If it is a nefarious scheme of some sort, the obvious question is, "Who stands to gain from it?"
The answer is equally obvious:
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Whotta Revoltn' Developmink!
I can't help but wonder if this whole contaminated spinach thing is actually a carefully orchestrated anti-spinach plot.
If it is a nefarious scheme of some sort, the obvious question is, "Who stands to gain from it?"
The answer is equally obvious:
If it is a nefarious scheme of some sort, the obvious question is, "Who stands to gain from it?"
The answer is equally obvious:
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Iconic Moments
There are movie scenes that, sometimes, manage to achieve a kind of iconic status that lives on well past the moment the last credit rolls and the lights come up, scenes that permanently etch themselves into the collective consciousness of a generation.
Take the passionate clinch between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here To Eternity, or the dropping of the snow globe in Citizen Kane, or pretty much any scene in Casablanca.
The iconic moment in question for the purposes of this entry, however, is the one that is a little more recent and is no doubt permanently imprinted into the minds of most males of my generation: Phoebe Cates coming out of the pool and taking off her top in Fast Times At Ridgemont High.
Whether you approve or not, you can't really argue the iconic status of this scene (from a movie that has many iconic moments and which features so many future stars).
Jennifer Garner paid homage to it on Alias.
Family Guy has spoofed it.
Even guys who have never seen the movie at least know about the scene.
Honestly, the scene has everything it needs to achieve iconic status: Phoebe Cates moving in slow motion towards the camera in a drippng wet bikini, distinctive and memorable music accompanying it, the slow building of your anticipation right before that ultimate moment, and, finally, at the end of it all, Judge Reinhold getting caught spanking it in the bathroom.
So as I said, iconic.
In any case, this has all been preamble for the unveiling of my lovingly-crafted tribute to this iconic scene in which we see the penultimate moment just before the payoff (and well before Judge Reinhold getting caught with his pants down):
In a world that's more fair and just I would have had some HD captures to work from and this would have possibly turned out marginally better, but this is not a particularly fair and just world, and so I did the best I could with what I had. Overall, I think I did pretty well.
I also think that Kevin Kline is an extremely lucky man.
For those of you interested in such things, I paid at least some amount of attention to time while working on this, so I'd say it took me roughly 5 hours from start to finish.
So obviously I didn't do much else besides work on this today (which means that I didn't do the load of laundry that I meant to do, but at least it's going now), but I did venture out into the world briefly to do some shopping.
Afterwards I ended up driving around Leesburg trying to figure out where I wanted to go for lunch, ultimately settling on this little cafe where I've had lunch with Kathleen a couple of times.
For some reason I thought it was earlier in the day than what it was and was, therefore, surprised at how crowded the place was.
There was a large group of people sitting together and eventually I noticed that their shirts said "Fire and Rescue," which made me think of Brian and I thought that I should give him a holler to see if he wanted to join me, particularly since the place is just right down the street from his house, but I was thinking that it was just sometime after 10 and therefore too early for him to want to go anywhere for lunch. By the time I realized that it was, in fact, after noon, my food had already been brought to me.
Sorry Brian.
I was thinking that it was just after 10 because that's when I usually venture out into the world and was thinking that today was no exception, though obviously it was.
Oh well.
In any case, my weekend is drawing to a close so I suppose I should wrap this up.
Take the passionate clinch between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here To Eternity, or the dropping of the snow globe in Citizen Kane, or pretty much any scene in Casablanca.
The iconic moment in question for the purposes of this entry, however, is the one that is a little more recent and is no doubt permanently imprinted into the minds of most males of my generation: Phoebe Cates coming out of the pool and taking off her top in Fast Times At Ridgemont High.
Whether you approve or not, you can't really argue the iconic status of this scene (from a movie that has many iconic moments and which features so many future stars).
Jennifer Garner paid homage to it on Alias.
Family Guy has spoofed it.
Even guys who have never seen the movie at least know about the scene.
Honestly, the scene has everything it needs to achieve iconic status: Phoebe Cates moving in slow motion towards the camera in a drippng wet bikini, distinctive and memorable music accompanying it, the slow building of your anticipation right before that ultimate moment, and, finally, at the end of it all, Judge Reinhold getting caught spanking it in the bathroom.
So as I said, iconic.
In any case, this has all been preamble for the unveiling of my lovingly-crafted tribute to this iconic scene in which we see the penultimate moment just before the payoff (and well before Judge Reinhold getting caught with his pants down):
In a world that's more fair and just I would have had some HD captures to work from and this would have possibly turned out marginally better, but this is not a particularly fair and just world, and so I did the best I could with what I had. Overall, I think I did pretty well.
I also think that Kevin Kline is an extremely lucky man.
For those of you interested in such things, I paid at least some amount of attention to time while working on this, so I'd say it took me roughly 5 hours from start to finish.
So obviously I didn't do much else besides work on this today (which means that I didn't do the load of laundry that I meant to do, but at least it's going now), but I did venture out into the world briefly to do some shopping.
Afterwards I ended up driving around Leesburg trying to figure out where I wanted to go for lunch, ultimately settling on this little cafe where I've had lunch with Kathleen a couple of times.
For some reason I thought it was earlier in the day than what it was and was, therefore, surprised at how crowded the place was.
There was a large group of people sitting together and eventually I noticed that their shirts said "Fire and Rescue," which made me think of Brian and I thought that I should give him a holler to see if he wanted to join me, particularly since the place is just right down the street from his house, but I was thinking that it was just sometime after 10 and therefore too early for him to want to go anywhere for lunch. By the time I realized that it was, in fact, after noon, my food had already been brought to me.
Sorry Brian.
I was thinking that it was just after 10 because that's when I usually venture out into the world and was thinking that today was no exception, though obviously it was.
Oh well.
In any case, my weekend is drawing to a close so I suppose I should wrap this up.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
I'm Not Ready To Say "Gayest Movie Ever," But I'm Close
Though I went to bed a bit earlier than usual last night I was pretty groggy when I woke up this morning. I vaguely recalled getting up to use the bathroom in the night, still caught in the grip of a fading dream, and being absolutely convinced that someone was going to be standing in the doorway waiting to kill me when I came back to the bedroom and being a bit surprised – though pleased – when that didn’t happen.
Not sure what was up with that.
In any case, shortly after I got up the phone rang. It was Scott calling to see if we were still on for seeing The Covenant today and to figure out when we were going to go.
All of the showtimes at the theater we usually go to would have interfered with an afternoon appointment he had, so we opted to go to a different theater in Manassas.
I hadn’t read anything good about The Covenant, and my expectations were pretty low anyway. I figured that the story and the acting would be weak, but I thought that what it lacked in substance it would make up for in style, presenting some dazzling visual effects.
Even with my expectations set so low I was still disappointed, and this is from someone who managed to set his expectations low enough to enjoy Showgirls.
(To say I managed to “enjoy” it is overstating things; basically I went into it expecting nothing more than to see the chick from Saved by the Bell naked, so in that regard it met my expectations and all of the rest of the movie was just meaningless white noise that I ignored. So at the very least I wasn’t disappointed in it.)
The exciting visual elements of the movie were few and far between, and they weren’t especially exciting.
Still, while story, dialogue, acting, and visuals were all sub-par, I was at least kind of prepared for it to be bad.
What I wasn’t prepared for was how incredibly gay it was.
At one point, during the umpteenth scene of loving, lingering shots of buff, hairless, naked male torsos, I leaned over to Scott and said, “I feel like we’re watching gay porn.”
This comment was immediately rewarded with a cut to the boys’ locker room.
Beyond all of the bare chests, though, there were plenty of homoerotic scenes featuring the four male leads engaging in too much touching and close-talking and longing gazes, and what was supposed to be dramatic tension was very clearly sexual tension.
The scene in which the hero, who’d been knocked unconscious, opens his eyes and looks up to see all of his friends – wearing nothing but Speedos, of course – leaning in way too close over him looks like it’s shot from the perspective of someone getting buckkaked in a circle jerk.
I think the most entertaining aspect of the movie was watching them try to pretend to be interested in girls.
Speaking of the girls, whereas we got a locker room full of naked boys and lots of close-ups of bare chests and abs, we only got one crappy shower scene, through frosted glass, of the female lead, and some half-hearted scenes of her and her roommate lounging around in their underwear. And not even sexy underwear. Given the granny panties they were both wearing, I’d guess that their cycles are in sync.
Not that it really mattered, as the girls weren’t terribly hot anyway, though the roommate did have some major guns.
Of course, it wouldn’t do for the girls to be too pretty anyway, as that was the responsibility of the boys.
Not than anyone was all that pretty anyway, as the film was really grainy in a fashion that made pores and blemishes practically jump off the screen.
In terms of the story, like I said, it was really weak.
There was way too much expository dialogue.
Also, while I’m not really up on the social lives of wealthy, privileged teens in New England, I can’t help think that there’s a lot more drug use involved. Or, you know, at least some drug use. Sure, the whole supernatural powers that are addictive and the use of which forces you to pay a heavy toll thing was an obvious metaphor for drugs, but even so, someone should have been dropping some E, or at least smoking some pot, or even drinking a beer.
The music could have been good, but it was used very poorly in an attempt to amp up scenes in which nothing was happening. For example, there was a scene featuring dramatic, suspenseful music that builds up to…a guy parking his car and walking into a building.
Then there were all of the scenes of people just sneaking up on other people for the purposes of making them – and, presumably, the audience – jump, which is the hallmark of a movie that’s desperate to elicit a response.
So overall this was the biggest stinker I’ve seen since Ultraviolet, which is saying a lot.
And seriously, the homoerotic content really makes me wonder if there was a particular reason that Geena Davis split up with Renny Harlin.
Obviously I’m no homophobe, as most of the homos I know, who don’t scare me in the least, could tell you, but I couldn’t help but be taken aback by just how surprisingly gay this movie was.
Anyway, speaking of Renny Harlin, as someone who is arguably the most famous one in the world, Finns love him. It’s kind of a “local boy makes good” thing, which kind of makes sense, given just how small Finland is.
Back when I worked at Suomi College (now known as Finlandia University), I used to get a lot of Finnish newspapers in the mail, as I actually submitted press releases about the College to them, many of which were actually picked up, and pretty much every one of them had some kind of story about Renny.
(As background for you non-Yoopers, Finlandia University, or “FU” as people like to derisively call it, was originally founded by Finnish immigrants who, like my family, had moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. When I was working there our focus was on using our historic connection to Finland to establish ties with contemporary Finland.)
Anyway, the Finns are seriously obsessed with Renny Harlin. It was national news back when he was still with Geena Davis and she appeared on Letterman and idly mentioned that she was learning to speak Finnish. The entire country fell in love with her in much the same way that the British loved Princess Di.
And poor Finland; Geena broke its collective heart when she split up with Renny.
It doesn’t help matters any that Renny hasn’t done much to make Finland proud in his moviemaking, and who knows how the Finns are going to react to the not-so subtle hints that The Covenant is giving…
Not sure what was up with that.
In any case, shortly after I got up the phone rang. It was Scott calling to see if we were still on for seeing The Covenant today and to figure out when we were going to go.
All of the showtimes at the theater we usually go to would have interfered with an afternoon appointment he had, so we opted to go to a different theater in Manassas.
I hadn’t read anything good about The Covenant, and my expectations were pretty low anyway. I figured that the story and the acting would be weak, but I thought that what it lacked in substance it would make up for in style, presenting some dazzling visual effects.
Even with my expectations set so low I was still disappointed, and this is from someone who managed to set his expectations low enough to enjoy Showgirls.
(To say I managed to “enjoy” it is overstating things; basically I went into it expecting nothing more than to see the chick from Saved by the Bell naked, so in that regard it met my expectations and all of the rest of the movie was just meaningless white noise that I ignored. So at the very least I wasn’t disappointed in it.)
The exciting visual elements of the movie were few and far between, and they weren’t especially exciting.
Still, while story, dialogue, acting, and visuals were all sub-par, I was at least kind of prepared for it to be bad.
What I wasn’t prepared for was how incredibly gay it was.
At one point, during the umpteenth scene of loving, lingering shots of buff, hairless, naked male torsos, I leaned over to Scott and said, “I feel like we’re watching gay porn.”
This comment was immediately rewarded with a cut to the boys’ locker room.
Beyond all of the bare chests, though, there were plenty of homoerotic scenes featuring the four male leads engaging in too much touching and close-talking and longing gazes, and what was supposed to be dramatic tension was very clearly sexual tension.
The scene in which the hero, who’d been knocked unconscious, opens his eyes and looks up to see all of his friends – wearing nothing but Speedos, of course – leaning in way too close over him looks like it’s shot from the perspective of someone getting buckkaked in a circle jerk.
I think the most entertaining aspect of the movie was watching them try to pretend to be interested in girls.
Speaking of the girls, whereas we got a locker room full of naked boys and lots of close-ups of bare chests and abs, we only got one crappy shower scene, through frosted glass, of the female lead, and some half-hearted scenes of her and her roommate lounging around in their underwear. And not even sexy underwear. Given the granny panties they were both wearing, I’d guess that their cycles are in sync.
Not that it really mattered, as the girls weren’t terribly hot anyway, though the roommate did have some major guns.
Of course, it wouldn’t do for the girls to be too pretty anyway, as that was the responsibility of the boys.
Not than anyone was all that pretty anyway, as the film was really grainy in a fashion that made pores and blemishes practically jump off the screen.
In terms of the story, like I said, it was really weak.
There was way too much expository dialogue.
Also, while I’m not really up on the social lives of wealthy, privileged teens in New England, I can’t help think that there’s a lot more drug use involved. Or, you know, at least some drug use. Sure, the whole supernatural powers that are addictive and the use of which forces you to pay a heavy toll thing was an obvious metaphor for drugs, but even so, someone should have been dropping some E, or at least smoking some pot, or even drinking a beer.
The music could have been good, but it was used very poorly in an attempt to amp up scenes in which nothing was happening. For example, there was a scene featuring dramatic, suspenseful music that builds up to…a guy parking his car and walking into a building.
Then there were all of the scenes of people just sneaking up on other people for the purposes of making them – and, presumably, the audience – jump, which is the hallmark of a movie that’s desperate to elicit a response.
So overall this was the biggest stinker I’ve seen since Ultraviolet, which is saying a lot.
And seriously, the homoerotic content really makes me wonder if there was a particular reason that Geena Davis split up with Renny Harlin.
Obviously I’m no homophobe, as most of the homos I know, who don’t scare me in the least, could tell you, but I couldn’t help but be taken aback by just how surprisingly gay this movie was.
Anyway, speaking of Renny Harlin, as someone who is arguably the most famous one in the world, Finns love him. It’s kind of a “local boy makes good” thing, which kind of makes sense, given just how small Finland is.
Back when I worked at Suomi College (now known as Finlandia University), I used to get a lot of Finnish newspapers in the mail, as I actually submitted press releases about the College to them, many of which were actually picked up, and pretty much every one of them had some kind of story about Renny.
(As background for you non-Yoopers, Finlandia University, or “FU” as people like to derisively call it, was originally founded by Finnish immigrants who, like my family, had moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. When I was working there our focus was on using our historic connection to Finland to establish ties with contemporary Finland.)
Anyway, the Finns are seriously obsessed with Renny Harlin. It was national news back when he was still with Geena Davis and she appeared on Letterman and idly mentioned that she was learning to speak Finnish. The entire country fell in love with her in much the same way that the British loved Princess Di.
And poor Finland; Geena broke its collective heart when she split up with Renny.
It doesn’t help matters any that Renny hasn’t done much to make Finland proud in his moviemaking, and who knows how the Finns are going to react to the not-so subtle hints that The Covenant is giving…
Monday, September 18, 2006
The Hip-Shaker Experiment
There’s a commercial for Bacardi that you may or may not have seen, the premise of which is that a bartender at a club is grinding a slice of lime and some mint leaves in a glass in preparation for making a Mojito, and as he grinds to the rhythm of the music playing the camera pans to various people grinding their hips in the same rhythm to the music. Suddenly the bartender stops and so does the music and the hip shaking. Everyone is standing around confused until finally the bartender smiles and goes back to it and the music and the dancing start again.
It’s only a moderately entertaining commercial whose real value comes from some of the hips that the camera focuses in on as they’re being shaken.
There’s one set of hips in particular that stands out as the woman shaking them is shaking them, as Scott put it, with authority.
(He actually said it as “authoritah,” in an imitation of Cartman.)
In any case, I like her hips and I like the outfit she’s wearing, so I decided that I was going to capture some frames from the commercial and attempt to render the hips at the height of their authoritative thrust.
Before I continue, here is the commercial in question:
So. I had recorded something that ran the commercial during an ad break, but had no luck capturing any decent frames, so I eventually used one of the sites that lets you save YouTube videos and was able to capture a frame from that.
Of course, the quality wasn’t that great, so it took a lot of extrapolating on my part to try to fill in some of the details.
Given that I was talking a little about the process of how I create my artwork earlier today, I thought I’d give you a look at some actual steps in the process, using the Bacardi hip-shaker picture as an example.
This isn’t totally representative of the process, as I used a slightly different technique this time around, but I’ll explain what I did differently as we go.
First off, here’s the frame capture at actual size. As you can see, it’s not especially clear or detailed and there’s a lot of noise. I tried to clean it up a little and enlarge it, but that pretty much made matters worse. Ultimately I used it as is.
I did a quick, very rought freehand sketch of the frame at a much higher scale in black and gray using a pencil tool. This was done on a separate, transparent layer so that I would be able to color underneath it.
This is very different from my usual approach, which consists of first using the pen tool to create the basic shapes in a solid color, after which I sketch in the details on layers above the solid color.
I used my favorite tool (the Smudge tool) to blend the blacks and grays together.
Normally, as mentioned, the basic shape would be laid out in a solid color on a level below this, and I would paint in the shading on a layer in between the solid color and the sketched-in details. I would then smudge the sketched layer to add to the depth of the shading layer.
This time around I painted in the solid colors below the smudged sketch layer, then added in some additional shading, did some more smudging to blend everything together, then used the pen tool to clean up some of the lines.
Here is the end result:
I’m not totally pleased with the end result, as the skirt isn't quite the color or the texture I wanted, but considering the source material I had to work from I guess I can’t complain too much, and the picture itself isn’t really the point, as I did this primarily as an experiment in using a different technique.
While I think the end result is okay, I’m not sure I’m going to use this particular technique again.
Anyway, that’s a little glimpse into the process of creating a picture.
It’s only a moderately entertaining commercial whose real value comes from some of the hips that the camera focuses in on as they’re being shaken.
There’s one set of hips in particular that stands out as the woman shaking them is shaking them, as Scott put it, with authority.
(He actually said it as “authoritah,” in an imitation of Cartman.)
In any case, I like her hips and I like the outfit she’s wearing, so I decided that I was going to capture some frames from the commercial and attempt to render the hips at the height of their authoritative thrust.
Before I continue, here is the commercial in question:
So. I had recorded something that ran the commercial during an ad break, but had no luck capturing any decent frames, so I eventually used one of the sites that lets you save YouTube videos and was able to capture a frame from that.
Of course, the quality wasn’t that great, so it took a lot of extrapolating on my part to try to fill in some of the details.
Given that I was talking a little about the process of how I create my artwork earlier today, I thought I’d give you a look at some actual steps in the process, using the Bacardi hip-shaker picture as an example.
This isn’t totally representative of the process, as I used a slightly different technique this time around, but I’ll explain what I did differently as we go.
First off, here’s the frame capture at actual size. As you can see, it’s not especially clear or detailed and there’s a lot of noise. I tried to clean it up a little and enlarge it, but that pretty much made matters worse. Ultimately I used it as is.
I did a quick, very rought freehand sketch of the frame at a much higher scale in black and gray using a pencil tool. This was done on a separate, transparent layer so that I would be able to color underneath it.
This is very different from my usual approach, which consists of first using the pen tool to create the basic shapes in a solid color, after which I sketch in the details on layers above the solid color.
I used my favorite tool (the Smudge tool) to blend the blacks and grays together.
Normally, as mentioned, the basic shape would be laid out in a solid color on a level below this, and I would paint in the shading on a layer in between the solid color and the sketched-in details. I would then smudge the sketched layer to add to the depth of the shading layer.
This time around I painted in the solid colors below the smudged sketch layer, then added in some additional shading, did some more smudging to blend everything together, then used the pen tool to clean up some of the lines.
Here is the end result:
I’m not totally pleased with the end result, as the skirt isn't quite the color or the texture I wanted, but considering the source material I had to work from I guess I can’t complain too much, and the picture itself isn’t really the point, as I did this primarily as an experiment in using a different technique.
While I think the end result is okay, I’m not sure I’m going to use this particular technique again.
Anyway, that’s a little glimpse into the process of creating a picture.
The Most Honest Answer
While I am often dismissive of whatever talents I may possess and frequently compare them unfavorably, with considerable justification, to the talents of artists such as Greg Horn or Alex Ross, I do recognize that I have an ability to create that not everyone does, and said recognition combined with the fact that, battered and beaten though it may be, I do have an ego, leads me to show off those talents, meager though they may be, whenever I have an opportunity.
Of course, I do so in an understated, “Oh, pshaw; I’m mostly a hack,” sort of fashion, I do puff out my chest a little and hungrily devour whatever praise I might receive.
In any case, the point of this long-winded rambling is that as soon as I got the opportunity over the weekend I was showing some of my artwork to Simon, one of the guys from the other department we recently merged with at work.
He was impressed, and naturally my ego swelled that much more, but, as I knew he would he eventually asked one of the two questions that people invariably ask me upon seeing my work.
There was one question that used to be the most common: How do you do that?
I never know what to say to this question because I’m never certain what the person who asks it is expecting me to say.
I mean, what exactly are you expecting when you ask a question like that?
A detailed description of the hand movements involved? A scientific explanation for the existence of talent and skill?
I can tell you what brushes and techniques and filters and other tools I used to create the image, but I can’t tell you how I did it. That is to say, I can’t tell you specifically why I’m able to do it whereas you might not be able to do it any more than, say, Olivia could tell me why she’s so much better at doing it than I am. The only thing I can tell you is that I’ve been doing it for years, but as to what makes it possible for me to it is beyond me.
I can never answer this question to anyone’s satisfaction, because no one wants to hear “I don’t know,” and simply saying, “Well, I’ve been doing it for years” doesn’t seem to cut it either.
Maybe what people are really asking is, “What is the trick to it and how do I go about learning the trick?” as if there is some word of wisdom that I can give them that will magically grant them the ability to accomplish in seconds what it took me years and years of practice to be able to do.
Of course, most people, I think, are asking it rhetorically simply because they’re unable to think of anything else to say.
The question that’s become more common lately – and which is the question Simon asked – is some variation of, “How long did it take you to do that?”
This question irritates me a little more than the other because it’s at least possible to answer, but I don’t have an answer for it because I don’t keep track of how long it takes me to finish a picture, and the person asking usually isn’t satisfied with, “I don’t know. A while.”
Usually the people asking will keep prodding, saying something like, “Okay, on average how long does it take? And my response remains, no matter how many times or ways they ask it, “I don’t know.”
I honestly don’t know what the average amount of time I spend on a picture is, as I’m not especially concerned about time, and there’s no easy way to keep track.
After all, it’s very seldom that I sit down to work on a picture and then sit there and work on it straight through until completion. There are times when I find myself so caught up in working on something that I’ll spend hours working on it without moving, but that’s rather unusual, and even in those instances it’s unlikely that I’ll actually finish the picture while caught in the throes of working on it. It’s more likely that I’ll finish a part of it and decide that it’s a good place to stop for a bit.
Most of the time, though, I find it impossible to sit still for extended periods of time and take frequent breaks, during which I usually do little more than simply pace for a little while.
(I do the same thing when writing and have, in fact, just returned from doing so.)
So let’s say that from the moment I started on a picture to the moment that I decided it was done, flattened all of the layers, changed the size and resolution, ran some finishing touch filters on it, and incorporated my “JP” signature into it somewhere, it took six hours.
How many of those hours were spent actually working on the picture? No clue.
Let’s look at a typical scenario.
Sometime shortly after midnight I start working on a picture. I lay out the basic shapes of the picture, pace a little, brush my teeth, clean my contacts, save the work in progress picture, and go to bed.
I get up, do various stuff, eat lunch, and open up the picture to work on it some more sometime around 1 pm.
I work on it until 4, then close it to write a Threshold entry. After that I end up watching TV until around 9, then come back to work on it a little more until 10, at which point I’m watching something else on TV, though during commercials I might come in and squeeze in a little work on it, but then I’m watching TV until midnight, at which point I come back in, close the picture, do the pre-bed stuff, and go to sleep.
I get up the next day and finish the picture by around 4.
How long did that take? Do I count the entire passage of time from start to finish, or do I try to figure out how much time in that 30 or so hours that was spent actually working on it?
Then there are the pictures I start then abandon then return to. Let’s take that Liz Phair album cover that I finished a few weeks ago. I actually started working on that picture sometime in mid-2004. Obviously I wasn’t working on the whole time; the bulk of the work was done on the couple of days during which I actually finished it. But does the time it sat untouched in a folder on my hard drive count?
So yeah, the most honest and simple answer is, “I don’t know. A while.”
Not much going on today. I went out and did my grocery shopping, came home and went for a walk, came back and had the rest of the pizza I’d ordered last night for lunch, downloaded the new version of iTunes for Munin, upgraded the firmware on my Nano, and moved some new mp3s onto it.
Then I started writing this.
Then I stopped writing this and posted it.
Of course, I do so in an understated, “Oh, pshaw; I’m mostly a hack,” sort of fashion, I do puff out my chest a little and hungrily devour whatever praise I might receive.
In any case, the point of this long-winded rambling is that as soon as I got the opportunity over the weekend I was showing some of my artwork to Simon, one of the guys from the other department we recently merged with at work.
He was impressed, and naturally my ego swelled that much more, but, as I knew he would he eventually asked one of the two questions that people invariably ask me upon seeing my work.
There was one question that used to be the most common: How do you do that?
I never know what to say to this question because I’m never certain what the person who asks it is expecting me to say.
I mean, what exactly are you expecting when you ask a question like that?
A detailed description of the hand movements involved? A scientific explanation for the existence of talent and skill?
I can tell you what brushes and techniques and filters and other tools I used to create the image, but I can’t tell you how I did it. That is to say, I can’t tell you specifically why I’m able to do it whereas you might not be able to do it any more than, say, Olivia could tell me why she’s so much better at doing it than I am. The only thing I can tell you is that I’ve been doing it for years, but as to what makes it possible for me to it is beyond me.
I can never answer this question to anyone’s satisfaction, because no one wants to hear “I don’t know,” and simply saying, “Well, I’ve been doing it for years” doesn’t seem to cut it either.
Maybe what people are really asking is, “What is the trick to it and how do I go about learning the trick?” as if there is some word of wisdom that I can give them that will magically grant them the ability to accomplish in seconds what it took me years and years of practice to be able to do.
Of course, most people, I think, are asking it rhetorically simply because they’re unable to think of anything else to say.
The question that’s become more common lately – and which is the question Simon asked – is some variation of, “How long did it take you to do that?”
This question irritates me a little more than the other because it’s at least possible to answer, but I don’t have an answer for it because I don’t keep track of how long it takes me to finish a picture, and the person asking usually isn’t satisfied with, “I don’t know. A while.”
Usually the people asking will keep prodding, saying something like, “Okay, on average how long does it take? And my response remains, no matter how many times or ways they ask it, “I don’t know.”
I honestly don’t know what the average amount of time I spend on a picture is, as I’m not especially concerned about time, and there’s no easy way to keep track.
After all, it’s very seldom that I sit down to work on a picture and then sit there and work on it straight through until completion. There are times when I find myself so caught up in working on something that I’ll spend hours working on it without moving, but that’s rather unusual, and even in those instances it’s unlikely that I’ll actually finish the picture while caught in the throes of working on it. It’s more likely that I’ll finish a part of it and decide that it’s a good place to stop for a bit.
Most of the time, though, I find it impossible to sit still for extended periods of time and take frequent breaks, during which I usually do little more than simply pace for a little while.
(I do the same thing when writing and have, in fact, just returned from doing so.)
So let’s say that from the moment I started on a picture to the moment that I decided it was done, flattened all of the layers, changed the size and resolution, ran some finishing touch filters on it, and incorporated my “JP” signature into it somewhere, it took six hours.
How many of those hours were spent actually working on the picture? No clue.
Let’s look at a typical scenario.
Sometime shortly after midnight I start working on a picture. I lay out the basic shapes of the picture, pace a little, brush my teeth, clean my contacts, save the work in progress picture, and go to bed.
I get up, do various stuff, eat lunch, and open up the picture to work on it some more sometime around 1 pm.
I work on it until 4, then close it to write a Threshold entry. After that I end up watching TV until around 9, then come back to work on it a little more until 10, at which point I’m watching something else on TV, though during commercials I might come in and squeeze in a little work on it, but then I’m watching TV until midnight, at which point I come back in, close the picture, do the pre-bed stuff, and go to sleep.
I get up the next day and finish the picture by around 4.
How long did that take? Do I count the entire passage of time from start to finish, or do I try to figure out how much time in that 30 or so hours that was spent actually working on it?
Then there are the pictures I start then abandon then return to. Let’s take that Liz Phair album cover that I finished a few weeks ago. I actually started working on that picture sometime in mid-2004. Obviously I wasn’t working on the whole time; the bulk of the work was done on the couple of days during which I actually finished it. But does the time it sat untouched in a folder on my hard drive count?
So yeah, the most honest and simple answer is, “I don’t know. A while.”
Not much going on today. I went out and did my grocery shopping, came home and went for a walk, came back and had the rest of the pizza I’d ordered last night for lunch, downloaded the new version of iTunes for Munin, upgraded the firmware on my Nano, and moved some new mp3s onto it.
Then I started writing this.
Then I stopped writing this and posted it.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Late Night Star Wars Fest
First up, happy birthday to Scott who, at 31, officially joins the “in your thirties” club.
Secondly, congratulations to Scott on passing the Red Hat Certified Technician portion of the Red Hat Certified Engineer test (and just barely missing the RHCE portion).
I have a bit of a headache today that I attribute to the fact that I drank way too much caffeine yesterday.
The headache is the price I have to pay for doing so, but I really needed it yesterday as a less than restful night of sleep on Friday night left me exhausted all day on Saturday.
I had gone to bed the usual time on Friday, and though I was tired and my eyes were heavy, I simply could not fall asleep. I was lying there for hours, occasionally drifting off just long enough for 15 minutes to shoot past, but then returning to full consciousness.
All the while I had that “sinking” feeling that often serves as the lead in to falling asleep, as you sink deeper and deeper into unconsciousness.
The problem was that I kept sinking without actually hitting bottom.
Eventually I managed to fall into a deep and total sleep, though I’m not sure when, and 5 am arrived far too quickly afterwards.
Brian tells me that he was out on a call at 1:30 am and had laid on the horn as they went past my place in an effort to wake me – though he was unaware of just how hard-won my sleep was that night – but I can say fuck him and the fire engine he rode in on because by that time I was dead to the world and didn’t hear shit.
When I got home from work yesterday I discovered that the Star Wars DVDs I’d ordered from Amazon on Wednesday had already arrived. I was pretty impressed by that, given that the free “super saver shipping” is listed as taking 5-9 business days.
After watching The Simpsons and the tail-end of an episode of Mythbusters I decided to pop in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and watch it.
I think the last time I saw it was back in 1997 when I went to see the “Special Edition.” The version I watched was the 2004 DVD version which has further enhancements beyond the 1997 version. The DVDs that I bought all include a second disk with the original theatrical versions of the movies, but I’m not enough of a purist that I felt a particular need to watch that instead.
After watching the first one I decided, “What the hell, might as well watch The Empire Strikes Back while I’m at it.”
Somewhere along the line I cracked open a bottle of SoBe Energy, adding to my day’s already high caffeine consumption, as I was struggling to stay awake by that time.
(As an aside, there was some kind of crud stuck to the side of the bottle on which I actually managed to cut my left hand while struggling, in vain, to twist the cap off. Ultimately I resorted to the little cap twisting teeth on the handles of my kitchen shears to open the bottle, but the point is that I’m the only person I know who can injure himself in quite that fashion simply by trying to open a bottle of SoBe.)
After Empire, though it was late and I was extremely tired, I said, “Screw it; I’m doing the whole trilogy,” and watched Return of the Jedi.
The end result was that I ended up going to bed sometime around 3.
For the record, my favorite of all of the Star Wars movies is Return of the Jedi, though I know many people consider it to be the worst of the original trilogy.
I can understand that, as the principle objection that people have can be summed up in one word: Ewoks.
Sure, the cute little teddy bear aliens are pretty annoying, but Jedi has enough going for it, in my less than humble opinion, that it can overcome that weakness.
I mean we finally have Luke coming into his own as a man, a Jedi, and a hero.
There’s no more idle daydreaming, no more whining, no more second-guessing himself.
For my money, there’s nothing better than watching him walk into Jabba’s fortress, Force choking a couple of pig-faced Muppets, overpowering the mind of that albino alien with that giant slug growing out of his head or whatever the hell that was, and very calmly and self-assuredly informing Jabba that his options are to cooperate with him or die.
Okay, sure, there were some missteps in the operation, but Luke makes up for it all once he gets his hands on his light saber on the barge and begins wreaking pure havoc everywhere.
There are so many Star Wars fans who have a hard-on for Boba Fett. I’ve never been one of them. I mean, sure, he looked cool, but that was pretty much it; he never actually did anything.
That’s why I always liked the way Luke pretty much just dismissed him. He slices Boba’s blaster, then turns away as if to say, “I’ve got no time for you, bitch.”
And of course, though it was a bad thing, as he was giving in to anger, it was cool, towards the end, to watch Luke just cut loose on his daddy, beating his ass into submission and saying, “How do you like having your hand cut off, bitch?”
Sure, it wasn’t the first time Darth had a hand whacked off with a light saber, but back then we didn’t know that.
Anyway, in watching Jedi again I was reminded of just how much I wanted to be Luke Skywalker when I was a kid.
Of course, I’m no longer the 11 year old loser I was when Jedi first came out. Nope, I’m a 34 year old loser who is much more cynical and jaded, and who has suffered through the prequels that just don’t fit together with the original trilogy the way they ought to, but even so, there was at least a hint that decades old sense of wonder as I sat watching the originals (even with the modifications) again.
I suppose it’s probably those deeply cherished memories that made it an impossible task for Lucas to make prequels that would live up to the expectations of the fans, but more than anything, I realized as I watched the originals, it really was the fact that he just didn’t stick to the spirit of the originals and didn’t construct a story that satisfactorily meshed with the story he’d already told.
Still, despite the fact that I was actually enjoying the movies – and despite the fact that no one was around to hear me – the fact that I am much more jaded and cynical than I was as a kid, I couldn’t help but give in to the urge to give the movies the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment.
This mostly consisted of creating my own dialogue for characters like R2-D2 and Chewbacca whose actual dialogue can only be guessed at.
In R2’s case this consisted primarily of snarky comments in response to everything that C-3PO said.
Mostly they were things like, “Yeah? Well at least I don’t look like I’m made out of gold lamé, you preening little queen.”
Another favorite occurred when Threepio was telling the Ewoks the story of Episode IV and R2, apparently, encouraged him to get to the part about Luke blowing up the Death Star.
(I know, I know, “Thanks for ruining the ending, jerk!” Seriously, if you need spoiler warnings for something dealing with the Star Wars movies then all I can say is that “Rosebud was his sled!” I mean, come on; catch up on the movie-watching already!)
I posited that R2 said something like, “Tell them about how Luke blew up the Death Star the way you blow guys in the Mos Isley cantina men’s room. Luke had to aim for the thermal exhaust port; you man to the glory hole.”
As for Chewie, on Cloud City when he finds Threepio on the scrap pile, I interpreted his roars to mean, “Hey! Hands off my fagbot!”
And as the little aliens played keepaway with Threepio’s head, Chewie roared, “I will murder every last one of you sons of bitches!”
Then there were just the unspoken bits of dialogue that I decided needed to be spoken.
When Han, who was blind from “hibernation sickness,” Chewie, and Luke were brought in front of Jabba, Han asked, “Where’s Leia?”
She responded, “I’m here, Han,” but she should have added, “And it’s really too bad that you can’t see, because damn I look good in this leather and metal slave girl outfit. Seriously, I’m providing fuel for thousands and thousands of masturbatory fantasies for decades to come. No pun intended.”
Anyway, that was how my evening of slightly loopy Star Wars viewing went. Even though my viewing extended into the wee hours and left me totally exhausted I didn’t get a lot of sleep, as I woke up at the usual time this morning, so I think I’m going to devote a portion of the afternoon to rectifying the situation.
Secondly, congratulations to Scott on passing the Red Hat Certified Technician portion of the Red Hat Certified Engineer test (and just barely missing the RHCE portion).
I have a bit of a headache today that I attribute to the fact that I drank way too much caffeine yesterday.
The headache is the price I have to pay for doing so, but I really needed it yesterday as a less than restful night of sleep on Friday night left me exhausted all day on Saturday.
I had gone to bed the usual time on Friday, and though I was tired and my eyes were heavy, I simply could not fall asleep. I was lying there for hours, occasionally drifting off just long enough for 15 minutes to shoot past, but then returning to full consciousness.
All the while I had that “sinking” feeling that often serves as the lead in to falling asleep, as you sink deeper and deeper into unconsciousness.
The problem was that I kept sinking without actually hitting bottom.
Eventually I managed to fall into a deep and total sleep, though I’m not sure when, and 5 am arrived far too quickly afterwards.
Brian tells me that he was out on a call at 1:30 am and had laid on the horn as they went past my place in an effort to wake me – though he was unaware of just how hard-won my sleep was that night – but I can say fuck him and the fire engine he rode in on because by that time I was dead to the world and didn’t hear shit.
When I got home from work yesterday I discovered that the Star Wars DVDs I’d ordered from Amazon on Wednesday had already arrived. I was pretty impressed by that, given that the free “super saver shipping” is listed as taking 5-9 business days.
After watching The Simpsons and the tail-end of an episode of Mythbusters I decided to pop in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and watch it.
I think the last time I saw it was back in 1997 when I went to see the “Special Edition.” The version I watched was the 2004 DVD version which has further enhancements beyond the 1997 version. The DVDs that I bought all include a second disk with the original theatrical versions of the movies, but I’m not enough of a purist that I felt a particular need to watch that instead.
After watching the first one I decided, “What the hell, might as well watch The Empire Strikes Back while I’m at it.”
Somewhere along the line I cracked open a bottle of SoBe Energy, adding to my day’s already high caffeine consumption, as I was struggling to stay awake by that time.
(As an aside, there was some kind of crud stuck to the side of the bottle on which I actually managed to cut my left hand while struggling, in vain, to twist the cap off. Ultimately I resorted to the little cap twisting teeth on the handles of my kitchen shears to open the bottle, but the point is that I’m the only person I know who can injure himself in quite that fashion simply by trying to open a bottle of SoBe.)
After Empire, though it was late and I was extremely tired, I said, “Screw it; I’m doing the whole trilogy,” and watched Return of the Jedi.
The end result was that I ended up going to bed sometime around 3.
For the record, my favorite of all of the Star Wars movies is Return of the Jedi, though I know many people consider it to be the worst of the original trilogy.
I can understand that, as the principle objection that people have can be summed up in one word: Ewoks.
Sure, the cute little teddy bear aliens are pretty annoying, but Jedi has enough going for it, in my less than humble opinion, that it can overcome that weakness.
I mean we finally have Luke coming into his own as a man, a Jedi, and a hero.
There’s no more idle daydreaming, no more whining, no more second-guessing himself.
For my money, there’s nothing better than watching him walk into Jabba’s fortress, Force choking a couple of pig-faced Muppets, overpowering the mind of that albino alien with that giant slug growing out of his head or whatever the hell that was, and very calmly and self-assuredly informing Jabba that his options are to cooperate with him or die.
Okay, sure, there were some missteps in the operation, but Luke makes up for it all once he gets his hands on his light saber on the barge and begins wreaking pure havoc everywhere.
There are so many Star Wars fans who have a hard-on for Boba Fett. I’ve never been one of them. I mean, sure, he looked cool, but that was pretty much it; he never actually did anything.
That’s why I always liked the way Luke pretty much just dismissed him. He slices Boba’s blaster, then turns away as if to say, “I’ve got no time for you, bitch.”
And of course, though it was a bad thing, as he was giving in to anger, it was cool, towards the end, to watch Luke just cut loose on his daddy, beating his ass into submission and saying, “How do you like having your hand cut off, bitch?”
Sure, it wasn’t the first time Darth had a hand whacked off with a light saber, but back then we didn’t know that.
Anyway, in watching Jedi again I was reminded of just how much I wanted to be Luke Skywalker when I was a kid.
Of course, I’m no longer the 11 year old loser I was when Jedi first came out. Nope, I’m a 34 year old loser who is much more cynical and jaded, and who has suffered through the prequels that just don’t fit together with the original trilogy the way they ought to, but even so, there was at least a hint that decades old sense of wonder as I sat watching the originals (even with the modifications) again.
I suppose it’s probably those deeply cherished memories that made it an impossible task for Lucas to make prequels that would live up to the expectations of the fans, but more than anything, I realized as I watched the originals, it really was the fact that he just didn’t stick to the spirit of the originals and didn’t construct a story that satisfactorily meshed with the story he’d already told.
Still, despite the fact that I was actually enjoying the movies – and despite the fact that no one was around to hear me – the fact that I am much more jaded and cynical than I was as a kid, I couldn’t help but give in to the urge to give the movies the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment.
This mostly consisted of creating my own dialogue for characters like R2-D2 and Chewbacca whose actual dialogue can only be guessed at.
In R2’s case this consisted primarily of snarky comments in response to everything that C-3PO said.
Mostly they were things like, “Yeah? Well at least I don’t look like I’m made out of gold lamé, you preening little queen.”
Another favorite occurred when Threepio was telling the Ewoks the story of Episode IV and R2, apparently, encouraged him to get to the part about Luke blowing up the Death Star.
(I know, I know, “Thanks for ruining the ending, jerk!” Seriously, if you need spoiler warnings for something dealing with the Star Wars movies then all I can say is that “Rosebud was his sled!” I mean, come on; catch up on the movie-watching already!)
I posited that R2 said something like, “Tell them about how Luke blew up the Death Star the way you blow guys in the Mos Isley cantina men’s room. Luke had to aim for the thermal exhaust port; you man to the glory hole.”
As for Chewie, on Cloud City when he finds Threepio on the scrap pile, I interpreted his roars to mean, “Hey! Hands off my fagbot!”
And as the little aliens played keepaway with Threepio’s head, Chewie roared, “I will murder every last one of you sons of bitches!”
Then there were just the unspoken bits of dialogue that I decided needed to be spoken.
When Han, who was blind from “hibernation sickness,” Chewie, and Luke were brought in front of Jabba, Han asked, “Where’s Leia?”
She responded, “I’m here, Han,” but she should have added, “And it’s really too bad that you can’t see, because damn I look good in this leather and metal slave girl outfit. Seriously, I’m providing fuel for thousands and thousands of masturbatory fantasies for decades to come. No pun intended.”
Anyway, that was how my evening of slightly loopy Star Wars viewing went. Even though my viewing extended into the wee hours and left me totally exhausted I didn’t get a lot of sleep, as I woke up at the usual time this morning, so I think I’m going to devote a portion of the afternoon to rectifying the situation.
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