pencil

Despite its dated design, Toki LineTest HD for Mac easily creates early drafts of professional animators' work, and has all of the functions likely needed by these users.

The program offers a free trial version with a 60-frame limit. The full program costs $69.90. The download completed quickly over a high-speed connection. The installation folder contained readme, instructions, and license files in several languages, which was a nice feature. It was unclear if technical support was available, but the program started up without any problems. The instructions were a particularly useful feature since the main menu is not intuitive. … Read more

Maybe you've seen photos that have been edited to look "old" or like they were painted by an Impressionist, and thought, "I'd like to do that!" Major image editing tools like Photoshop apply filters to images to create such effects, but suppose you don't have a major image editing tool like Photoshop? And even if you do, do you have the time to learn how to create these effects? Maybe you should try FotoSketcher, a simple tool for applying all kinds of visual and drawing effects to your digital images. With a huge … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Facebook launches rewritten iOS app.

- One hundred year-old package opened today, results reportedly underwhelming.

- LL Cool J captures home intruder.

- LL Cool J brings the Boomdizzle to CES 2012.… Read more

In this age of keyboards and stylii, there's still something beautiful about a pencil. I'm talking about real wood pencils, the kind you have to sharpen.

If you're anything like me, you end up with drawer full of pencil stubs that need to be cleaned out periodically. Instead of tossing them in the trash, there is an alternative.

The Sprout pencil from Democratech is made with a Ticonderoga cedar body, but it has a seed inside a water-activated cap. Once it gets small, just turn it upside down, plant it, water it, and reap the benefits of growing your own herbs or heirloom tomatoes.… Read more

So you'd like to be able to illustrate your reports and documents with top-quality charts and diagrams. You've got MS Paint, or maybe something better. You open a new document and...yikes. It's not as easy as it looks, and you end up trying to draw straight lines with your mouse. Why not try creating diagrams in Pencil? This free, open-source diagramming and GUI prototyping tool has a huge range of stencils and preconfigured elements to drag and drop into an intuitive interface. Pencil works as a Firefox add-on or a standalone tool using XULRunner, which is … Read more

Paper Camera offers up a unique photography experience using a cute interface to produce simulated hand-drawn results, but you'll need to select your shots carefully. The interface looks like a camera made from paper (appropriately), with hand-drawn arrow buttons for switching effects; controls for contrast, brightness, and line weight on the right side; and a save button in the lower right. You have the choice of taking shots directly with your iPhone camera (showing the effect in real time) or selecting an image from your photo library.

Paper Camera is a neat concept, but in addition to requiring you … Read more

My Sketch makes your photos into hand-sketched artistic drawings in only a few easy steps. Upon launch you get the option to take a new photo or choose one from your iPhone photo library. Once selected, My Sketch immediately has you crop the image to your liking, either in portrait or landscape layouts. The next step is to choose a style, and My Sketch offers 20 different types of sketch styles, from long-line sketches to pastel styles. It takes a couple of moments, but once the high-res sketch is finished, you have a chance to apply some finishing touches with … Read more

I've been a fan of pen technology for a while now, so I was more than a little intrigued by Sharpie's recent introduction of the Liquid Pencil.

It's sort of a hybrid between pen and pencil (and I'm a fan of things that cross boundaries once thought to be immutable.) That said, it can be kind of hard to wrap one's head around Sharpie's new creation, at least until you pick one up.

Although it looks like and writes like a pen, it uses liquid graphite and erases much like a pencil.

On the plus side, it writes smoothly, doesn't break or need new lead and it is even less smudge-producing than a standard pencil and far less smear-prone than any pen.

Its erasability varies based on a bunch of factors from the type of paper to how hard you press. In general though, it erases quite well soon after writing, which tends to be the only time I would want to erase anything anyway. It's supposed to get more permanent after the first 24 hours, but will remain somewhat erasable long after that.

Engadget has soured on the liquid pencil over the fact it doesn't become truly permanent. Sharpie responded that it might have overstated things when it said in a blog post that writing from the Liquid Pencil becomes permanent like a Sharpie.

Indeed, if you are signing a contract, writing a will or what have you, I'd definitely grab a pen. But, for those who want a pencil that won't accidentally disappear over time, I think you are probably safe with the Liquid Pencil. … Read more

Indecisive people of the world, we bring you Sharpie's new liquid pencil.

The reinvented classic writes like a pen, but erases like a pencil. And here's the thing wavering minds might like: the liquid graphite "ink" doesn't become permanent for three days, so you have a full 72 hours to decide if you want that treacly poem you wrote to your friend/roommate/mom/amor (with pen and paper, no less!) to live on in perpetuity.

The new liquid pencil will hit stores next month, according to the Sharpie Blog. But Wired noticed that Office … Read more