Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Ta-dah !

I have spent the first couple of days of the REAL holidays finishing up the "Little Monsters" painting for Jenni. Here is the finished work -


I took it round to Jenni's right away because it would get too hard for me to give up if I kept it around here ! I really liked it in the end as well, though that's good in a way - as if I DIDN'T like it I'm not sure I'd be too comfortable in saying it was finished. Or in giving it to someone.

Jenni seemed to like it a lot, so that was good. Now - to start work on the painting I promised my sister.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Let's find out who the chapel ghost REALLY is !

This is very very cool indeed. My pal Andrew, who has done some very cool stuff with light in theatre ( projected images and the like ) has made a haunted church ! So cool !

Here is part of the 'official' release :

Andrew Brettell creates critically acclaimed video projections (most recently for the plays Democracy, and Dr Buller’s Birds). He has ‘haunted’ the Futuna Chapel in Karori - with video projections of ghosts and stories from its past.

The chapel will only be haunted for 3 days – this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It’s free admission,

Futuna Chapel is at 62 Friend Street in Karori, and the display goes from 10am to 10pm

Oooo - spooky - the 'official' relase fragment is invisible ! JUST like a ghost !! If you highlight the black void above it will magically reveal the information. JUST like a ghost !!!

Doesn't that sound cool ? I'm going tonight - you should go too ! All the cool kids are going !

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Co-ordination issues

It's much nicer NOT to have to write reports all weekend. Sure - yesterday was so freaking freezing we had to start a fire to keep warm, but it did mean that I got to make some forward progress with "Little Monsters" -



The first step was getting some more background colours on. That was actually getting tricky - I guess I should have planned how to spread the colours better so there was more definate balance present, rather than just plowing in with what I thought was "A good idea at the time".
Still - there are no major problems there ( yet ).


I'm not sure about the yellow backing for "The Rascal" there. I think that the gray dragon will get a dark gray backing. I'm really not sure about the pink dragon though. It might have to be a straight white. I've left myself very few options. The only other thing I can think of is purple - but with the Beluga right next to it, there might be too much concentration of purple at that corner. Hmm. No - definately white. I don't want to even think about the springy guy ...

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Yellow and red !

Okay - so "Little Monsters" now has some warmer tones with added yellow ( I could have SWORN I had a tube of yellow when I started ... ) -

And also some red -


What I'm really pleased with is the effect I almost accidentally created with the purple colour of the "Beluga" ( bottom left corner ). The previous purple colour was much too dark - so I knocked up another lighter purple, but when I repainted the critter, I left a slight edge of the dark around it. It kind of has a 'glow' to it now - it's hard to explain, but it looks pretty cool.

I think I'll be blacking out some of the areas next - eyes and such. Hopefully it'll give things more definition without deadening the thing. We'll see I guess - it didn't seem to hurt the Stoner none !

Dangerously Obsessive

I feel pretty fortunate that I don’t have any significant physical addictions or compulsions. The closest I get is with video games – and even than I can be pretty good in moderating the amount of time I spend on them ( I’d say the “first term cold turkey” I’ve done for the last few years is a pretty good sign of that – though I AM getting pretty twitchy around Easter ! ).

BUT. I do get odd phases where I suffer from strange obsessions. I get totally fixated on something for awhile. A couple of months ago it was for light-gun games. I HAD to have a light gun ! HAD to ! And I obsessively picked though TradeMe till I got one. Well – two actually. And two games ( see what I mean ? ).

My current obsession is kinda odd – and I’m not entirely sure where it came from. It’s for Blood-Bowl. Right – for those of you without a knowledge of Games-Workshop games, Blood-Bowl is board game, a fantasy ( and that’s swords-and-sorcery fantasy too – not leather and latex styled fantasy ) parody of American football ( and not, literally, a bowl full of blood. That would be icky! ). You have little miniatures of the members of your team and you try and score touch-downs without being horribly maimed. I LOVED Blood-Bowl ! The really cool thing was if you played as part of a continuing league – your players got points based on what they managed to achieve, and eventually you started getting other player skills … oh, it was great !

Because I worked in a games store for a bit, I did manage to pick up quite a few of the miniatures fairly inexpensively, and I have a fairly good range of teams. I can field a team of humans, orcs, undead, wood elves, dark elves, chaos warriors, skaven rat-men and ALMOST a goblin team. Not bad.

It was the miniatures that I really liked – and I always slightly preferred the older 2nd edition figures.

I wandered into a Games-Workshop store* and asked if you could still order the older figures after I didn’t see them in the on-line catalogue. They seemed to think you should be able to – so I was happy.

But no – having done some more research on-line, I find out that a LARGE number have been pulled from production and you can’t get them made anymore ! Gasp !

Good news – I already have the majority of the pulled figures ( well – that I WOULD want anyway ).

Bad news – I find myself with filled with an almost overpowering desire to acquire a 2nd ed skaven team.

These out-of-production figures are coming up on E-Bay, but they can get pretty pricey – especially when they’re for pounds sterling. American dollars are bad enough !

What is interesting is that a new range of figures ( 5th ed ) seem to have been made from last year – which I didn’t know about at all. I didn’t think that BB would still be that popular – looks like I was wrong. The new werewolf looks pretty cool. And they’ve finally got a decent figure for the human star player Griff Oberwaldhe no longer looks like a guy with a duck on his head ( and that’s GOTTA be good ! ).

I might try and start up a BB league at school next year. It’s been something I’ve been thinking of doing for awhile now. And if I’m really sneaky – I can tack on a request on student orders and not have to pay for postage ! Hee hee hee !

… Next post I’ll update my “Little Monsters” painting. It won’t be nearly as geeky as this one ! I promise !



*And if I hadn't been rapidly cornered by some scary employee's - I would have ran out soon after. If you ever find you HAVE to go in - don't make eye-contact and pretend you're deaf.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Grinning Black Despair

You know you've spent too long writing school reports when you're tempted to write "JUST F**K OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE YOU B@STARDS !" for every remaining student you have.

77 out of the 96 I have to do done. Only 18 left !

Rapture !

Mind you - then I have to enter all the comments into the freaking electronic markbook ... as well as all the grades I haven't entered yet.

Damn !!!

In other more geeky news - played the BEST game of "Shadows Over Camelot" last night at Jenni and Lee's. Freaking 11 white sword to ONE black ! All the artifacts won ! NO-ONE dead ! I think there may have been under 7 seige engines on the board at the end too. Goddamn - we were so lucky !

Right - I'm going to sit in the sun for a half hour and eat my lunch - before I steel myself to returning to the dungeon of the office and finishing off these thrice cursed reports.

*sob*

Friday, December 01, 2006

Progressinator

Shall we see how "Little Monsters" is progressing ?

Oh all right then ! Seeing as you asked so nicely.

I had it up to this level on Tuesday :

And here is a shot of the painting I just finished not ten minutes ago :


I'm really liking the "Stoner" now that he's pretty much done ( top - second from left ). Now that I actually have some yellow paint, I'll be able to introduce some warmer colours into the mix very soon.

Not that I'll get much painting done this weekend. I thought I had an extra week to complete my school reports - they're actually due Monday. How many have I done ? NONE !

I'm so freaking boned. One very grim and frustrating weekend is coming my way ...