I'd also like to meet a sandwich.

My sister-in-law was looking around the net for herself (I don’t ask questions), and this somehow resulted in me finding my old MySpace page. I remembered signing up when it was in its infancy: Friendster was still in vogue at the time, if that gives you any indication of how long ago this was. I never actually did anything on MySpace, but it looks like I filled out my profile.

Apparently I was awesome.

Who I’d Like to Meet:
Humans, and the occasional chubby cat or Chow.

Interests

General:
Animation, Coca-Cola, zombies, shotguns, the Moon Crest, Wolf Medal, and the occasional Chow.

Music:
Hum, Castor, Shudder To Think, STP, The Pillows, Stabbing Westward, The Used, Shiner, and the occasional Chow.

Television:
FLCL, Robotech, Sealab 2020, anything on HGTV except that show where the designers set $1,000 aflame and inflict a pineapple themed dining room on some poor couple in the process.

Books:
I ran out of good books to read, so I’m trying out pornography. I prefer the magazines geared at very specific markets, like “Large-Breasted Redheaded Asian Woman Bi-Monthly”, “Assathon”, and “That Girl Alicia From Your Work, Except She Naked”. I also have four shelves full of “Hot Hobbit Women” in my apartment, and I’m not ashamed.

—————————————————————–

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume “Hot Hobbit Women” is supposed to be the name of a magazine and not a bunch of poor fantasy folk I’ve jammed into my furniture.

The role of the highwayman will be played by Courtney Cox. Apparently.

Messing around in Photoshop and trying out some new brushes since I took an accidental nap that threw off my entire night.

This is the 8bitartist Highwayman’s girlfriend, I suppose. It’s nice that they can share a closet.

I have a bad tendency to use the same brush for all tasks and all materials, and I’m trying to change that. I created a much coarser brush for the skin shading, a very smooth, airbrush-y one for the eyes and hair, and a chunky flat brush for the “cloth” pieces. Still needs some tweaking, but I like the textural variety. And it didn’t take long: this represents about 1.5 hours of casual Photoshop, including making the brushes. Can’t complain. Click the image for an expanded shot.

"I call upon the powers of...uh...hairiness and, uh, misplaced boobs."

I’m not going to lie to you. I am dying to know what this game is about.

It's like a dark, uh, splotchy thing.

Tweaking my pen settings. Dialed it in so that little-to-no pressure starts at 1-2%, and I can still run the gamut of values without pressing super hard to get full opacity. This abstract thing grew out of repeated pen tests as I was messing with the settings, and, well, I kinda like it. Also moderately happy with the pen response now, for  a change.

But I am reminded that my decade-old tablet still performs better than this out of the box, and that takes the shine right off everything.

You damned numbers.

31%? I am using 1/3 of the available pressure just by resting the pen on the surface?

Now to be fair, I just reset it to the defaults, and the grip pen is not light by any stretch of the imagination; an HB pencil this is not. But seriously? Thirty one percent of the pressure can be registered by the weight of the pen alone?

Maybe this makes sense in some technical way. Maybe I am just leaping at every chance to complain about my disappointing piece of $400 hardware.

My feeling, though, is that this is far too high for when you’re not actively applying pressure. Think of it this way: The Intuos4 can register 2048 levels of pressure. That means that at the default setting, the pen registers level 635 when you’re not even pressing down. Were I a scientist, I would say something scientific about the data at this point, like, “dang”.

Can this be combated with the pen settings? Probably. In fact, I think that’s my new “settings goal” for the tablet. Maybe I can finally dial it in to something I don’t want to bludgeon with an ox shank.

"Ssssalad fffingers."

Yes, it’s a little terrifying, but at least I can tell that it’s terrifying. Should’ve redone that front hand, but oh well. This is the last entry of Project Duff Offer Getter, and the whole point was developing comfort in drawing, not creating finished work. I’m pretty bummed that I blew it on the last night by falling asleep before drawing (new rule — draw when you get home from work, not before bed), so finishing this isn’t the joy I expected it to be.

But I definitely feel more comfortable knocking out hands and other anatomy quickly. Now I can concentrate on accuracy. I managed to halve the amount of time it normally took me to block out hands, and (in my opinion) they turned out much more fluid than the ones I pored over.

Overall, I feel better than I did at the beginning, but there’s still plenty of practice for me to do before I’m happy. Gonna try to continue the dailies whether I’m posting them or not. It helps so much.

As promised, I’m going to make a compilation of all the drawings back to back so I can trace my progress. I should have that up tomorrow evening.

I won’t bore you with the details*. I’ll post the final PDOG entry tonight after work, then I’ll throw a collage of the whole 28-day run together so we can see if I actually improved at all.

^{*I like to save up my boring and then really go to town every few weeks.}

"Rrawr! Whuf. Something"

It’s late.

"..." (or insert another famous Canti quote here)

Another quickie. It’s late, and I am going to a kite festival tomorrow morning. God knows what you’re supposed to do at a kite festival, but apparently I bought these hawks for nothing.

I need to rewatch FLCL this week. It’s been too long since last viewing.

Click for largeness/inchargeness

Up way too late, but trying to be good. Pretty sure that if I pulled back a bit and drew the rest of the torso, this pose is impossible. But whatever. It’s 1am on a work night. If there’s ever a time to make crucial anatomical errors, it’s 1am Friday morning.