So, you know how, if you have music playing when you go to sleep, your brain will sometimes incorporate the music into the dreams you're having? (If you haven't tried it, it's... interesting the kind of contexts your brain can put it in. Pretty sure I've had a dream or two in the style of a musical.)

There's this song which I hadn't heard in... YEARS, I think, that suddenly came on the radio when I was working on a final project last week. I had only heard it that one time recently - I'm pretty sure the time before that was probably when I was still in middle/high school, because it was on one of my dad's CDs (if I recall correctly).

I was napping for a little bit earlier this evening and started dreaming that that song was playing in some form or fashion. Some of the lyrics were definitely wrong, but it was otherwise that same song. Only thing was, I didn't have ANY music playing.

Ironically enough, in that dream, I was thinking to myself about how weird it was to have dreams with music in them because it was playing while you were sleeping. And that I was glad how I wasn't dreaming at the moment... while listening to that song.

The hell, brain?

This is the song in question, by the way. (Even with the weirdness that was that dream, I'm glad I was apparently thinking about it, because I actually quite like the song.)



Blah blah haven't posted in forever sorry guys. SO YEAH it's been a while.

Also, bin Laden is supposedly dead? The fuh? I'm not sure I should believe that until I see some actual evidence... in addition to the speech Obama's supposed to give, in which I'm not even sure he's going to say that he's absolutely, positively gone. Not that I'm going to discount what he's going to say, don't get me wrong. It's just been ten years since the hunt for him first started. It's hard to believe he's finally been brought down, you know? Gonna keep myself from believing it too readily for now.

I think I know what platform he's going to be campaigning on for 2012.

 A couple of things for our lovely mail service:

1) Would it have killed you to deliver the item I've been waiting for at the time you're usually here to deliver the mail every day, instead of an hour or two early? Also, did you even knock for someone to come to the door? There are three people on this side of the house who could have heard you do so, and I'd've gotten right up if I'd heard any such noise, but I didn't. How many times did you try before you gave up? Once?

2) It's pretty bad when even your automated mail system pronounces names incorrectly. I'll admit, "Sprayd-ling" is one I haven't heard before, BUT IT'S STILL WRONG. Could you maybe fix that? I know there are lots of other families down here that would probably appreciate it, too.

Hopefully, the signed notice now hanging on the front door will guarantee that the parcel you're playing keep-away with will actually STAY here tomorrow and not take another ride around the city with you, so I won't have to arrange a pickup TWO days from now instead of one. Seriously.

MEDIA FINAL DUE TOMORROW.

THREE PAPERS TO TURN IN, TWO ALSO DUE TOMORROW.

PRESSURE TO MAKE GOOD GRADES MEETS CHANCE I WILL NOT MANAGE THAT.

I THINK IT'S TIME TO PANIC NOW.

WHY AM I ON HERE.

WAAAAAAUGH.

I believe the first part of this prompt was phrased to be redundant.

NEXT QUESTION, PLEASE.

Looking back at my older journal entries makes me cringe. Ugh.

Someone please tell me I'm not quite that stupid anymore. @_@

Not so much to achieve them as to thwart them inadvertently. So it would seem, anyway.

Ended up making a new account for fanart after all. I made it related to the "original art" account I made a while back so that it would be more apparent whose account it was. That, and I liked the name idea I came up with for it.

I'm not going to post what the two new accounts are for now, since what's the point of doing so if I don't know when I'll start updating them? I figure the original art account will likely get my attention sooner, since I've actually got some finished work I can put up for it. I'm not sure what I can put up in the new fanart account that's actually finished, aside from maybe some of the stuff I uploaded to my old account. But any of those that I move there will probably be shuffled off to Scraps anyway, since they're older. I'd like to have some stuff in the main gallery before I share the page with everyone else. I'll post again about them when I've managed that.

On a related note, I started playing around in Dreamweaver last week and made a basic site layout for myself. It's nothing fancy; no graphics or anything yet, just black text on a white background with all the pages basically saying "COMING SOON"... I hope I can do more with it. Having my own personal site would be kind of cool, especially if I'm planning to sell anything I make in the future (which I've been thinking quite a bit about, actually. Got a few ideas I want to explore for that). I'm not sure what all I'm going to do with it, though; I've got lots of ideas down already, but I need to figure out what I should develop and what I should cut out. Don't want to cut anything out yet, but it'll come down to what works and what doesn't when I have to decide anything about that. In any case, I'm likely not going to be able to do anything with it for a while, additional, smaller changes aside. I've not thought anything about hosts and costs and couldn't handle that at the moment, anyway; too much schoolwork to try to keep up with, and now I have a job on the weekends to pay attention to, too... so it's going to be really busy. By the time I'm ready to work on those things for the site, my dA pages should already have a lot more life to them, hopefully.

When that happens, though, is all dependent on my school stuff. Right now I'm feeling swamped and a little more than strained, and I need to work even harder to make sure my grades are better than they are now. I've got a few extra days to work on a couple of projects for two of my studios, but... I'm still going to be/already am in a crunch for them. My stop-motion project is one of them. I hope I can manage to finish it.

So, I've got a stop-motion animation project that's due in a couple of weeks, and I've been trying to figure out some specifics regarding the character I want to animate, since I'm wanting to do a segment of my assignment in claymation. Before I can actually make the character, I need to make an armature for him/her. (Not really decided on a gender and I'm kind of thinking I don't want to. He/she's supposed to be pretty young and a little androgynous in features anyway.) And, before I can make the armature, I need to settle on the proportions of the character's figure. I'm trying to decide between two different versions of this kid and I'm kind of stumped as to which one would be better to go with. I'm talking "better" as in "easier and/or more practical to manipulate", because he/she's going to be bending over and straightening up, climbing out of nothing, twisting halfway, walking, and making fairly intense expressions. (Though I read that I can just make multiple heads and the like for that last part.) In short, I need to make sure I can move him/her around like I need to.

So, if anyone can take a quick look at the two versions I have for his/her build and make suggestions about which one looks like it'd be better to go with, I'd really appreciate it. Here's the picture for them:



A couple of people I've shown this to already have suggested I go with the one on the left that's four heads tall. I'm not sure I should, though, because A) he/she looks like he/she might be a little too thickset like that and B) four heads tall is, as I've found out, an infant's proportions. I wanted to make the character young, but not THAT young. So I don't know if it'll be appropriate, even considering this is a little on the cartoony side.

Also, the other segment of this animation is intended to be hand-drawn and I have a lot of movements I want this kid to do in that part, too (mostly walking, making faces, making frustrated gestures, and slumping down and standing back up again suddenly). I could probably do that okay with the kid on the right, but I'm not sure how it would look if I used the kid on the left, since he/she is a little thicker with four heads' worth of height.

As an aside, both versions are actually drawn to the height I want the figure to be (about eight inches tall). So going with one version or the other doesn't mean I'll be working with a taller or shorter figure, just one with bigger or smaller proportions.

At the moment, I'm honestly not really looking for critique on this one unless it's related to how either version is going to look and behave when actually put together with armature and clay. I think I have the different parts of the body about to the size I want for each of these versions and really would only be going back to modify either form slightly at this point. I just need a few more opinions about the better scale to work with, and then I want to move on so I can get this character put together and animated. I hope nobody holds that against me.

Suggestions, then? Anybody? Please? :X

Do raw veggies and fruit count?

I'm not sure what I want to do with my current deviantART page. Aside from comment threads I respond to, I've really not been putting any life into it. The last time I apparently submitted anything to it was more than two years ago. It's not like I've upped and stopped drawing or anything... I still do it all the time. But I don't think I really have anything finished that I want to put on there. Hell, I don't even know if I have ANY personal art that I've finished in all this time (that wasn't just crap done with a touch pad, at least)... most everything that I could call "done" is stuff I've done for school. I don't think it's really because art classes are sucking up my energy to draw; maybe they do a little, but... I think, in general, I just don't seem to have it together where I can take a picture or an idea and really, actually put in everything to finish it. And I really want to change that.

In the meantime, though, my dA page has essentially been left to rot. I've gone for fairly long periods without even going onto the site and checking stuff. I think I've only really popped back to any sign of life on there again because of classmates I know who also use the site. I mean, I check for updates to the people I watch, and stick my nose in places where it shouldn't go on occasion, but... that's been about it for the last two years. I don't really want to leave it this way, but... if/when I start uploading to the site again, I'm not sure I even want to upload it to that page anymore.

I mean, I made that account six years ago, when I was fourteen. I picked a pretty stupid name for it and uploaded a bunch of anime pictures that I had hand-copied from references and were not exactly new by the time I put them up. I've not really updated it much at all in all this time (I've got three, maybe four pages if you count the scraps I've put up), and... well, the majority of it is crap. And fanart. I want to get a little more serious with the stuff I put up -- possibly one of the reasons why I end up finishing things less often: the anality of a perfectionist coupled with the attention span and dedication of a gnat. But even though I'm struggling to work that dynamic out, I still want to put up something of higher quality than what I have previously. Even if it's not OHMYGAWD AMAZING, I still want to show something more worth looking at, you know?

I think I'm pretty sure of one thing at this point: at least as far as original, more serious stuff goes, I don't want to put it there. I want to put keep it on another page. I've tried this before with Sheezy and I'm not really sure it worked out. But... I kind of want to try again. I've already made a new account on dA for this purpose, actually, and picked out a name that I like. It's currently empty right now, unfortunately... has been ever since it was made. I'm guessing I should at least update it with some of the stuff I've done for classes; I do have images of a couple of those that I can put up at the current time. Other than that, it's waiting for me to get my act together and finish some of the stuff I have lying around. I don't know how long that will take.

I don't know what I'm going to do with my old account, either, for that matter. I'm not sure I want to keep using it, but I'm just as unsure about whether I should just purge it completely and start fresh with a new account for fanart. I still draw fanart quite a bit, so it's not like I'd just close the page down and not give myself a new place to put up what I like from what I've been making. And I don't really want to keep my fanart and my original art together in the same account anymore, so I definitely don't want to put it in the empty account I've got right now. Going with a new account would let me pick out a better name... but I'd also lose the feedback I've gotten on the stuff I have on there and it might be harder for everyone whom I talk to or who watches me (for whatever reason) to find me at the new location. I'd leave a journal up saying where, but... well, I guess if anyone doesn't bother checking the journal, maybe I wouldn't really be losing them at this point anyway. Probably lost them years ago.

I'm still not sure, though. Do I simply go through and hide/purge the worst of the bad stuff from my gallery and then keep using it, or do I make a new one entirely so as not to worry as much about the older stuff? ... And when am I ever going to get my ass in gear and actually finish some of the artwork I have lying around? It's not like I don't want to...