SPACEMANTIS

spacemantis — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:16:51 GMT

HAPPY EASTER

Posted without context

spacemantis — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 01:32:24 GMT

YOUR RATE FOR COLLECTING ITEMS IS:

spacemantis — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 02:08:58 GMT

No, this isn't a Christmas Loot wrap-up, 'cause seriously, who's ever been interested in that? I asked for nothing, got some dishes, a GPS, a Bowser-shell backpack (courtesy of pixelphile) and some plastic ponies from nunuu. Fascinating, huh!?

No, this is definitely more of a year-in-review entry vis-a-vis my New Year's Resolution, which can be found in the post preceding this one. Whoops! Guess I kinda forgot I had a LiveJournal in 2010! Seriously, though, it's not THAT far back, but maybe a little too close to this entry for comfort. Anyway, the resolution was this:

"RESOLUTION FOR 2010: Replace the old and busted in my life with new hotness"

So let's just tally up the score, here! In roughly chronological order:

1.) KOMPUTERMACHIN

Out with the old:

In with the new:

Unlike its namesake, the new computer STILL LIVES! Haven't done much artmaking on it this year, of course, but it's all tricked out for it; been dicking around in SAI PaintTool a bit lately, and I like how it handles my insane inking style.

The old machine's still dutifully serving in the living room, despite a brief scare the other week when it wouldn't turn on at all. Pulled it out, cleaned about a pound of dust out of the system, replaced a fan that had been steadily deteriorating for the past few months, and alakazam, it's back to playing host to all my media and charging up/syncing with the iPod. Speaking of which...

2.) DIE MUSIKPLAYEN

Out with the old:

In with the new:

Actually, I'm not sure if THIS is the new iPod, or if it's the 8GB version I owned for a single night before I realized 8GB was ENTIRELY TOO SMALL to hold all my dumb anime and video game music. It LOOKS like this, anyway!

Just as with the old system, I repurposed the old iPod- it now holds pretty much my entire Christmas music collection. The battery life isn't NEAR what it used to be, but it spent most of this holiday season plugged up to the media PC in the living room, kickin' out the holiday jams.

3.) DER SMURFENSPLOSION

Out with the old:

In with the new:

I still don't know what in the hell the previous owners were POSSIBLY thinking. This... this just wasn't a good idea by any metric. I've noticed that I spend a lot more time in the office now that the walls don't give me a headache if I stare at 'em too long.

4.) LE TELEVISEUR

Out with the old...

In with the new:

This has been a REAL revelation. Shortly after I got the new TV, I stepped my cable package up to include HD channels and upgraded my Netflix account to include Blu-Ray discs. I never knew what went on in those extreme margins you never see in 4:3!

Pity it makes all my classic consoles look like crap. Which is why I do most of my retro-gaming via emulators on the media computer these days!

5.) DER TAKENPICTUREN

Out with the old:

In with the new:

So I went to PAX this past September and had just the BEST old time, but one sore point that kept popping up the entire weekend was the fact that my little Canon Powershot A590 just wasn't keeping up with all the pictures I wanted to take. Shortly after getting home, I realized I had about half as many pictures as I THOUGHT I did because there was now a 10-second gap between the time I'd press the shutter and the time the camera would actually record the picture. Didn't matter which picture mode I was in, didn't matter how fresh the batteries were, and it didn't matter how free the memory on the SD card was- it was just getting pretty pokey.

Fortunately, I had a leftover Best Buy gift card from my birthday and some pretty sweet coupons from buying the TV, so I cashed all those in towards a new DSLR camera! And... well, the photo of the old camera there is the third serious picture I've taken with it. WISE PURCHASE, INDEED. Oh, well, I'm sure it'll see plenty of action once I drop two month's salary on a neckstrap and a bag and a flash and a few new lenses and all the other crap you need to buy when you're the new douchebag owner of a DSLR camera.

6.) CAN U DRAW ZERO SUIT SAMUS GETTING EATEN BY MIDNA WHILE GETTING BUTTSEXED BY FUTA ZELDA

Out with the old:

No, seriously, get out and stay out:

'Cause seriously, just how many nudie pictures of Nintendo characters does DeviantArt need?

Y'know, it's kind of ironic, in a way. Waaaaaaaay back in the year 1999, I started doodling Peach pictures because almost nobody else was doing it, or if they were, it wasn't NEARLY as well-published as it is today. Gradually, I started seeing more and more Peach art, and y'know, that was cool.

Then she got a spot in Super Smash Bros. Melee, and everything changed- she got a FANBASE. Suddenly, she was a fanart A-lister! At one point, she had FOUR simultaneous husbands/soul mates/t r u e l o v e r s that made the rest of us look SANE. Fanart of her EXPLODED and was all over the place- some even got on the mayor!

(I still wonder how things would've been different if the game didn't allow you to peek up her dress.)

But whatever- when I was stuck for ideas for a REAL picture, it was always fun to crank out a quick piece of Peach peril or Daisy disaster. Seemed like I was getting stuck for ideas more and more often, though, and eventually, the admittedly-creepy Princess snuff smut BECAME the real pictures. I might not be remembering correctly, but I think it was ALL I drew between 2005 and 2008.

I paid lip service to giving up the Peach 'n' Daisy smut; seemed like every other Journal entry I wrote at DevArt was about how I was REALLY hanging up my villain cloak and drawing MORE INTERESTING stuff in the future. Never seemed to happen, though. And though I appreciate the kind words of encouragement everyone over there gave me, it really didn't help matters much when at LEAST once a week I'd get a Note asking if I'd draw Peach doing this, or that happening to Peach while Daisy did the other.

So in an effort to affect REAL change, I took the only step that made sense- cutting off that whole part of my doodling history. Nuked the DevArt, deleted all the drawings on my Rydia space- all my stuff's still available in some form on the Internet, but it's nowhere I have any control over. And you know, it's kind of worked. Sure, I'm still drawing Peach stuff- I'm currently waist-deep in an art trade with an old DevArt acquaintance- but I've been sketching some decidedly NON-Peach stuff and it's been rather refreshing. Here's hoping I can share some of it soon!

(Okay, so honestly, I just wanted to see if todd18 could draw something for his impenetrable Mario/Sonic/DBZ crossover without my art being readily available for him to "reference.")

7.) DAS AUT-This listing title removed due to infringement on the copyright of Volkswagen of America, Inc.

Out with the old:

I mentioned in last year's Year In Review entry that the main goal of this entire exercise was to replace my busted-ass '98 Eagle Talon. Let me tell you just HOW busted-ass my old car was!

The good: The engine had 99,000 miles on it, it ran okay and it was paid for. END OF LIST.

The bad: I still owned it YEARS after it started falling apart.

The busted: Roof liner was almost entirely peeled off, as was 4/5ths of the original paint. It was beginning to rust in spots. The driver's door had to be opened from the inside. Nearly every extra on the car was busted- the cruise control button would not engage the cruise control and would actually FALL OUT if pressed, the sunroof switch would disappear into the sunroof motor housing if pressed, the power window/locks panel on the driver's side had fallen into the door (and subsequently been repaired) on three separate occasions, the windows sometimes wouldn't roll back up after being rolled down, the reverse lights stopped working maybe two years after I took ownership of the car, the turn signals and emergency flashers no longer worked, the exhaust system was 80% rust by volume, the entire thing was pretty dingy from the previous owner, and you know what, I make enough money at my job to where I shouldn't have to DEAL with this level of shabbiness.

So 'round about November, I started looking into new cars. All I knew at the time was that I didn't want something huge- a hatchback would be ideal. Something that was good on gas, fun to drive (straight-gear strongly preferred), and that could handle a 100-mile trip without SOMETHING ELSE screwing up on it. So I started looking around, did some test drives, and found something that hit all of my needs perfectly:

So this is what I'm driving now! It's a brand-new 2010 Honda Fit, 'cause god DAMN it, I'M going to be the one to ruin a car for a change. It isn't the most powerful thing on the street and won't win me any MANLINESS points, but damned if it isn't a fun little box to drive around. Surprisingly roomy inside, too, which is what pushed it up over the Ford Fiesta.

Well, that, and not feeling like a golf cart when I hit the gas.

It was a stroke of luck that I found the thing when I did, actually. It had JUST been offloaded at the dealership- it still had the protective film all over it when I took it for a test-drive, and the total mileage on it at that point was 4. FOUR MILES. What REALLY made it lucky was the fact that it's a stick; apparently, only 10% of Honda's new Fits (possibly their entire product line?) are straight-gear, as it's being slowly phased out to all-automatic. No other dealership in a 50-mile radius had one on-hand, nor did they expect one in the immediate future.

I'd been anxious to get rid of the old car all year long, but dreaded the car-buying experience. I don't like to haggle, and that's essentially what the customer-auto salesman relationship is entirely BASED on. Turns out I needn't have worried; apart from good ol'-fashioned in-person shopping, I'd solicited prices from various dealership websites. I'd unwittingly done BOTH at the dealership I ended up buying from, and there are few things more thrilling than seeing the salesman who INSISTED he just COULDN'T go lower than $XX,XXX on a car eventually have to let it go for the dealership's Internet quote of $YY,YYY, where $YY,YYY is more than $15,000 less than $XX,XXX was.

So yes, everything worked out for the best, and just in time, too- as I was driving the old car to the dealership to negotiate the Fit's purchase, I turned on my lights and heard a relay clicking away in the steering column. It was still daylight (yes, I drive with my lights on in daytime, wanna fight about it?), so I couldn't be sure, but I just KNEW my headlights were strobing all the way to the Honda lot.

In addition to all that, not only did I keep my job- I've actually gotten HALFWAY DECENT at it; enough to where exciting things may be happening very soon. Family's all healthy, life's just radical in general; overall, 2010's just been a massive success by any measure. There are MAYBE one or two things that could POSSIBLY make being me more awesome, and I'm hoping to work on those in the 2011 to come!

Anyway! I know I totally WON 2010, but I hope you guys had a great year all the same and that 2011 treats you even better! Now 'scuse me- gotta go juggle two New Year's Eve parties.

Doin' my bit for the economy

spacemantis — Sat, 15 May 2010 20:58:11 GMT

I got a copy of 3D Dot Game Heroes!

...But Shax, you ain't got no Playstation 3!

Now I do!

...But Shax, you ain't got no TV that can play HD games! I mean, look at that thing:

Best it can do is 1080i and it's 4:3 aspect ratio besides! The setup menu's in Sanskrit! A PS3 is gonna look like CRAP on that!

...................

I... I got a new TV.

NEXT WEEK: I get a second job at Burger King to help recover from all this.

DON'T MESS WITH NETFLIX

spacemantis — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:49:33 GMT

So around the time I proposed a hilarious series of out-of-context screencaps of Osamu Tezuka's greatest creation, thanks to the entirety of the translated 1963 episodes of Astro Boy being available via Netflix.

And the VERY NEXT NETFLIX CYCLE after I posted that image, I noticed something wasn't right- got TWO DISCS of the Sopranos instead of a Sopranos and an Astro Boy! And when I sent one of those Sopranos discs back, I got ANOTHER Sopranos disc. Well THAT was odd- even if the next Astro Boy disc was already on loan, they should've sent me the next available one.

But alas, when I went to the queue to do some reorderin', I found that EVERY DISC OF 1960S ASTRO BOY had mysteriously vanished! Whole damn thing's now on "Save" availability!

Netflix, you have well and truly bit off my pecker. Those sets can be had, but the cheapest I've seen 'em going for is $80 each :(.

So... guess I know where a chunk of my refund's going this year!

Best New Year's Resolution Ever

spacemantis — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 02:17:58 GMT

OLD AND ~~BUSTED~~REPURPOSED:

NEW HOTNESS:

Stupid HD performance bringing my Windows Experience score down- everything else is 6.8~7.2.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

OLD AND BUSTED:

I've had this mattress pad since college. This is probably the BEST corner on the thing.

These sheets aren't much younger, either. They're super-comfortable, but upon closer inspection...

...you can clearly see the dividing line between broken-in and just plain BROKEN.

NEW HOTNESS:

New quilt-top mattress pad!

new sheets!

EFF YOU HOLES

OLD AND BUSTED:

My 5th gen iPod. It has been an excellent little MP3 player, and under that bruised and battered case, it still looks fresh out of the package. Unfortunately, having used it extensively damn near every day since I bought it back in 2006, charging it every night, syncing it goodness only knows how many times and restoring it maybe once or twice a year, it's gotten to the point where the battery lasts all of five minutes before dying on me. For a while, I mitigated this weaksauce with a two-FM-tuner solution- used the world's worst FM transmitter but pretty decent power adapter to keep the Pod powered up via vehicle battery, and a Griffin FM tuner that plugged into the headphone jack that would actually generate a signal strong enough for the car/work van's stereo to pick up.

But then I realized my new year's resolution was to quit putting up with exactly that kind of shabby crap.

NEW HOTNESS:

And now I ain't got to! I listened to podcasts all day Thursday while doing menial tasks at work and STILL had enough battery power for the hour-long commute home. Haven't done that in... damn, at LEAST a year.

Oh sure, it's good for more than just playing my collection of terrible music, but at the moment, I'm still bowled over by the fact that I can listen to more than one-and-a-half songs when I'm not in the car.

DO WHAT I WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE

spacemantis — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:58:47 GMT

Last computer-related entry, I swear- it's just that WHOLE NEW WORLDS of what these things are capable of have opened up to me!

Got bored this weekend and decided to make a proper fricking network. Before, I had the new computer (henceforth referred to as "the desktop"), the old computer (henceforth referred to as "the server") and the laptop all linked up via a jury-rigged amalgamation of loosely-themed shared folders. Permissions were all out of whack- could write stuff to the Shared Mess folder, but not to the Shared Projects folder, sometimes it'd take a while before the server's folders would come up in the Network tree- it was just a damn SHAMBLES. Besides, there were other problems to consider- did I REALLY want to have to set the new computer up to handle torrents? Was I gonna have to share a bunch of .avi/.mpeg folders on THAT system as well? Didn't I plan to make the old computer a file server to KEEP that from happening?

All these problems disappeared when I discovered REMOTE DESKTOP ACCESS. Suddenly, it doesn't MATTER that I don't have a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse to plug into the server when I want to move stuff around! I don't HAVE to shuffle files from the laptop to a writeable folder on the server, to be moved to its PROPER location sometime in an undetermined future! I can have stuff downloading to the system they'd ultimately end up on in the first place!
I was managing torrents from the bathroom. It's really the only way to be. All it took was realizing that I NEED a password on my account on the server computer. But still, heavy was my heart, for all the remote file sharing capabilities in the world mean little in a world suffering from a CRIPPLING drought of new Game Center CX episode torrents :(.

There's a Japanese BT site I used to check a couple days after new episodes premiered in Japan, and more often than not it'd be available with plenty of seeds. All that stopped somewhere around Episode 95; the site went offline for a couple weeks, and when it came back, all of a sudden- no Game Center CX :(.

But hey, the net is vast an infinite, right? Surely there's another pusher-man that can give me my fix! You'd think that, right?! YOU WOULD BE WRONG.

Japan apparently doesn't have much time for the torrents. No, Japan fileshares like it's 1999 through a variety of programs bases off the bad ol' days of WinMX. Seeds, peers and ratios? Forget that- we're throwin' it back to nodes, cache and hashes!

Considering that my frantic searches for "ゲームセンターCX" #whateverthelatestepisodeis yielded

the show's official site on fujitv.com
two or three viewer blogs that talk about how HI-LARIOUS the episode was
a ton of "search aggregator" sites that are about as useful as those bullshit placeholder url search sites you get when you mistype a URL like www.youtuube.com, and, finally,
a couple sites with ShareDB/Winny hashes for the episode

...it was obvious that this would be the only way I'd be able to procure a local copy. Watching 'em across three different Youtube/Dailymotion/SayMove entries is all well and good, but those things have a habit of disappearing after a while- an .avi on your hard drive is forever. Well, by comparison, anyway.

But eh, y'know, Wednesday nights are pretty slow around here; nothing really good on TV between 10 and 11, and I'm between Netflixes, so why not get a completely foreign filesharing program up and running? And that's exactly what I did! With just a liiiiiiiiiiiiittle help from the Internet, in the form of a page that pretty much tells you exactly what to do.

Not three hours later, I was all caught up on my Kacho Backlog, and I realized I was up ENTIRELY TOO LATE on a work night. I'm LOVING this computing thing again. It's just a damn shame that my newfound joy is based in activity of a morally dubious nature! Is it really pirating if all I'm doing is downloading a TV show that has no clear means by which I could support it domestically?! I'll think about it later- Arino's about to get whooped in Ninja Gaiden II.

ADVENTURES IN COMPUTERCRAFT, the Conclusion

spacemantis — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 03:29:37 GMT

Well! Turns out the only problem with the new system is that it doesn't have built-in support for the ancient Aramaic that my pre-SP1 copy of Windows XP was coded in. A brand-new copy of Windows 7 arrived in the mail today, and installed with nary a hitch.

Thanks to everyone who offered help in the last entry's comments! Even mads- belated congrats on the naturalization, by the way :D.

So far it's been a perfectly lovely system, but I haven't had much of an opportunity to see what it can REALLY do; looks like I'll have to whip up some ridiculously huge Photoshop monstrosity to really put it through its paces :D. 'Course, before that, I'll have to get a new scanner- my poor ol' HP ScanJet 2200c doesn't have any drivers more recent than XP. Oh, well, that's carrying on a proud tradition- I initially got it because the Visioneer scanner I was using under Windows 98 never got a proper XP driver.

In the meantime, though, gotta see about learnin' some stuff about how to turn my old system into a proper file server wth full remote access. I basically have it set up wtih a buncha shared folders at the moment, but ultimately, I'd like to just shove the box in the closet, hook up the power/network cables, and access it remotely from the laptop or desktop to move files around/back stuff up/work torrents/etc. I need more HOBBIES, man.

ADVENTURES IN COMPUTERCRAFT

spacemantis — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:40:04 GMT

A sotware nightmare in three acts.

Right on- finally got all my parts and pieces- let's put us together a computer!

~*~ One Hour Later ~*~

Oh my, this thing is beautiful. But it really needs an OS, 'cause I didn't buy it to look pretty! Where's that XP disc- aha! In the old motherboard box, right where I left it.

INSTALLING WINDOWS XP. WHERE DO YOU WANT IT- IN THE LEG, ARM, CHEST OR HEAD

One great big 500GB partiton, please

OK, YOU'RE THE BOSS. INSTALLING....

SETUP IS NOW INSTALLING DEVICES- 36 MINUTES REMA-IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER

Huh, that's weird- let's try it again...

36 MINUTES REMA- WHAT, DID YOU THINK I WAS JOKING?

But I don't actually have anything other than the bare minimum of hardware installed. Let's see what the Internet says...

INTERNET: "The F2 BIOS this board ships with is runny shit. FLASH IT WITH F4."

Oh, wow, Gigabyte makes flashing easy! Says right here it can be done with a floppy or a USB key. USB keys are for dumbasses, but I've got a whole SHOEBOX of floppies- I'll just borrow the drive outta my current system! Let's get that hooked up.

~*~ Thirty Minutes Later ~*~

OK! Time to decompress this file and transfer it on over... WHAT THE HELL THE BIOS FILE IS 2MB. HOW is that supposed to work with a floppy!? Dammit, I gotta buy a USB drive, but it's 11:30 on a Thursday night and it's too late to go anywhere. Guess I'll try again tomorrow!

~*~ The Next Evening ~*~

Whew! Good thing I picked up that USB drive at lunch. First, though, let's give installing a shot again- maybe it just needed time to come together.

36 MINUTES REMA-OH, IT'S YOU AGAIN.

Ok, Internet, let's see how much you know about it. Flashin' some BIOS!

~*~ Some time later ~*~

...

~*~ Actually, quite a bit of time later ~*~
WHY IN THE HOLY HELL WON'T YOU RECOGNIZE THE USB DRIVE AS A SOURCE, QFLASH!? I don't HAVE a floppy drive! You're not gonna find it there! The BIOS is on the USB drive that's PLUGGED INTO THE BACK OF THE COMPUTER! It's right THERE! I've even borrowed a different, smaller drive from the parents just to make sure it isn't that you don't like the one I bought! What am I gonna have to do- format one of these to be bootable?!

~*~ One Bootable USB Key Later ~*~

Huh, that's apparently EXACTLY what I had to do. Won't boot from the drive, but at least it sees the BIOS revision now. Good enough for me! Now, let's try installing again.

36 MINUTES REMA-OH HEY, NICE NEW BIOS YOU GOT HERE, BUT I STILL GOT A PROBLEM

Ohhh, Internet. You're such a disappointment. Well, that's one of Microsoft's suggestions down- let's try some others. TAKE 1: Turning off damn near everything in the BIOS!

36 MINUTES REMA-WHAT, YOU DON'T NEED SOUND, ONBOARD LAN OR USB PORTS?

Take 2: Swap out the memory! Let's try it with just one DIMM in the primary RAM slot...

36 MINUTES REMA-FUNNY, SEEMS I ONLY REMEMBER HALF AS MUCH AS BEFORE, BUT I BET YOU REMEMBER ME

...Now take that out, and put the OTHER stick in the primary slot...

36 MINUTES REMA-OH, NOW THERE'S THE OTHER HALF OF MY MEMORIES, BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FIRST HALF?

Well hell. Can't take out any installed hardware because I need every bit of what's installed in the thing for basic operation. Haven't installed any drivers because I can't even install the OS. I really hate to bug the IT guy at the office with something dumb like this, but the dude builds computers every week- let's see what he knows...

IT GUY: "Is your XP Service Pack 1?"
ME: "I think it's pre-Columbian. The CD key's in Mayan pictograms."
IT GUY: "Yeah, those versions might be having a hard time installing to a 500GB hard drive, try partitioning, like, an 80GB space; I think that'll work for you."
ME: "Okey-dokey!"

36 MINUTES REMA-IT'S A LITTLE CRAMPED IN HERE, ISN'T IT?
Fuck you are the worst Windows installation EVER. Now it's midnight on Friday and I'm too worn-out to beat my head against it anymore. Sit there and I'll make you my problem again tomorrow.

~*~ The Next Morning ~*~

... Man, that computer's just lurking in the living room, waiting for me. I KNOW I put everything in properly. I KNOW everything's compatible with Windows XP. Why the hell won't it just WORK already? And if it's this much trouble now, what's gonna happen when I try to upgrade to 7? Maybe I should just do that to begin with... but damn, I spent nearly all my disposable income for the month on the computer to begin with. I can't really afford even the $139 that an OEM copy of 7 Pro 64-Bit costs.

Maybe I should make it someone ELSE'S problem. There's a guy down the block with a shop- I hear he's good. But damn, last time I trusted my system to a local guy, I had to break-and-enter to get the thing back before he tried to skip town. I even have a LiveJournal entry about it on the old account, but it happened sufficiently long ago that I'd be embarrassed to link to it ('cause it's probably full of emoticons =^o.O^=;;;;;).

But I'd just be tempted to tell him to go ahead and try putting 7 on there. On the OTHER hand, he's undoubtedly better equipped to try and see if it's a HARDWARE issue. Either way, it's gonna cost me money. But if it results in a new computer that fucking WORKS, wouldn't it be well-spent?

...Upgrading used to be fun, right? It hasn't ALWAYS been a chore, has it?

ADVENTURES IN LIVEJOURNALING

spacemantis — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:22:32 GMT

TEST POST- just to see if LiveJournal spits a "Error updating journal: Client error: Sorry, there was a problem with content of the entry" message at me.

EDIT: Apparently, the problem it was having was the image I was trying to embed! What does LJ have against Scissors Jaguar!?

First Dream of the New Year

spacemantis — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:47:18 GMT

Well, the first one I REMEMBER, anyway, and it's gonna have me puzzled all day.

A strange little man only referred to as "the doctor" (Yes, yes, I know, let me finish) had summoned a number of people to gather to try and help him solve a centuries-old riddle. Transporation was arranged- I and a few others (none of which I distinctly remember) were to fly aboard a massive aircraft. The interior looked, in general, like the interior of a modern middle or high school, but with bedrooms and lounges in place of classrooms. Everyone aboard, including myself, seemed to be between the ages of 12 and 18.

The flight was made largely without incident, though at the end I was afraid I'd lost the duffel bag in which all my regular clothes were packed- for the duration of the flight, I'd been wearing the awful, slightly-inspired-by-anime clothes I wore throughout high school. Big, baggy, oddly-colored pants, plain solid-colored T-shirts and plain, off-brand sneakers- imagine going to a Chess King at the mall and picking out the closest outfit to Ryouga from Ranma ½ as you can find. Luckily, I found the duffel bag stashed, along with my laptop bag, in the overhead compartment of my janitor closet/bedroom.

Anyway, we arrived (returned to our normal ages) and disembarked in a thoroughly Victorian area. Color palette was grey and brown; lots of rain, an urban cityscape that was grimy and cluttered but at the same time kind of cozy. No trace of sun, horses and old-timey bicycles everywhere, though we were met by a gentleman in a sophisticated car- along the lines of an early model Rolls-Royce. He drove us through the town at a breakneck speed until coming to a stop on a large hill right outside town. There we were to wait for others to join us before pressing on, so to pass the time the doctor took from the trunk of the car a collection of smallish cannonballs and rolled each down a drainage ditch leading back into the town, tallying an arbitrary score as each one would launch from the end of the ditch and smash something unseen, but not unheard.

Eventually a handful of older folks joined us. We were told that all of us were masters in certain areas that would allow us to help on the journey, though we weren't acknowledged for our areas, so I STILL don't know what I was a master of. Anyway, our masters of religion would be matching wits with the Caliph (name forgotten, but it was one of those fakey Muslim names people who don't know Arabic come up with), interred in a cemetary a short walk from our present location. We were given a series of warnings; since the Caliph was a very wealthy man who guarded his treasure very jealously, we weren't to stare too hard at anything at his tomb, nor were we to show any signs of wealth of our own. Jewelry, fashionable clothing items, gadgets, even pocket change had to be kept out of sight until we were away from the Caliph's tomb.

So we made the short walk and came to the tomb of the Caliph. The sky above the tomb was a surging mass of black clouds pierced by a almost blinding light. When light broke through the clouds, it illuminated a great golden expanse, punctuated here and there by golden pillars topped by pieces of golden sculpture, great golden statues and squat braziers that burned with otherworldly flames. The statues weren't still; the busts atop the pillars rotated lazily, and the statues milled about, almost human-like but far more stiffly. Being statues.

As we approached, they all settled into their natural roles- the busts on top of the pillars stared straight ahead. Some were unfinished- abstract representations of the head with crude features- but most were intricately detailed into horrible, inhuman shapes. The statues, too, were human and at the same time monstrous- long, bony fingers, completely hairless and spotted scalps, eyes that bored right into you. It was at this time that I realized I was clutching a quarter in my pocket; hurriedly, I let it go.

Just as the walk was getting unbearable, we came to the center of the tomb. A rectangular sarcophagus of golden bricks, upon which sat a massive marble slab, making up the desk to what looked like a giant golden museum exhibit. There were artifacts of the Caliph scattered about in cases of diamond and crystal, with golden plaques and interestingly-shaped wall panels telling us all about his life in several different languages. There was a man there, dressed in the I'M ON VACATION style of any tourist in any city of the world- checkered polo shirt tucked into short-shorts, socks pulled up to the knee, baseball cap on, backpack slung across one shoulder. The doctor took aside a few of our large party and had them speak to the tourist, who would turn and speak directly into a small compartment in the main display of the tomb. The box would answer by pulsing with small but intense flames. The tourist would then relay the flames' message to the masters. In this way the living communicated with the dead Caliph.

And I woke up before the conversation finished or we found out what the next leg of our journey was. Honestly, I haven't a clue what any of it actually MEANS; I haven't seen a Doctor Who episode in almost a year at this point and the doctor of the dream resembled none of the Doctors I know of. There was nothing particularly sexually-charged about it, though in the high-school aircraft someone did find a peephole in their room that looked directly into the most obscured portion of the bathroom next to their cabin, but nobody ever used it that I can remember. Probably doesn't mean ANYTHING- just a clustering and jumbling of images in my mind that, frankly, kinda surprised me with how vivid they were. Those moving sculptures are gonna have me creeped out for a good long while.

2009 STOP

spacemantis — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:22:58 GMT

Fucking YES

This is EXACTLY how I wanted to end 2009: Stuck in bed with a RAUNCHY head-cold. Though the power to rattle windows using only the newly-acquired, snot-augmented BARRY WHITE levels of bass in my voice is undeniably awesome, I could really do without the splitting headache, random aches and pains and total lack of any energy to do anything more than lie on the couch and try to finish up Kamen Rider Den-O for the fifth time.

So 2009! This is pretty much it! I'd forgotten all about it until I checked my LJ Friends page and saw all the "boo 2009 you sucked" posts, and said "Oh, right, I should make my own year-end post." Not because anyone's actually interested in reading ANOTHER one, but because I still have JUST enough Internet Narcissism to feel like I HAVE to.

So how'd we do for Resolutions, Shax?

"New Year's Resolutions: ...Don't have to make any. As it stands, I'm pretty much perfect already."

SUCCESS! If anything, I ended the year even MORE perfect than I started it. Yes, I know it's a logical fallacy 'cause if something's "perfect," it can't GET better, but sometimes Nature Finds a Way, in much the same manner that you sometimes end up with two-headed animals.

But seriously, though, banner year by any metric. Got nunuu down here for a week-long visit again, managed to make it back up her way, got a new job doing what I love for more pay and benefits that keeps me challenged, and honestly, I'm still coming down off the awesome, AWESOME Christmas we just had.

Really, my only complaints about the year are that it seemed to pass by much too quickly, and I didn't get as much drawing done as I'd have liked. Though considering what I've BEEN drawing for the past couple years, maybe that's not entirely a bad thing. Regardless, I HAVE been doodling a lot more than my stagnant DA gallery would let on; hopefully I'll be able to translate my random bouts of sketching into something a bit more presentable in the new year.

RESOLUTION FOR 2010: Replace the old and busted in my life with new hotness, as mentioned last post. I'll probably pull the trigger on that computer order in the next week or two. Part of the tax refund's going towards a new TV (with the other part put into savings for a trip back to PAX 2010- another regret of '09 was missing out on it again, but going to Toronto was far more important). Sometime very soon, we'll be seeing about a new car. All this, in conjunction with getting this house a bit more settled into- tired of beige (and worse) walls and third-generation hand-me-down furniture.

Kinda materialistic, I know, but hey- at least I'll have a better shot of sticking to these resolutions than to the generic lose weight/get in shape/meet new people resolutions you USUALLY run into.

Only 364 shopping days left 'til Christmas

spacemantis — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 04:28:40 GMT

So last entry, you all met one of the shining stars of Shax's Holiday Haul: the Billy Herrington Halloween version Figma. I mostly wanted it to help mitigate the overpowering girliness in my action figure collection (largely caused by my Revoltech Queen's Blade collection), but truthfully, he's just a hell of a lot of fun and lends himself to so many hilarious scenes. I could easily do a Billy pic a day for an entire year- sort of like a beefier, more nude version of Stormtroopers 365- but I just don't know if the Internet's quite ready for it.

Along with Billy, Kou sent me a couple statues of Rin and Len Kagamine. I've had my eye on these for a while; I'm not usually a huge fan of statues, but I really like the twins' design, and Rin's spunky BUTT BUTT BUTT pose just fills me with joy. The problem with having the Kagamine twins as your favorite Vocaloids is that you've gotta buy TWO pieces of merchandise. Two Nendoroids, two Figmas, two 1/8 scale PVC statues- but you just can't have one without the other! They're a double act!

As amazing as Kou's gifts are, they're but a part of this year's incredible loot. Grandma gave me a couple pairs of socks and a stick of deodorant. The thought might count, but seriously, take a minute to consider the thought behind THAT present. Fom aunts and uncles, I got a Salad Spinner, a travel manicure kit and a couple loaves of pumpkin and banana bread. Got a pie carrier and a copy of Terminator: Salvation from my best friends; the former's a guileless attempt to get me to bake more cranberry-apple pies for them, and the latter's the latest in a long line of movies they buy for me because THEY really like them.

From family, I got a $50 American Express gift card from my brother and his family, and from the folks, I got an RC Mini-Cooper, a 12-pack of handkerchiefs (which would've come more in handy before I got prescription medication for my severe allergies) and a ton of candy. Also, this:

Cute! More to the point, PACKED FULL OF CASH, which is really all I asked for from ANYONE this year. $700 in cash, to be precise. I kicked $100 of that right back to the folks to pay off various debts I'd incurred over the holiday season- tree money, reimbursement for the art table I bought for Carlos' kids, that kinda thing. Still, that left me with a tidy $600 to put towards fulfilling part of my 2010 New Year's Resolution: to replace the old-and-busted in my life with new hotness!

Yes, as I look around me, I'm surrounded with traces of a life I should start leaving behind. I own an HDTV, but being one of the first HD models released, not only is it a CRT that weighs a FUCKTON (metric, not SAE), it's also has a standard-def 4:3 aspect ratio. My car- a 1998 Eagle Talon- still runs like a champ, but that's the absolute best that can be said for it- the reverse lights haven't worked in three years, half the paint's fallen off, the heat doesn't work, the windshield fogs up to near-zero visibility if you so much as LOOK at it, and lately it's developed a charming habit of not letting me in on the driver's side, even when the door's unlocked- I gotta open the driver's side door by going around to the passenger's side, leaning across the seat and opening it from the INSIDE. My desktop computer was already approaching obsolesence when I built it in 2003.

I don't need to put up with this shabby crap! I'm at a point in my life where I'm making more money than it takes me to survive; I can afford to increase my standard of living! And that's just what I intend to do in the new year.

Unfortunately, this is gonna involve a little research on my part. I've never shopped for cars; all I know is that I want something that's kinda small, fun to drive, gets decent gas mileage and doesn't cost a fortune. I know a bit more about TVs, but not enough to go out and buy one TONIGHT.

The computer, though... that's something that needs to be addressed first, I think. Which is sad, because of the three upgrade points I'm looking at, it's probably the one I know LEAST about at the moment. See, aside from buying an external hard drive or two, I haven't paid a BIT of attention to PC hardware since I put my LAST system together- again, at the end of 2003. Going into Christmas, I already knew I wanted to put any Christmas money towards a new desktop PC, but didn't wanna start picking out parts and pieces until I knew how much I had to spend.

Well, now I know! And I spent most of the day after Christmas building systems and tearing them apart again in Newegg.com's Shopping Cart. Only now, it seems like I've hit on a combination that offers a fairly decent balance of performance and value. Submitted for your perusal: my next PC candidate. Please, take a look, let me know if I'm crazy or just plain dumb.

CPU: Intel Core i5-750. Pretty much the only i5 processor to be had at Newegg, it continues my proud tradition of building PCs based on just-out-of-date processors, but the LGA 1156 socket is shared by several i7 chips, so stepping up isn't too big a hassle should it become necessary.
MB: Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R. Gigabyte boards seem to come highly recommended, and this model in particular seems to be the Board of Choice for the i5 processor.
HSF: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. Fluid bearings, yo.
RAMs: 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1333.
GFX: HIS Radeon HD 4670. Honestly, I dont' know from video cards. While it's refreshing to see that the ATI-vs-NVIDIA debate's still raging after all these years, fact is that the last card I bought was an ATI All-In-Wonder waaaaaaaaaay back in... hell, must've been around the middle of 2003. It's still in my system to this day. Anyway- not going to be doing a ton of gaming or anything, but I DO want something nice and beefy enough for my Photoshoppin' and video-watchin'.
PSU: Corsair 650W. Again, this is an area I'm not really up on; figured there's a ton of 600W-700W PSUs up for sale, so that should be sufficient for the majority of systems. I'm not looking to cram this thing full of drives or extra graphic/sound cards or what-not, but I would like for it to not suddenly shut off if a fan comes on.
CASE: Cooler Master Centurion 5. Tempted to ditch this for a standard beige box, transfer my current system over to that and put the new guts in the Lian Li mid-tower I have at the moment. Still, I added a couple fans to the Lian Li- two 80mm intake fans in the front and a 120mm exhaust fan in the top- and the air balance has always been ATROCIOUS in that thing as a result. Pulls negative static, which means dust gets into that thing from EVERYWHERE. Better to just start over with a new case, I think.
HD: Western Digital 500GB/7200RPM/32MB Cache. Brand loyalty FTW. Every drive I've owned for the past decade has been Western Digital.
DVD: Sony Optiarc. I'm considering DVD drives as the modern-day 3.5" floppy- every system needs one, and for the most part, it doesn't matter who makes it. I'd just use the Plextor that's in my current system, but I've been having trouble reading from CD-Rs on that thing lately. Maybe a driver issue, but seeing as how the current system's about to start a new life as a file server, it'll need a DVD drive anyway.

All that, a tube of thermal compound and shipping brings the grand total to $812.59, meaning I've gotta kick in about $213 of my own money. Which is STILL not a bad deal for a brand-new computer! Still, I put this here for input from people who actually know from modern computers. Anything look blatantly wrong, here? Is Newegg still the place to shop, or has it been supplanted- can I save some money elsewhere? Gimme a hand, and maybe I WON'T pollute your Friend's List with a Billy Herrington photo a day for a year :D.

Happy Holidays, Everybody!

spacemantis — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 02:40:43 GMT

Bert, Shax. The Rapture of Billy. 2009.

(Yes, zerochan, you're off the hook.)

Don't Mess With Pompous

spacemantis — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:52:08 GMT

Lots goin' on around here lately, and if I get a free minute between now and New Year's, maybe I'll write about it! For the time being, though, enjoy part 1 of what's sure to become an ongoing series- DON'T MESS WITH POMPOUS

Parental guidance, please!

spacemantis — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:06:59 GMT

Need input from the family folks in my Friends list on a point of order considering guest etiquette.

I have a married couple I hang out with at least once a week- we get together, eat some dinner, watch some TV, and just do generally low-key stuff since they have twin two-year-old girls. Usually I go to their place 'cause its a lot less hassle for me to come visit than it is for THEM to come visit ME.

Last Thursday, however, they decided they wanted to come to MY place. I made some dinner, they came over, and we ate and watched TV for a few hours.

Now, these kids are pretty close to being toilet trained; they're in Pull-Ups these days, but they're pretty good about usin' the big-girl toilet. They DO have accidents from time to time, though, but the whole time they were at my place, they each used the bathroom a couple times, so I figured everything was fine.

Fast-forward to this afternoon; I was working in the office and suddenly, I hadda go. The guest bathroom's just outside the office, so I opened the door, and WHEW, SUCH A STENCH. Sitting right there in the trash can: a soiled Pull-Up.

I... I'm at a loss. At no point did the mother mention that she'd dumped a loaded diaper in my bathroom trash can. What's the protocol, here? Is it incumbent upon me as a host to check these things when they leave? Is this something I'm supposed to KNOW? I mean, I've lived on my own for goin' on six years now, and I'm pretty expert at Guess That Smell, and y'know- two-year-olds, usin' the bathroom, maybe certain things should be taken as given?

Or am I right in thinking that I need some new damn friends? I'm a gracious host; sure, if you wanna take your nasty diapers home yourself, I'm not gonna stop you, but I don't EXPECT you to take your soiled diapers all the way to the curb. At least let me know it's IN there, right? Don't let me accidentally stumble upon it two days later, then have to make a special trip to pick up air freshener to try and get the smell outta my house!

But that's just the single-guy perspective; is there some unwritten rule I'm unaware of?

There are worse problems to have, I guess.

spacemantis — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:22:56 GMT

I have a quandary!

I am at a point in my life where I'm paying more and more attention to my home electronics situation- specifically, the fact that I've had the SAME home electronics since just after graduating from college. That was longer ago than I care to think too hard about, but fact of the matter is that it's probably time to start upgrading stuff.

But damn, folks, where to START! Well, I guess with a quick rundown of what's led to this whole mess. Honestly, as much as I go on about RETRO-GAMING and CLUB 8-BITS and whatever, there's much to be said for the current generation of home consoles, and they're approaching a price point where I don't mind just going out and picking one up. Problem is, I already own the one that doesn't strictly require a decent HD setup!

Of course, I actually DO own an HDTV. It's a 36" set I've owned for... shoot, goin' on seven years now. Seven years ago, HD wasn't NEARLY as ubiquitous as it is these days- I bought this set strictly because it was an actual HDTV and not one of those poseur HD-READY sets. So when it went on sale at Amazon for a paltry $1,250 or so, I jumped all over it.

Unfortunately, being an early HDTV, it has a couple quirks you won't find in modern sets. For one thing, component video is the best you're gonna get out of it. Not too unusual- nobody even knew what USB 2.0 was back in 2002, let alone HDMI. It's also a CRT; sure, you get great contrast with it, but it weighs a FUCKTON and you can't mount it on a wall. The WORST thing about it, though, is its 4:3 aspect ratio. 16:9? Pssh, who wants black bars on the side of their screen when they're watching broadcast television?! Letterbox DVDs will look terrible, too- all squashed down to fit a screen that's too wide already!

But still, it's an HDTV, and it'll display a 360 or PS3 game just fine! It'll probably just letterbox the picture- am I correct in assuming that most games are widescreen these days? Still, though, that's taking a 36" TV and throwing away a good 6" or so of the picture at LEAST.

So yeah, need a new TV. But do I REALLY? I don't watch that much of the stuff- all I use my current TV for is playing the occasional game, watching the local news and streaming video of ancient forgotten cartoons and wacky Japanese TV shows from my PC. Granted, those latter two could definitely benefit from a TV upgrade- even the local news is broadcast in 16:9 HD these days, and considering most fansubbing groups apparently want to encode their stuff with the highest possible quality, my magic Xbox is having a hard time streaming most modern encodes- it sees the typical .mkv file as less of a video format and more of a Powerpoint slideshow, so I'll probably wanna put together a dedicated media-center box in the near future as well. On the other hand, my laptop streams even the gnarliest HD encode just fine, and it's not like I CAN'T watch the news on my current set, so it boils down to just wanting a new TV to play new games on. New games on systems I don't actually own, and am partially holding off on buying because I don't have a TV that can make the most of what they have to offer. Catch 22. Possibly even 23 and 24!

Special Delivery from Snowpoint City

spacemantis — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:56:11 GMT

Artpost! But first, an addendum to the last entry- completely forgot one of the most significant finds I made up north!
One of the few non-Toronto places Kou found for us to visit was a little place called Toyratt just down the road from her office. It was apparently a store crammed with '80s pop culture- games, toys, posters, records, everything for the aging Toys R Us kid who never grew up. So we jumped in her car and set out in search of this magical mystery store!

And it was a SEARCH- wno problem finding the office park the store was located in, but as we cruised around the parking lot, Toyratt itself was nowhere to be seen. I checked the address on my phone just to make sure we were in the right place, and it was indeed supposed to be there, right where the dumpy-looking plumbing store was....

Wait, what kind of plumbing supply store has NES games lined up in its front window?

Sure enough, Toyratt shared shop space with a variety of toilets, sinks and other plumbing fixtures. Further inspection revealed that Toyratt is only open on Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday by appointment, indicating that it's most likely the side business of a plumbing contractor. Still, it's a pretty decently-stocked side business; they had a bit more room than A&C, and while they didn't carry quite as many newer games, the retrogame selection outclassed the Toronto store handily.

'Course, it's kinda hard to judge them based on inventory- a store with a handful of $5 and $10 NES games will beat a store crammed to the rafters with NES games for $20 apiece any day of the week. Unfortunately, I had the exact same problem here as I had at A&C- faced with an overwhelming selection, I couldn't think of anything I actually wanted to LOOK for. Until, that is, I spotted a few boxes packed with old consoles and accessories in the back.

The NES Max is the bastard son of the Official Nintendo peripheral family. Not quite as ubiquitous as the Zapper, nor iconic as the Advantage joystick, nor as legendarily useless as ROB, it's the controller people never remember- it just never caught the userbase on fire. And that's largely because of the godawful cycloid D-pad. Consisiting of a large red disc with a raised thumbpad set inside a black ring, the cycloid allegedly catered to gamers who demanded quicker reaction times and more precise control than the standard plus-shaped D-pad could offer. In reality, it worked about as well as you'd expect a pseudo-analog digital device to work- you'd frequently press right when you meant to press down, and that's when you'd press any direction at ALL since, at first touch, you'd think the red disc part of the cycloid is the business end of the equation when it comes to movement, though in reality all the cycloid does is push the black border ring down in the appropriate direction.

Still, this was my go-to controller as a kid. I think I first read about it in one of the several hundred How to Win at Nintendo Games you could pick up for two quarters at the drugstore back in the day. Jeff Rovin claimed the NES Max made the games "too easy," and I knew this was the edge I needed, and I laid some grade-A begging on the folks until they finally bought me one to shut me up. I don't know how much EASIER they made the games, especially when I'd usually send Simon Belmont plunging off the edge of a platform into a pit instead of descending safely down a staircase because the directional controls were so touchy, but those turbo buttons were a GODSEND against some of Mega Man 3's more annoying enemies. Looking at you, Holograph Megamans. Overall, though, the thing just felt better in the hand with its curved body and angled buttons. Not quite on the ergonomic level of a Dual Shock, of course, but a definite improvement over the stock NES controller boxiness.

I can't remember where or when, but at some point, my NES Max went missing. Did I sell it to a smalltime game shop when I needed bill money in college? Did I lend it to a high-school friend, who then lent it to another friend who then lent it to someone I didn't even know? Is it, in fact, still sitting in my folks' attic somewhere, at the bottom of a cardboard box full of other childhood things I've forgotten all about? Don't know, and probably wont' find out anytime soon, 'cause I found the one in the photo for $10 CanuckBux at Toyratt. It's a little scuzzy- I'll probably be taking it apart in the near future and cleaning the terrifying crud that's encrusted around the center part of the cycloid off- but otherwise it looks and works just like new. Plugged it in, fired up Mario 3, Turbo-assisted Raccoon Tail flight... it was like coming home again.

There- now that I've taken care of THAT, let's get on to the main attraction- PRETEEN LESBIANS

Greetings from Snowpoint City

My quest to clear out the Current Projects folder (and my slow, steady descent into madness) continues unabated! Here, at the slightly-older-than-the-Industrial-Age request of a close online confidant, we have a snuggly scene featuring Dawn from the latest Pokemon anime series and her friendly coordinator rival, Zoey.

The friend- who wishes to remain anonymous, but let's call him Hunter Olive- is a pretty big fan of this particular pairing, and it's easy to see why- not only does Zoey's tomboy-ish style mesh nicely with the more girly Dawn, but they're one of the friendliest rivalries in the entire Pokemon series, which seems to be built on setting rivals up to be ULTIMATE EVILS or something. At least, that's MY interpretation; granted, I don't follow the show very closely.

I should say I didn't follow it, because if there's one thing Hunter Olive doesn't stand for, it's shoddy research going into a project. To prepare for this picture, i watched pretty much the entire run of Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl, and all of Battle Dimension that was available up to the point at which I started sketching for this picture. Probably could've done without some of the realizations that came along with it- namely, that Dawn, being the newest female lead, is a fresh-faced young trainer just starting out on her Pokemon Journey- a pilgrimage taken by many young people in the Pokemon world when they reach a certain age.

That age being ten years old. WHOOPS!

Oh, well- it's not like she's the FIRST lolicrush I've ever had. And it's not like it's terribly GRAPHIC or anything- at first glance, you might actually miss the fact that she's as nude as she first appears. Oh, who am I kidding. The picture more or less follows Hunter Olive's original suggestion- something cuddly and warm and fuzzy involving the two girls- make it clear that they're having adult goodtimes, but not being horribly BLATANT about it. I like to think I came as close as one can and still incorporate a five-alarm pantyflash in the equation.

Hunter, of course, flipped his lid when he saw it. Suddenly, it became much more than a simple request- it developed into a full-scale collaboration. I originally pictured the scene as the front of a postcard to former lead Pokegirl May, who meets Dawn and Zoey at one point in the new series; Hunter took that concept a step further, designed a BACK for the postcard, and planned to have another friend of ours actually write a letter from Dawn and Zoey to May. Stamps were designed (that's mine, serving as the image thumbnail), plans were made to have yet another friend write dedication messages for the front (you're off the hook, by the way :D), I designed a NEW back for the card that looked a bit more Pokemon-ish- it was snowbaling into a thing.

Then, suddenly, Hunter Olive had a moment of self-reflection and realized that following through with the project would probably draw the attention of some folks he'd rather avoid scrutiny from (lol partyv&), and decided to call the whole thing off. He still loves the pic, though, and it's another project I'm able to move from my Current Projects folder to Finished Projects, so everybody wins!

And now, appropos of nothing, a fairy riding on a frog's back.

Torontor, the Northern Monster: Part II

spacemantis — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:52:07 GMT

"This week?" HA! That line works every time, I swear.

Seriously, though, I had the best of intentions, but "this week" turned into a 72-hour workfest, culminating in a weekend spent working 7am to 9:30pm on both Saturday AND Sunday, then making a three-hour drive home Sunday night. I managed to partially make up for missing a weekend by spending most of last Monday passed out on my couch in exhaustion, but there's just nothing like the real thing, and I've done my best THIS weekend to do as little as humanly possible!

But shoot, last time I talked about all the haute cuisine I ate while in Toronto... shoot, going on a month ago now; let's talk a bit about the great places the city has to offer a couple of dorks!

In addition to plotting all sorts of food joints on our Google Map for the trip, we also spent a good deal of time looking for awesome nerd stores. And brother, did we find them!

In all, we made two trips to the big city, and of course I only realized I'd brought my camera along for the second. Missed out on snapping pictures of the amazing array of sex shops and lingerie stores all up and down Yonge Street. Virginia is for lovers? Hardly!

I also missed taking pictures of the stores we actually DID go into, but that's all right since they were almost exclusively the comics shops of Yonge and Queen Streets, specifically:

One Million Comix
Hairy Tarantula
Grey Region
Silver Snail, and
3rd Quadrant (I think? Kou, did we actually go to this one? Comics stores tend to blend together after a while)

Brief side note: We also went to a lot of Chapters bookstores. A hobby of mine whenever I go to a bookstore is to find the latest book published by whatever pundit can't just shut the hell up already THIS week and do my best to obscure the display so as to discourage anyone from actually buying that garbage. It warmed my heart CONSIDERABLY to find that, despite the fact that Glenn Beck had published another book mere DAYS before my trip, I couldn't find a copy of it ANYWHERE in the New Non-Fiction/Best-Sellers displays in any of the bookstores I went into! Couldn't find books from any pundit of any political stripe, for that matter!

Just as I was starting to get weirded out, though, we went to One Million Comix, and found a middle-aged ex-hippie rambling on to a friend about how damn crooked the entire Canadian system was, and in the space of about ten minutes, heard him advocate for every political system from anarchy to socialism to oligarchy to monarchy. He was the only example of I really get what's goin' on in the government, maaaan I found, but he scratched my itch for the rest of the trip.

I actually used the camera on the second trip, though- let's see where we went!

A & C Games

We almost walked right past this place; I was gonna use that Mario Kart mural painted on the low wall as a landmark, and of course we approached the store from the OTHER direction. A&C looks tiny from the outside, but every square inch (whoops, sorry- CENTIMETRE) of the place is slathered in a thick, viscous coating of RETROGAME. Pretty decent selection of modern games, too, but who wants to play THOSE when you could pick up a boxed Famicom copy of Dragon Quest III for 20 CanaDollars? I felt bad for the fact that I just didn't have anything I'd wanna buy in mind when I went in, 'cause I would've LOVED to throw some cash at these guys. Actually, there WAS one thing I had my eye on, but it was a little more expensive than I thought I could afford at the time; not gonna tell y'all what it is 'cause I want it to still be there when I dispatch Kou to pick it up for me.

Going through A&C made me aware of one important fact: though I claim to be a diehard fan of the old-school, I'm hardly an active participant in it. I need a LIST for when I go to places like this- stuff I want to look for, grails to go in search of; just walking in to see what they have, as is my usual practice, is just overwhelming. I really need to decide on somethign to collect, I guess; maybe I should go back to my first home console loves- the Atari 2600 and Sega Master System. Maybe I should just work on building up my NES collection. It seems like a damn shame to spend so much time wishing that there were viable Western analogues of those cheap, extensively-stocked Japanese gamin stores, only to not actually buy anything once I DO find one.

Kou gave 'em a few bucks for a pixelly Simon Belmont figure and a Kirby plush, which mitigated my guilt just a bit.

Anime Xtreme

I love me some Figma and Revoltech, and I've had an eye out for the out-of-print Yotsuba DX Summer Vacation figure for a while now, so when Anime Xtreme turned up in our search of places to go, I figured they might actally have it for less than the ULTRA-RARE LIMITED EDITON COLLECTOR'S ITEM prices the few places you can still find it online are charging!

Well, turns out they didn't, but it was still a worthwhile trip; I had no idea that the latest volume of Pluto was out, for instance, and in their scattered gashapon collection, we found a set of Astro Boy figurines that I couldn't pass up. More on those in a bit!

They also had a Danboard Mini Amazon Version for $50; just a bit too rich for my blood. I'll just have to content myself with my boring ol' plain version.

Chinatown Centre

We stopped by here 'cause it's where KikiWai used to be, but alas, no more. So we spent a little while walking around and checking out all the awesome bootlegs. A Hello Kitty shirt covered in unintelligible English drew Kou's attention, but unfortunately, the store wasn't open :(.

We also used some pretty frightening public restrooms! And that's pretty much it for Chinatown Centre. The rest of the area yielded a few more discoveries; checked out some stationery and gifts stores, and tittered childishly at a couple of humorously-named stores.

Mmmmheh heh mheh- "ding dong." Hnnhehheh.

We went and saw and did much more than this; the full photo set with commentary will be goin' up at my Flickr gallery after Yahoo reactivates my account!

So hey, let's see what riches I brought back with me from the frozen north:

BOOKS! Like I said, we spent a LOT of time in Chapters. That's where I picked up Black Jack Vol. 1 and the new League book. I'd been meaning to check out the former for a while- I've been on a HUGE Tezuka kick recently, which I'll get back to in a moment, but 1910 was a true unexpected pleasure. As a huge fan of impossibly-complex crossover works, I've always been a huge fan of this series. Even when the main content is nigh-inscrutable (as in some of the materials in Black Dossier), it's still a great read just to spot all the references.

Haven't gone back through 1910 for all that yet, though, but I DO have the incredible urge to check out the Threepenny Opera just to get a better understanding of the main thrust of the plot. Probably won't be for a while, though; I only JUST got "Mack the Knife" out of my head. Something to do before the next chapter in the story comes out, I suppose.

Yotsubato! vol. 6, Pluto vol. 5 and Cromartie High School vol. 12 all came from our comics-store excursions. Yotsuba was a particularly nice find; how long's it been since Volume 5 came out, anyway?!

Here are those Astro Boy gashapons from Anime Xtreme! Apparently, Astro Boy's eighth power is to destroy your browser's horizontal resolution!

I've been working my way through the various Astro Boy series; I've watched most of the 2000s series, I have the 1980s series lined up and ready to go, but at the moment, I'm about seven discs into the original 1960s series. It's a bit of a slog; "inconsistent" is certainly a charge that could be levelled at the old series, but considering it's widely regarded as the first television anime ever produced, I gues that's to be expected. Still, I eat this stuff up, and my recently-developed hunger for Tezuka stuff helps me soldier on through it.

When Kou found this set in the store, I knew I had to get it- after all, it contains a figurine of Hige-oyaji and Uran beating the shit out of a bomb. Hige-oyaji's been one of my favorite characters since his turn as hardnosed detective Shunsaku Ban in Rin-Taro's Metropolis movie, and my favorite episodes of the '60s cartoon invariably involve him somehow. The Pluto figurine really didn't hurt, either; I'm really liking Urasawa's Pluto manga, which prompted me to check out the World's Strongest Robot storylines in the other incarnations of the series.

ANYWAY! The real trouble figure here is the one of Astro and his mom. Sure, *I* know that she's just refueling him, but I imagine houseguests would probably wonder why a woman's holding a giant syringe-like device, poised to insert it into a little boy's butt. Then again, considering the fact that I collect AND display the Queen's Blade Revoltech series, I guess I don't really have much further to sink!

Kou and I got together with fellow Toronto resident Pipps and a few of his friends to watch 9 one afternoon. He showed up bearing a plastic shopping bag full of tiny figurines! Inside were a full set of Fullmetal Alchemist figurines that Kou took possession of, and I snatched up these Azumanga figures. It's almost a complete set; Pipps kept the Kagura figure since she's his favorite. Still, if I HAD to be missing one of the Bonkuras...

In addition, there was a Kubricks-style Chiyo-chan that makes me wonder if the REST of the cast has similar figurines D:. See? It really shouldn't be hard to transfer some of this figure obsession to videogames.
All in all, not a bad week's vacation! Thanks again to Kou and her awesome mom for putting up with me living in their basement for a week :D. Can't wait to do it again!

NEXT TIME: That damn art post I mentioned last time. Don't have any more double-work-weeks planned for th future, so maybe I'll actually get it up in a more timely fashion!

KITA NO KUNI KARA CORN-CHIWA

spacemantis — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:51:53 GMT

Jeeeeeeeez, enough with the 95-degree heat already! It's the middle of September* already! Summer's practically over! Where's the damn FALL!?

I mean, just gimme a SIGN already-

!

!!

!!!

Now that right there's what I'M talkin' 'bout! See you next year, shorts and sandals- bring on the jackets and pumpkins and yams and all that other ill Fall shit!

*Yeah, I know, September 27th, but it actually WAS the middle of the month when I took these photos. Been a lot goin' on, y'see!

First things first, I got a new job. One of the contracting firms my dad's company contracts through made me an offer and I jumped on it- started working for them full-time at the beginning of the month. At the moment, my duties involve doing pretty much everything I was doing for Dad, but for more pay and better benefits. Just got my company insurance card on Friday, so hooray, I can get sick again! Eventually, I'll be moving on to the service department and troubleshooting problems in nice, conditioned spaces, and there's not a thing about that job description that I don't enjoy.

For the time being, though, I'm working on a controls changeout for several government buildings in a small South Carolina town, so I've been spending three to four days of each week on the road, trying to get that finished up. Should be done by now, too, but I'm just FLOORED by how big a baby a fully-grown government employee can make of himself when you take away the mercury-switch adjustible thermostat they've had on their wall for the past two decades and replace it with a simple temperature sensor with no little lever they can move to make it warmer or cooler.

Still, it's been a lot of fun so far, and I've learned a heck of a lot about the business in the past month, and I'll never complain about making MORE money for doing stuff I love doing! Just waiting for Monday to roll around so I can give my doctor a call, put that insurance to work and find out just what the hell's gone wrong with me in the past five years!

But y'know, there's just no better way to celebrate getting a new job than to take a week off after only working at it for TWO weeks! ...No, wait, that's an AWFUL way to celebrate. Can't be helped, though- I made arrangements to head up to Toronto to hang out with nunuu waaaaaaay back in March, and the new boss was well aware of it when he hired me, so all was well- got on my plane on the morning of the 16th and headed up north for a week of arctic adventure!

Well, not really- Kou and I had done a LITTLE planning, mostly in terms of what kind of nerdy stores we were gonna try and find in the big town itself, but mostly we just planned to hang around, play games and just make the most of our week together. And that's exactly what we did! Together, we put a truly EMBARRASSING number of hours into the likes of Muramasa: the Demon Blade, Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Scribblenauts and the second Game Center CX DS game. More on all that in a bit- I've got more pictures and I wanna show 'em.

We spent a couple of days wandering the mean streets of Toronto, and we did so with two goals in mind: to find excellent but inexpensive food, and to seek out the kind of stores that cater to the fiercest desires of geeks like ourselves. Both missions were accomplished ADMIRABLY.

A few weeks before the trip, I sought out the expert opinion of Toronto's own jlunar to help me find two types of food:

Poutine.
Excellent noodles.

And in the absolute FLURRY of recommendations that followed, I made note of a couple of locations!

For the poutine, Kou had already staked out a location called New York Fries which, as I came to find out, turns out to be a mall food court standard in Toronto. Jen nixed that idea pretty quickly and suggested we try the Mr. Tasty Fries truck that's found parked out in front of City Hall most days, but if we wanted an actual restaurant, we should probably head a few blocks over to...

Smoke's Poutinerie"

This place does poutine, and they do it very well. I've always been a big fan of piling unnecessary stuff on top of french fries- ketchup goes without saying, but I've found there are very few fries worth eating that aren't made even better with copious amounts of malt vinegar, pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, nacho cheese, chili, onions or any number of other accompaniments that double the calories, fat and flavor. I ordered a small since Kou, for WHATEVER reason, wasn't too visibly thrilled at the idea of eating gravy-and-cheese-curd slathered french fries.

Turns out this is one of the few Canadian restaurants I encountered with a uniquely American idea of "Small":

There was enough here to challenge even MY appetite- and I pretty much stayed hungry my entire trip! I gave it my best shot, though, and it was well worth the pain- despite the fact that "cheese curd" is one of the single most UNAPPETIZING names for a food since "mechanically-separated chicken," it turns out it's pretty tasty! Even Kou couldn't say no, ultimately, and between the two of us we finished it off pretty quickly.

Good stuff all told, and relatively easy to make at home! I've come to discover that premium cheese curds are made a town or two over from the folks' mountain house, and I'll have to see about procuring some during the next family trip. Wanna try throwing some mushrooms into the mix... we'll see how it turns out.

Now, Poutine is a pretty uniquely Canadian thing; noodles, much less so. Fact of the matter is, though, that I haven't had a good bowl of noodles since returning from my year in Japan, and that was over a decade ago now. It's just not something that's commonly found in my area; sure, we have a pretty rapidly-growing Asian population in Raleigh, and I haven't thoroughly checked every corner (or ANY corner for that matter) of Charlotte, but the fact remains that, unless you're after sushi, teppanyaki, expensive fusion bistros or standard Chinese kit-restaurant fare, your choices for Asian cuisine are pretty limited around here.

Town like Toronto, though? Place is LOUSY with noodle shops! After checking the menus of a few of Jen's recommendations online, we settled on Kenzo Ramen.

Kenzo Ramen

Now this is what I was looking for in a noodle joint- a nice variety of main dishes and accompaniments, and nothing on the menu over about $10. The KING OF KINGS Ramen was VERY tempting, but ultimately, it looked a bit too seaweedy for me, so I went for the next-best-thing Netsu Ramen with a side of gyoza. Good stuff, and worth the ten-year wait!

High points: The food and price, of course, but besides that, the decor- the menu proudly displayed "Now serving ONIGIRI," and just in case you were curious, they had a poster that really made the sale. ONIGIRI for you!

Low Points: The fact that I got THREE CALLS during my bowl from one of the dudes I now work with, despite telling him pretty early on that I was, in fact, still on vacation and unequipped to do anything work-related. Fella can't seem to take a hint!

There's loads more to show and tell, but all this talk of food has reminded me that it's nearly 8 and I have a steak and potato that ain't gonna cook themselves. More to come sometime this week, including a delayed art post!

FARTPOST

spacemantis — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:44:54 GMT

Sat down this past weekend and decided to get crackin' on my Current Projects folder. There are eight things in there, and six of them can be rocked right out if I just sit down and draw something already.

WARNING: It's gonna get raw, and most links behind this cut aren't safe for work.

One of the oldest projects in there was a picture I was drawing as a gift for an acquaintance at DeviantArt. JaCrE does his thing sprite-style, and for a short time he was all into making sprite versions of my terrible Peach 'n' Daisy pictures. You can find 'em in his gallery, but he compiled all of them together- along with a few sprites he hadn't uploaded to DevArt- and sent them to me a while back... along with a couple concepts that were influenced by my work. See if you can guess which!

So seeing as how he invested so much time and trouble converting my video-game-princess junk back into something that LOOKS like it came from a video game, I figured I'd reverse-engineer his process by way of thanks and draw him something based on pretty much the entire left-hand side of that .PNG. Fired out a sketch, scanned it, and sent it in to him; he replied with "Wow, nice!" right around the same time I was finishing up the flat shading and deciding that I couldn't STAND the damn thing.

So I started over again- sketched, sent a preview, inked, flatted, abandoned the whole thing in disgust and vowed to try again some other time. A TIME... THAT NEVER CAME.

Until this past weekend!

Actually, I didn't start over again as was the original plan. No, I took the flat-shading of the newest version and decided I'd try to make something presentable of it. So from Saturday afternoon to Sunday evening (wtih a break to entertain a houseguest Saturday night and watch Harvey Pooter on Sunday afternoon), I broke six kinds of Photoshop nasty all over it, and on the other end of the weekend, I had a finished picture. Emailed it off to the guy right away and sent him an Note with the URL at DevArt, but I haven't heard back from him, and god DAMN it somebody's gonna take a look at this thing, and it's far too raunchy for DeviantArt, so it might as well be YOU.

Shax draws tentacle rape. No, really. Don't click on that thinking I'm making some kind of pun or something- it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a subject I don't plan on ever working with again, but every now and then, something like this can be fun. No backstory this time, no establishing dialogue- though there IS a happy ending.

One project down! NEXT TIME: Shax draws preteen lesbians. Yeah, we're circling the bowl, here.

SUP FATTY WHY DON'T YOU GET IN SHAPE HUH FATTY

spacemantis — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:08:21 GMT

Shax: If you could change one thing about me, what would it be?
Kou: I dunno!
Kou: Your tum tum?
Shax: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shax: My stomach?! But I like my stomach- it's where I keep all my food!
Shax:So you'd rather have washboard abs, eh? Or maybe it's too hairy and I need to shave it?
Kou: D:
Shax: Hey, you brought it up- elaborate >:3!
Shax: Seriously, I'm legitimately curious about this kinda stuff
Kou: Less pudge D:

This conversation took place almost two and a half weeks ago. Kinda unfortunately timed, as it also took place just before I had to head down to South Carolina for a couple days of work, and just before the July 4th holiday during which both my Dad's and nephew's birthdays took place. Soon as all THAT was out of the way, though, Kou and I struck a bargain- the details of it must remain secret, but basically, it boils down to me having to lose twenty pounds in two months.

So basically, I weighed myself at the beginning of last week and tipped the scales at an even 260. This did not come as a huge surprise, as I've basically been hovering between 255 and 260 for the past decade or so. I gotta say, I think I carry it well, but still, that's probably a little more than a man SHOULD weigh. Beyond that, though, there was plenty about my lifestyle that could use some improvement- I'd eat, on average, a pizza a week, fast food burgers every day for lunch, and for a span of two months or so I was in the habit of getting a chicken fillet biscuit combo from Bojangle's* every weekday morning before work. My work demands a certain degree of physical fitness- there's lots of walking and climbing and carrying heavy loads, but in most cases, it's not anything PARTICULARLY demanding, but after getting home at the end of the day, I didn't make any great effort to break a sweat.

(*Chicken filet biscuit: 454 calories, 21 grams of fat. French fries: 344 calories, 19 grams of fat. Medium Coke: 210 calories, no fat (phew). YOUR CALORIES ARE: 1008. YOUR RATE FOR COLLECTING FAT IS: 40g. AND THAT'S FIVE DAYS A WEEK, PEOPLE.)

WELL NOT ANYMOAR, SUCKAS. July 6th, I hit the grocery store and bought HELLS of fruits and vegetables. Completely shunned the delicious Italian sausages that had become a staple of my dinners- seriously, fried some of those things when Kou came to visit a few months ago and incorporated 'em into my already-delicious marinara recipe, and it was TASTY provided you didn't look too hard at the thick, waxy orange deposits it'd leave in the Tupperwares when you refrigerated them. I also passed up the cookies and crackers I pick up every time I go to the grocery store. I've eaten more salads in the past two weeks than I've eaten in my entire LIFE up to this point. More to the point, I've basically cut all the crap out of my diet- no more fast-food breakfasts that account for half my RDA of calories, fries are right out (which suits me fine since I'm not a big fan of fast-food fries to begin with); I don't get a giant sloppy burger when a tiny, less sloppy one would do.

It don't stop there, though! Before going to the grocery store, I also went to a running specialty store in Raleigh and got professionally fitted for my very first pair of running shoes. I live less than two blocks from the town's park, which features a nice mile-long walking/jogging track around a pond, and I've taken to walking it for thirty to forty-five minutes, at least four days a week. The old hometown of Fuquay is full of great walking paths as well, and I get together with a friend and walk a couple miles at least once a week over THERE, as well.

Recently, I've started working a little jogging into my wanderings. The first time I went to the park, I jogged a tenth of a mile, then walked about half a mile wheezing my lungs out. Wednesday, I upped that to jogging about three-tenths of a mile. Tonight, I did two-fifths. It's all done in one-tenth increments, with two-fifths of a mile of cool-down time, then jogging for anther one-tenth. I'm already recovering from these bouts a lot faster- within one-fifth of a mile, I'm no longer breathing particularly hard; once it becomes a little easier, I'll probably try jogging a fifth of a mile at a time. As it is, I've had to peel my shirt off after getting back from the park on my past few trips, and folks, it feels great.

All that walking and jogging is great for my legs, but to try and help build up my core and upper-body strength, I've started doing the Hundred Push-Ups Challenge. I'll be finishing up Week One tomorrow; I'm going through Column II at the moment, and once I finish those up, I'll probably do Week 1 over again on Column III and keep on using that through the remaining five weeks.

All in all, though, I'm kinda surprised at how easy a transition it's been to this newer, slightly-more-healthy-and-active lifestyle. It seems to be working, too- got on the scales on Wednesday, and I'm down to 253. That's seven pounds in ten days; if I can keep this up, I'm lookin' at losing around 40 pounds before the wagered time is up! Well, maybe not, but 20 doesn't seem to be that daunting a number anymore :D. It may just be my imagination, but I think I can SEE it working, too; the belly just doesn't look as big as it used to. Still nothing on the level of DEFINITION!, but baby steps, man.

There ARE a couple challenges I'm still trying to figure out, though. The biggest involves what to eat when I'm at work. Weekday lunches are a HUGE problem. I don't really have any means to keep food cold, and most of the time, there's no good way to warm 'em up when I'm on the job, either- every now and then one of the contractors on a project will have a microwave I can use to warm up some leftovers, but that's a pretty rare situation. Fast-food remains my best bet, so to help alleviate that, I've spent a LOT of time on different restaurants' websites, trying to figure out what I can eat that'll a) satisfy me until I can get home for dinner and b) won't end up being a CALORIC TERROR. Fortunately, I've managed to work out how to eat pretty much anywhere I used to for under 550 calories; the fact that I LOVE water really, REALLY helps. So does the fact that my lunches have gone from $6~$8 affairs to, in many cases, less than $5- I'm not just losing weight, I'm saving money! It's not as good as being able to bring my own lunch, though; might take some of those savings and invest in a lunchbox/cooler, start bringing sandwiches or something a couple times a week.

Eating with the folks is a challenge as well, since they pretty much only have tastes for things that are absolutely TERRIBLE for you. Dad and I had to go work on my uncle's air conditioner on Wednesday; on the way, we stopped by a restaurant Dad eats at every time he gets a chance. They specialize in barbecue, seafood and chicken; with the exception of that barbecue, EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE RESTAURANT IS DEEP-FRIED. I had a small plate of fried shrimp (figured that hey, might be fried, but it's still seafood), with french fries and deep-fried hush-puppies on the side. Felt positively AWFUL afterwards. That's generally how it goes; at least most of the places they like to eat offer a salad of some sort, but I still feel kinda greasy after eating even THAT.

BUT HEY, enough of me blathering on about drastic lifestyle changes and what-not; how 'bout another art post?

I have a folder sitting around on my drive full of sketches done by the same guy who did the Rosalina sketch I finished last time. I'm apparently a pretty bad influence on him, as he's started putting his OWN characters into compromising situations. So it came to pass that he sketched up a quickie of his original character Nova stuck ass-first in a gelatinous alien life-form. And so it came to pass that I decided to spend last Sunday learning how to ink and color via Photoshop's Pen tool:

Tracing and filling paths is a HELL of a lot easier than using the Lasso-Flood Fill method I'd been trying to get the hang of. Still trying to get the hang of managing Paths, though; I have an annoying habit of completely forgetting about them and, consequentially, they end up getting overwritten. Guess I need to train myself to pay more attention to the Paths window than the Layers one. Could probably use a bit more work, but I'm pretty pleased with how it came out considering I knocked it out over the course of five or six hours.

Anyway, think it's about high time I work on my OWN stuff again; we'll see if we can't make strides in that direction this weekend!

TO ALL ARTIST FRIENDS

spacemantis — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:42:25 GMT

General life update coming soon, but for the moment, I gotta put a call out to all my cartoon-liking friends: Any of you know of a decent repository of vintage animated feature posters? Ideally, what I'm looking for are things from the EARLY days of feature animation- posters for theatrical shorts from the '20s and '30s would be great, if such things exist. Not really looking for stuff to buy; I mainly need them for reference material.

All right- off to work with me.

i liek colering

spacemantis — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:24:10 GMT

Oh hey, been a while since the last art post, huh?

That's largely because I haven't been too serious about making any. From just before Christmas 2007 until somewhere around February of this year, we had pretty much an all-go no-stop work schedule at the day job; I'd work long hours during the day and get home wanting to do nothing more than watch a little TV and go to bed. Since then? Well, you see me updating LiveJournal at 9:30 on a Thursday morning; things have slowed down quite a bit.

Still, sixteen months is PLENTY of time to establish ANY habit, so whenever I have free time, putting pencil to paper still isn't my first instinct. Admittedly, this is also because I've come to be a bit bored by my own output. For the past couple years, it seems like if I'm gonna draw anything, it's gonna be either Princess Peach, Princess Daisy, or both, and more often than not they'll be staring right in the (metaphorical and literal) teeth of some grisly fate or another. It's fun, and my muse just keeps kicking out ideas for that kinda thing, but it got old BEFORE my Year of Working Hard, and neither time nor disuse have helped the concept regain any of its old appeal.

I'm also starting to get bored with my own style. I mean, it's one thing to draw nothing but Peach 'n' Daisy stuff. It's even WORSE when you realize that, in your dedication to keep them looking as close to their official models as possible (err, with certain embellishments here and there, of course), you completely fail at drawing a compelling facial expression. Seriously, Nintendo doesn't give the girls much in the way of emotional range; you basically get "anxious" and "not-anxious." Granted, the Nintendo Princesses are a pretty specific example, but honestly, I'd like to work in more cartoony elements into my stuff- give it a bit of life! Only thing worse than a stagnant body of work is a stagnant body of work that's all BORING.

My third major problem is just a general lack of motivation. From those first two points, you might think I'm just strapped for non-Peach/non-Daisy ideas, and nothing's further from the truth. I have a list of over 80 subjects I'd like to tackle, none of which involve Nintendo Princesses showin' their boobies. I've also been poking away at one of two pictures I'm hoping to use to put the lid on this whole Princesses-in-Peril thing; essentially, I'm planning to devote one picture each to Peach and Daisy in which I more or less burn through all the lingering peril concepts I have for 'em. I'm about halfway through the rough sketching for Daisy's; I've managed to fire out around 30 sketches for it, and though some (most) need a lot of work, I'm kinda surprised at how much I can get done if I put the time and energy to it. Still, at the end of the day, it's still me drawing Daisy over and over again, which cycles back to the whole "I WANNA DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT" problem, even though this is supposed to be the LAST of the Daisy stuff for a good long while, and arrrrrrgh.

So yeah- need a change of topic, need a change of pace, and need the drive to work on both those other needs until something cool comes out of it. With a long holiday weekend coming up, I'm hoping to address all three of those situations.

But hey, if I don't wanna draw princess-in-peril stuff, there's no law that says I can't sucker someone else into drawing it for me! A few weeks ago, a friend of mine was trolling around for ideas of something to sketch to get him in the mood to work on some other projects, and somehow the conversation turned to endangering Nintendo princesses. Now, this guy has a great cartoony style that I absolutely LOVE, but he's never drawn anything more risqué than a bared midriff, so while we were batting ideas back and forth, I never thought he'd actually follow through on any of them. But no, an hour or two later, he delivered the basic pencil sketch for this picture:

Danglin' Rosie

Warning: This image is brought to you by the color orange. It's the orangest thing you'll ever see. Do not stare directly into the picture; you may need to fashion a crude device out of a shoebox, paper towel tube and piece of paper to safely view it.

Somewhere in our conversation, we got onto the topic of Princess Rosalina and how I'd never endangered her, myself. Granted, she's a little more than a year old at this point and the other Princesses have had YEARS to cultivate a healthy crop of distressing scenarios, but personally, Rosie's always had a couple things working against her in that regard. It's tough for me to come up with plausible ideas for her for a couple of reasons.

First off, she lives in a giant flying castle in the depths of SPACE. Terrain plays a major part in most of your classic peril scenarios. Steaming marshes full of quicksand, endless deserts, bottomless oceans, thick jungles teeming with savage and hungry creatures- all these are staples of the peril artist's diet, and they're all settings that are fairly tricky to work a spaceborne Princess into.

Granted, space has its own dangers, but in a large part, most of these dangers are mitigated by the fact that Rosalina's a super-being.

Peach and Daisy are classic damsels-in-distress because, killer hang-time in Peach's case aside, they're largely defenseless. Hell, Peach more or less EXISTS to get captured by Bowser, which prompts Mario to have to run through individually-themed Worlds to rescue her, and thus we have a Super Mario game. They're quintessential Damsels-in-Distress, and it's easy to work with them in that regard.

Rosalina, on the other hand, has her castle attacked and its power source stolen by Bowser. Despite this, she personally seems none the worse for wear; she certainly isn't kidnapped, and despite being stuck in the dead of space with no go-juice for her castle, she's getting by okay. Bowser's not the most gentle or subtle of adversaries; his approach is quick and brutal, but none of that's evidenced in his assault on the Comet Observatory.

Now, try to jump on Rosie, and she puts a force field around herself. Fall off the castle, and she snatches you right back to safety. Those are pretty spectacular powers in their own right, and considering she's "mama" to a race of beings that can become planets, stars and entire galaxies, Rosalina is some pretty powerful stuff. How do you shove THAT down a Piranha Plant's gullet?

So that's why *I* haven't drawn anything involving Rosalina. My friend, thankfully, is not prone to such fits of over-thinking, and chose to dangle her over a lava pit. Everybody wins :D!

I more or less had the inks done before I bothered asking whether he'd mind if I finished it up. Seeing as how I've gotten bored of my own style, I thought it'd be a great exercise to work with one that's almost as far removed from it as you can get. And it was- I learned all kinds of neat stuff from inking his pencils! Like the difference between a pinky finger and part of a palm:

"I never draw five fingers on any of my hands"

...But seriously, this thing was a breath of fresh air. Then I started on the background, and it all went down the toilet :D.

Nah, apart from the Podoboo fireballs on either side of Rosie, he hadn't sketched in any background details. I tried to go with an approach that wouldn't overpower the subject, but still looked cohesive with the pic as a whole. Not sure how well I accomplished that, but good god, if nothing else, I feel a lot more confident shading orange now. It's a color I don't work with very often- most of my pics end up focusing heavily on cooler greens and blues.

Kinda wish I'd have taken the time to break that massive lava field up with a few more rocks and fumes, but overall, I'm pretty satisfied with how it came out. Especially considering I hadn't colored anything in almost six months! And of my many attempts at cel-shading, I like how this one came out the best.

Since he hasn't done (or at least distributed) anything of this nature before, my friend's asked to remain anonymous, and for this pic to be pretty limited in distribution. I know it probably goes without saying, but please don't go posting it up all over the place :D.

Animal Crossing: Cheatin' Folk

spacemantis — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:55:21 GMT

Just ate a couple of cookies, so we can count that as "breakfast", making it safe for me to warn you all of a terrible scam I just dreamed about!

It started out as an innocent enough request- someone wanted me to visit their town to trade fruit with them. So I did, and all around their town I saw posters for their church's mission work. "Ohhh, no," I thought to myself, "THIS won't end too well."

But then I found that the people were quite likeable, and didn't once mention anything not related to our business at hand. 'Til after the trade was done, anyway. THEN I started hearing about the terrible shape their family home and church were in great, two-hundred-year-old buildings crafted in the old-world style that were literally falling apart around them. They'd inherited them from the last living relative of the church's founder, and they were already pretty dilapidated at the time, but about five years ago a fire had broken out in the old chapel that pretty much destroyed half of it, and their mission work was dedicated entirely to raising money to restore these national treasures, but it was pretty slow going- there were no more actual MEMBERS of the church, and the family's two elder sons were out abroad working and sending back whatever they could to support the family's efforts, leaving them to care for their youngest son, who on top of EVERYTHING else, had Down Syndrome.

So hey, I'm a nice guy, and I have a free week coming up; what can I do to help these nice folks. Turns out their property is about 300 miles away in the mountains of Virginia, but if I stay at the folks' mountain house, I can get there in 30 minutes. Right now they're working on framing up new walls for the chapel, and could really use some help removing the old antique doorknobs, hinges and hardware, which they're gonna reuse in the restoration. And it comes to pass that I pack up and spend a couple days working with a small team of other Nice Guys, doing what we can to move the project forward.

One night, I'm high up in the belltower of the place- it caught some of the worst of the fire damage, but the family has assured me that it's safe, and they've placed reinforcing beams all around. I'm up there trying to get a massive deadbolt off of the door at the top of the stairs, when suddenly I sneeze, startling a small family of bats who then fly through the broken window. And that's when I notice that the burned beam they were hanging from is slowly crumbling away into powder and doesn't seem to be showing signs of stopping. Suddnely, the bells start ringing- they hadn't worked to this point before! The tolling makes the entire belltower start falling apart quicker, and I beat it down the stairs to warn everyone else that the whole place is about to collapse. Nobody else is around, though, and I barely make it out the front door before the entire building collapses.

I get up and dash into the house to see if the family's OK, but there's no sign of them- just a couple locked doors, and nobody answers when I bang on 'em. I call in an anonymous report to the police and tell them exactly how everything went down, then beat it for home. I don't know- I guess I'd done something pretty bad in my subconscious life and just didn't feel like going to the station.

When I get home, I find that my house has been broken into, but the thieves apparently had to leave in a hurry. They've taken most of my toy collection, my desktop computer, and a couple pieces of bedroom furniture, but didn't get my massive, heavier-than-it-looks TV, or any of the consoles attached to it.

After getting in touch with the parents and letting them know I'm all right, I decide to try and contact the owners of the church through Animal Crossing again. I log in, only to find that my entire town has been denuded and all my furniture and outfits have been taken- I'm left wearing a default design in an empty house in a town full of tree stumps.

I make myself a sandwich and hit the Google, looking for any sign of these people. After a couple hours of following links, I find one that takes me to a REALLY rudimentary online store, and after poking around for a while, I start to see my stuff popping up on it- my Yotsuba Revoltech there, my nightstand there, all marked with a price tag and having to go NOW!

They have a forum; I drop in, only to find a lot of deleted posts and messages from the administrators about how they're having to ban a bunch of spam and troll accounts. I try to register to find out what's going on, and I'm blocked- turns out my IP's on the list of Recently Banned Users.

And that's about when I woke up. Sure, it seems like the most elaborate and most prone to eventual failure hoax EVER, but man, what a hassle. So watch it if someone wants to trade fruit with you in Animal Crossing- you just may end up with your boxers going on CraigsList for $5 a three-pack.