joe randel's art dump

During my morning web surfing, I came across this book that has recently been released in Japan. It’s called A Guide to a Truly Correct Net Love Life and it gives tips and advice to online romance. What I think is truly interesting is that the guide has examples with this cute little anime girlie. I guess this book is primarily be aimed at geeks/otaku. The guide sounds like it takes it’s self pretty seriously and doesn’t really hold back with its tips like, “shaving those neckbeards, and getting clean clothes that fit you so you can appeal to your future squeeze.” Continue reading

I guess it’s that time of year that I need to think about the candy cane picture I want to do this year.  I’m pretty sure I want to do a Random Squirrel one… or maybe a Ping and Pong one.  Not sure…. gonna have to think about it.  But I would like to do some fan art too.  Ever since I started to draw smutty things, my first love is drawing the fan arts.  I also love to hear suggestions from the crowd too.  So if you have any character suggestions for this years candy cane pic, shout them out for all to hear!

I guess I should also think about what kind of messy New Years pic I want to do.  I missed out on 2012 so I guess I should do one this year.  You know, start the year off right… and very messy.  Very, very messy if I had it my way.  Any thought on who is should be?

Today I went out paint balling with my brother-in-law and a bunch of his friends for his birthday.  It’s normally not really my thing to do.  I’m not very athletic… I mean… I sit at a desk for 8 hours a day.  I’m not an aggressive person nor do I care for first person shooters.  Oh, I also don’t care to get shot at.  But even with all that, I still had fun.  Continue reading

The other day I was riding the bus home like I usually do when something strange happened to me.  The lady beside me talked to me.  Here, let me set the stage.  I managed to get a seat on this trip so I immediately put my ear-buds in, flip open my 3DS and started playing.  Pokemon White 2 to be specific.  About half way home the pretty lady beside me, who looks a whole lot like Astrid from Fringe,  taps me on the shoulder.

Now normally any one that does this wants off at the next stop and is letting me know that I need to stand up to let them out of the seat.  So I stand up.  I notice that she started to shake her head no and motioned me to sit back down.  I took out my ear-buds so I could hear her and to my surprise… she wanted to ask about the game I was playing.  Apparently she used to play Pokemon games a long time ago and was amazed how cool this new one looked.  She asked me about it some more and I filled her in on what I knew.  We then talked about other things, like how she’s going to University in Toronto and she remembers her Dad taking her to comic shops when she was little and is I bit of a geek herself.  I talked about how I’m a trained animator but I followed my love of games and art and made that my career.  Then she tells me about this arts festival called Nuit Blanche that takes place in Toronto and that I should go (next year, it’s done for 2012).  It was about that time that we arrived at the mall and she had to get off.  We said bye to each other and that was that.

Now, I’m sure many of you readers know, I’m married.  So I wasn’t looking to step out on my wife or anything.  In fact, when I got home I even told my wife about Astrid on the bus.  She thinks that she was hitting on me.  I don’t think so personally.  I think she was just being friendly.  Wife said that women don’t start up conversations on a bus with a guy unless she’s interested.  Hmmm… I’m still not sure.  If so, I’m pretty flattered.  Ladies don’t usually hit on me.  Wife said that I don’t give myself enough credit and that as I’m getting older I get better looking.  Regardless, it was nice and still a bit shocking that someone talked to me.

Looking back on meeting Astrid on the bus, I don’t think I was as smooth as I would have liked.  I was pretty shocked over the fact that she was asking me about my video game and fumbled my words a lot.  If I was single and this was a chance for me to score a date perhaps… I think I would have blown it.  I’m also not really forward with the ladies and so wouldn’t have even asked to go for coffee or something.  I would have let her slip away, I know I would have.  Ah well.  It’s fun to play pretend in your head sometimes.  My wife thinks it’s cute. ^_^

So anyone out there pick up that new Nintendo watch-cha-call-it?  Wii U?  I would have loved to, but my cash flow won’t allow it .  Probably in the new year or maybe Santa will bring me one for Christmas.  That would be super swell.  I did get a chance to play it on one of their traveling trucks.  I got to play Super Mario U and The Wonderful 101.  Both where lots of fun.  I mean, Mario is always fun in my books.  Sure it’s the game with some game tweaks, but I don’t care.  Playing with the game pad was cool too.  I was able to put down blocks to help others out and stun enemies.

The Wonderful 101 was really awesome, it’s like Pikmin but with little super heroes.  You wander around and gather up regular citizens to be a part of your super hero crew and then you get to wail on enemy robots that are destroying the town.  I really liked it and will probably pick that one up once it becomes available.

I have to be honest.  My budget doesn’t allow for me to buy every system.  So while I’ve been very happy with my collection of Wii games, I did feel a bit left out seeing all the gorgeous games on the PS3 and 360.  The Wii U seems to fill that gap now with its current line up.  I’ll be very happy to play current versions of Assassins Creed III, Batman, Bayonetta and not some watered down version or just miss them entirely.  I know that Nintendo will be left behind again when Sony and Microsoft show the new PS4 and 720 (or what ever they’re going to call them), but for now I’m pretty happy.  Or at least I will be once I pick up the system.

I’m sure that most have noticed that for the past… week, my blog was gone.  We seemed to have a slight mishap behind the scenes and the whole thing went kaput.  I honestly thought that I’d have to start this whole thing over again, because everything I did resulted in nothing.  My last resort was to take everything down and put up an old, old, oooollllddd version of the blog.  I mean… from back in January.  So I did, but when I did WordPress yelled at me and said my database was out of date and so was my WordPress itself.  So I pressed the button, updated everything and to my surprise… the whole blog was there and totally up to date post wise.  I was totally shocked.  I did have to reinstall some plug-ins and put back some of the most current pics, but I think everything is up and running again.

If anyone sees any thing out of place, just let me know.  People might want to check to make sure they can log in if they’ve registered for anything.