Friday, July 27, 2007

Tale #30 - The Tale of Art Blocks

Hi, all!

Anyways, I'm still stuck on that stupid art block! Arg! It's quite a fustrating thing sometimes. I'm working really hard to try to get rid of it. Plus side, my photography side seems to be quite active and non-blocked lately. Especially since I was lucky enough to snap a few awesome shots! I mean I managed to get pictures of summer sunset clouds, some dew covered flowers and plant life, and a few of this rainbow I saw. I don't have those shots with me right now so I can't upload them for you, but I do have a few items I was tinkering around with that I will show off:


These are just some vectors I was toying around with. It was more of a think-creativly vector-doodling excersize and not really a finished work. But I'm totally digging the vector trees logo.


This is another vector-based creation where I was working on a sample TCG template for a now defunked project. I guess you can tell this is an older project.


From that same project, logos had to be created for each card-type. Here's a few that I came up with. Again, I have that whole vector feel to it.


And this is just examining details of an earlier digital-creation I posted here on Tales Of A Media Geek. It shows a bit of how I think whenever I create something. I guess you can say that I think with a lot of detail and quite elaborately for not only artwork but writting as well. The thing is, I get such a blast out of doing this too. It's like putting two ideas together to get one bigger, newer, cooler idea. But yeah... that's a little window in to my mind when the creative process revs up.

Anyways, see you all later and hopefully I'll be out of this super bad art block!

Friday, July 20, 2007

Tale #29 - The Tale Of Trudge The Terrible

Hi, all!

Good lord! I have the worst art block ever! I can't seem to pick up a pencil and come up with something! ARG! Artblocks are infuriating! So the best way to get around one of these is to well... step back for a moment or two then start drawing again no matter what which is exactly what I did. However, it occured to me that I haven't coloured anything in a very long time, so that's exactly what I did with the one drawing I came up with and unfortunately it's the ONLY sketch of the day I've got right now.

So before I move on to it, I'm going to put this question out to you - If you ran in to an artblock, what do you do to get out of one? What are your techniques? Come on... don't be shy. I like it when you guys talk!

.... well... on to the daily sketch(es).....




This is Trudge The Terrible (Trojen). Well... he's not SO terrible as he likes to think he is. He's much more like a rather big and very goofy armor-clad teddy bear. So let's all give him a hug!

Anyways, see you all later and hopefully I'll be out of this artblock after the weekend.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Tale #28 - The Tale Of The New RenderFarm Smell

Hi, all!

Anyways, I've been really busy lately and there's an extremely good new reason for it - I got a new RENDERFARM! That's right! I've created a new renderfarm! You see, I managed to get an identical PC to what I usually use for my workhorse (Which is a Compaq Persario using an AMD processor and an ATI Radeon card! Woot! And in case you're wondering, I totally love Compaq and HP. Haven't had a single problem with that company/brand.) which makes me rather pleased. Now I've got the resources to hook them up and create the renderfarm I wanted. So what did I call the new computer to my renderfarm? Well... I decided to name it after someone who was very close to me - Checkers. In case you didn't know, Checkers was my dog who I've had since I was five. I couldn't imagine a time without her around. She was pretty much like my best friend. She passed away at the end of May. So as the very first computer in my renderfarm, I've decided to name it after her.

On another note, I'm also going to be picking up a new Mac in September and I'm picking it up for cheap (Try 500$ CAN cheap!). You see, my friend has only had their Mac for a year and they've just bought a new one, so they're going to be selling this one to me with all the fixings. So what am I going to do with it? I'm going to set up Maya PLE on it along with an evaluation copy of RenderMan for Maya. I figured that would be an awesome thing to learn and learn how to use. Now I already know how to use a Mac, but I've never rendered anything on one before so this should be very interesting.

As for the daily sketches, well... I don't have a lot of them and well... I wanna upload them when I've got a lot to show off. So there's no sketches for today, but I am going to highlight the current projects on my plate:

- Steeleing 6: Piolet, Animator-itis, Starsuit's Revenge (Working title. It's the one with the giant fighting robots.)

- A Day At The Passing Parade

- Trudge & Quill: The Animated Short (Working title)

- That top secret project I keep talking about and for all that I say about it, not much information is out there. XD

Friday, July 13, 2007

Tale #27 - The Tale Of Name Changes

Hi, all!

Notice something a little different? Yup! I've decided to change my name today. I was getting a little bored of my old one and wanted a new change of pace. (I had my old one for a very long time.)

Now as far as the daily sketches goes, I didn't get a major chance to draw anything recently, so I don't have anything to show off. So maybe some time in the next few days, I'll upload something to show you guys. Why? Because my accounting teacher really piled on some homework that I really need to get through which is limiting my drawing time. But I will try to get something up here ASAP.

Anyways, see you all later! Homework waits for no... uh... myselfs? Okay.... I've really gotta find a better line....

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Tale #26 - The Tale Of Sketch Dumps

Hi, all!

Well! After all that time studying, I finally wrote my test and managed to scan in some down-time sketches. Some of these are fanart requests (It's the one broken up in to three parts marked "Skin" ), some of these are ink sketches done in indian ink, some are pen sketches, there's at least one Steeleing 6 sketch in there where I was experimenting a bit with style, and there's one self portarate I did based off a picture I took while I was looking up (And I just got my hair cut in that one. I kinda wanted to do something speedy yet candid with it, so I don't look my best in it but for a quick portarate, it looks good.) I'm not going to explain all of them like I usually do since there's so many! So here's your daily sketches that I pretty much owe you all! ^^;



















See you all later!

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Tale #25 - The Tale Of Tests

Hi, all!

Well... in case you didn't know, I'm enrolled in an online course and they're having a test comming up soon, so I won't have much for sketches (I'll try to post something in that time, though.) or stuff to talk about while the heat is on. However, you can expect more after that time.

Sorry about all that.

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Tale #24 - The Tale Of Actual True Stories

Hi, all.

Well... not much going on except a comedic incident. As usual, I got up to head out for a walk. But before I did that, I looked outside and it looked quite pleasent out so that was further incentive for the walk. So I make my way outside and about 15 seconds later, it starts raining. So I pretty much say to myself "okay... it's only a little rain so it's no big deal, right?" Then I walked a little further up the ways. Maybe only about a minute or so later, I hear thunder. Even worse was that I was around A LOT of quite tall potenital lightening rods. Lightening rods + lightening and dangerously high voltages + me walking around admist all the danger = Me as toast. So I made a run for it back inside. As you can imagine, I was soaked. Just goes to show you that mother nature is an unpredictable one and likes to come out and supprise you.... like Naruto-type-ninjas or something.

Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #23 - The Tale Of Experimentation

Hi, all!

Anyways, tonight as you all know, I'm heading out to the movies and I'm definately looking forward to it! ^^

So before I get to the daily sketches, I ask you all to please bear with my lack of knowledge about American History because... uh... well... you know... I'm Canadian and I'm way better at Canadian History because that's what we're taught in school growing up. ^^;; So on to my main thingy here! To those in America, Happy America-type Day or as it's normally called "Independance Day" where a certain paper that looks a lot like the Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms gets signed many many years ago. Or was it when that Civil-war-type thingy ended? Er... anyways, you get the picture. (Right? Uh... right? Hello....? ) Okay... before I go and start making up my own version of both Canadian and American History with nuclear powered laser monkeys and giant fighting robots from the Edo period, I think I'll move on to the daily sketches:


This is my first attempt at paper craft. I decided to try a poker table. Now a few notes here is that I didn't have enough brown and that the pieces I DID have were all cut up! So what I did was try to put a few pieces of brown paper together to make a bigger sheet. That's why you can see the seams.


This is my second attempt at paper craft. Instead, I went with something a bit simpler and just created a logo. It's the logo for highly explosive brainstorming. Beware! XD


Okay... it's a stylized Collette from Pixar's newest movie. I drew this a little while back but forgot to post it. So here it is now.

Oh... and before I go, I'm going to mention a brief list of projects here:

- A Day At The Passing Parade (The comicbook remake of the sorts) = After seeing the short one-shot old-school movie, "The Passing Parade," I was so inspired by it that I wanted to create a version of that movie as a comic. It's one of those oldy-but-goodies that you should ALL see at some point in your life. Anyways, the script is mostly complete.

- Steeleing 6: The Piolet = I'm still working out the piolet story for Steeleing 6 and how it's going to work out. It's mostly together inside my mind, it's just finishing it and putting it all to paper.

- Steeleing 6: "Animator-itis" = This is a goofy short story based in the Steeleing 6 universe about the mysterious epidemic that seems to be striking animators and artists all over the place.

- Steeleing 6 - Villian creation = Finally we've got a set of villians to pit against SixAir! I'm thinking of calling them StarSuits Inc. These guys are also an animation studio who always seems to be in SixAir's shadow and quite frankly, they're tired of it! So they're always scheeming of ways to put SixAir out of buisness for good. Sorta like the jealous next-door neighbours or something except more evil. Oh yeah... they're much more corporation like and are dominated by the Suits and they've lost their touch with what movies are really about. The Head of StarSuits Inc. is a man named Hans Von Heilt. Now as you've noticed, StarSuit and Hans Von Heilt is full of puns and referances like most stuff in the Steeleing 6 universe. For starters "Heilt" is pronounced "hilt" which is a referance to a sword hilt. StarSuits is a referance to corporate suits that appear in the actual real world media industry from time to time. Oh... and in case you're wondering, StarSuits is NOT referancing Dreamworks at all. I really didn't want that at all. I might refrance Dreamworks, but they aren't going to show up as villians.

- Steeleing 6 - Fighting-robots? = Well... I wanted to do something funny with SixAir and StarSuits both owning giant fighting robots and doing battle with eachother in a very goofy way. I also figured it would be an awesome way to introduce StarSuits as the villians. This idea is still up in the air still. ^^;

Anyways, see you all later!

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Tale #22 - The Tale Of Internet Memes

Hi, all!

Well... today's sketch comes with a nice little artistic challenge. What's the challenge? Well... here's what you do:

1.) Google a random word in to Google's image search
2.) On the first image that comes up, you draw/sketch/3D model it using the image as a referance.
3.) If it's something you don't like or don't wanna do (EI: Porn), then skip it and go on to the next one.
4.) There's no time limit or anything. Just have fun! ^^

Yup! So that's the challenge! So hop to it! To the rest of you, I Googled up an image and I based my pic off the first one I saw. I took more of a brightly coloured retro-ish style to it and went crazy. It may have come out a little too detailed. I might boil it down later, but here's how it looks:



Anyways, good luck to everyone particiapting in this goofy challenge! ^^

Tale #21 - The Tale Of Phones And Cancelled Plans

Hi, all!

Well... remember how I said I was going to see Pixar's recent movie on the weekend? Well... turns out my friends had prior commitments and couldn't go with me. So instead, we're going to see it on wednesday. So I guess you'll hear a bit more then.

Anyways, the daily sketches are going to be posted later, but right now I'm going to talk about Apple's new Phone.

As you all know, it was released just recently, but two things really got me thinking there and is starting to actually cause me to doubt the phone's success. The first thing was the price.

That phone costs between 500$-600$ US for a 2-year contract (This, I don't think includes the price of the phone itself either!)... and if you converted that to Canadian, it's more closer to 700$ (Give or take... it's a rounded off estimate, guys) which is almost like paying one grand for a phone. Now doesn't that seem a little STEEP? This means that only people with plenty of money to spair and pretty much burning a hole in their pocket will be able to afford this. Now you're probably thinking why would the price totally effect the success? The answer comes in the form of another steeply price electronic item - The PS3. By Sony's standards and pretty much a lot of other people, that this was a huge failure for their gaming division. When it first rolled out, you were pretty much expected to pay 1,200$ to get your hands on one of these. Yeah... sure... it had decent drive space, can read BluRay disks, and had excellent graphic quality. But not many people were going to pay that price tag unless they were die hard Sony fans. To everyone else, they wouldn't dare wanna pick it up. The first signs of trouble for this doomed consol was when the Head Of Sony was trying so hard to justify his logic for the price. I mean if you have to justify a price and invent an excuse, you already know that it's going to be hell. Then after that, Sony pulled its' 20gig model from the shelves and discontinued them after a few months. After that, the Head of Sony stepped down and it was just perpetually going down hill from there considering you can pick up a Xbox 360 AND a Wii plus some games just to make up for the price of 1 PS3 with NO games. To me personally, the PS3 seems like an over glorafied stripped down version of my computer. Even my laptop is cheaper and has way more features than a PS3... oh! And My computers can definately play games too. So seeing this happen with the PS3 because of the price leads me to think of a similar fate to Apple's new phone. Maybe it won't be so extreme, but it'll definately force Apple's hand a bit in order to avoid Sony's fate.

The second thing is that the Phone is going to be available to the US and the UK but NOT Canada? Canada is practically the US's next door neighbour and almost everything from America makes it over to Canada and has the potential to do well. And let's not forget that the Canadian market is also quite big. So why did Apple exclude it? It just doesn't make any sense at all. I mean Canada has similar electrical and phone systems to America already. So converting it over to a Canadian version shouldn't be a huge hastle as it would for a UK version. But yet... they're working on a UK version anyways? I don't really understand that kind of logic. This is almost as odd as the AppleTV logic which is STILL not available in Canada. Because you're excluding a major market, that means that sales wouldn't be as strong as it could be.

So what's the solution? Well... part of it is to release the Phone to Canada. There's no need to totally explain that one. The second part of the solution is to make the Phone cheaper. I mean one way is to have some form of sponsorship program like LiveJournal does for its' blog-domains and have some of the advertising pay half the price. Which if they did that, and made it about 300$ (Give or take... again, an estimate, guys....), it's far more competitive against something like a BlackBerry and far more reasonable. But that's just one solution of many right there of a methode to make the Phone cheaper. But as it stands right now, Apple had better think fast to turn things around for their new Phone before it ends up like the PS3.

Anyways, see you all later, guys! ^^