It has been about a year since I read Chris Noessel's article on one free interaction and was immediately filled with an excited tingle-y feeling. You know the one ... it's usually reserved for when you find an extra $10 bucks or when you're the guy to remember a song title that's eluding everyone else. It's actually the same feeling I got my first time reading William Lidwell's amazing Universal Principles of Design. He was ...

I had intended on posting about all of the features I am excited for in the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 software update (of which there are many), but Apple did a nice job of spoiling that with ...

More reminders of their continued belief that the HTML5 markup language is a direct equivalent to and a capable replacement for Flash, Flex and AIR ... where it definitely is not.
A re-written development agreement that not only restricts ...

You may have missed the announcement a few weeks ago, but one of my favorite games, Plants vs. Zombies, from one of my favorite Mac game developers, Pop Cap, has just spouted up on the iPhone. Now you can continue to quell some beautifully illustrated zombie madness on the go!

I know Jodie didn't install this on her iPhone, for fear of losing her life to it ... but I had no such qualms. Parcelling out ...

Since I didn't have a Wacom tablet around, my daily person drawing (and coincidentally my Illustration Friday entry) was done in the great Brushes iPhone app.

Rocky Ricardo from Oscar Cortez on Vimeo.

Here is another piece done in the wonderful Brushes iPhone app, on the way to Cocoa Beach. I didn't have any specific inspiration for it, but did think about that scripture in Mark:

The Parable of the Sower
Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all ...

Pretty much anytime Mel and I start talking about anything Yeti, I have to draw it. It's like I have this Himalayan fever and the only cure is letting it out with pencil, pen or Wacom stylus.

For this piece I did my typical pencil drawing, covered over with felt-tip marker and then digitized with the normal "Brush" tool in Illustrator ... but once I got to that point, I wasn't entirely happy with it. So ...

Apple just released the newest installment of iPhone software sweetness ... Three dot O! If you haven't already, head over the iPhone website or open up iTunes and get it. During the install my phone needed a quick restore, so I had to learn how to put it in recovery mode ... good to know, for sure.

Also, since I always forget, here is a link on how remove the photo-blue lines from a digital scan. ...

Gilbert Grape from Oscar Cortez on Vimeo. You can view the high-res version of the final piece here.Yesterday was such a great day … enjoyed a yummy lunch with Courtney and Jodie, fell asleep on some soft couches in IKEA and got to hang out with a bunch of old (and new!) friends, including Nathan G., Eddie, Rosie and Sarah. I drew this guy over dinner at Chick-fil-A … again, using the sweet, sweet Brushes iPhone ...

Here is my vector entry for this friday’s Illustration Friday theme of “subtract”.We were talking a bit about division and algebra in the DFP class the other night, so I had math on the brain … apparently.I even sized it to a perfect 320 by 480 pixels for your iPhone usage. Enjoy.

Tuesday was a really easy-going, since our DFP (Deployment of Flash Projects) students had already finished their work and were just presenting their projects. We discussed some of the cool things that the Happy Cog guys are doing with the Redesign Mozilla.org campaign and how important it is to not only be able to defend design choices, but also be able to offer an intelligent and informed exposition on them.After the students presented their projects, ...

Squiddy McSquiderson from Oscar Cortez on Vimeo. You can view the high-res version of the final piece here.

Jodie and I enjoyed hearing Aaron Welch speak at church today, about the Crisis of belief and how we need to respond to such a crisis. Afterwards, a whole bunch of us went out to celebrate one last Sunday with Melissa Reyes before her several month trip to Australia. The plan was to eat at Pei Wei, but the restaurant being so crazy busy led us to enjoying our delicious food elsewhere … take-out style ...

I’ve been seeing all these really nifty iPhone stands lately and not wanting to spend any real money on them, I decided to go the home-brew route and make my own out of LEGOs. Four hours later I found myself in the living room surrounded by pieces and no recollection of what I had been doing prior to the happy fun LEGO time.Although it is not as sleek and branded as some of the alternatives, ...

Finding out that the DFP course isn’t starting until February left me with some extra time to have fun last night, so I rolled up my sleeves and dug into some new Mario Kart cups (I am so loving how Nintendo has added so many of the DS, GameCube and N64 maps into this new version … love it!).Despite how much I have tried to stick with just using the fancy new Wii Wheel, with ...

All the work I have been putting into tracking my daily calorie intake (using the fantastic and free Lose It iPhone app) seems somewhat muddled at times by the mechanical floor scale I have been using. Sure, it is usually only about 3 pounds off, but when trying to be daily encouraged (despite the slow process of losing weight), being able to track down to the ounce is exciting indeed.FYI, Target had a nice $20 ...

As much as I would like the iPhone to have a better CCD, some kind of flash or even a way to focus the lens (gah!), it still has been one of the most convenient cameras to have around.Where normally I wouldn’t be able to take some of the spur of the moment shots I like without looking like a big camera tot’ing nerd, I’ve always got my iPhone with me and now, thanks to ...

I am a little late to the game on this, but recently I was creating an iPhone screen optimized version of a site for my personal usage and thought I would share some of my findings.

The InitialThough Apple recommends through the expansive information in its iPhone Developer Connection to implement CSS3 conditional statements to effectively achieve alternate style-sheets for personal computers and for the iPhone, I wasn’t satisfied with the resulting functionality. Yes, it did ...

IF : Foggy (uploaded by DRA Studio)It is currently 7:00 am the following day, and I am still hyped up on the rush that is iPhone 3G. My class ran for close to the entire 8 hours, so we (Jodie and I) didn’t get to the Apple Store at Millenia until around 6:30pm. Luckily, Courtney was holding spots for us.Four or so hours later, we had Chris the Apple Genius help us purchase and set up ...

Day 2008-1-1 (uploaded by DRA Studio)Day #26 – It’s a new year and here are some new lines. Enjoy the goodness and the fun. I seem to have run out of pages in my sketchbook, so time to set that one aside and find a new one to fill.And if you haven’t already looked at the last couple of posts, go ahead. Tonight was nice and lazy and I managed to ink and scan all ...