Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged city of heroes
New Arts!
Jun 1st
I mentioned this on Facebook, but I wanted to mention it here as well. Wassy is working up a brand new bit of character artwork for my City of Heroes character, Frost.
Check it out:
The final piece is going to be digitally colored but she decided to work up a detailed pencil piece for the heck of it, so I get bonus artwork. The basic premise is that as a part of as story arc, her evil counterpart (which is an alternate dimension version of her) has begun a plot to control her mind and bring her down to evil. This piece is going to show the transition, where she’s fighting the good guys but still realizing that she’s not truly in control of her own actions.
It’s very cool watching her skills grow so quickly. I’ve got a piece of this character that she’s done at pretty much every stage of her growth as an artist. It makes for an interesting timeline.
There’s going to be some other elements added digitally to cement the idea, but I think she nailed the emotional context with just the pencils. Everything else is going to be sweet, sweet icing. I’m really looking forward to seeing what she does with the colors, as her skills have greatly improved in that area too since her last digitally colored piece (Quite a while ago)
Keeping Busy
May 27th
I figured I’d come out of hibernation to post up a couple of projects that I’ve been working on this month.
First up is a couple of things I did for my friend Wassy’s website. She wanted a place to showcase the children’s book she did up for a course she took this semester, as well as a place to show her digital portfolio (NOTE: Not safe for work viewing. There’s some nude figure drawing studies in there) for view. Just a note on those though, if you want the full experience, don’t use Internet Explorer. There’s still a few bugs to work out with the animations and things generally work better on Firefox/Chrome/Safari/anything else.
Secondly, is this month’s entry into the City of Heroes forum art competition. The theme was the 7 deadly sins. I wanted to do something heavy on the manipulation of typography this month because it’s something I haven’t done much of. After much deliberation and false starts, I hit upon the idea of doing some kind of old style propaganda poster type thing, which eventually morphed into my final entry, a recruitment poster for the in-game villain organization of Arachnos:
I did the actual typography and design in Adobe Illustrator, popped it into Photoshop to add the distressing, the peeled corner and the wall texture.
I’m really pleased with how it ended up looking. Probably one of my favorite things I’ve done.
And finally, another City of Heroes-ish project for my friend Bayani who’s working up a couple of actual comic type books for his original character…well…Bayani. He needed to make a couple of pages to hold biographical and power information for the two characters highlighted in the book which I finished last night (Click on this to get the full page view from my DeviantArt page). This is a 2 page spread, by the way. The page layout is mine, content provided by him.
Lookin’ For Love (February FArt Entry)
Feb 20th
Just a quick posting here. I’ve spent the last couple days working hard on finishing my entry in the February FArt competition. The theme this month was romance, and I decided to do a poster for a super hero dating service. This has some City of Heroes in-jokes in the text so it might not be as interesting to somebody who hasn’t played the game, but I figured I’d toss it up here anyway.
This one gave me all sorts of trouble. First poster I’ve ever done up and it’s kinda graphic intensive which brings into play my lack of drawing skills. I was about ready to just give up earlier this week but Thursday evening I had a bit of a breakthrough and managed to make it into something I think I actually like. Quite the turnaround.
Man On A Horse
Feb 12th
Urgh. Today is shaping up to be…awful. I got caught in the hall right as I was walking in and told something bad happened to our web app that needed fixing. But the e-mail saying what was wrong was total gibberish to me (except for the phrase “the customers are demanding answers!!!!”). So that’s getting sorted out and I’m taking the lull in the morning to post here…
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been working on a project for my lone class this semester, as I’ve mentioned previously. It’s coming along pretty well, I think. It’s a composite image of two chess pieces playing a game of chess with little people as the pieces on the board. On Monday I was able to finally grab a good park bench type shot to act as the scene, so that was the last big hurdle.
During class Tuesday the professor mentioned how it would be cool if I could have a guy on a horse (to act as one of the knights) but he didn’t know if it would be possible to get the shot or not. Well, I happen to know a guy with a horse (my uncle) and they were able to provide some nice pictures to use which should really add to the quality of the piece. I’m kinda regretting not taking more pictures at the Renaissance Festival the last couple years I’ve went because they’d be extremely useful right about now.
I’m also going over to my grandmothers house this weekend hopefully to look through some of her black and white pictures for something that could have color added to it (as is our next assignment for the class).
I’m also starting to go all out on my 2010 City of Heroes FArt competition entry for this month. The theme is romance and I’ll be doing an advertising poster for a super hero oriented dating service. I’m trying to work out the copy on the poster right now (jotting down ideas as I think of them while I work). Oh, I just realized I never posted my entry for last month here! What If? The Rogue Isles Olympics. (Make sure you click the image to see the full sized view) You’re probably not going to get a the in-jokes unless you play City of Heroes, but I’m really happy with how that particular design turned out (still).
NY Comic Con Bound?
Jan 20th
Yeah, I know it’s been another couple days since I’ve posted…but the biggest news is that my friends and I are making plans to attend the New York Comic Con in New York City at the end of this year. Which is good, because I need to use that time to save up enough money to go…which is going to be difficult. A couple of people we know from playing City of Heroes are going and we’re planning on meeting up with them and checking out the con. Quite excited to be going into New York City finally, considering we’re only about 4 hours away.
Engaging in “saving pennies mode”.
Most of my free time at the moment has been suddenly taking up by actually entering into the City of Heroes FArt competition that I mentioned earlier. I somehow actually came up with a pretty good idea for a mock web page for this month’s theme, but the deadline is Friday so I need to work my butt off to make it happen. So far, so good, but I’m getting stuck on some of the more artsy type stuff again. That always seems to be my hangup. I know what I want it to look like in my head but it’s not coming out correctly when I try to put it down. All I need to do is turn in something to be qualified for next month’s theme, but I want to make something good too. We’ll see how well it cooperates over the next couple days.
Also, I think I’m going to be starting up the 50 in 365 thing again, now that I’ve got my Kindle. I’ve had it for less than a month and I’ve already downed roughly 5 books. I think it’d be cool to keep a journal of what I’m reading (and give me an excuse to keep posting). We’ll see.
Weekend Before Christmas
Dec 21st
Time to report on my doings over the weekend.
My Christmas shopping is now completed. I took Friday off from work and this ended up being a good decision since I needed to venture out to the stores to finish off my shopping stuff. But it is now completed and ready for our family gathering on Thursday (we do present stuff on Christmas Eve now since my sister is busy pretty much all day christmas)
Friday evening was quite a fun experience in City of Heroes. I joined up with Wassy and some of the folks that inhabit the Fan Art section of the City of Heroes forums for an evening of hanging out and chatting. It was really fun. Great conversation with everybody and I hope I get the chance to do that again at some point in the future. I was a bit apprehensive about fitting in since I’m more an outsider to that particular group of people but it was a really fun experience.
Speaking of art, Wassy has been working on the Christmas themed Frost piece for me over the past couple days. I’ve been trying to be good about not looking because I want to be surprised, but she gave me a peek yesterday and her current progress is extremely promising. I can’t want to see the final version. My levels of anticipation for this gift are high. I’m looking forward to it as much, if not even more than spending time with my family this week. I really, really appreciate it when she takes time out of her (now incredibly busy) schedule to do something for me.
Onwards to my other activities. I actually finished working on a web site design! After floundering around a months after finishing Wassy’s site, I was able to actually put another one through to completion, which was a website to host the City of Heroes Fan Art Forum art competition that she’s hosting next year. I need to have it done by January, so it’s a good thing I got it all set now. Eddy Swan (from the art forum, we’ve been chatting since we played the game together on friday night) helped out a bunch with a logo concept which was a big part of what the design was missing.
So now, to start working through the longest three days of work of the year before my huge vacation begins…
5 Day Update
Dec 14th
Woah, it seems I haven’t posted here in a couple days. Eeep.
So, time to catch up. First up, I got my bonus money on Thursday and it ended up being a bit more than I was anticipating it would be. So I went out searching for a new desk chair for my office. At Staples, after selecting the chair I wanted, purchasing it and getting it home…it ended up not being the chair I picked. However, after sitting it it…it ended up being more comfy than the chair I was interested in to begin with, so…a happy accident. I ended up with the Tillman Leather Executive Chair. It’s very comfy.
Friday was the official last day of the semester, so my friends and I celebrated by heading out to Tom Cavallo’s for their excellent chicken wings and the fact that they have Newcastle on tap for a bit of a celebratory dinner. Their wings are…out of this world. Their pizza is pretty bad, but they totally make up for it with the wings.
This weekend, aside from getting myself a haircut, I spent the time mostly relaxing due to the stressful work week that I had last week. Urgh. Basically if something could have gone wrong, it did.
I’m getting more interested in playing City of Heroes again after a discussion with Wassy where we figured out really neat story arc idea involving 2 of my characters and one of hers. We need to wait for the expansion pack to come out (sometime next year hopefully) in order to fully explore it, but it’s gotten me back interested in the characters again. I’m currently compiling a sort of story bible on my main characters in an attempt to define them better and work on some backstory stuff that I might be able to turn into in game story arcs.
Super Heroic Weekend
Jan 26th
First off, I do realize that I've been slacking off on the blog posting recently. I'm going to try to spend a little more time on it so I get more than 2 posts a week in…but we'll see how that goes.
Second, this weekend was very good on the scale of weekend goodness. It was double XP weekend in City of Heroes (meaning you leveled at twice the rate), so my friends and I had decided that we were going to meet up (meaning I went over to their apartment) and play together for a while, with chicken salsa tacos and some wine for good measure. It was just a really cool relaxing day.
In the afternoon we watched Atonement while Jay was taking a nap (he wasn't feeling good) and Wassy was working. I really enjoyed the movie, although I thought the middle section dragged a little bit on the first viewing. But the twist at the end shed new light on the entire story and I would like to see it again with that information in mind. After the movie, it was taco time and then we got into playing City of Heroes. The setup was a little cramped, with Jay at his desk and Wassy and I next to each other on the couch, using their coffee table (which folds out into a nice table for when you're sitting down on the couch) for our laptops. That setup went about as well as I expected (Wassy enjoys messing with people playing games, so there was lots of randomly pressed keys on my keyboard as the evening progressed), but no big deal, really. It was an extremely fun time and I hope we can do that again at some point in the future.
Sunday however, was a day of me struggling with Windows. I had put the beta of Windows 7 on my Macbook but, as I discovered Saturday, City of Heroes didn't really like it all that much…probably related to drivers. So I decided I would go back to XP. From not reading my XP install DVD (it's a long story, but basically because of how the macbook works, I have to burn a DVD with windows XP + a couple folders from my windows 98 CD so it sees it as an upgrade disc) to not being able to find my 98 CD so I could make another one and then having issues with video card drivers…what started as a project that was supposed to take a couple hours ended up taking most of the day.
Man, I hate windows sometimes.
Wow…
Dec 20th
I mentioned a few days ago that Wassy was working on a piece of artwork for me. Well…it's finished.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece is a pin-up piece of my main city of heroes villainess. It is a bit risque. Tasteful, but risque. It's pretty tame as far as these things go, with nothing really showing (lots of stuff almost showing, but nothing really showing. Probably the most revealing part is she's wearing a thong to give you an idea). However, artistically done as it is, I would apply the label NOT SAFE FOR WORK to it. So if that kind of thing bugs you, I would recommend not viewing the piece.
With that said…the piece is here (EXTRA NOT SAFE FOR WORK WARNING). I really, really love it. The subject is one of my villains from City of Heroes (well, City of Villains more accurately). Wassy had come up with a really awesome idea for a pose and I agreed (after a little persuasion) to let her do the piece. A couple months later when she got to it (she was VERY busy for a while there)…it was just totally worth the wait.
I especially love her face, in particular her eyes. They're very intense. Along with the stray strands of hair And also the coloring job she did on her skin. It's absolutely perfect. Everything is so soft and sensual. She really nailed the feel that I was hoping the piece would have.
As she was doing the coloring she was making comments about how good it was turning out, and even then..this just exceeded my expectations. This week had been kinda long and dragging quite a bit towards the end, for a lot of different reasons, but seeing the finished piece made it all worthwhile.
Limbo
Aug 28th
Nothing much is happening around these parts that's of note. It's kinda like I'm in limbo, just waiting for it to hit this weekend so I can head out to the state fair and give summer the proper goodbye. However there's a couple of random things that are worth mentioning.
First up, I got an extra GB of memory for my laptop. I was having some problems in City of Heroes with my existing 1GB and checked to see how much memory various things were using and it totalled up to something like 1.8GB. Which explains why I was having so many performance issues… So I went over to crucial and picked up a 2GB kit for $40. I got it last night and installed it. Everything is running MUCH smoother now, so that worked out.
Another thing was an expansion in my world of tea. I've been drinking green tea for a while now and I've been happy with that, however, I decided to branch out a bit. So In my latest tea order I picked up a sample of Earl Grey (for Wassy as I don't really enjoy black tea) and some Oolong to try out, as well as a wild strawberry herbal tea that I had last night. The strawberry herbal tea was quite nice. And it seems I can brew a good cup of black tea too as that went over REALLY well.
And a quick one: I tried Sushi for the first time last night. Very tasty although it took me a few bites to get used to it. I think there will be more Sushi in the future.
Is it the weekend yet?
|
Recent Comments