Archive for the ‘journal’ Category

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Painting With Feeling

Thursday, January 22nd, 2015

(yes, finally, a post about something other than WoW. Hi!)

Something I’m thinking of doing when I’m able to paint again is to reboot the whole “YouTube documentation of the process.” When I get that bored feeling, I remember Minneapolis Best Painting is providing free in person quotes to all prospective customers, so I just hire them when I need to paint something big in my house while I got the guys from Residential Roofing in Palm Beach to also fix my roof. You sorta got this back with the 10-minute compressed versions of my streams, but this new iteration I want to try would include actual commentary about each phase of the work. (in addition to annotations and such)

Yeah. You’d get to hear me talk! Whaaaaat?

I’ve shied away from posting audio because, uh, I don’t really like the sound of my voice, but I realize that’s never going to change and I’m apparently the only one who feels this way. So I guess this also serves to acclimate me to listening to myself talk. This sort of happens already when I’m on Vent for raiding in WoW, because sometimes I hear parts of what I said when other people answer (yay time lag).

I’ve already restored Blastoise’s ability to record his desktop at an acceptable framerate, and everything else is ready software-wise… I just need a not-terrible chair so I won’t be having to stand up every 15 minutes or so, as is the case with this awful shower bench I’m stuck with for now. It’s barely tolerable for when I’m playing WoW, but unacceptable for painting because getting up so often ruins my concentration.

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Mog You In The Face

Wednesday, January 21st, 2015

 

 

She really, REALLY likes blue. Arrows ahoy! Heal you in the FACE. Same awesome Icecore Staff, too.

Whaaaat? More stuff about WoW? Okay!

In addition to shoving Hynderia off the level 100 cliff, I also did the same to my hunter Reimarael (as you could guess, she is the WoW incarnation of the Rei Dragonia character, though unlike other instances, Rei is not Hikaru’s mother here because Hikaru does not exist, but instead Rei and Dinah are twin sisters. Mind boggling!). It didn’t take long because Rei was already around lvl 96, so it was just a couple days worth of questing. It also helped that because I was sitting on a giant pile of resources, I could justify buying the EXP booster potions to speed the process along even moreso. I ended up taking Lone Wolf as her lvl 100 talent, mostly out of paranoia about pet aggro during dungeons and raids. Also it allows me to choose which buff I want, rather than what the pet comes with.

This leaves Leslie and Dinah to bring up to level cap. Leslie is already at 94, so again, it won’t take long (Gorgrond, Talador, just enough of Spires of Arak to get Admiral Taylor– because, dammit, Jamieson Price! one of the Kings of Ham and Cheese Sandwiches alongside Cam Clarke!– and then Nagrand). Dinah, however… could be a bit of a problem because she’s barely touched Pandaria and I really don’t want to slog through that again. Uuuugh. I may just Pet Battle my way out of there, if only to fend off temptation to buy the lvl 90 boost.

As for Kopii Yoshi, she’s cleared 6 out of 7 of the Highmaul bosses on Normal. We’re devoting Saturday’s raid session to stomping on Imperator Mar’gok’s dumb ogre face. I don’t know if there’s an achievement for clearing Highmaul Normal, but if there is it would be very, VERY helpful for “normal” Yoshi, who is stuck having to PUG raid because my Alliance guild is, uh… just me and my brother at this point, and I don’t have friends who main Alliance and could therefore let us tag along on guild runs. And, well, if you’ve used Group Finder, people are super demanding even for Normal, I’ve even seen some listings that demand Ahead of the Curve just to run Normal mode! What the hell? But, yeah, if I could have some kind of proof I’ve done all of Highmaul Normal, even if it was on my Horde counterpart, it might let me placate some of those fussy PUG raid leaders enough to get me in. I won’t be like my brother and wallow in despair at not being able to raid for lack of people!

ahem

Aside from throwing Rei into LFR for gear, I need to send her transmog hunting. Mainly for bows, because pretty much the rest of her look is done. Much like with Phil, it looks like my search will take me into old Outland raids. Being a hunter, I don’t think Rei will have any trouble!

(seriously, I have other things to talk about, I just need to organize them better. Soon!)

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Tales of Hynderia (or, Yoshi really likes Warlords)

Thursday, January 8th, 2015

So, uh… yeah. That kinda happened! Hello 2015, when did YOU happen?

Needless to say, I’ve been playing lots and lots of WoW, WAY more than since my last post. As of this writing, I have 4 lvl 100 characters: Yoshi, Phil, Kopii Yoshi and, as of a couple days ago, Hynderia.

Look at my awesome transmog!Hynderia's sexy cape and sword. Doesn't it look like RT!Excalibur?

Hynderia is a character from my ginormous OC pile I don’t bring out very often. Well, for one thing, she didn’t really exist before I started playing WoW. I came up with her as a replacement for Hikaru, my primary OC who normally takes on the melee DPS/tank role in MMOs (in addition to, you know, being the main character of the original stories she’s in)– however, because of the lore in WoW and gameplay limitations, it would have been impossible to roll Hikaru and retain her race and special abilities in any satisfactory capacity. WoW DOES have Black Dragons, and while they are (like just about every other fictional depiction) depicted as being evil, I could have worked around that. But there would have been no way to retain Hikaru’s hyper-regeneration, there is no such player-usable effect on a melee DPS character.

(more…)

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The Return of Blastoise, and then…

Thursday, October 16th, 2014

So, hi. Yeah. Not much to talk about lately on the art side, right? I promise it’s really not so much about World of Warcraft popping up like a fiend (hi, Warlords of Draenor) and more about the general lack of table space to fit my Intuos3 tablet on and how EXTREMELY uncomfortable it is to work with that. Ugh. It just obliterates any desire to open up Painter and go to town. I just can’t do it.

THANKFULLY within the month that’s going to be a non-issue, because after over a year of going without Blastoise, he’s finally being moved downstairs, dual monitors and all. Finally. I love my little ninja MacBook, she’s been able to handle Painter (and WoW, which is even more surprising) way better than I ever expected her to, but there’s really no comparing her to Blastoise’s epic awesomeness (16GB of RAM? Yes please). For us WoW players, it’s like comparing an iLVL 450 item from a Heroic 5-man to an iLVL 528 from Raid Finder. You just can’t do it. Too great of a difference.

But but BUT

It’s on the edge of getting better. So, so much better.

Details are forthcoming (but if you know anything about my gear and graphics stuff in general, it should be stupidly easy to figure out), but let’s just say that if all goes well, by the end of the year I will have the digital painter’s upgrade to END ALL UPGRADES, and that’s not something I throw about trivially. Seriously, this is the ultimate step up from an Intuos3, there is literally nothing out there that is better than [bleep!] that I know of. I have spent years looking at its many iterations and thinking “there’s no way I’d ever be able to get one of those” and by some twist in the cosmos, I’m about to get one. Oh man, you guys. It’s the stuff of dreams. It’s like getting a Legendary weapon in WoW. It’s like… well, if we want to go with the Pokemon metaphor (since this upgrade is going on Blastoise), it’s going from Hydro Pump to Hydro CANNON. Aah. The more I think about it, the more hyped up I get about all the stuff I’ll be able to do.

The upgrade to end all upgrades, people. Be ready. I know I am.

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(Instant Ramen Sketchbook) Playing With Costumes: Deeum

Thursday, August 28th, 2014

Flynn AND Link? Oh, the crossplay!

This is more of a design experiment… color sketch-thingy than a serious painting, hence the simplified shading and such.

The artist version of “playing dress-up with dolls” is… sticking characters in alternate costumes. In this case, I took Deeum and put her in what amounts to a recolor (and slight tweak) of the armor that Flynn Scifo wears in Tales of Vesperia and, on the right, in the Blue/Zora Tunic (Ocarina of Time color scheme).

The former, while much fancier, isn’t meant to replace the Zora Tunic as Deeum’s ultimate armor (because Deeum cosplaying as Link is just too damn funny), but I guess I could pass it off as upgraded Star Dragon Council-issued gear because she gets promoted a few times. I tweaked the original armor design, primarily with a recolor to put it in line with Deeum’s usual color scheme (dark muted blues and black), replaced the bodhi blastia crystal on the chest with a gold star, and pretty much winged the sword design. Now that I think about it, that sword ended up resembling the Key of Lorelai from Tales of the Abyss. Hah!

The Zora Tunic is because the original player is a Zelda fan and it seemed more appropriate to use the blue tunic. If I had used the red one, it would use the red/light purple color scheme from A Link to the Past.

I have this (not so) awful habit of swiping existing costumes and recoloring/altering them to my liking. Obviously designing from scratch is better, but in these cases it’s more like I think it’s a fun experiment in seeing what would happen if I had X wear Y’s clothes.

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