Sunday 29 July 2012

Illustration Friday - "lonely"

Illustration Friday - "lonely"

I really need to both actually learn to ink and to get that drawing tablet. Oy vey.
The monkey is ok, the rest of it not so much. :T

Saturday 28 July 2012

Look, over there!

Cap without colours

I laid down some scheduling for my various projects, personal and otherwise and it turns out that I'm a) pretty good at keeping my own deadlines and b) just like everyone else in the world, less stressed out and irrationally annoyed when doing things I enjoy and achieving personal goals. Huzzah for personal goals!
Basically, the Captain America re-draws are going to be done by 13th of next month and posted in that other blog of mine. The one with the drawings. Yup. Because.. it's for drawings. This is just for shooting my mouth off in the hopes of decreasing WorldSuck with the power of mere lung capacity. No, wait, finger dexterity? One of those things.
But anyone who reads this probably already understands what I mean.
God I hope someone understands what I mean.

The idea would be post roughly 1 new redraw a day for the next few weeks. In case you're interested in that sort of thing. You should go see. I might draw Cap naked cuz I'm that kind of a person.


Another project, one about some ladies who made history,... well, I did my numbers and that's going to take me at least 6 months. And I don't have financing for that yet. And I'm going to have to do that while studying. In other words: expect me to maybe possibly go on Kickstarter or Indiegogo at some point for that. I've barely started doing research for it, but it's going to be awesome. I'll be posting more specific info and images of that thing on here and the other blog as it progresses. Right now, I don't even have an estimate of costs. But again, most pics will probably be in that other blog, so if that's what you're after, then keep clicking here.
There are also a couple of other things I might be arting on, but they're in such early stages that we're just figuring out what exactly it is we're doing. Yeah, there are other people involved.
When I know, you will know.

On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I do quite like Andrew Zimmern. A man who likes foods that taste of something other than pizza or beer? My kind of a guy.
Yeah, I don't expect much. Don't blame me, blame society!

This sounds like a good place to go make another cup of coffee.

Friday 27 July 2012

Fancy breakfast

eggs

It seems that the ink (or whatever sort of paint they used for the print on my napkins) does not hold against deshelled eggs. Naked boiled egg + lurid napkin = fancy breakfast.

breakfast1

They're really quite pretty. But I'll try to not do that again, since I have no idea if the ink is toxic or not. And if someone knows why the napkins - and yes I use napkins when eating alone in my room in front of the computer because it makes me feel like I have a proper life - don't smudge with water but do with eggs, I'd be really interested to find out.
The same reason you can clean your hair with egg?

So yeah, that happened. :D

Thursday 26 July 2012

I did a thing

There's an online portfolio. Yeah. One of those things. Is it absolutely perfect? Oh hell no. There's no such thing as a perfect portfolio. But it's a start, it was free, and it's as good a place as any to start working on getting some actually good stuff on display online (and get like, employed).

Why does doing all this creative business always make me do more of it? It's like a vicious cycle.

You can view my portfolio here. Also feel free to share the link for any reason whatsoever with everyone you know. No pressure, but you have my permission. Just so you know.
Now if you excuse me, I'm going to check this thing off my To Do list and start spamming (did I say spam? Of course I meant some other canned meat) potential employers.

It's 7am. I think that means I can make a cup of coffee.

Randy Pausch tells you how to do it

If you'll only ever watch a single video in your entire life (or are determined that all lectures are a terrible waste of time and money so I'll have to promise you sexual favours to watch one) make it this one. This is how it works. No ifs and no buts, just a big smile and how do I do this. Everything else if window dressing. And mostly the sort of butt-ugly window dressing you pick out yourself so that other people don't want to look at your window and you don't have to look out of it.
I swear, there's a really good metaphore in there somewhere.

Anyhow. Sit. Watch this. Smile.



Randy Pausch's wiki-entry.

Wednesday 18 July 2012

Work

This is pretty much what I do for at least 4 hours per day:



Or, you know, try to do, and end up trying to set up the tinies goals for myself such as aligning a piece of a single image on a single item before I'm allowed to take a break so that maybe, just maybe, I'd end up over-doing myself, exceeding my own miniscule expectations, and aligning TWO (2) pieces of that single image.


 Picture found online from here.

This is me working.
And this post is about not being addicted to brain crack but getting the derps out of my head and flourishing in the great wide world as soon as the derps appear. And by derps I mean ideas. Sometimes they fail in a stunami of firey explosions and sometimes they turn into beautiful butterflies. Fly little derps, fly!
This post is also about distracting myself from drawing a version of an 1996 Liefeld drawn Captain America comics book cover.
I want to and yet I fear I could not do it proper justice. So I derp.
But hey, at least I got other important stuff done while trying to avoid doing that one! #winning

Right. Captain America coming up tomorrow. Stay tuned! I'm going to bed now.

Monday 16 July 2012

On crack

Mah damn feet

It's been a rather terrible couple of weeks in that my perspective has been on doing crack and then getting frustrated when nothing happens. There was the waiting for the university entrance exam results(1), the benefits office(2), the skin(3) and probably some other things that I forget now and what's terrible is that none of those things are as terrible as I'd want them to be so that I could indulge in brain crack(4).

I should probably include annotations in the entry.

There, added.
(1) I didn't get in the uni or the degree program I wanted. I'm on reserve spot #3. This is not terrible for the simple reason that I can study the first year courses through open university while NOT enrolled officially as a student and claim unemployment benefits as opposed to student benefits. The difference between these two is about 300-400€ per month in favour of unemployment benefits, which brings us to...
(2) .. the benefits office. After over 3 months of waiting for them to make a decision on my benefits (a process that should by law take 30 days) I got a negative decision for the first 2 months I've been in Finland and not a peep on the all the other months after that. This isn't good, but it's not as terrible as it feels. And I managed not to swear at the boy in the benefits office and told him I was sorry for being short with him because obviously it's not his individual decision and he said he understood that after 4 months of no income at all, I might be a little tense. The good thing about all of this is that for once, none of the hiccups in the proceedings are actually my fault. They're solely the failings of the system to function the way law requires it to function. And now we wait for another few weeks for the rest of the paperwork to pass through.
(3) The skin has not been reacting favourably to OCM which of course hasn't exactly improved my mood. Why is this ultimately a good thing? Well, it just struck me today that after cursing that silly doctor who wanted to fix my skin with topical ointments that obviously wouldn't address the actual cause of the situation, I was doing the same thing with the OCM. With some people it works perfectly for just this sort of thing, but quite possibly, with those people the reason for the skin acting up wasn't in the rest of their body not functioning properly. And to be fair, who wouldn't want solutions that were as easy as just changing the product that you put on your face because the alternative would be to change things that you just don't wanna.... like leaving out cappuccinos. I don't wanna. But if it's a choice between leaving comforting foods out for now and getting skin to calm the fuck down or keeping those comforting items on the menu and have to pay for paper bags to wear over my head and oh, use twice as much money and time.. there's really no choice. But I still kinda don't wanna. Because I should just be able to live like a 5 year old and run around the streets naked and pee where I stand and everyone should think it's totally charming and give me lollipops. And that sort of brings us to...
(4) ... brain crack. "Brain crack" is a term possibly coined by zefrank describing how addicting it is to come up with ideas and never actually do anything with them because you're "maturing" them or "nurturing" them or other such words that describe the fermenting process. We like the idea that ideas are like fine wine or cheese and the longer you let them sit in your head, the better they get because you're perfecting them so that eventually you'll have that Idea To End All Ideas that will solve world hunger and capitalism and syphilis and everything bad and wrong ever in the world and in the process make your life the sort of perfect that you want it to be inside your head. And hey, maybe there was once an idea that fermented in someone's skull like this and when it finally came out, it was awesome. But for 99% of people that nurturing process is just a way of a) not doing anything that would require actually doing anything, b) a way of procrastination and c) a way of holding on to the notion that we could be something great if we wanted to, we just don't want to right now. In short: change is scary! Failing is scary! The fuck I will put myself out there, people might actually see that I'm a human being just like they are and that I'm not perfect! Hell, I might have to face that! No thanks!
If you are addicted to brain crack, fear not, most of us either are to some extent or have been.

The thing to do with brain crack is to watch this video by zefrank on it. And then think to yourself that if this is how the brain works, by forming physical links between things that it finds pleasurable and gratifying and the things that you do, surely you can strenghten the link between immediate action and execution of an idea and immadiate gratification just like you can between eating pizza and feeling a bit less bummed out. I learned to like eating cheesy pasta when I'm bored or frustrated, so surely I can learn to like drawing when I feel those same things. Or taking a walk. The human body is nothing if not a constantly changing organism.
And if you need a bit of extra motivation, just keep asking yourself "if I didn't do this thing today (or now) how would I feel about it tomorrow? Would I want to kick my own butt for being a lazy bum and bumming around all afternoon/evening/morning/day instead of doing the thing I actually want to be doing?"
Believe me, you don't want to get yourself angry. You wouldn't like getting your butt kicked by yourself.

Oh and walked barefoot on grass. It was awesome. So I did it twice.
And I will never ever do crack again.

End note: there's a high possibility that "cheese" and words for other forms of dairy will make frequent  appearances in this blog in the coming month. I'm not sorry.

Saturday 14 July 2012

Illustration Friday - "Lost"

Illustration friday - "lost"

Pugs get lost too. Never trust a squirrel for instructions.

On a related note: I really neeed to get a drawing tablet. Trying to fiddle with the mouse is getting ridiculous.