Yesterday I was looking for a photo to throw on one of my other blogs, but I did not want to get into trouble by taking just any picture I found off the net. After wasting some time googling for clip art I remembered to add the words "open source" and quickly found what I was looking for.
The Open Clip Art Library is just what it claims to be. It offers clip art that is free for any use. I was searching for a weight loss style graphic and quickly found this little clip of a bathroom scale. It suited my needs, it was quick to access and free to use. What more could I want.
To help this project you can submit clip art that you have made, report problems or contribute to the Wiki. People like me with little or no talent can simply spread the word and let others know this resource is out there. If you are looking for clip art and want to make sure you are using something that is not protected by a copyright try the Open Clip Art Library.
The project we are supporting this month is Blender, the open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation. My husband has been using Blender for a while now. He has some personal projects he is working on, but many times he just plays around with it to learn how it works. On his blog Normal Vector he blogged about the first model that he made, which was a gun (more specifically a Colt 1911). You have to realize he is a gun collector and a gamer so if he ever does make a 3D game he is likely to need some guns for it. Anyway, here is a sample from his blog showing the gun in progress and the completed project. I think it is pretty true to life myself!
Since then he's learned more about making clean meshes and suggested this link for beginners from the Blender Artists Forum. He will probably tell you these were rather simple, and he is currently working on making human models now among various other things. While I think this was really cool there is so much more that you can do with Blender, It is an amazing piece of software if you ask me.
Blender is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and it runs on many operating systems including Windows. They also offer plenty of documentation for you on their Education and Help page which will enable you to learn how to use it. We think that this particular project is definitely worthy of our financial support and that is why this month we are donating to the Blender Foundation. To see some of the depth of what all you can do with this free and open 3D creation suite, check out this video. It was made using Blender!
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