Well, sorry I've been away for so long, but things have changed a lot for me around here. At the end of September, I was moving out of my temporary apartment where I was living by myself into a much cheaper and more long term place. So, I am now living in a house with 4, sometimes 5, other guys and I rarely have much time to myself. On the bright side, I am paying way less to live here than I would anywhere else in Maryland, so I should be able to save enough for a nice downmayment on my own place in a year or two.

To make matters more complicated, though, I have also had a series of computer problems. Right as I was moving, both of my computers suffered failures, and I basically lost everything on all my boot hard drives. Inconveniently, I had not yet moved all my art from the boot drive on my main PC, so anything I did digitally (coloring) was lost. It's not a terribly big deal, as it was really only two pictures, but the one took me quite a while. At least the low def versions are still here.

I've recently been talking with a friend at work who is a bit of an artist, and he is showing me the ins and outs of marker coloring, so I may be experimenting with that in the not too distant future. We're also going to be working together on a project to make custom model spacecraft soon, so I'll be sure to post any results from that, cause they'll surely be cool.

Anyway, sorry about being such a recluse, but I'll be around from time to time.

Before I do anything else today, I must post this, as I don't know how long I'll have a stable system.

My main computer died horribly today. I have spent the last 6 hours troubleshooting and then trying to get my secondary computer working, which died a little less horribly a couple months ago. I have just now gotten this one into a useable state, but a hard drive is unstable, and I don't know which one it is.

Anyway, I narrowed down the problem with my main computer to either the motherboard, processor, or power supply, as those are the only things hooked up to each other and the motherboard still does not give any error sounds when I power it on.

To make matters worse, I am moving into my new long term (1 year+) housing this week, so I can't afford to spend any more time troubleshooting. So, if I seem to disappear for however long it takes to get this fixed, now you know why. I can only pray that the failure didn't corrupt any of my hard drives on the main machine, or I'll lose quite a lot.

Well, I don't feel so pathetic now that I have done some drawing. I'm a bit tuckered out after that last one, though, because I started a policy of not stopping until the drawing is completely inked. That sorta kept me up until 5am, but if I don't do that, I set drawings aside and don't finish them for a long time, if ever. Well, anyway, that might be backfiring a bit, since I am now apprehensive about starting a new drawing. That and I can't decide whether to draw the last race detail sheet or this really cool scene I just thought up.

Anyway, I was wondering a few things about FA. First of all, does anyone think it is or isn't a good idea to do my character sheets in the nude, like that last one? (I mean the guy on paper, not me. I was fully clothed while working on it.) I'm kind of kicking myself for that, because now I can't show it to all of my friends back home without wierding some of them out. If there's one thing I noticed about marking it "Mature," it's that it sure gathered pageviews quickly because of it; at least that's what I'm attributing that to. Speaking of pageviews, that brings up my next question.

How the hell do pageviews calculate?? I noticed I crossed the 100 pageview barrier (and there was much rejoicing), but something seemed off about it. I quickly went through my few meager posts and tallied the pageviews there, and counted roughly 200. Odd. Something has seemed strange about FA's numerical system, as I noticed some people, like  duskyshark are shown as having -1 submissions, which amuses me.

Lastly, what can people tell me about coloring? That last drawing I did screams to be colored, but I am terrible at it, or so I think. Does anyone have tips for coloring, namely in Photoshop? Training resources would be greatly appreciated. I have also considered manual coloring, in which case I'd need someone to recommend some good coloring supplies. It would also help if I had a printer so I could practice on prints, rather than originals...

Not that anyone cares yet, but I hope to change that in the not so distant future.

So, I splurged and got nice drawing equipment and I've even drawn some things that are at least a bit better than that tiny thing I've already uploaded. Now, the question is, what scanner to get? If anyone reads this and has suggestions or experiences they'd like to share, please let me know so I don't get a sucky scanner. I'll be scouring newegg.com and other websites in the meantime.

The first thing I plan to upload once scanned is a much better version of my "Shark Tank." Then I have some nice cut-aways that always get good reactions. Then, more sharks!