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Our
guest is a Japanese twin living
in the US, and a software
engineer with excellent taste and
knowledge of how to make great
icons. His site, Hide's
Icons
is the home of his delicately
styled icons, a wonderful
tutorial on making icons as good
as he does. The site also has
many great little utilities like:
iTrashMaker, iMacolors, iTrash,
Snap'n Clip, Clip Changer, and
Finder Icon CMM plug-in to
mention a few!
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It
is always fascinating to meet
multitalented people, know their works and
hear their opinions! I'm happy to
introduce to you, one of our favorite icon
artists, Hideki Itoh.
Thanks
Hide, for being with us and giving us the
opportunity to promote your
work.
Ilona:
Please
tell our readers what made you start and
when you started making
icons?
Hideki: Thanks
for the great introduction, Ilona. I am
very happy and excited to be here with
you. I started making icons about 11 years
ago when I first got my Macintosh SE. I
was absorbed in HyperCard and enjoyed
drawing bitmap images as well as making
HyperCard stacks. I was also interested in
customizing the Desktop icons with
ResEdit. Of course, everything was black
and white and it was not in the same style
of my current icons, but this was the
start point of my making icons in the good
old days....
It was about 2 years
ago when I started 'Hide's icon sets' on
my home page. One day, I stopped by the
IconTown
while surfing the web and I was interested
in the concept of IconTown and wanted to
be a citizen there. That was the start of
my current style of icon
making.
Ilona:
You
emphasize that you make icons with
ResEdit. Why do you feel so strongly about
it? And have you ever thought about
switching to another icon
editor?
Hideki: As a
desktop customizing maniac, ResEdit is a
indispensable tool. For making icons, I
got a lot of great tips at
Mozco
!garash!. It
made my icon making with ResEdit much
easier. I have tried some other tools like
IconMachine but It didn't appeal strongly
enough to switch from ResEdit.
Although I have not
entered the 32 bit icons world yet, I have
tried IconMachine and IconGrapher recently
to see how they handled 32 bit icons
because ResEdit does not support 32 bit
icons. Both of them are good, but not the
perfect icon editor I had expected. Anyway
I have tried to make some 32 bit icons to
see if I can find any charm.
Oops, I forgot to
mention one important thing about ResEdit.
It's free and everyone can get it from
Apple's
site.
Ilona:
What
is your opinion about the new 32 bit
icons?
Hideki: You do
not have to worry about the colors missing
in the 256 system color table with RGB
true color, and you can make the outline
of icon less jaggy with 8bit deep mask.
But both of them are not strong enough to
convince me to make 32bit icons.
As an icon artist, I
believe that jaggies are the charming part
of an icon, not the ugly part. I prefer
the jaggy outline of an icon than a
blurred one. I am confident that I still
can make my icons beautiful and better
quality than cheap 'just shrink the real
picture with Photoshop' 32 bit icons.
For me, icon making is
a challenge in the limited small world of
32x32 pixels in 256 colors, and I find the
art of making icons there. The process of
selecting the best colors from a limited
palette and placing each pixel by
individual mouse click is the best part of
making icons, and true color is too many
for me to select from.
Many people are trying
to make beautiful non-jaggy icons with 32
bit colors and 8 bit deep mask now. The
style of making icons seems to be changing
from pushing pixel by pixel to drawing a
big picture and shrinking it into 32x32
pixels on the last stage. I guess that
many 32 bit icons were created by such
method. For me it's hard to change from
the style of making icons which I got too
used to. In the future I may make some 32
bit icons, but I will stick with 256
colors until the time most major OS's
shift to 32 bit icons, not only Macintosh,
but also Windows, Unix...
As an icon lover, I'm
disappointed every time I see such cheap
'just shrink the real picture with
Photoshop' 32 bit icons because I can not
see any art, no matter how real they
look.
Let me show you samples
of some 32 bit icons I created.
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The first set is of a
Macintosh SE/30. The left one is
drawing in 256 color, and right
one is 32 bit color. I made both
of them exactly the same except
for the colors. This might be a
good example of the advantage of
32 bit color. There's no real
ivory of the traditional
computers in the 256 color table.
Icon artists have used similar
colors like I do in the 256 color
version of the SE/30. This is a
big advantage of 32 bit icons
over 256 color icons.
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The next sample is the 32 bit
icons of new DV iMac and G4. I
used Photoshop and IconGrapher to
make them. I did not even push a
single pixel. All I did was to
get the GIF images from Apple
Computer's web site and draw a
thick black edge with Photoshop
and shrink it into 32x32 pixels.
It's easy to make them and each
icon took about 20 minutes once I
get used to do this method.
Although they may look nice, I
still do not like the method.
It's not boring but less fun than
pushing pixel by pixel.
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Ilona:
I
imagine you get many emails about the
usual subject: "How to change the trash
icons?" Is that what made you come up with
the idea for iTrash and its related
utilities, or is there something else
behind it?
Hideki: Bingo!
:-) After I released the 'Hide's iSystem'
icon set, I started to receive many such
emails and I was tired of answering them.
That's why I developed the iTrash. Then,
after releasing iTrash, I started to
receive many emails asking me if they can
create their own trash icon replacement
extensions using iTrash. That's why I
developed iTrashMaker.
Many icon artists
(especially Japanese icon artists) have
released their original icon trash
replacement extension created with iTrash
and iTrashMaker and I am happy to see
that. During developing iTrash and
iTrashMaker, I was able to learn many
technical things about 32 bit icons.
That's the start point of my Finder Icon
CMM plug-in development.
Ilona:
Besides
ResEdit, your other favorite is HyperCard.
What is it that you like so much about it?
And what future do you see for these
program?
Hideki:
HyperCard was the
first Macintosh program I saw and used. My
boss had a Macintosh Plus at the office
about 11 years ago. Before that, all of
the computers I used were a character
based terminal type computers with white,
amber, or green text on black screen. It
was a big culture shock see the
Macintosh's reversed (black on white)
screen and the sophisticated GUI.
Then I used HyperCard
and found how easy it was to make an
original stack with nice graphics and GUI
parts with just a little bit of knowledge
of HyperTalk. I was absorbed in HyperCard
and created many stacks. The base of my
bitmap drawing was obtained through this
HyperCard experience. Although I do not
use HyperCard these days, I still think
HyperCard is the best software I have ever
seen. As a programer my dream is to design
an epoch making software package that
gives people culture shock like
HyperCard.
Ilona: Which
do you like better, making icons or making
software?
Hideki: Tough
question. Making icons is very fun, but I
use only a few custom icons on my Mac's
desktop. I enjoy hearing from people who
like my icons and use them on their Mac.
On the other hand,
making software is simply for myself, at
least when starting a new development. I
always make the software that I want to
use, or I think it would be helpful for
me. It's very hard to maintain the
software if you do not use it regularly,
especially when it comes to freeware.
I use my software a lot
everyday. If I have to choose one, I
prefer making icons because it much easier
than making software, no bugs, no
debugging, no trouble report from users,
and no shareware registration code
cracking ;-)
Ilona:
You
have written some programs for the Palm
Pilot. Why do you like the Palm Pilot so
much? And how do you feel about other
operating systems like Windows and
Linux?
Hideki: I am
just a one of the guys who likes small
gadgets. Since Palm Pilot programing is
similar to Macintosh programing, it did
not take long until I found myself writing
Palm software.
I love Linux and I have
been using it for a long time since 1992.
I use Linux mainly for web site
management, CGI programing and various
server software. All of my graphic and art
work is done with Macintosh. Although I
use Windows PC a lot on my real full-time
job, I am not interested in Windows at
all.
Ilona:
Which
sites do you surf
regularly?
Hideki: I visit
Iconfactory
everyday to check the news on Mac icon
community. Also, I visit IconParade,
ResExcellence,
IconCow
and other famous icon artists sites like
your IliCon
regularly. I use the web more often for
getting information and software for my
Linux PC computers at home and
office.
Ilona:
What
is your next project?
Hideki: I got a
new domain name and my LINUX PC at home is
ready to go as the web/ftp server for the
new domain, and I am now working on a
total redesign of my site. It is partly
open, under the new domain name and the
title has been changed as well to
PIXTURE
STUDIO. In
addition to the current contents, I also
plan to put the portfolio of my custom
icon design work, LINUX and Windows
versions of my icon sets. I have been
interested in typography recently, and I
would like to challenge making fonts next
year.
Ilona: What
are you doing when you are not programming
or making those wonderful icons? What are
your dreams? How do you like to see
yourself, let say, ten years from
now?
Hideki: I spend
most of my free time on Linux and Palm
stuff, as well as on Macintosh stuff. My
dream is to live in a place with beautiful
nature that changes every season, and
enjoy outdoor life while working at home
with a computer and the Internet.
I can not imagine what
I would be doing after 10 years from now
just like I had never imagined myself
making icons.... well hopefully running my
own business successfully....
;-)
Thanks, Hide,
for being with us. I wish you a great
success!
 the
end
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