Month: May 2008

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.