Update 20.04.07

~Zaleucus — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 13:30:49 PDT

· Another CSS redo for the journal. I decided I would just stick with the normal DA style with a few additions only possible through the use of CSS. In addition, I've removed myself from some of the groups mostly due to group inactivity.

· I finally bought a 360 and a new TV to go with it. Looks amazing and is loads of fun.

· I just started Game Production in which I will be learning how to model and texture an Unreal Tournament 2004 level. Yeah, it kinda sucks that we're using such a dated game engine, but at least I'll have something fun to show off.

· Since my last update I've taken Introduction to Animation, Animation 1, a term break, and Texture and Lighting 1. Due to one amazing crash that managed to delete my work and my backups, my T&L work isn't as great as I had wanted it to be, but I've posted them anyway. The two final projects were to texture a character model from UT and to texture a scene of our choosing. I chose a robot from UT, and I modeled my own scene:

Character
Scene

The work I did in animation is all movies so I can't post them on DA. Even though I did enjoy animation, we had a terrible teacher and I found it very hard to really get into the class. We were given all the main models and rigs, all we had to do was animate them. The final was to animate the character to a ~10 second audio clip. So here's a link to my final which I ended up doing in about a quarter of the time we were given. My clip is from This is Spinal Tap:

Everything I Read... (2.6 MiB)

In Introduction to Animation we did mostly hand drawn animation and used video capture to make digital movies from the drawings. (The low quality is due to video capture.) We started off by animating three different balls, one heavy, one medium/bouncy, and one that's ultra light like a bubble. We also did a walk cycle and some simple animations of a character the teacher designed, but I seem to only have the ones of the balls. But they were probably the best anyway:

Bubble (23.9 MiB)
Bouncy (1.9 MiB) This one is intended to be looped.
Heavy (14.2 MiB)

· Geometry Wars
· Heavy Weapon
· Gears of War

· Aqua Teen Hunger Force
· South Park
· Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
· Lost
· Primer
· Smoking Aces
· The Pick of Destiny
· Science of Sleep

· Soft Machine by the Teddybears
· Mythmaker by Skinny Puppy
· Less Talk More Rokk by Freezepop
· Shut Me Up by Mindless Self-Indulgence
· Converting Vegetarians by Infected Mushroom
· High School by Tiga
· Bla Bla Bla by Gigi d'Agostino
· Never Win by Fischerspooner
· Your Cover's Blown by Belle & Sebastian
· Ice Cream by New Young Pony Club
· Take What's Mine by Baumer
· Mr Dabada by Carlos Jean
· The Fever by The Yound Immortals
· Shine On by Sunloverz

· In most cases, irony is...
· When driving, what is your favorite gear?
· Free TiVo or free tacos?
· Chocolate?
· Which number is most pleasing to the eye?
· What is your upper of choice?
· How has your experience been with DA staff?
· How do you like your eggs?
· What is lemon candy to you?

Quick Update

~Zaleucus — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:01:04 PDT

I haven't really had any time to do a full update, but I'm just posting to point out that I'm trying out a cafepress store with some of my vector art on it.

It's just a free store now so I can only have one picture for every item, but if it does at all well I will be paying for a premium account which would give you a larger selection.

[link]

· Chocolate?
· Which number is most pleasing to the eye?
· What is your upper of choice?
· How has your experience been with DA staff?
· How do you like your eggs?
· What is lemon candy to you?
· Are you an interesting person?

· ~Picture-Maker
· *Nature-Club
· =macrophoto
· *TasteOfLiquid
· *NaturPics-club
· *flower-club

Update 31.10.06

~Zaleucus — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 19:11:47 PST

· I just noticed the little CSS thing at the bottom of the journal. Been playing around with it a bit and it's pretty cool. Not sure if this is a beta tester feature or what, but I like it. If anyone wants help customizing their journal feel free to ask

· After Design Basics we took two classes, one was Compositing 1 where we first learned to composite images well using photoshop and later learned how to combine movies in after effects. Overall it was a fairly disappointing class with a less than amazing teacher. The other class was Concept and Imagine where we learned a bit of illustrator, a bit of photoshop photo restoration, but the majority of the class was digitally painting in photoshop. Nothing from either of these classes was particularly amazing so I won't be posting it.

· The next class which just ended was Modeling 1 where we started to learn how to 3D model in maya. I made a couple decent models, but nothing about texturing or lighting so I'll probably wait until I know how to do that to post any of this.

· Mystery of Time and Space
· iPod games! (which I won on Blingo.com)

· Aqua Teen Hunger Force
· Harvey Birdman
· Perfect Hair Forever
· Moral Oral
· The Venture Brothers
· The Information by Beck

· Shine On by Jet
· D-D-Don't Don't Stop The Beat by Junior Senior
· Basement Jaxx by Crazy Itch Radio
· The Information by Beck
· Straight Outta Lynwood by Weird Al
· Without You Near by Gabriel & Dresden
· Tracking Treasure Down by Gabriel & Dresden
· Tracking Treasure Down by Gabriel & Dresden (Retrobype Remix)
· Fire by Ferry Corsten
· Everybody's Free by Aquagen (From the intro to Venture Brothers season 2)

· Chocolate?
· Which number is most pleasing to the eye?
· What is your upper of choice?
· How has your experience been with DA staff?
· How do you like your eggs?
· What is lemon candy to you?
· Are you an interesting person?

· =Picture-Maker
· *Nature-Club
· *macrophoto
· ~sky-shots
· ~Cats-n-Dogs
· *Cat-Lovers-Anon
· ~naturephotographer
· =TasteOfLiquid
· =NaturPics-club
· *flower-club

Update 02.09.06

~Zaleucus — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 14:40:25 PDT

· I had a lot of fun in Design Basics last term. I'd love to post some of the work I did, but I'm far to lazy at the moment. Currently I'm in two classes. Compositing 1 we learn the basics of compositing. The first half is learning to composite images in photoshop, and the second half is in after effects. The second class is Concept and Imaging where we learn illustrator in depth and the remaining pieces of photoshop which aren't covered in Compositing. I'd love to post some of the work I'm doing, but, now especially with two classes, I have very little free time and therefore am less motivated to post things.

· Starcraft
· Tetris

^{I never really thought I would use my video iPod for video, but it's proving to be pretty handy while working in lab on our composites}
· Chappelle Show
· FLCL
· South Park

· Eurostar by Yé Yé (I finally found this CD after loving the music video for so long: [link])
· Two Brains for Feet by Yé Yé
· Revelations by Audioslave
· The Life Persuit by Belle and Sebastian
· Dirty Sticky Floors by The Felix Experiment (original by Depeche Mode)
· Just Can't Get Enough by Company of None (original by Depeche Mode)
· I-Deez by 8-Bit
· Bullfight by Hockey

· Chocolate?
· Which number is most pleasing to the eye?
· What is your upper of choice?
· How has your experience been with DA staff?
· How do you like your eggs?
· What is lemon candy to you?
· Are you an interesting person?

· Irresponsible Parent Drivers
· Why do some people think being derogatory will help out?
· Does anyone know what a yield sign means?
· Don't post a complaint if you don't want a response.
· DA's lack of forum features is annoying.

· *Picture-Maker
· =Nature-Club
· *macrophoto
· ~sky-shots
· ~Cats-n-Dogs
· *Cat-Lovers-Anon
· ~naturephotographer
· =TasteOfLiquid
· =NaturPics-club
· =flower-club

Update 06.07.06

~Zaleucus — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 19:36:52 PDT

^{Operation Drawing Bootcamp: Accomplished}
You may have noticed that I haven't really been posting stuff as of recently. You also may have read in my last journal that I was taking probably one of the most difficult drawing classes. Well I'm done with that as of Wednesday, July 5th. I've posted almost all the drawings we turned in as our final in my scraps section. I have them below with descriptions along with a more in depth description of the class.

The first half of the class for most of the class periods was spent figure drawing. Yes, that means with a nude model. That's 4 hours of standing at an easel drawing various 20 minute long poses, from 8 in the morning to 12 noon. About two thirds through the class we had a midterm figure drawing where we basically got 40 minutes per pose to draw the best figure drawing we could. We were able to fit 5 poses in, I believe, and we turned in the one we liked the most. Here's mine:

Up until this point in the class, all the homework assignments dealt with drawing real things. We were told to put our one favorite drawing from the class with the final, so here it is. This assignment was to draw two objects from three different angles. It's a female to dual female phone splitter, if you can't tell.

After the midterm, all our assignments were leading up to our final project which was a storyboard. First we had to draw 100 quick sketches of characters mainly to get our brains thinking and to get us to stop thinking about normal expected characters. From there we picked 6 of our favorites and did an anatomy study which means we block in their skeleton, then their 'meat' and then their costume all onto the same drawing. And then we had to do a single pose render of all 6. After that we had to pick at least two of those characters and come up with a story that fits with them. With the two characters we had to do a 5 point turn, an action sheet with three renders, and an expression sheet with three renders. Here are those:

After we finished those, we drew out a thumbnail storyboard, and once that was checked by the teacher we had to draw all the thumbnails bigger. The storyboard had to be between 18 and 25 frames long. Here's mine, the descriptions of each frame in included in the deviation description. I'm not particularly proud of it, but it was my final so here it is:

this one), and viewing and editing photos in iPhoto/Photoshop. Some idiot posted what seemed like a legitimate complaint about misleading website titles, but the website he linked basically used everything it could to fuck your computer up as bad as possible. Opening hundreds of windows, moving them all around as fast as the computer can, opening hundreds of mail and AIM windows.

Here's what the admin did about this. He posted one post at the bottom of the page (so, you will never see his post until after you have clicked the link). And he locked the thread, which you also can't tell unless you scroll to the very bottom of the page. After a couple minutes of trying to fix my computer I ended up getting fed up and force restarting it, loosing all my work. As you can imagine, I was pretty pissed and decided to tell the help desk about it.

I told them basically what I just told you, just is a much more bitter tone and more explicit content (which I still feel wasn't completely unnecessary, after all it was their fault that I had just lost hours of work).

What did they do? They banned me and ignored the thread. The poster of the thread did not get banned, the worst he got was his thread locked. The admin who mishandled the situation didn't get anything, he just went along happily with his day being a terrible admin. Although, I do realize this may not be the admin's fault. DA's forum system is very primitive and I wouldn't be surprised if all he was able to do was lock the thread and unable to modify the original post or delete the thread.

The last thing that annoyed me from the help desk this week was their punctuality in banning me compared to their super slow response in dealing with an inappropriate comment someone left on my page.

Let me explain the background of this comment. This person is utterly unable to understand the difference between a photograph and a screenshot. He actually spent a good week arguing with me about weather a photo of his dog belonged in the screenshot section. It was a fairly calm argument which is the best kind, but ended with him deleting his original deviation and leaving that comment on my page.

He has now deleted all his deviations but one and has been banned for a week, which is good. I'd love to link you to our argument or at least the deviation but they are all lost now.

· I went to the zoo with our drawing class to draw animals. I don't think any of mine came out very well, but it was a nice break after the midterm. We also got an additional break after the midterm in that homework was fairly light for the first time. Too bad I was suspended or you would have seen my drawings.

· I remembered a little while ago that I believe you can use flash for your DA ID, unless they've removed that feature. I want to remake my current ID in flash with each layer of text sliding the opposite direction of the one next to it. Should be pretty awesome if it works and doesn't suck

· I've been using last.fm a bunch, even though I can't update tracks from my iPod which sucks as that's the majority of what I listen to. You can see me here, but keep in mind that this is only music I listen to at home, all music on my iPod goes unrecorded by last.fm.

· I decided to make use of the shoutBoard by putting some of my pictures on there, and I'm sure you can tell where my inspiration for the current poll is. I'll probably be posting another 'how do you like my signature poll' too. I hope this doesn't upset you.

· Gradius IV: Boss Rush Mode!
· Conker Live and Reloaded

· These Guys
·

Update 09.06.06

~Zaleucus — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 18:57:03 PDT

· I've finally made it to the core classes at my college (that is, the classes that actually have something to do with my major). The first one I'm taking for this term of five weeks is "Drawing Bootcamp" which is basically a couple years of life drawing crammed into five weeks. In other words, I probably won't have much time for photography but on the up side you might get to see some of my (somewhat) amazing drawings in my scraps section.

· I finally got around to making some journal headers. They are all transparent pngs, so you need a browser that supports that. I know Safari and FireFox do, I believe Opera does, and I have no idea about anything else or how it will display for those of you who have a browser that doesn't support them.

· I decided to start posting links to my complaint threads which I like the most. This is partially for my reference, partially because I think some readers might enjoy them, but more importantly it's so that I can feel like I'm sticking it to the man by having people bump my threads back to the top after they've gotten really old (as I think many of the DA forum's lack of features are pointless)

· Over the past few months I've been slowly going through the 8-Bit People's archive of all their music. If you like video game music, you might like this. All their music is free and it's all 8-Bit video game style music. Check it out here.

· Anything unusual happen on 06.06.06? (other than the release of a bad movie) I didn't think so.

· Gradius IV
· Super Bust-A-Move
· Fantavision

· Halo 3 Trailers
· No time for much else.

· Hologram by trash80
· Weeklies (04) by trash80
· Looking for the Perfect Beat by Afrika Bambaataa
· Dance With Me by The Sounds
· Missing (Todd Terry Remix) by Everything but the Girl

· How do you like my signature?
· How do you like your eggs?
· What is lemon candy to you?
· Are you an interesting person?

· Does anyone know what a yield sign means?
· Don't post a complaint if you don't want a response.
· DA's lack of forum features is annoying.

· *Picture-Maker
· =Nature-Club
· *macrophoto
· ~sky-shots
· ~Cats-n-Dogs
· ~Cat-Lovers-Anon
· ~naturephotographer
· =TasteOfLiquid
· =NaturPics-club
· =flower-club

Update 28.05.06

~Zaleucus — Sun, 28 May 2006 16:01:52 PDT

News
· I started to think I might be updating these things too often, but I think it really depends on how quickly things are changing in my life.

· I watched a few episodes of Pete and Pete yesterday which I probably haven't seen since they were releasing new ones 10 years ago. That was pretty neat as I like that show a lot.

· I hooked up xbox live again and have been playing a bunch of halo 2 again.

· I really like a lot of the songs on AFIs new CD. I hate the ones that try to be at all like punk, but the ones which are completely not like AFI at all are pretty good.

Watching
· Big Love
· Pete and Pete

Playing
· Halo 2
· Gradius

Listening
· Whatever people say I am that's what I'm not by Arctic Monkeys
· Broken Boy Soldiers by The Raconteurs
· 37mm by AFI
· Miss Murder by AFI
· Kiss and Control by AFI
· What is Love by Haddaway

Polls
· How do you like your eggs?
· What is lemon candy to you?
· Are you an interesting person?

Groups
· *Picture-Maker
· =Nature-Club
· *macrophoto
· ~sky-shots
· ~Cats-n-Dogs
· ~Cat-Lovers-Anon
· ~naturephotographer
· =TasteOfLiquid
· =NaturPics-club
· =flower-club

Update 19.05.06

~Zaleucus — Fri, 19 May 2006 02:31:28 PDT

News
· I've been on a Daft Punk revival for the past week intermittently listening to a couple new tracks. Daft Punk is definitely one of my favorite bands and as such, they are the current favorite displayed on my homepage.

· I've also been spending a lot of time on the DA forums. Mostly complaining in the complaints section, but also asking useful questions and helping others out.

· I think I'm having Bloc Party withdrawal. Been listening to remixes of them in anticipation of their next CD.

· I was thinking I might keep track of my complaints threads between Polls and Groups in the footer, but I'm not sure anyone would enjoy it but me.

Playing
Zelda (Whichever the most popular SNES one is)

Watching
Nothing at all

Listening
·
Homework
· Around the World
· Da Funk
Discovery
· Aerodynamic
· Crescendolls
· Digital Love
· Face to Face
· Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
· High Life
· One More Time
· Shord Curcut
· Something About US
· Superheros
· Veridis
· Voyager
Human After All
· Human After All
· Technologic
· Robot Rock
· Television Rules the Nation
· Emotion

· Fame and Money (Station Warrior Mix) by Booty Bouncers
· Helicopter (Diplo Remix) by Bloc Party
· Banquet (Boyz Noize Vox Mix) by Bloc Party

Polls
· How do you like your eggs?
· What is lemon candy to you?
· Are you an interesting person?

Groups
· *Picture-Maker
· =Nature-Club
· *macrophoto
· ~sky-shots
· ~Cats-n-Dogs
· ~Cat-Lovers-Anon
· ~naturephotographer
· =TasteOfLiquid
· =NaturPics-club
· =flower-club

Update 07.05.06

~Zaleucus — Mon, 15 May 2006 00:06:10 PDT

News
· I tried to edit my first poll (what makes you most uncomfortable), but DA messed it up. I've been seeing more and more bugs in DA, which may be due to my beta tester status. But nothing has changed in terms of features, just more bugs.
· I'm working on a header for these journals, and maybe some pictures for section headers. It really annoys me that the majority of browsers people use don't support png transparency so I have to make my pictures with a green background.
· If you haven't seen it, the dev5 alpha can be found here. Pretty nifty, but pretty stupid that it can only open in firefox. I'm not sure why DA doesn't pick a more standards compliant browser, or why FF isn't more standards compliant

Underline means an entire CD (for music), italic means something old that I have already loved and am bringing back for another run.

Playing
· Armagetron Advanced
· Find a lens on ebay

Watching
· The Sopranos

Listening
· Out Here All Night - Damone
· Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
· I Love a Man in Uniform - Gan of Four
· 21st Century Digital Boy - Bad Religion
· Everything Zen - Bush
· Cantaloupe - US3
· Cowgirl - Underworld
· The Cosmic Game - Theivery Corporation

Polls
· What is lemon candy to you?
· Are you an interesting person?

Groups
· *Picture-Maker
· =Nature-Club
· *macrophoto
· ~sky-shots
· ~Cats-n-Dogs
· ~Cat-Lovers-Anon
· ~naturephotographer
· =TasteOfLiquid
· =NaturPics-club
· =flower-club

Update 28.04.06

~Zaleucus — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 12:53:43 PDT

Although not a totally original idea, I have to credit thejcgerm for inspiring me to use my journal to keep track of personal happenings.

I just got back from a trip to Tennessee (and a sub trip to New Orleans). I'll be posting a bunch of pictures taken both on the road trip there and from New Orleans. I didn't ever get around to taking photos while in TN, and it's not like anything was just shouting to get it's picture taken anyway.

Playing
· Geometry Wars Evolved
· Need for Speed: Most Wanted
· Cave Story

Watching
· The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
· Hostile

Listening
· Your Woman - White Town
· Joker & The Thief - Wolfmother
· Elysium - Scott Brown
· Hung Up - Madonna
· Signs of Life - Every Move a Picture
· The Shouty Track - Lemon Jelly
· C-C (You Set the Fire in Me) - Tem Vek
· Dictaphone's Lament - Tycho
· Bom Bom Bom - Living Things
· Ghettochip Malfunction - Beck
· I'm 9 Today - Mum
· Perfect Situation - Weezer

=Picture-Maker · =Nature-Club · *macrophoto · ~sky-shots · ~Cats-n-Dogs · ~Cat-Lovers-Anon · ~naturephotographer

Finally Payed

~Zaleucus — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 23:46:03 PDT

I'm really liking this payed account... And I'm going to make better use of my journal, I promise.

Update

~Zaleucus — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 17:16:59 PDT

I've been trying to get a payed account to try it out, but DA's checkout is broken.

I've begun to update many of my old photos to be smaller and have a border.

iPhoto

~Zaleucus — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 13:16:10 PDT

I sure am getting tired of iPhoto. For some reason apple thought it would be a good idea to dump my entire photo library into memory. That means while iPhoto is open my 1.5 gigs of memory is always full, and my hard drive is working non stop swapping files to and from virtual memory. And I only have 600 photos! Maybe iLife 06 will fix this... can't wait till I can run aperture.

Art Size Continued

~Zaleucus — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 02:38:44 PST

I've settled on an average width of 900 pixel with a 10 pixel border, and an extra 10 pixel border on the bottom to make room for my new name copyright. This allows for around 100 pixels of padding on a monitor 1024 pixels wide, which I believe to be the average monitor size, or at least the minimum the average user uses now adays.

Any comments regarding this decision would be appreciated.

Art Size

~Zaleucus — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 16:27:23 PST

So I recently realized that having all my art in such a high resolution is probably pretty inconvenient to smaller screened users, which is the majority of people using computers. So I'm going to try to have a uniform smaller size for my art and offer higher rez ones to those who want them. What do you think?

deviantART: by:Zaleucus

Update 05.08.09

Update 20.08.08