Tale #60 - The Tale Of Broken Machines

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

Hi, all!

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

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

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

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

---PROJECTS---

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

Shelved Projects:

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

New Projects:

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

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

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



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



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






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



Good luck on the zombie hunt!

Tale #55 - The Tale of Why I Create

Hi, all!

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

Sixty Minute Artist

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


Anyways, onwards to other stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Tale #53 - The Tale Of Kam the Konquerer

Hi, all!

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

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

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



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

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






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



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


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



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


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

Tale #51 - The Tale of The FRENCH!

Hi, all!

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



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

Tale #50 - The Tale of Older Geeks

Hi, all!

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

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

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

Tale #48 - The Tale of kPod and Other Stuff

Hi, all!

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

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

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

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

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

Tale #47 - The Tale of Orientation Day II

Hi, all!

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

So what happened?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tale #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 #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 #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 #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 #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.

Tale #31 - The Tale of Tutors

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

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

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

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