Dallas Mavericks Jersey Contribution

Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks has Crowd Sourced a Team Jersey design for his Basketball Teams 2015/16 Jersey. I have submitted a design, and even re branded a logo design that can be seen at http://www.facebook.com/digexart. The Jersey was designed with the Adidas Climacool, and Formation technology in mind. Take a look at the details. I had to stop short with the design, The pro bono work I do is for charity, non profit and the like. There are a lot of comments, complaints regarding the type of request The Dallas billionaire has requested. http://blogmaverick.com/2013/05/13/help-the-mavs-design-our-next-uniform/#comment-81607 Check it out here. Sign up and 'like' my contribution.

Digexart Custom Cartoons Animation and Software

I will be doing a review of my favorite current versions of web animation software tools as I complete several animation projects over the coming spring and summer months in 2013. I'll be using Flash, Javascript's jQuery framework, Toon Boom, Anime Studio, Sketchbook Pro, Pencil , Crazy Talk Animator, and some 3D software like Cinema 4D, and Strata 3D I look forward to completing my animation work this spring. Most will be converted using Final Cut Pro, and some will remain Flash files without the dreaded embed tag, I have a new trick for placing flash files into html since the practice had been deprecated.

Here is an old Live at the BBQ Logo hand drawn

Converting the Illustration to Animation with an arsenal of powerful tools will be my objective to give a good assessment of each of the tools ability to work with traditional drawing skill, Adobe CS3, and advanced authoring techniques

Live at the BBQ animated Logo created in Flash

Lady Soul Logo

Flash CS6 was a pitiful attempt to appease Steve Jobs. All recent updates included features aimed towards "app developers" and mobile platforms, none of what have any use for people who use Flash as an animation tool. What is needed is a UI upgrades, since Illustrator/Photoshop now have adjustable UI colours and upgrades as well.

Li'l Fox Trott hand drawn, coloured and animated in Flash

The stage is still limited to 2k by 2k, and no thumbnails in the library. There is no 64 bit support and no more available memory. If you are using Flash for animation, use CS3 - CS5, or look to CS6.5 for updates... More to come.

Photoshop & Illustrator: Adobe CS6

Yemeni Art by Demuth Flake: Drawn and painted using TheWacom Cintiq The Wacom Cintiq 12WX is a 12.1″ TFT wide-screen LCD in WXGA resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. Wacom currently offers Cintiq pen displays in three sizes–the small 12WX, which I used for this artwork, the 20WSX in wide-screen ratio, and the 21UX in standard 4:3 ratio. The larger Cintiq displays don’t require a converter box, making for a more elegant cable solution. A converter box was used with the 12WX in order to keep it thin and light. I have to admit, even though the converter box is small, it is quite cumbersome when you look toward the future ie: Tablet technology.
The Dopest Ethiopian Queen of Sheba
The Cintiq pen display is compatible with Macintosh and Windows and works in any software, taking advantage of any pressure and tilt capabilities built into the software. For my review, I worked with the Cintiq in ArtRage, Painter, Painter Essentials, and Photoshop. It comes with SketchBook Pro, Painter Essentials and Photoshop Elements.

The Hair Gypsy

Sneak peak at sketches for Kelly ann Araujo's Logo. Profile style 1 Profile style 2

An Artists Revelation

This painting was started in 2000. It was painted using Acrylic, on a 5' x 3'9" Canvass. The reason for this painting was to paint a modern biblical theme. I had an idea that a classical paining like those of the old masters like michael angelo and Degas could be reintroduced not as contemporary, but as a new expression of Fine art. A new form of art exists, and i believe God does powerful things. Something interesting happened to me as i developed this painting. There were more than 20 versions, with each one I had used a dramatically different approach, eventually, the art was destroyed. What drives an artist to destroy something they spent time and energy on to create? Hatred? Self-disgust? Embarassment? Fear of how it might be interpreted or misinterpreted? Let me tell you how I did it.

I was put on to painting something that was potentially positively divyn. The initial idea was based upon the Scriptures Revelation 12: 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days. Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon,and the dragon and his angels fought back. But was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan Shaitan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him... Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring — those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus. Between the first and twenty first versions later, the expression started out in the scriptures, and near the end 4-5 years later, it became about the expression itself. In other words, it became an idol and I felt strongly about it's lingering presence. I realized it was no longer about God, and the original idea to create something to honor those who keep God's commands, but became all about me, my style, my ability, me, me, me. It was destructive to worship this idea of me, and ignore God. I learned, that a humble person can't be humiliated. I show this art today to say that Action and Faith go hand in hand, and I am a student mastering both.

Digexart Creative Inc Partners with LBC Group Network Worldwide

Using the MASS media Mobile Marketing System LBC - LOCAL BUSINESS CONSULTANTS LBC is a full service digital agency with services that include DIGITAL STRATEGY, WEBSITE DESIGN, GOOGLE ADWORDS, GOOGLE ANALYTICS, EMAIL MARKETING, EMAIL DEPLOYMENT AND ADVANCED SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING. Change and transition are the keywords of business today. The team at LBC utilizes many channels in the digital sphere to encourage engagement and conversation with customers and prospects. LBC is providing various types of information, special events, important industry news, trends and insights, as well as timely offers to our clients, friends and followers. We'd be appreciative of the opportunity to stay in touch and share this information with you. LBC Cellular Partners LBC cellular network partners cover virtually 100% of the Canadian population. As of June 2012, our CAN cellular partners are:

• Mobilicity
• Telus Mobility
• Rogers Wireless
• Bell Mobility
• Fido Solutions
• Virgin Mobile Canada
• Wind Mobile
• Public Mobile
• Videotron Mobile
• MTS Mobility
• SaskTel Mobility

MASS Mobile Applications System Specialists. Here are some Marketing Ideas:

• On mornings when the appointment book is light/ Business is slow, send out a message with a special and watch how many customers call in.
• Hold a Contest, let random patrons win free salon service if they send a text.
• Send reminders to customers when they are due to come in If you can get them in a week earlier than normal, you will increase the number of visits per year!
• Send a Coupon, "10% off" on a particular day, or of certain products.
• Put your keyword in your print & radio ads. Make them interactive!
• Custom API, let our programmers develop something specific to your business.
• Anything you can think of, the possibilities are endless! We have complex systems and apps ready for depoyment. Let us take you there

mySEO Tricks, Tips and other Nice things

I am currently upgrading and updating content at www.digexart.com. I always knew various Search Engine techniques, and really never applied it to my own projects. It really came as a surprise to me when people came looking for the proof of my SEO abilities, and that they did not believe I had the ability to control the ranking of sites by manipulating element, links and tags in an html page. I really did not think about it! As a Graphic Designer, and Theme Designer, I also program, mostly front end scripting and some back end programming with mySQL and PHP. I have learned some techniques, tricks and friendly hacks that will not confuse the spiders logic and make the Search Engine Giants like Yahoo and Google mad.

The Number one thing that I learned about SEO is to read, especially older reference books like Google - The Missing Manual on O'Reilly Press. This book was published in 2005, These books really were written when important tools were being developed. To help users take advantage of the tools, these books explained them very well. You really get the heart of the Search engines basics. These never change. They say Keep it simple for a reason, because it does not matter how much is piled on top of these cool new tools, the root basics remain the same. These basics are often forgotten, then hidden so we are dazed and glossed over by this fancy stuff built up on the basics.

For Example


The Problem: an 'h1' tag and a page 'title' tag must be specific, or relative to one another. These two elements are the most important 'on-page' ranking factors there are. The Title tag becomes the 'headline' of the small portion of the page that shows in the search results. Using Content Management systems or programming languages that build dynamic page titles often use a code in the title that helps the system dynamically load custom pages. Google and other Search engines have their own logic for avoiding complicated Titles and URL's. Dynamic pages make web bots run from your pages. Dynamic pages that Search Engines may consider too hot to handle include those built with templating systems like ASP, PHP and JSP.

The Solution: Wordpress a Blog CMS written in PHP often has problems with dynamic page titles. Often generated code is unrecognizable to the Web crawlers. I wrote a script that can be downloaded here That will remove the issue of coded titles. This code snippet will dynamically generate a dynamic 'title' tag to improve your WordPress site’s SEO and should be placed in your WordPress site’s header.php replacing your existing 'title'. Here is a Check list of issues that you should go through to prepare your site for 100% optimization.

• Analytics
• Facebook sharing
• Printability
• Feeds
• Popularity
• Facebook page
• Incoming links
• Twitter sharing
• Duplicate content
• W3C compliance
• Headings
• URL format
• Alternative text
• Meta tags
• Images
• Links
• Page titles
• Inoffensive content
• Semantic HTML

There are a number of sites that will run a dignostic on your website, and send you a detailed report of the results. The report is often times a huge list of changes that must be made. Sometimes. Some of the criteria by which a search engine crawler determine high ranking on organic listing are:-

• Keywords
• Title tags
• Site content formatting
• Anchor text
• Site popularity
• Topical link
• Site language
• Content
• Site Maturity

Other than above, several hundred of other criteria that could also be examined before your site is ranked by search engine. By nature, many of the elements are likely to have some impact on your site ranking even when you do nothing to improve them. For some search engine, links are more important than site maturity and for other, links have little importance. Changing ranking algorithm is to make difficult for optimizers to execute the preplanned seo strategies. Getting regular web traffic for improving conversion for business, they have to compel to hire a dedicated optimizer and marketers for promoting their sites. Still primary source of web traffic is search engines and it is necessary to monitor the ranking and site traffic regularly for asses the seo effectiveness. SEO is an ongoing process and have to monitor and change the strategies time to time as per the changes of ranking algorithm.

Unique SEO provides result oriented freelance seo services, internet marketing, social media marketing services, search engine submission, article submission and marketing, Directory submission and Forum posting services.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Founder Alvin Ailey and Company performed this weekend at the Sony Center for the Performing Arts. Alvin Ailey’s 60's joint dedicated to black southern roots "Revalations", closed the Program on Saturday. Artistic Director Robert Battle found the right balance with principal dancer Rachael McLaren. Rachael, you're Awesome!

I attended the show on Saturday at 2pm and it was brilliant. The best parts of the show were "Home", "The Hunt", and "Revelations". Perhaps Battle’s most interesting commission is Home, by hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris. It’s inspired by the "Fight HIV your way" initiative.
The Hunt, a thrilling dance for six men propelled by the powerful drums of Les Tambours du Bronx. I don't have a clue what it meant, but I was captivated by the entire experience.

Well Rachael, you and the crew are inspiring a new generation, some of which may be in New York under scholarship in the Alvin Ailey Program as you were. It was very special, but Like I said, I don't know what the meaning is for most of the show excluding the Revelations, I know exactly what that's all about, but the beauty of the first four sets overshadow the interpretations that I drew upon. Anyway, I was very happy to see you afterwards, unfortunately we could not spend a lot of time together. All the best in DC. I will let southern family know you'll be in Atlanta February 14th.

Inspired by the show, I am now working on a new series of paintings based upon the shows in Toronto. I will update this blog as I complete the paintings.

Me and Rachael, The Best dancer I've ever seen in my life.

Making Fresh Logos Daily!

Here are examples of logos that have been created by Digexart. We are professional Graphic Designers with over 20+ years experience. What you get at Digexart Creative Inc., is a custom drafted logo specific to your marketing needs. This is what sets us apart from these $99 dollar crowd sourcing sites that guarantee you a logo. There are up to 40 designers that work for free and only one is rewarded in the end. No Crowd sourcing or spec work here. Keep in mind that Spec work is done by inexperienced designers hoping to build their portfolio, and many believe spec work is a necessary evil for all starting designers to prove themselves. The rise of the design community has also been met with the rise of the ‘weasel economics’ of spec work. Now that we have identified it as an evil and seen the destructive manner, we can identify how the creative community is fighting back.

For the few people out there who don’t know what ‘spec’ work is – I’ll try to sum up: it’s when a designer creates artwork for a paying project in the hopes of having their artwork selected, in order to get paid for that work. Think design contest as opposed to, oh, I dunno, a professional trade. Design organizations like AIGA (USA) and RGD (CAN) have generally frowned upon ‘spec work’ as being ‘unethical’ and have campaigned against the practice for years. Members are encouraged not to engage in spec work as part of the regulated standards in the industry. While I have a hard time branding designers who participate as ‘unethical’ – shortsighted perhaps, but many have their reasons and motivating factors – I have absolutely no qualms about describing people who try to profit from the ‘spec’ work of others as ethically challenged.

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