Sometimes I really don’t understand armor design in video games. Specifically, I refer to what friends and I refer to as “battle panties.” Battle panties are those pieces of high-level armor that has the best stats, but only seems to cover the character’s privates. I know they exist as cheesecake, but it still strikes me as terribly impractical, and just a little bit gratuitous. Still, my friends and I have managed to have managed to make use of such armor in-game. Usually, in rather troll-like manner. Usually, this involves creating characters those physical attributes are nowhere near what many may consider as cheesecake. And then we parade the characters around in those battle panties.

Printmaking

Both intaglio and linoleum printmaking are pretty intensive. In both, it can take a long time to draw or carve out an image. Once you’ve made a mark, you are stuck with it. The best thing to do is either figure out how to make the mistake work for the piece, or start over. Intaglio prints, when using wax, can be sensitive to heat and cold. So when traveling from school to home and back on my bicycle, I have to be careful to not expose the plate to either temperature extreme. Then when it comes to printing with a press, you can run through over twenty prints in an attempt to get one that is perfect. Despite these troubles, I found that these are mediums that I enjoy working with. I don’t know why, but there seems to be a more rewarding feeling that comes with producing a handmade print, rather than drawing something digitally and printing on a printer. 

Digital Painting and Textures

Found out today that I’ve been going about digital painting in totally the wrong way. Or rather, the very laborious way. I'd painstakingly spend upwards of 30 or 40 hours drawing out the intricate details of some texture within the image. And then I’d find that I didn’t really like the location of something, or some detail about the object in the image, and then would have to spend that same out of time repainting the whole thing. Apparently, a lot of time can be cut out of the process my creating my own brushes. While I had modified brushes in an attempt to get the look I want, often they fall just short of the goal. Apparently, though, I can take photographs of the texture that I am trying to simulate. Then, with some adjustments to the contrast and minor editing, I can a section of that image into a brush. The result would be that with a single stroke of the pen, I could paint something that looked like concrete. I used to draw every little ding and put when trying to make the texture by hand. I will have to try out making my own brushes. Hopefully it will save some time, and allow me to produce art at a faster pace.

On the road...

My family came from Utah. We spent most of your summers traveling through the various national parks and camping grounds around the state and in states nearby. Among the ones we vested most frequently were Calf Creek, Devil’s Garden, and Goblin Valley. We’d also been through Coyote Gulch, Bryce Canyon, Zion Narrows, Arches, Dinosaur National Monument, a petrified forest, Yellowstone, Carlsbad Caverns, and others. Oddly enough, we’ve never actually been to the Grand Canyon, although we were not far from it. There was this scary road that we’d often cross during these trips. I don’t remember the name of the road, but my dad would often refer to it as a ridgeback. It was this very narrow road that dropped off like a steep cliff on both sides. I remember thinking that we’d drive off of it, if not careful. However, we’d make it across and move on toward our next destination. 

Cayote Gulch

There was this one time where my family was backpacking through Coyote Gulch, Utah. A few different things happened while we were there. At some point, my sisters and I had lost sight of out dad. When hiking, he tends to walk on ahead while leaving the rest of us behind. As a result, we needed to track his footprints through the desert. Luckily, his footprints were easy to find. Once foot has grown at an odd angle. So, we were able to catch up to him. During one of the nights, we heard roaring outside our text. It turned out that a mountain lion had wandered near. We were eating sardines, so it was probably attracted to the smell. The sardines were thrown outside the tent, and eventually it went away. We’d also run out of water about midway through. While dad hiked back to the car to get more, we waited under the tree. It took most the day for him to make the trip.

That time we went ice fishing...

Back when I lived in Utah, my family used to spend many winters ice fishing at Strawberry Lake Reservoir. I don’t remember exactly what kind of fish we were after, but I assume that it was some sort of trout. We’d go out into the middle of a lake, and with an auger, drill a hole through three feet of ice. Then we’d wait around for hours, waiting for something to bite. Sometimes we’d catch fish, sometimes not.

Ice fishing, at least in Utah, is not as cold as one might think.  With the sun reflecting off all that ice, sometimes it would feel warm enough to take off our coats. That, or we just got used to the cold. Sometimes, it would seem rather warm out. It was on one such day that we had to cut out fishing short. We’d been out until early afternoon, when the sun was high in the say. It was at the time that we started to hear loud, groaning noises that seemed to echo over the whole lake. It was the sounding of ice cracking.

We decided to call it quits, and hastily made our way back to the car—only to find that the ice had melted along the shore. The gap was as large as three or four feet in places. We moved along the edge of the floating slab of ice until we could find a spot where the ice seemed to still connect. Then, we made a running leap for solid land. My sisters and I made it alight. I guess we were light enough to not really make a dent in the ice. However, dad was not so lucky. During his running leap, his foot broke the ice and fell in. Luckily, the water was shallow and dad only suffered an incredibly cold and wet foot.

"That Time We Went Ice Fishing..."
intaglio, etching with aquatint, 11"x17"

Family Trip to Goblin Valley, Utah

I spent many summers of my youth hiking through the deserts southern Utah. Among the more memorable sites vested was Goblin Valley State Park.  The place is filled with many cliffs and rocks that had been eroded away through a mix of water and wind. The result is a bunch of mushroom shaped rocks that sit upon a landscape of muddy bedrock.

My sisters and I would try climbing on top of these formations, in order to see how high we could go. My father would stand at the ground and take pictures of us standing atop the mushroom rocks, or inside small crevices in the cliff wall. Among one of the oddest rock formations, I remember seeing one that held a strange resemblance to the alien in E.T.  Whenever we return to Goblin Valley, I always try to locate that same rock formation.

My intaglio print, “Family Trip to Goblin Valley, Utah” is based upon my childhood memories of hiking and climbing through that state part. 

"Family Trip to Goblin Valley, Utah"
intaglio, etching with aquatint and a la poupee, 6"x12"

So I've Been Watching Gotham...

Lately, I’ve been enjoying the new TV series on Fox called Gotham. What I find particularly interesting is the approach that they are taking to tell the story. They’ve set the series early on Bruce Wane’s live, starting at the death of his parents. It looks like they plan to tell the story how the various characters within Gotham came to be the characters we know to day. So far, the series seems to revolve mostly around James Gordon and his investigations as a new detective Gotham. As for Alfred Pennyworth, they seem to be basing him around the rougher Earth One interpretation, in which Alfred was written as a former member of the Royal Marines. It is an interesting departure than how I’ve used to seeing him depicted in animation and the film. The series is also introducing early versions of other character as well, like the Penguin, Catwoman, Don Falcone, Ed Nigma, Harvy Dent, and others. It will be interesting to see how they develop the new incarnations of these characters over the course of the series. As long-time fan of forensic and crime dramas, as well as a fan of the Film Noir aesthetics, I like how this interpretation of Batman seems to feel more like a modern take an a 40’s cop show than a superhero show. Don’t get me wrong, I have a certain appreciation for campy superhero shows as well. However, I am drawn to stories that try to take a more “realistic” or serious approach. 

Gaming and Budgeting Time

Despite owning over 90 titles of video games, I probably consider myself a casual gamer. Because I am a miserly gamer, most games I own were purchased years after release. Alternatively, they were included in giant Black Friday bundles mark down to less than five bucks (where it was cheaper to get the one game I did want this way, than alone). I particularly love RPGs, but between work and school, I barely find the time to sit down and play anything through to the end. It took thirteen years to beat Final Fantasy VII! I own all of Zelda. Someday, I hope to sit down and play it. Obviously not all games sit untouched, but the ones I did play average around three years to four years to finish. Of all those games, I can count the number I have actually completed as less than ten. Yet, according to my family, I play too much, as is. There is no reason to be spending more than two or three hours a week gaming. Past that is an obsession. However, next to my gamer friends, I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of gaming. As an illustration student, I find that I usually do not know what classmates or instructors are referencing when they talk about the art used in this game or that game. Therefore, I feel that I really need to step up and play more, to gain a better awareness to what is out there. So I wonder, for someone who is interested in working in the industry, how much gaming is too much gaming?

My lack of time spent gaming… is this like someone saying they want to be a writer, but then not reading enough books? How much reading is too much reading?

On that note, I’ve been told that I own way too many books and comic books. That is, enough to fill an entire bookcase (and unlike games, most of those I actually have finished).

Childhood Memories: "That time I..."

“That time I canoed through a thunderstorm...”
 Linoleum Print, 18"24"

“That time I
canoed through
a thunderstorm...”

It was June 2001—during the weekend of my high school graduation. As it so happened, my church scheduled its annual canoeing activity on that very same weekend.  Now, I’ve never been a person who cared much for lines or crowds, and I imagined that a graduation ceremony would be abundant in both these things. Therefore, despite the schedule conflict with what would normally be considered by most—I assume—a pivotal moment in a teenager’s life, I decided to trade cap and gown for paddle and boat. Instead of attending an once-in-a-lifetime event, I went canoeing. Gotta have priorities, right?

Our church’s annual canoeing event took place on Arkansas’s Buffalo River. It was a familiar river that my dad, sisters, and I had canoed at last four times before. That year, we also brought along our new rat terrier puppy—rather than leaving her home alone for an entire weekend.

The Buffalo River itself is fairly calm and easy—at least in comparison to canoeing in oceans and white water rafting down the Colorado River. Such is the calmness of the Buffalo River that I once slept through it on a previous trip (forcing my sister to paddle the final half on her own while I snoozed…but that is another story).

We arrived at the Buffalo River, that year, to overcast weather and a fear that it might start to rain. There was some concern that the activity would need to be canceled, yet nobody really wanted to turn back after driving the hours it took to get there. As the resident meteorologist, my dad was consulted on the matter. The forecast for that day had indicated only light showers with partly cloudy skies. In the end, it was decided that a little rain wouldn’t be a problem—we’d be getting wet, anyway. The paddled and canoes were then divvied up among those in attendance, and off we went. Yet as is common with meteorological predictions, the weather turned worse than expected. 

We were about half way to our destination with no sign if the overcast lightening. The rain had been sporadic up until that point—mostly light drizzles. However, it soon picked up, and with it brought the rolling of thunder.  We continued along the river in hopes that we’d reach the end before the thunderstorm worsened.  That plan only lasted until a bright bolt of lightning struck close ahead of us. At that moment, dad quickly instructed my sisters and I to paddle to the bank and get out of the water.  Once there, we huddled under the canoe with our terrified little dog and waited for the thunderstorm to pass. Maybe a half hour had passed before the storm cleared and we were able to return our canoes to the river. 

We were about half way to our destination with no sign if the overcast lightening. The rain had been sporadic up until that point—mostly light drizzles. However, it soon picked up, and with it brought the rolling of thunder. We continued along the river in hopes that we’d reach the end before the thunderstorm worsened.  That plan only lasted until a bright bolt of lightning struck close ahead. At that moment, dad quickly instructed my sisters and I to paddle to the bank and get out of the water. Once there, we huddled under the canoe with our scared little dog and waited for the thunderstorm to pass. Maybe a half hour had passed before the storm cleared. We returned our canoes to the river and continued with the activity. When we reached the end, we shared some laughs with our friends about how close that lighting strike had been, and then went home.

It was not until the next encounter with a thunderstorm that we learned our puppy had developed a phobia that would last through her entire life.