Josh Sager Media: Creative Technologies Blog

This evening Refresh Pittsburgh is meeting up at the Creative Treehouse for their monthly meet up.

If you don’t know about Refresh Pittsburgh you should check it out. Picture this. Every month a bunch of amazing designers and developers get together to share secrets, techniques, and news about the industry. Admission is Free and it’s open to the public. Don’t be afraid stop by and learn something new.

I’m giving a presentation entitled “Rapid Design Techniques in Fireworks that make PhotoShop Jealous”, which is going to be a lot of fun! How do I know? I’m presenting of course : )

Val Head and Joe Kromer from the Pittsburgh Flash Users Group will be presenting “Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight. What are they and why should you care?” These are 2 of the top Flash talents in our area. I would totally pay to see them speak. Good thing we are friends.

It all starts at 7:00 pm so get there early to make sure you have a seat. Even though you’ll only need the edge!

I am currently at the 24 Hour Comic Challenge at the Creative Treehouse. I’m working on my script for the graphic novel “The Perception of Reality” that I blogged about earlier this week. This years event has about 10 participants and its a really good excuse to get some work done.

If you not doing anything stop by the treehouse and check it out.

This is what I did this weekend!!

Courtesy of specialspark

Courtesy of andablog

Courtesy of Josh Sager

Courtesy of andablog

Courtesy of Creative Treehouse

Courtesy of mbfulk

Courtesy of luvslilk

Courtesy of jen3701

Courtesy of Johnny Treehouse

Courtesy of luvslilk

Courtesy of Johnny Treehouse



Courtesy of mbfulk


Courtesy of Johnny Treehouse

Boy am I exhausted. But I had a great time!

For more pics check out the Creative Marathon 2 Flicker Stream

Come discuss, plan, and help organize the 2nd Creative Marathon.

The Creative Marathon is a 24 hour event where artists have 24 hours to create work, in any media, based on the theme of the event. All works created during the marathon will be viewed in a gallery show the very next day acompanied with live music and horderves. The first Creative Marathon featured 70 artists, and 150 guests at the show. It was a blast and I really look forward to planning and participating in the next one.

Right now the plan is have the marathon Sept28th and 29th.

Any questions can be sent directly Josh Sager, creative.marathon[at]gmail.com

Time: 12:30 PM , Sunday Sept. 2nd
Place: Creative Treehouse
517 Lincoln Ave. 2nd Floor
Bellevue, PA 15202

Once again Pittsburgh’s premiere punk rock art show will be at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue. As with any sequel it will feature more. More punk, more rawk, more art, and of course more doughnuts.

Rachel and I will be displaying all brand new work. Her theme of “Western Bizarro” will surly make you chuckle and my “Portrait Studies” should make you say hey I know that guy. But you don’t have to say hey if you don’t want to.

Where: Creative Treehouse in Bellevue
When: 6PM
Website: doughnutsandart.com

Featured Artists:
Matt Gondek
Jeremy Shank
Jason Mosley
Debris Magazine
John Bodnar
Ruth Allen
Jeremy Murray
Rick Byerly
Marty Smyczek
Rob Larson
Rogo
John Wamsley
Sarah Anne Mayer
Eric Luden
Experibreed
Katie Simmons
Josh Sager
Jay Michael Del Greco
Rachel Arnold Sager

Tonight is a double dipper with part 3 and 4 of the “ActionScript: Things I almost forgot” series. Part 3 deals with creating and modifying text boxes with ActionScript. Part 4 loads external files such as .txt files into dynamically created text boxes. It should be a rock ‘em sock ‘em good time.

Details
ActionScript: Things I almost forgot Part 3
Creating Text Boxes with ActionScript

ActionScript: Things I almost forgot Part 4
Loading external content with ActionScript

Time: 7:30 PM
Place: Creative Treehouse

Tonight is the 1st Refresh Pittsburgh meeting at the Creative Treehouse! I will be giving a Presentation entitled Web Comics on the Internet: From Analog to Digital. After the meeting I will post my slides online for everyone to check out.

Web Comics on the Internet: From Analog to Digital
Learn more about web comic process from concept and Illustration to scanning and publishing. Leveraging technologies like MySQL, PHP, Blogger, XHTML, and CSS you can create a CMS to support your drawing, sketching, or art habit.

The meeting starts at 7:00 pm. Get there early to get a good seat.

Tonight continues with part 2 of 4 of the “ActionScript: Things I almost forgot” series. Tonight will be all about loading in external style sheets to control text formatting for Flash content. I will go over how to load, unload, change styles on the fly and dynamically output style names as well as values.

The last two sessions of “Shared Objects” and “10 Really Cool Flash Tips” have been recorded and cued up. I’ve got a few outstanding bandwidth and domain name issues to iron out before I can post them. But I am getting really close. Realistically Tutorial Tuesday should be online by mid August.

Once again Tutorial Tuesday will be at the always awesome venue of the Creative Treehouse. Bring your learning hat and I’ll bring the knowledge. We’ll get started at 7:30pm.

Tonight starts a 4 part series of “Actionscript: Things I almost forgot”. Leading off with Shared Objects, which are kind of like flash cookies. They are great for storing data on a local machine like high scores, os, and browser information for the next time a user launches your flash application.

Once again it will be at the Creative Treehouse

Last weeks “10 Really Cool Flash Tips” went really well and the video will be posted online very soon. I added the chapter cue points last night. I just have to iron out a some of the bandwidth issues and all will be good to go.

Tonight is the first installment of Tutorial Tuesday. Every Tuesday I will creating video tutorials about Web Design and Technology. I’m going to kick it off with a series of “Flash Tips and Tricks”. Neat things hidden within the Flash IDE. The next series is slated for “Actionscript: Things I almost forgot” which will be about commonly use ActionScript that is used often enough to be helpful but not frequent enough to remember the syntax.

If you would like to see the tutorials in action stop on by the Creative Treehouse Tuesdays at 7:30 PM. The tutorials are open for everyone and is free to the public. If you have an idea for a Tutorial I’d love to hear it. You can submit it as a comment or email me at sager379[at]gmail.com.