About IdeaMonster

Krop, Square Extension, Dust|box artist. Illusion of sense art group founder, creative director, open mind.

Game Review: AstroSlugs (iPad)

Posted on October 3, 2011 by IdeaMonster

Rating:

Astroslugs is a beautiful puzzle game that takes some ideas from other games and packs it all up with beautiful graphics and sounds. Your job is to connect meteors drifting in space in predefined shapes that you get for each level. The design is so stunning, that half the time I kept looking at the graphics instead of playing. The price is quite high, but seriously, we’re talking a premium game here. There aren’t many better looking puzzle games in the App Store, and that includes Cut the Rope. The gameplay is addictive enough to lure you in for long hours of gameplay before you feel ANY boredom. That’s mostly due to the fact that the visual side corresponds well with animations and gameplay so it constantly has something a little bit different to show you.

The music in the background is one of those beautiful pieces that I’d like to have in my iPod. Job well done! The idea isn’t all that new, but the execution here is close to perfect. If you like great looking puzzle games then head to the App Store right now to get if for 5 Eur. Here’s the link: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/astroslugs-deluxe-for-ipad/id442411315?mt=8

Pixelmator, Vector Designer and Hype as a Budget creative suite?

Posted on October 3, 2011 by IdeaMonster

We have covered the alternatives to Adobe’s expensive suite many times yet, but since the release of Hype, there’s a lot more options for a web designer, to have an almost fully functional set of apps, for a fraction of the price. Sure, Pixelmator is not yet in 2.0 version, which will bring it even closer to Photoshop, but it’s gonna happen soon, and an improved type tool plus many other additions (vectors!) will make many people to seriously consider it. At 40$ it’s a steal. Same with vector designer – sure it’s simpler, but only a small percent of users (those alleged power-users) are actually taking advantage of all that illustrator has to offer. Most of us just want to design a logo quickly and efficiently. Another 40$ and it’s yours.

Flash is nearly gone from the web altogether (even Adobe now has it’s own HTML5 authoring tool), and Hype can do a lot of the things flash did, only with better battery/processor performance on mobile devices (that includes laptops). All of those Apps combined cost less than 150$. And sure they’re underpowered sometimes, and not as feature packed as their Adobe counterparts. But almost 80% of designers use the same tools all the time, the same filters and the same elements. Pixelmator is really close to being able to successfuly replace Photoshop, and both Vector Designer and Hype are constantly being improved as well. We may see a big split in the design community in a year or two, with Adobe loosing a lot of market share towards cheaper options.

I’ve been using those three apps alongside CS5, and I’m sure that I won’t buy the CS 6 update anytime soon. Monopoly is never a good thing, and it led Adobe to the high prices they have today.

Tablet interfaces, web apps and oh, I’m back!

Posted on September 29, 2011 by IdeaMonster

Been away for quite a while, since I’ve been working for one Apple related blog, but now I decided that it’s time to be more creative, instead of repetitive. So CreationMachine is officially back in “business” (whatever business it is) and you can expect more updates soon.

A couple of interesting things happened when I was gone: first and foremost some Android tablets were trying to beat the iPad, the Kindle Fire was announced (and it can shake things up finally), and there’s an explosion of Web Apps led by Financial Times, that withdrew from the App Store to cut the Apple Tax out of it’s subscription. We’ll be seeing more and more of those kinds of apps in the near future, so HTML5 is something to keep an eye on. Especially after “Hype!” and “Edge” by Adobe, which are in fact targeted at app developers and designers.

So there are things happening and there’s been changes, but not too many apparently, so we’ll manage somehow. Just need to redesign the site and connect it to my wider network, so an official start will happen soon. And when I say “soon” it really means soon or it’d drive me crazy ;)

Game Review: Contre Jour (iPhone/iPad)

Posted on September 12, 2011 by IdeaMonster

Rating:

Contre Jour is an arcade/puzzle mix with stunning visuals and atmosphere, released by Chillingo. At first the game wows you with amazing graphics – toned blacks and blues create a world that seems odd and believable at the same time. That’s not really easy to do without cliches, and the company behind CJ did just that.

Your goal as an odd, sperm-like-looking black ball with one eye (or a one-eyed-snake if you must ) needs to travel towards an exit from a level by means of moving the ground and connecting it to various types of “leech-like” ropes. If you played the other Chillingo Classic – Cut the Rope, you’ll recognize some of the gameplay from there – it can be pretty similar at times. But here we don’t have the cut dinosaur and those pastel boxes. No, here we have darkness, mood and out-of-this world atmosphere. The basic mechanics remain the same, but that’s not really a problem. It’s more suitable for older players, if Cut the Rope is considered to be more childish. The music is ok, but it can get pretty annoying after a while, so I turned it off and put some Snoop Dogg on

Overall it’s a beautifully designed and fun to play game, so for 0,69 pounds (iPhone version) it’s a steal! The iPad version shines even brighter with bigger, HD graphics it’s simply a pleasure to play, so the price is bumped up to 2 quid. Here are the links:

iPhone

iPad

Game review: Jetpack Joyride (iPhone/iPad)

Posted on September 12, 2011 by IdeaMonster

Rating:

Jetpack Joyride is an universal (one price for iPhone and iPad versions) gem of an App by Halfbrick studios – guys who brought fruit chopping to the masses in their highly popular Fruit Ninja. This time though, there are no fruits, just a secret agent, that steals a jetpack from a VERY LARGE lab, and wants to have some fun. Our goal, as Barry Steakfries is to fly right (literally), using a jetpack and a couple of powerups, to get as far as possible. On our way we encounter lasers, zappers, guided missiles that all have the goal to stop our joyride and turn Barry into fish food.

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Game Review: Mega Jump! (iPhone)

Posted on September 2, 2011 by IdeaMonster

Mega Jump is one of those rare games, from which you can’t get away. In fact it’s almost as addictive as Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride or Angry Birds. It’s also free which lead to a massive 4.5 million gamers downloading it in a couple of months. It might be a praise towards capitalistic economy – you know, swallowing coings makes you go higher, but nevertheless it’s freaking entertaining and well thought out as a whole.

Your goal is to get as high as possible (an addict’s wet dream ), and you achieve that by eating up coins. Each coin pushes you a little bit higher, and if you miss them, you fal and the game ends. There are some powerups and bonuses scattered along those vertical levels, which make the game even more entertaining. My favorite is by far “coin magnet”, that pulls all the coins towards the character.

The graphics are a bit like play-doh, mixed with watercolor backgrounds and it actually looks good together. For a free game it’s silly not to try it. Besides, 4 million people can’t be wrong. It’s a nice casual game, that can get pretty addictive, with good graphics and decent sounds. And free. What more to ask?

You can download it for free at: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/mega-jump/id370398167?mt=8

App review: 360 Panorama

Posted on July 19, 2011 by IdeaMonster

Rating:

360 Panorama is a cheap (2Eur) iPhone App that lets you create “dragged” panoramas in a fake 3d, that are both easy to do, and fun to play with. Currently the web view only works in Safari (sorry for that), but it really is impressive. When viewed from the iPhone 4 – even in the browser – we can use the full potential of the built in gyro to rotate around with our phones and preview the 3d world. The App runs surprisingly smooth, although it requires some precision and a fairly steady hand. Most panoramas have at least one jagged line somewhere – usually at the final end.

There also should be an option to do it more “3d” like than two rows of photos, but currently doing more than one can result in a badly stitched result unfortunately. Still it’s a pretty good effort in a cheap app, and can be a nice addition to our iPhone photography folder. The image quality is not bad, even in low light conditions, but there’s no focus and exposition lock, so each panorama-part can actually differ visually and that sucks a lot. But in good lighting conditions it’s a whole different story as seen above (it’d be perfect if not the final error near the end of the panorama).

It is predicted that iPhone 4S / iPhone 5 will have a built in panorama tool in the camera App, but we have to wait until tomorrow to see that anyway.

You can download it at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/360-panorama/id377342622?mt=8

Is it the end of Adobe Flash? Here comes “Hype!”

Posted on May 22, 2011 by IdeaMonster

Steve Jobs never really loved Adobe Flash. The omission of the technology from Apple’s mobile iOS platform was one of the examples of that. Flash was slow and hard on battery, so Apple decided to start pushing HTML5 technology, that could achieve the same goals, but without the CPU and battery strain. And they somehow succeeded because flash is less and less popular every day. Designers either don’t do animations at all anymore, preferring simpler, more usable sites,or make them in jQuery and HTML5.

The only problem so far has been the fact, that to make anything “moving” with those tools you needed to be a programmer, while Flash had a nice little 700$ application, that any designer can use to create. Well now that has all changed – A small company called Tumultco has released Hype – HTML5 authoring tool, that’s easy to use and you don’t need to put in ANY lines of code for the animations to work.

You can buy it (mac version) in the Mac App Store for the introductory price of just 29$!! That’s 660$ cheaper than Flash! Get it while the price tag lasts!

Here are some examples of the technology in use:
Gallery

Tablet aspect ratios, 16:9 vs 4:3

Posted on May 11, 2011 by IdeaMonster

So people teased the iPad for being 4:3, assuming that a 16:9 panoramic tablet would be that much better. Well below is a video that shows a comparison between an iPad and a widescreen tablet running windows 7. It’s quite clear that 4:3 is the winner here.

WordPress index.html vs index.php struggle

Posted on April 20, 2011 by IdeaMonster

Usually when we make wordpress websites we don’t really want people to see the website in the making – so we create an index.html splash page with “under construction” or something of that sort and then we go back to tweaking index.php

Well for a while now (since wordpress 2.7) that’s not really possible because if you access www.mydomain.com it’ll in fact show the splash page, but when you go to www.mydomain.com/index.php it’ll also redirect itself to that splash index.html file.
All the other wordpress pages and permalinks work, but without the main page it’s kinda hard to edit now isn’t it?

I was searching for an answer for a LONG time and it turns out there is one.
http://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/9203 – here it is. If it’s all black magic to you or you’re just lazy (who isn’t?) I’ll simply tell you what to do :

Go to wp-includes folder on your server, find the canonical.php file and then find a line that goes something like that:

$redirect['path'] = preg_replace('|/index.php/*?$|', '/', $redirect['path']);

and replace it with

$redirect['path'] = preg_replace('|/index.php/$|', '/', $redirect['path']);

It’s just removing two characters but the result is a working splash page and a working index.php

Ain’t it just great?

Garageband for iPad

Posted on March 13, 2011 by IdeaMonster

I was so excited for GB that as soon as it hit the app store, I got my hands on it and I can only say : Whoa!
But it’s not the fact that it’s such a great app by itself that is appealing. This is a complete package – many instruments, many ways to tweak and multitrack recording. That all combined (though limited) can mean only one thing. Someone will make an even better app in the near future because apparently tablets are our future. They already accept MIDI and some USB sound cards, so the next logical step instead of bringing a laptop along for gigs is taking a tablet + a smaller, usb powered audio interface. Touch interfaces can bring many instruments in one, additional drums, kaoss pads, synths. This could be a good addition for both DJ’s and electronic musicians.

Oh and those smart instruments – they suck. Sorry. Those chords sound nice, but lifeless. There’s no beauty in ultra-perfection. Skip these and play the real things :) Even if lousy.

Oh and “sampler” here is actually useful. You can record your own soundbanks and play that live. Awesome’o 2000! :)

iPad is starting to work for the creatives

Posted on March 3, 2011 by IdeaMonster

A while back I considered the iPad to be nice timekilling tool, but not really a device to create content. Well maybe if you’re a writer and have a keyboard dock you can use it for work. But most other kinds of creative activities were out of the question since the apps were baby-apps, not too powerful and not too serious. That changed a while ago when apple released iMovie for iphone. Sure it’s not Final Cut, but it’s a start – you can be on a bus and edit a video you shot before. This opened up a lot of new possibilities, but it looked like that was about it. Photoshop for iOS is a big disappointment, because of it’s lack of serious tools and layers, and those painting apps, well , they’re for painters not designers.
Sure there’s iFontMaker which is pretty useful and can be considered productive. But yesterday garageband came into the spotlight, because frankly, this is an app in which you can actually do something. Just like iMovie. It’s not a time killer, because if you’re into music making it’s the first big app that doesn’t just let you play with some sounds but also records them and let’s you arrange them. This is big. Sure I can’t imagine a real photoshop or illustrator for mobile devices just yet, but who knows. It’d have to be stylus operated though and that doesn’t sit well with capacitive touch displays. And making a company logo with just your fingers is only good if it’s a logo for fingerpaint selling firm.
But finally we can do some music and that’s great. I can’t wait to see ableton and other bigger players make an approach at this. The new iPad is as capable as the computers from a while back if not better. So the only thing stopping the expansion is the user interface. It has to be redesigned and it has to be done good enough to allow some serious work. Exciting times!

Mess

Posted on March 2, 2011 by IdeaMonster

State of mess is a typical thing for any designer. We see something we like on the web and we bookmark it for future reference. Then we can of course always access it later easily…

Yeah, right!

I have a gazillion of bookmarks and I have no idea what most of them are. Some are years old and I never checked them out again. But I found an app that instead of bookmarks, just snaps images, that you can tag and then find easily. The app is called “Little Snapper” and it simply snaps a screenshot of a website. Think of it as your screenshot catalogue. After a while the amount of images starts to grow, so it’s actually pretty cool to type in “minimal” and “white” to see all the matching sites and get some inspiration (but not too much, right? ;)).

It helped me plenty to keep a better track of what I see online and it also cleared most of my bookmarks that I’d never check anyway.

Print design – bleeds, safe areas, margins, a0 / a1 / a2 / a3 / a4 / a5

Posted on February 26, 2011 by IdeaMonster

Sure it sounds kinda easy, but when we design for print it’s important to keep some basic rules in mind. If you never did any print designs read on to find out what to do, to avoid instant failure. The most important thing is – modern printers are pretty precise, but still not as precise as your screen. That means that if you make an A4 sized paper and print it on a bigger one, the cutting and printing process together can result in your design being actually less than a4. And most clients don’t really want that.

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Cool flyer designs from the web

Posted on February 25, 2011 by IdeaMonster

A flyer is a simple, little poster to hand out, which should be informative about an event (usually) but it also should catch the eye visually, because you know, flyers usually travel in packs. And the ones that are handed out on the streets are pretty terrible. So let’s take a look at some cool examples:

More after the break.

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