Letter from Lynda  Welcome to the October newsletter! In this month’s edition, we share our latest releases, newest Creative Inspirations documentary, and web site improvements. | New Creative Inspirations: Marian Bantjes, Graphic Artist |  The latest addition to our Creative Inspirations series features graphic artist Marian Bantjes . Marian is known for her ornately detailed, precise vector art, obsessive handwork, patterning, and meticulously crafted ornament. This documentary also features some of the luminaries from the design world who have hired Marian to create custom type for magazines, advertising, and special projects—including design legends Debbie Millman from Sterling Brands, Michael Bierut and Paula Scher from Pentagram/NY, Sean Adams from AdamsMorioka, and Stefan Sagmeister. This documentary was shot on location in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, and Los Angeles, and features intimate glimpses of Marian’s home and workspace on an island near Vancouver, where she shares her views on design and designers. We also visit her distinctive one-woman show at the Ontario College of Art & Design.
Watch Marian Bantjes, Graphic Artist. | New feature: Play an entire chapter with one click | You can now play an entire chapter by clicking a chapter title on a course’s table of contents page. All movies in that chapter will play, one after another. Toggle auto-play on or off by clicking the auto-play chapter button at the bottom of the player. | | If you don’t see this button in your player, log in to lynda.com and go to the my account menu at the top right of the page, then choose site preferences. Change your player preference to Flash, QuickTime Custom, or Windows Media. | One-day seminar with Bert Monroy |  Bert Monroy, a lynda.com author who is also profiled in one of our Creative Inspirations documentaries, is hosting a series of live one-day seminars about the making of his spectacular digital painting masterpiece, Times Square . Bert will be demonstrating the Photoshop and Illustrator tools he used and the techniques he developed while making the 5-foot-by-25-foot digital illustration of New York’s Times Square. The 6.5-gigabyte image was built pixel by pixel, using more than 750,000 Photoshop layers. | | Seminar locations and dates:
Los Angeles, October 21
New York, November 3
Chicago, November 17 | Create game environments, interactive maps, and more | Hands-on creation can be one of the most satisfying and rewarding parts of the learning experience. This month, we’ve released a series of project-based courses from creating game cityscapes, to interactive maps, to WordPress-based portfolios. | |  In Creating Urban Game Environments in 3ds Max , author Adam Crespi constructs a city block in 3ds Max utilizing low-polygon modeling and advanced texturing techniques. The course shows how to model common city elements such as buildings, intersections, curbs, and roofs and explains how to expand a city quickly and easily by reusing existing geometry in a modular way. | |  George Maestri introduces the tools needed to create and animate highly controllable characters using After Effects in Creating Animated Characters in After Effects. He shows how to assemble characters with hierarchies, make realistic deformations with the Puppet tool, automate rigs with expressions, create realistic head turns, and more. | |  In Create an Interactive Map with jQuery, Chris Converse shows how to design and create a rich interactive map for a web site, working in a coding environment and using the open-source scripting library jQuery. It covers creating web-optimized images, implementing HTML and CSS to assemble an infographic page layout, and adding interactivity. | |  Create an Online Portfolio with WordPress demonstrates how to build an advanced portfolio site using custom post types and custom taxonomies in conjunction with the regular posts and pages. You’ll see how to gain the ability to add customized items and display these in different ways to give your site visitors the best possible experience. | Photography series | We’ve published new installments for each of Jim Sugar's Shooting with Wireless Flash and Douglas Kirkland's photography series this month. | |  In Shooting with Wireless Flash: Outdoors at Twilight, award-winning photographer Jim Sugar demonstrates his approach to using off-camera flash in a variety of lighting scenarios, sharing practical tips along the way. In this installment, Jim shows how to shoot outdoors during twilight, and goes on location to show how to light a scene by balancing all of the available light sources. | |  In Douglas Kirkland on Photography: A Photographer’s Eye, Douglas discusses the importance of developing a sense of photographic vision: keeping your mind and eye open for photographic opportunities, and maximizing those opportunities through composition and other creative decisions. Douglas reviews images from his personal collection, and goes on location, explaining his creative and technical decisions as he shoots. | Programming fundamentals for non-programmers | Our programming courses this month should resonate with more than just programmers: The Foundations of Programming: Fundamentals course is ideal for designers and other creators who need to learn a bit more under the hood and speak to developers in a common language. And anyone interested in how web sites take shape will benefit from learning the basics of CSS. | |  Foundations of Programming: Fundamentals reveals how code is written in several languages, and explains what each one is appropriate for. Using JavaScript to explore core syntax of a programming language, you’ll see how to write and execute an application, and explore conditions, loops, variables, and expressions. | |  CSS Fundamentals offers a high-level overview of Cascading Style Sheets, exploring the basic concepts, terminology, and tools of the language. Beginning with an exploration of CSS syntax, author James Williamson explains how CSS modifies text, borders, backgrounds, and color; demonstrates CSS and HTML integration; and contextualizes the current state of CSS. | Animation software and tools | This month, we’ve released two courses on rendering software, modo and mocha. Two new offerings in our 3D and Animation collections are designed to help you stay up to date on the latest animation applications. | |  In modo 501 Essential Training, author Dan Ablan walks through the process of understanding the modo workflow while learning to create 3D models and animations. He demonstrates fundamental tasks, such as modeling polygons and applying materials with the Shader Tree, while exploring scene building in depth through advanced lighting, camera, and animation techniques. | |  mocha has always been very popular as a tracking tool, but with the recent explosion in stereo 3D conversion its rotoscoping capabilities have become a favorite. mocha Essential Training covers the basics as well as advanced tracking and rotoscoping techniques. Special attention will be paid to teaching the mocha/Nuke stereo 3D production pipeline. | Learning Apple’s latest OS | OS X Lion from Apple boasts 250 new features, from auto-saving to wireless file sharing with AirDrop. It’s a lot to sift through. Our course shows how to take advantage of Lion’s new features both from a user and an IT perspective. | |  In Mac OS X Lion Essential Training, Macworld senior editor Christopher Breen provides a comprehensive overview of Mac OS X Lion, complete with insider tips for getting the most out of the operating system. The course shows how to configure system preferences, personalize the interface, and master gestures, as well as achieve fluency with applications such as Mail, iCal, Preview, and much more. | Business productivity and home computing | These courses in our Business segment are designed to help you understand and efficiently employ tools that can help make your business or home office run efficiently and connectedly. | |  In Adobe Connect Essential Training, author Tim Plumer, Jr. explains how to deliver and host interactive web meetings, webinars, and e-learning tutorials with Adobe Connect’s screen sharing, full-screen, and whiteboard features. |
|  In Google Calendar Essential Training, Google Apps trainer Susan Cline demonstrates how to manage both personal and professional schedules. The course shows how to invite attendees and assign resources for any event with the Scheduling tool, and how to monitor attendee responses from within the application. | |  Scanning Techniques for Business and Home shows how to get the best results from your scanner, whether scanning photos, artwork, or text. Author Taz Tally explains scanning essentials, including how to clean and care for a scanner, choose scanning software, and understanding concepts such as resolution and file format. | | That’s it for this month! Until November, happy learning!
—Lynda | |
 Keep an eye on the site for these and many other helpful new courses coming to the Online Training Library® soon: - Illustrator Insider Training: Drawing without the Pen
- Up and Running with VBA in Access
- Revit Architecture: Rendering
- Scanning Techniques for Photography, Art, and Design
- Creating Photo Books with Blurb
- Building Android and iOS Apps with Dreamweaver CS5.5
- Photo Restoration with Photoshop
- Compressor 4 Essential Training
- Web Form Design Best Practices
- Word 2010: Styles in Depth
- Creating an Adaptive Web Site for Multiple Screens
- Design in Motion
- Setting Up a Database in Excel
- Effective HTML Email and Newsletters
- Outlook 2007: Time Management with Calendar and Tasks
- Outlook 2010: Time Management with Calendar and Tasks
- Using Regular Expressions
- eBay for Buyers Essential Training
- eBay for Sellers Essential Training
- Managing and Analyzing Data in Excel
- Shooting with the Canon 60D
- Shooting with the Nikon D7000
| Testimonials of the month Closed captioned training made it possible
I want to tell you how much I appreciate that you have closed captions. I am hearing impaired and it is a rare occasion that something like your site is so available to me. I am doing some crash course training to update my old-timer software skills. I am a nurse and just recently got an excellent job combining my nursing and computer skills. Your site actually made it possible. Thank you.
—Tiffany M.
Answered my 9-1-1
I am one almost-65-year-old woman who just signed with lynda.com, and I’m so excited to have found you!!!! I was referred yesterday by my niece, who is a graphic artist living in San Francisco. Having just installed these new programs, I placed a 9-1-1 call to my niece. She told me about your site... just love it! This is more exciting than Bloomingdales.........
—Sandra K. Read more great feedback. | Tip of the month |  | | Sorting and starting apps with Launchpad from Mac OS X Lion Essential Training Mac OS X Lion includes a new feature called Launchpad. Like many of Lion’s new features, Launchpad is inspired directly by iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system. To start Launchpad, just click on its rocket ship icon in the Dock. You can also invoke it by typing launchpad into Spotlight, or with a four-finger pinch on a Trackpad. Once Launchpad is open, you’ll see all the applications that are on your Mac, and you can launch any program by clicking on its icon. The first page shows the applications that came pre-installed, in alphabetical order. Any additional programs that you install will display on subsequent Launchpad pages. To switch among pages, click on the dots below the icons. The problem you may run into is that if you have a lot of applications installed, you’ll get screen after screen of applications, and it may start to get difficult to find the one you’re looking for. Fortunately, there are ways to better organize Launchpad. If you want to change the location of some of your applications—say you want your most-used applications on the first screen—simply click and drag the applications you want to move. You can also create folders for applications that you want to group together by clicking on one application and dragging it on top of another. You can rename the folder by double-clicking on the name. Then click on the Launchpad screen to close the folder. Now you can drag as many other applications to the folder as you wish. Each time you move an application to a folder, the folder will open and you can rearrange the icons inside. If you click and hold on an application until all the icons start shaking, you can move applications to a folder without opening the folder. Once you’re done moving icons, click on the Desktop to exit the shaky mode. To exit Launchpad, click on the Desktop again, hit the Esc button, or click on any other icon in the Dock. View sample movies from Mac OS X Lion Essential Training. | |
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