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!