Enjoy!

• News: Nintendo Chief Doesn't Care for the iPad
  Published: January 29, 2010
  Source: Nintendo Life | Latest Updates
  ... or 3D televisions apparently. I guess that means no 3D Wii or DS-Tablet then?
• ‘Bad Apple!!’ stop-motion animation
  Published: January 28, 2010
  Source: Pink Tentacle
• Axe Cop
  Published: January 29, 2010
  Source: Neatorama
  Ah to be five again!
• How to Suck at Facebook - The Oatmeal
  Published: January 28, 2010
  Source: theoatmeal.com
  Oh dear, I think I'm at least one of these!
• Books - ‘The Trauma Myth,’ by Susan A. Clancy - Review - NYTimes.com
  Published: January 26, 2010
  Source: www.nytimes.com
  Science versus Conviction!
• 'Oral sex' definition prompts dictionary ban in US schools | Books | guardian.co.uk
  Published: January 26, 2010
  Source: www.guardian.co.uk
  This should be in the onion, not a real newspaper!
• Strange Worlds on the Behance Network
  Published: January 26, 2010
  Source: www.behance.net
  Beautiful miniature models!
• No D&D for US prison inmate serving life
  Published: January 26, 2010
  Source: Boing Boing
  So you're not allowed play DnD in US prisons!
• 440 – Dissuasive Cartography: the Emerald Desert
  Published: January 25, 2010
  Source: Strange Maps
• Flight attendant succeed
  Published: January 22, 2010
  Source: SUCCEED Blog
• A Single Sheet of Paper | Photos and pics
  Published: January 22, 2010
  Source: www.picm.co.tv
  I think I may have shared some of these before, but there is some here I haven't seen. Beautiful.
• RickRoll’d Win - FAIL Blog: Epic Fail Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments
  Published: January 22, 2010
  Source: failblog.org
  Christan TV channel rick roll'd!
• McDonald's McObjects To You Calling Your Event "McFest" - The Consumerist
  Published: January 21, 2010
  Source: consumerist.com
  This is McFucking unbelievable. McDonalds sue a charity event over the use of "Mc" in the title!
• Mystery visitor to Poe's grave is a no-show - Yahoo! News
  Published: January 20, 2010
  Source: news.yahoo.com
  :(
• Gamers Helping Haiti [BUNDLE] - OneBookShelf, Inc. | DriveThruRPG.com
  Published: January 20, 2010
  Source: rpg.drivethrustuff.com
  If you're a gamer you've probably seen this already, but this bundle is incredible. Over a $1000 worth of gaming material for $20 and proceeds go to Haiti aid. I had a bit of difficult paying with my Irish credit-card but they accept payment through paypal. My only problem is that there isn't a nice way to download everything (they aren't in one big zip for example).
• Twins And A Fake Mirror Wreak Some Havoc - VidZest - Daily Hilarious Videos
  Published: January 19, 2010
  Source: www.vidzest.com
  This made me laugh! A prank with twins a fake mirror
• Advanced Imaging Reveals a Computer 1,500 Years Ahead of Its Time - Technology - io9
  Published: January 9, 2010
  Source: io9.com
  Fascinating!
• A-Team Trailer - TheFilmStage.com on Vimeo
  Published: January 8, 2010
  Source: vimeo.com
  :)
• RTÉ News: All schools to close until Thursday
  Published: January 8, 2010
  Source: www.rte.ie
  Can they actually do this?
• Alma: Animated short is "equal parts Pixar and The Twilight Zone"
  Published: January 6, 2010
  Source: Boing Boing
  Very cute/creepy little video!

I will quote a few of my tweets from last week instead of summarising what happened:

• 1st thing, I am okay. 2nd thing, car is write off. Got caught in black ice.
• http://twitpic.com/y12ck – The car
• More photos of the crash: http://is.gd/6fryI – Quite drained, lots of calls with insurances etc. The car is officially a write-off.

I remember reading an article about on “luck” and that it mostly boils down to perspective. The car may be write up, but I walked away from it and no-one else was hurt. Thats luck.

I just got this in my “possible spam comment for approval” email for this blog:

HELP! I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia and being forced to post spam comments on blogs! If you don’t approve this they will kill me. They’re coming back now. Please send help!

I like the little touches to the spam, the email address for the comment is in the format:

russianmobvictimXXXXX@gmail.com

A guy called Court has put together a video tutorial and article on using TDO Mini Forms, my free Wordpress plugin.

The video is pretty good too as it shows you how to create a submission form and an edit form. I think I may be adding a link to this on the FAQ!

As a footnote to the video, the latest version 0.13.7 does include Custom Field editing and the compare view for edit posts is now working.

Also check out his site for indie musicians called indilean that uses TDO Mini Forms too.

There has been some great stuff on the web recently, some great trailers like Clash of the Titans and a return of the Alice computer game.

The bad joke comment-spam keeps rolling in today on one of my blogs:

Here there can not be a mistake?  I have a fresh joke for you)   Why did the bunnies go on strike? They wanted a raise in celery.

You are not right. I am assured. I can defend the position. Write to me in PM.  A joke for you peoples!   What did the worm say to the caterpillar? What did you do to get that fur coat?

It is remarkable, rather amusing information Wanna joke?) Why do Vampire have to brush their teeth? Because they have Bat-Breath.

*groan*

I suggest you to try to look in google.com, and you will find there all answers. I have a nice joke. Why was Santa’s little helper depressed? Because he had low elf esteem.

Obviously spammers have a bad sense of humour.

It has been nearly month since the last one. The big one for me was the Microsoft Courier demo videos. Man I want one!

When I uploaded the photos from my five-year-old daughter’s digital camera, I found some shots that managed to capture unexpected looks and expressions on people. I was so taken by at least one I decided to work up an image.

I was also partly inspired by the character “Meave” that I created in my mind for this little piece of fiction for my Lost Heroes RPG project. Here’s the relevant two paragraphs:

The young emo-goth Meave sits by herself in the school cafeteria. She numbly rubs at the healed scars on her wrists. The other kids just ignore her today. This is a good day for her. …

Meave will see her father, the god Dagda, in the distance watching her. She will run from him, run as hard as a princess of worlds that don’t exist can run. And the crows will screech through the sky after her.

During the process I ended up branching and producing a second more creepy character (which I’ve been referring to as “deadeyes”). Anyway, here are the two completed images:

(Which one works best do you think?)

The one thing I’m learning in any of my creative endeavours; writing, drawing and even programming, is that you learn so much by working through the process from beginning to end and it greatly improves the basic fundamental skills. And the stuff I did during the process, I think, is nearly as good as the end result.

I’ve been tinkering a lot with my drawing process. For a start I didn’t use a scanner. Instead I photographed them with a digital camera and use the photos. This preserves the textures and tones much better than using a scanner. You can see this in the original pencil drawing here.

But there is a catch which I’ve noticed. The shape of the lens of the camera “bends” the drawing. It’s not perfectly to shape, there is a slight distortion. But I think it pays off in terms of the quality of the image.

It was the expression that really captured my imagination and those big lips. I’ve been told I got a good likeness of the person in the photo, however I’m not going to be uploading it here so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I already had the end image composition in my mind, but I needed a good background. I grabbed several reference images from my photo collection and developed this of a murder of crows. The image is good enough stand-alone I think.

I had originally intended this to be a silhouette only, pure black. I used ink with brushes and black markers and I ended up giving it some texture, which really worked. Then, for good measure, I used charcoal to give it that rising tint you get at twilight. Again I photographed it to keep the texture (it was also on an A3 page so my A4 scanner is too small). And once I had the images on the computer I could start playing around with composition:

Prototype of background and character

I then printed out a series of the character study to see how I could “enhance” it:

(You can see where I came up with the dead-eyes concept)

My first stab at moving the sketch to ink was atrocious (and I’m not uploading it here!). So I pass the sketch through some filters on the computer and got out a raw black and white version and I used this as the basis of the first run. I thought it looked cool, though I think part of the expression got lost (but the ratio of the head to body seemed to improve, or had you not noticed that it was off?).

Having everything set up, I just ran with it and dug up the second character visualisation:

Initially I thought it came out better, but looking at the final two pieces, it was simply different but just as good.

Once all the pieces were in place, it was just a matter of getting them into the computer and arranging them in some image editor. I did play around with a lot of the funky effects you can do in software, but I felt they didn’t add to the final image. I think such effects work better if you’re colouring the images.

Both images work, though they each have a different feel. Certainly the “deadeyes” one is more creepy, but the first is closer to my original vision. I learned lots doing this one, and I have a few other projects/ideas I want to do. I may even use this image in Lost Heroes RPG: Book of Gods, you’ll just have to wait and see.

At least two very cool movie trailers, some funny stuff and even a touch of nostalgia for you!