Sunday, October 10, 2010

How to befriend an alarm clock

Ok, so we all know about these infernal machines. Alarm clocks have been despised by studying and working people pretty much since they came to existence. According to Wikipedia (yes, that oh so reliable source of information), Plato was the first to use one. Damn Greeks claim first dibs on so many things. One might argue that Plato could not have made such a thing because no human is sick enough for it. I'm sure many feel that these sleep robbing bastards were handcrafted by the Devil himself on his worst possible day.

And here's where I'll humbly disagree. I hate alarm clocks as much as the next person, but I think that there are smart ways to ease the blow that kicks us out of bed each morning. Like all things that annoy us in life, we just have to be one step faster than the lil' buggers.

By now, most of us have cellphones. Some of us even have more than one. And alarm clocks in cellphones are awesome. Why? Because you can use any sound as your wake up call. The solution, therefore, is pretty simple and straightforward. Use a sound that you like hearing. Something that will make you smile after you wake up. We can't avoid that "JESUS CHRIST!!! What is that!?!?!" reaction that makes us pop out of bed like someone screamed fire to find and shut the damn thing off, but we can control how we feel after that.

That sound will eventually get boring and cause the same dislike as the regular alarm clock sounds, but the trick is to keep changing it to the next thing you like to hear at that specific week, month, time in your life. So you avoid becoming bored of it and treating it just like all other annoying and meaningless sounds that have tormented you for years.

My most recent and first attempt at that (which I haven't grown bored of yet), is the Happy Cat Alarm Clock from the Duck Dodgers series. I just glued all his taunts together and they have been waking me up since August. And I still smile when I remember the scene. Not only because it's hilarious and does say things that are true about me :P, but because of a great fondness for the voice actor. Mako was the voice of Aku in Samurai Jack, a series that I love and admire very much. And that's the trick with one's alarm clock sound. It's something close to their heart, something they can't possibly hate. As long as your character is upbeat and your alarm clock pleasant, your mornings won't be all that bad.

And here's the scene itself:

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Bienvenue à Paris

I had this book for a summer course called "Creative Photoshop CS4". So I got inspired to work on something and made this. Actually, "made" isn't exactly right since I traced this from two seperate photos. One of the area and one of the girl.

Did it by hand (took a friggin' long time too) cause I still can't work the pen tool well. Which is why it looks this messy.

The colors and composition are mine, but I can't take credit for the drawing itself. I did add the fans and remove people though. Also made it night. XD

Rapture Share

Sunday, June 27, 2010

A School Game/Assignment

Something I did as part of a little "game" we have with our designers' group at school. We would have one word each week and create something around that word. The first one was the one bellow. Unfortunately, that's as far as I got. Twas a busy Spring. Used Photoshop and some Illustrator for this.

Introduction

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Wheelchair

So this is one of my most favorite photoshops. I found the picture of an old wheelchair and Silent Hill-ed it. It's very simple to do, but it looks awesome.
I have a whole "Silent Hill Collection" and I'd love to do more at some point.

Wheelchair

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

"The Final Countdown"

A sick little poem I just wrote, inspired by a friend's post on facebook. He posted a verse of a poem based on the Agatha Christie book "And then there were none". So, numbers 9 to none are mine. ^^



Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine.

There on the sidewalk were nine little girls. Wearing pink dresses and covered in pearls. Keen little Suzy just couldn't wait. A car ran her over and then there were eight.

Eight little boys went out for a swim. The youngest, the sweetest was poor little Tim. The waves were too strong, they took him to Heaven. The others were sad and now there were seven.

Seven repairmen, the fattest named Peter who just got a job of fixing a heater. Quite nothin' to it, the easiest fix. Boom went the heater and then there were six.

Six happy pensioners went to a farm. None could imagine there'd be any harm. Old man Ignatius saw bees and a hive. He was allergic... and then there were five....

Five little rascals discovered a dog. Bob thought he'd hurt it, he picked up a log. "Come guys! It's easy! Let's poke it some more!". We all know what happened... and then there were four.

Four young male morons went out on a walk. Laughing and walking while having a talk. Jimmy was bored, he climbed on a tree. That was a power pole... then there were three.

Three hardcore surfers left on the mark. One of them, Kyle, was smelled by a shark. "I'll just play dead" he thought "That's what I'll do". Kyle was an idiot... then there were two.

Mark and Barbara finally wed. He bought her a house and even a shed. But Barbie just wasn't so innocent, it seems. Fooling her husbands was part of her schemes. She went to the kitchen and picked up a knife. Mark on the bed, expecting his wife. "Barbara, you're joking. This just can't be true! You said that you love me and I'm the one for you!". "Poor poor Mark, you trusted me so. Trust won't pay bills though, that we all know". She raised the knife high saying "Goodbye, my hon.". The knife descended... and then there was one...

Barbara smiled. Mark was no more. His blood all over, flooding the floor. Everything red. My, what a mess. Barbara needed another clean dress. She passed by the stairs. She started to run. She slipped on the blood.. and then there were none.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Rapture Share blue version

I did this very quick so I'm not all too happy with it, but this is the blue version of the poster I have on the Rapture Share post.


Rapture Share

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Memoirs of a Vasia

I'm not feeling too well today, so if you're reading these instead of hearing me talk about them, I didn't make it (to school). Or... you know, you're not my classmates... Ahem...

I chose to use the same theme for this blog that I used in my static web page because I like it very much and would like to have it somewhere where more people will see it. I did change a few things, but the idea is the same. I also contemplated having a black background instead of the pink gradient. I might try it out and see, although I like the pink one. It's a bit like sky in the morning. You know, it's brighter on the horizon as the sun rises and darker above.

I like the sakura tree because of what it symbolizes. A lot like life, it doesn't last long, but it's beautiful. It's also full of bugs, so how you look at it depends on what kind of a person you are and what kind of mood you're in, I guess. ^^ As for the style of the theme and all that pink (yes, lots of pink, I know), the first song on my playlist right there ------> kind of sets the mood for it. It's a bit retro (tried to slightly go for a painting or old photo look) and full of fluff. What can I say, I've been watching lots of romantic kdramas lately.

Now, it may look nice, but it has secrets.. Dark secrets... See, I used this template called "Touch of Purple" (credited bellow) for the structure of my theme, but the code it had under the CSS had some tags that I hadn't seen before. Later I found out that it's Blogger's own widget tags and whatnot, but I barely got the CSS done so no time to study that (it seems like it would take ages anyway). So, messing with the CSS to make the page look good, but not touching the code itself gives us about 443 errors in the validator. Ouch... I honestly don't know what the majority of them mean and I'm sure they do cause some problems, but the site looks good, works good and I can find it on google using my name so, for now, that's all I care about. I would love to understand all about the code and have a clean page with no errors, but since I can't do that with my skills at this point, I can at least fiddle with the look and get familiar with the code little by little. You live, you learn.

One last thing would be the whole portfolio business. As you can see in the post bellow, I already started posting stuff I've done. I plan, however, to take it slow and post a little at a time so that my friends can have time to visit the blog and see them without getting a flood of new posts. One every 3-4 days should do the trick for now. I don't have a lot anyways.

Now here's where my classmates and friends can be useful. Assuming you haven't fallen asleep and are drooling on your keyboard by now. What do you think of my theme? What do you like and what don't you like? Can you find your way around easily? Are the texts clear enough and the colors not blinding? Staring at it for hours at a time might have rendered me numb to any visual problems it may suffer from. And most importantly, how does it make you feel? Do you like being on this page? Does it give you a relaxed and fluffy feeling? Also - and this goes to the guys - is it insufferably pink and feminine or can you stand being on this page long enough to see my posts? XD Sorry guys, for not making this a bit more testosterone-friendly. My previous theme was a black Blogger one with a Silent Hill banner though, so you had your turn. :P

Thanks for listening, chiiildren..err... I mean.... Too much Fallout 3 will do that to you. What I meant to say is thanks for viewing my blog and going through the trouble (if you did) to comment. If you didn't though, s'okay. At least you visited it. ^^

Jiminy Jehoshaphat! This is one mother of a post! Sowwy...

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Rapture Share

So, here's the first work I'm posting, although it's quite a recent one. The story behind this is the following:

I was talking with my friend Nick in Windows Live Messenger about Bioshock 2. At some point, he expressed a wish that the game would feature music from the 60's as well, since the game is set 10 years after the original. At that point I ask him "And how will the splicers (crazy humans/enemies) get the latest music down there?" to which he replied "Rapidshare?". I added the "Rapture Share" twist to that, "Rapture" being the name of the underwater city in the games. So eventually, I decided to make a poster out of it. I do love retro art so I drew in the same style as best I could. The arrow behind "Rapture Share" is actually in the Rapid Share logo

I used Photoshop to design most of it and then traced it with Illustrator. I'm pretty new to Illustrator so I wasn't comfortable enough with it to start from scratch using it. The texture isn't vector based, so I couldn't make it too big. I would love to have it printed in poster size sometime and find out if it would look good though (I have a pdf version that's bigger than this jpeg mini version). I made a blue version too so I might post that later on.

Rapture Share

Oh Death...

Too cool for words...

This, that is.

My code has 443 errors... Niiice.

That's what you get when you use a template with code you don't even recognize. Looks good, but it's full or errors which I can't fix. Curses...

Well, looks good and works good. That's enough for now.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Blog Theme Change

Ok, so this is a bit of a test post, but I'm currently designing my new blog theme. It will be completed soon and after that, I'll start uploading my "works" as well. Yay. Looks cute.

P.S: I should have already created a link on the banner for the homepage, cause now I gotta go back the hard way XD Well, not hard, but not as fancy as clicking on the banner.
 
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Images used on this blog are taken from various sources and often modified by Orion. The credit belongs to their respectful owners. If you do not want your image to be used here, contact me with a link to it and it will be removed.
KangDW Light Theme designed by Orion. Based on the template "Touch of Purple" by Jakothan. Dreamon Shape Brushes used.