More poking around in the past
I'm old. That's what happens when you get old. You poke around in the past, seeing what's in the crannies. Like a smoker digging in a couch, looking for a buck to buy a pack of smokes. Smokes are still a buck, aren't they? Well they were in my day, by gum! Kids today, with their new fangled $12 packs of smokes, and their whoozeewhatsit 'peapods'... Get off my lawn!
The latest poking about took me to my old forum. I had big plans for the forum way back in 2004. My site had some regular followers who were also bloggers and creative types, so I started the forum so we could play a game together. A storytelling game called... wait for it... "The Storytelling Game!"
That's me being creative.
The point of the game is that someone would post a list of words, as many as they wanted, but usually 8-10, and then everyone who wanted to play would have three days or so to write a story that incorporated all of the words on the list. Then after the time elapsed, everyone could vote on their two favorites whether they wrote a story or not. Points would be totaled and the winner of that round would pick the words for the next round.
It was a lot of fun. It lasted through 22 rounds, but toward the end participation was sparse. Near the beginning I became sidetracked by my new romance, in addition to the other daily things that ate my time like a cannibal loose in a nursery. If my time in that scenario were represented by plump, tasty babies and there weren't any cops on hand to save some of my baby time.
What drove me down that long abandoned road of creativity is a rekindled desire to write the zombie story that is buried somewhere within me. I also remembered a short series of stories that I began in the game, and considered digging them up and seeing if there was anything worthwhile to them. Anything I could use. I looked all over my computer to see if I had them stashed somewhere, but I couldn't find them, so I decided to go back to the source, if it still existed.
It does, but it hasn't been touched by anyone since 2005. I could almost see dust and hear an echo when clicking around. Made me kind of sad.
I found the story. When I say "a short series" it turns out it's shorter than I remembered. The first part came up in round 3 and the second in round 4, and then like many things it was abandoned.
If you are interested in reading both parts, it's after the jump, unmodified in all its glory. Well, maybe not "glory" exactly. I still like it though...
Rummaging around in the past.
I'm going to try to revitalize some of the old things I used to do. Judging from my track record, I'll probably get distracted and forget about it before long. But for now, I've shaken the dust off of my old Blogger site "Visual Breakdown" and given it a WordPress makeover. It's now located here: Visual Breakdown
As of now there's no new content, however I plan to put a post together that shows how I made this using Photoshop:
So at least that's something to look forward to. Although in looking at the file I realize that a lot went in to making it... hmmm...
Here's a screen capture of the Photoshop layers pallet:
Perhaps I should start with something a bit less... daunting. It took over five hours to build, and I was working at 33.25" x 84.5" @ 200 d.p.i. for the original file. It's a 903MB PSD file.
Tell you what. For this one rather than try to break down the entire thing I'll post stills from various stages and let it go at that. Sound good? Great! I knew you would agree.
Is 42 too early for a mid-life crisis?
(I started this post a few days before my dad went in to the hospital. It was intended to be a humorous look at my life and getting older. Now I don't really know what it is, other than here it is.)
Depending on how long I have left to live, it might be too late to hit the actual middle.
What would I like for my mid-life crisis?
My hairline restored? Nah. A couple years ago I shaved my head bald for charity, and I think I actually look better bald than the way I look with my goofy-ass hair grown out. When I was twelve-ish my mom took me to a barber school for a haircut. The woman cutting my hair spent some time running her fingers this way and that in an attempt to figure out how to begin with the disaster that was me. She told me that I had seven different cowlicks going on. My hair was all kinds of fucked up and it's been annoying for my entire life. Now as my hair line has receded, I think I'm down to four. Fuck hair. The less I have the better.
An expensive car? Nope. I don't really give a flip about cars. Never have. If it doesn't break down and gets me where I need to go then I'm happy. Of course, it's easy to take that attitude when you don't have the money to get one. Which I don't. But even if I did, I couldn't see myself in a douche-mobile.
A motorcycle? Now that's a possibility. My first mode of motor-powered transportation when I was a teenager was a motorcycle. I didn't even get a license to drive a car until I was in the Air Force, and I wrecked my first car within a month of getting it. I never had a major accident on a motorcycle and I looooove riding them... but, damn. Back then the only person I had to be concerned with was myself. Now I just don't know if I can let go of the safety of a car and take on the risk of riding a motorcycle again. Especially around here with the huge amount of idiot drivers we have and the horrible condition of most of the roads. Maybe I should wait on that until my end-of-life crisis.
Video games? From the time of my first Atari 2600 back in the day, I've never really stopped playing video games, so it would be hard to turn them into a mid-life crisis. I suppose I could try collecting arcade cabinets. Hah! The only problem without that, apart from the cost, is that there aren't that many arcade games that I remember fondly from my youth that I would also like taking up space in my house. I have a crapload of games, but all grouped together they would take up the same amount of space as a couple of cabinets. I like variety too much to settle on a couple of stand-up cabinets.
Drastic career change? Hmm. Quite often I find myself wondering if I made a mistake by allowing myself to fall into graphic design. After the Air Force, I did a lot of shit jobs. One of them was through a temp agency assembling baseplates for a company called Applied Magnetics. It's the place I was heading to when I rolled my VW bug way back when. The work itself was monotonous and slow, so I started thinking of ways to increase the efficiency of the job. The in-house engineers were interested in my ideas and worked with me to turn them into reality. These baseplates were the core components for an emerging technology: optical disc drives. From what I can tell, the contracts were military, however one order came through an account called "Skywalker," so it's possible that they went someplace in the George Lucas empire.
With my improvements to the process, what used to take 15-25 minutes when I started the job only took 10-12 seconds by the time I was done, and we cut down the number of magnets that broke by at least 80%. The lead engineer asked me if I would be interested in working in their department (I'm getting the feeling that I've already told this story before – another sign of getting old). By that time I had been accepted into The Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design with my sights set on becoming an illustrator, so I politely declined. Based on what happened while trying to achieve my goals of becoming an illustrator (which I know I've talked about before), that was probably a mistake.
I've always enjoyed trying to increase efficiency, get things done faster and faster. No idea why, but I like it and I'm pretty good at it. However walking away from a paying job in this economy in the hopes that I can find something more inline with my heart's desire just isn't a doable thing, especially with other people depending on me and my income. Much like riding a motorcycle again, no matter how much I might want to I just can't see doing it at this time.
Take up with a woman half my age? Don't be stupid. I love Heather.
I guess it'll sort itself out when the time comes.
Cheese it! It’s the fuzz!
On my way home from work last night, while heading down to the light at the bottom of the hill, a police car pulled out of the cop shop at the top of the hill and moved into position to turn right at the bottom. At the last second he pulled in behind me in the left turn lane.
I was sure I hadn't done anything wrong. There wasn't enough road to get up to a high speed by accident, especially with the somewhat sharp turn halfway down. But of course I start running over everything in my head.
Hands at ten-and-two? Check!
Turn signal on? Check!
Current registration sticker on the license plate? Check! At least it was when I last checked...
Not rockin with Dokken? Check!
Dead hookers removed from trunk? Check!
Brake lights working? No idea, but I think so!
Turning into the correct lane? You know it! I mean 'Check!'
I did manage to turn into the correct lane, something I'm guilty of failing to do at times. The three cars in front of me didn't. The cop stayed right behind me. Dammit Johnny Law! Bust them, not meeee!
I signaled and moved into the right lane; he continued on in the left lane. I wasn't his target after all.
Whew!
This got me thinking about police cars. About how, when I was a kid, I loved seeing police cars. They looked cool, even though it was the 70s and pretty much everything was stupid in hindsight. Out of the 16 or so Hot Wheels I had as a kid, my favorites were the three or four police cars in the collection. One of them even had working doors. I loved 'em!
Now, as an adult, seeing a police car makes me alert, and having one behind me makes me nervous. Not because I do anything especially illegal. I'm usually going no more than 5mph above the posted speed limit, keeping with the flow of traffic. I signal and look when I change lanes or make a turn. I don't cut people off or weave through traffic like a f'ing tard. If you happen to be one of those people who dodge in and out of cars just to gain an extra couple of feet before the next red light, then fuck you very much you self important, self absorbed assbag and I hope that after you finally bite it, Satan spends his lunch hour raping you with a jagged cinder block for the remainder of eternity. At least that's what I thought about the last guy to do that to me a few days back. Fucker...
Ahem. Pardon my digression.
I'm not sure when the shift from liking police cars to being wary of them happened. It must have been around the time that I realized that they might be there for me, and not every cop is unbiased and there to help. You don't think about that when you're a kid. Then it's all flashy lights, loud sirens, and cool on wheels. It's how my daughter and, to some extent, my son still feel about them. Whatever caused the change it's too bad I can't capture that feeling again, because there are some pretty cool police cars these days and I'm tired of feeling guilty for shit I haven't done.
You know a design is popular…
... when two different sites "borrow" it for their posts/articles. Even if it doesn't really fit.
While we were watching the new Alice in Wonderland tonight, Heather decided to try to find my "Alice" design I made a few years back for Illustration Friday by doing a Google image search. She didn't find the design:
... but she did find my old, original "Fizzle & Pop" masthead:
... being used by two different sites. The first was placed in an article on someone named Jill Stanek's blog from May of 2007. She appears to be the type of person... Hmm... Let's just say I find her intolerance annoying and leave it at that.
The second is on this page a ways down. It's a slow moving page and a ways down on the right, so I took a screenshot for those unwilling to wait:
The site itself appears to be about military strategy.
I have no real problem with these people using my design without asking. As large as the internet is, it's bound to happen and not everyone can just make what they like when the mood strikes them. It's just really weird seeing something I made so long ago, and looked at so many times back when I posted with some regularity, used for these two things.
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In other news, she found a few sites mentioning a couple of my t-shirt designs. I made #9 (my favorite number, actually) on a list of the "Funniest Unofficial Star Wars T-Shirts" at Teenormous.com. I'm #12 AND #36 on their list of "The Best Zombie T-Shirts".
My "Kill Brain" design was favorably reviewed at www.best-tshirts-ever.com. Browsing around the site I found they also reviewed my "Portal" design here.
Fun stuff.
---- EDIT ----
Dave over at www.best-tshirts-ever.com commented and asked for a list of my shirt designs. I've sent him an email, but I may as well post them here too in case anyone wants to take a look at them. Like I told him, in hindsight I'm no longer that keen on some of them. But here they are, frogs and all, sorted by submission date, first to most recent.
Brainbow - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_486cdd2d5af6e
Zombie Day - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_486cdde0704f2 (printing)
Zumby - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_486cde5d6f94b
PaWN3D! - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_4875070a8e4b1 (discontinued)
Dead Color - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_487fb85c9d447 (printing)
Dance w/Death - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_487fbf7badae8
Bl(Fr)ogger - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_4880ed563e4e7
Master's Voice - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_4884b9868bd4a
Monster & Kitten - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_488ca9ba989d8
Gamer Party - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_48a0c00b3eb4e
Gnu-Bee - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_48a0daa7b4115
Kill Brain - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_48a5e0a9c1dd5 (printing)
Cooking Mama - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_48a9cc8e5f4e5
Goth/Sith - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_48ac273be55e9 (printing)
Flash Bang - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_48c920cc6a8ed
Virtual Ops - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_49063a4a8d50c
Fitting In - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_4929d27f08863
Boo Buster - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_492b4054823a6 (printing)
Jolly Ninja - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_492b42ed2596e
Commuter - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_492b723446af1
Character Building - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_49a43ff045366 (printing)
Portal - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_49d6a852961b5 (printing)
Bwains - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_4a775d696342d (printing)
Jaws - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_4be0e69065a36
Zombie Power - http://www.splitreason.com/design/design_4beb721b7de67
25 designs so far.
Blog? What blog?
Oh right! This blog.
I haven't forgotten. Honest. I'm just busy during the day, and when I get home I don't feel like sitting in front of the computer any longer than necessary.
When I find myself with a bit of free time I tend to fill it with games. Lately it's been Red Dead Redemption on the Xbox 360 (also available for PS3). Man, it's blast. I haven't gotten this into a game since Fallout 3.
I'm pretty sure Heather hates it.
When I first heard about it, I figured it would be another failed attempt at a western themed FPS, and I didn't give it another thought. Then I started picking up on rumblings through the net that it was a game that shouldn't be missed if you like open world (sandbox) style gameplay, and the wild west. It's made by Rockstar, of Grand Theft Auto fame, and many people like to call it GTA on horses. Many people are stupid.
That's not to say the game is perfect. There's a fair amount of glitching throughout. One random event had me chase down a horse thief for a shopkeeper. Instead of blowing him off the horse, I lassoed him, hogtied him, and put him on my horse. When I tried to find the horse he stole, it was gone. I took the guy back to the shopkeeper, but he was gone, and when I turned around the thief had vanished from my horse. Another time the train pulled away from a station and left behind a man, sitting in mid air. So, more annoyances rather than game breakers.
I will say that I find it enjoyable in ways that I haven't found any version of GTA enjoyable, and it really is a gorgeous game.
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I recently stumbled across an article about a hoarder that has me really thinking about how I live. I have crap in my closet that I haven't looked at since I put it there when we moved in. When we first looked at this house it was so spacious, we thought we would always have room. Now it's getting kinda scary. Not with towers of piles waiting to crush you if you bump them, but certainly the seeds are there. I'm going to have to buckle down and figure out what "treasures" are really "trash" and get them the hell out of here. Figure out what I can live without and then do so.
It's not going to be easy. Every time in the past that I've gone through my crap in an attempt to thin it out, I've later found myself needing something that was no longer there. Just yesterday I found a need for a USP Zip drive that I used to have, but I got rid of it some time last year. Annoying. But I can't keep going like this. It's stupid.
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It's looking like my Pacman Jaws design will go to print. The only question now is what version. Due to many comments asking for it, I've updated with a pixelated ghost version:
Jaws design @ © SplitReason.com
and have requested further comments before handing over the high-res artwork. Brian at SR said we'll give it a couple more weeks and see what happens. I expect it should be printed by August, but the timetable is all up to them.
Shirt design and more.
While the voting is going very well on the Pac-Man/Jaws design, my latest design isn't doing nearly as well. Probably because the first version was crap. After the redesign it's picked up more positive votes and some comments, but it hasn't even come close to offsetting all the negative votes it gathered in the first few days on the site.
Here is the redesigned image:
To vote for it go here, although it's probably a lost cause.
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I've set up an art blog for my 10-year-old daughter, to encourage her to keep drawing. There isn't much there at the moment because she's been at her mom's house since I set it up, but we'll do what we can to fill it out when she gets back. You can visit it here.
I have a new shirt design up for voting at SplitReason.com
If you like it, you can vote on it here.
Slides
Not the kind you ride down. The 35mm kind. My dad loved to take pictures, and he preferred slides to prints. When I was out in Tennessee for his funeral I was given five cases full of his slides with the agreement that I would scan them and upload them for anyone who wanted to see them. The slide scanner I bought through Amazon arrived today and I took it for a spin with a couple of random boxes. I uploaded the results to my SmugMug gallery.
This weekend I hope to have the time to start scanning more, starting with the oldest slides I can find. Anything not for the public will be put in hidden galleries, but everything else will be available to browse. One thing about my dad; he LOVED to travel. There will be photos that were taken all over Europe in the sixties... possibly older. It's going to be fun. I just wish he was still around to tell us about them.
When I was a kid I DREADED my dad breaking out the slide projector. Now I would give ten years off my own life for one more year to be able to sit with him and talk about his life and his adventures.
One story I'll never forget is how, when he was stationed in Turkey, he had a molar that was hurting him something fierce. As he told it, the base dentist was a butcher and there was no place off base that he could go to have the tooth extracted, so he did what he had to do. He got liquored up, took a pair of pliers and extracted his own tooth...
I'm sorry I wasn't there for you for the last 18 years dad. This project won't make up for that, but at least something you created will be out there for the world to see.
The Princess is a bling whore.
Excellent video! I'm impressed and very amused.
I really wish I could have filmed the boy doing the Russian dance to The Nutcracker last night at my daughter's school's Talent Show. It was... awesome.