deviantART: by:ArgoForg

deviantART: by:ArgoForg http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:ArgoForg&section=today deviantART RSS for by:ArgoForg en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Sun, 20 Dec 2009 02:12:35 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png Crap, Crap, Crap. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/28785939/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/28785939/ Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:57:41 PST

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SO HERE WE GO AGAIN

Yep, the good computer's down. Â After mucking around with it for a few weeks, we've pretty much given up on the combination of the motherboard and the processor, and we can't figure if it's one, the other, or both that are causing the issue. Â Or a combination of factors above and beyond that.

So there won't be a whole lot of 3D work, at least until the beginning of the year, when I can use my tax check to either get a new computer or fix the one I have-- which means a ridiculous amount of upgrading, most likely. Â Not sure the direction Im going yet, but I think there's a pretty good chance I'm going new system and hopefully adding my previous hard drive as a secondary drive. Â The big thing is that I really need a good desktop to run Poser/C4D/Vue, and I may go ahead and keep it fairly program-free except for the art programs I use and a few minor extras... like Office and a base version of Firefox to download extras for those programs. Â Then I'm hoping to do a couple pictures I have in mind that really showcase what I can do with Vue and C4D that I haven't been able to get done before the computer went down. Â (Oooo, especially if I can get a more recent version of Vue, which is on my wishlist. Â

)

So I apologize, especially to the people who watch me specifically for my statue pics. Â (And you know who you are. Â

) But it may be the beginning of the year before you really see anything new. Â

And of course, to the rest of you, I hope I'll have some other stuff up here sooner or later before the end of the year.... Photos, hand-drawn work, maybe some other items. Â I'm just really sorry that I'll be missing out on doing my yearly Christmas Bob pic. Â

RANDOM THOUGHTAGE

I really seldom watch TV, except during football season, when I watch a lot of games and then kick over to ESPN. Â During this season, I can tell you two sets of commercials that have become wildly irritating....

First, the Levi's "Go Forth" commercials or whatever the hell they are. Â The black and white grainy video with the overlaid voice-over of some guy that sounds like he's speaking over 1930's radio, spouting random phrases that I guess are supposed to sound either patriotic or majestic-- that or he's reciting really bad free-verse poetry. Â Either way, the whole thing just sounds gimpy. Â "Pioneers, O Pioneers, tan-faced something or other..." So when did Levi's become Christian Dior and start doing perfume commericals? Â Let's see.... Wrangler has Brett Favre, the epitome of man's man, playing football into his forties and sitting on a tractor. Â You have a bunch of goofy black and white images of kids dancing with their shirts off around a fire and a guy spouting free-verse poetry. Â Which jeans am I going to be more inclined to pick up? Â (PS: Here's a clue. Â Levi's usually cost about $15 a pair more than most of the jeans I buy.)

Second... in the name of god, Apple, please fire your marketing division. Â Or, no, keep them, because the price of your products and your marketing campaigns are the two major reasons I go out of my way to find products that are every bit as good and don't come with the stigma of having an Apple logo on them. Â The PC/Mac commercials are okay, although usually they're filled with half-truths, which is what you can expect from a company that is desperately trying to get an even share of the market in an economic dry period, when their products run, by and large, about $500 more per unit than comparable PCs, and have less available software with the OS that comes standard. Â You'll note that Microsoft, Intel, Dell or HP don't by and large sit there and mudsling Macs in their commercials. Â That's because they don't have to. Â And yes, I realize the irony of this considering my own PC troubles. Â But also consider that I have owned three computers in my 3D life, and I have still not paid the equivalent money it would take me to own a good Mac.

Anyway, let's go ahead and add the iPod and iPhone commercials to the fray, just because they're annoying. Â iPods alone have quite possibly some of the most annoying music, and their iPod color/iPod video commerci... ]]> =ArgoForg Frustration and Randomness http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/28222824/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/28222824/ Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:53:20 PST

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MOUNTAIN FRUSTRATION

So, to add to a nice laundry list of fresh computer issues, my XP profile corrupted and wiped a bunch of my user settings, including my Poser UI and Photoshop settings. Â Yay. Â I created a new profile tonight, and we'll see how that works. Â As it stands, I've just about had it with this computer recently. Â The best system in the world does me no good if every time I log on I have to start fresh. Â I had a friend who is also a computer guru, and he spent all day yesterday trying to track down what exactly the problem was, all to no avail.

At this point, we're leaning toward the major issue being either the motherboard or the processor. Â He ran a buttload of tests last night to see if the problem would be the hard drives, but the problems continued cropping up even after he cloned the C: drive onto a 400G drive and switched it out as the master drive. Â He flashed and updated the bios and chipsets, and that didn't work, either. Â If the problem is, in fact, the processor/mobo, it'll be tax time before I can get a fix. Â Until then, I'll continue nursing this system along, rendering with the affinity settings on, and running checkdisks anytime a blue screen flashes.

Of course that's immensely frustrating, but at least I still have my laptop. Â (Knock on wood)

RANDOM THOUGHTAGE

Last weekened, I turned off the light on my big aquarium and started siphoning out the water to clean the tank. Â I was repulsed when I suddenly noticed what I assumed was the largest freaking parasite I had ever seen in my life swimming around in the back plants, and nearly lost hold of my siphon. Â But when I looked closer, I thought to myself, "That's odd, usually parasites are attached to other fish, not swimming free." And then I had a total WTF moment when I realized that it looked like a little fish!

See, I was under the impression that all the fish in my larger tank were male. Â I had three male platies, a pair of cory cats, and Piddles-- a dwarf gourami. Â Apparently, one of the platies I thought was male.... actually sorta wasn't, and what's more, (s)he had two babies. Â So now there are two tiny little platies who look just like their mother swimming around and growing bit by bit in my 30-gallon tank. Â And yes, I know livebearers like platies pretty much could breed in a vacuum, but I couldn't be more thrilled, as this is the first time I've had any fish have offspring. Â

Maybe it's just me, but if you're tabletop gaming, you kinda owe it to your fellow players and GM (all of whom are taking time out of their own schedules to play) to actually focus a little on the game. Â If you're going to sit around the table, tweet on Twitter with your laptop and just halfheartedly roll a die when it's your turn in combat, then don't bother coming. Â If you've had a shat day at work and you're exhausted to the point of not being able to keep your eyes open, then don't come. Â No one ever put a gun to someone's head and said that they have to play a game. Â Except maybe the Aztecs. Â And then it was a club, most likely.

At any rate, this sort of situation happened to me over the weekend, and while I wasn't going to make a big deal about it, the more the night went on, the more it pissed me off. Â I'd rather run a game with three players who want to play and are into the game than eight players with two, three or four who are there for social networking. Â It's not fair to the other players, it's not fair to the GM.

I recently got myself upgraded to a Blackberry cellwise, and have been ecstatic about it. Â I don't text a whole lot, but on the occasions I do, I much prefer the keyboard I have with the BB than I did any cell I've tried using before... on top of that, I like the number of apps it runs; I listen to Pandora on it at work, use the GPS every so often, and have a couple other small things that are cool but not overblown. Â It's kinda like having an iPhone without the ridiculous price tag, the constant fingerprints on the touch screen, and the overall stigma of having something with an Apple logo on it.

It's dark right now... at 6 pm. Â I f**king hate winter coming.

To those of you whom I fairly regularly get those sordid petrificative commissions from, I... ]]> =ArgoForg Paizo Gleegasms and Affinity Settings http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/27962100/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/27962100/ Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:56:20 PDT

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FANGASM... Â ISM... Â OR SOMETHING

Those of you who know me at all know that I am an avid tabletop-- and to a degree, Play by Post-- RPG gamer. Â

Those of you who know that very likely also know that I've been outspoken in my touting of the Pathfinder Role Playing Game by Paizo Publishing. Â Not only does their game continue the tradition and feel of D&D version 3.5 (as opposed to what I feel is the more videogamey, MMORPish feel of Wizards of the Coasts'... er... Hasbro's 4th Edition), but Paizo's Pathfinder line-- from the PFRPG book to the Adventure Paths and Chronicles products-- seems to have a cleaner, more professional look; feels as though it is better edited, and in cases where necessary, quicker with web-available addenda; and has far better quality overall-- ask some people about the smudgery in recent WOTC products. Â When I've met the people from Paizo at Gen-Con, there is a genuine "aw shucks" feel to them, too. Â They're not full of themselves, they're people like you and me who love the game they created adventures for before WOTC cleaned house, and took control of Dungeon and Dragon magazine... and now love the work they do for the PFRPG. Â So at any rate, I've become a pretty hardcore Paizo-ite in the last few months.

So imagine my surprise and glee when, on Friday, I hit the front page of Paizo.com (which I do quite often to see the daily blog of what cool new thing's for sale, much to my wallet's chagrin) and found this little gem, Mega Feats Revisited by Otherverse Productions and Scorched Urf Studios. Â Check that link out; you may have to scroll down to where it says "Feats Don't Fail Me Now!". Â I'll wait.

Now, in case that graphic doesn't look familiar, here's the original:

That's right, a piece of my very own artwork was not only featured on the cover of a Pathfinder-Compatible Book (okay, okay, PDF, but still!), but it was featured on the front page of the Paizo Store Site! And some of my art is also used for interior illustrations, too!

I have sold off some of my fantasy art pieces under the banner of Darker Age Press, specifically for royalty-free use by FRPG supplement creators. Â The fine folks at Otherverse/Scorched Urf bought one of those packs and gave my pic of Keylyn the cover, and Paizo decided to feature it for their storefront blog, and overall, the whole thing has made my freaking month. Â (If you buy the PDF-- which natch, I highly recommend-- you'll notice that an editorial goof listed the cover artist as Kenshin, although I got interior art credit. Â I've contacted the publishers to tell them, but I'm not frothing about it... Kenshin does some phenomenal Poser work, too, and I know my art when I see it, and I don't know if the decision to put my piece on the cover was a last-minute decision by the editors. Â Either way, I'm still in the middle of a fangasm. Â

)

FINDING GREATER AFFINITY

I know a lot of you follow me for my statue art, and are probably sitting there wondering where the hell all the hottie statuification victims have gotten off to... Â after all, since now I have my computer back, shouldn't I be chomping at the bit to put some Poser models into some sort of petrificative peril?

Well, not just yet... which requires a little 'splaining. Â And no, it's not because I've suddenly become a eunuch. Â

I've got my rendering computer back, yes, but it's still not completely up to snuff. Â Apparently, when I do really busy renders in any program (and I should note, most of my renders qualify as busy unless I do them piecemeal), the computer has been really overworking the processor... to the point that it will shut the computer down in the middle of a render.

http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/27453656/ Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:03:50 PDT

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Reports of my demise have been greatly underestimated.

Working on a couple things, here and there. Hoping to have my 3D programs back up and running at some point soon.

_{"Ah, perhaps your mouth says no, my dear lady, but your eyes..... well, okay, your eyes sort of say no, too. And that sword you're pointing at me is looking pretty negative, as well."
- Around the table again at Gen Con.} ]]> =ArgoForg GEN CON KINDA SORTA DAY 2!! http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/26763542/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/26763542/ Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:21:40 PDT

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FIRST AND FOREMOST...

HELP A COUPLE FELLOW ARTISTS TODAY!!!

~RogueRider and =mookyvet are good dA friends of mine who have done some really amazing commissions for me and others, some of which can be seen below. Â Both of them are in bad need of some help and a little money to help out their financial straits, and both do some absolutely awesome artwork... so this should be a natural fit to anyone. Â I can vouch for their ability and their friendly attitudes, and tell you that your money will go to a damned good cause. Â So if you have a little extra spending money, go now. Â Commission them. Â Details can be found in their deve journals!

PREVIOUS DAYS
Thursday

(Quick note, y'all! Â I'd really planned to have this churned out much faster than this, but 10 hour shifts and general post Gen-Con sleeplessness has made that a bit difficult... sorry about that!)

FRIDAY!

9:00 AMish: Â Â I've noticed something about myself: the longer Gen Con goes on, the less likely I am to want to wake up godawful early. Â Today my alarm went off at 8:15 and I still hit the snooze twice. Â I made it a point this year not to pick up any 8 AM gaming timeslots like I did last year, because I was absolutely freaking useless when I was waking up at 6 am to go to them. Â This year, it's a nice trade-off: I get to stay up a little later, and still not wake up so ridiculous monkeyfuckin' early but that means I don't go to as many games as I otherwise would like. Â Still, I can take my time, get to the convention center about 10:45, and still have a little time to roam the Exhibition Halls before my first game.

10:35 AMish: Â Â I'm taking notes now. Â I didn't bring Tom today, and my parking space is the same one I've had the last couple years... namely, about a half to three-quarters of a mile away. Â However... it's $5 event parking, not so much by the hour or every two hours. Â Im happy about that, at least!

11 AMish: Â Â Started in the Artists' Alley this time around while I was just browsing around, looking to shamelessly cadge some tips from the masters. Â Many of the masters, I find out, have a significant other that covers their booth while they go out and hobnob with bigger name publishers. Â Not that there's anything wrong with that. Â If... ]]> =ArgoForg GEN CON KINDA SORTA BLOG!! http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/26619822/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/26619822/ Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:44:40 PDT

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It's HEEEEEERE!

This is just a mishmash of thoughts, opinions and mental ruminations that have struck me whilst having my Christmas away from Christmas here in sunny Indianapolis, which for this weekend is the gaming capital of the world. Â I'm a little behind, I know... I was going to actually try to keep a more progressive daily log and update when I could get internet access, but I underestimated the weight of a backpack full of gaming books, and my back wasn't about to stand up to that plus a 17" laptop being carted around for a mile of walking from the parking garage to the convention center. Â So I'm afraid everyone will have to deal with the post-coital bliss rather than the... uhm.... mid-coital? Â

At any rate, I'll add onto this as I finish the days, so if you receive this multiple times, it's just me adding the next day!

Anyway....

THURSDAY!

8:00 AMish: Â Â Welcome to Indy, Gen Con Attendees! Â For me, this is my absolute favorite time of the year, even though by the end of it, I'm always worn down and acting only with considerable help from my friends caffeine and barely-legal drugs. Â But for now, I'm giddy like a schoolgirl on nitrous and lithium and you couldn't drag me down from this high if you told me my house was on fire. Â Not only because it's Gen Con, but it's Gen Con the year the freaking Pathfinder RPG comes out! By that, I mean, of course, The Pathfinder Role Playing Game Core Rulebook, which should be considered a legal weapon. Â Seriously, this th... ]]> =ArgoForg Notes From Just Outside A Cooler. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/26303009/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/26303009/ Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:22:34 PDT

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FIRST AND FOREMOST...

HELP A FELLOW ARTIST TODAY!!! (or if you're not an artist, just HELP AN ARTIST, hot dammit!!!)

is a dA friend of mine who has done a couple really amazing commissions for me, including the one shown here, which is all colors of kickass and stuff. CHECK IT OUT!

She is in some bad need of help to cover some rising medical bills, so if you can spare a few bucks, why not think about getting a commish from her? It's money for a good cause, and it will get you some hawt artwork! Â See RR's journal for details.

Shhh. Don't tell anyone I'm not in there today. After a week and a half of freezing myself in the cooler, my brain operations were starting to consist of A) basic survival and B) wondering if fry-slinging at McDonald's was really that bad, which means I was probably getting pretty close to terminal. So once my nards began looking into co-signing a six-month lease in my stomach, I decided I had to get out of there for a little while, so today I've kept myself on the fringes, going inside every so often and mostly staying out in beautiful 70 degree comfort. If anyone asks, I'm in the cooler, playing good little soldier.

No news yet on the computer. This is a case of no news being a little on the expected side, however. I'm fortunate enough to game (tabletop-real-interaction like game, I mean) with my computer tech, so I learned early on that he's moving his store from its current location to one a little more west, where it will actually be more convenient to me, and a little less hassling and a helluva lot cheaper, rentwise, for him.

My desktop computer just happened to have its issues leading into this move, so it's been sort of put on the backburner while things like, say, boxing equipment, signing lease agreements, changing business cards and the like have taken the forefront of his mind. And since he pretty much works on his own, it's not as though he can have a bunch of lackeys continue to work on other things, such as the desktop of a friend that he generally lets off with a heinous discount, anyway. That's totally understandable. And since we game together, he tends to keep me up to date weekly. On the whole, this would probably be a much bigger issue if I didn't have my laptop, or if I wasn't working 50+ hour weeks.

Speaking of which, it looks like the heavy work weeks are going to continue unabated for some time. There was some suggestion going around that we would be going back to 8 hour days soon and forgoing weekends, but it was later discovered that was nothing but a vicious rumor, right alongside the one where it was understood that President Obama was going to visit and grant us all a tax break. We can barely keep up without working weekends when we're pulling 10 hours a day/5 days a week. How are we somehow supposed to magically keep up working 18 less hours a week? What genie are they going to unleash to make up the extra time we're not there?

Oh wait... yeah, that would probably be the team leads. As a team lead, I am quietly insulted by that thought. *Sigh* But at any rate, life is still good. Can't complain too much.... TWO WEEKS TO GEN-CON, BABYYY!!!!

Shit. That was too loud. And now they've caught me outside my frigid home. Alas, poor heat, I KNEW YOU WELL!

_{"Your moment of Zen:
This is the sound of one hand
not giving a fuck."

- Me, Haiku} ]]> =ArgoForg Notes From Inside a Cooler... http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/26093738/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/26093738/ Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:53:56 PDT

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UPDATED - July 24: HAY PEOPLE! HELP SOMEONE NEEDY OUT!

is a dA friend of mine (okay, an acquaintance I watch who has done a couple really amazing commissions for me, but I call that a friend, so deal with the semantics on your own time) who is in some bad need of help to cover some rising medical bills. Â Money's tight all around, but if you can spare a few bucks to get a commish from her, you'll get some primo art, she'll be much better off for it, and the money will go toward a good cause. Â See RR's journal for details.

Christ, it's cold in here. Â You never realize how much you miss spending the entirety of the summertime outside until you're backed into a situation where you're spending a ten hour shift in front of a computer screen in a 40 degree cooler and feeling the tips of your fingers become numb while you're taking time to write at work. Â Could be a lot worse, I guess, and there are a bunch of people I know who would kill to be doing the same thing. Â Course, many of them live on the Equator and think air-conditioning is a pleasant myth, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, a friend asked me a couple days ago, "Don't you keep a blog?", and was genuinely surprised that I didn't... because apparently every writer and artist worth his or her salt blogs somewhere. As some of you who have followed me for a while know, this journal is pretty much my blog. Â This is where I talk about what excites me, what moves me, what raises my ire, or what I consider rant-worthy. Â Some people have suggested that I probably do that too often, for that matter. Â And I do sometimes try to tone myself down, but it's not like putting something touchy out in a public fora on the same Internets that have advertisements for Fleshlight and half of the crap on YouTube is some kind of major social gaffe, like if I belched "Amen" while I was receiving communion or something. Â

(As an aside, a schoolfriend of mine did something like that in 5th grade. Â Few things will get you on the the Bad And Quite Possibly Possessed List in Catholic school faster than belching in the momentary pause right after "hallowed be Thy name.")

But at any rate, if I had anything reasonably close to a blog, this would be it. Â

That also explains why I only update this journal something like semi-annually... I lead a really boring life, and most of the happenings in my life that some people would consider momentous have pretty much passed me by. Â I almost couldn't imagine finding something interesting to write about on a daily basis, unless I was just chucked to overflowing with ideas for a big story. Â Or unless I won the lottery and suddenly had liquid time and money. Â So I tend to space my journals out quite a bit and get a big bunch of happy/rant going before I commit them to virtual paper.

So why not just "blog" on MySpace, or LiveJournal, or FaceBook, or TwitTer, or WhattheFuh, where it's not interconnected with my art? Â Glad you asked! Â First off, see, I somewhat shamefully admit that I have a MySpace page. Â It's been created and changed once, and has something like 23,000 friends, four of whom I actually know. Â (The others are people I don't know who seem very interested in telling me that I can meet singles at their website, or see them do something wild and crazy in front of their webcam.) To put it a little lightly, I don't much care for MySpace or Facebook or most other social-circle gathering sites, because... well, I A) am antisocial, and B) had a social-circle gathering site at one time. Â It was called high school, and the cliques were even more obnoxious. Â To be bluntly honest, though, half the reason I don't spend time at them is that I can barely get myself to go to either page without feeling like a pedophile. Â

Twitter's worse, because you really can't say anything worthwhile in 140 characters. Â You know this if you've ever tried giving feedback on eBay:

Wow, I was extremely impressed with how quickly my seller got the product to me, and how closely its condition... (Counting) wait. Â Uhm. Â Shite. Â I was happy to receive my product from my seller in tip-top condition, just as adverti... (Coun... ]]> =ArgoForg Computer Issues (Wow, Deja Vu, Yo!) http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/25885874/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/25885874/ Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:54:28 PDT

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Well, I guess I figured that sooner or later, the shite would hit the fan.

I was really hoping for later, to be honest.

Last night I got home and decided to answer some e-mails, respond to a couple notes and even start on a picture that'd been banging around the inside of my skull. Â Okay, maybe not in that order. Â Anyway, when Cinema 4D began to load, I got a "cannot access ****32.dll" error. Â So I hmmmed, closed out Cinema, and opened my e-mail program. Â Same error.

rogram loaded up, even checked mail, but I got a warning from the system tray.

So I've already run a backup, and pull out the handy XP disc, go to repair the installation through the recovery console. Â It's not a hard procedure, just a little time-consuming and tedious. Â I've done it on more than one occasion for others.

So I lfirst run a checkdisk, and see that there's some "issues" with the HD. Corrupted files, and the like. Â Greeeeeat. Â I load up the recovery console, call up my directory, and then notice there's no Windows directory on my C:/ Drive. Â I run a search, and Setup can't find a valid Windows installation.

I hate doing it, but I decide I better look at a wipe and install. So I run a full format and checkdisk. No issues at all. I install Windows again (which is a time-consuming, tedious operation.) and exhale, because that means my Saturday will be filled with installs. So I install, get the updates, download an antivirus, run it--

Blue screen. Again. I get two of these before noon.

So long story short (too late.) the computer's down again. At least I have my laptop as a backup, but dammit... just when it seems like I achieve breakthroughs with my art, I lose the ability to create it again. So it may be a while before I get some new pieces up. But rest assured, as soon as I get my system back, I'll be fiending to create.

Sorry for the rant. Just had to tell someone. And y'all get to be it. Lucky you.

_{"Your moment of Zen:
This is the sound of one hand
not giving a fuck."

- Me, Haiku} ]]> =ArgoForg Computer Issues (Again) http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/25726774/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/25726774/ Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:43:23 PDT

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So my computer hates me. This is fast becoming a trend.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it doesn't hate me, it's just being a nice-sized biotch, which is hardly a surprise, because now that I'm getting some heavily-OT'd paychecks, it makes complete and total sense in a Murphy's Law-esque manner that just at a time when I could really use the extra money, something of mine would start to break down and cause me to have to spend an excess of it: the car, the computer, dvd player, my body.

I finally decided that my vacation would be a nice time to go ahead and do something that I'd really been putting off for a couple months, since the last major computer issue: reinstalling the OS. See, when I got the last fix, we found that for whatever reason, a sector of the drive had dumped and portions of my registry got eaten. Something to worry about, sure, but my bud at the computer shop corrected the vast majority of the problems, and while it wasn't a cure, it was a more than adequate fix. But I knew that sooner or later I'd be looking at a complete reinstall and wipe of the C:/ Drive.

So I bought a terrabyte external HD, and backed up the C:/ Drive, and...

... well...

I put it off.

Not because I fear reinstalling Windows or anything like that, but because... hell, I have a ridiculous amount of software I'd have to reinstall, and it would take the better part of a weekend to do it, and the better part of a week updating them and inserting add-ons, such as the freaking 100+ gig Poser runtime directories, my sets of Photoshop brushes/actions/filters and the add-ons for all the material/atmosphere/filter/plant/model sets in Vue that I have to painstakingly point. The program to. One. By. One. It's a little like fingernail torture for the mind.

So yeah, I was lazy. Because if I could take tedium like that, I'd be less into art and more into programming.

Well, I BSOD'd Thursday and watched my baby go through boot/no-go/reboot/no-go a couple times and decided that, and the recent problems with C4D running out of memory, were the Clarion Calls From God¹ That It Was Past Due. So I swallowed my pride, completely formatted the C: drive, reinstalled XP and all my motherboard/graphics card drivers, and downloaded Avira, which runs a full scan first thing. The program froze and I got another blue screen. So I'm thinking "bad sector/cluster/some shite", and on my bud's suggestion, uninstall Avira, run Check Disk, and download Avast, because Avira sometimes freaks with some systems, the same way Norton freaks if you try to run certain 3D programs.

So Check Disk comes back with absolutely no C: drive errors, Avast loads fine and runs a scan, and midway through the D: or F: drive, it freaks out too and the computer reboots. By now I'm starting to feel rainclouds forming over my head, since this week of vacation was going to be a good creative one for me (hey, I'm nothing if not stupidly optimistic!) and suddenly I'm beginning to see that go right down the f**king drain.

At that point, I say to hell with it, I'll run a checkdisk on both drives later tonight, and today I'll just work on installing Photoshop and writing some of my responses at DA. Well, as I sat writing a note response, the computer slowed to a crawl and blue screened again. With nothing at all accessing either the D or F drives.

So I'm beginning to think the problem might just be with the hardware. Possibly one of the sticks of RAM going bad, possibly a HD issue, or one with either the MB or Geforce drivers (which would be a small miracle, as it would cost me squat to fix). Most of the possibilities I'm seeing blow because I have no finances to cover anything like them until Thursday at the earliest, but I'll let the pros help me figure that out. If it does turn out that my art suffers this week because of this, I apologize ahead of time... I was feeling like I'd get some good stuff done this week, too, and I'm just as disappointed as the lot of yas.

^{1: I'm afraid my God is most likely not your God, or probably even the God you're thinking of. So don't go thinking I've given up on being a bona-fide heathen or anything silly like that.}

=ArgoForg Recently Deceased http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/25658016/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/25658016/ Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:25:42 PDT

My GalleryÂ Â Â Â Â Â My PrintsÂ Â Â Â Â Â Note MeÂ Â Â Â Â Â Watch Me

60 hour work week + 1:25 AM alarm + General work crap = Half-Dead Argo.

Really, I don't mean to miss so much here, but I seem to manage all the same. We're right now on mandatory 10 hour days (which means I get up at 1:25 AM to be in at work by 3:30, and then get out between 2:30 and 3 to get home by 4 and start the cycle all over), and every couple weeks we pull 6 days. I'm hoping that a vacation soon will help me out, because my big project is WAY behind schedule.

So, soon, I hope to again be constructive and not just a lurker and commissioner. But for now, enjoy the free time from my cynical, arbitrary, sarcastic ass. You deserve it for just keeping up with me on a consistent basis, alla ya. Love yas.

(And yes, I tried the clicky change journal thing. Woo! Automation!

)

_{"Your moment of Zen:
This is the sound of one hand
not giving a fuck."

- Me, Haiku} ]]> =ArgoForg Gen Con and Other Snippets http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/24569491/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/24569491/ Sun, 03 May 2009 15:58:19 PDT THE COUNTDOWN TO GENCON

It's ON! I have my 4 day badge, my vacation days are already approved and I'm already giddy about GenCon... almost 4 months early.

I've signed up for six events, and am looking for more. My schedule is something like this so far:

THURSDAY

TENISH-NOONISH: Put a serious hurting on my bank account in the Merchants' Stalls.
6 PM: Pathfinder Society: The Devil We Know Part 1

FRIDAY

NOON: D&D 3.5: Dream Whisperings
6 PM: Pathfinder Society: The Devil We Know Part 2

SATURDAY

NOON: D&D 3.5: The Weight of Time
6 PM: Betrayal in Absalom: A Pathfinder Society Event

SUNDAY

NOON: Pathfinder Society: Tide of Morning

I'm still looking to fill in some of those gaps in between... for instance, Thursday is my big "Buy" day, where I spend half the day and wayyyyy too much money adding to my collection of RPG stuff, but I can spare a few hours for a couple hour long seminars, writers' symposium, or an informal 2 hour RPG or something of the like. Most of the board games, tac-sims, collectible (whatever) games and MMO's don't really grab my interest at all.

It was surprisingly tough finding spots! Last year I was a little put off by what events were available, but I waited far later to register. This year, I made sure to register early, but inside of a week from the site opening, half the games were still filled. I'm a little ticked that the Stargate SG-1 and Mutants & Masterminds games all filled so quick, because I really wanted to try some new games this year... I was even actually going to give a 4E game a chance, but the only 4E openings are the WOTC games, and I'd prefer to try my hand first with something that's not RPGA-associated, since I'm an utter newbie (sans books, natch!) with the system.

***

Among the other things I did this weekend, I also began setting up the new library at the house. I have a small island nation's worth of books, and for a long time they've been languishing in sealed totes. Meanwhile, we cleaned up my dad's old workshop in the basement and got rid of a lot of the items we would never have any use for-- My dad was really good with older electrical tech, so there were oscilloscopes and multimeters and twenty-year old circuit boards aplenty, along with stereos and VCR's in various states of repair.

After clearing it out, we've paid to have indoor/outdoor carpet installed, lined the walls with bookshelves and put a desk in there. My laptop will still grab the upstairs wireless connection from there, so it's a nice new library/study, and may double as an art studio for me. I'm pretty psyched about it!

***

Got another pic in the works, but sorry to alla you ASFR true-believers, it's nothing statue-heavy. Soon, I'm sure I'll have something to whet your appetites. But right now, I had an idea a while back that I'm trying to bring to the canvas, so it's got my attention along with my project work.

I'm on mandatory 10 hour shifts this week (Bleah!) so I may only be stopping in to check my messages and such here with very little excess time. I'll still try to answer all the responses, deviations and comments I can, though! Hope everyone has a great week!

***

Argo's Advice for the Week:

Don't take for granted that the things you can do now are things you may not be able to do in the future.

... Wait. That's all garbled.

Take for granted that the things you can do now are things you may be able to do in the future.

...

Take for granted that the you can do things now and may be able to do things in the future.

...

Granted, take things now and ably do things in the future.

...

Fuck it. Live for the moment, yo. Get me?

_{"I try not to worry,
but she's got me terrified;
it's like we're in some kind of hurry
to say goodbye,
to say goodbye,
to say goodbye."

- Death Cab for Cutie, Your New Twin-Size Bed} ]]> =ArgoForg Short and Sweet http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/24468231/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/24468231/ Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:45:31 PDT

And don't worry, I'll still have time for my usual bits of fun and probable inanimation... maybe not quite as much as usual, but I'm not about to stop doing the stuff that I enjoy most.

Argo's Advice for the Week:

Live.

Feel.

Experience.

Go outside during a spring storm and inhale the air. Feel the wind blow through your hair and over your skin. Listen to the rumble of distant thunder and the touch of raindrops on the leaves of the trees. Incline your neck to stare into the sky and taste the rain as it falls to your lips. Enjoy. Relish.

(PS: Don't do this during a storm that has the tornado warning sirens going off. There's enjoying life and then there's just being a 'tard, and I can't be held responsible if you can't tell the difference.)

_{"We're just ordinary people,
You and me.
Time will turn us into statues
Eventually."

- Foo Fighters, Statues} ]]> =ArgoForg 100K and Asshatted Nonesuch http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/24332080/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/24332080/ Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:52:26 PDT )

So, anyway, it was pointed out to me (and really, I'd had no clue whatsoever) that I have recently passed the 100,000 hit mark here at DeviantArt. To that great honor, I have the following to say:

Would the guy that keeps hitting refresh hoping that new art will magically appear just stop it, already?

Kidding, all. I'm thrilled that people have enjoyed my work enough to come here and take a look, and some of those have been nice enough to leave comments, faves and shoutouts. That really rocks in ways that I would be much better explaining if I weren't on short sleep.

Suffice it to say that I really appreciate it, and I would like to thank everyone for making that possible!

I'm on some serious overtime this week, but I'm hoping that between that and some freelance projects I'll be able to put together a picture worthy of a 100,000 pageview thank you!

.

In other news, I had a big aquarium die-off that ripped through my two tanks a couple weeks ago and took away Constantine, as well as four White Cloud Minnows, one of my Cory Cats and Scoob, my newest Platy. Today, I brought home some Black Phantom Tetras and a new betta, which thanks to a suggestion from =mookyvet have named Theodosius.

Pics, possibly, soon.

-

Oh, and I signed up for Twitter, and then realized that Twitter is actually the antithesis of everything I strive to do. It's set up for letting everyone know where I am, what I'm doing, and what I'm planning, when I usually take great pains to let everyone think I'm somewhere else doing important work, or just can't be found. Very odd.

_{"We're just ordinary people,
You and me.
Time will turn us into statues
Eventually."

- Foo Fighters, Statues} ]]> =ArgoForg Confessions of a Serial Killer http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/23958560/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/23958560/ Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:08:06 PDT (Or, 15 Random Thoughts that have occupied me for the past few days... but that didn't sound as cool as a title.)

1. Â I Love Led Zeppelin, and yet I think I can objectively say that Stairway to Heaven might possibly be one of the most pretentious songs ever made. Â Seriously. Â Now, that's not to say it doesn't kick all sorts of ass, because it does. Â But just read the lyrics and tell me it doesn't sound like something that was composed by some pompous, nasal-voiced arrogant-prick poet whose face just begs to be beaten in with a crowbar and then shred-stripped with a wood chipper and a basket of live ferrets. Â

2. Â My first thought upon looking out my window today: It is NOT freaking snowing on March 29th. Â Who comes up with this shit? Â I went out at 10 this morning to pick up my paper in shirtsleeves, and thought it was very comfortable outside. Â I went to Home Depot at 12:30 and had to wear a jacket, and that wasn't enough. Â By 2 we were having flurries. Â WTF?

3. Â You would think, with the economy being what it is, that there would be a lot more artists offering commissions... or I should say, there would be a lot more offered commissions at prices that aren't laughably outrageous. Â I'm not really looking for a freaking professional artist here at dA-- I sure as hell can't afford $150 base full-body color plus $45-60 per add'l character and $30-50 for a background for what amounts to soft-cel-shaded comic art (oh, and payment up front, plz!), and if I could, I'm pretty sure I would specifically look up someone who has already done some big-market work for DC or Marvel just so I could sell it later to some slobbering fanboy on eBay when my financial ship hits a fucking iceberg like everyone else's is. Â

Is that me being miserly? Â I guess maybe it can be construed as such. Â But part of it is also experience. Â I paid $145, half up-front, less than four years ago for Look Away, and that was considered two characters (assume the left-hand side statue is considered not a character) and a highly detailed background, all with a print. I'm willing to allow for inflation, but much of what I see offered out there now for more than that is not up to that level of detail for anywhere near that price. Â Hell, a solid quarter of it isn't worthy of sniffing that level of detail's sweaty jock strap, and with money being tight so many places, you're gonna be harder pressed to find people willing to pay it.

4. Â You know, for that matter, the commission 'well' on the whole seems to be pretty dry for as shatty as the employment situation is in the States. Â dA Searches for 'Commission' yield some results, but many of the better ones are either way overpriced (see above), not currently open for commissions, or have insane restrictions on what they will or will not do (Will not do multiple figures, not offering full-color pieces right now, no fanart, no full-body, no nudity, or whatev.) The one or two artists that are reasonably priced-- as well as open, and willing to do the sort of work I'm looking for-- are backlogged enough with work that it'll be next Christmas before they get caught up. Â The dA forum is often a great place to hire commissioned artists, but recently I see the same artists over and over, many of which aren't really what I'm looking for, either in style or in what mediums they offer.

Now, a caveat here... there are people whom I've regularly commissioned before that are currently open for work, and I try to help them out where I can... but I also like to get commissions from other folks, too, because I like seeing a wide variety of styles, considering the narrow niche of commissions I order. Â So I do tend to look around a lot, and that's not a slap on anyone I've commissioned before, because I've really been happy with almost all of the commissions I've gotten, and have been lucky enough to be burned only a couple times.

5. Â It's actually funny to have to explain to people that I named my latest betta Constantine after the actual Roman Emperor, not the comic character (which makes sense, considering it's me) or the Keanu Reeves movie role (which may or may not be related. Â I forget). Â Actually, I name all my bettas after Romans. Â

6. Â To wit, I've had Aeneas, Nero, Hadrian and Constantine. Â Eventually, I'm sure this means I'll be looking at naming fish in the far-flung future Septimius Severus and Booetitian. Â

7. Â I really am not looking forward to moving back to a 1:30PM - 10PM shift. Â But I think I would look forward to the alternative, a 6:00AM - 2:30 PM shift even less... ]]> =ArgoForg Still Not Dead Yet. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/23546990/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/23546990/ Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:23:08 PST

I've been wanting to sit down with a clear, fertile mind and write a nice, stimulating journal for a long while now.

...

I guess it'll wait a bit longer. Â Between work and large amounts of mental lapses where I say such thought-provoking bits as "Uhhhhhhm," "Man, they crapped on us again," and "Sure, I'll stay here at work a bit longer," I haven't been able to throw together enough poignant thoughts to fill a cheesy Hallmark card, let alone a good journal.

So I'll close with this: Yes, Bob is coming soon. Â Be very warned.

Oooo! Another New Graphic!

RANDOM STUFFS

Yay! Â Computer's back, although I don't really have much time to mess with it!

Yay! Â I'm getting lots of OT at work!

Yay! Â I've found I can survive on two to four hours of sleep almost indefinitely!

Yay! Â When we go to the new warehouse, I'll get lots of exercise covering my work area, which is roughly the size of a city block!

Yay! Â I also get to share my desk with the other shift's team lead, which makes me special, because every other person with a desk has their own desk!

Yay! Â I'll also be on a brand new shift, where I won't have to see that irritating sunlight!

Yay! Â This straight razor does a really good job of opening that little vein in my wrists!

SPECIAL THANKS!

Like I've mentioned recently, a HUGE bunch of Thanks go out to everyone who takes the time to fave my work, or watch me, and especially to those who take the time to respond to it! Â I'm really sorry if I seem slow or unresponsive, especially to those of you who fave and watch me... I try to take time out to respond to every response to my work, but a lot of times the +faves and +watches tend to get relegated to the background, and I don't mean it as a slight whatsoever.... I'm thrilled that you like my work enough even to select it as a favorite! Â So without further ado, Thank you very much!

EXTRA special thanks to =mookyvet for giving me use of her characters on some recent pics, for being so awesome as to get me Fable II for Valentine's Day, and for just being really awesome. Â Cause she totally is.

STAMP WHORING

http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/23111194/ Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:28:02 PST

I have begun to notice that Fate is a capricious bitch mistress, and that She is bound and determined to stop me from doing my art. Â Everytime I really start feeling like I've hit that "next level" in my progression as an artist, She sticks Her nose in my business and intervenes.

Usually by killing my computer.

Which brings us to last night, (rambling alert!!!!) when I was working on my latest picture-- and yes, that would mean that I would have been well on my way to two pics in a week, which qualifies as a bona-fide shit-you-not more-than-just-reasonably effing productive week, despite the fact that my writing took a nosedive and work spent half the week with its foot up my ass. Â I'd been beyond thrilled with the way my last few pics have turned out, and this one showed every inclination of being as complex and detail-filled, and beyond that, I was already considering some camera and lighting FX I hadn't worked with before to add to the drama of the picture. Â I am usually really humble about my work. Â I think I do an okay job, but really, what I do is 90% artistic vision and 10% overglorified photog... I adapt, clothe and pose models, compose them into scenes, and then try to make magic that'll make people happy, weepy or horny, depending on the mood. Â But recently, I'd done some work that even I was starting to get a little proud of. Â And this was gonna be better. Â I got my models and set pieces placed, and was beginning to muck around with lights and cameras when it became apparent that I wasn't gonna finish before midnight. Â And I get up for work at 4:45 AM. Â So eff that noise. Â

I saved the picture and closed out everything, and went into shutdown mode, then walked out of my room to brush my teeth. Â The last sound I heard as I left was the "My ass is off" XP chime.

When I came back, the computer was bluescreening and taking a physical memory dump. Â And rebooting. Â And taking another dump. Â And rebooting. Â And then not registering my digital monitor connection at all.

So it's in the shop for now. Â I've been told it is most likely not as serious as it sounds, and may not even be expensive, which is good, since my tax check is actually going to other things.... I'm taking solace in that, but all the while, my exhales and hopes are tempered by the fact that yet again Fate is denying me the apex of my genius or something like that. Â I am absolutely positive that if I only worked with traditional art, She would cause me to break an arm just as my shading was beginning to show true form.

And the whole time She'd be laughing, and probably having sex to rub it in my face.

I would not make a good Buddhist. Â I can't blithely accept Fate like that without wanting to take a shovel to someone's skull.

Oooo! Another New Graphic!

RANDOM STUFFS

Anyway, yes, I am currently down a Poser-capable computer. Â I do have a laptop this time and it's loaded up with Photoshop and drivers for my tablet, so hopefully I'll be doing up some nice sketches, and... writing. Â God, I need to get my writing ass in gear. Â I owe RP posts and game mechanics, and fictional letters from old half-dead biddies writing tearfilled and regretful last wills to their sons, and reviews, and a sourcebook or two. Â I so need to take up amphetamines again.

...

Just kidding. Â I've never taken amphetamines. Â

That's not to say I haven't thought about it. Â

A lot. Â

Especially after a day of work.

Like them or hate them, but Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters put on one helluva show, and they do a mean cover of Zep's "Rock and Roll", to boot. Â There aren't many bands that put out the sort of energy these guys put out in the Wembley concert.

Sometimes, in the darkest recesses of my mind, in the sort of places even I fear spending too much time, I curl up and think to myself, "Did I turn off the f**king burners on the stove?"

SPECIAL THANKS!

Again, a quick note to everyone who has recently added my work to your favorites or collections... Thank you! There's a lot of great artists here, and the fact that you think one of my pieces is good enough to stand among those great pieces is humbling and awe-inspiring, and I can't thank you enough!Â

Course, if you're just faving to add to your collection of statue pics, that's cool too, but it's not nearly as awe-inspiring. Â Sorry about that. Â ... ]]> =ArgoForg Freeflow http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/22812677/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/22812677/ Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:47:27 PST

I have come to the realization, rightly or wrongly, that this is my surrogate blog.Â And as such, it has also come to my attention that I would be an utterly shatty blogger.Â I don't write every day, because some days I get home and the words won't come, and some days I don't have an all-consuming need to rant or rave about something, and some days I just want to tell the world to feq off and let me get to bed.Â I would probably be a much better writer if I did blog or even journal every day, though, so I'm going to be working at it.

One of the things that The Artist's Way Â teaches is that you should freewrite three pages longhand every morning before you do anything else.Â Half the issues, it says, with waiting until you wake up is that half your brain is centered on logic, and once it begins to take over, your writing becomes more structured, you worry about spelling and grammar, and you automatically censor yourself of things that may on the surface make no sense... it is for this reason that they say dreams fade after you've been up for a while, unless the mental images are particularly strong.Â (Which is also why others suggest it's a good idea to keep a journal at bedside to write down dreams). Freewriting when your logical mind hasn't kicked into auto-censor mode makes it easier to unleash your creative self when it has.

So that's what I'm going to start doing, or at least, I'm going to do a variation on it.Â I wish I could say I have time in the morning to handwrite three pages of text, but the sad truth is that I get up and, if I don't jump into the shower, I'm already working on being late to get my morning going.Â And my alarm rings at 4:55.Â So what I'm going to do is try to meet halfway and see if I can stretch myself.Â I'm waking up 20 minutes earlier, and I'll have a mid-size notebook by bedside, with the hope to be able to freeflow-write a page and a half every day to start.Â

If it does work, I may add another 10 minutes and try to freewrite three pages a day.Â After all, longhand pages really aren't so bad.Â Typing three pages?Â Now that would be a horrendous pain in the ass.Â And hell, if it works, maybe I'll suggest the book here in a journal.

Cause I'm a hopeless schill for stuff like that.

Oooo! Another New Graphic!

RANDOM STUFFS

First off, what does everyone think of the new formats on the pages?Â I really like them!Â I'm NOT entirely sure whether I like the SitBack Gallery thing or not yet, but I'll be the first to admit, it adds something very different to the page. Â Sometimes I wish there was a way to change the theme on the whole homepage, to match my sorta dark mindset, but.... then there would probably be all sorts of troubles that would crop up in the name of "creativity", so I can understand the powers that be at DA wanting to keep that sort of thing under wraps and doling out customization in small dollops rather than vatfuls at a time.

Having watched Superman Returns again, with the objectiveness of fanboi-ism far away (I'm a general comic-book geek, so I tend to watch movies like that with rose-tinted goggles), I have to say this much.... yes, it was definitely no great shakes, especially when placed alongside the recent good movies like Iron Man and The Dark Knight. Â But I honestly think it could have been scads worse than it turned out. Â A franchise like Superman, however, is a double-edged sword, because you really have to tell a story that's bigger than life. Â And SR just... wasn't quite there. Not for lack of trying, though.

Less than 8 months to Gen Con 09. Â Just sayin'. Â

SPECIAL THANKS!

Oh, and one quick note to everyone who has recently added my work to your favorites or collections... Thaaaaaank you! I apologize that I may not get back to you as quickly as I'd like (or as quickly as I might respond to comments) to tell you so, but trust me when I say that it means an awful lot to me to know that you enjoy my work! Â

STAMP WHORING

http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/22601863/ Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:15:44 PST

Woke up this morning and went out to start my car. Â And it was cold.

Not that kinda wuss cold. Â I mean, cold.

Arctic cold. Snow-down-your-shirt cold. Smokestack-smoke-rising-in-chunks-and-not-dissipating-in-the-air-forever cold. Â Balls-vacating-their-usual-place-and-crawling-into-my-stomach cold. Â Inhaling-and-feeling-lung-juices-crystallize cold. Â Letting-the-car-warm-up-for-twenty-two-minutes-and-it-still-feels-like-a-meat-locker cold.

And it's supposed to be colder tomorrow.

That f***ing groundhog can't get here soon enough for me. Â And he damn well better signal spring's around the corner, cause I got no desire to see another 6 weeks of this frigid bullsh*t on top of what we have between now and then.

_{"So, in effect, you're saying it tastes like there's an orgasm in your mouth."

- Me, to a co-worker who was gushing over the flavor of some Christmas gourmet chocolates.}

]]> =ArgoForg It's 2009 and Nothing's Different. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/22422960/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/22422960/ Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:57:07 PST

Happy 2009, everyone! Â Hope that the failing economy, the impending global wars and unemployment crises, the social and political turmoil, and the reformation of the middle classes doesn't get everyone too down, and that everyone remembers that for a couple weeks or so, that newly popped open bottle of champagne symbolizes the hope that liquor will help us forget all our problems!

Kidding. Â Jeez, stop looking at me like that.

I can't swear that this year will be any better than the last, but I'm trying this year to start out with some concrete goals, rather than my usual ephemeral "My resolution is quit expecting things of myself" or "My resolution is to become healthy, because that sounds really good on paper, and I'll take comfort in the fact that I'll be in the majority of people who make resolutions and break them slightly before March."

So, what goals?

Well, the little poll I've done lists a few of them.Â Publishing something this year, doing up 24 pics, and writing three flash-stories, among other things. Â In fact, since every one of them proves some bit of personal growth-- even if it's only in my wallet-- all of them might be among my goals for 2009. Â (Except the be nice to everyone thing. Â I'm much too glorious an asshole to keep that sort of nicey-nice tripe going throughout an entire year.

)

Now, these are goals. Â Not resolutions, because I don't really believe in the sort of New Years Resolutions I constantly hear.... if you want badly enough to make a change in your life, you don't need a holiday to justify it. Â Really. Â Just make your mind up to do it today and keep at yourself to follow through. That's how all the best things in life are accomplished: by proving that you have the will to succeed no matter what.

So there. Â You have an uplifting and spiritual ending. Â

Now get the hell off my lawn, you bunch of whippersnappers. Â

_{"There's never been a surfeit of wank material on the net on any subject, and it doesn't have to even be sexual anymore. For every picture of a pancake, there's very likely some breakfast food fetishist yanking himself silly imagining syrup."

- Me.}
]]> =ArgoForg Christmas Blather http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/22176079/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/22176079/ Wed, 24 Dec 2008 20:48:50 PST
Christmas used to be the time that reinstilled my faith in humanity, believe it or not. It had nothing to do with the religious or commercial meaning of the season, there was just something...special, for lack of a better word... about the season. Like it brought out the best in most people. Not everyone, obviously-- there are exceptions to every rule-- but more often than not, you saw a lot more grins and smiles than you did expressions of anger, even if the stress built to insane proportions the closer it got to December 25th. That was one of the funny things about Christmas... it just seemed to fill people with the whole kitschy "Holiday Spirit" and lent to this feeling of peace on earth regardless of your personal beliefs. And trust me, when you're the sort of cynical, sarcastic and overly caustic bastard I am, it takes something special to really bring out the whole 'awe-inspiring' side of me.

It always made Christmas my favorite time of year, regardless of how my personal situation was and how much loot I was raking in. (Christmas has always been more fun for me seeing people unwrapping what I got for them, rather than what I received, even if I am big into getting gifts)

I've tried really hard to capture that feeling this year, and for whatever reason --the economy, the unemployment levels, my own bouts of depression, or just cold old honest putrid cynicism-- it's been noticeably lacking. Today didn't even feel like Christmas Eve. I'm not all that "OMG I can't sleep" excited about tomorrow morning. I'm not filled with that usual feeling of goodwill and happiness. I didn't feel like sitting around and soaking in the Christmas atmosphere.

For some reason that I can't explain, this year feels emptier than usual to me.

Not that it doesn't mean that I wish everyone the Merriest of Christmases and a boundlessly Happy New Year. The picture I did pretty much explains it. Hope this is the season of wonder for you all.

Oh, and a very special bit of holiday cheer and Bob-love for

, who was absolutely sweet in making me this wonderful Christmas present:

You rock, Mooky!

So, yeah. Merry and Happy.

_{"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

- Luke 2:8-11

(I'm actually not a diehard Christian. That passage just resonates very nicely IMHO.)} ]]> =ArgoForg Surviving. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/20816826/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/20816826/ Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:05:25 PDT

Haven't died yet. Just having some issues. I'll detail it a little more in a nice long-winded journal that will probably piss everyone off that isn't already pissed off at me for whatever reason they feel like dredging up.

Just because that's how life operates, sometimes.

But for now, I'm having problems stringing three coherent sentences together, so it'll have to wait.

Peace.

]]> =ArgoForg Mornings. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/19507778/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/19507778/ Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:17:15 PDT

... just are not my friends. I got to work the morning shift at work this week, and while getting out of work at 4 in the afternoon was really nice, there is no such thing as me "Getting used to the time." Every morning I was waking up at 5 in the morning... and I am someone who fervently believes that 7 o'clock in the morning is borderline god-cursed. I came home every day this week and was so out of my element I couldn't think straight. I've spent this whole weekend trying to figure out why my brain flat refuses to work and why I sit down to my computer and can't come up with three straight sentences at a time.

Damn, do I prefer night shift. No rush to get out of bed at oh-dark-thirty, no coming home in the middle of a rush hour with several thousand people, no fouling up my brain more than it already is.

Oh, and of course, on top of all that, somewhere down the line this week I've managed to pull a muscle in my back. That on top of having my brain go WTF makes for a freaking ridiculously unproductive weekend. Maybe next Friday night I can manage to swing a case of amoebic dysentery to blow my whole weekend.

I am actually working on a pretty heinous picture, but it'll take quite a while to get done. I'm currently expecting it to take something like 12 renders and be composited after the fact. And it doesn't even have petrification in it. That should scare the whole lot of yas.

Having downloaded it for free, printed it, and taken a closer look at it, I have to say I'm really psyched about the Pathfinder RPG by Paizo Games. The latest alpha playtest is about 170 pages, and the playable beta print run is supposed to be about twice that... and will be implementing a lot of 'fixes' for 3.5e to smooth out some of the rules problems and yet be back-compatible so the $hundreds that 3.5 players have shelled out on WotC products and 3rd party additions isn't invalidated after basically 5 years of gameplay. Especially since it seems pretty obvious 4E stems from an itch in WotC's money-palm to try to grab the MMORPG crowd and pry them from point-click-and-kill to point-roll-dice-and-kill.

Oh, and I love that some 3rd Party companies like Paizo and Green Ronin have gone on record as saying that they won't support 4E under the terms of the new restrictive GSL. GR's front page says the terms "are too one-sided as they stand." and that they "do not {...} feel that this license treats third party publishers as valued partners." Bravo! The OGL was easily one of the 10 biggest leaps in RPG production ever. And WotC was responsible for it. It's funny how the mindset has changed in less than 10 years.

That said, I still plan on at least taking a long look at the 4e Players Handbook, because I still want to believe that WotC hasn't completely gone all "It's kinda like MMORPG's... only on a table!" on its customers. Even on the Pathfinder boards, there are some suggestions to incorporate rules from 4E that don't sound completely ludicrous. So I'll admit to curiosity.

ENTER A CONTEST!

This is your last chance!

Commissions: Closed, see below
Art Trades: Possibly
Requests: Closed

Mah Journal

<... ]]> =ArgoForg Ketchup. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/19244858/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/19244858/ Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:10:50 PDT I am not really content. But my Journal icon is apparently frozen on it, so I'll be content. For now. Wankers.

One thing three-day weekends are utterly awesome for is catching up. Â Unfortunately, this particular three-day weekend dealt with me mostly getting caught up on housework and chores that I let fall a little behind while I pulled OT at work, rather than getting caught up on things I really wanted to, say my messages here or creating a lot more in the way of artwork. Â So I apologize to everyone to whom I still need to respond to messages and artwork, and I'm sorry that my sole addition to my artwork this weekend doesn't involve some half-nekked sexay elfchick boobage or obligatory hottie petrification pics. Â

Fortunately, by now, you're almost certainly used to this from my worthless ass, so I'm assuming everyone will survive till next week. Â

Something I forgot to add to my Underrated/Overrated list last week. Â The movie Troy is highly underrated, especially if you consider how terrible it could have been... it's kinda become one of the red-headed stepchildren of the 'Sprawling Historical/Fantasy Epics' that were en vogue in the box office about five-to-eight years ago, which arguably started with Fellowship of the Ring and made its way pretty much right through 300. Â I watched it recently and with a fresh eye (and a greater appreciation brought on by the special features disc-- I almost NEVER buy an 'epic' style film without getting the special edition.) and have to admit that (director) Wolfgang Peterson and (screenwriter) David Benioff did a very respectable job adapting to a more historical-based Troy, and making for a decent fictional story based on the Iliad, without necessarily making the story as dry as the Iliad generally is. Â

Yes, there were definite divergences from the original tales of the Trojan War, such as Achilles living to the sack of Troy and the more romantic takes on Paris/Helen and Achilles/Briseis. Â (In most stories, Paris slew him with a poisoned arrow through his vulnerable heel long before Troy's walls fell, and Paris himself was killed by Philoctetes... and both romances would probably be considered either too wussy or too heterosexual to be a major component to the original Iliad's audiences.) And of course, the timeframe was naturally compressed-- the Trojan War supposedly lasted more than ten years.

Anyway, long story short, it's not that bad a movie. Â Is it an ever-living epic, one of the best ten movies of the past ten years?Â Probably not. Â But it's definitely underrated.

I'm sort of curious. Â What sort of pen/paper/dice/tabletop RPG's does everyone play? Â What do you think is a good RPG system? Â I used to swear by 2nd Edition AD&D, but I've grown kind of fond of 3.5. Â I like the Ars Magcia and Pendragon settings, but it's too nonstandard for some people to play. Â I've mucked around with numerous superhero RPG's, but didn't like the mechanics on a lot of them... MSH is pretty dece and easy to use but sometimes too simplistic; Nothing with DCU on it has been worth it; M&M is good, but it's all kinds of complex and suits itself best to a campaign with a battlemap, like 3.5; Champions is.... really, I can't bring myself to go there. Â Ditto GURPS. Â So what does everyone play, and what are your favorite "real" RPG memories? Â

ENTER A CONTEST!

This is your last chance!

So, then... onward!

Mah Journal

Welcome to Argo's First Ever OVERRATED and UNDERRATED Journal!

That's right! Â This is the journal where I call 'em like I see 'em and give my reason for why I see 'em like I do. Â Who knows, maybe this will become a regular feature... because I know everyone just freakin' waits with bated breath to read my overly opinionated journals. Â It's water-cooler talk, it is! Â

So let's light this firecracker, baby!

OVERRATED: Manga - And yes, I know, this could very well bring the ire of the flavor-of-the-month club bearing down on me. Â Here's the thing: I love manga art and manga-inflenced art. Â Some of my best friends here have a heavily anime and manga-influenced style. Â And I often commission them, whenever I can, because I think the best manga/anime-influenced digital artists can really make a picture sing in a way few illustrators can short of digital painters. Â So no, I find absolutely nothing wrong with manga art. Â

Now, the stories themselves? Â Many of them are --especially at their essence-- very good and ridiculously imaginative. Â But imagine taking a single episode of whatever action show or drama currently sucks out your brain at night. Â Now stretch that single episode out from a single hour into a twelve-hour miniseries that still only covers the same plot points. Â (PS: If you watch Lost, you already know how to do this.) Voila! Â You have just done what large numbers of manga series do: tell a story in 170 pages that could be legitimately told in about 70. Â D-r-a-w-n O-u-t. Â Lots of talking heads. Â Even many of the ones that have action scenes have long stretches in them that seem to exist in the sort of slow motion seldom seen outside of fanfiction.

Oh. Â And the lack of a tail for the speech/thought balloons... hate that, too. Â Now I'm sure that's another thing that I'm sure I "Miss the culture" on. Â So to show you the reference I'm working from when I talk about that, imagine the following: Jim, Bill, Dave and Mike are standing in a room. Â You walk in, and...

"Hi!" He says.

...

Uhm. Â Who says? Â Which one? Â WTF? Â As a regular reader of both prose and western comics, that just irks the absolute piss out of me.

Like I said, I do like some bits of manga, especially the art, which I utterly adore. Â And many of the stories are awesome. Â But some of the time, the form of it outweighs the functionality, and drags a story out to give a few dozen extra "poignant" silent panels. Â And when you have a fanbase that generally puts down western comics/serials for pretty glossy pages, pinup model main characters and crap stories, that sort of thing gets you an overrated mark from me.

UNDERRATED: Landscape Photography - Something I don't see a whole lot of on the front page here at DA are landscape photos. Â And yet, is there any sort of art that can feel quite as majestic and breathtaking as a panoramic vista of nature's beauty? Â Is there anything that can make you feel like some sort of force is guiding or shaping the world than to see a picture of a churning river, or a craggy mountainside, or the morningtime scenic overview that lets you seemingly see forever while pockets of fog cling stubbornly to the grass, not willing to be burned away?

Landscape photography seemingly gets very little of the love. The view of a pristine, primeval sunrise with a purplish cloudbank shading it or... ]]> =ArgoForg Whatsername. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/18606307/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/18606307/ Sun, 01 Jun 2008 08:29:13 PDT

_{The following is not meant to be fingerpointing, mudslinging or the like in any direction, nor is it meant to come acros as some sort of a cry for help. Â It's just an informative journal to those who are interested, with no subtext implied or meant. Â Thank you.}

I know there have been a couple of you that have suggested a picture to me, or have just asked me something along the lines of "When's the next picture of Argo and {Argo's Girlfriend} coming out?" Well, I'd love to tell you that it's going to be soon, but the simple truth is that's not going to be happening.Â Possibly ever. Â Sit down a spell, and I'll tell you a story... Â It's long, be warned.

See, what might not be known to everyone is that the character-- specifically, the one that the model the above pic is based on-- isn't mine... Â I'm pretty much to blame for that misunderstanding, because I don't know that I always included the little copyright caveat on all my pics depicting her... just like I haven't always included model creators or my mediums. Â I tend to have mind-slippage from pic to pic.

Point is, while Argo and his look are completely mine, {Argo's Girlfriend} is not. Â She belongs to an acquaintance who didn't really do art when we first met and started gaming together. Â I, on the other hand, did... and so I photoshop painted a uniform over a character I did up in Poser 3 to match the text description he'd given of her uniform. Â And with that, the graphic version of {This Character} was born, and over the years I was given carte blanche to change and update her look and use her in my artwork pretty much without reservation.

Over time, I kept trying to refine the look so I could get beyond the limitations of Poser meshes, and at one point, when we were under the impression we were going to make a comic together using {That Character} among others, we even pulled in third-party help in the person of *sturkwurk (who is pretty much one of the masters of Poser superhero uniform creation) to help with the problem of her heroine alias running down the legs of her suit.

When the comic project crashed and burned, largely because I just didn't have the time or wherewithal to handle the full scope of everything I'd envisioned on my own, I went back to making singular pics, and eventually revamping {Argo's Girlfriend}'s look to its most recent incarnation, one that I thought really captured her original personality and youth, and consequently an incarnation I was very happy with.

That lasted up until the last couple months when {The Character}'s creator and I got into what I think I can objectively call a pretty childish, immature fight (especially on my part) over things we both feel strongly about and are probably, in the larger scheme of things, ultimately pretty fucking stupid. Â But really, that's neither here nor there. Â The point is that I was specifically requested to quit doing new pictures depicting, or referring to, certain characters... including {Said Character}, all of which I should point out is entirely his prerogative.

But, at first, before I thought it out-- as you can probably imagine-- I was all sorts of pissed. Â I mean, my thought process was this: I'd basically created the visuals for her, especially the most recent ones. Â I drew the original roughs that we used to create a poser model for her suit. Â I'd done all the work on creating, modeling and texturing her most recent look, and it could even be argued that my artwork was essentially the reason those characters had built up a fanbase in the first place. Â My money went into them and helped create their individual looks. Â And on top of that, dammit, I'd been given free rein with them. Â That was my opinion, not the facts, and it was not a correct one to take.

See, those were all arguments hinged in a need to lash out defensively, not actual logical conclusions. Â The rub of it was, he was not only completely within his rights as a creator, but absolutely correct in doing so. Â The argument was just an impetus to do so... if he'd said, "Dude, you eat bananas and therefore I don't want you doing pics of my characters", that's completely his right. Â And it would be hypocritical of me-- as someone who loudly touts artists' rights and gets PO'd when people anonymously post artwork they've stolen from other sites without even giving the actual creators proper credit-- to fight it. Â What I'd done doesn't matter in this cas... ]]> =ArgoForg Exhaustion http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/18390734/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/18390734/ Sun, 18 May 2008 21:40:41 PDT

UPDATE: Working on Journal CSS. Go about your business.

Really, nothing new to report. Still alive. Just have had a couple real busy weeks that have culminated in what was a real busy weekend the last couple days.

I do have a few new pieces in the works, but the way the last few weeks have gone, they've been sort of slow going, especially in postwork. And I'll hopefully have a "real" journal up soon. And maybe a whole new journal look. It's about time for me to shake some stuff up. But for now, hope everyone's having a great month of May thus far!

Oooo! Another New Graphic!

HELP SOMEONE OUT!

and

are both in dire need of some extra money, and they could use help from whatever sources they can get. They both offer very reasonably-priced commissions, and they both do really good work. So please, if you have a little extra spending money, consider getting an art commission from either of these two. Not only are you getting a primo piece of art, but you're helping out a couple lovely gals who really need it... that makes it all the better!

Commission Info HERE

Commission Info HERE

-

ENTER A CONTEST!

Also, another really good friend and sometimes co-conspirator,

HELP SOMEONE OUT!

and

Commission Info HERE

Commission Info HERE

-

ENTER A CONTEST!

Also, another really good friend and sometimes co-conspirator,

I still have some announcements on behalf of a few friends, though.

HELP SOMEONE!

and

Commission Info HERE

Commission Info HERE

-

ENTER A CONTEST!

Also, another really good friend and sometimes co-conspirator,

is holding a CONTEST with the theme "Encasements" (I.e., petrification, plasticfied, card-fied, picturefied, frozen, that sorta thing... Details HERE!), so here's your chance to show off what you can do and get some primo custom artwork as a prize if you do it well!

After all the cool pics Alex puts out, I know some of us really owe him! So pull out your pencils, pens, and tools of the trade, and enter early and often... and tell others to, too! You only have until the 15th of July!

-

I got a new betta (whom I named Hadrian) today, and he's the blue and black sort; he's a little more skittish than Nero was. Sooner or later I might get some pics of him once he settles in.

]]> =ArgoForg Eulogy http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/17467046/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/17467046/ Sat, 22 Mar 2008 23:45:28 PDT

Short journal this week with the holiday and all, peeps. Â Sorry about that.

A few people have told me itÂs kinda funny that I try to ascribe personalities to everything. Â I act as though inanimate objects have it out for me. Â I talk about how Reno ÂlikesÂ certain types of weather or speeds (despite the fact that IÂm sure if he could talk, the one thing heÂd bitch about is that I consistently eat in the driverÂs seat). Â I use a lot of personification analogies to describe things in any creative writing I do. Â My sister made mention last week about how funny it was that I named my fish, and I admitted to her that IÂd have named all of them if I could tell the smaller schoolers apart. Â See, thatÂsÂ just... Â me.

And I guess, when you name something, when youÂrightly or wronglyÂgive it a personality, you connect more with it. Â And that just makes it hurt a little more when itÂs gone. Â So hereÂs a warning: if this feels all sorts of overly melodramatic to you, thereÂs the door-- donÂt let it hit you in the ass.

IÂm sitting here right now, looking at a three-gallon tank on my desk, watching the caustics from the mini fluorescent play on the colored substrate through the thick green-blue of the medicated water. Â And I canÂt bring myself to empty it. Â

I didnÂt want Nero at first. Â From the moment I decided I would be using this little three gallon tank on something else, what I really had my heart set on was a Cambodian Blue Betta. Â I got Nero because of dumb luckÂ Petsmart colors their Betta water with blue dye, so itÂs very hard to tell what color the Bettas actually are. Â (As a side note, I find that to be almost as moronic as spray painting the puppies so you can buy one, take it home, wash it and be surprised.) I might not even have gone there, but IÂd heard horror stories about the fish from other local pet store and the fish shop has hours that conflict with my work schedule every day but Saturday. Â I even had the clerk at Petsmart net out a few fish from their little tubs to try to find a blue one, but after the fifth or sixth, it was pretty obvious she was getting ticked at the ordeal, and so I decided to just take the next one. Â I have to also admit, honestly, that when I brought him home and found out he was the same color as my other Betta, I was pretty disappointed. Â

That turned out to be Nero. Â

If Nero had been human, heÂd be in constant need of therapy, considering what he dealt with. Â He wasnÂt the sort of Betta IÂd originally wanted. Â Unlike any of my other fish, he was named only after a few days of asking around on the net. Â He wasnÂt as big as Aeneas, or as personable as Piddles, so he was always the ÂotherÂ fish to everyone. Â He stayed holed up in my room, away from everyone but meÂ and then he got stuck with me at the desk for hours at a time, sometimes playing music or letting the computer screen glow into his tank until past 1 in the morning. Â He didnÂt have a nice timer turning off and on his tank lightÂ he had me doing it by hand, and on rushed work days forgetting to do it altogether. Â He dealt with me usually making him the last of the fish to get food, he dealt with me putting my finger in front of the glass every so often to get him to flare up his gills at me, and hellÂ he dealt with me being the one to take care of him periodÂ keep in mind that IÂm the guy who didnÂt notice his filter had become unplugged last week until he was constantly at the surface gasping for air.

Nero didnÂt care. Â Or at least, in my overly personificative world, he didnÂt. Â Every day, he was happy to see me come home. Â When I turned on the light in my room after work and sat down at my desk, there he was in the front corner of the tank, waggling back and forth as though he were saying Âhi, Dad,Â in the only way he knew how. Â He enjoyed his tank and loved to explore. Â He even built bubblenests in itÂ as long as IÂve had Aeneas, and both Piddleses, none of them ever built a bubblenest, which I would consider one of the truest sign an anabantid is happy and content with its surroundings. Â

ItÂs hard for even pet lovers to understand what itÂs like to care for a fish. Â TheyÂre quiet, theyÂre generally helpless, they mostly donÂt show affection. Â You donÂt get to pet a fish, the way you can pet a cat or a dog or damned near any other pet out there. Â So when a fish is sick, you canÂt commiserate with them and rub behind their ears to show them you care. Â All you can do is watch them waste away and hope what youÂve put in the tank to help themÂ does so.

ThatÂs all I could do with Nero recently, was watch him and hope. Â That ended today, and Nero lost his battle. Â The last couple weeks, he didnÂt much resemble the... ]]> =ArgoForg Ejaculation. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/17355437/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/17355437/ Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:20:13 PDT
I'm sure if I gamed a lot I'd be able to tell you that my frame rates were unbelievable or that I didn't even experience graphic slowdown when I ran my castle raid with two hundred other similarly-plot-deprived faction-mates, or some silly shite like that. Â But fortunately for everyone, I don't.

Â But I am currently writing this journal in metapad, with an open browser window, listening to mp3's in Winamp, and just finished rendering a 4.5 billion poly vegetation/landscape scene in Vue 5 with a pretty standard non-GI lighting (just for shits and giggles... nothing imperative) in about 45 minutes. Â I'd expect that in Vue with a FAR less complex scene with nothing else running. Â

Needless to say, I got the upgraded baby back today. Â The guy at the computer shop did it up wonderfully, setting me up with everything he promised and then some. Â When I saw the new case, I had to suppress rabid mad-scientist cackling, too... he set me up with the Guardian case, and compared to even my black X-Blade case (which I shamelessly loved the black/blue theme on), it kicks all sorts of ass.

Thus far (knock on wood) I haven't even had to reinstall any software. Â How awesome is that? Â

Soooooo, sooner or later, you can expect to see some new art from me.Â Probably some Poser 7 work, as I've installed it and have been futzing around a bit with it today.

Oooo! Â ssssSSauciness!

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

COMMISSION STATUS: Closed. Â

Oooo! Another New Graphic!

RANDOM STUFFS

I've been surprisingly not tied up with the 360 recently. Â I dunno why that is, if it's just a sheer lack of interest, or lack of time, or just the fact I've outgrown the whole runaround-action-gaming phenomenon. Â I played Lost Odyssey for a few hours the first few nights I had it, and Oblivion a couple times, and I have a dynasty going in March Madness... but this whole week I've just seemed to find good reasons not to turn it on. Â Weird.

There really is some part of me that wonders if people open up commissioned art slots and then see a note from me and give that "Awww, fuck," exhale. Â Probably not, but it's fun to think that I've made people spit-take while they're reading what I request. Â

Today while doing some serious cleanup around the house, I came across some older writings I'd done for RPG's (real, tabletop, pencil-and-dice RPG's, too!) back before I eally had a decent computer... back in the middish 90's... and while some of it was teeth-gnashingly bad, there was enough really good stuff to remind myself that I actually used to write for the sheer unadulterated hell of it... and I used to do it well. Â Maybe that's a hopeful sign.

If you have a little extra money (I know, times are tight for a lot of us), you really ought to consider commissioning an artist here at DA, especially one in need. Â Really! Â There are artists all throughout DA of varying abilities, experience, and artistic strengths, many of which could use a little income help and many of whom charge very reasonably... often you can find people willing to do decent inks for under $20, sometimes colors for a little more.

(SEMI-... ]]> =ArgoForg Degraded. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/17154756/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/17154756/ Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:54:41 PST not like riding a bike. Â You have to do it every day, once or twice a day, for some actual time, or your skills actually degrade. Â Mine have degraded badly. Â I honestly forget some of the things I learned while taking sketch courses.

Now, if I could just get work to not keep me busy 10+ hours a day, maybe I could get to the point where I was actually continuing to practice once or twice a day. Â What worries me more is what's going to happen when I finally get my computer back and I'm out of practice on my 3D programs. Â Buggery.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

COMMISSION STATUS: Closed.

RANDOM STUFFS

After a couple weeks, my poll, ÂWhat Is Your Favorite Non-Statue Pic of Argo's,Â had a 7-way first-place tie at two votes apiece. Â It's good to know that at least a selection of people like a variety of my work, including some stuff that's a little over a year old.

I've been forcing myself not to spend the entirety of the weekend playing Lost Odyssey, and actually try some of the other games I've picked up. Â NCAA March Madness is aight, but nothing outrageous or spectacular, and I consistently find myself in the middle of the tense moments in games fat-fingering the X and hitting the start button by accident. Â I have yet to crack into the NCAA Football yet, but I could certainly see that happening until I get used to the 360 controller. Â

A friend sold me Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion dirt cheap, which I've also just took a cursory look at. Â Kinda nice graphicswise, but the created characters are scary-ugly without an assload of tweaking, and of course, it's a Multi-player (dangerously close to an MMO) FPS-viewpoint, which I'm not sure I like, but if the story's as good as I've heard, I'll let it slide. Â I have to slightly compromise my values, since I won't be able to get Final Fantasy games on the 360 yet. Â

Speaking of the controllers, I like how ergonomic the 360 controller is on the whole, but the positions on the analog sticks just don't do anything for me, compared to the PS2. Â Of course, the triggers on the 360 kick all sorts of ass, so it's an even trade-off. I haven't seen what the PS3 controllers look like, but I gather they're pretty similar to the PS2's.

Poser 7 came in the mail Thursday, another gift to myself. Â Nothing sucks more than waiting around for the computer to be upgraded so you can see how much nicer your work can look out of the box.

And a disturbing trend, speaking of: Poser-Bashing by 3D Purists. Â

I realize that Poser is not Maya, it is not Lightwave, 3D Studio Max or Rhino or Amapi or C4D. Â It's more ready for pictures Âout of the boxÂ than any of those. Â Many of those that unilaterally bash Poser (or D|S or Vue/Bryce/insert Âsoftware that doesn't force you to sacrifice hundreds of hours learning to model from scratchÂ title here) users as non-artists prove themselves to be as narrow-minded, pointlessly priggish, and bigoted as the people who, fifteen years ago, didn't want to consider digital work a viable form of art. Â And it's not right.

A lot of the purists like to spew the ÂYou don't really create anything in Poser, so it's not art. Â You just click and pose someone else's work.Â Using an analogy that I used before on a friend's journal, saying that's why pictures made in Poser aren't really art is... well, absurd. Â That's like saying that Photography isn't art, simply because the photographer leased the studio and bought th... ]]> =ArgoForg Spelunkation. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/17046156/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/17046156/ Sun, 24 Feb 2008 17:27:35 PST

I.

Took the plunge.

When I found out that the computer upgrade was going to cost a little less than I'd figured, and it would still be a kick-arse system, and after a week of messing around on a system that slows to a crawl with two browser windows open (I can't even run a new version of IE. Blows the system specs out of the water.) I decided I needed to do something drastic.

Of course, no, not something constructive drastic, like, I dunno, draw by hand or work on some far overdue writing projects. Oh hell no. I took some of my leftover money from my tax check and bought an XBox 360.

The funny thing is that there are probably a hundred better things I could have bought, not including spending the money paying off some bills. And I'm not a terribly big gamer type in the first place. But Wal-Mart had a nice deal, a pro system (with the 20 gig hard drive) and a game of my choice. So I got Lost Odyssey, which I knew I'd like, since it's A) a turn-based (not active time MMO-style) JRPG, whose B) creators include both the producer and music director of the Final Fantasy franchise and which has C) Freeze and Petrify status ailments that D) actually effing appear on-screen, as opposed to FF XII.

I also made a stop at the local Gamestop (I actually stopped there first, but they had no available 360 consoles) and picked up a couple used year-old sports games. The coolest thing about the ÂEvery Year GameÂ principle of the EA and 2K franchises is the fact that once the newest year has come out, the year before takes a dramatic price plunge that makes it accessible for everyone. I got NCAA 07 Football and March Madness 07 for $12.99 apiece used, while the 08 versions were still showing up on the used rack for $44.99.

I even signed up for a month of Xbox Live Gold, just to try it out... mostly for the previews, access to demos and such, and I doubt I'll keep it for more than a couple months, because the big selling thing is online gaming... and I don't really online game. I might try playing the sports games here and there online, but I doubt very seriously I will be shelling out for FPS tournaments anytime soon or looking around for online Kill-buddies, simply because FPS games aren't generally my thing. Once in a while, I'll get a twist in my knickers and get the urge for a nice brainless high-explosive shoot-em-up, where the only thing I have to put my mind to is Pavlovian Button Mashing, but then I generally rent it for a couple days because the urge goes away shortly after the first couple hours.

Oh, and I certainly won't be looking for MMO's, even with Live, because A) I hate MMO's, B) I hate MMO's and C) No, really, I think MMO's are somewhere between eating an excrement sandwich and yanking your pud with a handful of broken glass on the dislike-o-meter... and don't effing call them RPG's. It's my hope that Lost Odyssey brings back the simpler enjoyment of turn-based RPG's that are more akin to the tabletop variety that actually started the phenomenon, as opposed to the Massively Mindless Oversaturated style that floods the shelves nowadays with no storyline plot other than ÂLevel Up and Raid Other Factions. Wooo.Â

One other thing. After looking around at Gamestop, I realized something that irritated me. The 360 doesn't yet have a game like SSX Tricky for the PS2 on Live. I loved that game because it was fun and addicting without necessarily requiring me to kill things, and the whole SSX stable has been awesome thus far. At least I can play SSX3 for the Xbox, and they did make SSX On Tour, but neither of those are Live compatible, and I woulda thought SSX was a tailor-made franchise for the Live gaming experience. Something to look at.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

COMMISSION STATUS: Closed.

RANDOM STUFFS

System Specs as I have them on what my new system will come up to, for the tech-savvy: Gigabyte SLI-S4 nForce board, AMD AM2 X2 5000+ Black Box (Dual Core, not Quad, thassallright, though.) Processor, 2 Gigs Corsair XMS2 PC800 RAM, single XFX 512Mg GeForce 8600 GT, beefed up case and power supply + my 3 SATA HD's + under $700 = Drool Heavily.

http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/16936720/ Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:26:26 PST

So here's the good news.

Soon, I'll have a much better computer. My old faithful baby has been taken into the shop for a full-fledged upgrade. When I eventually get it back, it won't even look the same. Hell, in many respects, it won't be the same system.

I took it into the shop and told the man at my local shop (which I hasten to point out is not Best Buy. Last time was the last straw with them.) that it was time for him to get to the point of being able to run my 3D work and not going into shellshock when I load up Vue 5 or consider buying Poser 7. So, bam. I find out Monday what we can swing for it... right now, the basics are New ASUS Motherboard, New Quad-Core Processor, 2 gigs of RAM, and a GeForce 7800 or two. And a new case to fit it all in. Bwah. I can't wait, even though it's gonna cost me the lion's share of my tax check... but I love the way the guy's eyes glowed when I said what I was willing to spend, and the way he said, "Holy Crap. We can make you a monster for that."

The bad news is that for now, at least, I'm on this really hellaciously slow backup system I've had for a couple years. It gets on the net, and I can use Open Office on it, so I guess there's that much. But art? Puhleeease. It slows down worse than traffic in Indy when it first snows and the people forget if their tires are any good, and at this point the only art program I can have on here without it spazzing out is an old copy of GIMPshop. I can't imagine doing anything seriously art-worthy on it, beyond MAYBE scanning in some hand-drawn stuff. Which I might, later. Dunno.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

COMMISSION STATUS: Closed.

RANDOM STUFFS

Another weekend, another lack of things done. I was really hoping to get a little more motivated. I see now that's a pipe dream. I think I have nothing but useless, unmotivating weekends anymore.

I know there were some people worried after my therapeutic foray last week, because I went on one of my more uncensored bashing sprees. So just for the sake of making everything nice and clear, here: If you thought one of the bad responses was about you... it probably was. There. Now don't you feel better?

A lot of times, I wonder why I have cable. After getting a nice HDTV with the rest of my tax check, I went ahead and okayed Comcast to set up the HD package for my house. It's like $7 more a month to an already ridiculous bill, but I figure I'll foot the difference, along with half the monthly bill, if not more, so what the hey. They set me up, and supposedly, all I needed to do was check my channels. So I settled in with this brand new TV, and hit a Hi-Def channel.

Nada. Sound, no picture, on any HD channel. I call customer service and they can't figure it out. So next weekend I get to have some guy from Comcast come out and diagnose the problem. Beautiful. A part of me wonders if it's even really going to be worthwhile. I mean, maybe for sports... but does HD make THAT big a difference to regular programming?

I bought four new fish today, to make up for some losses I've had recently in my tank. I hope to have pictures taken and posted up before they inevitably kick off. Kidding. I just seem to have very little luck with fish in that 20 gallon tank. I know a lot of it has to do with the crap water we get around here, which is very high in Alkalinity, probably due to Indiana's limestone content and our older pipes, which also means that without careful upkeep the water can get toxic to the fish really quick. With the exceptions of the big ones like Piddles, or Bettas, I tend to buy extra fish knowing that one or two m... ]]> =ArgoForg Therapeutic. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/16809269/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/16809269/ Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:05:43 PST

I think there was a meme like this once. Prolly. Hell, I dunno. I laugh at most memes and then pointedly do not follow them, because I don't like to be part of the "herd".

But at any rate, these are just some random thoughts that I would like to express to random people, in a nice, therapeutic, healing manner. They're not all gripes, they're not all fawning, it's sort of a mix. In other words, these are things I have bitten my tongue rather than say, things I've forgotten to say, and thoughts that I'm getting off my chest simply for the sake of... well, getting them off my chest. These are taken in no particular order, and with no particular tagline, and many of them don't even apply to people I know from dA, or people I even claim as close friends.

So enjoy my Therapy:

1) I do realize not everyone's an English scholar. But when I see an e-mail from you, just reading your grammatical errors makes my ears bleed. Do you even realize the butchery of language you spew out in e-mail is one of the major reasons I've railed against Keyboard Shortcut Speak and MMO's for as long as I have?

2) I don't tell you nearly enough that your friendship means the world to me, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

3) Don't you sort of owe it to me to explain what in the hell did I do to make you suddenly become so standoffish and snotty to me?

4) I wish you could see what I do... and realize that the only role you play is that of a 14 year old AOL chatroom imbecile with ADD and a bad need of Ridalyn and a vicious punch in the teeth.

5) Someday, I'll have to travel there, or you'll have to travel here, or we'll have to meet in the middle, just because we'd have such an awesome time shooting the sh*t together. Probably over a small vat of alcohol.

6) You know, if you weren't so self-absorbed, and so willing to surrender to any excuse you can come up with on top of it, you might be able to make something of yourself. But as it stands, five years from now, you'll be begging for handouts downtown, or expecting a relative to bail your ass out again.

7) I still catch myself whispering words to myself that I only said aloud when we were together.

8) Sometimes, I wonder if what you've done to other people keeps you awake through the darkest part of the night.

9) Really, I have nothing against emoticons or action text, but you really don't have to cite every action you make. If you choose your words and punctuation well, I can generally tell when you're smiling, laughing or PO'd without the benefit of emotes at the end of every line of text.

10) There are not many people whose personal philosophy can be so f***ed-up, and yet with whom I can still feel an understanding kinship. That says a lot of good about you, or a lot of bad about me. We'll take the first.

11) Don't blow smoke up my ass about how you totally disagree with the way they have your hours set up. I know better. And I know that you're consistently talking to management about me getting PO'd with you behind my back. You're so two-faced that you could be a card-carrying member of the circa AD 1300 Catholic Church.

12) If you were half as interested in the quality of your art as you were churning it out in gross quantity, you could really wow people, me included. As it is, anytime your name comes up in conversation, I tend to get really condescending and sarcastic in response.

13) If I could draw and CGI paint like you, I would tell everyone to f*** off and spend entire months away from work putting together a portfolio and charging a hundy or so per commission. You're that good.

14) I never felt more profoundly touched and awed than when you looked at my artwork and said you really liked it.

15) Fortunately, this is neither a doctoral thesis nor a parliamentary hearing, so I'm allowed to go off on tangents if I feel like it.

16) You know, I, and everyone else whose work you've faved, actually have other pictures we're proud of beyond just the statue and transformation ones. I'm personally really glad you like my work, but I get a bit less excited when all I see in your favorites gallery are fetish pics. Even if I love steak, it'd never be the only meal I'd eat.

17) I look at the day I met you as a turning point in my life. A good one, not a sh*tty one. God knows, I have enough sh*tty turning points.

18) Whether or not you consider it a compliment, your presence alone kept me here when I could have very easily just left and not looked back at any point over the last few months.

19) I don't like my job anymore than you. So could you kindly be overly caustic and hypercritical about any d... ]]> =ArgoForg Valentine's Day, Swear Words and Random Rants http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/16605378/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/16605378/ Sun, 27 Jan 2008 23:10:23 PST

You know what? When I was in a really good relationship, and happy as anything and talking with that whole saccharine-sweet happy-trill to my voice and generally making everyone else nauseous, I still thought Valentine's Day was a tremendous crock. Now that I'm again single and a totally inconsiderate bastard besides, the holiday has not lost its crockiness. Not at all. It's still a greeting card marketer's orgasm holiday, set up to fatten up women ("Oh, don't do anything today, honey. Just sit back and let me take care of you. Oh, here's a nice cardboard vat of chocolate bon-bons."), put undue pressure on guys to outstrip one another in gifts, and generally push everyone currently happy in a relationship to physically shove it in the face of everyone who's not.

(PS: To all of you hoping to flaunt your cutesy-happy-couple relationship in my face, I have two words for you-- rhymes with duck poo.)

I went to the local department store (I can't remember which. Wal-Mart, Meijer and K-Mart have a depressing sameness about them. Target is essentially the same thing with slightly better merchandise, slightly less selection, slightly snottier clientele and slightly higher prices.) and the entire front of the store is a f**king guilt trip waiting to happen, clothed in red and pink. Freaking four lanes of sweets-- candy hearts, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, Gummi hearts, Marshmallow whatsits, Hershey kisses-- and three more lanes of cards, all to remind you that you are officially a card-carrying member of Fascists R Us if you don't buy the special someone in your life something for February 14th.

(picture (C) *Spookeriffic)

I'm currently in the process of starting up a competing holiday simply entitled "Put Out Day" when the cutesy-ness of sweetened hearts and cutesy plush bears gives way to leather and meaningless, guilt-free sex. Screw the whole "Be My Valentine" crap, just hand out cards that say "Put Out Tonight." Rather than the whole pink and red motif, we'll do shiny black and cheap hotel neon light blue. And you know what? I bet the gifts on Put Out Day will be tons better than anything I've ever gotten on Valentine's Day. The cards would be more daring, too. And at the end of the day, rather than being bloated with chocolate and an expensive Valentine's Day dinner, you've instead worked off several hundred calories and have a freshly f**ked glow about you.

Maybe I should take up a petition to Hallmark. This needs to happen.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

COMMISSION STATUS: Closed. On Break.

Slot One: - DONE! [link]
Progress:

SLot Two: - DONE! [link]
Progress: http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/16340120/ Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:42:42 PDT

We've kinda established I'm an weirdo semi-obsessive petriphile, right?

Well, the good thing about being a weirdo semi-obsessive petriphile (for you all, at least... not always for my wallet) is that I really like to see other artists' takes on facets of my "tweak." So in my time here at dA, I've managed to subvert a few otherwise excellent artists into sending me statuephile-themed artwork... whether by way of commission, art trade, gift art, or just sheer unadulterated pity and fervent hope I'll shut up.

So I present to you ARGO'S BIG LIST OF SHAMELESS EXPLOITATION (or in other words, my growing list of people whom I have had do art for me via commission/wheedle/trade/gift here at dA. )

Please visit these fine artists, leave comments on their work (especially their non-statue work!), and if they accept commissions, donations, or subscriptions, why not consider sending some money their direction for all the fine work they've done... and will continue to do!

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http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/16311925/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/16311925/ Tue, 08 Jan 2008 07:07:59 PST

Some woman suggested to me at work-- ironically, the same day as my poll appeared on what you dislike most about dA-- that I shouldn't always be so negative, and at any rate, if I find a problem, why don't I find some way to fix it, rather than just bitching about it? So I thought for a while, and I figured, you know, that's a pretty good idea.

So I killed her.

Ha! Ha! Just kidding. No, she's still alive, just tied up in a pit in my basement. But beyond that, it got me to considering the poll I recently put up here. What would I do to help 'fix' DA? (Not that I really see too much wrong with DA, but still, if I'm gonna poll about the 'bad' things here, I should be open minded!) At any rate, this is what I came up with, in two words: Inactivity Punt.

The idea stems from this: when you sign up for a free membership to dA, a ninety-day timer starts on your username. Essentially, you have ninety days to add something to the community... either by way of a journal entry; comment on another person's news, homepage or deviation; forum post; or deviation submission of your own. I have purposefully left out +faves, +watches, and entry into chat, because those are too point/click easy, and belonging to a community should denote some means of actual work on a user's part. When you do add to the community, your timer resets, and you have another 90 day grace period. This goes on indefinitely.

If, at 85 days, you haven't done something to add to the community, you receive an e-mail telling you that due to inactivity in your account, in five days your account will be punted, possibly including any deviations you've made. And at 90 days, your username gets the boot, and possibly a 5 day ban on top of that. Or maybe at 90 days you get a 5 day warning. Either way. The general idea being that it's bad to get a membership here and then not be involved. And on top of that, it conserves user space for the people who leave here and never return, but don't kill off their galleries... and people who create six usernames and never update three.

Obviously, if you have a paid subscription, none of this applies for the duration of it, because by paying, you (or whomever gifted you) are making a monetary donation toward the continuance of the community. That's also a form of involvement.

I'm sure there are some who would say this is a bad thing, and that it's unfair to expect someone to make a post every ninety days. Personally, I would respond with "Bullshit." An artistic community thrives on the critiques, comments, arguments, opinions and ideas of its members. If you can't be bothered to post five words to the community in a ninety day period... to look at any picture or literature piece and post a response, such as "I really like the composition," or "There's something I don't like about this," or "This shows a nice blend of colors," or even, "I really like your work, so I'm gonna watch you!"... well, then you're not offering anything to the community or the people who contribute to it. And here's the thing... if this became a dA term of service, they posted news about it, and you offered an argument as to why it's totally unfair you just extended your 90-day timer. And if you can't get online at home, and in a ninety day period can't get to a public library, or friend's house where you can log on long enough to post "Nice!" to a picture, you have bigger problems than worrying about an art site.

And natch, yes, I would think that the admins could take special cases into account (such as areas hit by natural disasters-- see why it would be important to at least generally post your location?) and could override the timer in cases of people who have a history of frequent posting and/or deviations.

Anyway, that's my idea. I'd love to hear others' ideas on how to make dA "better", even if you-- like me-- generally already like the place. But I'm off to go feed my new vic.... erm. Off to work. Yes.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

COMMISSION STATUS: Closed. On Break.

Slot One: - DONE! [link]
Progress: http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/16160062/ Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:29:23 PST

So what are my New Year's Resolutions? Simple, they are many, and varied, and not at all likely to all be kept this year. But because it's a long-standing holiday tradition to make unreasonable expectations of one's self, I shall do the same thing. So here we go.

This year, 2008, I resolve, among other things, to:

1) Not Die. In fact, I will be very disappointed with myself if I don't keep this one.

2) Open up, take on, and knock out at least two more commissions. Maybe even by next December.

3) Do at least ten more pictures on my 100 picture challenge, which I'm pretty sure I've forgotten to add my latest statue pics to, anyway.

4) Subvert, pervert or convert at least four other brand-new people on dA into doing statuary pics by sending them money (read: buy four more commissions for myself and support four artists I've yet to support).

5) Quit smo... dammit, too late on that one. Okay, be creative without smoking.

6) Spend almost as much time working on other art as I do working on statue/inanimation pieces.

7) Do a few more hand-drawn pieces, preferably before I essentially lose what little ability to draw I have.

8) Make a new Dev ID and Avatar.

9) Continue to prove what an utter bastard I am through word and deed in my journal.

10) Write... RPG posts, background stories, something... at least three pages of text every two weeks.

11) Do more Bob Pictures. Because retarded basilisks need love too!

12) Do at least six pieces of gift/trade art to dA friends and acquaintances... as far as the gift pieces, without the friends/acquaintances asking.

13) Take and publish several nude photographs of myself, including several black and whites that may well get me kick-banned for being too "Sexual". Create a brand new dA Identity, and using it, point these photos out to mods for consideration as Daily Deviation material. Get my nekked ass as a DD. Crow about that for months. (Okay, not really. But I figure you always want to make one outrageous resolution so you don't feel so bad when you haven't gotten all your resolutions kept. )

So.... what are everyone else's resolutions for 2008? Especially those that relate to dA, or art/creativity in general!

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

COMMISSION STATUS: Closed. On Break.

Slot One: - DONE! [link]
Progress:

SLot Two: - DONE! [link]
Progress:

Want a custom piece o' art by me when I get back to work? Commission me! More Details HERE

http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/16094811/ Tue, 25 Dec 2007 14:11:59 PST

Nothing major to report. Received some really nice stuff from family, had quite a few family members that were really happy with the presents I gave them... and now, like most Christmases, I keep finding myself slowly wanting to give in to sleep.

Merry Christmas to all... hope everyone's day has been filled with happiness, joy and love.

Or just a bunch of keen gifts. Happy Holidays!

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

COMMISSION STATUS: Closed. On Break.

Slot One: - DONE! [link]
Progress:

SLot Two: - Model Okayed, Modeling Background.
Progress:

Want a custom piece o' art by me when I get back to work? Commission me! More Details HERE

RANDOM STUFFS

My Christmas shopping is officially done right now. I just went out this weekend and spent a couple hundred on gifts... not that the money value really matters or anything. I'm just thrilled that I have more gifts to give out this year than I have most years. My only worry is that I don't have anything really 'big' and 'explosive' for Mom this year. No big TV's, no really signature gifts... just a lot of small things, many of which aren't on her Christmas list, because I know most of the family will find a way to get those.

Listening to: "Photograph" by Weezer. Crunchy-chorded, tasty, and generally hits home to me. I know a lot of people are iffy about liking Weezer. You know what? Too F***ing bad.

If you want it, you can have it
But you've got to learn to reach out there and grab it
'Cause everybody wants some love
Shooting from the stars above
And though my heart will break
There's more that I could take
I could never get enough

If you need it, you should show it
'Cause you might play so monastic that you blow it
'Cause everybody wants some, ooh
Something they can barely know
And though my heart will break
There's more that I could take
I could never let it go

It's in the photograph
It's in the photograph
It's in the photograph of love

'Cause everybody wants a dream
Something they can barely see
And though my heart will break
There's more that I could take
I could never let it be

It's in the photograph
It's in the photograph
It's in the photograph of love

If you blew it, don't reject it
Just sit drawing up the plans and re-erect it
Just sit drawing up... ]]> =ArgoForg Issues. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15966031/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15966031/ Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:38:50 PST

F*** Snow.

I drove through it Saturday. It's pretty to watch fall. Been there. Done it.

And enough of that noise. F*** snow. F*** it right in the swollen red monkey arse.

And f*** my brain, too, because right now I haven't been able to come up with anything more constructive than that last sentence for the last two weeks, in any medium. I'm willing to guess that lack of sex is my problem and am considering holding open tryouts for breaking my mental block.

Really.

I have money.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

COMMISSION STATUS: Closed. On Break.

Slot One: - DONE! [link]
Progress:

SLot Two: - Model Okayed, Modeling Background.
Progress:

Want a custom piece o' art by me when I get back to work? Commission me! More Details HERE

RANDOM STUFFS

My Christmas shopping is officially done right now. I just went out this weekend and spent a couple hundred on gifts... not that the money value really matters or anything. I'm just thrilled that I have more gifts to give out this year than I have most years. My only worry is that I don't have anything really 'big' and 'explosive' for Mom this year. No big TV's, no really signature gifts... just a lot of small things, many of which aren't on her Christmas list, because I know most of the family will find a way to get those.

Listening to: "Photograph" by Weezer. Crunchy-chorded, tasty, and generally hits home to me. I know a lot of people are iffy about liking Weezer. You know what? Too F***ing bad.

If you want it, you can have it
But you've got to learn to reach out there and grab it
'Cause everybody wants some love
Shooting from the stars above
And though my heart will break
There's more that I could take
I could never get enough

If you need it, you should show it
'Cause you might play so monastic that you blow it
'Cause everybody wants some, ooh
Something they can barely know
And though my heart will break
There's more that I could take
I could never let it go

It's in the photograph
It's in the photograph
It's in the photograph of love

'Cause everybody wants a dream
Something they can barely see
And though my heart will break
There's more that I could t... ]]> =ArgoForg Urk. Snow. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15856103/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15856103/ Sun, 09 Dec 2007 00:13:54 PST

Hate. Winter.

I really don't know that anything more can be said about it. We got about 2 inches last week, and it was enough to put the Fear of God into every Hoosier (like everywhere else, 95% of Indiana drivers forget from year to year how to drive, and therefore in the first few days of snow, we lose 70-80 drivers through 'environmental culling.' However, after narrowly avoiding becoming a messy smudge at the wheels of an 18-wheeler last year simply because my tires lost traction, I give them a bit more of the benefit of the doubt this year).

I'll give this little pissy bit of snow the benefit of the doubt because everything is feeling all Christmassy and shite around here, and I don't mind a little snow around Christmas. But after that, it can go bugger some people to the north. Far north. Say, people on a first name basis with Polar Bears.

Christ. We've had a few mild winters recently. I'm willing to bet we have three more months of this, too.

FISH UPDATE!

Thank you to everyone who gave suggestions! I didn't use a name anyone had specifically pointed out, but they all helped inspire me! suggested to me that the new Betta's coloration seemed to demand something purple, specifically a shade known as Royal Purple. suggested Solarus, which had a sort of appealing Latin sound to me, which made me think of the Roman Empire, one of my favorite historical periods.

Well, Roman Emperors were among the first (and most notable) to wear purple as a sign of their elevated rank and station, and the new little guy is an attention hog, so I've started calling him Nero.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

COMMISSION STATUS: Closed. On Break.

Slot One: - Essentially Finished, Awaiting Payment & Final Okay
Progress:

SLot Two: - Model Okayed, Modeling Background.
Progress: http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15672181/ Sun, 25 Nov 2007 22:05:37 PST

Well, I've had a pretty much fuckall week, starting last Sunday. I don't hate family get-togethers, but I don't particularly feel comfortable with them, either... and the holiday season, starting right around now, bring a lot of them. So a lot of times I retreat to my room to think.

That's what I did most of this week, both on the days off work and the days I went in. I did a lot of thinking, a lot of taking stock, and a lot of similar-type-brain-and- soulsearching-activity. Over the course of the past few days, I've begun to discover some questions about myself, and a lot of the answers I've come up with are ones I don't particularly like. So what sort of questions have I started to bandy about?

1) Should I continue taking commissions? Temporarily, for the time being at least, I'm holding off on accepting any more. The ones I'm working on right now will be completed (I know, I haven't exactly been a speed demon on those, but they are in progress and WILL be done.) and then I'm going on sort of sabbatical, at least for a little while. I've actually enjoyed working on the commissions I've gotten so far, but I tend to feel a little like I'm shirking or something if I work on my own art while I still have commissions to do. And really, I do have art I'd like to do.

Plus, on top of that, any pressing need I might have had for that extra spending money is... sort of... not so pressing now. While a little extra spending money for Christmas presents might be nice, the sad truth is that if I'm that hard up for cash I can pull a couple extra hours just about any day at work. The actual money I make on my commissions is generally pretty negligible compared to what I can make in OT at work, anyway, especially if I buy models or sets to finish off a commission and cut into the overhead. Anyway, I might open them back up after a while, if the demand's high enough, but for now, I'm going on sabbatical.

2) Is this the place for me anymore? Without trying to sound emo, there's a part of me that's really sad to discover I'm not sure if I should continue on here at DeviantArt. Right now, DA serves as a nice little storehouse and portfolio for my digital work. It's not a portfolio I'm likely going to use in any job interviews anytime soon, though. I think it's fairly obvious that I'm a hobbyist at best when it comes to my art-- a dilettante hobbyist, for that matter, I imagine. I keep giving thought to the idea that maybe it's time I grew up and joined the big-boy world, and left the art to people with the time to invest in it and the ability to grow in it. Not that I think I lack ability... I like to think I do a decent job, but time is a bigger issue.

One of the things I've always believed about here is that to get the most out of the community, one should actually contribute. (And yes, I know that might preclude the people who come here, don't subscribe, and wordlessly put together 'fave' collections based on their fetish of choice... but WTF do I care? Would it hurt them to post a comment to every third fetish pic they fave? Hell, the B/W nude woman photo collective has people that point out works to mods for Daily Deviations and you can't take thirty seconds to type "I [like/dislike] this because [insert variable reason]"? I digress.) The point is, I came in here today and had 287 watched deviations I have yet to respond to, and 87 messages above and beyond that... and while I'd love to respond to everyone, that's. not. gonna. happen. And I hate that, because there are some really good artists here that deserve me spending a good five minutes critiquing and extolling the virtues of every pic they produce... and I don't have that kind of time. Or if I do, I can't jumpstart my brain to do it. To be honest, I feel like I can probably blame that on past drug use.... except really, I didn't use much beyond ginseng, caffeine, ephedrine and nicotine.

3) What do I do with the rest of my life? Again, nothing emo meant... but I've really started wondering what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I figure my life's about half-over (or more) as of Christmas... if I live to be seventy-five, I'll be surprised. But can I see myself in my current job until retirement? I dunno. The pay's there, definitely, as are the fringe benefits... but man. Thirty more years of this daily drudgery, dealing with people that sometimes act intellectually stunted? Feeling like I'm the only one who cares how well and how urgently a job is done? Consistently knowing that useless people are being kept on payroll despite the fact they're useless? Shit... ]]> =ArgoForg Help Argo Name His New Fish! http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15566672/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15566672/ Sun, 18 Nov 2007 17:55:34 PST

- is mah hot soccer mom ... only she has dogs and fish instead of kids, and she knows soccer is boring, anyway.

See, here's the dealio:

I have 3 tanks in my house, none of which are very big. After Piddles passed on, the big 20-gallon tank seemed... empty with just the little Cherry Barbs and the Cory Cats in there. So I ended up moving my turquoise guppy, Azure, from his little itegrated 3-gallon tank into the big 20-gallon, where he has a lot more room to swim around and seems to enjoy it, even though he has to share food (so he can't eat at his leisure). At any rate, that left me with an empty 3-gallon acrylic tank... which unfortunately is too small and prone to water parameter foul-ups to use as a good quarantine or hospital tank.

I considered an African dwarf frog, but I realize I don't know enough about amphibians to really do well with them yet. So yesterday I went to Petsmart and picked up another little betta, because I'm a big softy about bettas being kept in those little cups. Petsmart keeps their bettas in a blue solution that makes their real color hard to discern... I was hoping to get a blue one, and when I happily brought the little guy home and put him in his new home, I thought his coloration was a lot more blue than Aeneas, so I named him Cobalt.

But after a day or so, against good light, it seems as though they're actually fairly close to the same color, and my new guy isn't really so much blue as he is purple with a little more bluish tinge to his dorsal fins. In effect, Cobalt might be a bit of a misnomer.

So I'm looking for ideas for a name for my new guy, and any replies with suggestions are appreciated, even if I don't use them. Pictures of the new little guy are below. He really likes the little cave/house I have in his tank, and he seems to be a bit of a spaz, too. Last night he spent a good thirty minutes flaring and preparing to fight while staring at the wall... I don't know if he could somehow see his reflection or what was the deal. He's definitely still pretty, though, and I don't know if my pics do him justice.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

Slot One: - Essentially Finished, Awaiting Payment & Final Okay
Progress:

SLot Two: - Model Okayed, Modeling Background.
Progress: http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15471775/ Sun, 11 Nov 2007 23:01:37 PST

Completes me. Nothing more need be said.

Interruption to my Twelve-step thingie:

May - November, 2007.

Not much to say except that his condition went downhill quickly, in a matter of a couple days. I'm still not entirely sure of all the details except that it appeared he got a secondary infection while recovering from a wound, and that caused fluid on his organs and bloating. By the time I could get some medication set up in his tank, it was probably too late. I found him when I woke up Saturday morning, lying in the substrate, already gone.

I know that probably means very little to some folks, because not only did hes spend less than a full year as my pet, but he was a fish... which sort of invalidates him as a 'real' pet because he didn't get out of the tank and crawl on me, and fish can't 'interact' in the way that 'real' pets should. Not that anyone has ever come right out and said that, but I've noticed some people I know roll their eyes about fish, like they're decor and not pets... as though the fact that they don't get your slippers or piss on your carpet somehow makes them ornaments rather than pets... or less worthy to be lamented over.

Well, hey, if that's your mindset, then go fuck off somewhere. I liked that little fish; he had every bit as much personality as some four-legged critters I've known. And I'll miss him, even if he made no noises to remind me he was there and he only had six seconds of cognitive memory so he wouldn't know me from any other human.

Rest in peace, little Piddles. I'm sorry I couldn't do more.

* * *

On this Veterans Day, please remember that those who have fought in wars throughout history have generally done so at peril to themselves to help safeguard the rights and freedoms of those they care for. If you enjoy the freedoms your country offers, please take time to thank a Veteran for their service to your country.

Please also thank them for not kicking your miserable sorry ass because you take them for granted or equate them with being evil and subversive government toadies because you're a whiny little egocentric prick.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS & PROGRESS

Slot One: - Rendering 2nd of 4 full-size renders
Progress:

Slot Two: - Prepping background work after model okay.
Progress: <... ]]> =ArgoForg Argo's Twelve-Step Program, Part 1 http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15354180/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15354180/ Sun, 04 Nov 2007 00:18:35 PDT

will probably think a lot more highly of me if she doesn't read this. Fortunately, I have told her that over the phone, so no doubt she'll still read it, and I'll still love her, even if she thinks I'm a moron.

ARGO'S 12 Step Guide to Making Art... NOT. (Part One of Three)

NOTE! This little tutorial can be used for writing, art, or anything else that is ninety-to-ninety-five percent bullshit. And yes, it's not meant to be taken seriously. If you take offense to it, I may very well listen to your deeply held grievance and in a softly-spoken and carefully cultured voice tell you to go have sex with a fragmentation grenade.

STEP ONE:
Procrastinate. Lots. Sit there and find anything, everything, else to do besides art. Sit there and pick your nose. Or spank yourself off incessantly. Or watch TV, movies, DVD's, games. Hunt the web for porn. And I mean good porn, too... not that nasty inexpensive crap where some ostensible model has a cameraman who is trying to jam a 38mm lens in their orafices to give you the equivalent of a National Geographic All About the Labia miniseries. Fuck that noise. Although if you go visit one of those sites, you can always call it 'reference work' and if you're persuasive, someone who is really naive and stupid might believe it.

The rest of us know you're spanking it, just like you do to the Artistic Nudes you Deve Favorite.

STEP TWO:
Get a job that essentially gives you no time to do anything during the week except stress over the fact that in less than twelve hours you'll have to be there all over again. Really. You'd be surprised how much you can visualize and write or draw when you have heightened stress levels and the realization that you MUST have a job... because you're supposed to be a financially stable individual with responsibility, rather than an irresponsible asshat that thinks you're actually going to make enough money on the once-every-two-week commissioned pieces that'll keep you eating Ramen and Mac and Cheese until you can essentially shit strings of pasta. You would be similarly surprised in how well your muse responds to being constantly reminded over the weekend that it is only X days, XX hours and XXX minutes until you have to be back to work Monday morning, so she'd best make with the happy visualizations while you have time.

STEP THREE:

Stare at a blank screen or blank page for hours on end, envisioning the perfection of what your finished piece will be like without ever taking steps toward that finished piece. Because let me tell you, the potential of a finished piece is worth it. Who wants something finished when you can constantly create unfinished pieces that just freaking burble with neverending potential! Every time I look at a blank piece of paper, I see a masterpiece that is not yet completed... and if I complete it, well, durh, that means I have to find a whole different piece of paper! Just today I stared at a blank Word document, a default character in Poser, a new document in Photoshop and four sketchbooks. All that potential has me positively giddy with the things I could eventually create on them!

STEP FOUR:

Start some hopeless addictions and obsessions, and then focus every waking minute you can on them. Everyone knows you can't be a good artist or writer without two or three really good addictions. Do you honestly think that Stephen Crane would have been worth squat if he didn't go on opium binges? And don't take the wussy way out and pick the 'occasional drinking' or 'habitual marijuana use' pansy-ass addictions, either. Be bold. Avant-garde. Get an obsession with visiting amputee porn sites. Get an addiction to snorting Pledge. And use that as a constant crutch, too. When your buddy asks you why you didn't get a picture done, whimper a lot and say that you're fighting your problem constantly, that it's a day-by-day battle, and remember to thank him for helping you crawl out of the bottle. Or the porn site. Either or.

STEPS FIVE-EIGHT... soon. Cause yes, I don't have the time to be able to work on this during the weekend. Bwah.

http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15283670/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:37:09 PDT

- is the bestest lil' nummy Halloween treat ever. And that includes rock-candy Shadow, who comes in a close second.

I do want everyone to know that I am not particularly trying to shove off here during the week, but since I've been on the new schedule at work (and since work has been consummately KICKING MY ARSE) the last few weeks, I tend to get home and not be able to do anything but collapse and exhale. So getting in touch with me during the week might be iffy, and it might seem like my workload is grinding to a halt because I can't get that much done during the weekdays. It feels like I haven't been able to write anything cogent in weeks, so I know my reviews and responses have dribbled off to nothing.

I am still definitely working on commission work, but mostly I have to focus on that on the weekends, because mucking around in Poser and Cinema 4D takes too long during the weekdays to arse with. And likewise because of that, my own work might dry up a little... I have a couple pieces that are render-ready that I might slip in here and there, but largely all I've been working on during the week is my hand-drawn piece, because Photoshop loads in an eighth of the time of Poser.

It may be closing in on time for Argo to look elsewhere for work... except for the fact that my current job's pay rate is really nice and I can't match it off the street almost anywhere. But even until that comes around, I am most definitely here and will be for the foreseeable future. Cause my job bein' a massive prack doesn't change that.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

Slot One: - Re-starting work on layout/texturing after second draft.
Progress:

Slot Two: - Working up tha Aiko model to specs.
Progress:

Want a custom piece o' art by me? Commission me! More Details HERE

_{"Talking to you is like clapping with one hand."

- Anthrax, Caught in a Mosh} ]]> =ArgoForg A Little Cheese with That? http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15209216/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15209216/ Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:28:19 PDT

- Without you, my heart is an empty room with big loud clangy echoey walls. And a shat paint job.

As I told someone special earlier today, on my way home from work I decided I was going to go ahead and buy some wine. I don't drink, really, at all. But I thought a small glass of wine might help calm down my nerves and help me sleep. And I've heard bits and pieces about health benefits of a nightly glass of wine.

So I was sold, and work sucked, so I stopped at ye olde liquor establishment, and after hunting through for a little while, finally decided on a nice bottle of Merlot to try out tonight. I bought it and went home, feeling worldly and ready to revel in my newfound luxury. And then I got home, realized it's a corked wine and found that we do not own a corkscrew.

That, in a nutshell, describes the sorts of days I've had recently.

Oh. Yeah, and work sucks a big ol' elephant knob, too.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

Slot One: - About 75% finished with layout/texturing
Progress:

SLot Two: - Working up tha Aiko model to specs.
Progress:

Want a custom piece o' art by me? Commission me! More Details HERE

More Later. This was Short and Just Here to Prove to You That I Haven't Died Yet.

_{"Talking to you is like clapping with one hand."

- Anthrax, Caught in a Mosh} ]]> =ArgoForg Happy WTF? Day!!! http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15061131/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/15061131/ Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:38:28 PDT

- Makes mah heart go pitter-pat in Morse code that says 'You are a blessed lucky bastard, you are.' That or 'Young foo cow mix jungle pleasure.' I never learned Morse code.

What.

The Fizzuckle.

Is Sweetest Day?

I saw an ad today mentioning that October 20th is Sweetest Day. Sweetest Day? Excuse me? Let's talk about your obvious 'Created by the Card, Floral and Gift Industry and Embraced by Materialistic Fookers and People Hoping for Multiple Attempts Per Year to Get Laid' holiday. If you're lucky enough to have a significant other, let's go over the days that are inexcusable to miss for gifts:

a) His/Her Birthday.
b) Christmas.
c) Your Wedding Anniversary. And no, if you're not married, you are not required to remember and celebrate the day you had your first date/meaningful conversation/kiss. You can do so to get some extra nookie brownie points, but anyone who expects you to remember that, unless it's connected to some other important day, is being needlessly unrealistic. I can't remember most of my brothers' & sisters' birthdays. Adding excess dates will just cause my brain to implode early.
d) Valentine's Day. And you don't get a pass on this one. The Hallmark stores start advertising it right after January 1st.
e) Mother's Day or Father's Day, if the two of you have children.

That's it. That's all. And dammit, that's enough, too. If you have the money, and you want to show someone you care about that you love them by giving gifts, flowers, candy or the like, then do you really need another impetus day? Is it really necessary? Hell, no.

Me? I'm saving my money for Love-You-Day in April.

CURRENT COMMISSION SLOTS

Slot One: - 1st Drafts, Model Sheets
Progress:

SLot Two: - Working up tha Aiko model to specs.
Progress:

Want a custom piece o' art by me? Commission me! More Details HERE

RANDOM STUFFS

Something that just occurred to me after this weekend. I love painting pictures. Oil, acrylic, waterc... ]]> =ArgoForg In Other News... http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14848372/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14848372/ Sat, 29 Sep 2007 22:43:52 PDT

- I am an official Elle addict. It's more fun than crack and not nearly as socially unflattering.

Torn from today's headlines:

SCIENTISTS AND DIETICIANS AGREE:
"WE HAVE NO F***ING IDEA WHAT CAUSES CANCER."
In a sudden reversal of common medical belief over the past thirty years, scientists and a panel of doctors finally admitted in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that they not only have no clue what exactly might cause cancer, but that they "generally like to cover all our bases by randomly selecting words out of the dictionary and saying they're bad." This news comes on the heels of findings announced at a conference in Barcelona that alcohol may contribute to breast cancer.

"Well, sure, a drink per day might very contribute to it," said Dr. Emil Bornea, head of the study's panel in a confidential interview. "At least, that's the evil flavor of the month for October. In actuality, we have no fuckin' clue. Not even the slightest. I mean, sure, we can look at something through a microscope and go, 'oh, that's cancer,' but what causes it? We have no fuckin' clue. Just like the whole 'what's healthy to eat' question. No clue. These things change monthly, y'know?"

Dr. Helmut Von Stanck added, "It's a very inexact science. Last month we were sure that lunchmeat caused cancer. Now we believe that it's generally benign to eat and may even promote a healthy pancreas. Like nuts. We can't decide if they're high in soluble fiber and healthy, or just fattening and cholesterol-loaded and terrible for you. It's easier to just flip-flop and cover all of our bases. So we just pick randomly and rebuke something."

The panel thus far this month has pointed to the following as potentially cancer-causing: alcohol, 'hard' cheeses, squirrel meat, working on one's own car, green beans, plums, eating asbestos, having sex, being within thirty square miles of someone who smokes, broken microwaves, fallout from a dirty bomb, and water. Dr. Von Stanck is not worried, however.

"By next year, we'll have everyone eating cardboard to stay healthy anyway."

--

Does anyone else think the doctors make a lot of this stuff up as they go along? That link above appeared in my local news and prompted me to write thisÂ This comes after a long series of studies that promoted the drinking of one to two glasses of wine per day as a relaxant was healthy. Here's the deal: they don't know what's good for us anymore. In a year or so they'll backslide and say red meat is good for you. They'll say that some vegetables aren't good for you. They'll say rice causes cancer. Or standing downwind of barbecue sauce is unhealthy. Or that the Atkins diet actually caused unhealthy responses from the lack of fibrous bread.

My dad lived to be 90 years old eating two eggs every morning for breakfast when every doctor in the world was saying cholesterol was the most evil thing around and eggs were Satan's fatteners. It all goes in cyclesÂ. And my opinion is that these studies are conducted by people that have no idea and are just hazarding guesses every month or so.

COMMISSION SLOTS

Slot One: - Beginning Model Sheets
Progress: http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14735379/ Fri, 21 Sep 2007 21:30:32 PDT just shut up!"

(See, that's actually an in-joke. If you don't listen to sports radio, especially ESPN Radio, you're probably sitting there with the Scooby-Doo "runh?" expression on your face, wondering what in God's name brought that on.)

Noooo, really, what you've said is that you would like to see me doing actual commissioned art! And I, being a humble and usually cash-strapped artist who would really like to save some money toward traveling out to see mah honneh, am excited to try my hand at some Commissioned Art!

------------------

PRICES

- 3D ART:

Single Character "Pose" Sheet (No Background, Limited Postwork): $20 - Example -

With 'Limited Postwork' I mean that I'll make sure there are no mesh tears, poke-throughs and the like, and finish out and soften the picture, without going into my usual fullbore amount of FX postwork. You can choose a background color if black, white or Poser Neutral Grey doesn't appeal to you; otherwise I'll select one of those three that offers the best contrast to the character, or give a light burst in the background, as I have here. This is generally a simple character portrait.

Single Character Scene (Full BG & Full Postwork/FX): $35 - Example -

Full BG is obviously, within reason. The complexity of the 3D work and the availability/craftability of the models and scene may limit me somewhat, although I'll try to match whatever you have in mind! Full Postwork/FX includes the postwork above plus various actions/filtering/hue-modeling/layer-compositing to get a final picture along the lines of the ones I generally post here.

Per Additional Character: + $15
Prints: Uhhhhmmmmm....

All 3D art will be completed at large-scale size, at least 1500 pixels on the long side, (no matter if it's portrait or landscape format) and will be sent to you via e-mail in a high-res JPEG format; a smaller version will be posted here on DA. The option of print availability is largely up to you... I will be happy to make any commissions available as prints here while I look for a less expensive printer.

- TRADITIONAL ART:

Single Character, Pencil Sketch (Limited BG): $12 - Example -
Single Character, Inked Linework (Limited BG): $20 - Example -
Single Character, Inked + "Tonal" Greyscale CG Work (Limited BG): $25 - Example -

Per Additional Character: + $10
Add Detailed Background: + $10

Pencil or Ink Linework can be sent to you for the cost of Priority Postal delivery from Indianapolis, USA. Details on that can be worked out as we go. Traditional Art will most often be done on 8 1/2" x 11" 50 to 70-lb medium tooth sketch/drawing paper. Inked art may be... ]]> =ArgoForg Scandalicious! http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14680639/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14680639/ Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:41:17 PDT

_{NOTE: Testing CSS.}

Okay, the computer is back, and apparently none the worse for wear. I was elated when I got it back from East Side Computers after less than a week, and they said that my only problem was a configuration error. All my software was still intact. No re-installing, nothing lost. And on top of that, the SATA hard drive that I bought at Best Buy when I took the computer to Geek SquadÂ® (Motto: "We've never met an extraneous charge we didn't like.") is now installed, so I have another 300 gigs of storage space.

My motherboard required a new PCI SATA Card to be able to fit three in, due to the RAID settings on the primary and secondary HD's I already have installed. So the gang at East Side installed that, too. All in all, repair and optimization ran about $150. In other words, $20 less than Geek Squad charged for the Advanced Diagnostic that essentially they couldn't complete because they couldn't get the motherboard to recognize my hard drive. Hm.

The sad thing is that I really used to trust Best Buy/Geek Squad, because they had a guy there that didn't speak 'down' to me and had helped me on a couple occasions without selling me a lot of extras. He was the same guy I pointed out to my sister when she had problems. It was worth it to me to pay a little extra to get him to work on my computer. Now, they have people there that remind me of the sales associates they have on the floor. You ask them about the specs on a system and they have a "You want fries with that?" traumatic episode, and before long, blood is running out of their ears and they're whimpering about the guy that ordered a Big Mac at the Burger King drive-thru and caused their best friend's head to implode.

Okay, maybe not that far. But the ones that do know what they're doing are generally arrogant snots. If I have to get help from a floor associate, I know I've had a bad experience in the local Best Buy. And I love the local Best Buy.

Anyways, that's the good news. Computer's back.

Now, the bad is this... it may be a while before it's back 'up to snuff'. Meaning, Argo has a bunch of stuff he really needs to do to it, starting with backing up all my important data and stuff so I don't go through the grey-hair-causing adrenal worry of "OHSHIT I might have just LOST EVERYTHING!" again. So for those of you hoping I'm back to posting a picture every other couple days... that ain't happening yet. Soon, I hope. But not yet.

RANDOM STUFFS

I hate you, you worthless fucking brain. Make with the fucking written creativity, or I start slamming my head around aimlessly into solid objects. Or worse, I start smoking again. And if I do that, my lungs are going to crawl up there and beat the ever living fuck out of you. Promise. So might my genitals, just because they're getting no other work and are therefore in an obstinately shitty mood. So START SPOUTING OFF THE SORT OF ROUGHSHOD CREATIVITY YOU WERE FUCKING CAPABLE OF BEFORE I DECIDED I WAS GOING TO SAVE $40 A WEEK AND BREATHE HEALTHIER, YOU SODDING PIECE OF WORM-RIDDEN MONKEY FECES!!!

The above is an example of the sort of mantra I tend to say to myself when I have trouble writing. Needless to say, words have not been coming very easily lately, and it's starting to tick me off. There was a time not long ago that I could pull three pages out of my ass without thinking hard.

By the way, vote in my poll. I'm seriously considering offering commissions, and I'm curious as to whether people might think that's a good idea or if I'm being vacuous and overestimating my ability. Natch, if I do offer commissions, I still won't be able to do EVERYTHING. Some things just don't look right in what 3D I'm capable of.

(SEMI-)RANDOM DEVIANT PLUG

This is mjrahabim, whose Poser work is a few steps beyond awesome, whose patience is liken to a saint, and whose female models are thirty-one flavors of tasty. Go there. Be impressed. Or I'll get angry. And you wouldn't like me when I'm angry. I should kn... ]]> =ArgoForg Kaput. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14405634/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14405634/ Thu, 30 Aug 2007 05:29:31 PDT

- You make my heart do weird pattery things that I would usually attribute to the beginnings of needing a restricted diet.

Sad to say that this is another lightweight journal entry, as I'm in the middle of another fifty-hour week at work. In fact, I'll be pulling ten hour shifts this week and next. With luck I'll add onto this over the weekend. But Ithought I would post, all the same.

Mah computer is kaput.

Juuuuuust to update everyone, a few days back, I went to boot up my computer, and went to the kitchen to grab something to drink. While there, I got into what turned out being a ten-minute conversation with my brother. Eventually I found my way back to my room, and the XP boot-up screen was still showing. Now, my computer's slow... but it's not that slow.

With the lack of 'non-out-of-the-home' computer experts on the east side of town (the last place I went closed down a few months after I got my computer upgraded there), I was pretty much stuck taking it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy. They said both my hard drives weren't showing up on a diagnostic, which I knew was bogus (if there was no connection to the hard drive, the XP boot-up screen wouldn't have shown) but accepted that I might have a boot sector problem, which would have required a new drive, anyway. I couldn't find my Windows XP disc, either, so I had to buy a new legit copy. I honestly think it's a case where someone in my family needed to borrow it and then made off with it. So, long story short, I've paid $400 and still have no word how long it will take before I can even SEE if I can access my old hard drives. Those hard drives also include all my unfinished artwork and models.

And on top of that, there is talk that if it's a motherboard problem keeping the hard drives from being 'seen', then they'd have to send it off somewhere rather than doing in-store work. Which would be a $400-$600 pricetag, on top of everything, with still no guarantee I'd have my old data. Bear in mind, my Poser directories are well over 120 Gigs now. I have a couple OLD backups. Conceivably, I could eventually re-download and re-install models in bits and pieces, at least what I hadn't custom-made (such as all my own characters). At this point in time, if I can't get my hard drive back and cadge the data from it, I'm inclined to say "That's it" as far as my 3D art goes. I don't know that it's worth the time-consuming process of reinstalling every Daz .exe file I own (which-- 2 years ago-- filled 2 DVDR's. ).

The only good side to all of this is that I do have a backup computer. But my backup computer is ridiculous slow and low on hard drive space. It chokes on image-heavy pages. It chokes on java-inclusive pages. It chokes on Office documents. It closes IE randomly. So while I can make it here, I haven't done a lot of responding to either my own pics or other peoples'. And I'm sorry about that. I'll be here, my responses all around may be pretty slow, though.

Regardless, this isn't a "Pity Mark... in fact, show your support for him and give him statuification pics to make him feel better!" journal. (Natch, I'm not going to sit there and turn down any statuification pics that do show up. I'm not a moron. But that really wasn't the express intent of this thread.) I just wanted to keep y'all informed. If I can manage to do some hand-drawn art, maybe I can get my scanner drivers to work and scan them in. But I don't know for sure.

Hope everyone else is having a great week!

_{"He dropped acid bombs from litle hatches in the base of his testicles, pissed dissembler all over them, blinded them with organ-specific toxins sprayed from his nipples.

"--And he claimed he did it all for the Virgin Mary-- who, he said, lived down his street and wore Indian Army boots."

- Spider Jerusalem} ]]> =ArgoForg I Admit To Being Wrong and Get Conned. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14218125/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14218125/ Tue, 21 Aug 2007 04:03:48 PDT

ADD/EDIT: My computer went belly-up with what I hope is a software problem Monday, and is in the shop... which is good, because I'm sure XP will be reinstalled and the whole shebang optimized, but bad because I didn't really get a lot of backing-up done, which means I'll be losing some of my in-progress work and probably a few of my programs that I have no backup CD's of.

I have a backup computer that I'm using to write this, but it's no great shakes and even has problems connecting... so be warned.

- I don't care if there are fifty cons on the west coast. Someday, you and I will be at GenCon. Cause you would make squee noises all day, and hearing that would have made my year.

I'm going to admit that I'm a lot of things. I'm a petrification and statuification fetishist. Durh. I'm an artist and writer wonders if his most productive days are apparently behind him. I'm an unabashed fish-lover. I'm a general complainer at times. But moreover, I'm a big enough man to admit that I was mistaken when I realize that I was.

So here goes: I was wrong.

As many of you know, because I sat here and bitched about it just a few days ago, I was in full-of-piss-and-vinegar-Argo mode because I was denied a vacation day to go to GenCon. For those of you who didn't get to hear me go off about it, you can read about the whole sordid affair here.

Point is, I was wrong. Yesterday my supervisor makes his way over to me.

"You look sick," he says.

"I... do?" I ask, mystified.

"You do. Real sick. Wouldn't surprise me if you had to take part of the day off tomorrow."

I stared.

"You do have the sick time, after all." He admits. "I mean, if you wanted to come in early and then use four hours or so if our orders aren't too bad. I couldn't justify a whole day, naturally... we're much too short-handed for that. But you could use four hours, and you know... get some rest. Or something."

Which was about as transparent as Argo and Liss after the nameless blurred magi.

I admit it.

I was wrong.

Not everyone at work is a prick.

And so saying, here is my first annual POST-COITAL-BLISS GEN-CON REPORT!

_{Cause... well, going to GenCon is a little like sex. You feel sticky and exhausted (and maybe even used) afterward and you still absolutely love it and can't wait till next time.}

First things first... GenCon is the gaming equivalent of a four-day kegger. It's a thing of savage and thickened beauty... like a Ruebens nude that makes you feel weird and twitchy when you focus for too long on the naughty bits. About 20-someodd thousand gamers descend on the Convention Center in Indianapolis from parts all over the world. We're talking geeks. People that not only enjoy games, but aren't ashamed to hang out in a thick throng of strangers wearing man-skirts, tight leather armor, Ren-Faire cast-offs and in some cases, far too little.

Not many, thankfully. And there were a couple that I'm afraid I once-overed simply because I'm a male and can't control when my crotch thinks for me. (What! Elle has Leonidas in 300, Clayton from Celldweller and Master Chief from Halo. I had a momentary weakness from the chick modeling for some collectible card game that was dressed like a naughty pirate. I never thought of a blunderbuss as a sexy weapon until I saw that, either. And I paid so much attention that I couldn't tell you either the game or the game manufacturer. That's the sort of impact she had. Now sod off.) But there were just as many that I once overed in the same way you do when you pass a car that 360'd into the embankment, just to see if the driver's head blew through the windshi... ]]> =ArgoForg Please Assume the "Jobbed" Position http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14138888/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/14138888/ Mon, 13 Aug 2007 19:07:59 PDT

- Some day, we will raise everyon in the Great Northwest's diabetes levels, just you and me. And we will laugh at them all while we sip chai tea at a Joe Bar like teens in a 50's malt shop.

_{I worry about myself sometimes when I have visual images like that.}

Why, hello, Argo! We just wanted to tell you that we're very happy that you've spent the last five years not taking sick time unless you're having major surgery, and we very much appreciate the fact that you've been willing to work ten hour work days to cover for some hypochondriacs you work with who will call in sick if they get out of bed with a case of the sniffles. We also fully appreciate that you are a reliable member of our team, staying over if necessary to get the job for the day as done as possible rather than just waltzing out because it's your scheduled time.

We also understand your frustration at other shifts, who work mandatory overtime to their own advantage, rather than what will actually help the team function with the most staffing for the longest amount of time. We also apologize for taking a hand in causing your muse-- what remained of it, anyway-- to in effect be lost, and for the stress you gained here to weigh upon you daily since you became a team lead.

But regrettably, despite putting in the request over two and a half weeks early, we have decided to f*** you without Vaseline, and let the other team lead take the week that coincides with GenCon off work instead of you. You know the other team lead. The one that already took the vast majority of a week off work to deal with a foot issue despite the fact that he largely sits down at the job while we can barely find a seat for your desk that isn't an ergonomic nightmare. The one that took another two days off previous to this week because his 'foot still hurt', when you took a total of three work days off after having 26 teeth extracted and your mouth swell like an inflatable beach ball. The one that leaves daily at 5 pm or before, no matter how many orders or how far behind everyone is, just so he can beat the rush.

So... we're sorry you'll be relegated to going on Saturday at the earliest, and dealing with the weekend crowds downtown, especially knowing how much you hate crowds. Please let us know at your earliest convenience when we can stuff a hardened lead pipe up your orifice du jour again. It pleases us to no end.

Sincerely,
Your Job.

PS: After the ten hour shifts this week, we need you to work early shift for that other team lead, because we really have little clue when or if he's returning. Ciao!

PLEASE do not repost any artwork you find in my gallery on other sites without my express permission!

RANDOM STUFFS

ADDED, 8-13-07: American comics lost one of their best and brightest today, with the passing of Mike Wieringo from an apparent heart attack. Wieringo-- or 'Ringo, as many knew him-- was only 44 years old. I saw his first work in Flash during the seminal Mark Waid run, and followed him here and there to Robin, Spider-Man, Tellos and Fantastic Four. And all the while, I was very impressed by how clean and slick his characters always were... never overmuscled, but very sleek and flowy and... yes, even as some have pointed out, cartoony-- as though that's a bad thing in comics.

I'd never met him or even been to a Con where he'd attended, so I'd never talked to him, obviously.... which was my loss. And therefore, I never had a chance to tell him what a great comic artist I thought he was, and how much of an influence on my own art he became. I also never got a chance to thank him for the years of excitement and sheer boyish joy he gave me by drawing some of my favorite books. Times like these, words fail.

Rest easy, Mike. You're among some of the greats now.

Held Over! Because pluggin... ]]> =ArgoForg Rants, Raves, Bitching, and Whining. Yep. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/13837357/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/13837357/ Mon, 06 Aug 2007 20:53:23 PDT

A quick addendum to everything here. Epicurean Poetry, for reasons that have nothing to do with me paying her, has actually considered me interesting enough to interview! Read about it HERE.

And while you're at it, why not visit her gallery as well... cause she does cool photos, digital paintings and poetry, among other things. And because she is the shiznaggle for not going wide-eyed and immediately finding other things to do when she found out I was weird like I am.

<--- VISIT HER OR REGRET IT!

And now, back to your regularly scheduled-- and largely unaltered-- journal.

- You make me wanna frolic with you. And I really, really am not big on frolicking.

PLEASE do not repost any artwork you find in my gallery on other sites without my express permission!

_{WARNING! I cannot be held responsible for what sounds like whining. But I HAVE numbered my rants and raves for your ease of responding. Enjoy!}

(1) First off, boys and girls, respect your teeth, because not having them-- or having replacements-- sucks big hairy carnivorous spider-monkey nards. I cannot possibly stress this enough. I lost mine, through a combination of bad genetics and years of abuse, and going through the ridiculousness of dentures has pretty much opened my eyes.

This past week has proven to me exactly how much I can be disgusted with my teeth, or lack of them, even as I run the gamut of highs while having them in. I can really cut loose with the smiles now, and that's a huge plus, because for the last few years I've pretty much reined my smiles in to smarmy-looking grins that didn't show teeth. And I like smiling. I like laughing.

But... My God, do these suck. Let me give you a f'r instance. I missed my nephew's (and namesake) wedding, because I wasn't sure I'd be able to drive to Arkansas at night after work, because I had no one to travel with me. Keep in mind that almost yearly before this, I traveled overnight to South Carolina. But with these new choppers, I can't do caffeinated beverages or eat any 'snack foods' that might be able to keep me going through the long hours of Missouri. And plus, there's the non-knowing when it comes to pain. Friday and Saturday, I had my dentures in for twelve hours, and even forgot they were there a large portion of the time. Thirty minutes of discomfort in the morning, nada afterward.

Today, for no reason I can tell, I feel like I have a firelog stuffed between my cheeks at my gumline.

And let me tell you. I am so goddamned sick of yogurt and formless foods that it's not funny. I want a steak. A big, thick, juicy-dripping 24-ounce Porterhouse steak with a huge effin' loaded baked potato on the side and a huge glass of something sparkling, bubbly and caffeinated to wash it down. I clapped myself on the back yesterday because I managed to experimentally down two thin-sliced pieces of Rotisserie Turkey to complement the stuffing and mashed potatoes that I actually could eat. Today, in about thirty minutes, I've managed to down most of a thin hamburger and a few bites of long grain and wild rice that fortunately don't require much chewing. The last few bites have been slightly less than room temperature.

That just sucks. And blows. And several other forms of metaphorical fellating.

RANDOM STUFFS

(2) And just to keep up that little cycle... after making tomato soup to take to work on Thursday, I started feeling a bit of acid reflux. So I go to the office at work to get some antacid. And of course, what do we have? Chewable tablets. F***ing Brilliant.

(3) I don't know if I'm fond of it, but I mucked around with the CSS on my journal. Maybe someday I'll have some kinda desire to actually go... ]]> =ArgoForg Respect. Feesh. Etc. http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/13662912/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/13662912/ Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:09:41 PDT

- Images of you, whether mental or physical, always make me smile. You rock.

_{And this is something I honestly thought I'd never have to say:}

We all pretty much know I'm a petrification fetishist, yes? I mean, I honestly and without reservation enjoy the whole 'women turning into statues' (or at least becoming largely unmoving) theme. I could go into the reasons for it, the psychology behind it, or the victimization/objectification/dom-sub/bondage fantasies behind it, but that's not what this is about. The important thing is this: it definitely makes its way into my art. I enjoy it something fierce, and it certainly has not stopped me from amassing a collection of pictures, scans and videos from the web. The internet is a lovely place for that.

Now here's the rub. I've noticed that more and more people who also enjoy the fetish have come here searching for petrification/statuification art. And that's fine, better than fine, in fact. I hope that means that you're expanding your horizons, finding other artists that do killer pictures and are encouraging them (whether to do statue art or not. ) and above all, not just playing silent witness. I definitely encourage that... it's what I was actually hoping to get when I first worked up the Gorgon:Art website.

Here's what's not fine, and what I obviously don't encourage: Taking their hard work from here at DA and posting it elsewhere on the web without their permission. Just don't do it. I've seen it happen, and that's just... beyond cold. Especially when everyone at DA can be sent private messages via their homepages. Takes thirty seconds to ask for their okay.

First off, many of the people who post that sort of work here generally make very little money from it. These aren't the liquid-money publishers or distributors... so it's not like you're 'beating the system'-- all you're doing is taking pageviews and a smidge of notoreity from the people who really deserve it. And if they are making any money from it, chances are it's in the form of commissions... and they'd likely prefer people to visit their own site to see more of their work and maybe commission them. So by reposting their work somewhere without their permission, you're in effect lessening the chance someone else could commission them with the same genre of picture you've enjoyed.

And then, yes, some of us simply would prefer not to have their work reposted elsewhere without their okay to do so, period, end of story. I tend to fall into that camp. If it's something I've drawn/rendered/created/done the work on, shouldn't I really should get final say if I want the picture posted elsewhere or not, especially when I have no control over whether or not I'll even get credit? Betcher ass I should. And yet, I've seen some of my stuff reposted on other sites-- not only without credit, but with filename changes. Needless to say, that torques me off.

So have some effin' respect, people. No one's gonna go ballistic if you save a picture to your hard drive. No probs. And almost every artist on here will be happy if you provide a link to their DA page. But don't save someone else's work to your hard drive and then post it elsewhere without even asking the original artist. That's a slap in the face.

And while I can't speak for anyone else, it makes me a helluva lot less inclined to post pictures that I know might be cadged away and posted somewhere else without my okay.

RANDOM STUFFS

ADDED: I am now without teeth. It's not nearly as painful as I'd thought it was going to be, largely because I'm on enough good painkillers to put down a bull elephant. This is what we in the field call 'a good thing', because i was still feeling the surgery even when they put three shots of novacaine in my right lower gum area. The bad thing about these painkillers is that I often catch myself dozing in and out every few moments... ]]> =ArgoForg Apologies and Other Worthless Shite http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/13505299/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/13505299/ Tue, 26 Jun 2007 22:58:37 PDT

- If you were my credit card, I'd so do naughty things to your magnetic strip.

_{NOTE: The more I think about that little mental image, the more I realize that is just sick and wrong, and pretty much demands a picture someday.}

I want to throw something out here and make sure we're all pretty much on the same page, just so I'm not running around pissing people off for no apparent reason. Cause, trust me, when I go to piss people off, I tend to not want to f--- around and do it haphazardly and randomly. If I'm going to go out of my way to piss you off, I want to not only MEAN to piss you off... but actually SPEND HOURS CRAFTING THE PERFECT WAY to piss you off.

So, that said... please, please please don't get bent out of shape if I don't respond to you right away. I really do appreciate anything you might say-- good, bad, constructive or just BSing-- about my work, and I really do like to thank everyone whenever they fave something of mine. And although I'm probably not the most unbiased of constructive critics (I mean it. Do up a pic of a hot babe getting statuified and I can guarantee you I'll get all fanboi and completely miss any problems with any other elements of the pic. Dead serious.), I do like to respond to others' works, too.

Lately, a lot of things have happened that haven't made it easy to respond to every post and watched piece of art the way I'd prefer. Work's getting to be a pretty major pain in the ass, for one. We had over a thousand orders today... bear in mind that at the beginning of the year, a heavy day for us would be 700 or so. I don't want to say I'm burned out, but work is definitely taking a lot more out of me every day than it used to. So I tend to get home a little tired, a little worn, and seeing that I owe over 150 responses sometimes gets a little daunting for me to even consider tackling before I head off to bed.

So the responses WILL come. They may be a little on the slow side, but I will definitely do everything I can to respond to everyone's comments, critiques, favings, and your own work. Please, please don't think I ignore the lot of ya (or for that matter, ANY of you) or anything.

Now c'mere. Give us a hug. Don't ya just feel better?

RANDOM STUFFS

I haven't been 'right' since I quit smoking back in April. And while I'm no doubt healthier and can breathe easier, something feels undeniably... missing... every time I sit down. Words aren't flowing with their usual ease. All my RPG's have suffered from my lack of being able to piece together sentences that don't sound like crap. Less than six months ago, it was nothing-- NOTHING-- for me to rattle off a page and a half of action and dialogue in less than a half an hour. Now I'm having trouble doing four paragraphs in a full night. And I haven't even been able to focus hardcore on art for a few days.

And lemme tell you, that sucks. I needs ta bitchslap my internal muse or something.

I feel really old when I sit there and try to understand a modern role-playing game like Mutants and Masterminds and can't help but wax sentimental for the 'good old days', when character creation didn't require a spreadsheet or a calculator. The sad thing is that the game looks like it blessed well rocks! But jaysis fook, am I THAT old that I'm longing for 2nd edition AD&D, where everything was cut and dried, and you were ready to run a character inside of a half an hour?

Does it make me a bad brother if I go, "I really do want to play golf with y'all on Sundays... but for the love of all that's holy, can you let my ass sleep in till at least 8... ]]> =ArgoForg Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.... http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/13291014/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/13291014/ Thu, 14 Jun 2007 06:44:28 PDT

- Me. You. An Art Museum, and active imaginations. I will say nothing more.

ART UPDATE!!!! - June 14, 2007

My picture Pounce! (located here) was featured in the Summer in 3D news article!

ZOMG!!! Someone saw my work and wasn't made nauseous!!!

Seriously, go check out the article, and take a look at the other 3D artists that created some awesome summery work. Give em some props, too, because there's some really nice stuff there! I don't expect any less... anyone who selects Liss in a bikini obviously has some exquisitely good taste and wouldn't select crap!

FEESH UPDATE!

Aeneas, my Betta, seems to be doing pretty fine, but I bought three Otocinclus pygmy sucker cats that haven't done nearly so well yet. A couple of them (Ovid, Virgil) seem to be pretty okay, but the third, Plutarch, didn't last at all. The ammonia levels have been a little on the high side, and that worries me... plus, I have no way of knowing if the Otos are getting the sustenance they need, since they generally eat nocturnally.

Pics of Aeneas:

I'd have a lot of other stuff here, but I haven't been able to do much thinking whatsoever, so I'mma just steal the quiz Elle pointed out to me. Simply put your music player on shuffle. The answer to each question is the song that is playing at the time.

1) How are you feeling today?
"Midlife Crisis" - Faith No More (Ohhhh, that bodes well for this. )

2) Will you get far in life?
"Closing Time" - Semisonic (Apparently, I get to the end, anyway.)

3) How do your friends see you?
"The Noose" - Offspring. (Oh, thaaaaaanks, everyone. )

4) Will you get married?
"Leave It" - Yes (Is it just me, or is that a mixed response?)

5) What is your best friend's theme song?
"Throne Room Theme/End Titles" from Star Wars - John Williams

6) What is the story of your life?
"A Small Victory" - Faith No More

7) What was high school like?
"Sweet Little Sister" - Skid Row (Say Whaaaaa? Although I guess that could be a euphemism for Catholic School Girls.)

8) How can you get ahead in life?
"Here is No Why" - Smashing Pumpkins (I guess that means ask no questions.)

9) What is the best thing about your friends?
"The Deepest Blues are Black" - Foo Fighters

10) What is in store for this weekend?
"The Remedy" - Jason Mraz (And I'm assuming that means NEXT weekend.)

11) To describe your grandparents?
"Evaporated" - Ben Folds Five (You know, that's about 31 colors of wrong.)

12) How is your life going?
"Call of Ktulu" - Metallica (Hm. I'd buy it.)

13) What song will they play at your funeral?
"The King Dies" - Atlantis Soundtrack. (BWHAHAHAHA!!!)

14) How does the world see you?
"Carnival Overture" - Antonin Dvorak

15) Will you have a happy life? =ArgoForg More Generally Neutral Crap http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/13158374/ http://ArgoForg.deviantart.com/journal/13158374/ Thu, 31 May 2007 00:14:03 PDT

- Just calling you 'special' is like calling the Pacific 'wet'. Alone, that doesn't even come close to covering it.

Well, there's good news, there's REALLY good news, and then there's the usual bit of boring crap. I'm not gonna go into all kinds of extra sections on my journal, but I wanted to at least keep everyone sort of up to date why I have yet to get any real creative stuff done.

First things first, I wanted to show off the newest member of the Argo household. This would be Aeneas, my new Betta, and he's the first official feesh I've bought for the two tanks I have set up... so he'll always have that distinction. And plus, he's cute. See?

So soon I'm hoping to have more, and I'll keep everyone up to date when I get him some tankmates. Cause I know you all want to hear about that rather than actually seeing me do artwork.

To Teeth or not To Teeth - I got word after a consultation today that if I can raise $2500, I can get a full upper set of dentures and a lower set of partials. These are the good ones, too. The ones that look realistic and fit better than any set of standard dentures around. I would raise that kinda money by offering commissions, but I'd likely never get them finished, and before that, I'd probably even lose track of who placed orders... and besides, I doubt seriously that I could find that many people interested. So nutz ta that.

Instead I'm looking into options for getting a loan, even if it means getting a co-signer.... because it's worth it to me in the long run. The bad side (or at least, the side that worries me) is that these guys don't do gas. I may get a local. And I may be able to get a sedative.

Not Quite GREAT news, but pretty good! I have not only repainted my room, but am in the process of completely re-vamping the look of my room, and so far it looks pretty dece! I put up a ceiling fan this evening, and am moving furniture around tonight!

Boring Crap? I'm afraid I still have done nothing majorly creative since I've been on vacation. Sad but true. GAHHHHH!!! STUPID BLOCK!

_{"I'm ripe with things to say;

the words rot and fall away

My stupid poem

could fix this home

I'd read it every day."

Blink 182, Stay Together for the Kids} ]]> =ArgoForg