David Revoy

The personnal choice of Open-source

David REVOY — Wed, 01 May 2013 11:42:00 +0200

I decided to write a blog post to silence the rare but existing gossips saying I use open-source because I'm ....
... a poor artist (¬_¬)

It's wrong : I use open-source since 2009 as a personal choice. Let me tell you, 'how'/'why' it happens.
( and sorry in advance for my english )

photo : I'm moving soon, and while I'm cleaning, I found in the bottom of my bookshelves my old software licenses.
I took a quick photo on the ground to keep a souvenir.

Back-in-time

Before using open-source, I was strict on buying every licenses I needed for my freelance activities. I started with the Photoshop Element 2.0 boxed with my first Graphire Wacom tablet , but also Gimp 2.2, Artrage Free edition and Artweaver. I did a lot of artworks like that and was happy. I didn't wanted to install hacked/pirated full version, even if a whole part of internet is encouraging into this practice...

With the years, and commissions, I had to buy Photoshop CS2 for my publishers as a requirement to send CMYK illustrations.
799€ for a feature. That was hard, but at this time, no alternative or open-source software could do it ( nowaday, there is 2 tools available : 'CMYKtools', 'Krita' ).

Then with the years, I purchased other Softwares ; as Corel Painter, or Manga Studio, and won also many other ( not on the photo ) into contests.

Then happened the bad experience ... I bought a new computer, delivered with the shiny new Windows Vista operating system, and discovered I couldn't reinstall Xp on it ; the motherboard didn't had a driver made for it. I had to do a lot of horrible hack to make all my software running on it, but it wasn't stable as it was on Xp anymore . I had to reboot almost twice a day (╯︵╰,) .

So, I decided to sell this Vista computer, and bought back one of the last machine existing in shop delivered with XP to run smoothly my software.

Oh ; a solution existed to make all the software running bug-free on Vista ; update pack. It was expensive, and also not bringing any new relevant features other than just being Vista compatible.

So, I thought all of this circus couldn't work on long term, and wasn't happy. On the new computer, the Linux compatibility was near perfection and it was a luck back in 2008 for my early Linux dual boot test. So, I had a successful dual boot with Linux Mint and could pull my hair learning the hard way : compiling Wacom driver, modifying Xorg, doing Xsetwacom script ( all a joy you don't have to normally do now on Nowaday Linux distribution ). Yes, at this time, having a Wacom was really hard to manage, and I had a small Cintiq 12Wx...

Then came the Sintel open-movie project and my involvement in it as an art-director. Doing pre-productions artworks with open-source wasn't forced by the Blender Foundation ( even if warmly encouraged, of course ) . But again, I made the personal choice to persevere with what existed about 2D . I started to test everything to find a workflow using Mypaint and Gimp-painter ; later documented into my first DVD Chaos&Evolution .

So, I switched my machine to a full open-source system around 2009, and decided to keep it at the end of the project when came back home with this thinking, " open-source could work on the long term ". But let be honest : my change to open-source made a regression on my workflow about many topic ( features, performances, easiness ) and I kept Photoshop Cs2 running on Wine for a long period to deal with CMYK and files from publisher.

Time passed, as well as hundreds of bug reports, meetings, thousands of commits done by dedicated and passionate developers from all around the world. Mypaint, Krita, Gimp, G'mic and Linux system way to handle Wacom tablets changed a lot and are nowadays way easier, performant and featured than back 2008. And most of all : I really like the independence I get about it : I can install it on laptops, every machine, upgrade, downgrade, fine tuning it. This independence is gold.
The con ; I'm now dependent of hardware 'linux' compatible. Witch is not easy to find , and not well documented.

Am I happy about this personal choice ? Yes :-) and I can without any remorse put my old software license in a box for long term storage, just to show to my ( hypothetic and not yet existing ) grant-children what were .... the proprietary 2D software I started with.

And you, why are you using mostly open-source ?

Peacock Dragon

David REVOY — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 19:27:00 +0200

(click to enlarge )

Krita + Gimp&G'mic

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Reposting and usage of the artwork is free, allowed and encouraged, providing credits "Artwork : www.davidrevoy.com" but any usage of the artwork for commercial purposes or manipulations, derivations are strictly prohibited.

Symetric impro with fish

David REVOY — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 23:15:00 +0200

first : improvisation started in my workshop at the Libre Graphic Meeting 2013 , with details added later at home.
second : improvisation done on my laptop during the Libre Graphic Meeting 2013

my LGM2013 report and photo gallery here

tool : Krita

Compilscripts

David REVOY — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:03:00 +0200

Big Update and maintenance of my "Compilscripts" small project ; a set of script to help you to auto-compile and install :

Krita
Mypaint
VC

from source on Linux Mint KDE 14 ( check here all my install tips for Linux Mint KDE for digital painter ).

15 may 2013 notes : Due to change in VC ( a lib for Krita ) the script will not work to compile Krita for the moment. I'll fix this soon. Read the last comments for a workaround.

Whats new ?

A dedicated Git repository on GitHub here : https://github.com/Deevad/compilscripts
A documentation included in the README.md file, also displayed on front page of the GitHUb project
More user-friendlyness ; easier menu , all colored with also separators for better lisibility
Update libraries of Mypaint for GTK3
added LICENSE ; GNU GPL 3.0
Add a uninstall feature
Drop of the 'reset to stable' old feature because of issue with libs and user preferences file.
Tested on a vanilla Linux Mint KDE 14 system, non tested on Kubuntu/Ubuntu/etc... Feel free to report

Download

You can download a ZIP of the last version here : https://github.com/Deevad/compilscripts/archive/master.zip

Extract, and follow usage instruction in the README.md, or read it here

For git users, you can also clone the repository with :

git clone https://github.com/Deevad/compilscripts.git

and update it later.

Krita workshop at LGM 2013

David REVOY — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 05:27:00 +0200

It will be my first LGM ! I hope to meet a lot of you around this event and have good time :-)

The theme :

The workshop will be about digital painting with Krita.
I'll adapt my workshop to my audience, but my main guideline will be "speedpainting with Krita : tips and tricks to refine your process."
And the idea I have in head is to build a symmetry portrait as the one I painted on my previous post here , step by step. I think its a good exercice for beginner or experienced artists, accessible and also very fast rewarding : Krita paint literally half of the artwork for you.

Place / Date / Hour

Friday 12 april 2013 at the Libre Graphic Meeting in Medialab Prado‘s brand new building in Madrid city center.
Workshop will happen between 14h30 - 16h30 ( duration 2h ) in RoomC
More infos on LGM official website .

Billing/Reservation :

LGM is free and open to all! Registration is not required.
But feel free to leave a comment if you can be around.

Requirement

I'll keep the demo active and interactive, participant can bring laptop and tablet with Krita ( <= 2.6 ) to paint during the presentation.
Note: It's also OK to come with Mypaint or any other software.
Curious and spectator without tablet hardware or laptop are also warmly welcome.

Workshop content overview :

- Choosing a new document
- Make a first brush
- Have good Dockers around
- Calibrate your hand, eyes and tablet
- The essential shortcut for painting in confort
- Thinking in layer, using layers
- The joy of grey value, and color selectors
- Edges and happyness
- Fancy Brushes
- Various way to save project

... and if we got extra time
- Coloring
- Color adjustement
- Export tips with calligraconverter

My LGM 2013 :

A lot of cool people will be around . Here are the talk I 'll follow in priority :

-Thu11   ( 17h30-18h10 Auditorium ) Krita Foundation with Boudewijn Rempt, "Krita Sketch" with Timothée Giet
        ( 18h20-18h40 Auditorium ) Display Calibration with Richard Hughes
          ( 19h00-19h20 Auditorium ) G'MIC with David Tschumperlé
      ( 19h40-20h00 Auditorium ) Save/Export talk with the Gimp team

- Fri12     ( 14h30-16h30 RoomC ) My workshop about painting with Krita :-)

- Sat13    ( 12h20-12h40 Auditorium ) Animation with Blender - Jakub Steiner
                 ( 12h40-13h00 Auditorium ) MyPaint dev with Jon Nordby
                 ( note : also Martin Renold, and Andrew Chadwick around LGM , so 95% of Mypaint's source code author )
                 ( 13:30~~    Auditorium ) Closing discution

Also, here are 2 workshop I'll not attend, but really recommend :
- Wed10    ( 14h30-16h30 RoomA ) Konstantin Dmitriev , Workshop about character animation with Synfig
- Thu11     ( 14h30-16h30 RoomD ) 'Krita Sketch' workshop Timothée Giet

For the full program, have a look here

5 mirrored speedpainting portraits

David REVOY — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:06:00 +0100

( click to pictures to enlarge )

Training and relaxing speedpainting time with the Mirror feature of Krita , and doing a bit of brush creation on the way.

The Art of Illustration | Off Book | PBS

David REVOY — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:07:00 +0100

My illustration "Fantasy Landscape" and "All 4 seasons " get featured on this cool documentary , The Art of Illustration | Off Book | PBS , Produced by Kornhaber Brown: http://www.kornhaberbrown.com . ( they appear around 1:30 and 1:40 )

( Thanks to the comment of jaforcon to notify me about it )

Heroes from the Past: Joan of Arc, Green Sauce Games

David REVOY — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 14:01:00 +0100

Heroes from the Past: Joan of Arc is a puzzles/match 3 game produced by Green Sauce Games.

My work in this project was mainly to produce some of the games backgrounds for levels ( night and day version ) , startup screens ( Joan with the flag ) and a cinematic with still picture as a game intro. The game contain epic landscapes with high colors and details, castles and waterfalls with various ambiants.

I used the same technic as I did on the previous video game with the team : Dreams of a Geisha ( blog post with makingof step ). A lot of other Gfx you can see on the video ( as the village construction, icons , Fx and game GUI ) were done by other talentuous artists. You can find their name in the credit of the game or by contacting Green Sauce Games .

The game is actually ready to download on Big Fish here for Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows and Mac.
The Big Fish page also contain another video presentation with other artworks.

Note : it's a real pleasure to see it ranked number 1 on BigFish.
Congrats to the Green Sauce Games team for the success !