The Kilrathi (Wing Commander universe) have always been a complete rip of the Kzin... and they looked like fucking MUPPETS in the movie. Alien depiction is only as good as the production crew and the director.... shit, Lucas has proven that no amount of CG can make the fake look real, while Del Toro (sp) has proven that you can mix it with the real deal for a seamless affect- the Kzin would be better off puppetry and/or makeup whereever possible- ditto the Pupeteers.:)
Stephenson would be EASY to adapt, and probably a good deal of fun in the process... depending on the book, of course. You could do a miniseries of Cryptonomicon on a fairly modest budget without any CG at all and still have it all come across- ditto the Baroque Cycle.
Snow Crash might require a bit more on the production design end of things, but the vast majority of it can still be created with good location scouting and creative set dressing.
Effects are no longer an issue. Production values and commitment to excellence are, and that's what sets things like Blade II and LotR apart from Sci-Fi channel crapfests.
You certainly can't do Roots with an all-white cast.... and if you did an adaptation of The Dark Tower with a white Susanna Dean who had all of her legs, you'd be missing the point entirely.
Conversely, Avery Brooks would make a fucking AWESOME Lex Luthor. The guy can do the no-hair thing and exudes barely-repressed evil-rage at the drop of a hat. It rocks.
Hollywood has always pandered to the audience- hence the profusion of tits and massive changes in character racial background. Some of that's actor availability... if you've read the Dune books, you know that the Fremen weren't exactly white.... yet they've been about as honky as you can get in every visual adaptation to hit the screen.
And there's nothing "upcoming" about it- it's being run on SkyOne in the UK as we speak.
It's easily the best television sci-fi I've seen in years, though I'm starting to wish they'd give their resource acquisition problems more than the coursory lip service of the first and second episodes- BSG is almost entirely sociopolitical drama at this point, and if the characters weren't so well-written and well-acted, it would suck. The fact that it doesn't is kind of a fluke- one I'm enjoying a great deal.:-)
I've never read Earthsea, but if their treatment of Dune is anything to go by, you'll get a lot more mileage out of your friend's reaction than you will any other form of entertainment you've paid money for this year. I promise.
(the Dune miniseries was absolutely HORRIBLE. UNfuckingWATCHABLE, even. I'm not sure which was shittier- the Hercules And Xena production values, or the "modernized" dialogue. >.)
I've never seen anyone actually get anything accomplished through watching TV. Unless you count "relaxing" for six hours a day to be an accomplishment.
When I bother with movies these days, I watch them on my workstation. I could care less about comfort level- for me, the ability to critique and O_o and OMFG:O a movie in realtime on IRC while simultaneously getting other things done in the background is comfort enough.
Unfortunately, my roommate recently renewed his relationship with the NTSC teat, and now the house is filled with the shit audio quality of a TV. At least he has the decency to keep it in his room, where the malevolent eye of the gorgon-cyclops can't stab into my soul.:|
... are WHY I still have a four year old Powerbook and don't want to upgrade.
Hard plastic shell that's soaked a lot of damage- this was a point back during the Titaniums, when every other one I saw was cracked or damaged.
Media bay. Can't put two hard drives in current powerbooks- and how often do you use the optical bay, anyway? I haven't had a need for mine since I last installed OS and apps...
Covered port bay- something the iBooks ignore, though it's still a "feature" on Powerbooks.
Dual batter capability. The Pismo is the last machine with it.:|
Oh, and it's BLACK. So it matches the rest of my wardrobe.:P
Yeah, the new machines are kind of pretty, but a Powerbook is currently out of my price range and I've heard enough about broken iBook screens, hard drives, motherboards, cases, etc, etc. to not want to spend my money on one.
Upside of PCland is that there's a hell of a lot of choice in the laptop department, and it's likely possible to get some of the features I use that current Apple machine don't have (albeit at the expense of no MacOS).
The design weenies always seem to compare Sony laptops to Powerbooks, but it seems like IBM is the one to look at. O_o
'cuz iBooks and Powerbooks come with graphics boards that were dated before they hit the market. They've always lagged behind the PC in terms of graphics capabilities- at least since 3d accelleration started to mean anything to anyone.
...when is someone going to take the Linux desktop (or at least A linux desktop) to task for all these failures and more? Yeah, it's easy to poke shit at an OS you didn't even install on your computer- most end users never change the defaults, and linuxland, "YOU DON'T LIKE IT?! CHANGE IT! RECONFIGURE! USE A DIFFERENT ONE!" is the answer. Which is work. Geeks are fine with that, users aren't. That's why they whine at us to fix it.:P
Besides, this guy reads like he has his head six feet up his ass.:|
Yeah, WACOM tablets are sex. I have one at home and one at work, got my boss and my coworkers turned onto them. They are far beyond awesome for shading, painting, etceteras.
But I can't draw for shit with one.
It's a speed / undo / comfort / tactile / positionable thing. Especially positioning. You can't rotate your monitor and the tablet to a weird angle so you can draw the bit from a position that doesn't make your hand or your brain explode. It's not exactly feasable to lug a wacom and a laptop to a meeting for the express purpose of doodling, and it's easier to lug a sketchbook on those forced family outings.
In short, I'm sure he has his reasons. I use a Wacom for a ton of things, but drawing is not one of them.
And consequently, telling it as anything else would be unworthy.
It's gotta be Cold War in the eighties. Back then, things were a little more clear cut and it was a little easier to be on the side of the US and allies than it would be today.
IMO, if we had a Doctor Manhattan today, well... either the US wouldn't exist, or we wouldn't look very much like we do at present.
I've never read the books, I'll admit. I read the Hobbit, was sickened by all of the "poetry" and "singing" and stayed very far away from the rest of it. Might get to it eventually- until then, I'm still pissed that Barnes and Nobel (the only frigging chain of bookstores in this twon) has a complete RACK devoted to Tolkein and can't be bothered to keep a single copy of a new book by a current author.:|
I mentioned the scouring because that's the bit everyone I know who's read the books and scene the movies bitches about the most- though at least one friend of mine mentioned Bombadil. So there's at least TWO of you.:)
And a lot of fans were pissed that Jackson left out some bits, like the Scouring of the Shire, and amped up shit that just wasn't in the book (like the role the elf woman played in the story).
Combine the complicated ties between all of the sub plots with the visual style of the book and you already have your script and your storyboards for a film adaptation- all the hard work has been done except for the inconvenient fact that Watchmen is so vast that it works better in the medium it was delivered in.
Jackson turned a few hundred pages of text into seven or eight hours of film, and in the process created a work that people enjoyed and that most of the fans of the original are delighted with.
Greengrass is tasked with a project that demands similar execution.
Jackson had some serious cult successes under his belt (Bad Taste, Dead Alive) and had (depending on your taste for that sort of thing) already proved himself competent of forging cult classics.
Conversely, Greengrass has nothing on his resume that indicates he's capable of handling a project like this. Given his existing track record, I have no reason to keep my hopes up, or to even hope at all.
On the other hand, if he CAN handle it, he'll have created a classic and cemented his reputation (and paycheck:P) in the process.
Man, that movie rocked. Having been a long-suffering Trek "fan" who cringes at the mere mention of time travel, Twelve Monkeys was one of the things that broke me from the franchise, for it was well-written film that (in my mind, anyway) did time travel RIGHT.
I've no issues with some healthy Watchmen influence- your points definitely have merit -but personally, I'm pleased that a director whose work I have a great respect for won't be dirtying his hands with this project.
For the article proves that (at the very least) whoever was writing it has no fucking idea what makes the story good, or (at the very, very worst) the director and studio are equally clueless.
I'm betting on both, and I'm betting this is going to make the recent Punisher movie look like Shakespear.
It's more of a jab at Hollywood's tendency to take Allen Moore's work and skullfuck it raw.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the movie) is shit. It bears very little resemblance to the book. Biggest difference between The League and Watchmen is that a quality film adaptation of The League is feasable.
Why they don't shoot for more screen-adaptable Moore is beyond me- Tom Strong or Top Ten would actually work in theaters.
What next? The director of Peewee's Big Adventure doing a film adaptation of Promethia ?
There's a reason Terry Guilliam opted out of working on a film adaptation of Watchmen. The man stated in a book dedicated to Moore's fiftieth birthday that he drew comfort from the fact that he wouldnt' be the one to fuck over the work.
This is Watchmen. This ain't spiderman, this ain't X-men, this ain't dime-store fluff. This is one of the greatest works in the genre and an absolute masterpiece of the superhero medium.
And Guilliam is on the record as being happy he won't be the one to fuck it over. Paul Greengrass has stepped up to the plate, proving he has some sort of perverse urge to alienate pretty much everyone who's ever read the book.
Watchmen can't be done in 90-120 minutes with Big Name Actors. Leastwise, it can't be done right, and if it can't be done right, it shouldn't be done at all.:(
Last I heard ANYTHING about what Wall Street uses was September of 2001, and that's because something based there happened to have a bigass datacenter near ground zero, and it got vaporized.
Said machines were HP/UX, and they went Linux for immediate replacement because the scale of the installation was such that HP couldn't replace the hardware fast enough.
Memory, of course. Can't back this up because I haven't the foggiest what I should be googling for, and said information is something like four years old.
But hey, Wall Street doesn't necessarily need Sun. They just need Sun to make money, or something.
You pay half a million for your box breaking to be SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROBLEM.
That money makes your box Sun's priority. Period. They'll FIX IT. Software or hardware. They'll roll you custom Solaris patches, because you're paying for it.
You're paying for a COMPANY to give you some LOVE. Not some snotnosed Admin whose first-line defense is an O'Reilly bookshelf.
There's a definite market for this kind of service. Just because you're not in it doesn't mean it isn't there.
Apple flips shit whenever ANYONE out there gets crazy with the Aqua theming, which has caused a bit of resentment, to be sure.
Conversely, every time I use KDE or Gnome, I find myself trying to dig through the interface to find the Control Panel, or hitting the keystroke that pops the MS-DOS terminal to fullscreen, or expecting the windows key to work, or any number of little Windows-isms... because the interfaces LOOK AND FEEL LIKE WINDOWS.
Maybe a little bit of lawyer blustering would help to steer these desktops into a more innovative direction. I for one would like to see something new- for the linux desktop to be a killer app as opposed to a Win32 / OS2 / Explorer clone.:|
Until then, I'm sticking with blackbox and bbkeys.:|
But for someone who sincerely wants to develop expertise, it's frustrating to hear the old "if you don't know it now, you never will" line. It's just downright anti-intellectual.
Slashdot is a horrible place to come for art tips. Or even coding tips. Or Choice Of OS tips. Mainly because Everyone Is Right, which gets pretty annoying.
Funny how in any other discussion there would be six billion OSS solutions proffered up, mailing lists linked, etceteras... but when it comes to art, the response is "HIRE AN ARTIST!"
Yes, amateurs create amateur art. Sometimes that's all you need. If you really want more, you can buy it or comission it. If you want to do it yourself, then there's nothing to it but to practice. And practice. And practice. And practice. AND PRACTICE. AND PRACTICE. Aud inifinitum. Practice until people stop proferrring tips and start asking you for help.
Hell, I'm a digital artist and it took me five years to get to the point where I can wear photoshop like a glove. Given enough time, I can make it do anything I want. I've been drawing since preschool and I still have problems with hands, persepective, and scaling. I'd have fewer obvious flaws if I spent more time drawing and less time nerding. But hey, I like the blinkenlights.
You want to learn the stuff, you have to make friends with people who already know how to use it. Or take a crash-class on it. Getting the flow of the app from real people who really know it is orders of magnitude more instructive than any online tutorial or manual ever written- mostly because the pros already know where all of the really neat stuff is hidden, which can save you months of practicing and digging around trying to find it.
There's no magic bullet- just like programming. You want to do the crime, you have to put in the time, so to speak.
As a digital artist, it's nice to see the tables turned. I'm used to being shat on and talked over by UNIX admins and coders who just assume I know vi, or emacs, or where network interfaces are on bsd or various linux distros, et ceteras.
And the programmers are looking for art tips? Nice.
My advice : If you can't do it yourself, make a deal with someone who can. It doesn't even have to involve money. Could be barter or whatever.
Just remember that an artists time is just as valuable as yours, if not more so- and artists are typically subjected to the harrowing horrors of Art Direction. "Make it smaller! Make it rounder! Can I have it in cornflower blue? It's too complicated! It's not complicated enough! It's not what I want but I know fuckall about how to communicate my vision to you so I'm just going to keep requesting changes until you resign from the project and tell all of your art friends I'm an asshole!" and so forth.
I do video and admin work for a living, and I share my work area with a designer who gets pushed around and shat on daily. I love working for myself, but from what I've seen, having someone else in charge of my visual output is a special kind of hell- which is why I don't do contract work.
Know exactly what you want and be prepared to produce several "along these lines" or "kind of like this, only..." examples to illustrate your point. Give the contractor too much free reign and you're likely to get some whacked out thing that bears no resemblance to what you want- wasting their time and yours in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
The Kilrathi (Wing Commander universe) have always been a complete rip of the Kzin... and they looked like fucking MUPPETS in the movie. Alien depiction is only as good as the production crew and the director.... shit, Lucas has proven that no amount of CG can make the fake look real, while Del Toro (sp) has proven that you can mix it with the real deal for a seamless affect- the Kzin would be better off puppetry and/or makeup whereever possible- ditto the Pupeteers. :)
Stephenson would be EASY to adapt, and probably a good deal of fun in the process... depending on the book, of course. You could do a miniseries of Cryptonomicon on a fairly modest budget without any CG at all and still have it all come across- ditto the Baroque Cycle.
Snow Crash might require a bit more on the production design end of things, but the vast majority of it can still be created with good location scouting and creative set dressing.
Effects are no longer an issue. Production values and commitment to excellence are, and that's what sets things like Blade II and LotR apart from Sci-Fi channel crapfests.
You certainly can't do Roots with an all-white cast.... and if you did an adaptation of The Dark Tower with a white Susanna Dean who had all of her legs, you'd be missing the point entirely.
Conversely, Avery Brooks would make a fucking AWESOME Lex Luthor. The guy can do the no-hair thing and exudes barely-repressed evil-rage at the drop of a hat. It rocks.
Hollywood has always pandered to the audience- hence the profusion of tits and massive changes in character racial background. Some of that's actor availability... if you've read the Dune books, you know that the Fremen weren't exactly white.... yet they've been about as honky as you can get in every visual adaptation to hit the screen.
And there's nothing "upcoming" about it- it's being run on SkyOne in the UK as we speak.
:-)
It's easily the best television sci-fi I've seen in years, though I'm starting to wish they'd give their resource acquisition problems more than the coursory lip service of the first and second episodes- BSG is almost entirely sociopolitical drama at this point, and if the characters weren't so well-written and well-acted, it would suck. The fact that it doesn't is kind of a fluke- one I'm enjoying a great deal.
I've never read Earthsea, but if their treatment of Dune is anything to go by, you'll get a lot more mileage out of your friend's reaction than you will any other form of entertainment you've paid money for this year. I promise.
(the Dune miniseries was absolutely HORRIBLE. UNfuckingWATCHABLE, even. I'm not sure which was shittier- the Hercules And Xena production values, or the "modernized" dialogue. >.)
It's on cable and satellite, which means you have to pay for it, and get a bunch of other channels you DON'T want in the package.
:-|
You're paying for the channel, and the channel's getting paid by advertisers. You're paying for the privelege of getting ads rammed up your ass.
This is, in part, why shows like The Sopranos are so popular- not only is it a solid drama, it's COMMERCIAL FREE.
I've never seen anyone actually get anything accomplished through watching TV. Unless you count "relaxing" for six hours a day to be an accomplishment.
:O a movie in realtime on IRC while simultaneously getting other things done in the background is comfort enough.
:|
When I bother with movies these days, I watch them on my workstation. I could care less about comfort level- for me, the ability to critique and O_o and OMFG
Unfortunately, my roommate recently renewed his relationship with the NTSC teat, and now the house is filled with the shit audio quality of a TV. At least he has the decency to keep it in his room, where the malevolent eye of the gorgon-cyclops can't stab into my soul.
... are WHY I still have a four year old Powerbook and don't want to upgrade.
:|
:P
Hard plastic shell that's soaked a lot of damage- this was a point back during the Titaniums, when every other one I saw was cracked or damaged.
Media bay. Can't put two hard drives in current powerbooks- and how often do you use the optical bay, anyway? I haven't had a need for mine since I last installed OS and apps...
Covered port bay- something the iBooks ignore, though it's still a "feature" on Powerbooks.
Dual batter capability. The Pismo is the last machine with it.
Oh, and it's BLACK. So it matches the rest of my wardrobe.
Yeah, the new machines are kind of pretty, but a Powerbook is currently out of my price range and I've heard enough about broken iBook screens, hard drives, motherboards, cases, etc, etc. to not want to spend my money on one.
Upside of PCland is that there's a hell of a lot of choice in the laptop department, and it's likely possible to get some of the features I use that current Apple machine don't have (albeit at the expense of no MacOS).
The design weenies always seem to compare Sony laptops to Powerbooks, but it seems like IBM is the one to look at. O_o
'cuz iBooks and Powerbooks come with graphics boards that were dated before they hit the market. They've always lagged behind the PC in terms of graphics capabilities- at least since 3d accelleration started to mean anything to anyone.
My problem is the lack of ADB tablet support under OS X- I have two ADB tablets and the necessary adapters, and hey- they work fine in OS 9! :|
...when is someone going to take the Linux desktop (or at least A linux desktop) to task for all these failures and more? Yeah, it's easy to poke shit at an OS you didn't even install on your computer- most end users never change the defaults, and linuxland, "YOU DON'T LIKE IT?! CHANGE IT! RECONFIGURE! USE A DIFFERENT ONE!" is the answer. Which is work. Geeks are fine with that, users aren't. That's why they whine at us to fix it. :P
:|
Besides, this guy reads like he has his head six feet up his ass.
Yeah, WACOM tablets are sex. I have one at home and one at work, got my boss and my coworkers turned onto them. They are far beyond awesome for shading, painting, etceteras.
But I can't draw for shit with one.
It's a speed / undo / comfort / tactile / positionable thing. Especially positioning. You can't rotate your monitor and the tablet to a weird angle so you can draw the bit from a position that doesn't make your hand or your brain explode. It's not exactly feasable to lug a wacom and a laptop to a meeting for the express purpose of doodling, and it's easier to lug a sketchbook on those forced family outings.
In short, I'm sure he has his reasons. I use a Wacom for a ton of things, but drawing is not one of them.
And consequently, telling it as anything else would be unworthy.
It's gotta be Cold War in the eighties. Back then, things were a little more clear cut and it was a little easier to be on the side of the US and allies than it would be today.
IMO, if we had a Doctor Manhattan today, well... either the US wouldn't exist, or we wouldn't look very much like we do at present.
Indeed. The ending is intense- the only time a comic book has ever given me the mental equivalent of a fullbore Amtrack derailment.
Yeah, it's not a Hollywood ending. Change that ending and it's not Watchmen anymore, it's shit.
I've never read the books, I'll admit. I read the Hobbit, was sickened by all of the "poetry" and "singing" and stayed very far away from the rest of it. Might get to it eventually- until then, I'm still pissed that Barnes and Nobel (the only frigging chain of bookstores in this twon) has a complete RACK devoted to Tolkein and can't be bothered to keep a single copy of a new book by a current author. :|
:)
I mentioned the scouring because that's the bit everyone I know who's read the books and scene the movies bitches about the most- though at least one friend of mine mentioned Bombadil. So there's at least TWO of you.
And a lot of fans were pissed that Jackson left out some bits, like the Scouring of the Shire, and amped up shit that just wasn't in the book (like the role the elf woman played in the story).
:P) in the process.
Combine the complicated ties between all of the sub plots with the visual style of the book and you already have your script and your storyboards for a film adaptation- all the hard work has been done except for the inconvenient fact that Watchmen is so vast that it works better in the medium it was delivered in.
Jackson turned a few hundred pages of text into seven or eight hours of film, and in the process created a work that people enjoyed and that most of the fans of the original are delighted with.
Greengrass is tasked with a project that demands similar execution.
Jackson had some serious cult successes under his belt (Bad Taste, Dead Alive) and had (depending on your taste for that sort of thing) already proved himself competent of forging cult classics.
Conversely, Greengrass has nothing on his resume that indicates he's capable of handling a project like this. Given his existing track record, I have no reason to keep my hopes up, or to even hope at all.
On the other hand, if he CAN handle it, he'll have created a classic and cemented his reputation (and paycheck
Hahah.
Man, that movie rocked. Having been a long-suffering Trek "fan" who cringes at the mere mention of time travel, Twelve Monkeys was one of the things that broke me from the franchise, for it was well-written film that (in my mind, anyway) did time travel RIGHT.
I've no issues with some healthy Watchmen influence- your points definitely have merit -but personally, I'm pleased that a director whose work I have a great respect for won't be dirtying his hands with this project.
For the article proves that (at the very least) whoever was writing it has no fucking idea what makes the story good, or (at the very, very worst) the director and studio are equally clueless.
I'm betting on both, and I'm betting this is going to make the recent Punisher movie look like Shakespear.
It's more of a jab at Hollywood's tendency to take Allen Moore's work and skullfuck it raw.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the movie) is shit. It bears very little resemblance to the book. Biggest difference between The League and Watchmen is that a quality film adaptation of The League is feasable.
Why they don't shoot for more screen-adaptable Moore is beyond me- Tom Strong or Top Ten would actually work in theaters.
What next? The director of Peewee's Big Adventure doing a film adaptation of Promethia ?
There's a reason Terry Guilliam opted out of working on a film adaptation of Watchmen. The man stated in a book dedicated to Moore's fiftieth birthday that he drew comfort from the fact that he wouldnt' be the one to fuck over the work.
:(
This is Watchmen. This ain't spiderman, this ain't X-men, this ain't dime-store fluff. This is one of the greatest works in the genre and an absolute masterpiece of the superhero medium.
And Guilliam is on the record as being happy he won't be the one to fuck it over. Paul Greengrass has stepped up to the plate, proving he has some sort of perverse urge to alienate pretty much everyone who's ever read the book.
Watchmen can't be done in 90-120 minutes with Big Name Actors. Leastwise, it can't be done right, and if it can't be done right, it shouldn't be done at all.
Last I heard ANYTHING about what Wall Street uses was September of 2001, and that's because something based there happened to have a bigass datacenter near ground zero, and it got vaporized.
Said machines were HP/UX, and they went Linux for immediate replacement because the scale of the installation was such that HP couldn't replace the hardware fast enough.
Memory, of course. Can't back this up because I haven't the foggiest what I should be googling for, and said information is something like four years old.
But hey, Wall Street doesn't necessarily need Sun. They just need Sun to make money, or something.
SUPPORT.
BLAM. That's IT.
You pay half a million for your box breaking to be SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROBLEM.
That money makes your box Sun's priority. Period. They'll FIX IT. Software or hardware. They'll roll you custom Solaris patches, because you're paying for it.
You're paying for a COMPANY to give you some LOVE. Not some snotnosed Admin whose first-line defense is an O'Reilly bookshelf.
There's a definite market for this kind of service. Just because you're not in it doesn't mean it isn't there.
Apple flips shit whenever ANYONE out there gets crazy with the Aqua theming, which has caused a bit of resentment, to be sure.
:|
:|
Conversely, every time I use KDE or Gnome, I find myself trying to dig through the interface to find the Control Panel, or hitting the keystroke that pops the MS-DOS terminal to fullscreen, or expecting the windows key to work, or any number of little Windows-isms... because the interfaces LOOK AND FEEL LIKE WINDOWS.
Maybe a little bit of lawyer blustering would help to steer these desktops into a more innovative direction. I for one would like to see something new- for the linux desktop to be a killer app as opposed to a Win32 / OS2 / Explorer clone.
Until then, I'm sticking with blackbox and bbkeys.
I work around 3000x3000 or so, which makes for a nice 10x10 portfolio piece of a REALLY HUGE ICON which can be re-used pretty much however you like.
Sounds like overkill, but lemme tell you- nothing sucks more than needing a graphic at a larger scale than you have on hand!
But for someone who sincerely wants to develop expertise, it's frustrating to hear the old "if you don't know it now, you never will" line. It's just downright anti-intellectual.
Slashdot is a horrible place to come for art tips. Or even coding tips. Or Choice Of OS tips. Mainly because Everyone Is Right, which gets pretty annoying.
Funny how in any other discussion there would be six billion OSS solutions proffered up, mailing lists linked, etceteras... but when it comes to art, the response is "HIRE AN ARTIST!"
Yes, amateurs create amateur art. Sometimes that's all you need. If you really want more, you can buy it or comission it. If you want to do it yourself, then there's nothing to it but to practice. And practice. And practice. And practice. AND PRACTICE. AND PRACTICE. Aud inifinitum. Practice until people stop proferrring tips and start asking you for help.
Hell, I'm a digital artist and it took me five years to get to the point where I can wear photoshop like a glove. Given enough time, I can make it do anything I want. I've been drawing since preschool and I still have problems with hands, persepective, and scaling. I'd have fewer obvious flaws if I spent more time drawing and less time nerding. But hey, I like the blinkenlights.
You want to learn the stuff, you have to make friends with people who already know how to use it. Or take a crash-class on it. Getting the flow of the app from real people who really know it is orders of magnitude more instructive than any online tutorial or manual ever written- mostly because the pros already know where all of the really neat stuff is hidden, which can save you months of practicing and digging around trying to find it.
There's no magic bullet- just like programming. You want to do the crime, you have to put in the time, so to speak.
As a digital artist, it's nice to see the tables turned. I'm used to being shat on and talked over by UNIX admins and coders who just assume I know vi, or emacs, or where network interfaces are on bsd or various linux distros, et ceteras.
And the programmers are looking for art tips? Nice.
My advice : If you can't do it yourself, make a deal with someone who can. It doesn't even have to involve money. Could be barter or whatever.
Just remember that an artists time is just as valuable as yours, if not more so- and artists are typically subjected to the harrowing horrors of Art Direction. "Make it smaller! Make it rounder! Can I have it in cornflower blue? It's too complicated! It's not complicated enough! It's not what I want but I know fuckall about how to communicate my vision to you so I'm just going to keep requesting changes until you resign from the project and tell all of your art friends I'm an asshole!" and so forth.
I do video and admin work for a living, and I share my work area with a designer who gets pushed around and shat on daily. I love working for myself, but from what I've seen, having someone else in charge of my visual output is a special kind of hell- which is why I don't do contract work.
Know exactly what you want and be prepared to produce several "along these lines" or "kind of like this, only..." examples to illustrate your point. Give the contractor too much free reign and you're likely to get some whacked out thing that bears no resemblance to what you want- wasting their time and yours in the process.