The Dead has Unthawed

I must apologize for the Emo-esque subject title. I'm not running that sort of a ship here, I promise. I took a walk today with my Canon Digital Rebel XT, and snapped a few photos of the surrounding fields and woods. The environment, while appropriately warmer than it has been, is still quite lifeless and dusty. It will be a few more weeks before the freshness of spring is in full tilt. I figured I'd take advantage of the nice weather anyway and take about fifty photos. I wasn't very happy with most of them, but I did manage to play around with two until I was satisfied. I toyed around with them with the mouse for a while. I hope you enjoy.

Debris from Deep Within

Sketch a day, I say bah! No, really. I do not know what that delay was all about. I think it had something to do with me getting a job. I knew this was going to happen too. Once I work nine to twelve hours in a day, I have no will to work on art. I hardly have a will to play video games. If I happened to have a job that I was more naturally attuned to, that would be a different story.

It's not easy getting a job these days. I've put in well over fifty applications, resumes, and cover letters these past months. The only place who even tried to snag me up was, of course, a cleaning system distributor. It's been fun so far. I never thought I'd be a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman living only on commission. The only requirements to work for them is to have a car. Best of all, they don't care if you are over qualified. I only mention that because most jobs refuse to hire me because I am over qualified. I'm over qualified, but I still have to eat! Oh well. I'm not here to rant.

I am here to upload another image. This one was a quick (yet highly successful, I think) study in Bryce, and some experimenting with some new-found Painter tools. I hope it is enjoyed, and enough to convince you that this blog is not dead.

Lastly, my thoughts go out to the students of Virginia Tech.

It's Movie Sign!

I'm a big fan of technology. If there is ever a chance that powerful, metallic beings will rise to take humanity's place as the primary inhabitance of Earth, I am all about it. Perhaps someday, in a dimly lit, post-apocalyptic-style studio apartment, a young unemployed robot will fail to update his sketch blog on a regular basis.

This was done entirely in Corel Painter IX, mostly using the airbrushes. That software never ceases to amaze me, being both extremely complex and simply intuitive all at once. If you are at all interested in digital painting, and want more than Paintshop Pro, but can't quite afford Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter is definitely the way to go. Even more so if you have a tablet. In fact, Painter is designed to completely take advantage of a Wacom Tablet's pressure and angle sensitivity. I cannot recommend it enough for anyone inspiring to do art on a computer. Of course, it takes some time getting used to. I remember the first few weeks of using my tablet, I would often look down at my hands and realize I had unconsciously put down my tablet pen, and had my hand on my mouse. Of course, if you really want to spend some money and get a nice toy, check out Wacom's Cintiq. It's actually a 21 inch screen that is also a drawing tablet. Of course, you'll have to drop around $2,500. It would be a very nice luxury.

Conflicts

Frankly, I'm disappointed with my lack of updates. It doesn't take long to bang out a quick sketch. I guess I'd rather do something more elaborate, which takes more time, which for one reason or another, I am not offering for this project. As you can see, this leads to conflict, and conflict leads to things not getting done. I am going to do better this month. The prime directive here is for me to get something... anything... posted on here just about every day. Or, on the other hand, should I try to spend more time and come out with quality stuff? I'll meditate on this. For now, here's what looks as if Invader Zim turned into an angry Smurf. Enjoy.

No Preservatives

Recently I've been studying different styles of cartooning. If you turn on the television, you may notice a lot of animation is getting very cheap and mass produced. This isn't the case for everything, there's still quality emerging from time to time, but the majority of American animation is fairly lazy. An older style that has been around since the dawn of cartooning coined as organic is a very fluid, stylized art form that can say a lot more in one image than what the stark and stiff new styles can in an entire movement. My goal is to start to learn this new style. I find it easier to draw in, it's easier to make things look right, suggestive of emotion, and there is more room to express a mood.

Six Months of Awesome

Life has been pretty busy the past few days. That's my excuse. Slap on the wrist, I won't let it happen again.

Lindsey and I just celebrated our six month anniversary the other day. It has been just over six months since we have been together, and roughly eight amazing months since our first date. A few words cannot be arranged to form even a summary of how much I appreciate and care about her. It has been so great thus far, and I only foresee it getting even better.

Water Vapor

It seems I have been getting back into Bryce lately. A lot of people seem to regard Bryce as an outdated, cheap 3-D modeling application with a very limited set of tools. This may be true, but I've seen a lot come out of it, both with my own work and the work of others. Bryce is easy for a beginner to get into, but complex enough to keep advance users constantly learning more. It's cheap to boot! If you've ever been remotely interested in 3D landscapping, and very basic modeling, give Bryce 5 a try!

This image took a lot of work, and an entire night to render. My goal was to improve my knowledge of Bryce's atmosphere emulation, with the hopes that I could create a very realistic setting with fog, haze, and water. I suppose I did what I set out to do.

I've been thinking, if I don't do a sketch every day, I'll do a bigger project like this every two or three days. It might keep me on the ball when it comes to honing in my technique to do longer projects.

The Restoration of a Failure

I almost didn't get tonight's sketch in. I've been pretty busy today; backing up my computers onto external storage space, planning my future, and fighting crime. Fortunately, it was a slow night for crime fighting.

I've become very interested in astrology as of lately. I know very little of the subject, but my girlfriend has quite a lot of knowledge on it, and continues her study. The notion that every object is reacting with every other object isn't a new theory. Astrology itself is as ancient as humankind's first enlightening look at the sky. It makes me sore that people are desensitized to the vast distances of space, to the infinite potential that lies outside our safe little haven. Ancient humans could look up at the night sky and see stories play out and great mythical God's clash with each other's rights for the sky. They could see the minute differences in the sky from one night to the next. Humans today would rather not bother. It seems we've come a long way, only to forget what we started as.

For Work?

It's not easy being unemployed, especially when your most prized document has the words "Bachelors" and "Art" on it. My resume is not very impressive either. Certainly, I've held down a job in the grocery industry for about six years, I've worked as an assistant in a computer art lab at college, and I've done plenty of extra-curricular activities; it seems that stagecraft isn't a valuable asset to an employer.

It seems that digital art-related jobs aren't hiring people without experience in the graphics arts field, and college education can't seem to replace experience. While this makes sense to me, to a point, I'm caught in a paradox of not being able to get experience because I don't have experience.

There's nothing for me to do than to keep trying. I've been applying everywhere that's within reasonable distance that might be able to use my abilities. I've also got a very good backup plan to start my own business.

Friends of Q-bert

Sometimes, it's best to look past our language barriers.

Documented Evidence

There's been so much research going on about how the brains of teenagers react to the harmful effects of violent video games. For instance, the murder simulator known as World of Warcraft trains children the ways of the occult, making them harbor such ideas as magic, cooking, and (gasp!) teamwork. Millions of helplessly addicted human beings are traversing fictional lands doing horrible things unto each other, such as questing, dueling, and working together to fight evil forces. Being a major piece of today's market, the video game industry is being eyed by hungry stay-at-home mothers and lawyers who'd love to dip their fingers in a bit of the market share. What better way to do this, than by funding research programs to determine what parts of the brain are active while a teen plays video games. It is then observed that any brain activity could be considered violent brain activity, which leads to school shootings, devil worshipping, and gangsters.

Fortunately, I've been funding my own research. I've scanned the brain of a gamer, while playing a game, and the brain of a non-gamer, not playing a game. The results are quite clear.

Life Happens.

I did not post yesterday. I was prepared to, but life happened. Nothing much more I can do about it, and I foresee this happening every now and again. I did in fact work on art yesterday, I just did not quite finish anything. Some of my projects take more time than I initially predict.

My two best friends are moving across the nation in a couple days. Once gone, I probably won't see them for a very long time. I wish them the best of luck in their endeavors, and I know they will do very well. They are both very responsible and hard working, and I will miss them very much. I want them both to know how much I appreciate all that they've done for me, the amount of times they have been there for me, and I am going to miss all the fun we used to have. Good luck out there, Mike and Jennn. I hope to see you both again soon!

Ninja with Rock

I've recently became the owner of a Canon Digital Rebel XT. It's a slightly dated piece of equipment as far as Digital SLR's go, but I did my typical consecutive months of obsessively reviewing and decided it would be the best choice for my needs. I look forward to better weather; either snow or spring, before really getting the most out of it. I do hope to continue on with my photography work. It has been a couple years since my last camera has been up to par. This is exactly the incentive I need!

Uninspiring Tree

I'm not happy with tonight's work. I had no inspiration to do anything today, so I feel that cheapened my project. If anything, it makes me think about the first time I used Bryce. It makes fantastic renders with very little effort. Hopefully, tomorrow's work will be better in my mind. Let me know what you think about it!