Painting Exercise: Blade Runner (30min vs 1 hr), and the lack of fruit.

May 10th, 2011 at 1:05 am No Comments

I said there’d be fruit exercises about 3 weeks ago.

There is no fruit.

I did buy the fruit and it’s been sitting on my desk for 3 weeks (note: plastic), but no painting of the fruit. Felt quite rusty when I picked up the pen yesterday so I did a few more screen cap replications. The other 45 minute one I did featuring Harrison Ford is going to stay hidden on my hard drive because there’s an embarrassing lack of resemblance. Luckily, I don’t know who the actress who plays Rachel is or what exactly she’s supposed to look like.

An example of the difference 30 minutes can make (…or the difference focused detail can make). Also an example of why I need to focus on maximum capture at minimal duration. Reaalllly need to get better with that. Also would like to repeat excuse of how long it’s been since I last tackled one of these. It’s tempting to work past the 30 minute mark because I don’t want all of my exercises to be hideous ._. Must remind self that they’re for learning.

Reasons for neglecting the tablet (aka “Plugs for awesome things”)

1) The CreeD series, which Trent began publishing when he was 16 (!!), is being released by IDW (probably best known for their Transformers and maybe Zombies vs. Robots comics) this summer. I designed a mini-site to promote that fact.

2) Boey was prepping to launch a Kickstarter campaign so I helped with some updates to his site.

3) Trent received invitations to both Long Beach and Anaheim Comic Con which kept us busy for two straight weekends.

4) The computer building (previous post).

Categories: Art, General, Web No Comments

The computer is done, but may suffer from an identity crisis in the future.

May 7th, 2011 at 8:49 pm No Comments

When shopping around for cases, built-in LEDs were kind of a factor. I’m not a fan of glowing blue cases — they just feel far too chilly and emotionless. Red, while potentially demonic looking, generally resonates with me better. (White would’ve been neat, but those seem to be pretty rare.) I ended up purchasing a case that didn’t come with any prominent colored lights so that made things easier, and since the case had no lights I looked for fans with no lights (my shopping philosophies are guided by powers beyond my own comprehension). Unfortunately, with fans I prioritized performance + price over visual consistency, and due to Microcenter having limited inventory I wound up with 1 red fan and 2 blue ones. I killed the lights on the blue fans, but the plastic itself is blue and my motherboard apparently has blue LEDs. I’m sure there’s a way to turn the mobo lights off… Starting to think the red/blue combination looks cool, though.

Stopped keeping track after these items. I believe the total, including monitor and fans, cames out to about $1050. Ran memory and CPU stress tests over the course of 1-2 days without any issues turning up, but haven’t done major overclocking and am still wary that some random component’s going to go kaput in a week or two. Most painful part about this entire project? Threading the plastic fans by hand using a screwdriver. Cursed fans.

Categories: Gadgets, General No Comments

Time to build a new computer, but let’s get the big shiny thing first.

April 16th, 2011 at 5:45 pm 2 Comments

The last (and first) time I built a computer was maybe in 2006. Since it was my first attempt and I’d just graduated from college, I went fairly budget. It still lasted me about 3 years with minor upgrades which seems to be the average lifetime of PCs before they become obsolete (I actually have no idea what the average lifetime is). In 2009 I purchased a gaming-style laptop (number pad required) in order to game/work while hanging out at Trent’s place, so at that point my desktop got phased out. With 2 years on the laptop now I’m feeling the need to have a full desk setup once more. How fortunate that a friend of mine built his own computer literally 1-2 weeks ago so I’m more or less referencing him & his build, which saves me a lot of time on the tech-catch-up research part.

Purchased the CPU & monitor yesterday for in-store pick up from Microcenter. Love that instant gratification feature, by the way. Set up the monitor and laptop in a way that allows me to pretend I’m using a desktop until the full computer’s built. If only I had a USB keyboard :|

Don’t mind the ziplock change bag and plastic fruits…

Categories: Gadgets 2 Comments

Painting Exercise: Star Trek

April 13th, 2011 at 10:57 pm 4 Comments

Did these last week (4/04-4/06) at about an hour each. Learned that (1) there is a whole lot of lens flare in that movie, and (2) tattoos are kind of hard. Had more images queued up, but after young Spock I felt like I needed to try something that’s not a screen cap. Fruit seems like a safe subject. Fruit later this week.

Categories: Art 4 Comments

Painting Exercise: Yimou Zhang makes pretty movies.

April 3rd, 2011 at 3:29 am 1 Comment

Going to post the products of my whole “learning to paint digitally” thing as I complete them. These are from yesterday & today in chronological order (they kind of get better toward the bottom, right? :| 30 minutes more time spent on details can make a big difference though).

I’d popped Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in at first to go for the general mainstream martial arts theme, but it’s not quite pretty enough. Most of these are from Hero while the first is from House of Flying Daggers (it’s also the only one I recorded a time for, apparently. I’m guessing the rest took between 30 minutes and 1 hour).

Categories: Art 1 Comment