GridIron Software Flow is a very unique program for creative professionals.
And Its basically a tool that helps you track and manage all the files that go into creating a project. Let me show you what I mean, check this out.

So one of the best features flow has to offer is that it allows you to visually see the structure of a project. If you use various programs to create a project, flow can actually see the connection between all the files.

Whats great is that this works for websites, print documents, video composites, just about anything! So It helps you streamline your workflow, and keeps you on top of your project.

So if your project looks like a major cluster, we can organize it down so its less messy.

So I can right click on the images, and select group similar, and we if we keep doing that,youll notice it groups all the images per file format, JPG, PNG, GIF, very nice!

Now whats even better is you can make custom groups. Ill make all these individual files into a group and call it Downloads.

A quick way to see contents in the groups is to right click and select Show Group Contents. Alright and its starting to look a lot more organized.

Alright, now lets take a look at another example. Its a Photoshop document. You can actually see all the layers and bins inside the document, very cool. Heres an after effects project, same thing, you can see the structure of the composition.

Alright and there you have it. Thats a quick demo of GridIrons Flow, now theres a whole bunch of other features like versioning, time tracking, tagging and ]]> http://noeruiz.com/reviews/episode-17-using-gridiron-flow/feed/ 0 http://noeruiz.com/reviews/redesign-of-pixilinfo/ http://noeruiz.com/reviews/redesign-of-pixilinfo/#comments Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:20:40 +0000 admin http://noeruiz.com/?p=253

With a brand new year come brand new ideas and expectations. Lately I’ve been busy focusing most of my time on Pixil.info for many reasons, but mainly because I believe it’s one of the best ways to contribute to the design and development community. So with the new year here, I thought it be a really great idea to redesign the blog and simplify a few things.

First thing on my list were to make the site’s load time faster. With all the videos loading on the front page, we agreed it was best to not display every video on each post. So I decided that the best way to display our media was to run it though an elegant yet simple media viewer. So we decided to go with Shadowbox JS.

A few other items on the optimization list was to reduce the size of image and to ditch unnecessary transparent PNG images.

The next thing to do was to spice up the sites color scheme. Though at first I enjoyed the dull muted color look, I choose to saturate the existing color palette and really pop the shit out of those colors (but not eye precisely harsh of course . New textures were created and I experimented a lot with making grungy patterns. Spent lots of time with the dark color blend mode!

Positioning and aligning elements is always important to me and Its definitely what makes or breaks a design, so of course I kept the layout very simple. Two columns, fixed width!

And from beginning to end, organized layers, smart object slices, and yes even layer comps were used in my workflow. You guys don’t know how much it helps to use these when building out a site! Let me know what you guys think of the redesign, thanks!

So recently I got a hold of the new update for BeatMaker and I’ve been playing with it pretty thoroughly. I decided I’d do a review and a tutorial on how to make custom drum kits.

New Features BeatMaker 1.3

So first, Lets take a look at the the upgraded sequencer. With the introduction to the new preview bar, it makes it easy to scrub through long patterns. We can now zoom in and out of the sequencer and can now insert and remove bars on the timeline.

Next there’s the dynamic access bar which lets us quickly jump between different settings. We can now quickly switch between patterns while in the editor. Drum patterns can now be up to 4 bars long and The “step resolution” can now be edited up to 1/64T.

Next, we got a whole new pad editing screen for easy access to settings. An improved wav editor with cropping and zooming function… and a new cross controller with fullscreen mode for live effects.

Next up, we got audio recording. Thats right, everyone asked for it, and we finally got it. You can now record directly from the iPhones built-in mic or headset.

Now lets take a look at the new Moog filter. Features low-high and a band-pass frequency with resonance support. Also theres improvement to the delay effect featuring dotted and triplet rhythm support.

Last but not least, you can finally export your beats in midi format.

Use BeatPack to create your own custom kit.

So first we’ll need to download BeatPack from intrua’s website. http://intrua.net/shop.html

When you open up the app, first thing you’ll see is the share kits and samples section. If you read the instructions first you’ll get a head start on how to sync your audio files from your desktop to your iPhone. But first, I’m going to jump to over to the Create Kit section.

The Drag Zone is where we’ll be loading our samples. Simply drag an audio file to the desired pad to load it. This is were your creativity comes into play. I like to arrange my samples in groups, so when I play it live, I can play it with ease. So when your kit is ready, you can fill out the information section and even upload a kit icon. To save it out, click the generate button.

Next, goto the Share kits section and follow the instructions to get your kit onto your iPhone. So heres a quick run down. Goto BeatMaker, in the home section, click on the BeatPack Icon, then click on add server. Next, type in your computers IP address, you can find it in the share kits section in the BeatPack app.

When your ip shows up in the server list, simply click on it and hit the download button. Just navigate to your file and hit the download button. When its done, close it and load it as a kit.

And Thats pretty much how we create a custom kit, with BeatPack. Remeber, you can upload your tunes back over to your desktop by using the upload function.

Download Free BeatMaker Kit

Since the recent overhual excitement from the release of Sweetcron, I’ve been spending some quality time designing some new themes. Some long hours went into making this one, so here it is. Feel free to leave me feedback,report bugs, or suggestions thank you.

View Demo
Custom Ecken Theme

Download Ecken’s Paper Theme

Testing out the new IR-909 beta 3 for iPhone. Within a couple minutes, I had filled all 4 patterns with some killer beats and decided I’d hook it up to Logic Pro. Somewhat a hassle to sync the BPM’s with Logic, but the result spoke for it’s self.

I’d definitely like to see the next version have more patterns, but 4 is okay. Having said that, I really like playin with this app! I tip my hat to Dmitry at http://roventskij.net/ for making this app, gotta drop a donation for all the hard work.

By the way, the track in the background is by yours truely. Check out the full song at Last FM

Some serious business goes down when we drive ourselves to get the job done. And sometimes pulling all nights can bring out the best in some of us. So the real eyebrow lifter will be when our buddy Jeremy Simkins (aka SoN9ne) puts the final touches on his own blogging platform and hence, we’ll drive ourselves nuts once again, covering over our themes over to a new blogging platform… Until then, I think this does just fine!