So love would seem to be in the air in Applegeeks … and in that vein,

Valentine’s is right around the corner and I know most people usually dread this day. So I decided I would suck it up and play cupid just this once (actually, Shannon is behind this … I swear … )

During our adventure to Magfest a few weeks ago, Shannon managed to make a new friend while kicking a few butts in Halo. We’ve become pretty good friends with him over the time since Magfest. Well, he’s pretty new in town (that town being Virginia Beach), and he needs a ladyfriend for Valentine’s Day! If there’s any girls in the area who want some company for V-Day, let us know. ;) Oh, and he’s 24 … just a heads up. (Shannon would just like to interject here and say that he’s a good lookin’ fella.) There’s only one major requirement – that she be into video games. Not too tough for this crowd, eh? ;) Just keep in mind, I can’t make any guarantees, ladies!

(ALSO DUDE PLEASE DON’T STAB US IN THE FACE)

Threadless has some new shirts out, and some reprints of old ones! I haven’t been too thrilled with their designs in the past few months, but some of these new ones are pretty hot.

AIM 3:07 PM

Hawk: omg!
Ananth: wow
Ananth: if you could swim naked through that
Ananth: i’m pretty sure you would
Ananth: i have no doubt in my mind

Pretty neat Photoshop fun thread (pretty funny, not all are amazingly done though) … hehe, there’s a few in there that you should appreciate, Hawk. ;)

Dunno if this is accurate, but it deserves to be linked. From Digg, how to hack around Google China’s censorship of search results.

HELL YES! Indiana Jones 4 is on the way! That guy was one of my heroes growing up.

Requisite Apple news: A look at Steve Jobs, how he transformed Apple, and how he might affect Disney. From the article: A few minutes [after the previous CEO cleared out], in walked Steve Jobs. The co-founder of the once proud company had been fired by Apple 12 years before. He had returned seven months earlier as a consultant, when Amelio acquired his NeXT Software Inc. And now Jobs was back in charge. Wearing shorts, sneakers, and a few days’ growth of beard, he sat down in a swivel chair and spun slowly, says McCluney, now president of storage provider Emulex Corp. “O.K., tell me what’s wrong with this place,” Jobs said. After some mumbled replies, he jumped in: “It’s the products! So what’s wrong with the products?” Again, executives began offering some answers. Jobs cut them off. “The products SUCK!” he roared. “There’s no sex in them anymore!”

Someone created a WoW map system based on Google maps!

So I’ve got a busy week ahead of me. I’ll try to keep up here.

First things first … As Hawk states at the bottom of his post, power bandanas are back in stock!

Little Gamers has a few books out. They’re nice guys, and champions of free information (they’ve even released their first book in a PDF format for free), so if you are so inclined, show those crazy Swedes a little love. ;)

I’m going to let you guys and gals in on a secret – this latest loose storyline was almost completely spontaneous. A lot of the story is planned out in advance, but this time around we just took an idea and ran with it. I’m pleased to see you guys rooting for Hawk … now the big question is, will he get the girl?! (Does he ever get the girl?)

It is less than 3 weeks to Katsucon. I’m pretty excited. ;) Cons are always fun, but there’s also a lot of people who I miss, who’ll be showing up to this one. Good times!

If you remember a while back, I linked to a program called Growl. Growl is basically a notification system for OS X. It comes in handy if you want applications to send you alerts while you’re working on another application. I recently got it working with irssi. Since irssi is a terminal based IRC client, it doesn’t have the bells and whistles like a GUI irc client. So with the help of Growl, a widow appears and lets me know someone is talking to me.

I also took a stab at creating a custom notification window.

Once again I would like to thank everyone for having patience while I did that tutorial last week. Like I mentioned Friday, I’ll be putting everything together as a PDF format. Also, I’ll be adding a few more things to the tutorial. So I’ll be working on that for a while.

A few readers emailed me, asking about my workspace. Here it is….

Shit, I totally forgot. Power Bandanas are back in stock.

This site maps news out over geography – really interesting approach!

Huge Canadian record company steps up to defend family sued by the RIAA

More later? Maybe … haha, if anything interesting comes up. ;)

The last step. (I added text to the comic for the shake of the tutorial)

Step 1: Sketch
Step 2: Inking
Step 3: Flats
Step 4: Color
Step 5: Speech Bubbles

Ever since Adobe added Layer effects to Photoshop, speech bubbles are easy to make.

I mentioned earlier that I created a comic page template. In the template I created a “dialog” folder. Inside the folder, I created layer called “bubbles” and applied a layer effect to it. The layer effect that I added was “stroke”. (Layer->Layer Style-> Stroke…) Above the “bubbles” layer will be all the text.

Using the text tool and the font DigitalStrip from blambot.com, I add in the dialog.

This is what the layers look like, clean, simple and organized.

Now I select the “bubbles” layer and create the bubbles.

Using the Elliptical Marquee Tool, I create oval selections around the texts. Hold down the shift key to add multiple selections.

Use the polygon lasso tool to add the triangles (pointy thingys) to the bubbles. Once again, press the shift key for multiple selections.

After I make the selection shapes, I make sure the foreground color is white. Then I press option+delete (Edit->Fill) to fill the selection. That’s it, the layer effect does the rest, it creates a stroke around the fills.

If I want to add or attach more bubbles, all I have to do is add the text, create the selection shape and fill.

All done!

I would like to thank everyone for having patience while I did this “tutorial”. I will convert all this into a PDF so it can be downloaded. But right now I need to start on my homework and catch up on my class readings.

If you have any questions about the steps, feel free to ask them here.
PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THREAD AND MY PREVIOUS POSTS. I’M TIRED OF ANSWERING THE SAME QUESTIONS OVER AND OVER.