Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Some things to do today
Well iv finally given up on trying to make my new hard drive work T_T it must be broken, the computer just cant see it no matter what I do! So im gona have to send it back today, I guess this is the troble with ordering things online, you cant exactly walk back into the shop.

Apart from that im meeting up with a friend from school today, I havnt seen her in absolutly ages so that should be good.

Also tonight im going to see my uncle, he and my cosins have been giving me driving lessons, which is very kind since I know nothing about cars!

Hmm well thats about all for now, c ya all later!
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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

just a quick post
Hi all! just a quick post to say how things are going, well i havnt been up to much really. Went shopping during the England game which was great because the weather was good and the shops were fairly quiet and everyone was in a good mood! I even bought a new pair of shorts to wear to the beach, but we didnt go in the end cuz it was cloudy T_T hopefully we'll get a chance to go soon.

im thinking of going back to the crappy super powers idea for some pictures, or maybe even some not so crappy super powers! We'll just have to wait and see.

At the moment im just waiting for a file transfer of a program which will hopefully get my new hard drive working, im currently using an old one and its not very stable T_T

well take care all!
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Sunday, June 11, 2006

Hi all!
Hey everybody hows your weekend going? Mine hasnt been to bad except today we were going to go to the beach, and I was really looking forward to it, and I woke up, and its the 1st cloudy day for ages! T_T So thats not likey to happen anymore.

In better news I have posted a picture ^_^ of a demon lady. Just to explain, she wasnt origenally going to have tights because I always imagined her costume to be a sort of leotard thing. But the way her legs are crossed it made her look like she wasnt wearing anything, so I thought id give her tights before someone flamed me for posting inapropriate images or something lol.

So if you have chance please go see it ^_^

buh byes!
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Friday, June 9, 2006

   Thanks for visiting my fairy ^_^
Thank you everyone who commented on my fairy, especially morbo86 and wheem001 , who comment on all my art ^_^ I have to say, I might be the only person who currently listens to your pod casts, but you guys account for 2 thirds of the comments on my pictures lol ^_^

So anyone who is here who isnt morbo or wheem should head over to morbo's site and listen to said podcasts. Especially if you like anime or games, particularly final fantasy, they made me laugh anyway ^_^

In answer to the questions about my fairy's wings, this is how I did them: I didnt actually draw them at all, I drew the fairy, without wings then scanned it. In paintshop
pro I used the layers tool for the first time and made a completly new layer called wings. I then drew the outline for the wings in red and filled it. Then put some orange around the outside and some streaks of yellow through the middle. Then I used the smudge tool to blur the colours together a bit. Then I used the warp brush, basically to use the warp brush you choose the effect you want (turn left or right, push outwards, etc) then the size of the area you want it to effect. then you hold the left mouse button down and the area gets more and more warped. Thats how I made them all curly ^_^

Then I sort of mucked up the layering bit and ended up with the wings on top of the fairy ¬_¬ but it came out ok in the end.

Well thats about all for now, buh byes!
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Thursday, June 8, 2006

another attempt and computer colouring ^_^
Hi all

I felt like having another attempt at computer colouring and have posted the results. I did try to use both shadows and highlights this time but I dont think the highlights came out as well as the shadows. I also found a new toy, the warp brush ^_^ which ment I could do all sorts of fun things.

Thank you to everybody who comments on my art, its very encouraging!

So what else have I been doing? Well I decided to see just how far I could push my new PC. So last night I loaded farcry on and had a look at that, with all the settings on very high it ran nice and smoothly and the tropical island looked very pretty ^_^ . Unfortunatly while I was trying to admire the reflections in the water and the textures on the trees mercenries kept popping up and shooting at me T_T . Then I drove the jeep I was supposed to be using into a ditch and couldnt get it back out again. So I gave up on farcry, first person shooters arnt really my thing anyway.

So this morning I tried Oblivion. I saved right before a fight against 2 dogs, outside, with lots of trees and water to render. And then gradually turning up the graphics settings, reloading, fighting, checking for lag, rinse and repeat ^_^ . And I have to say im very impressed.

Well better stop now before this becomes another monster post lol take care ^_^
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Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Slightly later then advertised
Iv finished half racoon boy ^_^ so please go see it if you have chance. I think the limbs look sort of lanky, but maybe thats just me.

I actually finished it yesterday but didnt post it because the rest of my computer parts arrived ^_^ so I was busy putting them together, and im now using the computer I made ^_^

Im not sure what I should draw next, girl with fast growing finger nails, boy who can fly in confined spaces, or racoon boy's little sister; small child with super strength?

well thats about all for now, take care!
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Monday, June 5, 2006

   Better be quiet now...
Ok, I appreciate my last post reached a new hight of geeky-ness. I didnt actually realise how long it had got till I posted it and went back to my site and had to keep scrolling and scrolling.... But in my defence I think it was partly a symtom of my current state of having nothing to do till my job starts (not that im complaining!)

Another thing iv been doing is drawing a lot. My latest idea being; if, for some reason, everyone in the world woke up one morning with super powers, there would be someone, somewhere, who drew the short straw. And that person gets something naff, like being half racoon or something. But then I thought, if that happened to a girl, at least it would be kinda cute and she'd be a real hit at anime conventions. So I decided it would have to be a boy. The picture still needs colouring, but I tihnk it came out rather well.

Anyway, whats the crappiest super-power you can think of? Well that wasnt too long, take care ^_^
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Sunday, June 4, 2006

   New PC bits smell nice
They do, its slightly differant to the new car smell ^_^ well so far my PC is a case, the Jeantech Phong 2. Yes, they very almost named a case after a pair of pants, aparently it means 'wind' in japanese or chinese or some such, draw from that what you will. But all the same its a very good case with a 140mm fan drawing air in, over the components to cool them (cooling is very important!) and a 120mm fan sucking the hot air back out again. It also has front usb, audio and firewire ports, if I can work out how to connect them up. It even has controllers for the speed of the fans, so you can turn them right up when the PC is desperatly crunching away to play new games, and turn them down nice and quiet when you're just surfing the net. And a temperature sensor display to tell you how toasty you're expensive components are getting :-S . It also came with a nice selection of thumb screws and other bits. The overall construction seems pretty solid and in my opinion you could pay twice as much for a far inferior case. So all in all im very pleased with the case.

Iv also bought the power supply, a 580W one from Hiper. Its basically the same as theyr type-R range just minus the 'bling' like modular cables, LED fan, etc. Which would all be a bit pointless since you cant see into my case anyway. So I got the same quality but saved some cash. Its got another whacking great fan on the underside and the case is made out of a sort of metal mesh to help keep it cool. A quality PSU is important because cheaper ones can often struggle to reach theyr rated wattage (is that even a word? :-p) and can even damage your components. Unfortunatly I havnt been able to test it yet since I havnt got the rest of the bits.

The last bit I have at the moment is a dvd-rom/cd-rw. I was tempted to get a dvd-rw but then I realised Iv already had one of those for 2 years and Iv never used it to burn a dvd, so I thought id save some money and go for the step down. If I ever do want to burn a dvd ill do it on the other PC, and if I ever sell that PC ill just swap the drives over ^_~ but again I havnt been able to test the drive.

So now im just waiting on:

CPU - AMD Athlon 64-bit dual core 3800+

The 64 bit part means that it can handle 64 bits of data at a time, most processors can only handle 32 bits at a time. Ofcourse the application has to be written to give the CPU 64 bits at a time, which most programs arnt yet, but its good to be future proof.

The dual core part basically means its got 2 processors on one chip. This is good because a processor can only do one thing at once, it may look like its doing lots of things but its actually doing them so fast that its looks to you and I like its doing multiple things at once. So by having 2 'cores' it really can do 2 things at once, so one might be running your antivirus while one is running a game. Unfortunatly few programs are written to use both cores at once, but almost everybody is running multiple applications at a time nowadays. I mean, just at this moment iv got a firewall, antivirus, anti spyware and a web browser going. Ok so none of those things are very demanding but chuck a game in aswell and you notice a difference.

Motherboard:

I cant actually remember the proper name for the mobo iv ordered :-p its from Gigabyte and it can support upto 4GB RAM (although to start with ill only have 1GB) and 7.1 surround sound (although my speakers are only 2.1 lol) But what i really wanted was the option to have both a dual core processor and dual graphics cards, and this was the cheapest board I could find to support both those things.

Graphics card: BFG Nvidea 7600

graphics cards are funny things, for 99.9% of them the chips are either made by Nvidea or ATI. Then theres a whole load of other companies like BFG, XFX, Sapphire, Club3D, etc, that actually make the cards using these chips. after reading the reviews I decided that the best GPU (graphics processing unit) for my budget was the Nvidea 7600. And ill say now im not going to get into a shouting match about who is better, ATI or Nvidea, iv used both, and will continue to use what I deem to be the best card for my money at the time. Im not big on brand loyalty, ill quite happily jump ship if I think theyrs a better deal to be had elsewhere. So once Id decided on the GPU I had a look at the graphics cards out there and settled on the BFG mainly because it comes pre overclocked (basically they make it run a bit faster) and since I never bother to over clock my components myself I figured I could get a bit more bang for my buck going for this one, and I read some good reviews about it aswell.

Also later on if I can get an identical graphics card then I can have 2 graphics cards ^_^

Apart from all that im getting 1GB RAM and an 80GB hard drive. Nothing too remarkable about them. So thats going to be my PC, itll cost around about the £650 mark. I think you could get a lot less for £650 if you went into PC world or some where like that and bought one off the shelf. that and theyr fun to build ^_^

Well if you actually read that entire long ramble, thank you and im very impressed ^_^
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Thursday, June 1, 2006

   wow, I posted some fan art for a change!
Yes iv posted my afor mentioned Final Fantasy fan art. Probly only the 2nd or 3rd peice of real fanart iv posted on here! Its Cloud and Tifa, done in my own style. Which is my way of getting around the fact they dont actually look much like the origenal characters! Im not very good at drawing a profile view of faces so that was a pain but im pretty pleased with how it turned out. So if you have time please go and see it ^_^
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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

   I fixed my scanner!
Well 'fixed' might be a bit strong, I plugged it all back in again and it started working ^_^ was probly something stupid like the usb cable had come loose or something. Anyways, iv just posted 2 pencil sketches, please go see them if you get chance ^_^ The origenal scans came out very gray and dark for some reason so I went back over the pictures with a darker pencil to try and improve the contrast. I can definatly say the Harujuku Girl picture looks better in the flesh, so to speak. The Lady with a parasole picture was just me trying out a new pose and the Harujuku girl picture was inspired by the gothic fashion in that area at the moment.

Also, inspired by Morbo86 and Wheem001's podcast about the advent children boxset (boxset just doesnt seem to cover it, but its a set, and its in a box, so itl have to do!) im working on a FF7 themed picture, its just a pencil sketch at the moment but I will ink and colour it before posting.

Well thats about all for now, take care and have fun ^_^
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