Got a bunch of shit to scan. Um.

Harmony

Dicking around making things that look like things i saw on the internet

Last year I got an iPhone, and dreamed of all of the wonderful things that I, as an illustrator, would be able to do with it. For one the screen is kind of small, the file system is locked off which makes loading reference pictures onto it a nightmare, and I could just NEVER FIND the apps that would let me use it as I dreamed.  More recently I've got an android tablet.  Much better for actually viewing reference with it's larger screen and ability to load and sort my library, and I'm currently in the process of uploading my reference library onto it. But I still have yet to find the apps that would really take advantage of carrying a touch screen library in my pocket. Here's what I want in a touchy beast:

3D Poser
a simple interactive human-anatomy 3D poser.

* few different drag&drop light sources preferably.
* The figures don't need to be infinitely customizable, just having male/female/child models to select would be fine.
* Options to choose between a simple untextured skin, musculature (even a fake skin of approximately where the muscles would be) and a human skeleton.
* Possibly also detail rigs of hands and feet.
* would be nice to upload any 3D studio max/cinema 4D rig you like!
*Not nessessary for it to need to modify the rigs, capture animation, or render at all (although saving snapshots would be nice.) Just needs a simple interface to interact with the rig... maybe to toggle between and editing screen where one can pose the rig and set the lights, and a viewing screen where one can zoom and rotate camera around the rig.

I am imagining this app as a lighting/posing reference for drawing.

Font Viewer
A few crappy font viewers exist, at least for iPhone, but none that do exactly what I want.

* for each search, entering a phrase that is SAVED so every font you view displays itself with that phrase displayed.
* saved searches. especially several saved searched within each phrase so you can go back and compare.  With the font name.  The ability to e-mail this reference list to your creative team would also be a huge plus.
* IDEALLY this app would search through my own font collection of OTF or TTF files, so, you know, I can make things using fonts that I already own.  would be cool to have it hooked up to an online database like DAfont or MyFonts, but since so many of these viewers already available are linked to individual type foundries and so tend to have crappy selection which makes them useless, I think it's waaay better to prioritize your own fonts.
* once you've got your phrase set, searching through the standard categories of fonts, serif, sans-serif, etc
* though preferably the font categories would also be customizable - I'm such a font nerd I tend to have catagories like vintage-1920, vintage-1970s, comic-dialog, comic-sfx, etc.

Image Library/Gallery Viewer
A zillion of these exist, but ALL that I've tried so far always focus so much more on looking through pictures you've taken with your phones camera and not with collected images for projects or reference

* for iphone, the ability to sort folders! selecting an image would fullscreen it, pinch to zoom, panning, etc, all that standard (you would think) jazz.  Press and hold results in a dialogue to email, SMS, all that sharing crap, or - what i've been missing most! - save/copy to another folder!
* folders! infinitely nesting is necessary! I need to be able to make both "project > blablabla > character_sketches > melinda" folder and a "type > full_alphabet > serif" folder.  And I want to copy a file from the first folder into the second in case Melinda is actually a font-based alien that I might want to use on another project someday.
* browsing as a wall of thumbnails. Back button to higher folder.
* swipe to view next image. (Localized to bottom of screen probably so it doesn't get mixed up with panning across zoomed image)
*  A browser bookmarklet to save images to sync with the program (either into an unsorted folder or allowing you to select what folder you want to save it to) would be great. Synced to dropbox then you can have the phone sync from dropbox when it's online.
* a web interface or drop box app to upload scans/whatever you make yourself and doesn't come from the internet or your phones camera!
* the ability to view PSD files would be soooo good.
* obviously searching phone for photos.

Smithsonian Natural History offline reference library

I have this book and it is amazing.  I would love to have an app that allows to to search or browse categories like this encyclopedia is formatted, with nice, hi-res images and those nice little descriptions.  button to google search for info on organisms would be nice. With bookmarking so I can go make and draw a picture of that hyena eating a cake later, maybe. Like everything else on this list, this is an app I would like to have for creative visual reference, but in this case also for learning fun.

In a non-Smithsonian variety, a plant/animal offline database with 3D turnarounds would be so, so excellent. Actually, if you guys are aware of ANY cool reference/art books that are published in beautiful, immersive format let me know.  I've got this cube of digital glory and all I want to use my 32 GIGS for is beautiful, beautiful pictures (and video because goddamn it we can MAKE books with video illustrations now, why don't we?!)   Especially if they have to do with looking at & learning about creepy fishes.  I just want to fill my brain up with beautiful objects when I'm on the streetcar, ok?

RT this list, comment on it if you'd also find these features amazing, and let me know if you find anything that has any similarities to anything on this list!

If you are an app designer who has any interest in collaborating on these projects please e-mail me. I've done some wireframes for a few of these and I've got a bit of a programming background but making these all by myself would be way over my head (especially since they all pretty much deal with reading different file formats..) I can't imagine that having apps like these available wouldn't help anyone but me and I'd love to be able to contribute to the making things/tech nerd community.

The illustrations for this article were originally done last year, and there were more of them - each one more clever than the last. But after several hard drive crashes and me generally being a slovenly woman, the only ones left are these, which I just scanned out of the Take Me Out of Context zine you may have seen me hawking around town. I know there was at least one more about my heart being broken. (There is always one more about my heart being broken.)

First actual set of prints pulled!  Just as the weather was getting a wee bit too cold. I can't wait for spring and more screen printy goodness. After all that rigamaroll, it's a good thing I enjoy it.

updating from tablet: needs work.

In zee studio! Still bumpy, but functional!

and: cold as tits.