No, my Christmas shopping isn't done yet. The Christmas parties are still on the schedule. My Christmas cards still aren't done, and I'm not playing 'Secret Santa' with anybody. But I'd like to take a moment and wish everyone a safe and warm holiday season. I know...it can be hard to do when you're driving in traffic and that asshat cuts you off because he's trying to get a better parking spot at Best Buy. Or, how about when that 16 year old punk who's driving Dad's Escalade is riding your bumper so close, he can see what station your radio's on. 
Yeah. It's like that.
That's why I shop online. 
This will probably be my last post of the year, but only because...now just wait! Wait for it...
Okay...only because in January 2008, this site will look completely different. That's right. Redesign time! My wife loves it when I do this. Stay tuned. It'll be worth the wait, I promise. There's a design underway as we speak. So, look for that in the first week or two of January.
Until then, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Christmas, or how ever the hell you like to say it. 
Peace out.
~Jonathon
Have you ever seen those Charles Schwab commercials where the people are talking about how they've been made to feel less important because they are smaller investors? They have that painted-over cartoon look about them? No?
Mm-k. Have you ever seen the movie A Scanner Darkly, with Keanu Reaves? No? Jesus William H Christ. Hand me that newspaper so I can smack you with it. And my wife thinks my rock is big. Mph.
Anyway, this style of graphics has been around for a few years, and the animators that worked on A Scanner Darkly, called it Interpolated Rotoscoping. Don't bother asking Webster what the hell that means cause my damn spell check is already freaking out at that terminology. Put simply, the style sort of mimics a graphic novel style of coloring. Or comic book style, for those of you who rode the short bus with the tinted windows.
I'm only kidding.
I decided to try this style of coloring a few weeks ago on a photograph of some friends of mine. You start with your basic photograph and you add layer after layer of color. First, you ink your dark areas and lines just like you would bringing a pencil drawing to life. Then you just keep adding layers of color under the blacks to 'flush out' the new color by eye-dropping the actual colors from the photo into the new layers. I used Illustrator CS3 for doing all of this. It sounds harder than it is. I probably have 18-20 hours into this image. Took me for-freakin' ever. Though, it was my first time, this was done using a mouse, not a digital drawing tablet. (I'm still working from the stone-age.) The newly colored image is on top and the original photo is perched at the bottom.
