through the night book, which will give you a different look at the state of mand kind.

here is the authors site.

Good Books

Occasionally I will recommend a great book.

A couple of weeks ago I finished Next, by Michael Crichton. I have read several of his other works, and would definitely reccomend this. If you have any fascination with the medical industry or genetics, this one is for you, reads like a fast mystery novel!

Click here to go to the authors website to find out more about him and this great read.

Which is the best social tool?

Here are my reviews and feedback for some mulit-tasking tools to consider for keeping your reality boat afloat on the seas of today's social network.


Yoono *****

Socialite****

ScribeFire***

TwitterBar**

Personally I use Yoono. I have it as a Firefox plugin on my macbook, and I can multi-post on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, IM, listen to music, Read RSS feeds, share webclips, photos, videos and more. It even has link discovery Nuff said my hands down favorite... However each app has it's own uniqueness and therefore appeal.

I really like Socialite. Drawback it is not free! However if you are a Mac fan, and appreciate when a third party company makes a great app for Apple, you should consider this too!

ScribeFire is great, if your a word press user. It has revenue capabilites and if you have like 10 firefox tabs open and want to share a lot of links and data quickly, it is a power blogging tool for sure.

TwitterBar. Now If I was Kevin Smith and I could talk about whetever the hell I wanted on Twitter all day, and make a living, this is the tool I would use.

That's my review! If you have any comments, or can suggest any other features or apps to use, please do share.

Multi Tasking Social app reviews & Links!

This post is all about multi-tasking and productivity tools for social networking.

The programs are:

Socialite MAC standalone.

Get Socialising

"Socialite is a beautiful Mac OS X application, designed to make it easy to stay in touch with the social networks and services that matter to you. From news on Digg, photos on Flickr, statuses and photos on Facebook and Twitter updates, to full Google ReaderRealMacSoftware, Inc. RSS syncing, Socialite keeps all your social networks in one convenient place."

ScribeFire MAC or PC firefox browser add-on.
(Note: this is for blogs like word press or blogger!)

About ScribeFire

"ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog: you can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog."

Yoono MAC or PC Standalone or Firefox plug-in.

STAY CONNECTED

"Connect to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, AIM and more...in one place..."

STATUS SYNC

"Update your status across all your services at once..."

EASY SHARING

"Share links, images & videos across all your networks..."

Twitterbar MAC or PC Firefox or Google Chrome browser add-on.

Post to Twitter

"...from your (FireFox) address bar."

________________________________________________________________

Click on a logo/ link to go to the site(s) and find out more info on each of these tools.

If you can think of any other tools that allow you to multi-task and be more effective with your social networking and marketing duties please do share! Also see the poll to vote on which is your favorite.

Twister- Twiiter groups for your website!

Twitters hot! But whats even better is how fast spin off aps are coming out. Here is a new one called Twister, that lets you display twitter account group posts on a website, instead of just one. It is easy to install and pretty powerful, well as powerful as your twitter audience is busy tweeting!

Avatar 3D with my daughter Ava!

Avatar official Movie Site

Last week I took my daughter to see Avatar.

What a joy to see the wonder, curiosity and awe in her face!

Is it any coincidence that one of the coolest movies ever, has my daughters name in it?

I think not.

If you have not seen this movie yet, go do it, while it is still in the theaters! I read the Wired magazine interview with James Cameron and was very motivated, here is someone who got into action by being pissed! He saw Star Wars with a buddy, and was like damn, I wanted to make a sci fi epic movie! I am not going to start a debate of which will end up being bigger or better over time, but it is cool to note that one influenced the other and made it all better for us, the movie watchers!

Now go see the movie!

Last day of long hair.

I grew my hair out for fun, and well mostly for my wife. She said it was for our family vacation in the Carolina Mountains, and she wanted a rugged looking mountain man! Well it reminded me of the 90s and a different era of my life. Here it is for posterity...