graphics

I was recently inspired by Jeffrey Miller's embeddable Advent Wreath widget to try my hand at illustrating and animating an advent wreath in HTML5 with the <canvas> element or by animating an SVG.

My heart was in it for a while, but I ultimately gave up on the project due to the fact that I had already spent a couple hours on it and wasn't happy with my progress...

However, I did end up with a fairly good illustrator/vector wreath and candles (I spent a bit of time trying to get the flames looking just right), and also created a brush to create the actual wreath, making it look somewhat like an evergreen wreath.

I could spend a bit more time making things look a little nicer (everything's relatively flat right now), but I thought I'd just release this artwork for anyone to use and improve. I just ask that if you make something awesome with it, you let me know how you did it and give a link to an example :)

You can download the brush and the wreath graphic using the links at the bottom of this post.

Advent Wreath by Jeff Geerling is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.lifeisaprayer.com.

While I was attending Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, a few brother seminarians and I had a long run of Monopoly tournaments, and we became quite adept at the game. Of course, my winning strategy was to always give up any and all properties to get Boardwalk and Park Place, buy a hotel, and hope someone hit the hotel before I went bankrupt...

I created this vector file (below) in Illustrator after many hours of path-tracing original Monopoly board art, my own hand-drawn designs, and some clipart. I was intending to print it on some cardstock and mold some actual pieces (like a biretta, a Liturgy of the Hours book, a pipe organ, etc.) to play the game, but never got around to that part before leaving.

(Click image to view larger).

So... I have had this file sitting on my desktop for over a year, and I thought it'd be best to simply share it. If someone wants, I can GPL the vector file so someone else can make a custom monopoly-like game without having to go through the Monopoly site and pay a ton of money.

[Edit: I am releasing my work (see attached Illustrator file below) free of charge, under the Creative Commons ShareAlike license. Please do with it what you will, but be sure to link back to my site or give me a shout out when you use it!]

Click to download: Seminopoly (Monopoly-like game board) - Illustrator Vector File
(you can also download the Community Chest artwork in a separate file, below...)

Seminopoly by Jeff Geerling is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at www.lifeisaprayer.com.

Seen recently on the office door...