The best laid plans...

So, I am still super busy with stuff, however, tomorrow looks like it'll be a busy day doing fun things. I believe the plan is to go out to the cinema and either watch Life of Pi or Seven Psychopaths. I haven't seen the Hobbit yet, but I am saving that for the new year. If anyone is interested I will be happy to rant a bit about whichever film we see. I also have to act like an adult for a while tomorrow, but hopefully that'll pass quickly.

Chill out plans are to play Audiosurf for the first time in a good while. I got the soundtrack to FTL for Christmas and I think it would play nicely through Audiosurf. Might also be a good shout to try some Lightguides on that, or the Bastion soundtrack. I'm also going to try and start a few projects I've been planning for a while, which also means learning some more code, so I'll have to look over my Gishwhes stuff from when I recoded Pacman. Wish me luck, I'll need it.

I've not drawn or painted anything today, but I'll post another happy dino for you all, since the last one I posted seemed to go down well, and because I haven't posted something cute in a while. I've just realised in saying that, I've not posted anything about the Mortal Kombat film this month either! If my cinema plans fall through tomorrow, you know what I'll be watching instead. So please enjoy this complimentary triceratops:

And thanks, as always, for reading! If you have anything you think I should be talking about, you can tweet me or leave a comment below. 

A late festive message.

Hi folks, sorry for the radio silence lately, December's been a month of family birthdays (the latest one was on Christmas eve...), so I'm late in sending all of you my Christmas wishes. I hope you all had a great day, or at the very least a tolerable one. Today- at about half nine in the evening- I decided to make the festive image below to share with everyone.

I swear we get the strangest carollers. They kept getting the words to "The Christmas Song" wrong. At least the wee one was cute! Lookit his wee mittens! This is the second thing I've painted in about 4 years, and I'm pretty pleased with the colouring. The first thing I painted in 4 years was my first piece of fanart of an actual person, and now I'm not sure what to do with it. It looks alright, the colours are a bit off but the shading makes up for it. I'm trying to decide if it's creepy to send it to them, or creepier to hold onto it.

Please let me know what you think of the painting above, like I said it's been a while since I picked up a brush and any feedback or criticisms are welcome. I may write out the Dalek version of "The Christmas Song" if I can figure out something for all 4 verses. The Daleks are a race of bad guys from Doctor Who, for folks that perhaps don't know, although they are pretty iconic. I had planned to tweet the picture before midnight passed but twitter had a hissy fit and wouldn't let me.
Hope you're all doing well, leave a comment if you want to and as always, thanks for reading!

I didn't expect zombies.

I've just spent most of today reading through a fairly interesting book written by Mark Hodder. "The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man" I guess comes under alternate history, with hints of steampunk and horror (hence my zombie title), but is classed under Science Fiction. The 'Clockwork Man' is actually the second book in a series that follows Kings agent Sir Richard Burton and his accomplice Algernon Swinburne, and their Watson and Holmes type roles in 19th century England. Plenty of historical names are dropped, such as Florence Nightingale and Charles Babbage, as parodied characters and the appendix at the end of the book even tells you a bit about what the actual people got up to in their time. The book has time travel, supernatural elements, a bloody good mystery and such a good twist in the story, I really enjoyed it. (It's the whole history nerd thing flaring up in me)

         The characters are wonderfully complex and fallable, for example, Burton's assistant Swinburne is boarding on alcoholism and seems to get worse as the story continues. Some characters are downright grotesque, such as the claimant in the 'Tichborne Affair', which is the central plot line throughout the story. Even little details, like the messenger parakeets that insult everyone they come across, or the description of the clockwork man, just add to the overall story for me. Hodder describes a Victorian era London with Eugenically 'enhanced' insects and plants that act like machinery, or are used by Technologists and combined with steam powered machines. He describes this Victorian era London being thrown into disarray and rioting, then plagued with some very polite zombies and smogged by wraiths, and he describes it very well.

         I loved reading this book and getting lost in the world it created. I'm a bit sorry I didn't start with the first book in this series, "Spring Heeled Jack", but I know it's something I'll read in the future. The book appealed to me on a number of different levels- steampunk, alt. history, and genetic experiments- and did it with humour and a compelling story. I have to quote a review on the book cover and say that it is, "steam opera at it's finest." So if you like a good mystery, or a little bit of the strange and the wonderful, I'd suggest you check out the 'Burton & Swinburne' series by Mark Hodder, it's certainly a series of books I'll be keeping my eye on.

If you've read it, or just want to suggest good books, I'm happy to accept any suggestions/criticisms, even if I don't have much time to read these days. You can leave a comment below or tweet me. Thanks for reading!

Anatomy practice

I go through weird phases of drawing skulls, or skeletons. I feel it helps with learning proportions or just as a way to come up with ideas. It can be helpful for movement too, knowing that an arm can't really bend in a particular way. I should've maybe asked for an anatomy book this Christmas but I'll check the library first.

The picture above is of a 3000 year old turtle skeleton, that measures 11 feet long by 7 feet wide. I found the original image on imgur and fell in love with it dino-like feel. I really like the way the skeleton's been posed, the way it looks like it's moving towards you. I'm still not good at defining the digits though, I'll try working on that over the next week or so.

If you have any comments or suggestions of things for me to draw, please feel free to leave a comment below or you can always send me a tweet. Thanks for reading!

Pokemon Picture!

Hey everyone, I was asked to draw a picture of a Sandshrew from pokemon in the style of my Myr and my Cthulhu drawings for Mack. This is the finished drawing:

It looks like a Clanger a wee bit, and Clangers are awesome, therefore Sandshrew is the best pokemon. If you don't know what a Clanger is, google it and try to find some old episodes of the Clangers. I do quite like the armour of Sandshrew and I wanted to effect to look like it was actually plated like an Armadillo. I wish I could've gotten better shading on the eye, but that's what practice is for.

I'll probably be drawing a fair bit over the next couple of days. I'm trying to draw or write a little each day especially since I've been super busy cause it's a great way to just take a break and chill without getting sucked into a game. I haven't gamed in what feels like a month (probably more like a week) but I'm hoping I can get Audiosurf working for a bit, that's not too intense. If you have any drawing requests please feel free to get in touch, I'll see what I can do. If you have any comments you can leave them below or get in touch with me over twitter. Thanks for reading!

Winter Sleep- Dreams

I stumbled across this album really late last night and I'm kind of in two minds about it. "Dreams" written by James Webster under the name "Winter Sleep", not to be confused with the Canadian indie band with the same name, is almost surreal in places. I'd even go as far to say that the third track 'Small Dreams' is bordering on being disturbing, but I can put that down to the strange backing track of laughter that runs through the song. Other tracks, such as 'Forest Fountains', are wonderfully upbeat, and the whole album flits between unsettling moods and positively dreamlike feelings, much like dreams themselves.

            It was an odd album to stumble across late at night, but it does make great music to have on when you're trying to write or draw. Finding it on the site where I get most of my chiptunes, Pause, made it an odd find. And it's not exactly what I'd call easy listening, but I am enjoying having it on in the background when I work. It's the only work by Winter Sleep that I can find but I think it's something I'll keep going back to listen to. Have a listen for yourself here, and please let me know what you think. It's a weird album so your opinions on it are more than welcome. I have a tendancy to like strange music, so if this is just me being weird then I'm fine with that. Feel free to leave a comment below or to get in touch through my twitter, and as always, thanks for reading.

Cthulhu art

Hi guys, I'm back from my week long break and I've brought Cthulhu with me! Well specifically this piece of fan art of Zeboyd games "Cthulhu Saves the World" titular hero. People seemed to like my Myr drawing so I thought I'd try that style again, and just to show you the difference between my pen and pencil shading.

The pencil shaded version.

And the pen shaded version.

Sorry the pictures look like balls, they were both taken on my phone and the camera on that is rubbish. I've been away from home a fair bit over the last week and that makes it hard to take photos of the stuff I've been drawing. Mostly over the past week I've been writing, fixing up a small short story I'd written and starting another that looks like it's going to be a good bit longer. I'm hoping to get a few more drawings done over the next few days and finish a couple of things I got planned for here. Until then, please let me know what picture you prefer, leave any feedback you have either down below in the comments or you can always tweet me. Sorry I was away for so long, and, as always, thanks for reading!

Ps. I know the pen version shows up much clearer, it's purely because of the camera. I'll probably end up using the pen version for something so you might see it again someday.

Research and distraction

Today I have had the attention span of a gnat with A.D.H.D. So naturally this makes it the prefect day to focus on research for some upcoming projects I want to work on. Double this with fact that I meant to spend a lot of today looking at 1920's fashion, it wasn't the best of days. I'm not into looking at clothes I'm afraid, which is tricky when you need to think about costume design. The problem is that when I become unfocused I get ideas and I forget what to do with them. Today I've come up with at least three painting ideas that I want to try and no clue about what to actually do with them.

Fortunately, an idea I've been stalled on may have been given a helping little push today. I was kindly given a book that has made me realise how much work is going to have to go into this project. I'm still really excited about it, but there's a part of me that's beginning to panic. Honestly I think part of me mostly panics because I'll be looking at coding again, and I am terrible at coding. The last time I did it was through the Gishwhes thing and that was a fairly simplistic, and slightly wonky, recode of pacman. This is going to be much bigger. However, with this little nudge of inspiration I may have found a place to start planning the behind the scenes stuff that is difficult and a ton of work. But I have a plan, and that's something right?

I also keep thinking of wee things that I'd like to write, but when I try to focus on something in particular it spirals into novellas and huge stories that I'd never finish properly. I want to write a few stories that are maybe a page or two long. Just to get the practice in. Maybe someday I'll actually do all the things I get ideas of.

In the meantime, I have spent most of today listening to this, and making lists. Tomorrow is a day without internet for me, so there won't be a blog post. But I promise the one on Sunday will actually have purpose to it! I think I'll be spending the rest of tonight sketching or doing a bit more research. But I'll see you all next on Sunday. Thanks for reading!

Back on Batman's legs

Remember when I was getting frustrated at Batman's legs? Well I think I've fixed them, and if I haven't well tough, they're inked now and all I can do is colour them. So below is a snippet of the picture that was giving me so much batrage. I've still to finish inking his opponents face, but when that's done I'm going to try digitally colouring it. The legs don't look too bad. And I never did come to a conclusion on whether or not his legs were actually sexy...

This will be the background to my twitter when it's done (hopefully, unless I get distracted and draw more dinosaurs. I might just draw dinosaurs forever.) and I'll move on to planning a background for here. The background for here will probably have something to do with sea life  as wunderpus photogenicus is a genus of octopus and where I got wunderpuss from.

I'll possibly not be updating as much as I normally do this month just because December is really busy for me- and, well, for everyone- and because I can't stop watching livestreams. I keep finding things to watch. And my laptop is just crashing daily now, poor thing.

Anyway! (I'm rambling, sorry) I'll try to keep on top of my posts and if there's anything you'd like to see me ramble on about or attempt to draw, leave a comment, I might try it. And I'll keep working to try and make this place look a bit prettier. Thanks for reading!

Trying something new

What do you guys think of this-

This is my first attempt at trying to shade with a pen. The picture is a piece of fanart of a Myr from Magic the Gathering. It was based off a wallpaper available from the Wizards website of a Silver Myr drawn by Kev Walker.

            The Myr were always my favourite race from the MtG lore, despite me getting into the game just as the set they were in fell off. I was gutted. In Magic, the cards that you play with gets updated every year, and if you're playing at a competition, unless it states otherwise, you can't play with any of the outdated sets of cards. I still love these guys though, they're the closest things to golems that I can imagine. These kinda of cards are either rare or expensive to buy now, but I have a few with some Myr. I'd ideally have an Myr based deck, but after looking into it, it doesn't seem possible for me.

I like how this turned out, although I still see things I want to fix. If you have any opinions or feedback on the drawing above I'd really like to hear it. Like I said, it's the first time I've tried shading like this, I'm very used to pencil shading, so any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks for reading!

A ramble of a blog post.

Hello, this is a going to be a kind of strange blogpost with no real aim or point because I don't really feel like I have one today. Today's been a great day for having ideas. It would help if I actually sat down and try working on these things but I have a reputation as a lazy bum to uphold. It's also been a good day for discussing ideas as I got to see Jim (from the Droids blog! remember that?) and he's the dude that listens to my inane ramblings. Even though it was mostly writing projects we talked about I got some great ideas for drawings too.

 Speaking of drawings, what do you think of this. I drew this about a year ago, and it's very much in the style I engrave in.

I like bats, I've always found them to be interesting animals but then again I was very young when I first saw them. It was in a friends backyard, they lived a bit north of Stirling if I remember correctly, and there were tons of bats that came out at dusk and ate all the midgies and other tiny flying things in their backyard. I thought it was amazing, these tiny, near silent hunters. I should see if there's any zoos or sanctuaries that house any in my area. It's been a while since I used this style, even in my engravings, but it might find it's way into some things my brain is telling me to do.

Also, is sharing my stories something that you guys and gals might be interested in? I'm a beginner writer, but getting feedback through here could help me shape my writing. I don't have many finished stories, but if folk were interested I'd be happy to share them. Thanks for putting up with the odd post today guys, I'm gonna go watch a Dishonored playthrough I'm getting into and make lists for tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

More band photos

Hi, I wanted to share some more band photography I've done on here. In the process I've found that I'm missing a ton of photographs from my old laptop, so I'm going to have to try and find them again and get them on this machine. It was disappointing not to have the exact photos that I wanted to share, but the ones I'm sharing I'm still quite proud of.

The photo above is of Anthony Green, the singer with Circa Survive. This is from a gig they played at King Tuts in Glasgow. I quite like the lighting, although normally I really dislike that kind of lens flair, I think it works alright with Anthony's pose and with him facing away from the camera.

And this photo is of English band Enjoy Destroy, and was again taken in King Tuts! The two gigs were very different, while Circa was packed, Enjoy Destroy's gig was painfully undersold, despite both bands putting on great shows. And again, this is another photo where I'm chuffed with how the picture turned out, even though I'm not really a fan of black and white photography. To me, black and white photos have their place in more arty photography, wedding albums, and modelling glamour type shots. To me it usually give a bleak and stark impression, especially in landscapes. But in saying that I think it works really well in the picture above.

Maybe I'm just strange, but I think we'd figured that out already. If you have any comments about the photographs, maybe your opinions on black and white differ from mine, please feel free to leave them below or tweet me any feedback. I hope you like the photos. Thanks for reading!

Some photos I took yesterday

I know I've been pulling up a ton of old photos that I've taken and sharing them with you all, but yesterday I had a chance to take some more photographs. It's been a while since I've done any photography, so I'm really pleased with how some of these turned out. All photos were taken on Prestwick beach.

The beach was covered in frost, that's why the sand looks a bit weird, but it was a beautifully sunny morning when we were there. It barely felt like winter.

Tons of these little wading birds were dotted around the sea front, indistinguishable from the pebbles until you really looked at them and noticed them moving. I saw one on its own and couldn't resist trying to take its picture. I really like the wave breaking in the background of this photo too.

If you have any thoughts about my photographs, please leave a comment below. You can also get in touch over twitter (@kafoomph) if you want to, and, as always- Thanks for reading!

MK film review pt 2- Character Introductions

     Yeah I'm writing more on this because in my last post about this (here) I just slightly scratched the surface as to why I think the first Mortal Kombat film, released in 1995, is better than most folk make out. I'm going to be actually talking about the film itself, focusing this post of it's character introductions. If you've not seen the film this whole series of posts is possibly going to be spoilery, but the film was released over a decade ago, and I'm not sure if those kinds of spoilers count.

         I feel the way that MK introduces its characters is very clever. The film opens focusing on Shang Tsung, its main villian, killing Chan Kang in a nightmare of his brother's- Liu Kang, the films hero. In barely a few minutes the whole push of the film is shown, as Liu sets out on his quest for revenge. The film segues into the introduction of Sonya and Kano, as well as a brief look at their history together. Kano is set as Shang Tsung's willing puppet and the lure for Sonya to enter the competition. To quote Shang Tsung, "You [Kano] killed her partner didn't you? She'd follow you into hell..." And she does. We cut to Los Angeles, California next, and to Johnny Cage kicking the hell out of four armed guys in suits. It turns out to be the set of his latest film and we find that he is bombarded with accusations about being a fake. His former karate master visits him at the studio and tells him of a competition where he can prove to the world that he can actually fight, although all is not what it seems, as the image of Cage's master was just an illusion created by Shang Tsung. But Cage's desperation to prove he can fight means that he'll be at that tournamet. The next segue goes back to Liu Kang as a means to introduce Raiden and commits Liu Kang to entering the competition.

       Already we've been introduced to our main villian, our main good guy and our three potential heros. Liu Kang is the reluctant hero, revenge driven to avenge his brother, he knows the danger he is going into and he goes willingly, even if not for the right reasons at first. Sonya is, again, driven by revenge, unaware of exactly what she's getting herself into until she's in the thick of it. Johnny Cage is driven mostly by vanity, the want to prove himself in battle- not an ignoble thing in itself, but his motivations are selfish and he comes across as such. To me the characters introductions work very well at hinting to the characters of each person in the film and gives the reason behind why they're even at the tournament. All we're left to do is enjoy watching them overcome these flaws as they fight in mortal kombat.

This took so many attempts just to get finished thanks to my lappy's failings, but I'm so glad I got it done. I'm still looking forward to going into more detail about this film, although I'll try not to bore you too much with it, and I hope that if you've never seen the film, you're at least curious about it now. Thanks so much for reading and if you have any feedback I'm happy to hear about it. Bye!

Computer woes

Hey folks, my laptop keeps crashing. It's making it difficult to sit and properly edit the huge post that I want to put up and I'm out tomorrow (hopefully taking more photos). I thought I should let you know cause I've not updated for a wee bit, but I'm hoping to get the post done tomorrow, and get started on another series of posts that hoping to put up in a while. So because this is such a short post I'll leave you with a picture to make up or it. This is a bottle I engraved for practice. I still have the bottle and I now have a bigger version of the bottle that I'm hoping to experiment with.

Thanks for reading!

Reading Bad Machinery...

...And I love it. I've been reading it since the end of Scary Go Round. But I decided to marathon it last night. I love it way it's broken into cases the children in the comic investigate, a collection of short stories, each story kind of ramdomly wanders with somewhat brief flashes of surrealism. These stories are sometimes punctuated with stories from the former characters from Scary Go Round in their current lives. It's a great way to catch up with old characters from the old comic.
If you're in need of something to read I highly recommend it, it's one of my daily reads. Here's a link to their archive and I'd also suggest looking over Scary Go Round if you have the time. Both comics are great, but I do appreciate the childrens characters in Bad Machinery, they sometimes remind me of people I used to know.

Some more old photos

I used to go to gigs a lot. It was one of my favourite pastimes and when I started getting interested in photography it made sense to combine the two. I photographed mostly local bands, not many of the bigger venues that I went to were keen on letting people in with digital SLRs, but a lot of the smaller venues were totally fine with it. The picture below was taken in Preston at a Biffy Clyro gig, it's of drummer Craig Kneale of Twin Atlantic.

This other picture is of Katie Harkin vocalist of Wichita Recordings band Sky Larkin. This photo was taken at their headline show at the Captains Rest in Glasgow. 

It was a fun gig, support coming from Dutch Uncles and Male Pattern Band. Katie often works with other bands which keeps her really busy. To be honest, I'm not sure what's happening with her, or Sky Larkin at the moment.
If you have any comments about the photos, or the bands, please leave a comment. Sorry for the lack of posts yesterday. I found a livestream of kittens and then was out until the early hours of the morning, it was quiet distracting and totally my bad. Thanks for reading.

An in depth look at the Mortal Kombat film

This is probably going to be spread over a couple of posts because I started writing out my notes for this and  my notes alone took over a page once they were written out. I decided to write out why I love the 1995 film Mortal Kombat, and why, for a video game film, it isn't a bad film.

I'm starting with my weakest arguement, nostalgia. Of course I find this film nostalgic, I was seven when it came out. I still have my Mortal Kombat cartridge for my Gameboy, and I have strong memories of being really excited for this film when it was coming because I liked the game so much. Nostalgia is an easy argument to pull for any film made in the 90's I feel, but for me, Mortal Kombat is slightly different from films such as Jurassic Park or Ghostbusters. When we got rid of our VHS and moved onto a dvd player, I kept looking for a copy of Mortal Kombat on dvd because I didn't want to lose that film. I know now that it's really easy to get, but back when I was thirteen and had no internet, it felt like if I missed my chance to buy it in a shop, I could lose the film forever. Even then, I could recite huge parts of the dialogue from the film, nowadays I could probably recite all of it, and probably get a number of the songs used in it right as well. For some reason, when I was a kid, this film meant something to me, and that's stuck with me since then. The reason this is my weakest argument is because nostalgia is something that's very personal, and I hope I've conveyed my personal nostalgia eloquently for you all.

Another thing I want to touch on in this post is the ageing of the film. I still watch Mortal Kombat, probably more than I should, but it's something that I still enjoy. The fact it was made seventeen years ago could lead to it feeling dated, but I don't get that when I watch the film now. Heck, even looking up some of the actors now it doesn't feel like it's been 17 years. I think the reason that MK hasn't aged much is because the basic story to the film is older than anyone reading this blog. It's two parts revenge quests mixed with a little self proving, with a few ninjas thrown in for good measure, and lets be fair, revenge hardly ever goes out of style. Even the special effects in most places (not in all, but I'll get to that when I'm talking CGI) doesn't really feel dated, and to me that's one of the most telling things in a film to it's age.

If you agree or disagree, I'd really love to hear why. I'm going to write more on why I love this film, and I'm going to focus on more critical aspects of it, but, I'm always up for hearing other peoples thoughts, no matter what they are. Sorry it's such a long post, but Mortal Kombat is something I can get quite carried away with. If you do want to comment you can leave me a message here, or you can tweet me @kafoomph. And, as always, thanks for reading!

More Photography

This time the picture I want to share is one I took earlier this year. It's of a lily pond in the grounds of the St. Paul's Catacombs in Rabat, Malta. The catacombs themselves are a sight to see, but I did love the fact the surrounding grounds where so full of plant life and colour that I found myself taking pictures of things like this lily pond.

Malta itself was somewhere I'd never considered going before but I had a great time while I was there. The amount of history on this tiny island was an amazing thing to comprehend. There were neolithic sights open to the public, tons of history on the churches in the country and how they came to be in Malta, and even history as recent as the part they played in the second world war. I feel like I barely scratched the surface while I was there and I do want to go back, along with all the other countries I visited in the last couple of years. Any excuse to go exploring really.

Thanks for reading!

Dinosaurs

I spent most of today drawing some very happy dinosaurs.

Even though this is a rubbish picture (it was taken on my phone- I have no scanner :c) I hope you like it anyway. 

Sorry it's such a quick post today, but I'm hoping the picture kinda makes up for it. I've always really liked dinosaurs from when I was young, but I've missed out on a ton of discoveries since then. I'll maybe take a day to brush up on my dinosaur types and families. Do you have a favourite dinosaur, or are they just not your thing? Let me know in the comments below.
As always, thanks for reading!

Dilemma

I think I've fixed the legs! But now I'm afraid to ink it.
Because what if it's wrong? What if it's bad, or I change my mind, or if I've got the proportions wrong.

I used to love Batman, then I tried to draw him.

Also, planning out coding another game in my head. I'm looking at a different engine to Byond for this one, thinking maybe RPG Maker. It's tons more complicated than the Pacman recode that I did for the Gishwhes thing which is equally scary as it is neat.

However, it has been a long day so I best be off. Thanks for reading!

Neverending...

I feel like I've spent the last two days staring at legs. Not a wide variety of legs, just the same two legs. They're not even sexy legs- they're Batman's. Not that Batman's legs aren't sexy, they're just not my kind of sexy. Actually, are they sexy? And I'm rambling... Anyway, try as I might I cannot get this particular pair of pins to look right.

The story behind this is that I wanted to actually update my twitter and make it look semi decent. I've got a profile picture that I want up, and the background should be done, except for them damned legs. The problem is, if I keep the legs I've got (knowing full well you'd never be able to see the thing properly on twitter) the image feels very flat and disproportionate. I've got other problems aside from the legs, but the legs are the one thing that's really bugging me. I don't want to rush this either, it's been the first thing that I've wanted to create in a while that I feel I can finish. Maybe it'll even look good, who knows. Right now though, the picture feels flat and horrible, and I don't like it. But it can be fixed, I think.

I'm both dreading and looking forward to the colouring. I'm going to try and digitally colour it, something I am terrible at. Maybe I'll colour the original in too, I'm unsure as the paper's very worn. I think markers would work really well for it. Or inking it, but that would take a lot more practice.

Once the picture's complete I'll post it up here so you can see it in it's full glory, and I'll link my twitter when it's up in case you're interested in my bitesize ramblings, or you're curious to see who I follow online (it's not that interesting really...) If you have any comments I'm always happy to hear, of if you have an opinion on Batman's legs- sexy? Yay or nay? Just leave a comment below.
As always, thanks for reading!

Photos from a Gishwhes shoot

One of the Gishwhes hunt items was to get a video of a girl sitting with some snakes. While we were shooting the video I took the chance to take some photos. Now that the competition is closed and the entries are being judged I figured it should be okay to share my photo's here. I hope you like them : )

I'll share some of the other's here later, but I figured these two were a good place to start. The girl in the photos is Amanda and the snakes were provided by Pro-Exotics in Paisley. Pro Exotics is a pretty neat store in Paisley that has a sister store in Greenock, they sell a range of reptiles and reptile environments/foods and can provide boarding for a short while. The staff were amazingly helpful with our strange request to 'borrow' a few of their snakes and they were wonderfully helpful with the whole process. They have a facebook page here. They do have a website, but it's currently being updated.

Also, now I really want a pet gecko. I've always really like them, but seeing how cute the lizards in ProExotics were, just made me want one even more.
Thanks for reading! 

So yeah, normality?

Normality is totally not what happened, but it's my fault. I forgot some stuff was happening this week and I've been totally thrown off by it. However I've had an idea for some drawings that I want to do so I'm pulling out tons of research material on the Art Deco movement and how it's used nowadays. It's for a character redesign project I want to work on (purely for myself so everything will go up here) and I'm looking forward to sharing it.

One of my main inspirations for this was Aaron Diaz, author and artist of Dresden Codak (found here) and his redesign of Batman. Dresden Codak already implements a lot of art deco design in it's architecture and fashion, especially in it's latest story arc, and it's making it a real joy to read.

I must admit in high school I disliked art deco as a design. I prefered gothic architecture and for art I was still finding my feet with surrealism and impressionism. And none of them I indepthly studied. It's something I regret of high school. I was there for so long with people that just wanted to teach me, but I didn't want to be taught. I wanted to learn, but learning something and being taught are different things to me. So now I try to teach myself.

The other thing I'm using as inspiration is the Bioshock games. Mostly a playthrough of Bioshock 2 done by a guy on youtube called Rythian (see his videos here!) He has a tendency to pick gorgeous looking games with great and indepth storylines that are actually pretty fun to play, and the best bit is, he plays them for the story. So there's no talking over any really cool plot points. It's something I really appreciate. And it's good research because a gaming environment cab give a style more depth than it can on paper, so it's a good way to get a feel for the style without visiting tons of art deco style buildings (I believe there's only one where I live. GG)

When I get the redesigns started I'll share the process here. In the meantime we're all still waiting to hear what's happening with the Gishwhes stuff, and I'm hoping to do some engraving tomorrow, if I don't get distracted that is.
Thanks for reading!

Gishwhes is over

And we've done the best we can. Now we just have to wait and see what happens now. The likelihood is that we've not won but it was a strange experience. Some parts of it were even enjoyable, but I'm kinda glad it's over.

I don't know if anyone else reading this will have taken part, but do you have any crazy stories to share? I was mostly a background character in my group, but there were some items that were just too crazy not to get involved in.

So it should be back to normality now, right?

The worst possible thing

Fate can be a right pain in the behind at times. Especially when it comes to me and computers. My humble little laptop that I do everything on decided that this would be the week it broke in the most frustrating way ever- it refuses to connect to our wireless.
I've checked our router, and the problem doesn't seem to be with it, my brother can connect fine when I'm getting nothing, or worse, it sees our wireless but says that I can't connect to it without giving me an error report.
I'm wondering if I've maybe downloaded a virus, but the last thing I downloaded was the Byond engine, and that was safe. My partner has the exact same engine on his computer and it's ran fine. I don't know why it's my wireless that's been specifically targeted either, but it's a pain because a) I'm doing this Gishwhes thing and internet is kinda a requirement, b) I live on twitter and youtube, and c) I need the internet to look for work and keep track of my comissions.
It has been really frustrating this week but at the same time I know I shouldn't complain. There are people on the East coast of American that have lost everything. So I'll be annoyed at this a bit longer until I can get it fixed, and I'll keep reminding myself that it's not that bad in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks for reading this confusing ass rant.

No news today

I'm playing Worms Crazy golf with my brand new pet diggle. And hopefully gonna get a fairly normal sleeping pattern.
Have a great weekend everyone. Thanks for reading.

Another Gishwhes update

Gishwhes is taking up a lot of my time at the moment. However I'm hoping that later today (after I sleep and deal with a few things in the morning) that I will get everything that I can do for the competition done. Coding the Pacman reboot took longer than I'd thought (so many bugs :c not a bee in sight :,c) and it was finally finished and confirmed as working about an hour ago. So! The video for that will be recorded and we'll try to get a few other things done as well.

I'm doing Gishwhes with two of the guys from another blog that I used to write reviews for, Mark and Jim. The rest of the people in my group I've not met, or they're the American half of the group, in which case I'm not terribly likely to meet them unless we win. But it's been interesting. It's cool to see what items on the scavenger list that people think they can do, and are really keen to do.

The reason, well a few reasons really, that I'm trying to wrap up my participation tomorrow are so that if anything needs redone, checked or changed, I have time to do that. Secondly it means that everything I'm responsible for, and potentially stopping someone else on the team from doing, is done and therefore anything I haven't done is fair game. And thirdly, Gishwhes happened to fall when my birthday is, and I wanted to not have anything preying on my mind while I was trying to goof off and play computer games. Even though Gishwhes has ruined my sleeping pattern, it's been enjoyable, but I want to ruin my sleeping pattern getting stuck into some Cthulhu Saves the World for a bit. So I'll sacrific a few more hours to getting some stuff sorted, but then I'm done.
Thanks for reading!

Gishwhes update

Okay, this scavenger hunt thing is a bit ridiculous. But some of it is really kind of fun. Especially one of the list items, which is basically- recode Pacman but add these things. Now I have tried some basic HTML coding, it wasn't pretty. However, I got some help and managed to recode Pacman with the help of the Byond engine, and holy heck guys. They've created a monster! I loved it.

Byond seems like a pretty good engine to use if you're just starting out, and the website has a pretty decent reference that was a huge help too. Once the hunt is over I will post screenshots of this amazing monster I've created, and if I ever make anything similar in the future, you'll hear about it first here.

Ps. I'm awful at pacman, testing this game is a pain.
Thanks for reading!

G.I.S.H.W.H.E.S.

Hi everyone! Me and a few of my friends are taking part in this year's G.I.S.H.W.H.E.S., the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen.
The main aim is to take photographs, films or make pictures that depict an item on the scavenger hunt list, the team with the most creative entries wins. There's only one winning team so competition is close, but already it's proving to be a lot of fun.
I need to check the T&C again to see if I can post any of my entries for the hunt here as well, so you guys can see what I'm up to, because it's something that I'd like to share. If I can't, but some of my entries don't get picked by my team, I'll post them here because they weren't entered anyway.

Think I'll post another photo soon too, but in the meantime wish us luck.
And, always, thanks for reading!

Another photo post

View from one of many canals in Bruges, Belgium. I loved being in Belgium despite the cold, we went in September/October and it was pretty frozen. The architecture was pretty interesting and had a nice use of colours like the contrast of the red brick next to the white building in the picture above. This picture was taken while we were in a boat on the canal and it's one of my favourites from that trip. I was drawn to this building by the way the vines were creeping up the tower. I'll probably share more pictures from this trip again because I loved the architecture and I really enjoyed being in Belgium. I hope one day to go back and explore a bit more.
Let me know what you think in the comment section below, and if you've been to Bruges, or anywhere in Belgium do you have any suggestions on places to go? We went on a few tours, but a lot of our travel was just jumping on the subway and seeing where we ended up. Thanks for reading!

Future blog post

I started writing what I expected to be a small film review for today, but when I started I got very carried away and, well, I want to do this post some justice. So I'm going to sit and properly plan this thing out when I have some time (I need to get my halloween costume today so nae chance of that happening tonight). I doubt it'll be done until sometime next week. Until then I might look through some of my photos and share another one of them if you like.
Thanks for reading.

Photo post

Hi folks, I wanted to share this picture I took a while ago.

This little guy is a gargoyle I saw in Edinburgh back in 2009. I loved his expression and I have a great appreciation for stonework in architecture because of the little flourishes it can give to a building. His wee guy was particularly interesting to me because of the angle that he was peeking out of the building at, his almost sorrowful expression he has, and also because he was separated from the rest of the other gargoyles for some reason. I don't know why he was kept apart from the others, but because he was, he became my favourite.

Question time! Do you like gargoyles? Also, if you like this photo and you want to see more, please leave a comment and let me know. Let my know if you don't like it, if you have any comments, criticisms or suggestions of what you'd like to see on the blog, please let me know!
Thanks for reading.

Quick Update

So, as I mentioned in my last post, most of my spare time has been taken up by the wedding of a good friend of mine. It took up a lot of my time- to the point where I haven't seen anyone else other than her and her new husband when I haven't been working in my room. Now that everything's done and everyone's had a bit of time to recover (kinda, I had to make a birthday cake pretty much straight after the wedding) I'm hopeful I can start being more productive. Although maybe after Halloween.

I love Halloween.
Hopefully I'll have a costume for the festivities this year, but I've not had much time to plan. And I'm one of these people that always has grand ideas above my station. I'm looking forward to seeing what my friends come up with though. I might buy as many glosticks as I can attach to myself and go as a living acid trip. If I do, I promise photos.

My artistic plans for the future? More engraving. Probably a lot more engraving. Possibly some photography, I'm quite out of practice on that front. And if I sketch, I'll try to post it. Sketches are always kinda difficult because I don't have a scanner, and I'm not any good at digital art. So if I can get decent enough photographs, or the loan of someone's scanner, I'll put it up here asap.

See if I don't post anything for a while, please yell at me in the comments, strangely enough I'll appreciate it.
Thanks for reading!

Commissioned work

        I was asked earlier this year to create favours for a friend of mine's wedding. We talked about what I could do for her and what she'd ideally like and we decided on making glass candle holders with red candles inside and a swirled pattern that would be unique to each candle. Once all the favours where done, I was then asked if I could engrave the name of the couple, the date of the wedding and a pattern, similar to the favours, on the diameter of 3 mirrored plates.

      With the wedding being later this week, I'm allowed to share a photo of the finished project here. All in all there were 13 favours and 3 mirrored plates. I don't think the mirrored plates show the engraving too well, but whenever I got close to the camera all the camera focused on was it's reflection. Please let me know what you think, I'm always happy to hear feedback. Thanks guys.

So, everything I own is possessed...

My phone is resending texts that I sent over a week ago, while it was off.
My laptop is randomly changing windows when it feels like it.
A pair of socks fell to the floor from somewhere.
My bed is creaking strangely, and one of it's drawers opened slightly.
And my door, which you usually have to force open, is making the noise it makes when someone's trying to get in.

Or is it just that I'm noticing this all today, when really it's always like this.
Either way I'm turning my music up. Speaking of which, on twitter Josh Mattingly of Indie Statik drew attention to a wonderful site full of chiptunes. Pause, found at http://www.iimusic.net/, has a full catalogue of a mix of chiptune artists, ordered by release date, with most of the artist information pages linking to a Bandcamp page where you can preview the tracks. I'm loving this site, and I'm still finding new tunes and artists to love through it. My favourite at the moment is Alex Mauer's 'Koalie is Dead', eight wonderful tracks for a NES game that unfortunately never saw the light of day. I can, and have spent hours on this website, just browsing through their roster of artists, and I probably will keep going back to it. Check it out if you're even slightly interested in chiptunes or if you're just curious about what I'm on about, Alex Mauer is a good place to start, and I'd recommend Disasterpeace afterwards. Especially the album, 'Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar', it is fantastic.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think if you do check it out. Thanks for reading!

Faster Than Light

It's been a wee while since I was on here. Life is getting really busy at the moment, but I'm hoping when the next month is over I'll not be as busy or as lazy.

One thing that has been keeping me occupied has been the wait for a fantastic rogue like game called "Faster than Light". This game was up on Kickstarter and looks like it might turn out to be one of their first successes for games that have been funded in this way. The plot is basically, you are the captain of you spaceship and you are carrying important information that the space rebels cannot get their hands on. You must make your way into safe space territory and blow up as many space rebels as you can. This game is so much fun, you die a hell of a lot, but with any rogue like, that's just what happens. On your journey you pick up crew and upgrades and I believe you even unlock other ships (I'm not that far yet). Check out Total Biscuit's "WTF is FTL?" or buy the game and try it for yourself from here.

I am totally digging this game and if you are too, or if you think you will/won't check out the game, leave a wee comment below and let me know why. I'm on a bit of a space kick at the moment, so I'm sorry if my next few posts are too astrologically heavy. Thanks for reading -erin

Feelings and secrets

I've been feeling really bummed out about music lately, well when I say lately I kind of mean for the last ten or so months. I'm not sure what happened I just started getting gradually more and more disinterested in the music that I was listening to. Taking a break to listen to the stuff I grew up with didn't really help either, and it got to the point where all I'd listen to was Big Giant Circles. Which isn't a bad thing, but I used to listen to anything I could: Black Keys, Led Zepplin, Meshuggah, Mastodon, Big Giant Circles, Pelican, Zico Chain, Carnivores, Bach, Dresden Dolls, Reel Big Fish, the Adjusters, Reuben; pretty much anything I could find.
My musical feelings became numb, and I can't even remember if it shifted gradually or rather quickly. Hell, I don't even think it's fixed, but when walking home from the pub one night I remembered how music used to feel for one brief moment.
On a particular stretch of road, a few years ago when I was coming home from a gig on a cold April night, I had my mp3 player on and was listening to Hundred Reasons, trying not to sing along too loudly when 'The Perfect Gift' came on. Just as the song was telling me that I was, "So guillible in every way, You stupid fool.", I looked at the sky. Now, at my eye level it was a perfectly clear night, but just above my head was a descending blanket of snow, thick as clouds. It was unreal. And now that patch of road makes me think of that song, which makes me think of that night, and the world goes unreal for a few minutes.
So go listen to Hundred Reasons, they're the shit. And don't walk around dark roads at night, that's just stupid, I am stupid.

Also I have a question, I've been seeing a lot of 'My Secret' videos on YouTube lately, these videos are basically young women (although some guys have probably done it too), usually with bits of paper with some sort of narrative about their secrets and life story that they show to the camera while music is playing in the background. I'm curious, is this something you'd ever do? I know I write a blog where I'll be putting up a ton of personal stuff, my art (that I hope to get up someday) I feel is very personal, and I usually don't show it to people unless I'm 98% happy with it, or I really trust the other person and want their feedback. But I don't know if I could ever give away 'my secrets' in such a blatant manner. I wonder, am I overreacting to this, is it something any of you would ever do?
Thanks for reading - erin

Adventures in Hardcore Minecraft

The world I spawned in was very forgiving. Tons of trees and a good few cows left me confident I'd survive longer than an hour, plus this was one of the biggest islands I'd started on. I could do well here. Shelter was speedily put up along the coastline and I started a small farm. A few days passed and I felt I might actually prosper for once. The exploratory tunnels I'd dug yielded some iron and lots of coal in sprawling caves that I had broken into. I got iron tools and some armour, had started making cakes and bread and with my home facing the ocean I figured having a room that faced out into the ocean depths would be nice, and somewhat relaxing. Building it was somewhat stressful, with a few moments where I got close to drowning, but when it was done I had a wonderful view of all the monsters that crawled above me. I planned to split the ocean facing glass room into two levels, the bottom holding a brick lined lava pit that I hoped to surround with water, the upper would hold chests with everything I owned. I was looking forward to building it, but first I needed to mine.

I spent days in the depths of some mines, hoping to strike lucky when I happened upon some diamond. Knowing that diamond is often surrounded by lava I gingerly mined the area around the diamond, with a clear exit just in case, and sure enough there was lava. A massive pool I later found to join with a couple of others, keeping a flow of lava pretty consistent, bucketing the lava out of the pool was pointless. I blocked off as much as I possibly could and mined the diamonds I could. But as always, when it comes to diamonds, I get greedy. Strip mining in the area would prove to be nearly fatal. Stumbling along another pool I noticed some redstone across the way, and usually ores are quite close together, so I nimbly edged my way across the pool and made it to the blocks of red. It was while I was mining that I misstep and landed into the lava. Jumping out and running as fast as I could, I don't know why- I had no water and it did nothing to help, all I could do was I watch helplessly as my lifebar slowly depleted. I was dying.
At my final heart, the fire stopped. My food bar was too low for me to start healing naturally so I headed back to base to replenish and maybe sleep through a night. Diamond greed returning, I ventured back into the depths. My run ins with lava this time where not as damaging, it was just as frightening, especially when they were at face height. Returning to base with a modest stack of gems, I decided to dedicate my future to a life of farming.

 However I noticed I was too low on clay to make enough bricks for the lava pool I wanted in the bottom floor in my house. So my first point of order was to scout my island, and see what treasures there may be out there. All that I really found was a number of creepers and a few skeletons. Running out of options I went to the ocean in front of my house, knowing I'd seen some clay there. Wading into the ocean I took a deep breath and descended. Luck let me find a small deposit of clay not too far off the coast, so I started digging. I'd only broken two blocks when the first stab of pain hit me from a lack of air. I pushed myself towards the surface, each painful stab slowing me enough to keep me from the surface. My vision blurred red, and I was greeted into my afterlife with the words, "You cannot respawn in Hardcore mode. Delete world."

Walking home

Torrential rain soaked through me as I walked home, and on my mp3 player all that was playing was Maximalisms' A Terrible Battle and some Big Giant Circles.
Feeling fucking euphoric.

Got home and watched nothing but Jon Tron Show.
It's been a great day.

Real news soon, I hope. I'm a real lazy so and so, sorry.

Procrastination

I am amazing at it.

I have grand plans that are actually kinda doable, and what do I end up doing instead? Anything other than what I've got planned. I've started replaying both Harvest Moon and Pokemon Red (big mistake, now I'm totally addicted again), I'm researching Troll lore because you never know when that'll be useful, and I'm contemplating watching Tekken the movie.  

In my procrastinations, I started planning out a painting I'd had the idea for a while ago. It's just a random side quest in life so I've not really given it too much thought, but while I've been distracting myself from more important things I got thinking about how I'd like this painting to look, and I've been planning the colours for it. I'm really happy with the way it's turning out, and I'm thinking of trying some ideas for colours with pencils or maybe just jumping ahead with the paints. 

The next couple of days are going to be busy anyway, but I'm hoping to get this finished by the end of the week (maybe, unless I start procrastinating on this which is very probable). In the meantime I'll hopefully get back to work on the important stuff. Hopefully.

Dead Cyborg

Dead Cyborg  is an indie game that I've just found out about. It's set in a strange run down nuclear future where your character wakes up in an isolation chamber with no memory of who you are or how you got there. It's a text based puzzle game (haven't seen one of those in forever) that is being released in episodes. It's currently free to play, but donations are more than welcome. Basically you pay for the game if you think it is worth it.
To me, this game looks fantastic. Looking at the screen shots I'm hit by fond memories of playing Doom as the game is played from a first person perspective, but has a puzzle element to it's gameplay that I've always loved. And since you progress by navigating your way round a maze and pick up items to help in your journey, it seems to add an almost dungeon crawler feel to the game. The graphics are bright and almost cartoon-like in some places, especially the text for me.

The only problem this game has for me is the episodic release schedule that is entirely dependant on people choosing to donate, basically meaning that the story might never be finished if people don't choose to support the game. I've wondered in the past if episodic games are really worth making, a great example of it going wrong would be the Half Life 2 series. With a game being released in episodes you run the risk of the game not fully being funded, or developers losing interest halfway through. With Dead Cyborg the problem is due to a lack of funds which is a bit depressing. The first episode was released almost a year ago and last time I checked Episode 2 is only 65 to 70% complete.

Even with the possibility that the game might not get finished I still think it deserves a look in. It's a short game, only a couple of hours long, and seems like a nice wee distraction.

Thanks for listening to me ramble and if you have any opinions or episodic games I'd love to hear them. Or if you want to know what I thought of the game after playing through it, leave me a comment and I'll let you know. Or if you want to check it out for yourself here's a link to the game: http://www.deadcyborg.com/

Late night internet searches

I don't know if this is a common thing, but I usually find that my brain is annoying active when I'm trying to get to sleep. For the whole of the day I may make one remark that is worthy of being heard, if I'm lucky it might even make sense. But, in that moment of wanting to give up and try again tomorrow by brain decides that it wants to think, now.

I work on a laptop so it's almost always close to hand. If not I have plenty of scraps of paper to write down my  madcap theories, but the internet provides access to a thought process that doesn't require much thought. I think of a question, usually Google has an answer, or at least a distraction.

So for the most part my internet history is pretty uninteresting. A quick search for info on a game I want to play, or a book I'm keen on reading. Pictures of cute boys with cats, or my shortcuts to various flash games. It's all pretty standard. Except for the times I look up practical spaceship design, or reference pictures for old WWI bombers, or the anatomy of a triceratops.

Is this something else that people do?

Introduction

Hi everyone.

This is where I'll be keeping my let's plays of games and maybe some writing things I end up doing. I'm working on getting a gallery set up for images and photographs and a proper website set up. You can follow me on twitter when I become more interesting (@kafoomph).

Thanks for looking in at what I'm doing and if you have any comment/requests, please just leave me a wee note.