Pile of Shame

I have started a new list to the right hand side of this blog to publicly display the games that I have either not started playing, or have only played for less than half an hour when really I know I should have played them all the way through. Yakuza is something I know I will enjoy, I'm a total Japanophile and this game is set in Tokyo so I'm sure to get all doughy eyed playing it like I do when I watch Lost in Translation. I probably would have played Super Mario Galaxy more if it didn't look so awful on my television. Even when using the 'Official Nintendo Component Cable' it still doesn't look very nice on a high def set. I will have to get over this petty graphical gripe because from what I've heard Galaxy is one of the best Wii games out there. This list will get longer and it will get harder to wipe games off: Games are coming so thick and fast that it's hard to dedicate a decent amount of time to each and every game I want to play. I still haven't even managed to pick up a Playstation 3. £300 isn't something I can drop so easily in such an uncertain time for the economy, but boy that Santa Sackboy costume in LittleBigPlanet is soooo alluring. 

NENDOROID GET - Gatchapin

A friend of mine recently got back from Tokyo and brought back with her a nice new Nendoroid for me. Gatchapin, from a certain Japanese television series (my minimal understanding of Katakana fails to bring you the title in English), cost less than ¥2000 from Amazon JPN. I'm not really pleased with the photo I have up on Flickr, perhaps I will update this page when I take a better one. Have a look at the Good Smile Company website to see all the other great figures they make.

Fable II - Signed

Lionhead Studios recently released their latest and greatest action-rpg, sequel to the original multi million selling Xbox game, Fable II. I have a very bad habit of buying the Limited Edition version of games and Fable II was not going to escape the custom. Originally, the Fable II LE was a bit more interesting than the LE that was eventually released. Disappointed by the lack of little extras that might somehow validate spending £10 extra, I decided to make my Fable II Limited Edition even more 'limited'. Luckily for me, I have a very kind neighbour who happens to work for Lionhead Studios. He agreed to get a few 'paw prints' on my Fable II cover from some of the team that actually worked on the game and yesterday I received it back through my letterbox. I'm quite pleased with the result, my copy of Fable II is without a doubt a limited edition now, living the rest of its life on my already cramped shelf of Xbox games...not eBay.

Nugget

I don't eat meat, but I do read their blogs. This little chicken nugget has started a particularly interesting blog about his travels around the world. Were I more adventurous I would love to do something similar but I'm afraid my adventures don't really travel farther than my local post office. Do take a look at his blog, it's far more interesting than mine Nugget On The Road

Something Musical

Music lovers, Smiths and Morrissey fans and people with ears: I urge you to go to this website and download some free music which actually happens to be extremely good. I first stumbled across Daniel's fabulous tunes through YouTube. It was here that I became very fond of his covers of songs by The Smiths, my all time favourite band. I was excited to discover that he also conjures up his own Smiths-esque music which I have been playing over and over again thanks to the free downloads with iTunes. I highly recommend his brilliant debut album 'Stigmata Playing Up Again' with great songs such as 'What's It Like To Always Be Wrong' and 'Twenty Easy Payments'. Go listen. Now.

New Job. New Shoes. New Blog.

Did you think I had forgotten about this page again? Never. Although admittedly I have been pretty terrible at updating this thing. So a couple of things worth writing about, firstly a new blog I have just started - Lunch Hour Doodles. I figured wasting an entire 60 minutes between 1-2pm during my working week is a crime and I should do something in this time other than window shopping. The inspiration sparked from another great blog up on the internets, rather than drawing on lunch bags though I will spend ten minutes or so doodling in a sketchpad and post it online daily. Now, this can go one of two ways. I come to realisation that in my ripe old age of twenty I have lost all creative imagination after drawing 30 consecutive pages of myself throwing up, or I will draw something fairly interesting every day that I can look back at one day and think "wow I really am crap at drawing". It's a lose-lose situation but I'm still going ahead with it. 

Remember that Photoshop tutorial I was doing? It paid off. I have just been offered my third job with my wonderful employer Explore, this time as a 'Marketing Services Media Executive'. Being an adventure travel company, it is important for Explore to have the best images to market their product... that's where I will come in. I will be tweaking photos in Photoshop, maintaining camera equipment, giving photo briefs for training trips, looking after the massive image library and fulfilling various other marketing/media duties. I'm really excited and happy to be starting this role, although to my disappointment that won't be until January. Still, it's a wait worth sticking out because this job will really put my career on the path I want it to. 

Something Plastic

So that Iron Man figure I was raving on about a few weeks ago turned up. After a week in transit from Hong Kong it arrived in surprisingly good condition and even more surprising was its authenticity. EBay can quite often traffic fraudulent items, even something as obscure as a 'San Diego Comic Con 2008 Exclusive Iron Man Mighty Mugg' but I was lucky and got the real thing. Certainly a mouthful and certainly a very nice, shiny, well made figurine that stands shoulder to shoulder with Boba Fett atop my tower of video games and Nendoroid's. I haven't taken a good enough (or Flickr worthy) photo of Iron Man yet but as soon as I do I will post it on this here blog page.

Mighty Muggs: Collection Initiation

This was rather unexpected. My brother returned home from town and brought back a Mighty Mugg, for me! Boba Fett, king of bounty hunters, is the first Mighty Mugg character to start off my collection. I thought it was going to be the SDCC Iron Man that I mentioned in my previous blog but I'm still waiting for that to arrive. 

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"