S p i r a l C a t

I'm doing a lot of illustration, creating a lot of images, and all with open source, free apps

Well, well, well. My Spiralcat site on Office Live still exists. I might have to have a play with it, and write some more web pages. I noticed recently in my Google stats that Spiralcat is still getting visitors. The design which I did an awful long time ago is still looking quite nice, and I thing I could enjoy creating some more content for this site. The goal of course is to get the site to be able to generate enough money to give to Microsoft now that they no longer want to renew my .com domain name for free.

I've been doing a lot of different things since I last visited Spiralcat and have even started a new website called Starbright Illustrations to focus more on the illustration side of my creative output. By that logic, I suppose Spiralcat would be more for the written side of what I do. I've also been playing an awful lot of Farmville. The most interesting thing I#ve discovered however is just how many open source apps there are out there that make the creative process so uch easier, but also just how good they are.

Blender: This is a 3D content creation suite which is more than capable of creating the sort of professional results you might see in a Pixar movie. It is super super good and it just got a whole lot easier and more user friendly with the release of 2.5. Get this great (and free) 3D content creation suite here.

Inkscape: Everyone is talking about Photoshop Illustrator in those glossy mags about creating your own art, right? The problem of course is that it costs like a bajillion dollars. Inkscape on the other hand does the same stuff with great results and is absolutely free. And of course with the supportive open source community behind it there is always help and advice when you get into trouble. This great illustration app is available from the dedicated website here.

GIMP: Ok that's cool for people who want Adobe Illustrator but can't afford it or don't want to sacrifice half their hard drive to it and wait for twenty minutes every time it opens up but what if I have the same issues with Photoshop? Well GIMP is the app for you. It does most everything the pricey application does when it comes to sorting out your images, but it doesn't cost you a couple of hundred dollars when it comes time to upgrade. GIMP, as usual has a website dedicated to it where you can get hold of this great image manipulation app.

OpenOffice: I've included OpenOffice here because I often want to write a little text to go with my images and this is the best way of getting that done. And there is even an add on that allows off-line blogging from within the word processor. As usual this office app is right there on there website for download, and they absolutely do not want your money, unless you are feeling philanthropic and want to donate it.



And when you put that all together here is an example of the sort of art, 3D and writing work that you can do.



I've made the switch from proprietary software to open source in my art, and I'm getting better and better at producing 3D CGI artwork. That'ssomething I started on Spiralcat with trueSpace, but I finally got Blender working on my machine and now I have made the switch to this more professional 3D suite..



I'm really quite impressed with the way the browser based online website creator has improved. It's a lot quicker now, more customisable, and it even has a spell checker.