The Snowstorm of December 2010

We had some fun this Christmas, taking some pics with my digital SLR in the snow. My brother, in particular, had a lot of fun with it.

I remember remarking that that the white of the snow really brought out the color in the world, but I can’t seem to find all that much of it in the pictures we took. I was stunned at how gray the sky seemed to be.

I can never think of anything but the winter levels in Secret of Mana when I see snow in the forest. Smash!

Shooting these in Camera RAW has made them fun to play around with. I have a lot to learn about messing around with the various settings, but I think it’ll continue to be fun to experiment.

Metroid Mural in St. Petersburg, FL

Ignoring logic and reason, there is a totally badass mural of Kraid in St. Petersburg on Central Avenue.

There’s a Metroid, and also Samus Aran, although she has tragically been destroyed with a window through her face.

Close up of the Metroid.

I am so blown away by the coolness of this. I will have to return and get some non-terrible non-cellphone camera pics, and possibly see what awesome person took the time to put this together.

The November Tampa Drink and Draw Meet!

The November meeting for the Tampa Drink and Draw (several weekends ago at this point) was a really great time. Here are the stupid drawings I did that weekend.

My friend Brent asked for everybody to draw him, so I drew him stabbing Hitler with an American Flag. He also asked I drew Conan O’Brien as I Dream of Jeannie, with Andy Richter as the Major. This is directly from a photo promotion for the show, with Jeannie in the Major’s hand. I really like both likenesses, although this image could use some inking.

The hipster fairy. When he shoots you with his bow, your shoes turn purple.

Sketchdump 3: Illustration Ideas

For a series of drawings/paintings called “Robot-Girl Army,” this is a ninja mermaid and a sharkbot. Going to be a lot of fun to paint this one up.

Some studies of Scott Pilgrim. I like my Stephen Stills, but I think my three Scotts need some work. I think the bottom right one is approaching the best. O’Malley’s style is pretty incompatable with my own. I’ll have to figure out how to properly pull it off.

I have had a crush on Samus Aran forever. I did this doodle inspired by Iron Man. I think it looks cool as hell, but I don’t know how I’m going to get a full illo out of it.

My stupid notes are visible on this one. This is Samus’s gun arm, as I drew it. It was supposed to be sitting on a table, having maintenance done to it. The SNES menu screen would have been hologrammed above the gun. I have no idea where I would fit that in, but I have to do that somewhere.

Found this character design for my D&D 4e barbarian. He’s a Warforged! I thought up the idea that he would have an axewound to the head, with grass growing through it (Warforged are made from stone, metal, and wood). The idea of a grass mohawk just made me smile. Then I got kicked out of the group for not wanting to talk about Sarah Palin at the table.

Sketchdump 2: Sexy Comic Character Design

Doing a script for a very dirty comic called Betty Binary. It’s sci-fi and very silly and I have fun whenever I work on it. This is one of the characters with the ridiculous name Stormi Jovian.

I don’t know why I have the motif of giving characters Archie comic-style names. I have a soft spot in my heart for Archie comics—but I do despise the cheesy books as well.

A sexy witch character, the main character’s foil, for a sort of science versus magic theme. I know, I’m a very deep writer. Look at the boobs I’ve drawn.

A second attempt at the witch character, this time making her look a little bit more alien. When I decided to go the more goth route, I changed her name from Sally Supernova to Sally Spookynova, which makes me laugh. I think the correct design is somewhere in between these two, or maybe something different all together.

Sketchdump 1: Sexy Girl Drawings

The sketch for my Hipster Vegan Waitress wallpaper, still available at my portfolio website. I like the cute little veggie icons at the bottom of the sketch.

I’m really pleased with the face on this girlie. I’ll probably try to replicate this sort of deer-in-the-headlights expression If I can manage.

The funny thing about this drawing is you can see my sketch marks—“Bigger! Make the boobies bigger!” The shame.

This was a portrait I drew of a girl in either Borders or Barnes and Noble. She wasn’t really topless, although that would give the bookstore a more party atmosphere.

Face I found interesting. Love her nose and the lip-biting smile she had.

Steven Moffat: the Best Doctor Who Writer?

Steven Moffat
Uploaded by abecruikshank. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.

Digitally Inking Hipster Vegans in Illustrator

Having a lot of fun with this goofy idea for a drawing, and experimenting with inking in Illustrator as opposed to Photoshop. It’s going to be a learning experience, but I’m excited about the final image and about the process to get there.

Thoughts on Demographic Relevant Search

The other day, researching for an illustration, I did a simple Google Image search for “Cute Bra” and got a mess of largely very erotic, often pornographic images. This, I think, illustrates the need for demographic based search, bringing more relevant information to searchers.

In 2008, a story broke that RushmoreDrive (now defunct) was being developed as “a search engine for black people.” And, naturally, the internet was there to roll its collective eyes and post pictures of lolcats saying “your doing it wrong.”(sic)

However, this technology is a sound idea and very, very necessary. Google searches are all about relevance, and one search can’t be relevant to us all. Certainly, if I search for “svchost.exe” or “English Wikipedia,” I’m almost certainly going to be looking for nearly the same thing that everybody else is looking for.

But, I did a search for “Cute Bra” on my girlfriend’s pink iPhone and got very similar searches. Women should be able to search for “Cute Bras” and not have to look at pornography. The searches are probably not relevant to them.

The same way Rushmore Drive hoped to bring more relevant searches to black users, Google et. al. should put effort into bringing relevant searches to different demographics. The best illustration I of this was a basic search for “hair care” or “hair product.” Obviously a Black person and nearly every other ethnic group on earth would need a different hair care product, and would have to trudge through pages of hair care results irrelevant to them to find them.

Current search engines marginalize nearly everyone that isn’t searching for what Google thinks is the result people should be looking for. And it is far from perfect. Pages with high “pagerank” can knock more relevant sites off of the first SERPs in an instant.

Basically, I view this as an important step in the evolution of search engines. Whether we are months, years, or decades away from more user and demographic relevant searches, I don’t know. But for now, our blessed internet is full to the brim with pornography, competing for keywords women use to shop for underwear, and nobody wins. We sell less porn, less cute underwear, and users get surprised with orgasming sluts and penises.

TPA Drink and Draw October Meeting

Great night at the Tampa Drink and Draw Social Club last night. Good folks, good laughs, good fun.

A friend asked for a “Theme” and I suggested “Unfortunate Robot Masters.”

Then he asked me to draw Shatner dressed like Leeloo from The Fifth Element. I’m not crazy about the likeness.

I think with some tweaking this can become another candidate for the Robot-Girl Army.

My girlfriend drew this and the hipster giraffe at the top of the page.

 

And I am still working on this Ars Gratia Awesome Illustration. The dino skulls look super awesome, though.

Tampa Drink and Draw Social Club

I Have a Total Man Crush on Neil deGrasse Tyson

Everything is Terrible Forever (Video)

How Printing Inks are Made

How Ink Is Made
Uploaded by h0nki. - Discover more animation and arts videos.

An excellent video about how printing inks are made. These inks are similar to the ones I work with everyday. I love this so much.

Gameboy, NES, and Sega Color Palettes

After my article Create Cool 8-Bit Style Pixel Art from Ordinary Images went up on How-To Geek, a commenter pointed me to a great Wikipedia link, showing the color palettes available to  classic game systems. I’ve managed to use these in creating images in the same style as the article. Check HTG for a followup using these color palettes within a few weeks.

Photoshop Column at The How-To Geek

So I've managed my way into the How-To Geek circle of writers, promising my expert hand for a column on Photoshop and Graphics.

The whole team has been great and I've enjoyed working with everyone, even though it's only been a little while. This is sort of a bit of a dream come true for me--I'm a big fan of How-To Geek from his articles on Lifehacker and his own site. I've also wanted to write my own Photoshop column for a long time, and this gives me a wide platform to be heard.

I'll be reblogging links to my articles on my Twitter account and to my Facebook page.

Experimenting With New Painting Styles

I’ve been trying to figure out a less airbrush-style and more painterly look for my digital paintings and I feel like I’ve stumbled up on the right combination of elements that’s giving me what I’m wanting. I’m excited to see how this painting looks when I finish it.

DeviantArt Is Full of Teh Hax

DA, I’m getting sick of you and your dubious advertisers that are putting all kinds of Adware Spyware Virus slag onto my computers. My friend Deric actually nearly lost his computer because of this garbage.

DeviantArt is a staple on ‘Teh Intarnets’ these days. You would really think they would be able to afford to stop this sort of thing and build a site that isn’t poison to us all.

First Meeting of Tampa Drink and Draw!

Had a blast at the first meeting of the Tampa Drink and Draw Social Club. Good turnout, even a few people I didn’t invite or know, and I hope that trend continues in the next meetings.

Tampa Drink and Draw Social Club

Doctor Who Poster-Research

When turning a set of Dr. Who novels into a framed poster, I’m afraid I would be doing the good Doctor a disservice if I didn’t do all my planning in the most unnecessarily complicated way possible.

I started by writing formulas in OO Calc to help me figure out what size frame to buy and how to build my matting. Calc helped because not only will the formulas figure out the sizes with my formulas, it also helps because I’m fairly visually oriented. When I was satisfied with my result, I drew the matte in illustator.

I’m embarrassed how long I messed around with the Spreadsheet formulas. I also wish I had a better understanding of Linear Programming, because this would have been a perfect opportunity to use the Solver in OpenOffice.

From there, chopped up the picutre I took in Photoshop and put it into the digital matte to get an idea what I was going to get in the end. This looks really good, although I might should add an extra inch on either side, because the frames I’m looking into cut in an extra 5/8 of an inch and won’t look exactly like this.

Regardless, I have a good roadmap for what I want to do and I’m pretty excited about it.