I really like a lot of things about you. You give me very realistic , paper-like, sketch effects and, in general, I really like the way you accomplish things. On the other hand, when I try to save a final touch up of my line work and you corrupt the .PSD file so miserably that I lose six and a half hours worth of work, it makes me swear and break things. A lot. I'm afraid if you can't straighten up and fly right, I'm gonna have to send you to hell.

Have a nice day, unless you delete my work again, in which case, burn in hell.

Thank you,

Pyromancy

Could we please stop posting Journals if we really don't want people to read them? It's just that I really am tired of logging on to find that I need to read 30 journals and having only five not "deleted by poster."

Also, is it possible that we could go maybe, a week, without posting the massive wangtacular that keeps appearing in my inbox?

Okay, then. Thank you.

I just posted something. I am proud of it. Please read.

Dog Washing!

There. I said it. This commonplace activity is usually as far from my daily routine, as removed from my purvey, as is possible for an activity to be. The dog scrubbery in my household is usually handled by my wife. I have issues with washing any small, living things in sitting water. It causes small panicky jitterings in my deepest psyche. I dislike holding something mere inches from drowning in a shallow body of water. Not, because of the obvious idea, that I might feel inclined to test the limit of safe immersion, but because I am certain that I will, by no intention of my own, surpass that safe limit and potentially end the tiny, squirming thing.

Anyway, long story short, my wife, searching for intelligent life in the darkest reaches of a barely tamed corner of the world, I had to bathe my dog. She has picked up the charming habit of expelling bladder content into her sleeping place. The dog. Not my wife.Though she is far from home, currently and any messes she makes aren't my concern. The dog, no longer a puppy, has that new puppy smell; that is to say, she reeks of urine. While this is cute, yet disgusting, on a young, relatively helpless mammal, once it grows older, this is not the case. It becomes, “just fuckin’ gross.” So into the bath she had to go.

This is my first time bathing her and she had the “Oh holy shit!” look, that she tends to get when the ominous music starts (possibly only in her and my mind) at the vet’s office, even before I lifted her to lower her into the tub. The collar came off and suddenly her eyes were the same size as the rest of her head (not as big a deal as it sounds. Boston Terriers have massively huge eyes.) and her ears (also substantial) were pasted, conveniently to the sides of her neck.

Side note: When we take her for walks, if she sees a puddle, she goes as far out of her way as she can to avoid stepping in it. If, gods forbid, she steps in something wet, she walks around like a three year old that has touched something icky, hands held out to be cleansed of this unholy morass. Not having hands, she limps around like the moisture has reduced her paw to a stump, steeped in gore. If she pees and it runs downhill and touches her foot, she finishes up with that foot hovering inches above the ground.

So, I put her into a tub full of water up to belly height. She tried to simultaneously lift all four feet without lowering the rest of her body into the water. Turns out, dogs can’t hover. She then began to try to run laps, one foot raised from the wetness, in a tub that was not explicitly designed for the purpose. So, I am actually accomplished at the task of washing things that are capable of movement (I have bathed numerous toddlers intent on escape from the bathing enclosure.) and I washed her quickly. Upon completion, I take her out of the tub and begin to dry her off. Like any two year old freshly out of the bath and not yet clothed, she begins to tear ass around the house like Hell itself was trying to consume her.

It was upon her third lap that I realized that it wasn’t fleeing in terror so much as enjoying the freedom of being naked (sans collar), clean and dripping wetness on the dry house.


Gods. I can’t wait ‘til my wife gets back home so I never have to do this mad dance again.

ATTENTION, Universal Movie Monster fans!!

Edited again. It's below the mini-poster.

...Before Tyra Banks had a voice? She used to be the Victoria's Secret chick and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue girl. She used to be that amazing girl with the amazing face and body and eyes like a frightened animal in the headlights.

I suppose it was inevitable that eventually, supermodels would want to get in front of a camera with a microphone attached, but why did it have to be her? Her every word bespeaks an ignorance and lack of intelligence. Her bigger than life (over the top, dumber than hell, choose your cliché) personality is really beginning to eclipse the beauty that she once represented. She has more television shows than is really warranted by her personality, skills or any other real consideration. She interviewed, on the Tyra Banks Show, Sasha Grey (pornstar) who then went on a blog and said that Tyra was the dumbest person she'd ever met. I dunno, but I'm of the impression that while most pornstars aren't, necessarily, dumb, they are certainly in a position (no pun intended) to know dumb when they encounter it.

Further, Sasha Grey strikes me as relatively intelligent, and to be in porn and say that Tyra Banks is the dumbest person ever, I think that means something.

Anyway, my point is, I'm in Denmark now and even here, in a hotel, with 25% or less of the programming being in English, I can't escape America's Next Top Model. Feckin' stupid Tyra Banks.

=Rules=

* Choose a singer/band/group.
* Answer using ONLY titles of songs by that singer/band/group.
* Tag 2 more people (let them know they've been tagged)

The band I chose: Mindless Self indulgence

Are you male or female?
Whipstickagostop

Describe yourself!
I'm Your Problem Now

What do people feel when they're around you?
Royally Fucked

Describe your current relationship.
Boomin

Where would you like to be now?
Futures

How do you feel about love?
Holy Shit

What's your life like?
Keepin' Up With the Kids

What would you ask for if you only had one wish?
Ready For Love

I tag: nobody! I'm so tired I'd probably injure us both.

Vegetarians eat vegtables, right? And fruitarians (it's a real word, look it up) eat only fruit. Do Unitarians eat units and if so should I be guarding my junk from the religious?

As of tomorrow morning (July 11) I am traveling. I will not be posting or responding to much. After two weeks, I will be settling in to Denmark for a week or so of jet lag and temporal dysphoria. After that, I should be approaching my normal habits but until then my time will be eaten and I won't be able to be reached terribly reliably.

I saw Xmen Origins: Wolverine, on Saturday. "It was brilliant!!!" Is what I wanted to say about it, but the stench of focus group-produced, mass market, "only idiots would want to see a comic book movie," summer movie fare is what I got. I'm slightly ashamed for Jackman that he did this movie. He played Wolverine so well in the X-men movies, (Except the Last Stand. That sucked a biblical amount of ass. He was good but that movie turns anything it touches to crap.) that his partaking in this project should have raised it up. Instead, they traded on his drawing power and standard action flick fare to make a good concept into a waste of two hours of my life and a heap of cash.

This movie had it all: pointless explosions, bad graphics, story that lacks continuity with either the movie franchise or the comic series, really bad acting, some phenomenally bad makeup, plot holes you could fly a plane through. I won't dignify it with a statement about which of these was where. Just suffice it to say that with Iron-Man and the Incredible Hulk both having been done the way they should have been, Marvel has no problem screwing up in traditional Marvel Movie fashion.

Save your money. This may be a rental someday, if you don't really have anything invested in the X-men comics, Wolverine comics or the first two X-men movies. Jackman's perfomance is good, but hey, he's Jackman. The casting was pretty good. Liev Schreiber was far better than the old edition of Sabretooth in the X-men movies. Even Wade Wilson (Deadpool) was cast well. Too bad the direction sucked, the writing sucked and the movie was a mediocre heap.

Sorry I've not been around much, lately. I've been working on a website for a movie my brother is doing all the special effects for. It takes all my time, really. Here's the deal: I hate building websites. I can't do Flash and I barely know javascript, but I'm really good with css and html. It eats a lot of time and I hate it while it's going on but it needs doing so I'm on it.

In a less explanatory mode,now, I need to know something for a project I'd like to see go live at some point. I have a question that'll help me reach that end.

"What is scary?" I need to know what the essence of scary is, what makes scary things scary to you. I need answers as honest as you can give, because I have to develop a series of seriously scary things and I need to know how to take apart and reassemble the scary bits to make other things that still have the same degree of creepy and actually frightening as the previous ones. EDIT: I need things that are visually scary. This is for a comic. I'm developing nightmare monsters. END EDIT.

Anyone who helps, may see their suggestions incorporated into a piece (or pieces) that will be dedicated to the ones who's suggestions helped me the most. I'll make high rez versions available to the applicable parties. Have at it folks.


{EDIT: I just passed my 400th watcher. Whoo!}

I dunno if it counts as furry or not but it makes me laugh. Check out Bear Nuts!

I found out on the first of April that my wife's company is contracting her to go to Denmark for about a year and a half (maybe more if the contract is renewed. This means many things, but the one that I'm focusing on here is the fact that the wife, daughter and I (plus our dog who, try as we might to explain this, doesn't get it.) will be moving to Denmark in the summer, barring some major unforeseen issues.

If any of you have ever moved to Europe from North America, and know things that might help us out, I would appreciate also knowing these things. I know I'm not really a huge participator in all things furry, as I've never gone to a furry con or anything like that, but I've made some good friends hereabouts and probably won't have as much time to be on FA.

After the contract is up, we'll be moving back to good old Canada, but for the interim, it's Denmark all the way.

I haven't talked to many of you about this. I am a GIANT fan of the new Battlestar Galactica series which just aired its final episode last night.

I have watched it faithfully for years. I had some ideas going on for quite a while about where the series would end. Firstly, let me say I hated the original even when I was young and it was new. I was reticent to get into the new series when the miniseries aired but I was almost immediately hooked. The destruction of humanity is a pretty good setting to place a space saga in. The casting was great. The effects were great. I liked the music better in the actual series than in the mini, but it all went well together. For the last six years I've had an investment in this series. I don't watch a lot of TV but every week there was a new episode, you can bet I was tuning in.

The final episode should have been two final episodes. There was one (the first half) that was absolutely gut wrenching. It was full of action and truly visceral moments where the arms of the couch suffered many a violent clutching. The second half of the final episode turned into the end of the Return of the King. There was 40 minutes of denouement that put a lot of relationships to the end.

I had a feeling going in to the final ep that I would be so satisfied with the ending that I would never again feel the urge to look upon BSG or that I would be so disappointed with the final ep that I would never deign to waste my time looking at it again. I was right.

The producers and directors of the show have always stressed that the story was more about the people than it was about the world they moved through. They dangled so many plot points in our faces for so long that I was certain that they had to be resolved with this final installment. Largely they didn't.

WARNING: Here there be spoilers!!

Starbuck, a.k.a, Kara Thrace, was returned from the dead and they had it confirmed that she had actually died earlier in the fourth season. I was hoping she'd be explained. I had suspicions as to what had happened and why she was alive. There could've been actual explanation on that. Instead, they decided that they could dispense with explanations and throw a "God did it," explanation in to hold the place of good writing. It seems that this was the order of the day as it was used in a lot of things, like Baltar and Caprica Six's phantom counterparts were suddenly "angels."

I don't know why it took 40 minutes, after everyone landed and was ready to start over with civilization, to deal with four relationships. There were thousands of people who survived. They focused on those four groups as though they were the only ones of any importance in the series.

Kara Thrace as an angelic agent of whatever god or gods there are in the universe is a poor explanation and her disappearing into thin air is a ridiculous concept. There were no miraculous occurrences in the series to that point that couldn't have had been explained with a scientific explanation, even a stressed and belaboured one. Starbuck going "poof!" was a bad way to end her story.

Baltar and Caprica Six getting to go on happily with their lives after all they had done is bad. That's just the part of me seeking balance, I guess, but Baltar and Six were fuckers who were largely responsible for the end of humanity and they get to go off and have a life together because, "It's god's plan." Bullshit.

President Rosalyn had been dying since the first season of the show. Making as big a deal as they did about her final passing was pointless and made the show entirely about Bill Adama and not about anything else.

The final idea, "Let's not rebuild," just didn't work, either. They all went their own ways to live as stone age types, yes, but society, as we saw at the end, just rebuilt.

The fact that they had the names of Greek Gods, like Apollo, Athena, Helo (Helios, first god of the sun), Adama (Adam), Hera, etc... and landed 150,000 years before the modern era, when people were pre-verbal, doesn't make a lot of sense. Legends don't live that long. The names would've been forgotten. It's like writing a story about a billionaire playboy named Bruce Wayne, with a butler named Alfred and not writing it as a Batman story. Why use the names at all if you aren't going to tie them into the final ideas?

I am fully disgusted with the weak ending and I am never going to invest my time in another series of this magnitude again as it will surely be just another letdown with, ultimately, no point.

Please visit my critter.

Thank you.

I hate when people do this. I hate it so much! I really need to, though.

I post stuff relatively infrequently of late. I just am not making as much art as I used to. I never really get feedback on anything I post here except from the same six or seven people. I rarely get faves from outside that group, too. I tend to get more human reaction to my rants than my art.

Am I lying to myself? Am I not good enough to be making art professionally? I'm not looking for a pity party or a bunch of back patting. I really need to know. I only tend to get comments from people who already love my stuff or people who are my buddies and would comment on it if I took a picture of myself vomiting. I feel like I made a mistake in taking up the artist's tools a lot lately and I need to know if this is just self doubt or common sense catching up to me.

My previous journal was a review. I've seen some reviews around herabouts, that state, in no uncertain terms, that the Wacthmen sucked. Largely, these are written by people who have not read the book. I've read, twice now, that the Watchmen movie was done by "the same guy who did V for Vendetta," and that this is the reason it sucked. I need to raise the issue that while Alan Moore wrote the original pieces on both of them, he is in no way responsible for the damage Hollywood does to his original plots and ideas.

I liked V for Vendetta, the movie, until I read the book. The movie disregards all the points of the book and massacres a good story. Watchmen, on the other hand, is as faithful to the original as is possible. I'm not saying that Alan Moore's work is everyone's cup of tea. Far from it. But basing a judgement of his body of work based on any of the movies is stupid and small minded. You can not encapsulate the brilliance of Moore's writing, particularly in the vein of dystopic alternate modern settings, in the mishandlings of any of the movies.

If you are a fan of Moore, you will be a fan of Watchmen, the movie. It is finally as if Moore's message was understood by someone in the film industry. Zach Snyder may be a little over the top with the graphic depiction of sex (The five minute sex scene could have said just as much in a minute and a half, both in 300 and in Watchmen.) he remained true to the spirit of this work. If you haven't read the book, the movie will make less sense. If you have, you will sit in awe. The fanboy in you that wants to see the movie told in word for word translation, 18 hour playing time be damned, will find places to nitpick but the project as a whole is a success. The casting was brilliant. The dialog, even the stuff that had to be reworked for time, was well done and easily flowing. The look of the thing was almost a direct translation. The elimination of subplots from the book to the movie, though regrettable, brought the watch time down to just under three hours. My bladder didn't chase me out of the theatre at any point and that's more than I can say for the Dark Knight.

The characters are accurate translations, the ending, while not the one from the book, due to the elimination of as many sub plots as possible, still fits with the universe and rings of an idea that Moore might've had.

I normally leave a theatre after seeing a movie and complain for days about what's wrong. I nitpick things until I hate them. I have four complaints about the movie and every one of them is minor. First, Silken Spectre's into the habit of taking extended action poses that are held two beats too long. Second, the sex stuff was held to the point of discomfort, but we know that about Snyder's work. Third, Ozymandias' pet Bubastis is brought into the story but never explained. Without explanation, it make the presence sort of weird. Fourth, and I covered this in my previous review, the music is handled weirdly. I understand the need to set the era, "This is the 80s that you remember, even though it really isn't." The music pulls you out of the moment on at least two occasions. Other than this, this is the most faithfully executed Alan Moore story ever translated to film.

If you like Moore's ugly, dingy, dystopic story telling, see it. If you haven't read the book, borrow it, check it out of a library, buy it if you have to. Read it. It makes the movie that much better to see how closely it follows. Also, a lot of exposition that had to be dropped in the interest of time, is made up in the slow motion opening credits sequence that, if you pay attention to it, sets up the whole thing so well as to barely be believed.

Also, the Silhouette? Totally frickin' hot for all of her thirty seconds or so on screen.

Saw Watchmen today. The filth that hides the truth of reality couldn't obscure my view of the spectacle that has been made of my life. Ms. Jupiter and Daniel were portrayed as spot on as could possibly be expected. The casting was better than I would've thought. The actors were the spitting images of their counterparts. Adrian was the bastard I've always known him to be and Manhattan was as contemptuous of humanity as I've always suspected. He walked around shamelessly as only a pervert or alien thing would; unashamed or unaware of his nakedness. The scar on the Comedian was not as intense and angry and ugly as I always seem to remember it was. They captured my face perfectly, but the thing behind it wasn't right.

Don't want to ruin the surprise for everyone but the ending isn't the real one. It's right, somehow, but that isn't how it happened. You put the telling of the Watchmen's story into the hands of some Hollywood degenerate, you're bound to get a few details wrong. Moloch was played by someone who reminded me of Max Headroom. I don't like that. Headroom always seems to mock me with that digital half-smirk of his.

The musical interludes seemed to come at odd intervals with nothing to say beyond, "you should remember that we're watching the '80s." Dislike being talked down to. The smut overloaded my sense at some points and I nearly ran, spewing filth and vomit, from the theater. I always knew Ms. Jupiter was a whore, the apple never falls far from the tree, but to see what she does in the dark and private, sticky moments of her life... Almost more than a sane person can bear. I'll have to have a word about it with Daniel when this is all over.

Hollywood owes the world many apologies for the degeneracy and filth that has come from it. The Watchmen movie is more of the same, but it captures the essence of the truth and has the excuse that it's just telling life as it is. See it. Know the dark and repugnant corner of reality that I call home.

We live in a weird world. Let me preface anything that follows by saying that.

A few moments ago, there is a knock at the door. My dog starts going ape shit. My wife, dressed for comfort, doesn't want to answer because she doesn't know who the guy at the door is and doesn't want to talk to a stranger in what amounts to her pajamas. I answer the door. The guy mumbles something to me that would be difficult to understand through his thick accent, had he not mumbled, and hands me a book. He shows me a badge on a lanyard that looks like it's from some educational something or other. He then starts, in that same low, mumbley, heavily accented voice, to tell me about food, coincidentally the subject of the book. He starts on the subject of salt and how salt isn't just a seasoning but is also -mumble mumble- diabetes. The nutrients (he says the word with a reverence some save for deities walking the Earth) are not understood by the average person in North America bzz bzz bzz... I tune out. I start hearing some far off music that sounds like a music box playing "The Girl From Ipa Nima." I glance down and he has two other books in his hands. One appears to be about India. The other must be the really good one because he hides the cover.

He holds up his badge again and continues to mumble. I think I heard the word "asparagus" but he might have been talking about "aspergillus." Who can say? My dog, at this point makes her third attempt to squeeze her way into the hall to attack or inspect or pee on the new person. The dude continues to drone on with the lack of urgency you hear from the heavily medicated and those who have been told that they're in for the long haul at the hospital. I look up into his glazed over, dead eyes. He is as bored and uninterested as I am. I decide it's time to make my move.

"...And that is why the foods--"
"Are you selling something?"
-mumble mumble- "Sir. I am" -mumble- "organization." he presents the badge. "We" -mutter- "for education and" -emphatic mumble.
"Look, dude. I am kind of in a hurry, here. You interrupted my evening with my family for this and I'm desperately trying to prevent my small, but feisty, dog from coming out here and mauling or peeing on you. Cut to the chase."

He shrugs. he mumbles something I can't make out and I'm not even sure that he can make it out at this point.

"Are you selling something? Something you want me to buy?"
"Well sir, I am accepting donations for--"
"Donations? Okay. I'm not really interested. I already give to my favorite charities and I don't need to go broke to help out everyone. Thanks anyway."

Oddly, he got loud enough to hear.
"Well, sir, my organization," present! BADGE! "is prepared to accept whatever donation you are prepared to give."
"And at this point that's nothing. Thank you." I begin to close the door.
"A dollar."
"What was that?"
"A dollar. You wouldn't even give a dollar to charity?"
"You already have taken five dollars worth of my time. I will let you off if you will let me off." Door closes.

The previous was not a work of fiction. The names of the parties involved were not obscured to protect anyone. They were obscured by an unenthusiastic mush mouth.

Here' my issue. I live in a high rise. It's not a giant high rise but, hey. We have a security door in the building. Nobody is supposed to be let in who doesn't know someone in the building. Nobody is supposed to be allowed to wander the halls if they don't live here. Peddlers and religious nuts are encouraged not to be here. If these fools (guy had a partner working on my next door neighbor) were allowed in, that means my "secure building" has unauthorized people just wandering the halls and any idiot with a book in his hand and a badge on a lanyard can come in and shoot people if he wants to! What the fuck about, "DON'T LET STRANGERS INTO THE BUILDING," is so hard to understand and are people such lemmings that they just open the door for anyone who happens past?

So, how is your evening going?

For the last few days I've been working on a project. Backstory: My father has been writing a novel for a few years, now. He finally got it into a finished form and he wants to promote it. If he can get enough buzz generated about it and find enough people who are interested in seeing it published, then he can pitch it to a publisher with a little more "oomf," and it's a lot more likely to get published. To that end, he commissioned me to build him a website. Please, visit it, read what he's got posted and see if you can't help with the generation of some traffic. Anything you guys can do to bring more traffic there would help immensely.

Thanks for watching me and thanks, in advance, for any visits you make/traffic you bring there.

... another one rides the bus.

I've been brewing this as a t-shirt concept for a while now, and I think it's time it was available.

...and here is the surest sign.

Make of it what you will but Liefeld's half thought barely drawn "extreme" comic crap coming to a theater near me is almost enough to make me swallow my own tongue and gouge at my head with rusty cutlery until I can be certain that if I survive long enough for it to happen, I won't see or hear it.

Okay. I sit here spewing bile and venom at anything that crosses my path in a less than satisfactory manner. I asked myself this morning, "Why do I never turn the eye of my rant inward?" Well, today's the day I share my inner rant that I never usually let out.

So, I'm looking at my gallery, today. Why? Because I'm in an introspective, self improvement kinda mood. I look and what do I see? A whole lot of not improving in my techniques. I seem to find a formula and work with it until I use it up and can't stand to look at it any more, then I move on. WTF, right? I mean, artists are supposed to grow and change; to seek out newness and the different. I, on the other hand, seem to be seeking out new ruts to land in. A lot of you folks watched me because you saw one thing you liked and watched, hoping for more of the same, or similar, and either you got it for a while because I didn't grow, or you came in at the end of an idea or process lifespan and never saw another good thing from me again. Good being subjective. As you may have already noticed, I'm trying some new stuff, a lot, lately. For fuck's sake, my most viewed and faved image on DeviantArt is The STAMP.

I can't make a living as an artist, so I'm looking for other work. I may not have the presence here that anyone is used to, for quite some time. Also, as an added, non-FA use of my time, my daughter is moving to my place from my ex-wife's place for the rest of this school year. I may not be around as much, but I'll try to make an effort to make the stuff of some sort of quality.