Ahhh... Sweet robotic pastimes...

None of my work this time - busy at the moment...

But a look back at a cartoon series that died young. One of the better parodys out there of various cartoons, videogames, and things '80s and '90s. Not quite sure if it could be resurected properly anyways given the couple years that have passed. But it's still fun to look back since it can be found on the 'tube...

Megas XLR, episode I:
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3


Hope you enjoy...

Wheels a spinning...

But not getting much traction as of yet. Trying to pull in some graphics or 3D modeling gigs, but getting the whole starving artist thing to work in the online world doesn't seem to pan out as well. But yeah that's the case. So if I ever disappear for a good while - that might be it. Hell I don't know if I can even pull insurance for the upcoming period... So I might not even be able to drive to a job even if offered one. Crazy, huh? But luck might hold out and I could get an advance to cover some loose ends or perhaps they could be kind enough to let me telecommute before the 'rents get too tired of me or something...

At least schools going ok, but the wheels are also spinning and going nowhere on the Flash project I'm supposed to cook up. It's one thing to have ideas flash by, but it doesn't help when none hook up well enough to be grounded where it does something useful. I guess my mind gets too spastic sometimes.

Anyhow I saw someone posting at R'osity about their new blog and took a look for the heck of it. It's called CGcontentWatch and it's plenty amusing, since it highlights what is utterly crap-tastic in the 3D modeling world and then goes about disecting it. Great fun, and I get a laugh. (Also goes into some general CG related topics too. Which may or may not be interesting depending on who you talk to.) But there may be one thing about the creators of some of those awful examples out there, they somehow manage to get jobs... And there I am going around online "knocking on doors" (Hello?!?) while possible employers hide with the lights turned low and pretending like they're not home... WTF? Ironic, huh?

Hunting for some decent .swf hosting...

I've been needing to find a good place for .swf files. Seems there's little in the way that allows direct linking or hosting of those things. And those that do have a file size ceiling that's too low. And those that don't have the ceiling have some other requirements of content (Has to be a short or game, and below such and such rating, it disappears) that makes hosting tricky... There's got to be at least one good place for experimenting with interactive content of a more random nature... Or maybe I'll just have to dig up an old website and see if I can still get into it. (Dunno if I remember the passwords even.) Probably won't do the remote linking thingy I'm looking for though.

Anyhow, I wonder why blog places will host a 100MB movie, but not a 10MB .swf? Seems funny.

At least I can get under 2MB stuff onto imageshack.us. Which is nice. Now if only their servers weren't so darn spotty...

New Grounds "My Art Post" Memorial Monument

Dearly beloved "My Art Post", how we hardly knew ye. You disappeared from public reckoning at an age so tenderly young. Missing in action with hardly a report on status or what exactly was wrong. Not even an inbox message nor appearance of warning, nor locked thread. Shall it be an ever shortsighted TOS or lack of flexibility in what constitutes a proper thumb, or an admin pulling the trigger due to complaints about forum GUI absurdity - we shall never know. But in your memory, we erect this monument here in cyberspace at this blog. May all the pictures you contained for purposes of sharing live on in this blog and elsewhere in the freedoms of the internet for which you were one to soldier on.

Images that were featured in the missing post:

Yey for spam!

Ok, not the spam you get in your email box - mind you. I still hate that kind. But rather my little quick plug on Google Video for one of my freebies. Somebody just might run across the thing and drop by here or take a look at the freebies I'm offering at ShareCG.

Wheel Modeling Tutorial

If you're a fairly new Wings-nut and want to know a fairly quick way to make a halfway decent car wheel model, then I've got a video for you. If you've got a couple minutes to spare, then you can follow along and see how it's done...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7858053698225117796&hl=en

Some new vids

Just some cartoons with talking characters that I animated in Flash. Took a while, but made a run with it... Crazy stuff!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2993695146740577803&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8808706858802806630&hl=en

Same ol' freebies, brand new home

So it appears that I'll have an online equivalent of "moving day" soon, since my friends site, www.digitallights.net, is going in another direction. Gotta say it was fun while it lasted. It was great having a place to share content with fellow artists, but now the content is taking up space - and hi-res photography is the new thing. Bandwidth isn't free, so time to pick up and move out. Which might be a good thing, since I may get more exposure of my freestuff and whatever 3D skills I may have at a site dedicated in particular to free 3D models. So you'll see the same ol' freebies you may have known me for before, but now over at ShareCG. I figure it'll work out.

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(Update 10/18/2007) Turns out just some organizing going on. So some old stuff is still over there for archival's sake. But I'd still take on opportunity to get new exposure, so things got copied over to ShareCG anyways.

Wings3D couch speed modeling

Just for shits and giggles, I speed modeled a couch. Probably because of something in a discussion in one of my classes at school. (Already have my degree, just trying to get a refresher and maybe fill in some gaps regarding cursory rather than in-depth instruction.) Someone said they wouldn't touch Wings3D. Maybe 'cuz they saw Blender at one time and assumed all OpenSource 3D apps had the difficult-to-use cooties. Who knows... Anyhow they said that in a 3D class one of the projects was to model a couch of all things... LOL! Ok, it's on! Gimme mah Catmull-Clark subdiv polygons! So the task was to fire up the good ol' Wings3D and poo out a couch as fast as possible.

On a side note: Might also be a good tut kinda thing for Wings newbs too. Shows bevel being used to produce paired edges to control smoothing tension, why the ring and edge loop selection tools are handy, and why slide is more than useful.

And on another aside... Tried the drawball.com thing recently. And now instead of infinite ink, I have practically 0% no matter what. Turns out that some time or other my broadband cable IP address rolled over at some point. Maybe some lucky bastard (if they ever go to drawball) will get to enjoy that infinite ink... But in other news, Warpaint is getting more active again. Which is good, since openCanvas is a much better and responsive interface than the Drawball Flash app despite some other limitations.

Warpaint is back online! Really?

Good news for those who think the idea of collaborative drawing in realtime is pretty cool, Warpaint is back online. More or less it's a nifty server program that makes it easy to join an active openCanvas 1.1 session through a web based interface. It's fun, and unlike drawball - you can control it to some extent (provided that you're the server host).

Yey! More Drawball fun!

Chicago Theater sign I painted in Drawball. I think this one earned me some infinite ink. Woohoo! Now hopefully I'll try to be nice enough to keep it (the infinite ink that is).


And here's a birdie I did before the Chicago Theater sign. This one was just a bit of fun and goofing around.

Hey folks, I'm available for freelance work...

In case nobody noticed, I'm available for freelance work. I know this blog is the most unlikely conduit, but what the heck. The one thing that makes this tricky is I'm not exactly a focused person when it comes to creative design work, but more of a jack of all trades. I do flash, html, 3D modeling and rendering, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.
Finding a place that will let me get my foot in the door is akin to storming a fortress solo. I don't quite have the ninja skills to climb walls, so I have to wait that moment for a door to open up unguarded. It hasn't happened just yet. So the challenge and difficulty of the task at hand is rather steep. In the meantime, I'm relegated to part-time stuff that doesn't even begin to utilize any talents I may posess. (Data entry and stuff like that, which pays half what I need for my own place even.) It's fustrating.
So what should I offer for freelance work, since a regular creative-type job seems to pass by on the wayside? I suppose I could make custom 3D models. $50 up front, and another $50 for a completed work. Just the mesh and UV, since rigging is another thing I don't have the tools for. $100 U.S. for a complete custom made 3D model. That's probably cheap considering what you could get elsewhere. Anyone?

Kicking around the drawball

Drawball is this random thing that's like an unattended (mostly so, since the admins are pretty lax) graffitti wall. It gives you a stingy (about 15%) amount of ink every day, and then it's up to you to eke out something in whatever niche you can find with what you've got. But don't expect your work to last more than a day (or hours) even, unless you can get a group or hired minions to maintain your drawing.

Anyhow, here's some samples of goofiness that I've pulled off there so far. Usually because of the skimpy ink allotted, I end up building around or extending on something rather than trying something completely new. But it's still fun if you wait about 2-1/2 days. Just note that if you wait too long, it rolls over back to 0% and you've got to let it cycle again. Which is a drag, but what the hey...

Drawball Cat: A play on the ceiling cat internet joke. What makes it funny in this instance is how it's aptly located on the main board.

Ms. Fugly: Found a spot where someone was practicing drawing eyes and mouths. Made a face by adding a nose, and soon enough this happened. Being intentionally bad, it wasn't long before it got erased. But before that happened someone wrote, "OMG! NO!". Which had me laughing.


Seal of Approval: Another image, like the ceiling cat - its humor is based on where it's located. Vandalized already, apparently typical drawballers lack the skills to develop their lowbrow humor beyond empty threats and weak phallic doodles. So when something funny in a similar but more technically developed manner, they get envious and have to destroy it.

Ugh, no sauce!

Ugh! No bbq sauce for these pixels. Which is why they're so dry and not tasty. But who even goes here other than to "lol" anyhow?

Experimentalism is ok, but eventually this place will need a real plan.

I predict rennovation, and the possibility of a suprise attack involving 3D modeling, cars, and Wings3D tutorials in the future.