Like it or not, sometimes the design process just grinds to a halt of it’s own accord. If you care about the quality of your work (and I do), there is often nothing you can do but keep grinding away until you get it right, all the time knowing that your hourly rate is plummeting as you burn through sketch after sketch after sketch of utter rubbish! Because lets face it, a client isn’t going to pay for your failure to produce the goods. They don’t care about artist’s block. They are paying you to do the job, not to agonise and tear your hair out because it just doesn’t look quite right.

A case in point: for the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a series of character designs for a new Wii title. I don’t think it’s giving away too much to say that the design involves a child with an imaginary animal companion. On Tuesday morning, I started a work on a new pairing; a young, sassy girl, and her squirrel companion. The girl was simple enough – I reused an abandoned design from an old, unreleased title; made her a bit younger, changed her costume, and a few hours later she was pretty much done.

But the squirrel. Oh, the squirrel. I wish I could post the sketches here to demonstrate the process I went through trying to get it to look good. By Thursday lunchtime, I still couldn’t get that damned squirrel quite right, so I made the decision to move on to something new, before I started clawing my own eyes out in frustration.

Feeling pretty dejected (I hate to be beaten), I began work on another proposed pairing, a young boy and his grumpy French-speaking penguin. This time it was a doddle! Two quick iterations for boy and penguin, and the design was done. A couple of hours later I had a nice, dynamic action pose for them finished as well (again, I wish I could post the results here).

Of course, working full time means I don’t have the same pressure on my hourly rate as when I was freelancing. But there is still a client to answer to (in this case my employer), and there are producers and managers who don’t understand or care about the creative process. They just look at the times allocated on their project schedules, and raise a critical eyebrow when it takes twice as long as estimated to get something done.

The premise is simple: Internet Explorer 6 is antiquated, doesn’t support key web standards, and should be phased out.

When I was developing this site, I chose to use PHP to generate browser specific CSS. This method is less than ideal, as browser sniffing is fraught with potential pitfalls, but I thought it was the best way to avoid the ugly CSS hacks needed to get around bugs in Internet Explorer 5 and 6. I decided some time ago that when I next change the appearance of this site, I will not be using any browser specific hacks, so I’m happy to make it official by signing up to this campaign. Internet Explorer 6 is an outdated piece of software that doesn’t deserve the time it takes to support it. It doesn’t even support PNG transparency; IE6 was released in 2001, almost 6 years after the release of the PNG standard.

So long, IE6. I’m very, very glad to see the back of you.

Hello. I`m Chris [redacted], Director at [redacted]. A wholly owned subsidiary of the [redacted], we were the [redacted] retail mobile phone website (launched in [redacted]) and are now the [redacted] mobile phone store in the UK.

I was searching the web for decent potential partners and came across drawingbusiness.com. I have an idea which I hope you will find useful:-

We would like to have our editorial team research and hand write some content for you to add to a page on drawingbusiness.com. We will agree a subject with you that is relevant to both of our sites (it won`t be a sales pitch for us!) and will include a single simple text link back to a relevant content page on our site. The content will be uniquely written for you and will not be re-used elsewhere. It should be helpful to your visitors and of course the search engines, as will the presence of a relevant link back to us. Hopefully we will also benefit from the link in the longer term. We are not currently in the position of being able to exchange or return links so we thought this could be a good alternative.

Naturally there are no costs whatsoever for you.

If this isn`t appropriate for you, please accept my sincere apologies for having troubled you.

*** IMPORTANT – PLEASE USE OUR RESPONSE PAGE IF POSSIBLE ***
We have found that quite a few emails go missing — plus I`m either out or in meetings much of the time and can take a while to reply to emails — so we have created a simple and quick-to-use response page that provides detailed information and answers to questions on the various options and allows you to send us messages . . and much more! You can access it here:-

Page: http://[redacted]/partner-response.html
Your Access Code: [redacted]

REMOVAL If you feel you should not have received this email, I`m sorry – please just reply with REMOVE in the subject.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Kind Regards – Chris [redacted]
Director
[redacted]
[redacted] Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of [redacted] Group PLC
Registered in England no. [redacted] at [redacted]

However much you dress it up, it’s still link mining. I suppose I should be flattered that my paltry site has drawn the attention of such a big player in the mobile phone industry. But instead, I just feel icky.

Rather than expand into untapped creative markets, Adobe seems hell-bent on expanding into the jerks-wearing-suits market, a market that’s completely at odds with the creative market they’ve dominated for nearly two decades.

I’ve always been a fan of Adobe products. Right now I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of my pre-ordered copy of Creative Suite 2. I can’t help but have a sneaking suspicion that John is right about the direction Adobe is taking. The fact that Adobe is introducing product activation into Creative Suite 2 seems to be a clear symptom of the sales driven road that they are heading down. I subscribe to the belief that the only people inconvenienced by product activation schemes are paying customers like myself. Those who want a pirate copy will just wait until some kind hearted hacker releases a patch that circumvents the whole thing and makes installing much easier.

Adobe products have a lot of momentum. The wealth of features in their current applications will power their dominance for some time. But, as John Gruber points out:

When is the last time Adobe has unveiled anything truly innovative for the graphics-and-design market? InDesign 1.0? That was nearly five years ago.

[...] the main reason Adobe Systems has been a success is that they created and developed terrific, innovative software. Engineering talent isn’t enough; you need passion for innovative products at the top of a company.

If that spirit continues to wither, Adobe will continue its slide into mediocrity, and will become just another software company. But if it becomes a bigger company while doing so, I suspect that will suit Bruce Chizen just fine.

I hope Adobe can keep creating effective, innovative products. I really don’t want to end up having to use CorelDraw.

The article ends with a depressing quote from Tony Ross, an analyst at security firm Sophos:

“At some point, people who receive them for Christmas often ask, ‘Is this computer a gift or a curse?’” Ross said.

How can the situation have become so bad for Windows users? And why are people continuing to invest money in an operating system that requires so much maintenance and extra protection from Third Party software? I know I’ve banged on about this in the past, but I continue to be bemused by it. You wouldn’t spend money on a new car that required almost daily servicing to keep it running, or expense new parts fitted to stop it breaking as soon as you use it on the road.

People need to learn that there are alternatives to Windows. It’s time that retailers started to accept the fact that alternatives actually exist by offering, and even encouraging people to consider, alternative operating systems. I’m not just talking about Apple and OS X (though for the novice user it seems like the best solution). Linux is making huge strides in creating a more user friendly and easy to use environment, with the advantage that it runs on less expensive hardware than Apple machines (although the “Apple Computers are too expensive” argument breaks down easily when you start looking at value for money rather than just cost).

PC World offer Apple machines for sale, but in a grudging way, with just a few badly set up iMacs and Powerbooks on display in my nearest store. There are no staff willing (or able?) to offer advice or information, and no effort made to emphasise the ease of use and security benefits of Mac OS X.

As even the most casual visitor to this site will know, I am a passionate advocate of Apple and the Mac OS. I run my G4 all day, every day, with NO viruses, NO malware, and NO security issues in the 8 years that I’ve owned a Mac. Just before Christmas, I decided to install and run the latest version of Virex, since it comes free with my .Mac membership. After nearly 6 hours scanning my entire system (nearly 60Gb of files in total), it found (as expected) absolutely no problems.

So, if you are tired of constantly battling to keep your system running and up to date with the lastest anti-virus software, consider Switching. You won’t regret it it, and you will soon be wondering why you didn’t do it sooner.

There seem to be more and more instances of ads on TV that are clearly foreign language ads, over-dubbed into English. A small percentage of these have clearly been designed for international use, and cleverly avoid lip sync problems. However the majority are painfully obvious re-dubs, and frankly I find them insulting. If the manufacturers of these products care so little about the British market, then I’m damn sure I don’t care enough to buy their products. If you want my hard earned British Pound, start making ads for this specifically for this country, or start employing agencies that can produce language-agnostic content.

My question is, how are Microsoft allowed to get away with this? They have created and distributed a widely used piece of software (Internet Explorer currently has about an 80% share of the browser market) that makes it possible to unknowingly install malicious applications that have system level privileges. This includes premium rate dialers that have landed owners of infected machines with huge telephone bills. Yet not one report I have seen about these exploits blames Microsoft. How is this possible? It is their product that allows the machine to be hijacked. Even, it seems, when someone has installed Third Party software that attempts to plug the holes.

If you use Internet Explorer on Windows, I suggest you perform the following procedure to ensure your protection against the raft of vulnerabilities that infect this poorly conceived browser:

1. Find a mirror.
2. Look yourself squarely in the eyes.
3. Ask yourself what the HELL where you thinking?
4. Download and install Mozilla or Firefox.
5. Sit back and enjoy a richer, better featured, and more secure Internet Experience.

Better yet, become a Switcher, and discover that using a computer can actually be a pleasure, not a chore.