So I had to get/make a last minute Christmas present for an aunt. So, I decided that I'd make cute magnets of her pets! First I drew them up on the computer. Then I got them printed and laminated and stuck magnets on the back. This is the result!

( Piccies )

They are so omgcute. They came out a bit larger than expected, and they're a bit yellow tinted--I need to check my screen settings. But other than that I'm very happy with them, especially considering it only took an hour to draw all three. I think I like making these little guys... I should whip up a few more to give to my family back home.

Speaking of which, my shuttle to the airport is coming in an hour! GAHH. THE WAITING IS KILLING ME.

And now I present Foremost. I've had this little test-server free webspace for ages, and I finally dropped a few hours and spruced it up to be a proper (if bare) website. It needs tweaking, but I like it. Though, why I chose the name 'Foremost' is a mystery. I may wind up changing it to something more fitting, especially since about 953032 other companies/organizations use that name as well.

Yes, I've been avoiding LJ. Leave me alone I feel crappy.


First off, I made some adorable Christmas-themed adoptables yesterday. They are being pimped mercilessly over at my FA because I need money to spend on presents. I honestly have no idea how they are going to go over--I'm simply drawing on my history of success as a B/C artist over on Gaia. But there were two differences on Gaia: first, there was no real money being spent, and second, the whole B/C forum was specifically marketed towards adoptables. I guess I'll just have to wait and see!

( I also am working on commissions and other crazy things )

So I haven't been posting art logs because I haven't really been drawing. BUT this week I did a ton--I have a load of commission sketches to post up. Also I did a huge amount of work for Wajas.com... but I can't post it yet because it's a surprise for when the site goes back up. The users will like a few of the items I did, that's for sure. ;)

I just did my entry for the Species_X_Change. I got a star-nosed mole and foolishly decided to try and do a background. For the record, I am not very good at drawing dirt. Here is the finished picture.

I noticed that if I took all the shading off, the picture looks very much like an animation cel. I guess that means I did an ok job at matching the character to the background--something I've been working on.

(Click!)

IN FACT... Why don't I go over how I do that. Consider it a Photoshop tutorial of sorts. Because while every artist and their dog has posted a shading or eye tutorial, they never seem to talk about HOW they choose their colors. It was and is very frustrating because color choice is often much more important than shading anyway (as all non-shaded animated films have demonstrated well!)

( Tutorial FTW! )

So wandering around in the cold last night took my cold from bad to worse. I was only out for a half-hour, too... I'd hate to think of what state I'd be in if we hadn't had a car like we were anticipating. I'm recuperating on Chicken Noodle Soup: College Edition:



In other news, we went out and saw Twilight yesterday. Considering the source material, I think they did a decent job in getting the spirit of Twilight across. Edward was much more awkward than I remember him in the book, but that seems to make him more believable. And, of course, I got to see sparkly vampires. That scene just made my year. It took every scrap of willpower not to burst into loud, obnoxious laughter and risk getting mauled by all the Twilightards in the theater. (Instead I burst into quiet, obnoxious laughter and only bothered the poor people sitting next to me.)

I didn't have a lot of issue with the movie (all the things that made me gag were things that made me gag more in the book, so they were really doing a good job)... EXCEPT for the special effects. I mean, come on. If you're going to have an awful story, at least have good SF to make the whole ordeal a little more bearable. The running, in particular, just made me want to disembowel the SF director. When a cheetah runs at 60mph, it does not just take teensy little jogging steps really, really fast with a blur filter applied. No. Its strides are hugely lengthened, its body is stretched out to the max. I imagined the super-fast running to be something like San from Princess Mononoke (2:40 in this AMV for example). She's bent over nearly double from the exertion. I mean, go ahead and apply some blur, that makes it easier to CG convincingly. But at least make it look feasible and not like you simply sped up the film.

Also, the film helped me realize exactly why I find Edward and Bella's 'twu wuv' relationship so corny. First: the ending scenes where Bella lays on the "I want to be with you forever" deal thick enough to choke on. You could replace Edward and Bella with any other starry-eyed high-school teenage couple and--GASP--they would say the EXACT SAME THING. ALL TEENAGERS GO THROUGH THIS STAGE. And guess what? 90% of these relationships end with tears and breakup two weeks later. So much for eternal love.

Secondly, Edward is designed to make girls fall in love with him. He's got supernatural infatuation magics and everything. Bella falls in love with him for no reason I can understand besides the fact that he's male and good looking. This leads to the obvious assumption that her 'true, undying love' is just her weak human body reacting to vampire pheromones. How romantic.

This is what makes me want to break down and find that leak of Midnight Sun. This so-called true love would be about 900 times more convincing from the POV of someone whose brains are not addled by vampiric feel-good drugs.

I was pleased to note that the movie did a good job of cutting out the 90% of the book that was sleep-inducing filler like "I got up. I made cereal. It was Kellogg's cereal. Then I went to school. I went to gym. Then I went to Biology..." It now makes the creepy, sexual-predator and overly dependent screwed-up relationship even more apparent than it was in the book. After all, there's no truer way to show you love someone than to secretly sneak in their room all night for months and watch them while they sleep!

I understand why the stores put up Christmas stuff when it's still Thanksgiving season. Yeah, they're dissing Thanksgiving, but Christmas is far more profitable and they're trying to make a buck.

But our LIBRARY!? Why are they sticking up Christmas trees in November? What possible profit are they going to make from doing that?

It just... doesn't make sense.

Thanksgiving is so warm and happy; I love it and its fall colors and its nature-themed deco and its delicious food. Yet it constantly gets dumped on the sidelines for no reason. Give us a few more years and we'll be phasing out Thanksgiving weekend too.

On a completely unrelated note, I just got superglue on my tongue. It feels rather strange.

Why did I have to bite my nails to the quick the DAY before cleaning checks. Now I get to stick my raw painful fingers in nice caustic household chemicals. Plus it hurts to type.

On that note, I wonder why nail-biting is such a habit in people. I've got a general oral fixation--I bite my nails, my skin, my lips--I've heard Freud's theories on the subject but they kind of scream "I'm trying way too hard to extrapolate meaning here" to me (as does most of his stuff).

A doctor in this article says that nail biting is a compulsive disorder in the same line as hair pulling or skin picking. This makes sense to me; I often sympathize with people's accounts of OCD when I'm trying to avoid biting my nails. I just get incredibly anxious and upset unless I give in and bite them.

The article also mentions that last year a center in the Netherlands opened up devoted specifically to nail biters. This makes me lol.

Something I found a long time ago is a site called Mototune. It's a motorcycle newsletter on the outside, but more importantly it's a prime example of how there is a social aspect to exchanging information.

One prime example of what this newsletter teaches is found in MotoMan's super glue trick. Did you know that super glue is great for covering up small cuts, especially on fingers? Bonds right on and, more importantly, it stays there--no bandages to get sweaty, nasty, or caught on things while you're working.

But! Super glue isn't for skin, is it?? I bought some, and right on the package it said, "WARNING: Contains Cyanoacrylate. May cause allergic skin reaction. Skin contact through clothing may cause burns. Avoid contact with skin and eyes."

Sounds pretty scary, huh? Well, I tried dabbing some super glue on a cut I got on the tip of my finger... and... no allergic reaction, no horrible burning, nothing falling off! Surprise! Now I can type and sew without the raw cut edges brushing painfully against everything I touch!

To understand why the dire package warnings are misleading, read this email that a helpful person sent to MotoMan:

Hey Motoman!!

Love your web site!!! I especially liked the Super Glue Trick. In fact I
work at a hospital and I asked one of the ER docs about it and he said
they already have it. They call it "liquid stitches" and the trade name is Dermabond.
They especially like to use it for face cuts etc.. where you wouldn't want a bad scar to
form.

Of course it's not available to the public, because you have to be a "professional" to use it.

Here's the catch: It's exactly the same ingredient as used in super glue .... Cyanoacrylate !
It is super glue, just in a different package. How bizarre.

I believe that this stuff is now widely available, too, since I've seen some 'liquid bandage' stuff at Wal-mart (though it's much more expensive than super glue!) Another email mentions that super glue was actually originally developed by the military to mend wounds in the field. That's why it bonds the best to skin!

People might wonder, "Why would the producers have two identical products and price them so differently??" It's actually a common occurrence, described in economics as 'price discrimination.' It's the same principle behind the fact that you can buy plane tickets for cheap several months in advance, but they are very expensive if you buy them the day before the trip. The company judges your willingness to pay and charges accordingly. Families who can't afford much will often plan in advance, so planned-ahead tickets are cheap, but business people, who often need a next-day trip, are willing to pay much more, so the airline charges more.

Nobody's going to pay too much for plain boring super glue--but they'd definitely pay $10 for a revolutionary liquid bandage. And to keep people from inadvertently discovering the secret behind super glue, the producers stick scary warnings of "Do this and bad things MAY happen to you" on the back.

The world's a misleading place, huh? ;)

To close: I highly recommend super glue, especially for small cuts that are often accumulated when working sloppily with exacto knives.

So I was accepted into a workshop held for School of Technology students called the Design and Thinking Bootcamp, a two day thing held on Friday and Saturday. I was really happy to get in, since there were very limited spots, and I cleared out and prepared my schedule appropriately to accommodate the large blocks of time devoted to the workshop. I had my midterm scheduled, and I was due to finish up my feather commission during that time as well.

Well, I got there at 9 am on Friday and we all had a blast. I learned a lot about solving problems and I got to work with a team made up of very different majors and mindsets. In addition, there would be a contest for the best design, and the winners would each get $100. We learned the basics of the design process, went out, gathered information, brainstormed, designed, and come up with several very interesting concepts. Everything was going well, and our ending time of 3:00 was approaching fast.

And then, out of the blue, the coordinators announced that for the contest, our teams were required to go and do the whole design process over again, focusing on a preselected theme. We weren't allowed to use the things we had just come up with. We were slightly surprised, but figured that they were going to give us the theme, let us think on it overnight, and then do the whole thing on Saturday. But then they said that no, we got about an hour on Saturday to prepare, but other than that the day was devoted to presentations. Which meant that they expected us to do the entire project on our own time.

This design process isn't a twenty-minute deal. First we had to pick a problem, which took us over an hour because of how ambiguous the theme was. We had to venture out and photograph, interview people, and otherwise observe the problem. We had to research ideas and solutions and then go interview more people on their opinions. We had to finalize the design and make a mock-up and a diagram presentation of the whole thing.

In the end, I got home at 9pm at night. I never got to do my midterm (I'm taking it today, which ranks high on the list of worst ways to spend a Saturday). But worse than that, I had painted my feathers for the feather commission and set them out to dry while I went to the workshop, expecting to get back while they were still damp so that I could properly brush out the fur. Instead, I arrived home five hours late to nine crusty, dry, glued-together, absolutely ruined feathers. There's no way to salvage them; I tried trimming the ragged edges as well as wetting them down and attempting to brush them off. I'm just going to have to do them all over again.

Yeah. I'm more than a bit pissed. And we didn't even win first. It was a great workshop, but they really, really should have thought about the fact that we all have lives outside of their cute little projects.

I've been doing this on and off for the last week or so.

( Fake cut is fake )

The boring static pose of her ref made me mad. I'm trying to inject some personality here!
Plus, she didn't look adorable enough in that other picture.

And man, she's been puttering around in my head for so long yet I don't have specific markings mapped out for her. Fffhgfhff.

I need to be doing about 5000 other things besides this right now.

NO. NONONONONONONONO *stamps feet*

Mother Nature, you are made of FAIL and you are very hateful too. I had to walk through 20 MINUTES of this to get to school and my hands were popsicle sticks by the time I got there; if I'd licked them my tongue would have frozen on and NEVER COME OFF. AND this was the day that I was planning to bike all over town to get my passport so I could visit my FAMILY over the holidays (and I wanted to pick up groceries and commission materials too). But I don't want to SKID OUT and DIE so now I have to pay through my nose to take the bus.

And don't give me this crap about "Oh, well winter is better than summer because you can bundle up if you're chilly, but you can't do anything if you're hot!" That's like saying you'd rather get CANCER than the common cold because oh, cancer responds to chemotherapy but those darn colds, you just have to sit them out!

Also, I think I have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)... either that or SHD (Seasonal Hatred Disorder). Or both.

I

HATE

YOU

WINTER

AAARRRRRGHGHGHHHHHHHHHGHGHHHH

Ok, I'm done now.

At least this will give me an excuse to make those cat ears out of earmuffs.

This was on our door yesterday. I found it mildly somewhat quite exceedingly disturbing.

Of course, it was just from maintenance alerting us that they stole our dresser in order to refinish the top, but I think it would be epic lulzy if burglars started sticking these things on houses that they robbed.

I've been mondo crushed with schoolwork this last week which is why I'm not posting.

So on a schoolwork note, here is an excerpt from today's reading in my Religion textbook:

The number of asses a man possessed was a measure of his wealth. Asses were associated with royalty, even with the Messiah.

I'm so unbelievably immature... can't stop laughing...

Skittle's ref sheet is all colored and done!

So, to celebrate, I decided to take some nice, relaxing time coloring my Sii picture. I filled in the flats for the Sii--it's kind of therapeutic unless it starts to bore you out of your skull (about 50/50 chance of this happening).

And then, I stopped, looked hard at it, and said, "I was planning on just slapping on a BS background and mucking with fur texture for 5 hours. But I need to stretch my boundaries."

AKA, giving it a decent setting and backdrop, integrating the character into the scenery.

Why do I always wind up torturing myself when I'm trying to have fun?

In any case, I am now taking a journey into the deep twisted thickets of composition and color theory. My only guides are a book called Drawing Scenery: Landscapes and Seascapes by Jack Hamm and the faint memory of a color theory tutorial I remember seeing on the Internet about a year ago. My inexperience shines like a blinding halogen bulb. But hopefully, I can get better with practice.

VIDEO: NOW WITH ALL-NEW COMMENTARY!

Took about 50 minutes total. Most of the color work was done with the "Airbrush Hard Round 13" and "Airbrush Pen Opacity Flow" brushes, with their 'spacing' set to a low value. I love those brushes; I use them in nearly every coloring job I do.

First: WOOHOO my new laptop runs Photoshop wonderfully due to its 4 gigs of RAM. No more brain-freeze after making over 3 layers.


So finally, I was able to finish the basic lines for Skittle. See the legs on the far left one? Yeah, I redid those three times. Thanks, stupid computer.

Hmm. He looks like he just had air holes drilled into his skull. That expression is fine for characters who are merely brainless props for the artist to throw at art trades, but this character has an extremely... developed personality. I'll have to ask about this. And about that ponytail, gosh I have no idea if I did it right.



Doodled this also. I don't know the real name of these guys, but their placeholder name is "Sii." Back when I was under the ludicrous delusion that I could have the time or motivation to code a pet site, I made this interesting little script for them. Refresh it to get a new Sii every time!

Also I realized I should probably watermark these logs in the off chance that anyone looks at them enough to get the idea of snatching them.

Hopefully there will be more regular art log updates now!

Saw this in our parking lot a few days ago.

It is quite possibly the most awesome car ever, especially considering how close it is to Halloween.

To those interested in sleeping and sleep studies, I must direct you to SleepWarrior. It has a lot of valuable resources, along with a free PDF of Claudio Stampi's famous polyphasic sleep research.

Also, a follow-up. Going back to monophasic sleep has been no problem for me. I'm back to wiling away 1/3 of my day in bed with no unexpected waking during the night. It makes me upset, though, because now my schedule will return to the unhealthy 90%-of-my-waking-hours-spent-on-college-related-stuff deal again. Polyphasic sleep had the nice side effect of preventing me from dropping into a bottomless spiraling depression by allowing me time to draw, relax, and do commissions instead of being a slave to getting my degree.

I am sad to say that divine parental intervention has caused the ending of my polyphasic sleep experiment. It's not that it's bad for me... actually, it's quite the opposite. It's that it could be bad, and poor parents, ever-fearful for the safety of their kids, will always choose sitting in a familiar, but boring hole all day over venturing out into exciting unknowns that might carry some risk. I completely understand their concern, and I don't want to cause conflict in my family, so I'm stopping the experiment.

I'm not so upset--after all, I accomplished what I set out to do. I found out whether polyphasic sleeping worked for me, and whether it worked well. The answer is yes in both cases. It worked exceptionally well, and the effects of this experiment (eating more healthily, getting up to my alarm, scheduling my time more effectively) will last a long time into the future.

I'll just say that I'm definitely going to look into returning to this experiment in the future, when I'm more independent and self-sufficient. The only way we're going to find out about possible long-term effects of polyphasic sleep is if someone actually gets up and tries it! :)