Using stock photos in a project?

Yay or nay? Anyone feel like thats a cop out or what?  Well I’ve used some stock illustrations in my apps. I’m not the worlds greatest illustrator, so at times I’ll go search a site like iStockPhoto for “inspiration”. And if I find its easier, and affordable to buy the art that inspires me, I’ll do it. Just check the licensing so you know you’re paying enough to use it properly.

So I got an email today from iStockPhoto advertising a new collection of art that is pretty cool, CSA Images. Most of which looks like it could have been hanging on the walls around Don Draper’s office.  Here’s a brief bit about the collection…

Established by Charles S. Anderson, the CSA Images collection began in the 1970′s. CSA Images is now one of the most extensive and highly awarded collections of graphic illustrations and design elements in existence.

Over the years, CSA has created countless original photographs, illustrations, and design elements along with seeking out and acquiring entire collections of original art from copyright owners. All told, CSA has spent hundreds of thousands of hours creating, commissioning, curating, and purchasing images in addition to researching millions of historic materials for rights clearance.

I’ll post up some ones that really struck me. And here’s a link to all 5671 …

The Mirror effect, when isn’t it cool? And why isn’t it a Flash Filter?!

Check out these ad campaign photos from an airport in Germany. Pretty brilliant use of the floor’s natural reflection. It makes me think some modern-day Mad Man got a free trip to, well the airport, to “take in” the space for inspiration and just happened to notice they kept the floors all nice and polished.

Okay, thats my loose tie-in to a mini Flash rant. Just yesterday I was thinking how awesome it would be to have a mirror effect filter in Flash. Right now you can easily achieve that effect by copying the symbol, blurring it a tad, flipping it upside down and arranging it behind the primary object. But what would REALLY be easy would be to hit a Filter button, and not have to worry about keeping a separate symbol. And the Filter properties could be sliders for how blurry the mirror effect is, the clipping, the angle, etc.  So anyway, I was thinking about this, and then realized, wait…. we haven’t seen ANY new Filters since Flash 8. So, we’ve got Flash CS3, CS4, CS5, CS5.5 (ahem, more like CS5.05). So Adobe, throw us designers a bone. I know its hard to believe, but you actually have people like me that almost only use Flash to illustrate/design with.  And I don’t want to hear that a mirror effect can be done with Actionscript, because in my best Eric Cartman voice, my reply is “I care!”. Doing it with code, doesn’t gel with me as a designer, nor can I export out a PNG with code.

Rant over. Here’s those pics…

Honest Logos

Saw these yesterday and had to share. Here’s what the author Viktor Hertz says “An idea for a series with honest logos, revealing the actual content of the company, what they really should be called. Some are cheap, some might be a bit funny, some will maybe be brilliant. I don’t know.” 

Check ‘em all out here. I actually didn’t get the blue one below at first.

A Brief History of Title Design

I just spotted this beautiful compilation of titles created by Art of the Title (.com) If you’re ever feeling uninspired, this should be a good pick-me-up…

FlashMindMeld! Listen to 60 Experts on Flash Gaming

Here’s a terrific resource for inspiration if you are planning to make a Flash game (or any game). I’ve made it through 5 of these interviews so far, and each 60 second sound byte  has been great. Worth a listen…

And if you want to go beyond just inspiration, CartoonSmart has plenty of tutorials on Flash Gaming as well!

Need a tree anyone?

This is pretty amazing. Check out this tree generator. Which does exactly that, and you can save the image as a transparent PNG….

Odd Job Jack

Thanks to (crud, I forgot, sorry) for pointing this out to me. I hadn’t heard of this Flash-made cartoon, Free Jack, till yesterday, and the cool thing is: they give away their source files. Crazy right. Check it out….

Some geeky, sexy pixel art to spice up your Thursday

Here’s a couple things that found their way to Digg (apparently I’m the last person still going to Digg, based on all the dugg-ed articles about how their traffic is done)…

Fan-made Marvel Brothel Sex-based Adventure Game. And based on the graphics below, you can guess how un-sexy it really is. The review from someone who actually played it is pretty funny.

And there’s this huge pic of  Video Game Character Sprites (only a handful are seen below). And almost as impressive as the author’s epic ability to waste spend time making all those sprites, they also must have spent a ton of time finding and prettying up the logos for a white background. Seriously, most logos you find in a Google Search aren’t in transparent PNG format. Or already on white. So kudos to you! And thanks for the logo references!

Classic Ads for New Media Stuff

Just found these on Illusion 360′s site. Pretty brilliant, there’s more using YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Minimalist Super Hero Posters

Anthony from ScreenRant.com created these very cool, very simple posters. There’s 30 in all here, but I’ll repost some of my favs below to entice you over. I only wish he’d left off the superhero’s name, or made it a rollover event, because even though I tried not to, I kept reading the character name first, then engaging myself in the art. And to gauge my geek-meter,  I would have recognized all but 5 of them (they get a little obscure towards the end).

Also I found this linked through Digg which means this artist’s 3 or 4 nights of extra work are paying off big time in traffic for the site. A good example of pumping up your site on a coffee-pot budget.