Tom Lechner's Art

Space

9 October 2015 11:38:00

I've put together a page compiling various computations for rotating space stations here. It's also a calculator so you can compute necessary spin speeds for various configurations of size and desired apparent G force. There are also a number of questions I'm seeking answers to (list on the page), research for future art projects!

Linework, LGM, Nightlife, Laidout...

28 March 2015 11:38:00

Oof! The new year is action packed! I'm busily working on Nightlife 12:04, my next installment of dream comics. This will be done in time for the Linework NW comics fest in Portland. I'll be there on Sunday, April 19, at the fabulous Gridlords table.

Also coming up is the Libre Graphics Meeting, in Toronto, a week after Linework NW. I'll be doing a presentation called A Brief History of Lines on Friday, May 1st. Come see me and all the other open source graphics fanatics talking over the current state of the field. I'm also trying to get a new "stable" release of Laidout done before then. All I can say about that is that debugging really sucks.

3d Asteroids

16 August 2014 11:38:00

As an exercise, inspired by the Perseids meteors, I made a 3-d, six degrees of freedom Asteroids video game with the game engine in Blender 2.71. This is the first video game I've made since I was a kid. The technology has changed a lot! In addition to approximately inertial movements, this game also has accurate space sounds (none). It is a little buggy with text overlays, but hey, this is just a rough draft.

This game runs "fine on my computer" that has debian linux and a good NVidia card, but freezes up my tiny Asus laptop running Ubuntu, so your mileage may vary. This game is released under the GNU General Public License, version 3. The first one's always free!

Download Asteroids.blend file, which you should be able to run with blenderplayer (part of Blender download).
Download Asteroids.exe, which should work on Windows (tested in windows with NVidia GeForce 540M card)

(The file size is quite large for what it is. I haven't spent much time figuring out how to optimize.)

click to view gameplay!

Portland Zine Symposium

06 July 2014 11:38:00

This Saturday and Sunday, July 12 and 13, I'll have a table at the annual Portland Zine Symposium. It will be at the Ambridge Event Center, 1333 NE MLK, Portland. I'll also be giving a workshop on paper folding for zine making on Saturday at 11:30.

Here's a couple of shots of projects I've been working on. Hopefully I'll have a prototype of Mass Consumption, a collection of all 12 of my political cartoon zine Consumption, around 460 pages worth. I've been using Laidout to lay it all out (mixed in with a lot of debugging), and my goal is to hand bind a limited edition with a sculpted relief cover. Speaking of which, on the right is an experiment with such things, that on on a black paper sketchpad.

Libre Graphics Meeting Travels

20 April 2014 11:38:00

The annual Libre Graphics Meeting was in Leipzig, Germany this year. It was a lot of fun, and I was able to take two weeks to wander around Berlin, the Bohemian Paradise, Kutna Hora, Prague, and ending up in Leipzig for the conference, rounding out the trip cruising around Leipzig's late night life with Alexei and Timothie. Hopefully I can find the time to process my copious photo pile!

The LGM itself was again packed with all kinds of interesting open source graphics projects from people all over the world. Projects like tailoring, to Gooseberries, Magic Lantern (alas for Canon cameras only), and many, many more. I gave one talk demonstrating my new engraving tool, and symmetric clone tiling tool, which I hope eventually to get operational in various other software. I also gave a workshop in how to fold large paper into smaller books. For a summary of this you can read (after folding) this little book (released cc-by-nc).

It was fun to talk comics and illustration with Timothée Giet , also learning about Krita on Steam, an unusual combination of a free, open source illustration program allying with Valve's proprietary Steam platform, apparently something Blender is also getting in on. Steam is mainly as a game distribution platform which now can run on GNU/Linux systems (though not necessarily the games themselves!). It has a huge user base, with mostly a good relationship with its users. There have been many interesting projects made with assets and software released by Valve, as free to use, but not open source. It will be interesting to see how this combination of for-profit Valve and open source software plays out. Hopefully it will mean more users from mostly untapped audiences, and more money for open source authors to work on the software they are passionate about, without sacrificing those open source principals.

Below is a drawing I made of various speakers at LGM. I was drawn by programmer and animator Manuel Quiñones all the way from Argentina!

Time passes...

23 December 2013 11:38:00

Yikes! It's been how long since an update?!? I'd swear I was 15 years younger a few months ago. In any case, I'm am gearing up for a new release of my software Laidout I've been hacking away on. Hopefully this will finally happen soon. It's been a year overdue. As a preview, you can see below a sample of a feature-in-development, a version of which I hope to get working in Inkscape also. Inkscape has had work done on such things, but the work on it appears to have gotten about 95% done (excluding debugging), then stalled out. If debugging doesn't make me rage quit, I'll also have a stretching alignment tool and a graphical shell ready to go in the next Laidout release also!

Also check out the new minimal website for my polyhedron unwrapper called Polyptych. Interfacing Polyptych with Laidout is one of those rage inducing debugging ordeals I mentioned.

14 August 2013 11:38:00

I managed to port the signature folder of my Laidout program to the web. Now you can use the paper folder without having to compile anything.! It's html5 via processing.js. Maybe someday I'll port to an actual mobile touch based app, but not quite there yet.

Thanks to everyone who came to my workshop at the Portland Zine Symposium last weekend. For those who missed the workshop, we talked about how to figure out page mapping for folding paper into zines and books. Basically doing manually what the above software does virtually. In the end, folding actual paper with actual hands is probably more fun!

Portland Zine Symposium

9 August 2013 11:38:00

If you are in Portland, Oregon this weekend (Aug 10-11), stop by the Portland Zine Symposium where I'll have a table. This year, the symposium is in the Ambridge Event Center, located on 1333 NE MLK Jr. Blvd. I'll also be giving a workshop on how to fold big sheets of paper into zines and related things. That'll be Sunday the 11th at 1pm.

Nightlife Book Out

23 June 2013 11:38:00

I debuted Nightlife, Volume 1 at the Olympia Comics Festival, June 8. Now you can also read it as one whole story here, as nature intended! Plus you can buy the actual physical book here.

Olympia Comics Festival

1 June 2013 11:38:00

I'm hoping to have an actual book of my Nightlife minicomics completed in time for the Olympia Comics Festival, in Olympia, Washington, June 8th. So much to do! It's been a while since I've been to a fest, I've forgotten how quickly event dates approach..

Adrift, a 24 hour comic

1 June 2013

On May 18th-19th, I, along with David Chelsea, Paul (Boilerplate) Guinan, Pete Soloway, Jacob Mercy, Sera Stanton, Rachel Nabors, and David's daughter Rebecca, embarked upon a 24 hour comic adventure, where each person must draw 24 pages of comics in 24 hours. My story is 24.5 pages done in 24 hours, and 3.5 pages done in 2012 the last time I embarked on doing a 24 hour comic (failing badly)...

Nightlife 12:03

19 February 2013

It has been way too long since my last cartoon book, but at last it is done.
The fourth in my dream comic series Nightlife is now available for review.
Buy a printed copy here, tipping largely, or you can read from the beginning...

Zombie Walk!

1 November 2012

This year's zombie walk was less a walk, and more a gathering of zombies, then standing around a while, and walking mostly in a straight line between OMSI and Guardian Games. Seemed like less people this year.. It's a lot more fun when it was downtown, where there is a much higher density of non-zombies. I did a one-zomebie-stormtrooper walk home through downtown, and got plenty of wacky comments to make up for it!

I didn't dress up last year, so this year I made sure to go as the undead, as a zombie stormtrooper. Alas this meant I didn't take photos of the others! My favorites: zombie Mitt Romney with "Big Bird was here" written in blood on his back, a troop of Disney characters like Snow White, Peter Pan (with captain Hook's hook in his chest), Cinderella, that broken hazmat suit guy I remember from last year, two Star Trek redshirts (after dying). Someone even had a dog named Luke, that they took a photo with (if you are reading this, send me a copy!)! My favorite might have been one of the survivors with a gas mask on, with giant chains connected to his three zombie children!! See more of the horde at the PDX Zombie Walk flickr pool.

My zombie-ewok accessory was so attractive that I even made it to the Willamette Week fashion page!

My costume (photo by Luke Olsen):

And some construction shots!

Stuff

14 July 2012

For the first time in 10 years, I can't attend the Portland Zine Symposium coming up August 11 and 12, because I'll be in Vietnam! Hopefully when I come back I will have a new cartoon book done.

As for not having a new book since last year about this time, I can only claim in my defense that I have been totally obsessed programming new tools in my layout program Laidout. Here are a couple new tutorials:

Libre Graphics Meeting Recap

20 May 2012

The Libre Graphics Meeting was in Vienna this year. Once again lots of talks and workshops about all the graphics software I use all the time, with people from 32 different countries! This annual meeting is a great opportunity for users and developers to see directly what everyone else is doing with open source graphics software, give immediate feedback for bettor or worse about each others software and work habits, and strategize how to interoperate. Although definitely more developers than non-developers, there were many others coming from the art side. Artists are great at using software in ways they were really not intended, such as using Gimp as a music generator! (more on site)

Brussels and the Libre Graphics Research Unit

3 March 2012

Recently I was in Brussels for the Libre Graphics Research Unit's Co-Position meeting. These meetings are basically small, focused hands-on meetings fleshing out various aspects of open source graphics tools.

This meeting in particular focused on layout tools. I gave a presentation discussing possible uses of emerging tools like touch tablets in graphics software. Major areas of discussion included visual versioning, lots of discussion about fonts, including introduction of some javascript from Manufactura Independente that allows multiple color fonts on web pages by overlaying chunks of fonts on top of each other. That and various other font related discussions pushes me a little more toward actually implementing text in Laidout.

Pierre Marchand's Lazy Landscape, leverages open source development's natural tendency for collaboration by providing a kind of code wiki, where the "page" is actually runnable code. On the other end was a presentation from Nathalie Trussart about the limits of collaboration, in that sharing everything can easily result in too much information for the collaborators to process meaningfully.

Lots of other workshops and talks over 3 days concluded with Alexandre Quessy showing off Toonloop with live animated legos.

On another note, I also got some interesting comics, including 3", by Marc-Antoine Mathieu, a French cartoonist, a story basically following a ray of light as it flies around, bouncing off various reflective surfaces, and L'Enfant Penchée by Benoit Peeters and Francois Shuiten, whose expansive architectural comics derive a lot from Brussels buildings (thanks to Agnes for the recomendations, and helping me get to the Brüsel comics shop!)

Now I just have to get over a cold I seem to have picked up on the airplane back!

Palace of Fine Arts photos

17 January 2012

A few shots of the Palace of Fine Arts rotunda in San Francisco. I had hoped to get there during a rare sunny winter day (on the 1st), but traffic held me up. It is pretty at night, though!

New Laidout

3 January 2012

Finally, after a little over a year, got a new version of Laidout released.

Zombie Walk

6 November 2011

Here are some shots from this year's Zombie Walk in Portland. For the first time, it wasn't downtown, since the zombie organizers couldn't raise enough money for downtown permits. This was also the first year even trying to get permits, and the powers that be wouldn't accept a bloody smear as a valid signature on the paperwork. So, the gory onslaught fell upon NE Sandy Blvd.

Nightlife 12:02

14 August 2011

Nightlife 12:02 now online, for your amusement. Buy it now, or tip largely!! This continues where Nightlife 12:01 left off.

Libre Graphics Meeting

17 May 2011

I've just come back from Montreal, where this year's Libre Graphics Meeting was held. Once again there were a plethora of interesting talks on many aspects of open source graphics software, and even some talk about open source hardware! Here are some photos. A few more to come!

Eggbot

10 April 2011

I just got in the mail a new Eggbot, one of the most amazing things I've seen in a while, a plotter that can print on spheres!!! Learn more about the Eggbot here. You can buy them through Evil Mad Science. Definitely one of the coolest devices in the history of the planet.

Stuff...

3 April 2011

2011 has not been a productive year for me so far in terms of art making, but that's beginning to turn around. I'm going to the Libre Graphics Meeting again this year, in Montreal. Before then, I hope to have a working 2.5 foot wide diy multitouch table functioning, and running Laidout. We'll see if that happens! In the meantime, here's a couple photos from a recent Portland Lightist photoshoot:

Laidout 0.091

13 November 2010

Nine months in the making, and I finally finished version 0.091 of my desktop publishing program called Laidout! I use Laidout to make my cartoon books. Now, there's a new feature to fold paper right on screen to create booklets, and Laidout keeps track of where page content goes. Makes booklet and calendar making really easy.

You can see a video tutorial of it in action here:

Zombie Walk

1 November 2010

Shots from this year's Zombie Walk! My second year going, I felt like a schmuck not dressing up last year, so I let my inner diseased rat loose this time! You can see my whole set here, and the Pdx Zombie Walk flickr group here.

Nightlife 12:01

18 July 2010

Nightlife 12:01 is the sequel to Nightlife, basically a dream comic.

Libre Graphics Meeting

9 June 2010

The annual Libre Graphics Meeting for 2010 was held in Brussels, Belgium, and I was fortunate enough to be able to go and meet many of the makers of the software I use all the time. There were about 170 people from 47 different countries, each day was action packed with interesting talks about lots of different programs and subjects. When navigating the streets of Brussels early in the morning trying to find the conference, you simply have to throw out any preconceived ideas about urban planning, and this really puts you in a great, open frame of mind when you finally get there and listen to the talks!

Now that I've mostly gotten over a really bad cold I picked up in Brussels, here's a short overview of the meeting. Other non-LGM photos from my trip will trickle in on my flickr page over the next month or two.... (more highlights follow)

Wii Whiteboard

7 March 2010

Inspired by Johnny Chung Lee's wii projects, this is my recent experiment with a wiimote used to make a really cheap electronic whiteboard. Total cost (excluding the projector) was about $40, and most of that was for the wiimote. Software used was wmgui, gtkwhiteboard, and my own polyhedral panorama projection software.

I think I need to make a better pen. I am assuming my infrared led is too narrow, and too weak, and is making the input quite jagged.

See it on flickr or youtube.

Blue Monk photoshoot

27 February 2010

Shots from the January Pdxstrobist photoshoot at the Blue Monk in Portland.

Some photos from Seacliff Beach

23 January 2010

Just a couple of photos from my winter travels. These are from Seacliff Beach near Santa Cruz, California. The concrete boat at Seacliff was a favorite place of mine as a kid. Sadly, you can't legally go onto the boat anymore.

First comic of 2010

8 January 2010

Here's a quick comic that I made to be a contribution to the Stumptown Underground "Sleep" issue, but I missed the deadline, so it became my first comic of 2010. See it on flickr too.

Bunkers and dinosaurs

12 December 2009

Finished my Marin Headlands panoramas, taken just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Still have a few more panoramas to finish from my winter travels almost a year ago. Maybe I'm just getting old, but years just fly right by these days!! Also drew a dinosaur comic..

Photos from the Portland Zombie Walk of 2009

26 October 2009

Shown here are small sample of my zombie photos from the walk. I still have a couple of panoramas to edit from it. See the whole set here. Also, you might check out a lot more of other folks' photos at the Pdx Zombie Walk flickr group.

Shots from the corn field

10 October 2009

Shots from the Pdxstrobist group meetup at Lake View Farms (and later Craig's place) on September 26, 2009.
Still have one or two to edit, but not sure when I'll get to them!

My 3rd 24 hour comic

4 October 2009

This year in Portland, 24 Hour Comics Day was held at Backspace. A LAN party came in and we had to move, and I was afraid the live music later in the day would be irritating. Overall, however, it didn't turn out so bad, and I enjoyed most of the music. I could have done without the Twin Peaks theme song. I finished my comic several hours early, which is just as surprising as the fact that the story didn't involve aliens!

Read the whole thing here!

New parkour photos from Gas Works Park in Seattle

12 September 2009

6 of us from Portland drove up, and joined 50 or so other people for the national parkour jam in Seattle, August 29-30, 2009. This was a great training and jam session, a ton of people showed up from all over the country.

Here are some photos of mine (or view the set on flickr), still have a few more to edit.. You might see some other peoples photos and video here, here, or here.