Categories
Design Urban papercraft

Grizza – a SIZZA custom

I while back I created a custom for SIZZA and I called it GRIZZA.

Why I never posted about it on my blog (well I didn’t like the photos I took of it 😉 ), I don’t know… But I did mention it on
Nice Paper Toys so you can find some photo’s and comments there.

I created a promotional poster for Grizza:
Grizza a SIZZA custom by Matthijs C. Kamstra aka [mck]

And few days back Nick posted a download link for GRIZZA, and today he send me an update: 100+ downloads! 🙂 Which seems to be a lot in a short time.
Perhaps it helps that papercraftparadise also wrote about it…

For all the people who wants to download GRIZZA visit the blog of Nick Knite the home of SIZZA

Do you want to know more about SIZZA or Nick Knite, read my post or visit Nick’s site.

Update #1 (Monday 9 June 2008 ): I can’t help myself: I know this is not a contest, but I have beaten Dino-Sizza and Artdenka-design in number of downloads…. Next one in line is NiceBunny (181 downloads)
Update #2 (Wednesday 11 June 2008 ): 😉 I know: I’m a sad little man, NiceBunny is passed and Lil’ SIZZA is next (209 downloads). But way think small (it just another 3 downloads) so next one in line is SIZZA – Project Detonate Custom (currently 276) ….. 🙂 Nick mentioned that the numbers of visitors have increased! Thx for downloading this custom!
Update #3 (Monday 16 June 2008 ): Currently Grizza is downloaded 309 times 😀 …. I have passed SIZZA – Project Detonate Custom. And now it’s time for the big guns: GHOST SIZZA from Matt Hawkins (325 download) and SIZZA – Marshall Alexander custom (416 download). I guess that it will difficult to beat 400+ series, but time will tell. Thx once again for downloading this custom this much!
Update #4 (Monday 7 July 2008 ): Currently Grizza is downloaded 511 times 😀 …. I asked Nick if there is something to beat any more… It’s the design made by Team Steven (568 downloads) which is more then 1 year online and the original SIZZA.
Categories
Flash WordPress Plugin

ActionScript syntax highlighting

I wanted an easy way to present my ActionScript code on my blog.

The easiest way is to use the code button in WordPress and CSS.
I’ve used this in combination with the pre tag
But that’s doesn’t show nice code highlighting or line numbers…

Syntax highlighting is a feature of some text editors that displays text “especially source code” in different colors and fonts according to the category of terms.

I found out that there are two (probably more, but these two are the ones I tested) methods:
code highlighting server sided (PHP) or client sided (javascript)

Server sided

The first WordPress highlight plugin is: iG:Syntax Hiliter which is based upon GeSHi.

GeSHi – Generic Syntax Highlighter for PHP. Used to highlight almost any code for the web. Nearly 100 supported languages: PHP, HTML, C and more. Styles can be changed on the fly and CSS classes can be used to reduce the amount of XHTML compliant output.

Because the code highlighting is done on the server it’s really quick.
The install was very easy and it’s very easy to use: [as] place your code here [/as] (this is the code you use for ActionScript, read the manual included in the zip for other languages)

Pro: serversided so the code highlighting is done almost at once, a lot of programming languages that can be highlighted, easy to use in WordPress
Con: extra pressure on the server?, no copy to clipboard, not sure how up-to-date the plugin is (it works very good, but the last post about the plugin is from 2006, although the writer of the plugin replies to recent comments), I’m not very fond of the default CSS (but that can be modified). no button in the WordPress wysiwyg/html editor

Client sided

The second plugin is: syntaxhighlighter written by Erik Range, this plugin is based upon dp.SyntaxHighlighter from Alex Gorbatchev.

The plugin that I installed is removed, but there is a new one:http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/syntaxhighlighter/. This one is in the WordPress plugin directory, so it’s easy to install. I haven’t tested this one

syntaxhighlighter

SyntaxHighlighter is here to help a developer/coder to post code snippets online with ease and have it look pretty. It’s 100% Java Script based and it doesn’t care what you have on your server.

Because the code highlighting is done client sided, you will see some ‘flickering’, and change of appearances of the code block.
Default the dp.SyntaxHighlighter doesn’t include ActionScript so I had to add that to it (digitalflipbook wrote the javascript file so I only had to add it), change the WordPress plugin (it didn’t have ActionScript either ), update the WordPress Plugin to version 1.5.1 of dp.SyntaxHighlighter and fix the copy to clipboard function….

Pro: no extra pressure on the server, copy to clipboard, it looks nicer, posible to add just one language instead of all,
Con: no default ActionScript, view code in popup, no button in the WordPress wysiwyg/html editor

My choice

Both have there strong points and there weaknesses, but I choose iG:Syntax Hiliter because of it has included ActionScript default, and the processing of the code highlighting is done on the server side.

Update #1: For some reason iG:Syntax Hiliter changes the < code>-tag to a highlighted code block with the programming language code (never heard of that programming language 😉 ) but more strangely: to something unreadable… I always test all the plugins I want to use on a WordPress blog installed on a usb-webserver and the plugin works fine there, probably the plugins I have installed on my ‘live’ blog don’t play nice with each other. I don’t have the time to find out who they are, so I used syntaxhighlighter.
There is no reason you shouldn’t use iG:Syntax Hiliter: it works fine with WordPress 2.5, it just doesn’t on my blog. 🙁

[as]
function test ():void {
trace (‘test’);
}
[/as]

Categories
Design Flash Open source / Freeware

Print 2 PDF

I have been using this for some time now: sometimes you need to export something generated in Flash to a (vector) file. Another name for this post could be: Flash2PDF, Flash to PDF, SWF2PDF, SWF to PDF, Export2PDF, Export to PDF….. you catch my drift 🙂
And the solution is very simple: just print a .PDF!

What is PDF?

Portable Document Format (PDF) lets you capture and view robust information—from any application, on any computer system.

from the creators: Adobe

Read the explanation from wikipedia

How does it work?

Windows
You need to download (and install) a program: PDFCreator. PDFCreator is opensource: which means a lot, but the only thing you need to know for now is that it’s free.

PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application.

After you install it, you can print PDF files from every program: print a document, choose the printer with the name “PDF Creator” and print.
Print screen PDF Creator

Mac OSX
Apple doesn’t need a special program for that; it’s already build in: read more about that here
(can’t tell you much about Mac… I own one, but it’s old so I don’t work on it anymore)

Categories
Drukk Urban papercraft

Meet my new papertoy: drukk

By accident (I was creating a custom for another paper toy designer) I created a new papertoy.
This is the first time I create a real toy.

It’s called drukk and its still a papertoy in progress (WIP), but here you have an example made in Google Sketchup:
drukk: new papertoy by Matthijs Kamstra aka [mck]

Because it’s not a ‘static’ toy (you could call it a paper automata) I also created a promotional video:

Soon I will post more about drukk

Categories
AS3 Custmm Grumm Grumm Urban papercraft

Custmm Grumm – Selection tool

Custmm Grumm is a project that I will be working on in my spare time.
I will try to build a online tool for creating custom skins and modifying a Grumm.
It’s will be created in Flash (AS3).

The first research I did is selection, and how it works with shapes.
What it does:

  • select an item with one click
  • select an item by dragging (mouse down, mouse up)
  • select multiple items with dragging

What it doesn’t do:

  • shift add a selected item to the current selected items
  • shift click/drag deselect items

A direct link to the file: selectionTool v01

Categories
AS3 Custmm Grumm Grumm Urban papercraft

Custmm Grumm – The project

This will be my most ambitious project in my spare time: Custmm Grumm!

Custmm Grumm

What is Custmm Grumm?

When I created Grumm, I had no plans with the moody fellow. But after I got invited to participate in a book about papertoys I started to think about the future of papertoys (and Grumm).

Two of those thoughts about the future is the base of this project: you should be able to modify/create a papermodel without expensive software or specialized knowledge.

Papertoys are, more then vinyl toys, difficult to customize. You need knowledge of image or vector programs link Photoshop or Illustrator. Besides the knowledge of these programs, you also need the program them selfs, which is not cheap. Another bump in customizing is the flat version of the model: the simple papertoys are not that difficult to understand, but the more complex models with more parts, it’s difficult to know which part goes where and how it will look.
It would be nice that you could create a custom skin and modify the model yourself.

Creating a custom skin for a model is done before: papercritters but modifying the model to isn’t.

I will try to make Custmm Grumm in Flash (AS3) so that it’s possible to create a custom skin and modify the model (with some restrictions of course)…

I had a discussion about this project on Nice Paper Toys if you want to know some more about the rocky start of this project.

Categories
AS3

AS2 to AS3: get all objects in a movieclip

Sometimes you want a list of everything inside a movieclip. For example: you want to know the instance names of every movie in the root.

ActionScript 2

A little trick that I used a lot in AS2 is:

for(var i in _root){
   trace('key: ' + i + ', value: ' + _root[i]);
}

or 

for(var i in target_mc){
   trace('key: ' + i + ', value: ' + target_mc[i]);
}

to find out which movies are in target_mc

It was not only a trick to trace everything, I also used it to reset movieclips (place them outside the stage, or delete them) or quickly make buttons out of them:

for(var i in target_mc){
	target_mc[i].id = i;
	target_mc[i].onRelease = function (){
		trace ("id = " + this.id); // onRelease the id will be called (the name of the movie)
	};
}

ActionScript 3

But in AS3 this doesn’t work any more!
And I know: AS3 should make my life easier…. well if I see the solution to the problem created by AS3, I have to disagree!

for (var i:uint = 0; i < target_mc.numChildren; i++){
	trace ('\t|\t ' +i+'.\t name:' + target_mc.getChildAt(i).name + '\t type:' + typeof (target_mc.getChildAt(i))+ '\t' + target_mc.getChildAt(i));
}

In AS3 you first have to get the "number of children" (numChildren) in a DisplayObjectContainer, then you have to say which child you want (getChildAt(i))...
A good thing about AS3 is, you get everything in a movieClip, even shapes you made there without a instance name.

I'm glad that I work with FlashDevelop, which has snippets so I don't have to type this constantly!

(For the people that use FlashDevelop too, here is my snippet:)

// $(Clipboard)is a DisplayObject
trace ('+ number of DisplayObject: ' + $(Clipboard).numChildren + '  --------------------------------');
for (var i:uint = 0; i < $(Clipboard).numChildren; i++){
	trace ('\t|\t ' +i+'.\t name:' + $(Clipboard).getChildAt(i).name + '\t type:' + typeof ($(Clipboard).getChildAt(i))+ '\t' + $(Clipboard).getChildAt(i));
}
trace ('\t+ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------');
Categories
Design Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft: Macula

Another artist in the PaperToy book created by Matt Hawkins is Macula

Macula = Christopher Bonnette and he has a fascination for mythology and folklore.
Inspired by these myths/folklore, he create some paintings:
Krampus Painting

But he created not only paintings but also a paperToy series named: Squealer
This model is called Krampus:
Krampus

There are different kind of skins:

KrampusKrampusKrampusKrampus

(you can’t click on these images and download: visit the site yourself)

But has created some other models to:

tikiboxyeti

You can see the complete Squealer series in the Squealer gallery (of view Krampus directly).

And there is also a blank version to customize:
squealer

Just visit the site and click on the blank squealer, or follow this link.
There are also some building instruction.

Categories
Design Urban papercraft

Grim Grinning Grunt – a HedKase custom part 2

Update #1: There is also a review of this model on paperkraft.blogspot.com go check it out!

A little update after my last post about Grim Grinning Grunt.
a [mck] custom

You can now download the custom hedKase on the site of NiceBunny!
And with a little help from yours truly it’s now possible to link directly to a specific model: so to view my custom HedKase: Grim Grinning Grunt download the model and enjoy!

NiceBunny site

Categories
Design Urban papercraft

Grim Grinning Grunt – a HedKase custom

Update #1: Grim Grinning Grunt can now be downloaded on the website of NiceBunny

This is a first for me: I finished a custom design!

I have a very bad habit of starting something, but never finishing it… I think I have about 6 custom toy designs (from different designers) laying around that need just a little attention and then they’re done.

Without knowing it, NiceBunny made me realize that when someone does me a favor (i.e. create a custom Grumm) I will return that favor…
In this case I created a custom HedKase created by NiceBunny.

And what fun I had doing that:

Grim Grinning Grunt

and I call him/it Grim Grinning Grunt

It’s possible that you don’t recognize the original HedKaseHedKase….

I modified it a little 🙂

This is my way of saying: thx NiceBunny for a great Grumm Custom and I hope you enjoy Grim Grinning Grunt