Where did Two Lof Bees come from?
Once upon a time, there were two people who loved each other very much. To show their love, they drew notes and pictures for each other.
Here's a sappy little story about why this website exists. You can skip it if you want ^_^
One day the couple discovered that their notes and pictures also brought happiness to others, and decided to build a website to share their creations with the world.
We hope that you enjoy what you find here as much as we enjoyed making it.
If you would like to contact us, you can reach us at contact@twolofbees.com . We can't guarantee that we will reply to every message, but we do read all email eventually ;)
Artists
These are short(ish) profiles of our artists along with links to subscribe to their updates via RSS and their email address.
cheese
I've been sketching for as long as I can remember, which unfortunately doesn't automatically mean I'm good at it. I've also had a bit of experience with 3D and 2D digital artwork. When I'm not drawing (I love the way that makes it sound like I draw lots), I can be found under a guitar, or on a keyboard (of either flavour). I enjoy daydreaming and long walks on the beach - and when I say long, I mean it.
My preferred tools of the trade in order of importance:
- 2H pencil
- Inkscape (see more details below)
- Gimp (see more details below)
More than anything, I would like to thank Mim for the committment, patience, love and inspiration she gives me. You are my world, lof.
Note: She drew the picture below. I could never be that good ;_;
Subscribe to cheese's RSS feed
Email cheese at cheese@twolofbees.com
Follow cheese on Twitter as @ValiantCheese
mim
Long time drawer, first time website runerer...
I've been sketching scribbles in the margins of schoolbooks my entire academic life (which has become much longer than even I anticipated). I hope that my drawings reflect the kind of absentminded abandon that can only be cultivated through years of rigorous daydreaming training.
I spend my spare time reading books that make me more cleverer (I hope), geeking it up on my favourite mmorpg, watching movies whilst eating unhealthy quantities of Cheese & Bacon Shapes with my Josh, and sharpening my wit.
Though I may contribute to the content of this site Josh, in so many ways, is truly the one that makes it all possible. Like Tinkerbell I find that I cannot move unless someone believes in me. Josh is my inspiration and my motivation. He is also possibly the reason I occasionally find myself on a beach with a tent wondering how I manage to get myself into these situations.
Thank you, lof, for expanding my universe.
Subscribe to mim's RSS feed
Email mim at mim@twolofbees.com
Follow mim on Twitter as @MimLofBees
Technologies
Here is a list of some of the tools we use when creating digital art. You might notice that they're all
Free! If you make something using these tools, we'd love to
hear about it .
Here are some things that we use in the production of the images you see on the site:
- Inkscape
All of our vector art (including the design/visual elements of the website itself and our exciting banners) has been done in the Free/Open Source vector illustration program
Inkscape.
I'd recommend it as a professional grade production tool. I've used it to create print media as well as web stuff with great results - cheese
- Gimp
All of our digital paintings have been done in the
Gimp, a fully featured painting and image manipulation application that has been released under a Free/Open Source licence. We also use it to crop/adjust anything that we've scanned before uploading.
After switching from Photoshop, I find the Gimp to be a fantastic, Free alternative, which provides all of the features I need without worrying about licences or having to pay for upgrades - mim
- Blender
All of our 3D work has created with
Blender. Blender is a 3D modeling, animation, texturing, and rendering suite released under a Free/Open Source licence.
Blender's interface is deceptive. Beneath its easy to use simplicity lies a hugely complex and powerful beast capable of doing a lot more than I've ever dreamed of - cheese
- Sane/XSane
Everything that we scan, we scan with the Free/Open Source scanning program
XSane.
- Audacity
All of our sounds were recorded using the Free/Open Source multitrack audio editing application
Audacity.
- Fedora
At the time of writing, all of our artists were using
Fedora as their primary desktop operating system (it's also Free/Open Source).
If you're interested in Free/Open Source software and/or want to know about what kinds of things you'd need to put together a site like this one, this list shows everything we used to build and host it.
Our site was constructed entirely by hand using freely available tools. For anybody who's interested, here's another list (because we love lists)!
- Debian
Our website currently sits atop a server running the Free/Open Source operating system
Debian 4, which uses the GNU/Linux kernel.
- Apache
twolofbees.com is served by an installation of the Free/Open Source
Apache 2 web server.
- PHP
The site is hand coded to be compatible with
PHP 5.3 and above.
- MySQL
All of the information on the site (artwork details, blog and comic content) is stored in an Free/Open Source
MySQL 5.5 database.
- W3C CSS 2.1 and XHTML 1.0 Strict standards
All of the pages on this site are coded and validate against the current CSS and XHTML specs published by the
W3C. If you spot something that doesn't validate, we totally want to know.
- RSS Advisory Board RSS 2.0 specification
The RSS feeds available through the site are coded to the
RSS Advisory Board's current RSS specifications (though we do get a warning or two with some inline CSS).
- OGG Vorbis Audio Encoding
All of the sounds (currently only in the
Help page's glossary section) are encoded as
OGG Vorbis audio files. Unlike some other popular audio compression file types, the OGG Vorbis format is free, open and unpatented (also, they have a fish in their logo!).
- Imagemagick
We use the Free/Open Source image manipulation suite
Imagemagick to perform real time and upload time adjustments to our artwork.
- jEdit
All of the PHP, XHTML and CSS code for the site was written using
jEdit, a Free/Open Source text editor that supports a large collection of plugins.
- Lightbox2
For our image previews, we use a customised version of Lokesh Dhakar's
Lightbox2 library.
- AddThis
We are now using
AddThis' free social networking buttons to provide the ones we've got scattered around the place.
- Disqus
We use
Disqus to provide our public commenting system, which allows logging in using a range of social networking accounts.
- TinyMCE
The Free/Open Source browser embedded WYSIWYG suite
TinyMCE provides the back end content editing system we use to create blog posts and artwork descriptions.
- AnchorPosition
We use some of
Matt Kruse's javascript libraries in our back end.