Tale #59 - The Tale of Projects

Hi, all!

Still having troubles working with posting graphics here. So no art today. But I am going to mention a project cancellation. I'm cancelling "Schrute!" right now. I know it seems odd and unusual to cancel a project so early (This is very VERY rare of me to do this), but there's a very good reason for this: Both "Schrute!" and "I Am Chef" are both games and I have my own personal rule regarding game and game projects - never do two games at once unless absolutely nessisary. Not that I don't take on two games at once while freelancing, but for personal projects I tend to have a different rule set that I go by so it doesn't interfear with anything. If I tackled two personal game projects at once, both games will suffer in quality. With both freelance and personal projects, I like keeping a high level of quality. I don't like doing anything subpar. So doing one game at a time for a personal project dodges this problem. So that brings me to the second reason why I picked "I Am Chef" as the game I wanted to work on was because there was more orginality to it and offered the most flexibility in where I can use it... as in portfolio wise. (TOAMG is a "blogfolio" as it's a means to show off my best portfolio work.... but it's what I call a "loose-style" blogfolio meaning that it loosly follows the guidelines for a blogfolio. "Strict-style" is a blogfolio that follows the guidelines to the letter. I'll cover this more in "Blogfolio Power Tips II." )

So anyways, I don't have much else to bring up right now with my art posting ability being well... a little limited right now. So I'll see you all later!

Tale #58 - The Tale of Even More Sketches (And Updates)

Hi, all!

Well... I've been a little busy lately, but I did come up with a lot of artwork.

But first, here's a look at what's been going on:

- Tutoring French = It's true. I'm tutoring it... but only to family because they asked for my help.

- Art class = Well.... I think I'm looking at the end of it. As for why.... it's a sad story. The teacher is having a lot of trouble at home and it's really taking a toll on him so he may actually stop the classes. I really do feel sorry for him. It's kinda hard to find the right stuff to say here. But what I can say is that I hope things get better for him soon.

---PROJECTS---

Well... I'm going to be shelving a few for a while to revisit later. Whenever I get stuck on moving a personal project along, I'll shelve it for a little while so when I come back to it, I can look at it from a fresh light with more new ideas. I just find it easier that way. But I'll only do this if I can afford the luxury and right now I can.

Shelved Projects:

- Steeleing 6
- The top secret project
- Trudge & Quill
- A Day At The Passing Parade (A Remake)

New Projects:

- I Am Chef: The Game= Programming this in RPG Maker. It's a cooking/RPG game with a lot of twists to it. I'm not going to say much on this one.... yet!

- Schrute! = Okay... it's a fan-creation and I don't usually do that, but I couldn't resist. For the past few weeks, I've been watching "The Office" and I've got this grand temptation to create a Flash based game about Dwight Schrute... mostly because there's enough material there to do something kinda light hearted and funny with it.

Anyways, here's the sketches of the... uh day? I guess I really can't say "Sketch of the Day" anymore. But I can say that there's sketches comming your way!



I was watching TV one night and I just started drawing random people from random TV shows. This is the subject of most of today's sketches.



These next few come from watching "The Office." I'm starting to colour a few of these ones. There were more sketches, but for some strange reason, blogger wouldn't allow me to upload anymore and I was getting some weird error messages.... hmm.... anyways, here's the few that made it through:






Anyways, I know I'm a little late here but Happy (belated) Halloween, everyone. To celebrate, I managed to find this quriky Flash game (which I didn't program....) dealing with staple guns.... and.... zombies. Hopefully, the code works and it will show:



Good luck on the zombie hunt!

Tale #57 - The Tale of "Fanput"

Hi, all!

A friend of mine emailed me this link and I found it in my inbox that I want to show you and pretty much caught my attention:

Zeros 2 Heros

So what is it? Well... after having a brief look at it, the site focuses on amatures and the resources on trying to get their foot in the doors in the industry. They are constantly looking for writes and artists and will listen to fan imput (or as I call it "fanput.") But this is also a great chance for both the industry and the job seekers to connect.

So anyways, I really had to point that out.

Tale #55 - The Tale of Why I Create

Hi, all!

Before I launch in to something, I've got a link to show you:

Sixty Minute Artist

This guy knows stuff. Mostly art stuff, but he knows STUFF! Go. Visit. NOW.


Anyways, onwards to other stuff!

No art for this week. Mostly because my new job's kept me a little busy. So it can be a little tricky to sneak something in. So I think I'll start stockpiling what I have so we can have a major art-post at some point.

But in Aboriginal Art, we did go out to do some landscape sketches. I will tell you that mother nature was out to get me that day. Here's a nice look at what she had in store for me:

- Lots of wind = blew my papers around and ripped one of them.

- Ducks = Again, I am at odds with them. This time, it was me being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They took off and well... they nearly bombarded me with duck-dung in mid air. Fortunately, nothing landed on me. But it landed directly infront of me. Let me give you an idea of how close it was - I could feel the wind of it as it dropped down infront of me. Talk about close! Of course, everyone in our sketch group saw this and started poking a bir of fun....

- Dogs = If it isn't the wild life, it's the "life" people sometimes bring with them. In this case, it came in the form of two small growling, barking, and not-entirely-pleasent-looking dogs. I encountered them when I was trying to find the best spot to stop and sketch. I had just walked up the path when I encountered the man with his dogs. I was probably only about a few feet away when the dogs stopped, glared at me and started barking and growling. The owner said that the dogs didn't bite. At that time, I hoped he was right. So I started carefully trying walk around the dogs. However, that was short lived as the dynamic furry duo started after me. With a moment of supprised explicitives muttered under my breath and not wanting my legs gnawed off by the tiny terrors, I did what any sane person would do - get the hell out of there! So this is a big message to you all - if someone says their dogs don't bite, just get out of there quickly....

So what did I sit down to sketch? Well... I found this Chinese pagota, sat inside of it and sketched my POV looking out of the pagota at the statues and trees. It's just a quick sketch, but it turned out nicely. The only catch here is that I used my large very-scanner-unfriendly sketchbook. So this pretty much means I'll probably have to lay it flat and take a picture with my didgital camera. Not something I like doing, but I'll give it a shot.

But in that excursion that day, my art teacher spoke to me. He was talking about my landscape sketch and that he liked what he saw. He said that he sees a lot of disipline to my work. So now here's where I get on my mental tangent here that had me thinking about it much later.

I never believed myself to be "disiplined" through art. Whenever someone says that I'm disiplined, I always think of someone who studies very very hard, who practises hard at something every day, and someone who does whatever they can to strive for perfection. The other thing I think of when it comes to that word is generally someone who's when to art classes to learn what they've learned. So when I sat down to think of this, I wonder just a little bit.

For me, I don't really consider myself "disiplined." Not that I don't work hard at it or anything. But it's just that I don't tend to think of myself in that light. The thing with me is that how I learnt appreciate art came from my family (who's art-loving) and how I learnt to draw was entirely on my own. Well... mostly on my own. My family had a bit of encouragement to give out there. The earliest memory I have with art and family is one late afternoon when I was little. My dad was busy in the kitchen. I totally forget what it was that he was doing at the time. Like most little non-school-aged kids, I went up to my dad and asked to play with him. He told me he had a lot of work to do and maybe he'd play with me later. With a little more pestering, he sat me down in the dinning room and set out a crayon and paper. I could even remember the colour of the crayon. When he left, I started to draw. I've forgotten what it was I drew that day, but what I do know is that it was my first introduction to art. Little could anyone have guessed where I've ended up today artistically.

So now jumping back from early memory lane here, I mostly taught myself to draw from books I picked up from the local libraries. Now the thing with my city is that my city isn't pro-art. They just don't support it enough. And they still don't. Most artists, graphic designers, animators, storytellers... ect, move out of the city as soon as they can. So as you can imagine with a city like mine, we wouldn't have a lot of artbooks back then. I mean now we do have a few more in there and it's expanded (which is supprising to me, yet very welcome by me). But back then, we didn't have a lot. So I took what they had and learned what I could from them. Afterwards, my parents started to buy me a few books occasionally to help support this. I have a very closely knit family who would do anything to support me and this was just one of those ways. I also have them to thank for getting me in to the world of digital art at an early age too back when something like that in my city was almost unheard of. (Of course, I actually find it kinda funny that Fisher Price now came out with their Digital Arts And Crafts Studio tablet for kids which reminds me of my old TV-tablet I had when I was a kid! XD I say it's about time they came back! XD )

But anyways, here's the thing about me learning to draw that makes me say that I wasn't really "disiplined" at it - I had fun with it. As a kid, it was okay to draw purple suns or blue kittens. Perfection didn't matter. Having fun with the medium did. I also loved (and still love) using imagination. The big thing for me was that I enjoyed what I was doing and creating. Art was the thing that put me in direct contact with what was going on inside my head.

The only bit of formal training about how to draw came from that one class I took in high school. What I discovered in that class what that with the teacher, he was always about drawing everything realisically and with meaning. Everything had to mean something like for example "The apple with barbed wire around it = Someone's view of education for women in a 3rd world country" or "the baby doll's head with a toy hand gernade it it's mouth and electrical tape = represents genocide" or DuChamp's "Fountain." (You know.... that one of the urnial in the art gallery being called a fountain...?) Now I just made that up just on the spot (except for that DuChamp thing. That really does exsist!), but you get the picture. With me, I actually can draw realism and I will do it no sweat.... but I just don't like tackling that kind of meaning in that kind of way unless I can have fun with it and be a little lighthearted. Even storytelling with art is appreciated by me. I like having people enjoying what they see and appreciating it at face value and even having fun with what they see rather than having to think really hard about it. A little meaning tackled in a tastefully good fun way is okay with me. Weirdness without the fun just isn't my thing. But for the teacher teaching it, it was. So I started off with this class going at it my usual fun way not trying to hunt around for meanings but appreciating art as art and to invoke maybe a little emotion at face value. I also started off with character sheets and "commercial" artwork as well and introduced a little digital art. He hated it. When I asked why, he asked for meaning and asked why was I drawing what he considered "cartoons." Now I thuroughly believe that "cartoons" are still art. They still take the same ammount of skill to do. The same thing was there in my head back then. I didn't quite get why my old art teacher would have differentiated that so strongly. I also didn't quite get why he hated digital art either. I also asked about digital art and he simply said that digital art wasn't art. Again, it was a very confusing thing for me as was the idea of "cartoons." After that, I tried changing up the styles and went with what he wanted. But I always seemed to come up short with him. Throughout the semester, he'd always come back to that whole "cartoon" thing even when I wasn't drawing anything "commerical." He then started refering to me as "cartoonist" as though it were some form of artist's insult. The thing about the old art class was that he never taught us anything. I know to most that's a general student comment that never seems to hold water and seems to only come out whenever a student fails something. But the thing was, I never failed that class and that I genuinely mean that. He really didn't teach us any of the skills. He expected us to just go out and do it. The only thing he really did teach was art history. So it was more of this "trial by fire" teaching approach where he simply expected us to figure out on our own what to do. Because of that experiance, I didn't really go back to any art classes teaching traditional art until recently with Aboriginal Art. The experiance I had in the high school one was pretty negative and one I didn't enjoy. So I was back on my own teaching myself again.

But in those years between then and now, my views of art did change as did my ways of tackling it. For example, you don't draw lines in the sand of what art is. That's a perfect way of closing doors which is a really bad thing. It shut down possiblities you can do with your own art and really narrows your view. Another thing is that being flexible with your art styles and mediums is a great thing to do. Even as I'm posting, I'm branching out further and further with my art skills in to all kinds of things. Even cooking! XD (Eventhough I do suck at cooking, I'm still working at it which is probably also a good idea too.) There's more stuff, but this is what comes off the top of my head the fastest.

So now comes today. I'm back in another art class - Aboriginal Art, and I'm doing quite well with it. I enjoy the class alot. I mean yeah, I still have stuff to work on. You never stop learning, right?

But the thing that never really changed about me and art is that I always loved it and just enjoyed it which is one thing that really can't be taken away from me. The same goes for media arts and storytelling too. I genuinely enjoy it and love it which is why I'm always wanting to branch out and learn more. In doing this, I also gain the flexibility that I want and need so I can get in to the industry I love to death. (Freelance is fun, but it's really hard to do locally.)Working in the media field is just that dreams I'd want to complete and just dying to do. It's that one dream I'm chasing right now. I guess you can see it just by looking trough TOAMG. XD

So do I think I'm that "disiplined?" I don't think so. Well.... maybe just a little. But more or less, I just enjoy what I do and I don't plan to give that up any time soon.



.... Woah... that was one long post. I think this is one of the longest! Anyone got a tape measure? A word counter? XD Anyways, I'll see you all later!

Tale #54 - The Tale Of The Living Cartoon

Hi, all!

Okay... today's bit of life news will take the form of a comic.... more like my life as a living cartoon. All these sketches were done extremely quickly. More like under 15 seconds for each one and none of them were created to be a master piece. They're just here to illustrate the story in a very witty way. Observe!



Now just to start you off at the begiining of the story....



This is me. Or more like me with long hair, me with short hair (I actually have it that way right now) and my character, Kam Steele who frequently cameos as my avitar. So for this story she will, as she usually does, be my avitar.

Anyways, as you're all well aware, I'm a free lance graphic designer who's dying to get in to the media industry doing... well... anything I can get my hands on. Unfortunately, freelancing here locally isn't doing too well. Actually, not well at all. The only other reason why I'm doing it now is so that I can gain experiance to put on my resume (XP level up!). However in order to keep this going, I had to get a better paying job. So I applied to everything I could think of!

Until one day.....



... I managed to get one. It was a storefront position at a local restauarnt. I figured since it was storefront, it was just cashiering which is something I can do.



So on the first day, I went to training....



At training, we got our uniforms (we wear these visor things) and were watching videos. I wasn't 100% sure what to expect until it came to the END of the video.

I had never anticipated this at all....



.... I HAD TO BE ABLE TO COOK! I never expected this at all when I applied! I mean it was just a storefront cashiering position which seemed like a non-cooking position. Oh! And no where in the job description did it ever mention I'd be cooking anyways. Even in the job interview, the only time they ever alluded to it was when they asked "Can you follow instructions?" What do you say to that? "No, I am so disobediant that I'll deliberately not follow instructions and just for the heck of it, switch your morning coffees around for decaf, put clear nail polish all over your pens and to top it off - switch the "N" and the "M" around on your keyboard!" Of course I can follow instructions! It's one of those things where you sorta have to to get by in life at times. So I answered "yes" to that question. But that's all they alluded to it. So how did cooking come in to play with cashiering? Well... if they're short-staffed in their kitchens or if it's just too crazy in there, they'll occasionally call upon storefront to help with the cooking. And just for the record, I NEVER lied anywhere in the interviews or my applications about my skill set. But they said that they were desperate for people to come in on weekends.

Now for those of you who don't know.... I can't cook. I've got knocking stuff over in the kitchen to a science. Matter of fact, I'm usually the one who gets chased out of the kitchen! So what do I do?



Well... try to find some way of learning to cook. Unfortunately, the nearest cooking rat is in Paris and that's just too damned expensive. Cockroaches are probably way better at EATING the food. And in case you're wondering.... bananas can't cook either.

So I'm running out of options. What do I do?



Teach myself to cook. Fortunately, I haven't been called upon to cook, so that gives me time to learn and figure out what the heck I'm doing before someone figures out what my cooking skills really are like. So I'm teaching myself how to do it in any way I can and fortunately, I have my family to help me "test" my creations (as in eating them. XD ) So far, I've managed my first culinary achievement - baking a cake! For me, that's major. So hopefully I can move forward and learn a new set of non-computer skills.

So there ends The Living Cartoon. And yes, this IS a real story. Not one bit of it is fake. So now you have some funny story to enjoy and some insight in to my new experiment and my new adventure.

.....the drama continues! XD

Tale #53 - The Tale Of Kam the Konquerer

Hi, all!

Anyways, I've just finished up my first round of my Civ game. I won this one based on a culture victory. It's as I say (in game), "If you can't kill them in general and you can't kill them with kindness, kill them with culture." It's an interesting strategy, but I happen to like this one. Anyways, I'm starting up a second round. But to those of you our there who are also Civ fans with time on their hands (of varying degree), feel free to give me a shout to play a multiplayer game with you. I'll probably show up as France and my name would probably be "Kam _______" .... fill in a French last name. Most likely "LaForge," "Lavoie," or "LaRoche" or something.

But anyways, moving on. Today, I've got some sketches and art to post to show you guys!

Since I finally got my cell phone working, here's a few images I took!



This was done when I had a little time to kill before class started. I was waiting for people to show up and well... I was a little bored, so I started doodling on the chalkboard near my desk. As to how I got some of those pastel-styled effects with the chalk, I just used my fingers. What I discovered was that each different finger size could acheieve different effects. For example, my little finger can do fine details while my thumb can tackle large stuff in a hurry. I've done stuff like this with pastels but I haven't really done chalks before and I haven't done something like this on a chalkboard before. So it was a major opportunity to experiment!

Anyways, here's some of the close up details of my adventure in chalks:






Now here's a picture I took in a nearby cemetary with my cell. I wanted to see if I can at least take some decent photography with it. In case you're wondering... yes, you CAN take some decent photography with it. However, it relies very heavily on how you frame up your shot. A badly framed shot will likely get you an ugly result. So anyways, here's my decent cell phone photograpy:



And there you have it! How to kick some ass with just your cell phone's camera!


But that's not all for today's art-a-thon, folks! There's one more!



Anyone remember "Mar" the monster from a few months back? Well.... I finally gave in and decided to colour him and make him look all spiffy. It was really hard to pick colours for him, but I think I'm pretty satified with the outcome.


In other random news, I also finally gave in to one more thing - storm chasing! I finally decided to go out and do it! It was one of the craziest things I've done but by far one of the most funnest things I've done. I didn't get any pictures of lightening (unfortunately). I was too slow. But I did gets some other interesting weather related phenomina that day. I will post the picture to that another post at another time. But I will say, it was a lot of fun and I think I'm going to do it again when the next big one hits.

Tale #52 - The Tale of The FRENCH II

Hi, all!

Anyways, I'm almost done my first round of my French campaign Civ game. So far, I'm beating everyone out on culture power. It may be my key to winning here. XD But anyways, I'm doing an early art post and putting up some digital work to show you guys:



No text in this one. I think you got the point with the last sketchier one. XD

Tale #51 - The Tale of The FRENCH!

Hi, all!

Anyways, I STILL can't get my art off my phone. So I've got a nice Civilization (AKA Monty Python Quote) anecdote for whenever I play as France:



Yes.... I'm a major Civ fan and love the game to death. My family gave me the lastest version of it in this nice little box set for my birthday and well... been playing it on my breaks since. If there's anyone out there interested in playing multiplayer, my name will most likely be Kam, Kam_Steele or Kamui.EXE and I'll be playing as King Louie because you know... it's fun to be French. XD

Tale #50 - The Tale of Older Geeks

Hi, all!

Anyways, I'm a year older now... but not nessisarily a year wiser. Hmm.... Or maybe I am a little wiser because of the whole "you learn something new everyday" thing. So yeah... I'm now 22yrs instead of 21years. Woohoo!

So now comes another question: When will I be posting more art? Well.... I actually I did have something, but I'm uploading it tommorrow because it's sitting on my cell phone and for some reason, it's not comming OFF my phone. So this is going to take a little debugging here. So what do I have? Well... some artistic chalk board "fun" is one of them. (AKA: Got to class early, waited for people to show up, got bored, started doodling cool doodles...) And my other is my second graveyard trip in search of inspiration and well... I'm going to show off a little cell-phone photography (Trust me, it's actually pretty good for cell photography.) But that's comming up on Friday.

So that's it for my little update here. Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #49 - The Tale of Geek Tip II

Hi, all!

Anyways, here's the long awaited "Power Blogfolio Tips." I'm going to divide this up in to two parts to make things easier. So here's part 1!



So what's a "Blogfolio?"

What a blogfolio is it's a combination between a blog and a portfolio. It's what I call a close cousin to an art-blog where you post your art. The difference? A blogfolio is used to PROMOTE your art to people in the industry instead of posting art just for feedback or because you felt like it.

Okay.... now why use one?

Well! Firstly, blogs have a lot of power to them. You can either get hired or fired based on what you post on one. Another thing that blogfolios have going for it is that you can always update it. Unlike portfolios of the past, you can always update a blogfolio without resubmitting it which makes it very dynamic. But there's also one more thing that comes with it too that no other type of portfolio has - interactivity! You can interact with the blogfolio and its' owner and get feedback quickly.

Alright! Now I totally get it. But why the heck are you posting this?

The fine art of Blogfolio'ing is the newest and soon-to-be trendy'est thing popping out of the blog-o-sphere right now. But because of how new this trend is, there really isn't a definate set of rules, tips or ettiquet for them right now. So what I'm going to try to do is post a set of tips and try to define some form of blogfolio ettiquet based on observation, pre-exsisting blog rules, and good judgement. So let's get started, shall we?

Gear You Need

Here's what you need to start your blogfolio:

- A host (Livejournal, Blogger... ect)
- A Computer with Internet (You can't blogfolio without it)
- Some art you've scanned in or digitized somehow to post
- A resume or a resume-like blurb about your skills
- Dedication (A blogfolio isn't much unless you're willing to dedicate some time to this.)

General Ettiquet

Firstly, let's start off with the general rules/ettiquet for general blogging. Those will serve as a foundation for blogfolio. So here's a look at them:

Rule #1: Take responsibility for what you say - Well... you have to! Why? Because the Internet has a memory. If you put it in writing, it WILL remember. It doesn't matter if you delete it. You can still bring it back up in all its' glory/gory. So watch what you say.

Rule #2: Make room for comments - Part of the art of blogging is the chance for feedback. So leave room for it.

Rule #3: Let people know about what your tolrance level of abuse is - "Abuse" can mean different things to different people and cultures. Remember, it's not just YOUR country that's online. It's the entire world! So one thing that might be considered abusive or threatening to you may not be for someone else in another culture. For example - We, here in Canada, think of the thumbs up sign as a good thing. But in Austrailia, it pretty much means "up your's." So please keep that in mind and post all that stuff ahead of time. As for me, what I consider abuse is trolling, spam, harassment (Of all verbal types), and hate comments. However, I do have a sense of humor, so I use my own best judgement here.

Rule #4: Ignore trolls - They're just looking for a fight. The worst kinds of trolls look to start a fight, claim it as abuse, report it to an administrator to get you banned. I've seen them take it this far and I've seen their handywork = not pretty. So just ignore them. And if they post a comment you don't like, you can just simply delete it.

Rule #5: If someone is misbehaving on your blog and it's not trolling, tell them! - Often times, if you tell them what they're doing is wrong, they'll stop. But when you tell them, be sure to be calm, assertive yet firm. There's no need to get nasty. Just handle this civily.

Rule #6: Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say to anyone's face - I think this one pretty much explains itself. A blog or anything online aren't exactly privet things, so don't do that.


Blogfolio Ettiquet

While there isn't a general set of rules available for blogfolios, here's a few that I've noticed that generally work and pretty much are a good idea. However, please keep in mind the general blogging rules because they may help you out in a jam.

Rule #1: Avoid poltics and "heavy" subjects - The point of your blog isn't to disguss what stupid thing certain world leaders are doing next. Why? Because different people think different things and well... this can lead to arguments that can go quickly out of hand in to an all out flame war. Clearly NOT professional. So avoid this like the plague. I remember first starting TOAMG and I asked for a little bit of feed back and the one popular answer was to make it about politics. Their theory - negative attention is still attention. I told them upfront that my goal was NOT to piss anyone off and politics/heavy subjects are a great way of doing that. So, guys, negative attention is definately NOT good attention and well.... won't do you any favours. So NO POLITICS/HEAVY SUBJECTS!

Rule #2: Give, Give, GIVE - People like freebies and like free handouts, so why not create a few. Like create some comic book templates, tutorials or something people can use. If you can give them something they can use, they'll not only come back, but odds are, they'll tell other people about your freebies. I recall an episode of The Simpsons once where Homer created the Mr. X website. Before that, all he had was a page of animated gifs. It was then Lisa said that a webpage had to give something back. In reality, your blogfolio should be able to do the same. While it's primary purpose is to post your stuff and get yourself out there to potential employers, you should also find ways of giving back to your visitors.

Rule #3: Keep a resume or some sort of resume-esque blurb about yourself - We need to know what you can do. Most blog hosting services allow you to put some form of bio/blurb about yourself under your profile. So why not put it to use? Put all your skills and experiance you can in to this section of profile. BUT if your resume and experiances are too long to put in there you can either: A.) Put the most important stuff in there and supply the rest on request. B.) Host your actual resume on another website and link it up to your blogfolio.

Rule #4: Put your contact info where everyone can see it wherever they go - It's no good if no one can contact you, right? Just put your email or any other relavant contact info on your mainpage where it can be seen. On TOAMG, I keep my contact stuff on the side of my page so no matter where you go, you can always see it and find it.

Rule #5: Be professional but also be flexible - Let's face it, people like professional. But you have to be flexible too. You can't be overly serious all the time. So at least allow for a sense of creativity and fun in to your blogfolio. Here, at TOAMG, I like to keep a bit of a playful atmposhere so you'll occasionally see a cartoon pop up. But I also try to maintain a bit of professionalism while I'm doing this. Also when you post your work, be prepared to give an artistic explanation of the hows and whys of it. It lets people see in to your head.

Rule #6: NEVER talk about ANYONE in a negative light - That's a huge NO! This is one of those things that can ruin things for you. So no matter how angry or upset you are with someone, DON'T post it in your blogfolio! This can be a career killer! So avoid it at all costs.

Rule #7: It's okay to talk a little bit about daily life, but be sure to post some portfolio stuff - Yeah... we ALL have lives and interesting things that happen to us. But this isn't the focus of your blogfolio! The focus should be your portfolio stuff. So you can talk about life stuff (in a light context more often than not PLEASE!) but make sure you post a lot of your portfolio stuff too. Here, at TOAMG, I often make sure I have SOME art or SOMETHING attention-worthy going up as portfolio pieces. Throughout this summer (2007), I made sure a lot of art went up. So I believe that this is a good practise.

Rule #8: Post your BEST work only - DON'T post anything subpart or anything that isn't an accurate demonstration of your skills. This will most likely get potential employers to ignore you.

Rule #9: Keep graphic sizes small (thumbnails) and make your page 56k friendly - About 49% of the world's Internet using population in the year 2005 were still on 56k. Odds are, people are still using it now in 2007. So please keep them in mind and make your page a quick loader as well as easy to use. If you can, use thumbnails. Also bear in mind that some people will use their mobiles to access your page. So design-wise, keep them in mind too.

Rule #10: Allow for constructive critisism - It's a handy tool. If someone sees a way for you to improve, I seriously suggest listening to them. Constructive critism isn't bad critism. It's a good thing.

Rule #11: Post often - People like it when things update often and will come back. So it's a good idea to post a lot. Oh! And if you've got anything techincal glitches or anything relating to quirky issues surrouning your blogfolio (EI: Not being able to make an update in a week or something) - POST ABOUT IT! You have to let people briefly know what's up. It's a really good courtasy thing to have.

Rule #12: Be nice to others in the industry both online and offline - Do NOT become all fangirly/fanboyly over them and especially DON'T do it in their own blogs. Deep down at the end of the day, they're people and artists too... just like you. Treat them with respect like you would another human being, but don't go crazy about it. That fangirling/fanboying thing can get old fast and well... it can really bother a person. So I don't recomend doing that.

Rule #13: Have fun - Yeah... it sounds like a corny rule, but it's one of those things people forget to do and even more so with all these rules that I've posted. But listen, a blogfolio can be a fun, exciting and rewarding experiance. You should enjoy the adventure and enjoy keeping one running. A blogfolio or even a blog in general isn't worth while if you're not enjoying it or it starts becoming a chore. So please, have fun with your blogfolio.

Anyways, that ends Part 1 for "Blogfolio Powertips." As I said, I would have had something for Friday but because I wanted to do a post on "Blogfolios," the artwork is going to be delayed a week. But I hope these Blogfolio tips are helping you out in setting one of these up. (And besides, there doesn't seem to be any blogfolio tips on the web at all last time I Googled them. Even Wiki has nothing! So this would be the first set of Blogfolio tips I've ever seen posted.)

Well! See you all later!

Tale #48 - The Tale of kPod and Other Stuff

Hi, all!

Anyways, just as a little tidbit here: I think I'll be making the sketch-of-the-day as more like sketch-of-the-WEEK because of the amount of work that got dumped on me which is making it a challenge to find time to sketch and to scan it in to show you guys. So I'm sorry about that! But I'll try to make up for it on Fridays... I PROMISE!

Anyways, now a look at other things. Well... for starters, I finally finished off jPod. You know you're a major geek if you understood 95% of the geekisms in there and unfortunately, I do. XD Now I want to pick up Mircoserfs next. XD But anyways, I have to say that I did enjoy it. So yeah.... that's what I was reading when I wasn't cracking open the textbooks.

The other thing that happened to me in that time was I finally met my Sketching teacher for Sketch Class. Well... actually, the class's name is "Contemporary Aboriginal Art." But that's a major misnomer. You see, it's actually a traditional art class that teaches traditional art (EI: sketching nudes, working on charcoal portrates... ect). So why is it called ABORIGINAL art? Well... that's where all the wackyness kicks in. You see.... it's an Aboriginal TEACHER teaching the art. So he would joke and call the class "Contemporary Aboriginal Art." But since then, the joke kinda stuck and it's now become the actual name of the course.

But anyways, on to the main story. The teacher is a really smart guy. He's someone who thinks story and art should go hand-in-hand but he also has a broad view of what art is. Some of the stuff we got talking about was extremely interesting from the role of digital art to the Great Masters to well... anything art and story related under the sun. But then he asked me to bring one of my filled sketchbooks in to next class. That night, however, I had thought ahead of time and brought some of my sketchbooks along because I thought that we needed them to sketch in. So I showed that to him. He had a good look through it before I got questioned like crazy. I really wasn't expecting that! Like he asked me "How did you come up with your art style?" "How did you come up with your ideas?" "Where do you get your inspiration?" and so forth. He really liked what he saw in there (And just so you know, what he saw in the sketchbooks was what I posted here on TOAMG. So you've got that for referance.) And he just wanted to find out all about how I work on my stuff and everything. He was very happy with what he saw that class. So I'm going to take a guess here that I'm definately on the right track.

Anyways, I've got to get to class! I'll see you all later!

Tale #47 - The Tale of Orientation Day II

Hi, all!

Anyways, I've been a little busy. So the proper titles should have been "The Tale of Orientation WEEK" since I really didn't get back to this until about a week later.

So what happened?

Well.... on Orientation DAY, as our last pit stop, we took a tour of a Bombardier manufacturing plant to learn about the fine business art of Kaisan. However, since most thought Orientation day would only take up until half the day, most people couldn't stick around for the tour. So that left just four students including myself. The tour went over quite well except when we got to the fiberglassing area. Now to those of you who don't know, I have an extremely sensative sense of smell. (I also have good eyes and a great sense of touch, but that's a whole other story best saved for another time.) One of the things about having a great sense of smell is that I can pick up on stuff that most people in my family misses. I can also somewhat taste the smell in the back of my throat too. So on one hand, this can be an awesome thing. But on the other, I can actually have this work against me too. An example would be skunk. It's bad enough that I can smell it, but I can "taste" that smell too and it was god-aweful! The same goes for cigarette smoke. Can't be around smokers either. So bad smells tend to stick longer in the back of my throat and well that completely screws up my sense of taste for a moment or two and I pretty much am left coughing and hacking out my lungs if it's super bad. So as you can imagine with the fiberglass area, it was pure olfactory hell for me. I tried sticking it out as long as I could but I think everyone noticed that I wasn't handling the fiberglass smell too well. Eventually the tour came to an end and I learned much about the plant and the students who came with me.

Now move on to the other days of Orientation Week....

I had to pick up my student card and for some weird reason, this year was student card hell due to the huge line ups. So in waiting, I saw a checkers mini-tournament going on. I was bored so I decided to check it out. For those of you unaware, I hadn't played checkers in years. But when I did, I was pretty good at it. Since it had been a while, I opted to go and play in the mini-tournament. The guy I ended up playing against was the head of Student Sports & Rec. How about we just call him "Rec-Guy" for now. Anyways, Rec-Guy thought he was all that when he came to play against me. I wasn't sure if I had my ubber checker-playing skills left and thought I would be quite rusty. But as I started playing, it became quickly apparent that I can still kick someone's ass at this game. To make matter worse for Rec-Guy, we had an announcer with a megaphone who started teasing him when he lost. In the end, I managed to win a Hot Wheels taxi (which is sitting on my computer desk. You know how cool it is to keep toys and things on your computer desk to flaunt your geekyness! XD ) and a yo-yo. We sorta had a toys-theme going on.

So as it stand, over the course of Orinetation week, here's what I won:

- Bath soap (For being the only one in Marketing to be born in Septemeber. Am I the odd ball here?)
- A Student Union water bottle and pen set
- A stress ball that looks like a globe
- A yo-yo
- A Hot Wheels car

.... maybe I'm just too lucky or maybe I'm just at the right place at the right time.

So then comes classes. Now I was sure that Marketing and Media were pretty much cousines of each other. So I figured they would understand the same sorts of things. But what I quickly figured out was that none of them were Media-Geeks like me. They just didn't seem to understand the humor and I didn't understand why. I also didn't understand why when I brought up some of my computer experiances (it was unavoidable! One of my classes had us bring it up!), I get this weird stare from everyone accompanied with the shuffling away of the chairs on the linolium floor. So here I am sitting there confused. If Marketing and Media were cousines, why was I being looked at funny? This morning in that mental wake-up fog, it dawned on me - Marketers don't NEED to see under the hood and use the computer. They get the Media-geeks to do that for them. So this means that pretty much I'm the only one totally knowning the inner workings of the media end of things. So when I speak geek, they don't understand it. But they do understand numbers, facts and statistics where as I deal with that very little. I've got a rough understanding of how that works, but I need the diploma to prove what I know PLUS add on any extra skills. So now I get why Marketers freak about geek speak. But that also means that I've got to start holding back now. I feel a little trapped by this, but I know that I will get through this. I just have to watch my step now and just be aware of when I start to speak geek. This is going to be one unusual life-experiment.

Anyways, class is about to start and I've gotta get going. I will get some sketches up this week, I promise!

Tale #46 - The Tale of Orientations

Hi, all!

Back with another life update (Since things were so crazy, I really didn't get a moment's peace to sketch.... not that that's a hugely bad thing....) But I did have quite an adventure when it came to my Business Marketing Orientation day yesterday.

It felt a little strange going back to school, but hey! Two diplomas are way better than one, right? So I wasn't quite sure what to expect back on my first day. Well... the day was full of supprises! The first being that my order for my Adobe CS3 package FINALLY came in. So I had that to drool over before heading to the event. WOOT! But then the ball got rolling after that. I encountered some of my old professors and we stopped to chat about how our summers went. As it turns out, we both had equally busy summers. I also told him a bit about my blogfolio, TOAMG (Here I go, inventing words again! New word = "blogfolio" XD Actually... I didn't invent it. Someone else did, but it's a new recent thing using blogs as portfolios. Cool, eh? )

So after quick chit-chat, I managed to get to the correct room. Now here I am expecting to walk in there, not know anyone, and introduce myself like a dorky idiot (Okay... maybe I'm not a dorky idiot unless I'm without my morning coffee. But then again, who doesn't sound at least a little goofy in the mornings without coffee or some other means of a turbo-hyper-galactic-boost-and-mind-defogger substance?) But strangely enough, that wasn't the case. I actually DID know a few people. One of them I recognized as a drop out from the first year of my Media Arts major (The major I was last in and graduated from. It's a 3-year long major). Smart guy, but was more in to code than the art and animation. The other person I knew came all the way from my high school days. She graduated a year ahead of me and actually STILL remembered and recognized me. (The nasty snag: I didn't remember her very well. It's a goofy thing. You know how you can meet someone and then it could be a few years later before you see them again and when they see you, they remember you and you don't remember them thus causing a moment or two of "memory-guilt?" Similar feeling. Actually, I think there was a Pepsi commercial here in Canada based on this.) So at least I could take comfort in the fact that I at least knew a few people.

Then came on the presentations the professors had along with a few contests to test to see how much you were listening. My mind, being how it is the keeper and retainer of randomized bits of important information (Sometimes, I could be doing something else at the same time and I could still remember what was said.) So I was able to handle some of the quiz questions and won a bunch of stuff. Usually, someone else cuts in front of me and shouts out the answer before I even get the chance. This time, I was quite lucky. Oddly enough, I don't know why.

But out of all the presentations, one really caught me off guard. This one dealt with my city and did one very important thing for me - It gave me hope. For those of you completely unaware of what my city is like, let me tell you that my city is a dying city right now. There are several factors contributing for this. The first is that the city counsil still wants to hang on to the old ways of doing things eventhough it doesn't work anymore in modern times. The second is that around my city are smaller Native communities/tribes. Now what would happen is that in these communities, if you did something extremely horrible or if you're a chronic (Fill-in-the-blank), they would exile you. So what do they do when they exile someone from the tribe? They give them a one way bus ticket to my city to be dumped off there! They won't outwardly admit this, but you don't have to go very far to figure this out. So you can probably tell what this means. Also, the city's core has deteriorated badly, industry and business are moving out.... sounds like a recipe for disaster. As you know from earlier posts to TOAMG, there aren't storytellers and other media geeks like me sticking around either. So from where I stand, it seems like my city is going down like the Titanic. But then I listened to this presentation yesterday that got me thinking otherwise. The presentation said they've got someone new in charge of handling some money and the city planning. What's he going to do with it? He wants to build a media/IT district overlooking our major lake. Part of this, he let one thing to be hinted at that's going to be reality - we're getting a major animation studio here. My jaw dropped at this. Was I hearing things? Is this really going to happen?

...!


...yes.

It's real. They're starting the studio's construction this month. They are really here. It's really real. I can now actually see that there's a little bit of light and hope here. Maybe I can actually afford to stay for a little while.


There's more to this story of what happened on Orientation Day, so I'm going to leave you all here on a cliffhanger. Why? Because I'm going to have to dash off to class soon. So I'm going to leave those thoughts with you guys for a while.

Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #45 - The Tale of MacBooks

Hi, all!

Well.... yeah. This is two entries in a row for me, but I'm really excited about this next bit of news. I decided to cave in and finally get a MacBook. So I did. I picked it up today. I think I'm going to be using it for all my sketches from now on. Here's pictures of it:


(DRUM ROLL, PLEASE!)


























XD Well.... I did say it was a MacBOOK but I didn't say what kind of BOOK it was! XD So yeah... I found some Mac decals and decided to have a little bit of fun with them. It resulted in this visual pun! XD I'm horrible, aren't I? Here I am giggling away like a 2nd grader over this. God! The weird things that crawl in to my head sometimes....

Tale #44 - The Tale of No Straps

Hi, all!

Anyways, no art today. Today is more of a life-update.

First on my list of life updates, I've decided to go back to school to get my business degree/diploma. I mean what's better than having one diploma/degree? TWO of them! So I will have both a Media Arts diploma/degree and a Business diploma/degree. So now I'm upgrading my skills to become much more awesome in the future. But this also gives me more time to also train my current skills as well. If I hope to stand a chance of surviving in the industry, I have to be able to keep up with it. So I'm also going to be using the year to self-train which means more cool stuff here in TOAMG throughout the year.

Anyways, on to my next story! My best friend's computer up and quit on him due to a busted harddrive. But us being well... us, we looked at this as an opportunity to save money and see what we can salvage from the dead computer to build his dream computer. From what he tells me, he DOES have a high end graphics card in there. So right now, that's really got me thinking. So before I crack open the case to see what else I could salvage, I had to find my anti-static wrist strap. I will NOT work on any electronics without it. So as you can guess, it's seen a lot of miles. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it anywhere! My best assumption of what happened to it was that my cats must have taken off with it, chewed it up and left it somewhere for me to find. Somehow, I'm expecting a CSI-styled crime-scene here a few months from now where I'll find this chewed up hunk of moldy fabric and wire that used to be my wrist strap. But for now, looks like I'm out to buy a new one. The bad news was was that stores in my city are totally selling out of these faster than the Wii-rush of December 2006. I'm guess now at the beginning of the school year, these kinds of things would be selling like hotcakes because I can't find them. BYARG!

So now I'm going to end off this nice little blog-post with a challenge for you guys. I sorta got this out of a book I'm reading called "jPod" by Douglas Copeland. (The book made me realise how sad I am because I understoof all the geekisms and things in there. XD Wow... I really AM that geeky! XD ) But the challenge goes like this:

What you do is you write yourself as an eBay ad. You know... like you're selling yourself on eBay? These can be as crazy and as funny as you want. The purpose? Just to be silly and goof around with the semi-magical weirdness-wonders of eBay ads and you. Oh! To help you get a head start, here's an eBay ad generator that you can use to generate your silly ad. Be sure to post the goofy results you have with this. I think we all need a good crazy laugh every once in a while.

See you all later!

Tale #43 - The Tale Of Geek Tip I

Hi, all!

Anyways, today I'm going to do a short tutorial on Flash Painting. So here I go!

HOW TO PAINT IN FLASH 8 (or higher)



Okay. Here's what you need to make the magic happen:

* Your computer/laptop
* Some input perfieral of some kind (Either a tablit, mouse or whatever. If you want, you can even use GlovePIE and your Wiimote together too. Although, I'm not going to tell you how to set that up because that's a whole other can of worms there.)
* Your hands and the creative powers of your MIND!
* A copy of Flash 8 or higher. (If you don't have a copy of Flash, you can download a 30-day free trial on Adobe/Macromedia's website.)



NOTE #1: Please don't ask me how to hook up your wiimote to your computer. I'm not trying to be mean or anything. It's just that this isn't the place to do it. It's an ART tutorial and NOT a wiimote tutorial. Okay? Thanks.

NOTE #2: To those of you who don't have a tablit - RELAX! You really DON'T need one so don't fret if you don't have one. I mean, I hear people almost complaining to me saying that the only reason why anyone could be any good at drawing on a computer directly is because they're tablit users. I'm living proof that that's not true. You can get away with using a mouse. You just need to practise with it. Actually, before I got my first Wacom, all I was using was a mouse. The reason behind it is well... several, actually. The first reason was because I live in a small enough city where getting anything like that in town in the early to mid 90s was pretty much unheard of. The only thing we really did have that came close was this tablit you'd plug in to your TV. Other than that, we had nothing. So if you wanted to draw something on screen, all you'd have is a mouse. The second reason was that I saw this book in the mid 90s that was talking about graphic design (I'm pretty sure the book came out in at least 1993 or 1994) and some of the best artwork in there was done by just a mouse. The logic behind it was that graphic designers and artists need to be able to adapt and be flexible so then that way, they can work with anything they encounter. I've always kept that philosophy in the back of my mind whenever I'm training myself on something new. A good artist/storyteller adapts to their tools and don't let the technology itself be the one that dictates how good something is. You could still use MS Paint and come up with the Mona Lisa. You see, in the end, the technology doesn't matter. I mean it's always changing, you just have to put up with it and adapt while keeping in the back of your mind is that it's NOT the technology that makes you good. It's you who makes you good. It's as they say "A poor craftsman blames their tools."




So how do you actually paint in Flash? Well here's how you do it!

STEP #1



Sketch up your lineart on screen. Just quickly come up with something in Flash. This is the lineart I sketched for this tutorial.

STEP #2



Layout your base colours.



Just make sure that on the timeline that you keep your base colours SEPARATE from each other. It makes life easier when you do that. Also, KEEP YOUR LINE ART ON A SEPARATE LAYER FROM THE COLOURS!


STEP #3




Then create a new layer over top of your base colours (but UNDER your line art layer).




Using the Brush tool (Hotkey: B), paint your first layer of rough details. Make sure that you adjust the alphas to make your shading colours semi-transparent. I usually like to keep my alphas low so I can better build up the detail.

STEP #4



To add your next set of details, create a new layer and paint over top of your rough details where ever you want shading to take place.



Just make sure you adjust your colours and your alphas slightly whenever you add more details.

To do highlights, it's the same process only you're making your colours lighter. To put shading and highlights on the eyes, go and create a layer ABOVE the lineart layer and make sure to keep your base alphas/shade at 50% otherwise It'll never show up on the black. After you get your base in, keep your alphas low and follow the same instructions like you would in regular shading.

Here's what everything looks like in a step-by-step process to achive the end result:


















And here's some close ups of some of the details:




AND




Anyways, there you have it! That's how you too can paint in Flash!

So until next time, I'll see you all later! (And this was seriously one long blog entry. I think it's my longest one to date! XD )