Creating a New Yorker Cover On the iPhone 226
Jaime Leifer writes "The cover of the June 1, 2009, issue of The New Yorker, entitled 'Finger Painting,' was drawn by Jorge Colombo entirely on his iPhone — a first for the magazine. Colombo, a New York-based artist and illustrator, uses the iPhone's Brushes application to vibrantly depict New York street scenes." There's a video recapitulating the creation of the piece, omitting all of the undos.
Re:Kinda Cool (Score:2, Interesting)
This is kinda cool. Not so much that it was an iPhone, but that it was a handheld device. How much longer until these phones replace a laptop for most of our day-to-day computing?
Much of the appeal of a laptop is the screen real estate. You can use your iPhone as a laptop, and you can can use your laptop as a phone, but seriously. Use the proper tool for the proper job.
iPhone Has No Pressure Sensitivity? (Score:4, Interesting)
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think one important issue with the capacitative screen as used in Apple's phone is that while it does support multitouch, it does not support different pressure levels corresponding to force applied against the screen? To get pressure sensitivity similar to a Wacom-style pad, you'd need to be using a Palm/WinMo handheld which, with resistive screens, can support different pressures applied by finger or stylus. Is this correct? If so, then it's remarkable that he managed to produce quite a nice cartoon given the limitations of the device he was using. But you have to wonder how much more efficient a similar artist could be with a more artist-friendly approach. I assume that this brushes application lets you create a swipe, then click it afterwards to increase or decrease the transparency/strength/brush effects. That's got to be a lot less intuitive than just pressing your finger/stylus more or less to get the same effect. In effect, a single gesture dimensioned using pressure has been elongated into a mutli-step gesture dimensioned with serial, semantic twiddling.
Re:Kinda Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
For a lot of what I do it already has. I am always up to date on reading my email and much faster on sending high priority replies. For low priority replies I still wait until I have a proper keyboard in front of me. When I'm lunching by myself I do a lot of surfing on the phone including slashdot. When laying on the couch, the screen navigation features are good enough that if I have a quick surfing need, I'll just pull out the phone rather than walk to my computer.
It's not a complete replacement, but it's way more of a replacement than I imagined it would be with such a tiny screen and no keyboard.
Sheldon
Re:Cool! (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that I'm reading Slashdot from an iPod touch, from my deck, while grilling, I'd say they already have. The only trick here is that they have gotten a lot, lot cheaper than your average, non-netbook laptop. If you can't beat them with horsepower and features, you will always get them by being the cheapest ride in town.
Working with more natural subjects (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what's the news? Something subtle. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've used the brushes app before. This was not edited outside of the iPhone. That application really does a good job simulating paint and brushes. And yes, you can do this with a WinMo device. The difference is the interface of this application, the accuracy of a capacitive screen, and the multitouch make the combination of this app and this phone seem natural. Zooming in and out is effortless by pinching in and out. And the speed and sensitivity is perfect. I have used paint applications on my Winmo, and they don't feel very natural. Doing multiple strokes with textured brushes with transparency set on a winmo device doesn't feel very good ... not as fluid.
Re:I know it's unfashionable... (Score:3, Interesting)
Coincidentally, Chase Jarvis commented on the New Yorker's cover in his blog yesterday:
http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/ [chasejarvis.com]