Tale #45 - The Tale of MacBooks

Hi, all!

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


(DRUM ROLL, PLEASE!)


























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

Tale #44 - The Tale of No Straps

Hi, all!

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

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

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

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

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

See you all later!

Tale #43 - The Tale Of Geek Tip I

Hi, all!

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

HOW TO PAINT IN FLASH 8 (or higher)



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

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



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

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




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

STEP #1



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

STEP #2



Layout your base colours.



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


STEP #3




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




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

STEP #4



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



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

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

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


















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




AND




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

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

Tale #42 - The Tale of Flash Painting

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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)

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

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

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

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.