Guilty

Further to publicly admitting my new obsession with Mighty Muggs, I caved and blew £21 on a San Diego Comic Con Exclusive Iron Man Mighty Mugg. I shall eagerly await my very first Mighty Mugg but I have a horrible feeling that I'll end up collecting them all. Below is a comparison I put together between the two Iron Man Mighty Muggs. I have to keep looking at this to validate spending over twenty of my finest Sterling on a 6 inch (non-articulating) plastic figurine.

IT'S A TRAP!

That 'learn Photoshop in a week' kind of failed didn't it? I achieved what I really needed to do though which was to use Photoshop everyday, which I have since I started this blog. What have I been doing though? Well, I recently became obsessed with Hasbro's almost-urban-but-still-mainstream Mighty Muggs. I've become especially obsessed with the Admiral Ackbar Mighty Mugg, which then led to me getting all nostalgic about Star Wars. Of course this resulted in a vector drawing which I have posted below, enjoy.

This Blog Is Poorly Written

Going back to the Tate Modern after a couple of years was actually quite disappointing. Modern art doesn't speak to me like it once did, back in the days that I admired the work of Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst. No, not anymore do I spend more than five seconds looking at an individual 'work of art', it has just gotten old and seems to bore me. After half an hour of walking around the various exhibitions and not laying eye on anything of much interest I headed to the Tate Modern shop, located near the turbine hall entrance, to perhaps pick up a postcard so I didn't have to go away completely disheartened. As I walked towards the postcard rack I passed books and clothing and art equipment for sale, I lifted my head and looked back in the direction I was going and made direct eye contact with Batman Begins/Dark Knight actor Cillian Murphy. I saw fear in his eyes. Fear of the tall, clumsy, messy haired boy walking by him? No, but probably fear of the modern art freaks that surrounded him, his child and his wife. It took a few seconds to register what I had just witnessed, by which time I was so far into the shop of overpriced merchandise that it was far too late to say anything to him. I looked back but Mr Murphy was already headed for the exit, taking some sunglasses from his pocket and hiding his Hollywood fame behind black shades. The highlight of going to the Tate Modern was not the art, but the Batman fighting, zombie evading, sun igniting Irish actor Cillian Murphy.

All hail DJ Atomica

I was checking out the new bikes in Burnout Paradise the other day when DJ Atomica's voice started booming out of my speakers. He told tale of construction work going on at Angus Wharf and advised players to seek it out from the top of the multi-story car-park there. I did exactly as the Paradise City Overlord instructed and I discovered a bridge under construction that seemed as though it was heading in the direction of another island on the horizon. EA/Criterion are treating their fanbase very well with heaps of free content, most recent of which was the ability to race motorbikes and play with a day/night cycle. Word is that they're working on a new island and aircraft at the moment. 

Cloning

Truth is I've been a little occupied at the moment so I haven't been able to pay attention to the Photoshop tutorial, I have been using Photoshop to edit photos though...

Original here

Master Photoshop in just one week: Day 2 & 3

Whoops. Looks like I got carried away with those vector drawings. It's an easy trap, to learn to do one thing and focus too much on that, not progressing in other areas. If I'm completely honest then I have to admit that I haven't used the handy tutorial I refer to in the title of this blog for the past two days. I have, however, been using Photoshop and have even upgraded to CS3. 

See, the skill of vector drawing is something that I had wanted to master for quite some time so naturally I temporarily abandoned the tutorials to hone my skills in making nice shapes in Photoshop. Proof? You want proof? Well the best I can do for now is put up this shoddy attempt to create a vector drawing on top of a photograph of mine. I will get stuck in to the tutorial tomorrow and post on my findings over the weekend.

Original photo here

Master Photoshop in just one week: Day 1

I've been putting off learning Photoshop for a loooong time but I was actually excited about it today and had been looking forward to coming home and sitting in front of CS2 for a couple of hours. Preparations for my lesson included:

1) Going to the loo so I didn't get distracted mid-lesson

2) Making a coffee for a caffeine boost

3) Choosing music that would block out distractions in my room

4) Turning off said music after exactly 1 minute and 16 seconds

5) Signing out of instant messenger

I hadn't really given 'How to master Photoshop in just one week' a proper look until today and I discovered that it's actually not a tutorial but a big collection of links to helpful tutorials in an order that gradually advances in skill.

First up was getting to grips with Photoshop, I've been dabbling in Photoshop for about a year now so I'm already quite familiar with the layout and tools, but I'm not skipping any steps so I speedily skimmed through this part. 

Next I learnt about layers, selections, transformation and colour correction. The most useful things that came out of this was the ability to quick-mask and transforming layers. I would normally use the polygonal lasso tool to make selections but using the quick-mask function and my handy Wacom tablet I was able to make nicer, more accurate and realistic selections, as demonstrated below on my friend Simon's head.

I then moved on to adding Simon's head to an existing photograph of Josh, using the handy transform tool to manipulate his noggin to fit on top of Josh's body. It seemed to work, and although the lighting isn't perfect it's not bad for a first try right?

I'm going to skip a few steps next and move on to 'Vector tracing with the pen tool', this is something closer to what I want to produce in Photoshop so I shall report back after I've given that a go.

Update: Just before I go to bed and end the first day of my week long Photoshop quest, here's what I managed to produce from a quick vector drawing tutorial:

Protoshop

I will conquer Photoshop, procrastination is the only thing in my way. My good friend Steve Hogarty sent me the useful link: 'How to master Photoshop in just one week'. Let's see if that's true shall we? Starting tomorrow, I will spend at least one hour a day with this tutorial and see how much I progress after 7 days. I doubt 'master' will be suitable word for my level of achievement but if I can at least get to 'not completely useless' then I'll be satisfied. 

Inevitable

Someone like me can't go without some form of expression, it would be bad for my health. I keep a diary, nobody will read that but me. I take photos and draw cartoons, but they hardly communicate my deepest thoughts and most radical views. I will probably write a book one day but until then I will spread my words however I can, hence how I have arrived at this blog. I hope you can endure what will mostly be pretentious babble as I'm sure I will write something worthwhile  every now and again. 

"Don't judge me by the books on my bookshelf, I haven't read them"