What I Did Today

Here's what I did today:



I've been messing around with some Illustrator tutorials. The above is the end result of one of them.
It's actually a screen capture of the image, as every time I tried to export the Illustrator file to another format, portions of the image ended up missing.
Beyond that, it being Sunday, I did/am in the process of doing the laundry.
Yesterday I made the usual trip to the comic shop followed by grocery shopping. Eventually upon getting home I ended up taking a three hour nap.
After getting up I watched some recorded TV, then ate dinner - the leftovers of the pizza I'd ordered on Friday night (Me, talking to my stomach: Yes, I'm perfectly well aware of the fact that you're hungry; why do you think I ordered the pizza, dumbass?) - then thought about either doing some tutorials or some actual drawing, thought better of it, and watched a movie (Superbad).
In between all of that I'd decided that I should probably update the software/firmware on my iPod Touch, so I installed iTunes on Munin, and even went so far as to get around to creating an account in the iTunes store. I saw that there was an update to the software available, was dismayed that I had to actually pay for it, swore, and then set to downloading the upgrade. I left that going while I went off and did the other things mentioned above.
...
Whenever you decide to let a task, such as moving files, run unattended in Windows, there's a better than 50% chance that something will go wrong with it, and when you return, expecting to see the task long-finished, you'll find that little or no progress was actually made in your absence.
This most likely will be the result of some dialog box popping up while you were away and demanding your attention before the task can proceed.
One thing I've learned about Apple software is that there is a 100% chance that something will go wrong if you leave a task running unattended. This isn't because of a dialog box popping up, it's because the software will just stop working. While the Windows issues are annoying, once you finally click on the appropriate option in the dialog box usually the task will resume. Not so with Apple products.
Years ago when I worked at Suomi College, we didn't have any sort of campus network. This meant that if I wanted to get online, I had to use dial-up. More to the point, because we also didn't have any money, this meant that I had to use my personal dial-up account.
On my Windows 95 machine at home, I could launch the dial-up connection, get up and go to the kitchen or bathroom or whatever, and come back to find that I was connected.
With the Mac I had at work, if I launched the dial-up connection and left my office, I would come back to find that my computer had completely locked up pretty much as soon as I left, a frozen image of the dialer software saying "Dialing" floating in the middle of the screen.
This didn't happen every time, granted, but it was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-90% of the time.
It's led me to wonder sometimes if Apple software developers somehow manage to build in a clingy need for validation and attention in their software, making it like a kid getting ready to jump into a pool and saying, "Hey dad, watch me! Watch me, dad! Dad, watch me! Are you watching? Dad, you're not watching!"
In any case, I downloaded the update for my iPod. and left sometime after it started backing up the contents of the iPod in preparation for the install.
When I came back several hours later, there was a window saying "Preparing to restore iPod" on the screen, and it was clear that it had been there for hours and that it wasn't actually doing anything.
After forcing the software to close, I disconnected the iPod - which was now stuck in "Recovery Mode" - and restarted. Plugging the iPod back into the computer led to iTunes telling me that the iPod was stuck in "Recovery Mode" and that I needed to push the "Restore" button onscreen before doing anything. Doing this the first time led to iTunes locking up. The second time brought back up that "Preparing to restore iPod" window, which sat there doing nothing. I went through this cycle several times before clicking the "Restore" button actually led to something happening.
Having learned my lesson, once it actually started working, I sat there and watched the whole process with the defeated resignation of a father watching his kid clumsily belly-flop his way into a pool.
After that I did finally start a tutorial, the results of which will likely show up in another picture someday, before finally calling it a night.
And that brings us into today.

See You In Hell, Krypton

It should come as no surprise that I haven't done much of anything today apart from some grocery shopping and taking a nap.
In any case, I was randomly surfing around and found a Photoshop tutorial for creating an explosing planet. It looked easy, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Once I did, it seemed obvious to me that I should make the planet green and throw a red sun in the background to make the image in question the Death of Krypton.
So there you go.

Beauty And The Beast

I'll leave it up to you to decide which is which.
Apart from creating these buttons while following a tutorial, today has been pretty uneventful here at work.
Earlier on the Internet radio station I'm listening to the song Rainbow in the Dark by Dio came on, and, amused, I IMed Brian to tell him. He didn't appreciate how funny it was.
It led me to say, "*Sigh* I miss my metalhead friends."
Sometimes it's difficult to not be around people who understand how inherently funny it is to hear a song by Dio, or, better yet, King Diamond.
It's kind of like this MasterCard commercial:



I actually bought the issue of The Comics Journal featuring the Darwyn Cooke picture of Power Girl I used in the button tutorial. I really hope the image gets released as a poster at some point.
In any case, I suppose I should get back to being bored for a living.

Who Are You Calling A Dummy?

Here's the result of a tutorial I did yesterday.
The focus of the tutorial was on designing a "dummy" of a product for a presentation, and the product in question was a Lyra MP3 player. I added my own touch by having it playing a Liz Phair song and displaying the album art (which in this case is my drawing of the original album art) rather than just showing the generic image and text that the tutorial author provided for use.



I think it turned out pretty well. The tutorial was fairly complex, and the written instructions were somewhat lacking (I find that they usually are with most tutorials, as many of them seem to be written by non-native English speakers, and the rest are written by people who are better designers than they are writers), so I had to draw on my own experience to kind of fill in some of the gaps, which is good in a way, I guess.

You Get A Gold Star!

It Speaks For Itself

Random Tutorial Crap

I don't know that anyone cares, but sometimes when I follow a tutorial I like to post the results.
Here's something I did today:



The tutorial was just on making a wax seal; the rest was my own tinkering around with the concept.
I know; it's all too exciting.

Quick Updates

Just a few quick updates.
The clicking noise on my car was coming from the brakes. The car is still at the shop as there are, of course, other problems with it.
Scott came and picked me up and we went to see Transformers. I'll have more to say tomorrow, but for now, I'll simply say that it was pretty damn awesome.
And finally, here's a picture - inspired by all of my MST3K watching - that I started on Sunday and finished just before Scott got here. I actually used some new techniques that I picked up from a tutorial that I'm definitely going to add to my regular bag of tricks.

Building To A Pissed Off Crescendo

On Thursday I woke up at 3:14 AM, looked at the clock, saw that the little icon indicating that the alarm is turned on was present, realized that this meant that it was Thursday, said, “Son of a bitch,” and went back to sleep.
By the time the alarm went off an hour and forty-six minutes later my mood hadn’t improved at all.
I got up and angrily put my contacts in, angrily showered and shaved, angrily dressed, and angrily made my way to the car, which I angrily drove to the gas station where I angrily filled my tank.
Still, while I was clearly in a very bad mood, the Universe decided it wasn’t quite enough, so about five miles into my (angry) drive to work my car started making a weird noise.
Because that was just what I fucking needed.
The sound coming from the car was pretty much drowned out the rest of the way by the sound of me grinding my teeth.
Once I got to work, things just went downhill, as the NOC was unusually loud and inane, not offering me the opportunity to ease into the irritation that all of the other people working there invariably bring.
When I was getting the shift hand off from Mitzi it was like being in one of those Cingular – now AT&T – dropped call commercials.
I’m serious, at certain points her lips were moving but no discernible sound was coming forth.
It’s not like I really needed anything from her – it’s easier and more fruitful to just read the ticket notes – but it was just one more bit of aggravation that I didn’t need.
As the day wore on my mood didn’t improve much – the fact that I was busy didn’t help matters – particularly with the thought of whatever the hell was wrong with my car looming over my head.
Throughout the day, as people saw my new phone, every single one asked, “Why didn’t you wait and get an iPhone?”
Given how belligerent I felt, I wanted to reply, “Fuck you, that’s why.”
I didn’t, instead saying that I simply had no interest in buying one, which is true enough, and pretty much all I feel the need to say on the subject.
On the drive home I noted that, apart from making the noise, nothing else weird.
I attempted the “maybe it’ll fix itself overnight” approach, which didn’t work, and drove it in to work again on Friday, but decided that after I drove it home I wouldn’t push my luck any further, and so I caught a ride with Brian on Saturday, and made an appointment to bring my car in on Monday.
The thought of having to get up early on Monday to bring the car in and the inevitable hassles that would result from whatever is undoubtedly majorly fucked-up with it, loomed over my Sunday festering and I often found myself nearly as pissed as I had been on Thursday.
I have since dropped the car off to be checked out and to have whatever maintenance service needs to be done at this point.
Turns out said service is the 30,000 mile service, which encompasses a bunch of crap, and may cost as much as $450.
Four. Hundred. Fifty. Dollars.
My level of pissed-offedness shot through the roof at that point, and I think the service guy – who was larger than I am – was actually frightened by the look I gave him, as he scrambled to justify the costs.
*Sigh*
As it stands, the very earliest I can expect them to be done is by 4, as the service alone will take several hours. I’m clinging to the pathetic hope that the noise was caused by something that will be addressed as part of the 30,000 mile service, but I know better than that.
Whatever is wrong should be covered by the warranty, though I’m sure they’ll try to find a way to weasel out of that.
Scott and I had plans to catch one of the Tranformers showings tonight, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen, since I may be without a vehicle.
During my Sunday fester, I did actually mess around with some creative endeavors, working on a picture that has yet to be completed, and trying out a couple of tutorials, one of which resulted in this rather cliché manipulation of a photo of Scarlett Johansson:




And that’s pretty much all that’s been going on.

It Speaks For Itself

NSFW Picture

My latest picture, which is somewhat naughty and NSFW, can be viewed here.
It's a picture of model Alley Baggett, done in the sort of cel-shaded, vectorized, A Scanner Darkly style that I've been playing around with for years and never really succeeding in achieving to my satisfaction.
This one comes pretty close, and involved using a technique that I picked up from a tutorial.
I think the main reason I like it, though, is that it's just a really cute picture of Alley.
So check it out if you can (the features that make it NSFW are Alley's bare - and very nice - bottom and a bit of a nipple).

A Helpful Reminder

Random Nonsense

Because I have to wait for the guy from what I laughingly refer to as my cable company to get here, I haven't been able to do much today.
(All I would have been doing is going to the comic book shop and maybe like Super-Target or something, but that's not the point)
So, despite the fact that I don't really have anything to post about, I am trying to avoid working on a picture I started yesterday that I thought would be cool but is turning out to be more of a pain in the ass than I'm willing to deal with, I thought I'd post some of the random stupid crap I've done in recent weeks.
First up is the result of a tutorial that I did at work on Saturday and which I used as an opportunity to do something stupid to make Brian laugh:



Next is a silhouette of Liz Phair that I drew a while ago.



And finally, this thing that I did earlier today:



And there you have it, your recommended daily allowance of random stupid crap.

My Tutorials (Which Are Nothing Like The 80's Sex Comedy "My Tutor")

So I did some tutorials tonight. Here are the results.
A lot of the tutorials I do call for using photographs, but I figure I might as well use some of my drawings.
Anyway, here they are.

Nothing Special...

...or even terribly new, just the end result of a tutorial.
Make of it what you will.

Random Pointlessness (With Bonus Cookie Recipe)

Sometime around 4 AM I was awoken by an odd sound that I couldn’t quite place. It sounded rather like static, but not quite.
After determining that it wasn’t coming from my clock or computer, I realized that it was coming from outside, and so I peeked through the blinds and saw a world still blanketed in white and some poor schmuck trying to clean off his car. His scraping of ice was the source of the mysterious sound.
Over the next few hours I was awoken by a similar sound as other brave commuters tried to make their way out of the parking lot.
Given this, I wasn’t surprised when, at 8, my phone rang and I was greeted by Tabitha – that actually is her name – calling to tell me that the dentist office would be closed today, therefore my appointment was cancelled.
After that I went back to sleep for a little over an hour.
Beyond talking to my mother, the only thing I’ve done is go out and clean off my car and move it to a space that’s been plowed out.
Though there was heavy coverage on my car, it didn’t take long to remove it, as it was basically thick, wet snow covered by a hard shell of ice. Further, at the bottom it was beginning to melt, so all it really took was a shove and huge chunks, sliding on the wet surface and held together by ice, would slough right off.
I actually removed the snow on the roof of my car in one piece by simply it off.
The most effort went into moving my car, though even that wasn’t too difficult, just a couple minutes worth of rocking.
The sun keeps poking out periodically, and will likely make short work of the bulk of the snow if it manages to stay out from behind the clouds for a while. Even so, while the actual snowing has long since stopped, the ice is melting, schools have been cancelled for tomorrow as well as today. Why not just cancel them for Friday, too?
I just don’t understand why they think that a little snow and ice is such an intractable problem, especially considering how much money as the county has. Oh well.
Oh, one other thing I’ve done so far is a tutorial on creating a realistic-looking LCD screen. Here is the result, which I’ve personalized:



One thing that I’ve discovered after my upgrade to Vista is that I am able to once again get my LightScribe drive to work properly.
LightScribe is a technology that allows you to use your DVD burner’s laser to print labels on special LightScribe compatible discs.
I bought my drive a computer ago, and had no trouble with it in the HP, but after I’d installed it in the current Hugin, I was no longer able to get it to work, despite trying multiple fixes. It worked just fine for burning discs, I just couldn’t use the laser printing feature. I would get an error saying, “Unable to communicate with drive,” or something to that effect, which annoyed me, as I was always able to get the print preview feature to work, which required that there be a LightScribe-enabled disc in the drive. So it could communicate with it for the preview, but not for the actual printing.
Anyway, turns out it was lying to me the whole time, as once I downloaded the Vista drivers and software for it I was able to print without any problems.
So this is another instance in which I wish software and hardware followed the domestic abuse approach to interface design so that I could slap my LightScribe drive around for lying to me for so long.
What other lies have you told me, LightScribe drive???!
Anyway, this hasn’t really been a productive week.
Apart from going grocery shopping, I haven’t ventured out into the world at all. I still need to do that stupid emissions test and get my taxes done.
I’ve done zip in the way of drawing anything interesting. I had to give up on the one picture I wanted to draw because the low-res screen cap I was using as a reference is just too dark and too lacking in detail to allow me to even try to extrapolate useful reference information from it.
I’ve started on another picture, but my heart just isn’t in it.
I was going to make oatmeal raisin cookies yesterday, but I couldn’t manage that, as I don’t have any vanilla extract and I wasn’t about to drive to the store with there being actual weather outside and everyone in full end of the world panic mode.
I ended up making peanut butter cookies instead, which is okay, but I really had my heart set on oatmeal raisin. Oh well.
(Oh, and for those interested, here’s my three ingredient peanut butter cookie recipe:
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar (or Splenda if watching carbs)
1 egg
Mix all ingredients together. Make little balls and place on cookie sheet.
Criss-cross fork impression on top of cookie to flatten a bit. Bake for 8-10 minutes at 350.)
Anyway, I think that’s more than enough for one pointless, boring entry.

Wednesday Hodge Podge Post

I woke up this morning convinced that it must still be around, say, 6 AM, only to discover that it was actually 9.
This annoyed me because I really didn’t want to get up, but given how short my Wednesdays are already thanks to my insanely early bedtime (an insanely early bedtime that allows me to get up before 5 AM and still manage to get a lot of sleep and manage to stay awake while sitting in one spot in a dark, cold, boring room for 12+ hours), so, cursing Father Time, I got up.
I then proceeded to turn on the oven to preheat it in order to cook the breakfast casserole I’d prepared last night.
While that was cooking I talked to my mother – who is moving into a different apartment within the same complex she’s in this weekend, as it’s on a lower floor and has a southern exposure so she’ll actually get some sunlight – and then got around to eating the aforementioned casserole.
Well, part of it, anyway, because even though I’d halved the recipe I’d based it on, it was still a lot more food than I’m inclined eat in one sitting.
(The recipe as found, but not as prepared, follows:
2 lbs. pork sausage (1 hot, 1 mild)
3 c. milk
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
9 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 tsp. dry mustard
1 sm. bag Ore Ida hash browns

Cook sausage over medium heat until done, stirring to crumble. Drain well on paper towels, set aside. In same skillet, brown hash browns, over medium heat. Combine sausage, hash browns and remaining ingredients, mixing well. Pour into a well greased 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking pan. Refrigerate covered, overnight. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
Makes 8 to 10 servings.)
After eating I got around to showering and pinged Brian to see if he was up for seeing the movie today. He had to bring one of the cats to the vet not long before the movie’s start time, so that was pretty much a negative, and so I was left to decide whether or not I wanted to go see it alone.
While deciding, I worked on a tutorial for creating a postage mark.
The result of said tutorial work is shown below:



I made it a postage mark from Perdition, because that’s ever-so slightly more esoteric than Hell. Besides, there’s a Hell in Michigan, which people like to mail things from just so that it can be postmarked “Hell.” Similarly, around the holidays people like to mail presents from Christmas, Michigan.
While working on that, I thought, “What else do I have to do?” and so opted to head to the theater.
For a while I thought I was going to be the only person there, but then someone else came in, and after her a small group of teenagers came in, and, though there was no good reason for them to do so in the near-empty theater, they sat near me. Since it wasn’t as though those were “prime” seats, I assumed this meant that the Universe was just preparing to fuck with me by having these little shits behind me so that they could interfere with my enjoyment of the movie as much, and as loudly, as possible.
Fortunately they were reasonably quiet, so they didn’t annoy me too much beyond simply existing.
One of them did annoy me slightly after the trailer for the movie Lucky You – a movie that I saw a trailer for months and months ago, in the summer, I think, and which still doesn’t have an actual release date – starring Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore.
The kid said, “That looked pretty good until Drew Barrymore started crying. Then it, like, lost all credibility.”
I wanted to turn around and say, “What the fuck are you talking about? Do you even know what words mean?”
Instead I simply sighed and shook my head.
Then the movie started.
…
It was interesting, and, oddly enough it had some moments of real humor, though I think that they just stood out so prominently because they were set against such a bleak and humorless backdrop.
The basic premise of the movie is this: 20 years in the future, women have become infertile, with the last new child having been born 18 years earlier. The species is doomed, and that’s just one of the many problems in the world. In its dying throes, the ugliest aspects of humanity have come to the surface and we find ourselves visiting an England in which, much like the England of V for Vendetta, one of the worst crimes you can commit is to be from somewhere else.
Illegal immigrants – foogies as they’re called – are rounded up and placed in internment camps before being shipped away.
There is, of course, violent resistance to this state of affairs, and very early in the movie we’re hit with an act of stunning terrorist violence – the first of many.
The plot of the movie is centered around the quest to get a young foogie girl safely out of the country. This particular foogie is the most important person in the world. Why? Because she’s eight months pregnant.
The rest is all backstory and personal histories – such as the connection between the protagonist, Theo, played by Clive Owen, and the leader of the resistance group, Julian, played by Julianne Moore.
I have to say that I liked the pacing and the manner in which important information was provided to the audience (a sort of slow unfolding that inspires a growing awareness), and there are a lot of nice little stylistic touches, like the music, most notably the subtly not-quite right (thanks to the singer’s accent) cover of Ruby Tuesday.
I also appreciate the attention to subtle details. For example, in the movie Julianne Moore is in her 40s, which means she would have been in her 20s during the early 2000s, and as a mature woman she still bears the trappings that would have been de rigueur for an activist of that earlier time, such as a distinctive tattoo and a nose piercing.
So yeah, I’d say it was worth seeing. I can’t say for certain whether or not Brian would have liked it, but I’m kind of leaning towards him not liking it.
Once I got home I checked the mail and found that I’d gotten my belated Christmas present from Kevin.
I was surprised to find that it was two CDs. One I’d expected because he’d mentioned it when I last talked to him. It’s a CD called Where’s Neil When You Need Him? which consists of songs inspired by the works of Neil Gaiman, written and performed mostly by people I’ve only heard of because Neil has mentioned them in reference to the CD on his blog, and Tori Amos, who is a friend of Neil’s and who, by asking the question in one of her songs – she frequently makes references to Neil in her lyrics – provided the title for the CD.
The second CD, though, was a bit of a head-scratcher that falls into the “Uhhh…?” category, as I’m not quite sure what inspired him purchase it for me.
The CD is titled What is Hip?
It consists of remixes of songs that were popular when I was a kid. Songs by people like The Doobie Brothers and Seals and Croft (A remix of Summer Breeze that was, apparently, used in a Gap commercial, which explains why it sounded vaguely familiar).
So, yeah. I gave it a quick listen (listening to the Neil CD now), and it’s…interesting.
Still, I can see the motivation for getting me a CD with material based on Neil Gaiman’s work, but not really sure about the other one.
(In my thank you e-mail I quipped to Kevin that the only time that I think that “Jon” and “hip” will be likely to appear in a sentence together is in a form like “Jon slipped in the shower and broke his hip.”)
After I’d left the theater and turned my phone on I discovered that I had a voice mail from Kathleen, who was expressing anger and dismay at the fact that she’d gotten voice mail when calling me. I called her back and got her voice mail, even though it was already too late and I wouldn’t have been able to help her anyway (she needed someone to look up a phone number online, apparently).
Inside the box that Amazon shipped the CDs in was a little piece of paper that said, “Why worry about Valentine’s Day?”
I responded, “Exactly.”
I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but that pretty much sums up my feelings about it.
Anyway, that was my day in a – wordy and boring – nutshell.
Three long days of work lie ahead of me, and I’m sure that tomorrow night I’ll continue what has become my Thursday night tradition of only getting about 3-4 hours of sleep for no apparent reason other than that I simply will not fall asleep.
I just don’t get that. What is the mechanism that keeps you awake like that, despite the fact that you’re tired? I mean, I’m tired, I want to sleep, and I’m in bed. What more is needed to make sleep happen?
But whatever, I guess I’ll swear at that bridge when I come to it.
In the meantime, I hope you all have more interesting and exciting weekends than I’m likely to have.

See, I Told You

Despite the self-pitying "why bother" tone of my post yesterday, I told you that there was very little chance that I would actually quit drawing. Here's the proof:



It's a portrait of Scarlett Johansson inspired by the "Pop Art" style of Lichtenstein.
Or more accurately, it was inspired by a tutorial that was inspired by the "Pop Art" style of Lichtenstein.
The person who made the tutorial - one Melissa Clifton - had used a picture of Scarlett for her example so it only seemed fitting that I do the same.
Besides, considering how much time I spent on this it only made sense to have someone really nice to look at as my model.
I actually learned a lot from this tutorial, particularly about the advantages of tweaking the brush settings.
I also learned that Scarlett Johansson is really, really, really beautiful, though I had already suspected that.
One other thing of note was that, even though I was up until 2:30 in the morning working on this picture, the pain in hand/wrist never got much beyond a dull ache and stiffness, so it would seem that the chiropractic treatment is actually working.
Oh, and if you didn't know, the inclusion of thought balloons was a staple of Lichtenstein's work, which is why mine includes one. As to what the "If Only..." is about, I'll leave that to your imaginations.

Stupid Tutorial Tricks

As you know, I've been messing around with various tutorials for a while.
So far you've mostly only seen the end result of me applying the techniques I learned to other images, but you haven't seen the end result of any of the tutorials.
I thought I'd change that by sharing the end result of a tutorial I followed this morning which showed various easy (and frankly in some cases, I have to admit, amazing) methods for creating a comic book-inspired graphic.
So here you go.
(BTW, the text is mine, and was not what was provided in the tutorial. If you want to see the tutorial, along with several others, go here.)

New Non-Fish-Related Picture

Here's another picture born out of me messing around with a tutorial, though this one is a little more conventional than the fish.
It didn't really turn out the way I'd hoped, but then my pictures never do. Originally there was going to be a specific focal point, but I wasn't able to pull it off, so I took another approach.
If this looks familiar in some fashion it's because I used a photo from the same set as I did for this picture.
I just find the perspective interesting and thought that it warranted revisiting, though I didn't necessarily have images from that set in mind when I originally conceived of this idea.
This did actually take some finagling before I could even get started, though, as there was no picture of her in this exact pose. I had to take a hand from another picture and paste it in, then rotate it to suit my needs.
Anyway, this is what I spent much of yesterday and today working on, and here it is for you to enjoy or not according to your whim.