Zithro and Adobe

I have been under the weather for a month now. A month. The dueling, out-of-tune banjos of Flu and Cold have been taking their sweet, hateful time fencing across my lungs and sinuses. This is of course where the phrase 'sick and tired' comes from. Also the phrase 'kill me now'. But I sense a change coming, and it goes by the name of Zithromax. As we speak, legions of wretchedness in my lungs are breaking up and evacuating in all manner of ways. We won't go there, but you are welcome to visualize.

Take a moment.

As I was rising like a victorious Phoenix out of the devastation of the first bug, I started to engage the sniffling hints of the next swimming misery (wishing in vain that it was just bad allergies digging in), and here I was, headed to a conference in Santa Monica. The Art Directors Invitational Master Class (ADIM 8) is an annual hands-on Adobe software training and design-recharger.

(OK, since I'm chocking this thing full of pictures, I'm using thumbnails. If you--for whatever reason--want to see a bigger image, just click the thumbnail.)

Day 1 covered the use of Camera RAW formatted images and color managed output. Day 2 focused on Adobe Illustrator. Day 3 was for Adobe Photoshop. And day 4 was for Adobe InDesign. Rob attended last year, and couldn't stop raving about it. Even though I was feeling run down, I still had a great time. Hands-on, project based training is the best way to go. Adobe pulls out all the stops for tools, training, and showmanship. Adobe's senior creative director Russell Brown MC'd the entire event with more personality and hilarious energy than I could possibly have imagined a person exuding for 4 days in a row.

The theme for the 2005 conference was Super Heroes. Russell, other presenters from Adobe, as well as some of the hard-core attendees dressed in various hero and villain outfits and then made themselves available at photo shoots during the breaks. Canon was there and loaning out different digital cameras and lenses so everyone could get shots for use in the projects each day. It was downright zany. Here are a few:

Left to right
1. Adobe Man as played by Russell
2. Wolverine as played by Albert Hulm
3. Magneto--Eraser of Hard Drives as played by Russell
4. I have no idea. But their names were Frank and Michael. (edit: ok, Frank is The Punisher...still working on Michael's alter ego)

I did not come prepared for any heroeness or villainery but when Russell asked everyone to introduce themselves and their alter ego identity, all I could come up with when they handed me the mic, was that I was also known as 'Reflecto' while turning a 360 and displaying my gleaming halo of baldness. It got a laugh, and as Russell is the crowning master of baldness, I was gifted with a book. Thereafter, I was known as Reflecto any time he ran across me.

The first project was to design a kite using some of the Adobe Illustrator techniques we were working on. I really could have done better. A LOT better. But anyway, this is what I came up with:

Here is the chaos of kite prep:

And a few of the kites I particularly liked:

Now, on the evening of the last day of every ADIM conference there is a talent show with excellent prizes getting dished out. I came with an idea for this talent show that was almost fleshed out--because, you know, I wouldn't mind walking away with a Canon 20D or an iPod photo or a Mac Mini or whatever. I just had a minute-long music score to work out. I had found the exact wav file I needed online before I left for the trip, but I hadn't cut and pasted the bits and pieces I needed yet. So at 9 pm on the 2nd night, I sat there with headphones for a couple hours with a dozen Quicktime soundtracks scattered across the screen. I was cutting and pasting and silently mouthing words to be sure I had the timing right. One of the helpers walked by at one point and had a look on his face that said, what-in-blazes are you doing? I said, "talent show", and it immediately made all the sense in the world. I burned a CD and practiced in my room until I couldn't stand it any more.

On day 3, the project was scarves. I was a lot happier with how that turned out, compared to the kite. I didn't nab the popular vote, but the seamstress who was sewing all the printed scarves picked it as her favorite use of color. BAM! I got me an Apple colored pencil set for that. Heh.

The scarf:

I comboed Illustrator and Photoshop to set it up.

First I used layer effects to round-corner, and apply an exclusion effect to any overlapping shapes. Then I created different shapes and repeatedly duplicated, moved and rotated each object a dozen or so times to create the different invertebrate shapes.

Once the pattern was done, I chose a picture taken out the window of my hotel room for a color source:

I stretched that image to the scarf dimensions, applied a couple motion blurs to it and then a couple wave filters to it to get this:

After working on contrast, I ran the liquify filter and smeared some of the edges to emphasize them:

I imported the pattern from the Illustrator file, gave it a yellow-to-blue blend and a light yellow outline and set the pattern layer to 'Hard Light' blending.

The color looked too intense, so I created a new layer filled with red and yellow clouds from the Render Clouds filter, clipped it to the pattern and lowered the opacity enough to soften the intensity of the pattern.

Finally I drew a squiggle line on a new layer, ran the wave filter on it to give it a more random appearance and colored it bright yellow.

The last day of the conference focused on InDesign. The project was to create a comic book cover. I went for the Quark vs. Adobe angle and came up with this (I still can't believe I neglected to add any color to the background):

There were a lot of incredible covers that I wish I had pictures of. Ah well.

That night finished up with the talent show. I probably would have been a nervous wreck if I wasn't so worn out. Everybody else was lit. And I didn't need any help. I already had Dimetap as my copilot. Check out the bartender:

Let's call him Ron.

Ron was in good spirits when the evening began. When I came up to grab a Coke at the end of the night, Ron didn't have a smile on his face anymore. Just as I walked up, a flustered Asian lady in maroon caterer uniform zoomed up and bellowed, "You Last One!!" Yikes! I asked for my carbonation, and Ron tried to run through his smooth-move bartender moves where he swipes a napkin off a pile, slaps a glass on top of it and splashes the drink in. But nothing was working for him. The napkin took 3 swipes before it came clean, the glass missed the napkin, and there was only half a glass worth of Coke left. He was flustering himself to death looking for another teeny Coke bottle and I said "It's cool dude. This is fine." He threw his hands in the gesture of 'show's over people. I'm outta here.' and he was gone in a flash of grecian formula.

As for my skit, I had enlarged a pathetic Quark mailer to poster size, stood it on a chair, lit a candle, and then did a Mike Meyers 'So I Married An Axe Murderer' break-up poem to Quark with that timed jazz score I worked on playing in the background. As I went through it, I tore off sections of the poster to reveal my own version, before finishing up and blowing out the candle.

Quark's ad

My version

Anyway, I guess they liked it. I got 2nd place and walked away with a 40 Gb iPod Photo! :D

I know nothing if not how to pander. Also, Quark was asking for it.

The guy who won the Canon 20D did this rousing sing-along performance on a eukalailie -- how the heck do you spell that? Anyway, he had great showmanship and deserved that camera. I don't know that I deserved the iPod, but I'm liking it. A lot.

Having extinguished what limited energy I had to begin with, I got back and pretty much crashed and burned. I've been home from work for a couple days, wrapped in blankets, and filling the house with the smell of Vicks and antibiotics. I need to get better. I've got a yard and springtime weather that isn't waiting for me. Amanda has been out back planting wildflowers and digging out weeds. The front yard's for me though, and the dandelions are recruiting at an unbelievable rate. This weekend they will know fear.