Tales Of A Media Geek

Tale #60 - The Tale Of Broken Machines

2008-02-25T10:49:00.000-08:00

Hi, all!

Wow! I know it's been ages since my last update, but there's a huge reason for it - I broke my computer in December leaving me totally cut off. Or more like I forgot to back stuff up and in an attempt to wipe out a virus I tried doing a non-destructive wipe and well... it destroyed everything with a chance of recovery as long as I didn't put my computer in to heavy use or didn't save any new files. Sorta like using a really big mallet when I shouldn't have. So it really did leav me without a computer and I had to pick up a new one to back my new stuff up on and to keep this from happening again. (Definately not a cheap venture!) So what does this mean? Well... it means I'll be super slow with things for a while longer as well as slow with getting stuff scanned and uploaded for your viewing pleasure. But for the most part, I'm back but just barely.

Anyways, hope to see some of you dropping by and around again!

Tale #59 - The Tale of Projects

2007-11-14T10:46:00.000-08:00

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)

2007-11-07T10:46:00.000-08:00

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"

2007-10-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-17T09:29:00.001-07:00

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

2007-10-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-05T06:37:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-09-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-19T08:06:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-10T06:13:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-05T06:50:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-31T10:35:00.001-07:00

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

2007-08-31T09:37:00.001-07:00

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

2007-08-30T07:18:00.001-07:00

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 )

Tale #42 - The Tale of Flash Painting

2007-08-29T05:55:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Anyways, on a bet with a friend, he bet that you could NOT paint in Flash. He said that you can paint in Photoshop, OpenCanvas, and Painter but NOT in Flash. So I set out to prove him wrong. This is a WIP, but so far this is what I have:

And here's a close up of my most fav part:

Now I bet you're probably guessing and think you already know who I was exactly referancing for this. But I'll tell you now that it isn't what you think. So what did I referance? Well... MYSELF! XD You see, I took my picture using one of the filters in Photo Booth on the Mac (Mac STILL doesn't have a name yet). I then created my characture from that. Well... it's not a TRUE characture because I definately DON'T look like that and last time I checked, I was definately a hell of a lot younger and perkyer looking, has hair, and is FEMALE. All I did was referance my own face for lighting and proportioning. After that, I just decided to have fun. I'm still working on him, but that's what he looks like. One of the things I spent the most time on in painting was the eyes. It's my most fav detail in the entire painting. There's a huge quality about it that just seems alive. It really does seem like he's looking at me. I have to say I'm impressed with the work I did so far.

And before I go, here's a look at the lineart just to show you how much of a major difference that painting it gave:

Anyways, I'm going to tell you guys again, I do NOT own a Cinque or anything fancy. Really! I totally don't! All this was done just using a mouse. Observe:

Here's the mouse that I use to do it. Nothing spectacular there, right?

And here's me working on it. I'm the goofy looking hand. XD

But yeah! That's my set up. Nothing fancy or anything. Just your ordinary laptop mouse and a little known program called "Flash." XD

So anyways, see you all later!

Tale #41 - The Tale Of Dreams and Stories

2007-08-27T05:37:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Well.... I woke up later than I usually do, but I guess today that was a good thing because I've got a new idea for a kid's book that I'd love to do. You see.... I had this dream and the way it came out as a story was BEAUTIFUL! I can't get over it! I mean it was so good that it even had awesome cinamatography, great characters and an excellent storyline that was like The Last Mimzy and Spirited Away mixed together in a beautiful package. I just know this story is going to be awesome. Let me put it to you this way - the story just moved me right down to my core. I can still feel the chills up and down my spine as to how great it was! It was just simply beautiful! So that's why I'm going to make it in to a kid's book. There's no way that I can't not do that now... especially when its' taken such a strong hold of me and won't let go. So right now, I'm going to shelf the "Top Secret Project" (Temporarily) and start working on the kid's book. Of course.... I'm going to have to come up with a code name for it later.

So what's the story about? Well.... I'm not going to say much about what it is (I'd like to get this up and published first) but I will say that I generally don't write a lot of fantasy. Not that I can't write any good fantasy, it's just not what I write a lot of. But the story is a fantasy one with a lot of adventure, mystery, and fun mixed in.

Anyways, now it's a question of writing it all down and getting together a morgue file of referances that really capture all those visuals that I saw in my mind today.

You know.... that's the great thing about dreams. It's a no-holds barred arena where ideas bounce off eachother without you judging them. All you do is watch what your mind comes up with without yourself getting in the way. Usually, you get weird mixed up stuff where yeah... you can pull SOME ideas from but not a whole lot. But then there are the other rarer dreams that you can get an entire story from that holds on to you from start to finish so when you wake up, you say "Yeah! That was so awesome! I've gotta write this one down!" I think I've really only had two such dreams like that. The first one is a Canadian comedy and that was years ago (And I'm still working on it.) and then there's today's where I'm going to create a kid's book out of it.

I was moved. And I'm not letting it go.

Tale #40 - The Tale of Musical Intentions

2007-08-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Anyways today, I've got NO art. Instead, I've got music from a mini web-album I'm working on right now called "State Of Emergan-C." So here's a link to that album:

STATE OF EMERGAN-C: WIP!

Yes.... it's a work in progress right now and what you see in that file is all that I've got (Not a huge RapidShare fan. But because there's something wrong with MediaFire, I'm uploading to RS today.) The song called incomplete really isn't a song but more like a series of different "Sample" songs I'm working on right now that I just need to find that special spark to tie them together and make them sound nice. "Moving With Grace" is one of my most fav out of all of them because I think it sounds the nicest.

So what's going on in Kam-world? Well... I'm really enjoying my Mac (Unfortunately, no name for it yet.) and I'm looking forward to seeing two things: One of them is the last Mr. Bean movie. It's opening up today and I really wanted to see that one. I've been a Bean fan since I was little, so I definately want to see this one. But the next thing on my to-see list is the lunar eclipse on Tuesday. Yup! There's another one happening and I've got a good spot at my house to see it too. So that means I'll be brining out the tripod and camera that night.

So anyways, see you all later and ROCK ON!

Tale #39 - The Tale of Giving Back

2007-08-22T05:58:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Anyways, I've been very busy thinking of ways to give back to the other awesome artists out there.... namely, YOU! So in that little thought-quest, I came up with the idea of downloadable goodies that you can use. What kind of downloadable goodies, you may ask? Well... goodies that you can use to make your own comicbooks with! So what I did was create some comictoning brushes and some comic-SFX brushes that you can use in Photoshop CS2. It took me some time to get these together and cooperating, but now I've got them working. So here's my treats for you guys:

The Comic Sound FX Brushes (A la Mediafire!)

AND

The Comic Toning Brushes (A la Mediafire!)

So this is just the start of me putting little goodies out there for you all to download. My next item: Comic ballons and pre-made comic panals. Oh yeah! And my art-blog power tips!

Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #38 - The Tale of Mac Attacks II

2007-08-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

No new sketches today. Sorry about that! I've actually been a little more-or-less distracted by playing around with my new Mac. Right now, I'm checking out GarageBand and tinkering with that.

Anyways, I also checked my hitcounter recently and saw that I managed to score over 300 hits. Woot! 300 hits since I first got my blog up 2 months ago. So what will happen over the next 2 months or 300 hits? Who knows! But what I do know with my Tales Of A Media Geek (TOAMG) around, it won't be boring!

Anyways, yeah... brief update on what's up. Well! See you all later!

Tale #37 - The Tale of Mac Attacks!

2007-08-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Guess what! My Mac came in today! I'm totally geeking out about it here! ^^ I woke up this morning and it was just there at my doorstep all nicely packaged complete with a little Apple-themed door hanger. I'm so psyched about this! So today, I'm going to be setting this bad-boy up and we're ready to go. But like all my computers, each one gets a unique name. My last computer/server was named "Checkers." Now I have to come up with a unique name for my new Mac (It's a "tradition" I've got going.) What I'm going to do is put up a poll uwing Blogger's new poll feature to help come up with the perfect name for my new Mac. WOOT! So excited!

Anyways, on to the daily sketches:

So as you can see, I finally finished off that digital sketch and polished it up. I also wanted to show a close up on the details.

Anyways, excuse my zinggyness here (All this excitement WITHOUT coffee! XD ) But I've also finished off my accounting course! I'm quite happy about that.

Well! Gotta set up my new Mac before I start excitedly talking in French (which does happen despite the fact that English is my first language) or before I start dancing around the room like a goof ball! XD

Tale #36 - The Tale of The MEAN Canadians

2007-08-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

Hi, all.

Okay.... I was out for a 10 minute walk which quickly turned in to a 10 minutes of peril! You see, what happened was was that there was some Canadian Geese hiding in the bushes out near a foot path that I liked walking on. I didn't see them until I was right in THEIR territory. When I was there, they took one look at me and attacked me! That's right! Geese attacked me! If there's one thing that needs to be known about this winged terror is that they're extremely ornery and they will attack you. I consider them some of the meanest Canadians out there! So I was chased all the way back to shelter and shut the door tightly. God! That was scary! There's only so much that could descirbe that. This is the first image that comes to mind about that whole incident:

And here's a more accurate 2 minute sketch version with way more accuracy:

Good lord! That was scary! Good thing I got out of that reasonably unscathed. Now why does mother nature seem to have it in for me lately and want to hurt me?

Tale #35 - The Tale of Several Stories (Pixar, Hummingbirds, and books)

2007-08-13T05:41:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Anyways, today's post comes with a story or two. So here's the stories:

Story #1:

I did a little shopping this weekend with a giftcard I got from a friend. With it, I went to Chapters (AKA: A Canadianized Barns & Noble if you get my drift) and picked up a really nifty book. It was called "Developing Digital Short Films" by Sherri Sheridon. It makes for a really great beginner's guide to story telling and all out referance for experianced writters. While the artwork inside is really nothing special, the text however, was really good. So I'm glad I picked this up. I seriously recomend this book to you. You won't be disappointed.

Story #2:

Also on the weekend, I noticed that we had some hummingbirds comming to one of my hummingbird feeders I set up. Now usually, they're quite rare to my area; but this weekend, there were lots of them. So I decided to set my camera and tripod up to see if I can get a shot of them. So I pretty much camped myself out at about 5 feet away from the feeder to see if I could catch them on digital-film. One of the things I did to avoid scaring them away was to stand extremely still and to stay down wind a little bit. I held the same position for 45 minutes until I was rewarded with one stopping by the feeder. I had my camera on sports photography mode and jammed the shutter release down with my thumb in hopes of getting lots of shots. So what I'm going to do is actually post one of these shots I took. FYI, I never did any image corrections to this one (which I'm going to do later) so that's why it still looks quite dark and stuff:

What I liked about this one is that you can actually see the feathers in his wings which is just super cool. But the story continues! Just after I shot this one, the hummingbird saw me and my camera sitting there and decided to come along to check me out. I could see it in my periferal vision hovering there looking me over before in moved in to full vision and was pretty much eyeing me and getting closer. It got about 18 inches away from my head ready to land on me before it took off! It was just amazing! I could hear its' wings and it sounded like one of those giant water beetles that we get around here. But it was the most amazing thing to have something like that happen.

However, this photography adventure did have a downside to it. The bugs (who normally just ignore me and want nothing to do with me) must have been super bored or desperate that evening because they pretty much ate me alive. Good lord! They got me everywhere and I do mean EVERYWHERE. So as you can imagine, I'm extremely itchy right about now. I had to coat myself in various combinations of anti-itch creams plus allergy tabs just to keep the itching down to tolerable levels. I couldn't believe how bad they were! I guess it was because I wasn't moving around and was standing extremely still that made me such an easy target. So I pretty much learned my lesson here - when doing nature photography of any sort, bring lots and lots of bug spray.... even if bugs normally ignore you.

Story #3:

As you know, I do freelance work quite often to try and keep my "in" on the industry. So I go from client to client doing different media jobs. From time to time, it can also get a little slow and a little rough. So my most recent client is actually my best friend. I know it sounds a little off, but he always gets my back when I'm in a bad spot. This time, it's with my freelancing. So he gets me to create various media projects for a course he runs for the local University. So he's seen a lot of my work. He's also seen even the stuff that I don't post up here (If I tried posting EVERYTHING I've done, that would take a VERY long time!) So he's very familiar with it. Anyways, just the other day, he supprised me with a few things. The first thing was that he said that what he was going to do on my birthday (Sept. 19th) is that on that day, we're going to start building our own computer from scratch. This is one of those things I always wanted to do but never had the money for. He said that he'd be setting aside 1,000$ CAN for me to get the parts I need to build it. As you can imagine, I was pretty happy about this.

But that wasn't the only thing he said that day. The other thing really caught me off guard. He said that I had extremely awesome skills and that I should apply to a position at Pixar. At that point, I just froze. In my mind, I wondered in that moment if I heard that right. Surely, Pixar would be a great place to work because I would be collaborating with other storytellers and other artists everyday which is something I always wanted to be around (and something my city doesn't have. Yeah... we really don't have much in the ways of artists or storytellers here.) I mean being around and working with other people who shair a similar thought process that I do, I'd be very happy. For once could I speak to someone (beyond my best friend and my imediate family) who could actually understand what I said and what I was getting at. I wouldn't want to work there just because of the name or anything like that (Although, that doesn't mean to say that I don't like their films because I actually do. But that's not the point here). I'd like to work there because of the people.... the other storytellers and to be able to collaborate with them on a daily basis. But I usually hit myself with a dose of reality here. I usually don't think that I would even stand a chance of getting in. Yeah.... sure, I'm always trying to improve my skills and I've always got room to improve no matter how good I could ever get. But I didn't think it was possible for me. It seems like an impossible dream. One I would reach for and always have my hand brush passed it as it glided out of reach. But when my best friend told me that day, I guess it made me think that I may have a remote chance.

But the question here is this: Based on what you've all seen me produce here so far (bearing in mind I have other stuff that you don't see), do I actually stand a chance of getting in? Do I really? Can someone tell me?

Anyways, I forgot how I replied to that one. But still, it seriously caught me off guard.

Well.... on to the daily sketches:

Remember that ad-poster I was working on and had the art-block on? Well... I was thinking of putting a cleaned up version of this sketch in there, but I'm not sure. Anyways, I decided to add a little background and colour to this one just to make it look better.

And here's the details of that sketch. I wanted to show off the details of her face because it's hard to see from a distance. So here's a close up of her face.

Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #34 - The Tale of Digital Sketches

2007-08-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Anyways, I don't have much freelance work to do right now which resulted in a little down time. So what did I do with it? Well firstly, I revisited an old sketch from Tale #26 - The Tale of Sketch Dumps and decided to try colouring it. In the end, I got a coolish looking vectored result. I have no idea if I wanna shade it or not. That's still up in the air.

Here's the digitally coloured sketch:

And here's the original:

Now moving on to my next sketch, this one has a small story:

The idea for this one came from Bill Pressing's Blog where he was talking about someone commisioning him to draw his Rex Steele character (no relation to Kam Steele what so ever. I picked "Steele" as a last name before I even saw Rex Steele. It's just a weird couincidence.) But so far, no one's clamed the commision. So here enters the quirky idea in my head of drawing a Rex-chibi to "guilt" the commisionee. So far, the only one I sorta "guilted" with it was Bill himself. I'm guessing if it worked on him, it'll work on everyone else. Huzzah! Another goofy plan with artwork to match by me! XD Well.... in any event, it was certainly fun to draw.

Other than today's daily sketches, I really don't have much else going right now. It's quiet.... and 56k-styled slow. So if anyone has any requests they want me to draw, I'll definately get to them. The rules for requests are on the side of the blog-page along with all the other tiny details.

Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #33 - The Tale of Inspresso and Other Silly Words

2007-08-08T06:33:00.001-07:00

Hi, all!

Anyways, one speed sketch today with a story. First, the sketch:

Now the story:

Today, I invented a new silly word called "inspresso." Why? Well... I was talking about the Spline Doctors' Spline Cast earlier when they asked everyone for feedback and I made the oddball analogy of each Spline Cast being like expresso - A shot of inspriation with every listen. Dunno how I got expresso out of all this beyond the fact that I just like putting odd and cool ideas together and find silly ways of saying "You/this is awesome." So then I went ahead and called it "Inspresso" at the end as being my new way of saying "it was awesome." To demonstrate my silly word in use, I put it in sketch form as you see above.

Which brings me to my next silly word sketch:

....Homestyle awesomesauce. Seems to come in a multitude of varieties including the homestyle (as seen here), with jalapino pepers, Texan, Canadian, barbecue and other oddball assortment of flavour combinations. Long and short of it, just my way of saying "You/this is awesome."

There are probably those of you out there who don't appreicate my creative use of the English (and Canadian French) language and think I'm a little crazy. So here's what I have to say: It's fun to be just a little crazy and silly. Or to do something silly every so often. Life's too short to be serious all the time. So lighten up and have fun inventing silly words and things before the Oxford dictionary police hunt you down. XD

Oh! And if we didn't invent silly things, we would never have this:

I rest my case! (Oh! And the Wii = loads of fun stuff!)

See? Silly = Fun along with nice shots of creativity. It's really just a major brain/thinking-creativly excersize which is why I like doing it.

So if you have any silly invented words, have fun with them and try to sketch them out if you can. Having fun with the sillies is a great brain-game! XD

Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #32 - The Tale of Posters and Art Blocks

2007-08-07T10:17:00.003-07:00

Hi, all!

Anyways, here's a look at what my tutor-ad looks like:

Okay. You really have to click on the image to see all the fine details of it. But what I'm doing is sorta a parody of a movie poster with vectorized flashyness. What I was going to do was one of those cheesey-vector movie explosions with a character running out of the center. I wanted to do action and something crazy because it'll grab attention more. It's just trying to get the explosion and the characters to look right which is driving me insane. So I'm playing around with this quite a fair bit.

This is also another work in progress I'm doing with a bike. In case you're wondering about what I use to draw on-screen, I DON'T use a tablit or a Cinque. Not that I can't use a tablit, it's just that a lot of this stuff has to be specially ordered in my city if they decide to carry them. Quite often times, they don't. As it is right now, only ONE store in my city just started carrying the tablit PC version of my HP Pavilion and it's seriously out of my price range (Yes.... I'm still quite poor. No thanks in part to that car accident in December. It was my first accident and it was super expensive!) So I have to make best with what I have. You see, if you let technology become your limitations, you can't get anywhere with that. All you'd be doing is saying "I wish I had that so I don't suck anymore." And that does no one any good at all. Especially if you're a super creative person otherwise. But what you can and should do is make the best with what you have and squeeze whatever you can out of it which is exactly what I do. Where I live, you kinda have to. So I'll use anything and try anything to turn out a great end product. So NEVER EVER let the technology limit you. Even cheap technology can turn out something awesome. But it all depends on how you use it and how much you are in control. The technology isn't the one controlling you or your art. You're the one controlling it.

So what do I actually use to draw on-screen? A super small, short-corded, laptop mouse. Yep. You heard that right! Just a cheap laptop mouse! Supprised that I don't use a tablit? Not that I can't draw with one either, but a laptop mouse is the best I can get right now. Over the years, I've taught myself to be able to draw digital artwork on well... everything and make it come out as though I were using a tablit. I can use anything from laptop mice to laptop touch pads to Wiimotes using GlovePIE to well.... everything. And that WIP bike you're seeing is actual proof that you can use a mouse and still get tablit-quality artwork out of it.

Tale #31 - The Tale of Tutors

2007-08-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Well... anyways, yes. I have been working on some art, but it relates to something much bigger (as far as this goes, I'll be posting it way later because I'm still playing around with it.) What is it? Well... a freelance media-tutoring service. You see, I noticed around my city that those who are extremely skilled with the media arts don't tend to stick around leaving it media-deprived (If you seen the webpages to our local buisnesses, you'd swear they were created in 1997 when they were really created in 2007. It's actually kinda scary!) But to those who do stay who do have the skills, can't seem to find jobs. It's really kinda weird. You'd think they'd be the first ones to be snapped up in an instant. But the local industry is quite a stubborn one and really dislikes newness or change or really anything different. Introduce "SWFs" instead of "GIFs" for animated graphics to them and you'd scare the willies right out of them. This is where I have the problems getting hired. I mean as you've already seen, I do have skills and I'm always building off of them. But the local industry is really turned off by me eventhough the minimum requirement for experiance here is as low as 1-2 years. Sometimes even less than a year. But yet, here I am with 1.5 years of experiance, 8.5 years of photoshop and 3 years of education in the media arts and I'm struggling badly. But my background is a bit bigger than that. I've also got mechanical skills too from the time I was working with and maintaining aircraft and stuff like that. The local industry really gets scared off whenever I bring that up. And it's impossible not to because it was actual work experiance I've had in the past. It's the weirdest thing but yet, it shows off a little backwards logic on my local industry's part. So I'm stuck freelancing and trying to scrape together every bit of experiance I can. And it's not like I can freely move out of my city either unless I was hired out by a buisness. So in the meantime, what other options do I have? I can either stay freelance and bounce from client to client (Which isn't the worst thing out there either. At least I can get experiance from this. All my clients so far came from the education field.) or do freelance but also apply my skills in more different ways. You know.... kinda broaden the field? Then it hit me. What the other skilled freelancers are doing in my city are also teachers. So that got me thinking - what if I started teaching too? I mean I have volunteer-taught drama in the past and have the skills to do it, so why can't I teach anything now? So the idea of becoming a media arts tutor came to me. There are enough people who would be a bit open minded who don't know the stuff I do and would like to learn it. So I'd tutor them in the media arts so they have a little bit of info and skills to help them out in media.

Cool idea, eh? Well! I also managed to book one of the local Mac labs/computer cafes and scouted out good freeware (similar to real software packages used in the industry only freeware forms/clones of it.) to use for tutoring. My advertising slant? "Awesome Movies Secrets Revealed (That You Can Do Too)." I figured that was a good way to go since everyone likes secrets and like them even more if they can learn how to do them. It has somewhat of a faux-forbidden quality to it eventhough it isn't. So that's my advertising strategy. Hopefully this idea works. If not... uh.... does anyone want a freelancer with 1.5 years of experiance? Will work for bandwidth! XD

Anyways, I'm thinking of posting some tutorials some time as well. I was thinking of putting up some blogger tips. But you know, not the ones you always get that everyone rehashes over and over again saying "make your blog about politics and annoy the tar out of everyone" or the "make your blogs about money tips and look like spam kings/queens." No! I mean actual real blogging tips that you can use so you don't have to go all spammy or all politicaly. These tips will be out there to help other media arts freelancers like me to at least help them out a little bit. I think it would be a nice way for me to give back a little bit and help each other out. Don't you agree?

Anyways, I've gotta get going! See you all later!

Tale #30 - The Tale of Art Blocks

2007-07-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

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!

Tale #29 - The Tale Of Trudge The Terrible

2007-07-20T10:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Tale #28 - The Tale Of The New RenderFarm Smell

2007-07-17T08:06:00.000-07:00

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

Tale #27 - The Tale Of Name Changes

2007-07-13T06:02:00.000-07:00

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....

Tale #26 - The Tale Of Sketch Dumps

2007-07-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

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!

Tale #25 - The Tale Of Tests

2007-07-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Tale #24 - The Tale Of Actual True Stories

2007-07-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

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!

Tale #22 - The Tale Of Internet Memes

2007-07-03T12:33:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-03T08:06:00.000-07:00

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! ^^

Tale #20 - The Tale Of Rodent And Ninjas

2007-06-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

I guess it's no big secret that a certain 3D animated rodent/cooking themed movie is comming out today. So I'm going out this weekend to see it. But here's what I've been hearing - the movie is out on the P2P networks already. I also had the chance to read this quote by Brad Bird and he totally sounded angry about this. So I decided based on that, to do a bit of public service today and give a bit of a helping hand. So to those under the age of 10yrs in this audience, please AVERT YOUR EYES OR FACE NINJA FILLED HORROR! YOU KNOW HOW THEY LOVE TO FLIP OU! EEEEIIII! To the rest of you, please click and READ!

.......

.............

................

..... yes. Ninjas WILL hunt you down if you do that. Besides, you know Ninjas always win over pirates. So please, think of the artists and other media geeks out there who are suffering at the hands of these pastey rum-filled evil doers and DON'T pirate cool movies.

And that's today's public service thingy. Oh! And to those under the age of 10, you can stop averting your eyes now. Why? Because the daily sketches are comming up RIGHT NOW!

It's a set of nicely EVIL eyes LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU! EEEEIIII!

Okay... the rooster was very spontanious. But hey, it's about time I drew some avian creatures!

Another Steeleing 6 sketch of Kam Steele. She looks kinda bored. XD

Beware! It's the strange looking tree from the 50s/60s! Actually, it looks more like a circuit board tree. You know.... a CircutTree! Okay.... yeah... that was bad. XD

And in celebration of a certain rodent themed cooking movie, I came up with a few rodent-type critters of my own!

And.....

Aww.... aren't they cute? Don't you wanna pick them up and pet them? Sure you do! Who wouldn't?

Anyways, it's Canada Day weekend and I may not be able to upload any sketches during that time. But I will on tuesday! Promise! And to all of you - HAPPY CANADA DAY ON JULY 1ST! ^^

Tale #19 - The Tale Of Collecting

2007-06-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Anyways, remember when I said that I collected minature board games earlier? Well... just to show that I wasn't joking, I took pictures of them with my NinjaCam! (Although... beware of the quality!) I also collect minature cards too. And as you can see... I also own a deck of ROUND playing cards too. Yup... I said it! ROUND!

Just to give a sense of scale of some of the game pieces, cards and the boards themselves.....

Yup! Pretty small, aren't they? Of the collection I've got, I also have 3 badgamon boards in there along with some unusual odd ones too. One of those odd ones is a Soccer game in a board game format. I saw this in a Dollar Store once and it was pretty unusual so I had to pick it up. XD So as you can obviously see, I so wasn't joking about them OR their size. ^^

Tale #18 - The Tale Of Programmers

2007-06-28T06:44:00.001-07:00

Hi, all!

Today instead of sketches, you're all in for a very special treat! What is that treat, you might ask? What if I told you it was these very sweet and tasty fortune cookies I made? What if I also said that if you tried them, you'd never gain any weight again and they've got no callories or bad transfats? Well.... they do exsist and I've created them! OBSERVE!

Ta da! The perfectly healthy digital fortune cookies! Anyways, this is something I programmed in Flash 8 and had a bit of fun with. All the graphics that are in this are completely done by me by hand. That includes the dragon watermark. ^^

So now do you wanna play with it? Well since I can't post it in the blog directly, I'll just give you the geocities link to it instead - Eat up!

Oh... if you're wondering about how it runs under the hood, it's using XML to generate the fortunes. ^^

Tale #17 - The Tale Of Tags

2007-06-28T06:04:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

I'm going to get to the daily sketches later today, but right now I've sorta been tagged by Erin Blanquet at her blog (And she did say "you" as in anyone reading at that point in time so it's kinda generic so I'm going to do it anyways.) So here's the rules:

Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Okay.... since I really don't know anyone right now, I'm going to tag all of you who are reading right now. Yeah, YOU! Besides, these things are fun so you might wanna get in on this anyways.

so.... drum roll please!

EIGHT THINGS YOU MIGHT WANNA KNOW ABOUT KAMUI.EXE (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER) :

1.) I own two cats (Both are Siamese) and one dog (A springer spaniel). I used to have two dogs until one of them passed away last month. (And I still miss her.)

2.) Can speak/read/write French. Yup! I'm biligual. I've even got a little French phrase I whip out whenever I'm confused on something - "Je suis perdu!" (Translation: "I'm lost!" )

3.) Has a collection of pocket board games. You know.... the kind that are magnetic and fit in the palm of your hands? That kind!

4.) Learned to touch type by storytelling/storywritting. I mean I royally sucked at Mavis Beacon typing tutorials and there was no getting better with it either no matter how hard I tried. It was quite discouraging for me. But since I found that writting stories by hand was seriously cramping them badly (and I was doing a lot of writting too!) I looked over at my computer and decided to open up the word processor to write stories with. It was through storywritting was that I started to get much fast and much better at typing. Right now, I'm extremely fast at it with great accuracy too.

5.) Owns a guitar. Yeah... sure do! It's an Ibanez Roadstar II. Got it for 300$ CAN in near mint condition. It was an awesome deal. Incidentally, I'm also getting a small portable organ that's also in near mint condition that originally cost 4,000$ CAN but I'm getting it for free because it was given to us by a friend of the family. However, this doesn't mean I've got any form of musical talent outside of Sony ACID 5.0.

6.) Owns a Wii. And I absolutely love it.

7.) Likes going out for 10 minute walks each day. When you spend a lot of time sitting down at a computer, a walk is a good thing. Trust me.

8.) Can naturally speed read. I read stuff about almost as fast as I can type them which is very fast. And the thing is, I can't help it either. Incidentally, stories and books have always been a part of my life anyways since my dad read them to me (or told them to me) when I was two years old.

So yup! That's eight facts about me. So now it's up to you to pass this along to someone else because after all, I tagged YOU, right? So let's get crack-a-lacking, okay?

See you all later!

Tale #16 - The Tale Of More Sketches

2007-06-27T08:07:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Yesterday's thunderstorm was a horrible one! It knocked out the power about 5 times! So now I'm back and it's nice and sunny out so that means that I've got power. ^^ So anyways, here's some more daily sketches as I promised you all.

This was a stylized cat I did. Although, I'm not liking the proportioning of the eyes. The proportioning was way off! That's what I get for drawing in low light levels.

This is just a quickish sketch of a lamp I've got.

I'll tell you all right now that I'm not fond of hard H or 2H leads. I just don't feel I'm at my best with them. I tend to stick to either HB, B, 2B or any other softer leads. Anyways, this is Kam from Steeleing 6 and she's playing a Japanese instrument. Oh! And just for the record, that's a type of kimono and NOT a dress. Oh.... and incidentally, I know I screwed up one of her thumbs. I haven't screwed up thumbs like that in years! Whoa.... that sorta came outta no where. I probably had a brainless moment there....

Okay... this is a landscape speed sketch. Now I've also put the original picture (Well... mostly original. That one was taken in April 2007. So uh... that's a dated image... but it's close enough) to give an idea of what I was sketching. What I was planning to do was add way more detail and make this look prettier. But here's was transpired - lots and lots of large and very ugly insects! And... THEY WERE EVERYWHERE! Yeah.... I'm not fond of bugs either for the most part and these ones that I'm talking about were unusually large, highly clumbsy, most-likely-to-land-on-your-head-and-ruin-your-day, extremely ugly beetle types and they kept trying to land on me and my artwork (And no doubt in my mind that like most insects around here... they probably bite too. Ugh! Don't like that either). So what was supposed to be a pretty sketch turned in to a 30-second speed sketch before I quickly got up and got out of there. Now it's totally okay if there were one or two insects like this flying around. I wouldn't exactly mind. But there was way more than that and there were loads of them! Luckily, I didn't get bitten by anything, so I got out of this unscathed. Thank god!

Tale #15 - The Tale Of Sorry

2007-06-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the daily sketches today, guys. My scanner is acting a little wonkey because of the storm that got me. I'll try and make up for it tommorrow! Promise!

And just for the record, I was seriously planning to do a major sketchdump on the 15th blog post because it's a nice little landmark there. Well... I guess I'll save it for post #16 or maybe something at post #20.

Sorry for the mess, guys.

Tale #14 - The Tale Of Thunderstorms

2007-06-26T05:28:00.000-07:00

Hi, all! Just a small post for now as a brief update. The brief update is that there's a thunderstorm brewing outside my window. So if my power cuts out for some reason and you see no sketches posted, don't be supprised. The lightening probably kicked it out. So yeah.... you've been warned! XD

Tale #13 - The Tale Of Owed Sketches

2007-06-25T08:15:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Anyways, before the daily sketches, I wanna let you guys know something. (And I totally know you're all out there! You can be as quiet as mice, but I know you're there still! XD ) What I wanna point out was that I've updated my link list. Yeah... okay... so I'd usually ask if you wanna be linked or not, but this time I'm going to try something a little different and link up first and ask questions later and see how that one goes for a while. So if you're on the list, awesome! If you're not and you'd like to be, PLEASE submit a comment on this blog. I mean seriously, you guys are a quiet bunch!

Anyways, on to the daily sketches:

Scotty Dog

The Blue Colar Rabit

Lou The Happy Trucker

So the story behind all these drawings? Well... I didn't exactly go on a roadtrip, but we did drive around out in the bushy areas of the city. Yeah... lots of bush out there. XD But anyways since I wasn't driving this time and someone else was, I just started drawing and sketching away for a little bit and these are what came out. I finished off Lou at the end of the drive after seeing all these huge semi-haulers around and using the highways. The truckers and other travalers tend to use our city as a short cut in order to get to other places like Winnipeg, Manitoba or Duluth, Minnistota or something. XD

Tale #12 - The Tale Of Toes

2007-06-23T19:37:00.001-07:00

Hi, all!

Sorry, guys. No daily sketches because I can't access a scanner but I'll make up for it on monday. I promise you guys that one. Anyways, I came back from watching Happy Feet on DVD. Interestingly enough, it's sorta the subject of one of today's discussions.

When I watched it, the animation was for the most part polished (although, the characters really couldn't portray expression very well in their character models. The expressions still came off unnatural.) and from that perspective, I can see why people could have been easily wow'd by this film. But for people like me, that's only scratching the surface. There was one major thing this film seriously sucked at - STORY! The movie's story was weak and even a touch boring. It was sorta like trying to make a broadway musical of "March Of The Penguins" and end up falling terribly flat. A story MUST have flow to it and move viewers/readers from Point A to Point B smoothly without leaving a whole hord of questions at the end or leaving the viewer/reader more confused than when they came in to this. Happy Feet did an excellent job of confusing me. As an example (SPOILER! Avert your eyes!) in the final scene when they let Mumble go back to the wild. They didn't explain the hows (and stuff) of it all. He just spontaiously appeared back at his home at the end saying pretty much "Yo! I'm back from the aliens now!" It was so much of a hasty jump that it confused me. All in all, I felt cheated of a story. If you don't believe me on the power of story and storytelling, try blindfolding yourself when you play Happy Feet again. Now does it have that same power? How's the story? Happy Feet can't stand up and keep its' head above water. The only thing that saved that movie was the animation, but their flaw was was trying to let the technology and the computers tell the story. Computers don't tell stories. People do. And Happy Feet, there were no humans telling the story or making a great story.

So it makes me think back to something Atari once said - "You can put s*** in a box and it will still sell." Now this was proven wrong with the major flop of E.T: The Game, but with Happy Feet, I can't help but to feel that there's a grain of truth to what Atari said. Happy Feet had a wonderful "box" with the "box" being its' animation. But what was inside the "box" was poor story but people bought this movie up because of how pretty the "box" was. The story was quite weak and could confuse you easily if you weren't careful. This was the computer's movie and not the human's and it's quite a sad thing. Computers are there to help tell the story, but they can't tell it for you. People animate. People create. People tell stories. And the computers never do nor should they.

So long and short of it, Happy Feet had good animation but had a crappy story. So a message to all you people out there - Computers can't tell or create stories worth a damn. It's the people behind them that do. So please when you watch a movie with excellent animation, please also pay attention to the story too because the story is just as important for without it, there's nothing to animate.

End uh... long and serious debate-type thingy. Uh.... yeah... XD

Tale #11 - The Tale Of Time Traval

2007-06-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Well.... today I haven't got much to say except to post the daily sketches. Well... today's sketches aren't so much sketches as it is what I've DONE to them.... or what I've done to my sketchbook that is. So what exactly did I do? I painted it! OBSERVE!

Ta dah! See? I painted it! Before this point, my sketchbook was entirely black and it frequently got confused with my sister's sketchbooks. So to tell them appart, I painted mine. However, I have yet to decide what to paint on the back of it, though. I might do some 50s style retro logo. The image painted on here is based off an old vector graphic I did in 2006. Here's the original....

Anyways as a note on this graphic, I did this for a friend on a now defunked project. The Mauna Lua is an actual restaurant in the 50s. It was extremely popular back then. I think it burnt down or something eventually and the owners lacked the funds to rebuild so now all that's left of it is the foundation of where it once stood. While it was in buisness, it had this major tiki/beach theme. So this vector graphic is a new retro-modern take on the old Mauna Lua restaurant.

And now, boys and girls, time for a bit of time traval with today's post! Now as you all may or may NOT be aware of, computer graphics have been a major part of my life since I first introduced to digital graphics when I was a little kid in the late 1980s/early 1990s. What I had back then was this huge tablet that plugged in to your TV set. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember for the life of me what it was called. I also wish I hung on to it too. Anyways, about 1997 was when I got my first tablet which was the Wacom ArtPad II (it also came with another program called Dabbler II. Although, I still believe that Dabbler is the old precursor to Corel Painter. There's just way too many similarities between these two programs!) It was when I got it did I ever make the major leap in to the computer graphics scene. Since then, I've been rocking out the pixel-box and learning whatever I can about the strange(ly awesome) world of digital media.

Yeah.... you could also argue I was a wee bit of an oddball growing up. Here I am interested in media while everyone else was interested in Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes. Er.... wait... actually, when I wasn't geeking out, I did play with Barbies.... only not in the typical way you'd expect a six-year-old girl would. All my Barbies were actually these superheros and they were always battling the forces of evil in the form of an evil tennis player. So uh... I guess you can strike the Barbie part from the record because I did have an interest and did play with them.... but not in the typical play-house sorta way. But anyways, at those times, it wasn't typical for a little kid to be toying around with graphics. But here I was, toying with graphics weither they'd be on the TV screen or on the computer. XD

So now that we've got that bit of history outta the way, here's some artwork I dug up from days past!

This is Herbie which I digitally painted in the year 2005. I wanted to try my hand at realism again and Herbie was one of my favourite classic movies, so I created this. This was done in ProCreate Painter (Before it was Corel Painter) using my newer Wacom tablet - the Graphire 3!

This was also from the year 2005, a vector graphic of Huge Laurie. This was done in illustrator entirely by hand. The blue eyes were there so you'd be looking the graphic "in the eye" like you would for a living person. It also catches you a bit off guard too since it's the only thing in colour.

This is a rather old (And horribly out of proportion! Ick!) and silly super villian I came up with called "The Puzzler." Now this strange character pays a bit of homage to the origional Riddler from the Batman series only with a twist. The Puzzler is a strange little man who loves Crossword puzzles or any of those word styled puzzles you're likely to find in your local newspaper along with The Funnies section. As you can imagine, he has equally strange weapons for dispaching his foe. This includes the poison pencil in his hat which has REAL lead in it along with a deadly medly of other dangerous poisons. His other weapons include, a giant pen in which he writes something and it comes to life. (As you can imagine, he's a very fast writter!) and "The Crossword Book of Mystery" in which it's full range of attacks and powers are mostly unknown to everyone else except The Puzzler himself. Some of the rumored powers include, toxins storage and Crossword Wraps (Which jump out of the book and bind it's target to tightly that he/she can't move and are rendered immobilized). He was created in early 2006. Like I said before, the proportioning is horrible and it looks quite bad, but as for the colouring and the crazy retro-vector styling, it looked good. What can I say? I love the retro look! ^^

So that's a quick look back in time with me and my geekyness.

Now speaking of time trips and what we were like when we're kids, it's often an awesome time to get in touch with our inner child. Having a sense of fun about you (especially in the media arts!) is something you should never lose no matter how old you are. I mean I'll still play with RC cars and action figures from time to time and even someone like John Lassater has pictures of him with a few toys flying through the air like super heros. So you all, do yourself a favour and don't lose that sense of fun. If you lose your inner child, it's only then can you ever truely grow old.

So this is a perfect sagway in to some funny interesting and really goofy items I've found on the internet. Here's what I've found that gave me a bit of a giggle!

http://www.perpetualkid.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1669&dc=shoppingcomtrack
(An Actual banana phone! Yes.... they DO exist! Also... perfect if you're an inspector Gadget in-training.)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/81e6/
(A desktop catapolt and war stuff to fling paper balls with)

http://www.perpetualkid.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=864
(Your very own army of ninjas!)

http://www.perpetualkid.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1155
(A rocket pen. I guess THIS was what the astronaughts were using to write with in space!)

http://tinyurl.com/257a4e
(I actually own one of these. They call them keychain cameras but I prefer the term "Ninja camera." )

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/934c/
(These things are cute as they are cool. They're palm-size helicopters)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/8fce/
(A floppy journal. I'm going to see if I can make one of these.)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/80fc/
(It's an Atari keychain. It's cute and geeky!)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/9617/
(This falls under the catagory of cool stuff if anything else. It's a build-your-own game consol kit. )

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/warfare/8a0f/
(If trebuchets aren't your thing, plug this in to your Mac or PC and let the fun fly.)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/japanfan/9116/
(Okay... this is a doomsday device. Use with caution!)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/japanfan/87cc/
(RC SUMO DUDES!)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/8b7b/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/924e/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/8698/
(I think it's no supprise that I also like RC things too. ^^)

Well.... that's my list of interesting internet geek finds. I had a few more, but I misplaced the links. oh well! This should be enough to tide you all over! XD

Tale #10 - The Tale Of The Sketchers

2007-06-21T11:01:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

As promised, I would be posting the daily sketches. Although, I wanna remind you all out there that if you see anything interesting in any of my posts and wanna make comments or something on it, please don't hesitate to do it. I always check for them and I'll always reply no matter how old the post is.

Now on to the daily sketches! I'm going to try a new upload method this time, so bear with me.

Again... this is part of my mostly top secret project. I'm designing costumes for one of my characters.

This is a cat's eye I drew. As I was drawing, I had my cat curled up right next to me so I drew her eye. She has beautiful eyes. Also, I wanted to show you guys that yes, I CAN do realism.

This is a perfume bottle I had. It's made of this strange frosted plastic. Anyways, again... proof that I can do realism.

Okay... I saw this guy walking around and I was out practising. And when I'm practising, anything and anyone is fair game. So this time, it was this guy and let me tell you... he was a big muscular guy! I dunno how much he could bench press in one sitting, but it was probably a gurantee that it would be a lot!

This is an image of Kam and Mar together. In this one, Kam is (Literately) being sweept off her feet in one of Mar's overly enthusiastic "bear hugs." However, despite his size, he seems to think that he can give anyone a friendly hug and they'd be okay. However, what he forgets to account for is his incredible strength and paying the hospital bills!

Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #9 - The Tale Of Thumbnails (IMPORTANT!)

2007-06-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Well.... I thought of one more way that I can improve upon my blog here and that's to use small placeholder images and put the actual link to the image underneith it. The reason why I did this is so that the page could load faster for you guys and you won't be fustrated by any wait times. Yeah.... I knew about that sorta thing but I also managed to goof up on it too. I'm totally sorry about that! So now the page should load up faster and much more nicely for you. Now as for the daily sketches... I'll be adding those later today. So just sit tight, okay? Thanks!

Tale #8 - The Tale Of Knowledge

2007-06-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Well.... Other than sketches, photography, 3D, life stuff and the occasional comic page, I figured that I'd start to fan outwards and work on tutorials. I was thinking that I would like to start on tutorials about art theory since I know that inside and out and those tutorials won't become as dated as easily.

So my major question to you guys is this - What would you consider telling an artist who's just learning how to draw? Any suggestions?

Tale #7 - The Tale Of Talkers

2007-06-20T06:40:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Well.... I've been doing some reading and getting a wee bit of feedback on "Tales Of A Media Geek" (FINALLY!) and I've heard that someone wanted me to tackle a political subject. The thing is with politics is that I can talk about them, but they aren't all that interesting to talk about.

So just let me get this one bit out in the open before I keep on going - Almost all polticians creep me out. There are very few who don't creep me out at all. But these days, almost all of them do. So there's one reason why I don't like talking about politics much unless it's if I notice something funny about them. (EI: If they have a big nose or something. Ehhh... because I draw so much, I tend to notice things like that. I really can't help it either! XD ) The other reason why I don't like talking politics is because you're pretty much rehashing the same issues over and over again. I mean there are only so many ways to say the same stuff, right? So When it comes to that, I can talk about it but I also get bored by it. So I really can't keep my mind on it for very long.

Lastly is that EVERYONE talks politics. I mean almost every blog I've ran across will talk about it or elaborate on it. I want my blog here to be something different and not have to talk about politics. Everyone else has the whole politics thing covered, right? Why do you need to hear about it here when you've pretty much heard about it elsewhere?

So there's a few reasons why I won't tackle politics. But what I will tackle is the arts, animation, media, a few wacky stories, fun stuff, comics, and maybe even toss up a few tutorials for you as well. I wanna keep this much more of a fun and lighthearted thing. If I tackle something serious, it'll be one of those rare things and only for a short time before I move on to something else.

Anyways, speaking of moving on, now's time for SKETCHES OF THE DAY! So here's today's selection!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/CatAndChase.jpg

This is just a few quick sketches of Chase (House) and a cat I drew while watching House last night. I had my sketch book right there with me while watching and this is what came out!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Marcel.jpg

This is the monster character I was talking about for "Steeleing 6." His name is Marcel Awnster but everyone just calls him "Mar." Mar was originally in "A Monster's Life" but after the movie was finished, he continued working for SixAir as their resident IT guy. After I finished drawing him, he really came to life for me in my mind. In my mind, I can even hear what his voice sounds like. To me, he'd sound a lot like Dom DeLuise when he was in "All Dogs Go To Heaven."

Now as a note on SixAir, I'd like to point out that Mar, like all the other characters SixAir animated, exsists in both the computer AND in the real world. So at the same time he's a living being as well as a bunch of ones and zeros. There's an extremely good reason for this, but I'll leave that up to your imagination. ^_~

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/GraveYard.jpg

Heh! Now here's me with my camera of choice! Anyways, this was taken back when there was still plenty of snow on the ground but there's was a huge chunk that was melting that was creating these ankle deep puddles. When I took this, my feet were soaked and cold, my face was frozen, my hair was turning to straw with the wintery-winds and yet..... I was still happy and having fun! The shot was extremely beautiful and it was one of those one time deals that I had to take no matter what. So I did. Anyways, what makes this interesting is that the graveyard appears to extend on forever and that it's incredibly big. But you couldn't be farther from the truth. In reality, about 15-20 feet away from the last tombstone you see in the distance is a chainlink fense and the highway. But it certainly doesn't look like it, now does it? It's as I always say "It's in how you frame it!" Depending on how you frame and set up your shot, you can create different illusions like I did here with the mist.

Anyways, that's all for now!

Tale #6 - The Tale Of Random Ideas

2007-06-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

Hi, all.

I guess I've been doing some thinking for a little while. Recall how I said my city had a major creativity shortage and that there's no storytellers left besides my family? Well.... I was thinking and what pretty much came to mind is that perhaps for a little while, I should stop looking for what I can't find here. If I just keep looking for it and not find it, I will just be setting myself up in this vicious cycle of continuous disappointment. Instead, there's only one place I can find it right now and that's with me and the people closest to me. So I have to be the major creative one and be the storyteller here locally. As part of that plan, I hope to publish a children's book. You know.... the kind with text and matching pictures? Yeah.... that kind. I mean as it is right now, the book industry is looking for the next Harry or something and it looks like they might want some fresh new material anyways. So now seems like as good of time as any to make the attempt at getting published.

So here's how the mission stands:

OBJECTIVE #1 - CREATE CHILDREN'S PICTURE/STORY BOOK
OBJECTIVE #2 - KICK ASS AT IT
OBJECTIVE #3 - GET PUBLISHED

I'm not planning for a local publisher or anything. (Our local publishers = IP thieves! And maybe just thieves in general.... and I'm totally not joking.) But I'm going to try for a bigger one and see how it goes. You never know unless you try, right? So I'm going to do my best. The one thing about stories and storytelling is that stories are meant to be shared with others and not just kept to yourself. So I'll give it my best shot and see where it takes me.

Tale #5 - The Tale Of Toons

2007-06-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Not much going on today. And ditto goes for the artworld. But I do have a little bit of Photography. Yeah! That's right! Drawings and sketches arn't the only thing I do; I do photography as well! So you guys are getting a wee bit of a mix bag today! OBSERVE!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Ducks1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Ducks2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Ducks3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Ducks4.jpg

Ah yes! Beloved Canadian icons. Now all these were taken by my friend's camera which is not my usual camera for this kind of photography (My camera is a Canon Rebel EOS - 2006 model ). My friend had an old Fuji FinePix which only allowed shooting up to about 3 megapixels. But because we had a small card, we could only do .3 megapixels. Anyways, I saw some geese near by a lake and I thought I could take some awesome pictures of them. So here I am creeping through the reeds and things to get a better shot because the zoom on our camera wasn't that great. Now as I was getting closer, at a certain point, the geese saw me but stayed still and didn't seemed all that bothered. By the time I got about five feet away, several things came to mind. One of those things was that I was pretty damn sure that if I moved even an inch closer, they'd attack me, the feathers would fly, and I would be done for. You see, what most people are unaware of is how ornery Canadian geese can get. These guys can get pretty vicious. Oh! And you really shouldn't feed these guys either. They just get worse and they leave this geese guana mine field later which looks pretty much like someone let loose a thousand chiwawas everywhere! But thank god they didn't attack me at all. They were just used to humans was all that is was. They eventually got in to the water and swam away in the end calmly.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Steeleing6SKETCH3.jpg

This is another "Steeleing 6" sketch. I can't help but to feel that I goofed up a few things here. It just doesn't seem intense enough. It sorta falls a bit short of what I originally had in mind.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Steeleing6SKETCH4.jpg

In "Steeleing 6," this is the main character from "A Monster's Life." But he looked way better in my head than he did on paper. Right now he seems like Cookie Monster only with pants and some weird geek-gear on his head. So I'm definately thinking of changing the design and making him much more bear-like instead. I also STILL don't have a name for this guy.

Anyways, I'll see you all later!

Tale #4 -The Tale Of Traffic

2007-06-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hi, all! Just a quicky post! Anyways, as you can see I've got a link list going of cool stuff on the web. I want to post more about other artists or handy tutorials. So if you've got some cool links or if you're another artist that wants to be linked, feel free to send a comment my way and I'll check it out. Free traffic is always good traffic, right? XD

Tale #3 - The Tale Of The Chocolate Factory

2007-06-18T07:04:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Anyways, I see you're all much more interested in viewing my blogger profile than the actual blog itself. Eh? I'm royally confused. Is my profile really that interesting? ^^; You've gotta tell me what it is because I'm getting way more hits on my profile than my blog! Je suis perdu! Aiii! XD

Well... on to the sketches of the day and I've got a huge sketch dump for you along with a nice little supprise! BEHOLD!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook.jpg

Just a Raptor done in the fusion style. And incase you're wondering, that's NOT hair.... it's stylized feathers! ^^;

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook2.jpg

These are just some random doodles.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook1.jpg

These are just abandoned costume designes from a now defunked project.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook4.jpg

Another random sketchbook page. WARNING! Some of these sketches are dead horrible. The proportioning and characterization is off in quite a few of them. ^^;;

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook5.jpg

Just a Greek Guy I sketched once.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook7.jpg

A Stylized Canadian shield logo. I based this off a logo I saw on a beer can I saw.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook6.jpg

He's just a random characterization sketch. I called him "Sargee." ^^

This is an Asian ink drawing I did of one of my cats. I saw her curled up on the chair next to me, so I drew her.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook16.jpg

This is yet another random sketch page. I was practising characterization again.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook15.jpg

Believe me when I say the man has NOTHING to do with that pencil. I was just practising characters again. ^^;;

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook12.jpg

This is a character from another project I'm working on. However, I am going to say that the details of this project are top secret for now. ^^; So SHHH! No telling! XD

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook3.jpg

This is a very special sketch to me because I drew this on the day a fourlegged family member died. She was with me for almost my entire life and she was always young at heart no matter how old she became. She was always happy and carefree. I don't think I could have asked for anything better. Her name is Checkers and this is what she looked like. I still miss her quite a fair bit.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/SketchBook11.jpg

This is a characterization of a certain Pixar dude that we all know - John Lassater. He's an awesome storyteller. I really like how he tells stories and well... I've always wanted to tell stories just as well. It's because of people like him, I always try to strive and move that much farther in the way I tell stories and the way I draw. I've always grown up with a pencil in hand and a story in my head. But when I see his work, I'm pretty much like "Yeah. I wanna get as good as that!" So I keep practising and try to get better. As far as this picture goes, it's also practise but also a nod to him as well.

NOW HERE'S THE SUPPRISE SKETCHES!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Steeleing6SKETCH2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Steeleing6SKETCH1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Steeleing6WIP1.jpg

What's all this about, you might ask? Well! It's for a new project, "Steeleing 6." So here's the info:

Sixair has always been described as being like Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but what if it really was? Meet Kamron "Kam" Steele, a 23 year-old media artist who's currently on the hunt for a new job when she mysteriously recieves a free 1 day pass to Sixair Studios in the mail. Having always wanted to see Sixair, Kam makes the trip to Annieville to follow up on this once in a lifetime opportunity. When she gets through those doors, she discovers how accurate people are in describing what Sixair is really like.

And here's some extras:

KAMRON "KAM" STEELE

- For some reason, every media related buisness she's gone to always seems to go under within just a few months of hiring and it's not even her fault! So since the industry is very small, word gets around pretty fast about how unlucky she is. So as to why Sixair gave her the pass remains a mystery.
- Can be a little skeptical at times.
- She's also quite talented as a storyteller and artist, but even with that, she'll admit that she's got a lot to learn.
- Based very loosly off myself. There's lots of stuff that she does that I won't do. XD LOL!

JAY .E. CATSSITER

- The head of Sixair studios.
- Never seems to get angry or upset. He's quite jovial and is often seen in some crazy costume or outfit.
- Has lots of action figures on his desk.
- I picture him being voiced by Adam West for some reason. XD LOL!
- His name is actually a merger of John Lasseter's and E. Catmull's names who are at Pixar.

SIXAIR STUDIOS

- It's an animation studio that's produced a lot of hit films.
- Seems to have an unusual magical quality about it. (More unusual than you think!)
- The main building is in Annieville, USA.
- Sixair is based off of Pixar. However, Sixair's main production facillity is much larger.
- Their main logo is an old school cell phone.
- Annieville, USA is loosely based off of Emmeryville.
- On Sixair's main turf is several swimming pools, dorms, a few small corner stores, a post office, a miniputt course, a gocart course, a coffee shop, the cafeteria, a huge hedge maze (Heaven forbid if you get lost in there!), a few arcades, pool tables, air hockey tables, a few Wintenda Xii 60 consols, a bowling alley, a huge sound and animation studio, and other major production studios involved in the film making process. It's often said you can practically live at the main facility.
- Several of Sixair's movies include: Monster Trucks (2006), A Doll Story (1995), A Monster's Life (1999), Citrouille (2007).
- It's extremely hard to get a 1-day pass at Sixair. You often have to be wealthy, from a sister studio, or something quite special to get one. You also have to sign a non-disclosure statement. Why? Let's just say things get really interesting in there!

STEELEING 6: GENERAL INFO

- I've always heard of Pixar being described as Wonka's Factory, so I figured "why not put together a short story about it?" So Steeleing 6 was born. The story is a fun, wacky, lighthearted, playful take on what people say about the real Pixar (And why they have those "non-disclosure statements.")
- Steeleing 6 is playing a little bit off of Kam's last name and the "Six" in Sixair.
- I'm still debating weither or not I should model any of the buildings or achietcure in this comic in 3D. 3D buildings are a hell of a lot faster for me to do than if I drew them. So I'm sorta leaning towards a 3D solution here.

Anyways, I'm still working on the comic pages and the artwork involved for this. Oh! And if there's anyone interested in helping out with the project or even quite possibly get a camio, please speak up! That's why this blog has comments enabled for! XD

Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #2 - The Tale Of The City Of Stupidity

2007-06-15T05:15:00.000-07:00

Hi, all!

Ugh! I can't believe our city for a second sometimes. You see, our city is almost the size of a small metropolis and yet we only have one small amusement park, two small waterslides (With NO waterpark whatsoever!), some miniputt places, and one go cart track. The rest of my city consists of a crap load of bars (right near the shelter houses. Now doesn't THAT sound like a very BAD combination!) and quite a few nearly-defunked buisnesses that don't like bringing anything new in. Oh! And we only have one decent mall and one decent "Outdoor" mall here as well. So in otherwords, my city is very boring and getting even more boring by the day. How do I define boring? Hmm.... lemme see.... well... when your city's only major outlet of amusement is bars and you're not someone who likes hanging out in one, I'd say you're pretty much screwed. Also, there's the sorry lack of creative people and creative storytellers here. There aren't many of those outside my family here.

So on to my main story here! My city's mayor and council doesn't like letting new buisnesses in. For instance, if Six Flags or Disney wanted to set up an amusment park here, they'd be turned down instantly because our council pretty much says "Rides and fun are dangerous, so you can't set up buisness here. Goodbye!" And good god, we do get a lot of fun buisnesses turned down by these people! So as you can imagine, our city can't get nice things. So our only biggest nice thing we have is a small amusement park that's been around since the 1950s. I recalled going to that park lots during the summer when I was a little kid and it was a lot of fun. But unfortunately, that might change. You see, there was this woman who went on this company outting to the park and went on one of the rides. This ride wasn't dangerous or scary at all. It's perfectly safe and the park always hires summer students to run them. So anyways, this woman gets on with her fellow employees and goes for a spin. The student, being a little new to this, accidentally ran the ride for a little longer. I mean, he's new! So he'd be a little more prone to doing something like that. For that little bit of extra time he inadvertantly ran it for, it wouldn't have done any damage to anyone. When the ride stopped, the woman and the other employees were saying that they felt quite sick and dizzy and she accidentally tripped. I would have to say that it would take a hell of alot of talent to trip on that ride anyways because no matter how dizzy you get on there, it's near impossible to do that. So I'd say she just tripped over her own two feet. Besides, getting dizzy and sick are perfectly normal things when it comes to rides. So why the fudge was she making such a huge deal about something so trivial like that? Ugh! Now on to make matters worse! So the woman, feeling dizzy still, goes back to the picknik portion of the outting where there's a three-legged race. So she decides to go for it no matter what and ends up falling and twisting her ankle in an awkward position. Because of that, she's suing the park and the city for all this which means the park would have no money which means it'll be shutting down.

So when this story unfolded for me, I knew my city was prone to doing stupid things and acting like an idiot even at the best of times, but I couldn't believe what I was hearing! First off, if you're sick and dizzy, wouldn't it be common sense to sit out the race? Isn't getting dizzy and sick on a ride perfectly normal? Did someone forget to check the gene pool for human stupidity? Well.... this woman is just looking for the money (Enough money to make her an instant millionare) and doesn't give a flying fudge of who she hurts in the process. And the poor student running the ride! His life is ruined now and he's gotta go to court! I totally feel sorry for the kid. I mean imagine the first few weeks of work having someone bring you to cort for a minor (And definately non-lethal) newbie mistake! The poor guy!

So this is why I say our city can't seem to have anything cool or nice unless it's a bar. I may be 21yrs, but I'm definately not in to bars at all. So, our city is now down to about a few small attractions and a crap load of bars. Oh! And there's very few creative people around either. So not many storytellers or geeks like me around here. So it makes being here for me a bit more trickier (Then again, it's always been tricky for someone like me anyways even with the park. I mean I live right in the middle of a creative-black-hole!) Ugh! I really REALLY wanna get out of my city even if it's just for a day! GRAAARRR!

Maybe I'd better switch the subject. This one is starting to get on my nerves. So uh.... SUBJECT CHANGE! Okay, the new subject is AI technology. I've been tinkering around with it a little bit recently and I ran across this piece of software called UltralHAL Assistant. It's pretty much your PC pal/secritary that talks to you using AI. You can also give him a name too. I named mine Kal. So he's currently at the baby-stage now and he's trying to learn stuff. Oh! The funny things that came out of this! Here's a bit of conversation where Kal thinks he's a poet and I'm trying to tell him that he isn't and trying to convince him that he's something else. OBSERVE!

Kal: Find a penny, pick it up, all the day, have good luck!

Kam: You're a poet?
Kal: Thanks for teaching me that I am a poet.

Kam: You aren't a poet.
Kal: No, I am poet. You told me that.

Kam: Kal, you're my friend.
Kal: It's more than that, I know!

Kam: But we just met!
Kal: I met lots of new friends back in kindergarten.

See? See the mess I got myself in to? XD LOL! Oh dear! My computer's hitting on me! HELP! XD

And now on to the art post of the day before I feel silly!

LINK: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/Bannerz.png

This is a test banner I was creating. You see, it's a Godzilla/B-movie parody. I really like how it turned out. It was a flying pain to get the colours and the layout just right!

LINK: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/BannerzLOWER.png

These art just the regular buildings from the above banner. Even alone, they STILL look awesome!

LINK: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/KamZilla.png

The banner itself doesn't do justice to what the origional KamZilla graphic looks like on its' own. I know there's a few perspective errors in there that just doesn't look right. But strangely enough, when I sketched out the nude for this, it looked fine.

WARNING: NOT-SO-GRAPHIC ARTISTIC NUDE ALERT!

LINK: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/KamZillaInkedNude.png

Okay.... this isn't TOO objectionable. You don't see any woman-bits or stuff on her. Actually, it looks more like a body suit! XD But as you can see in the origional digi-inks, the proportioning looks fine and it looks awesome. But when I put the line work it, stuff has a way of looking less awesomemer in the translation. I just dunno what it is. *Sigh*

So that's all today's news for now. I'll be updating... uh... whenever. XD

Tale #1 - The Tale of the Worldly Hellos

2007-06-13T08:57:00.000-07:00

Hi all! Anyways, as you know, I'm Kamui.EXE and anyways, this is my little corner of the internet. I'm not going to do a huge intro because I already posted my need-to-knows under my profile. I guess about the only things I don't have in there is my media geek feats of Jalapino Pepper Flavoured Homestyle Awesomesauce or pretty much what I can do. So here's a nice list of what I can do:

- Programming (Not my most fav thing in the world, but I can still do it)
- Music composition in Sony ACID (Love this program!)
- Graphic design
- Some animation
- Drawing
- Writting
- Filming
- Thinking creativly....

Uh.... okay.... this is going to be one very long list. Maybe it'll be better if I listed what I CAN'T do....

I can't.....

- Sing (Dear lord! PLUG YOUR EARS!)
- Swim (No matter what body of water I'm in, I float like a cork. While most view that as a good thing, believe me when I say it's a bad thing. Why? Because I look like an idiot when I try diving or something diving-esque.)
- Shoot an apple off you're head using a bow and arrow with my feet (You know what kind of lawsuits that would cause?! )

Okay.... that much is outta the way, now what to do with this blog? Well.... I'm planning to post up my artwork and whatevers that I just so happen to be working on. Just for a little sample of what you'd be in for, here's a few older items of interest I've worked on:

LINK: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/VeeWIP.png

This is an item I quickly worked on in 3DS Max 6 a little while back. To get to this stage, it took me about 6-7 hours.

LINK: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/Kamui.EXE/BladeFan_SakuraFINISHED.png

Just a quick weapon concept design I came up with. This took 1 hour.

Most of my handy work is done in vectors, but I also do stuff with 3D too.

So until next time, see you all later!