joe randel's art dump

This past weekend I took my kids to the Santa Claus parade in my town.  I walked away wondering where the heck Christmas went.  During the parade I saw a whole troop of Star Wars cosplayers (stormtroopers, Luke, Vader, sand people, even some Death Star beam operators), Gene Simmons “The Demon” (yeah, the whole KISS costume), Ecto-1, The Blues Brothers, goth chicks doing fire tricks and some heavy metal band playing rock tunes on a float.  o_O

These are the parade memories my kids are going to have.  Where are the elves?  Where’s the reindeer? Geez!

At least there was a Santa Claus at the end.

So I’m sure that every one knows my love of games by now. If not… for shame…

But my question today is what are you playing (if you’re playing anything)?

I’ll go first.

I’m currently playing Minecraft on my lunchtimes at work. Tons of fun. It’s hard to explain why… it’s just better if you try it for yourself.

I’m playing Rocket Slime on DS while I take a break from Disgaea DS.

I’m playing Twilight Princess on Wii. It was actually the first game I ever bought for the system and I’ve yet to play it. o_O

I’m also playing Super Mario Galaxy (Luigi levels) with my kids.

Okay, your turn. ^_^

Okay, looks like all the commissions I’ve had to do for the last while are done and sent.  Yay!

I’d like to apologize to everyone that had to wait stupid long times for their pictures and for everyone being so very patient.  When I put out the call for commissions a few years back, I took on way too many.  Far to many then I could handle.  I was able to get out the first few with no problems.  But then I fell behind and then it fell apart.  So I am so very sorry for the wait that everyone had for their art.  I’m not in the business of ripping people off.

If anyone is still waiting for a commission that I have forgotten, please, please, PLEASE note me and let me know and the problem will be corrected.

Now then, this is not a call for new commissions…. yet.  I will put it out there that I think I’ll be doing them differently in the future.  I will only be taking one at a time, because I obviously can’t handle more then that.  I think I will also only be doing digital commissions.  This way people won’t have to wait for art to come in the mail.  If people do want actual physical art though, I’m not opposed to doing that for a small amount extra.  I will totally send people a high res version and the PSD if they so want that too.  I think this will help to get art done and in the peoples hands that much faster.

So when will I take commissions?  Not sure.  Maybe next month, maybe in the new year.  Not sure yet.  I will make a post saying when though so stay tuned. ^_^

If I had to pick one thing that I need to improve on it would be hair. I feel like I draw the same hair all the time. It really bugs me that I can’t think of other hair styles to draw up. I know, I know… there is a whole google out there for me to search and get ref from. I just seem to draw my favorite kinds of styles rather then branch out. I think I need to maybe do some doodles to during the day on blank heads to try out new things.

If I had to pick a second one, it would be breasts. I don’t feel that the ones I draw look soft or squishy enough. Nor do they have the weight that real boobs have. Some thing else to work on I guess.

What do you need to improve on?

Here’s the short version of this post.

I’m a moron.

Here’s the long version.

My TabletPC has been getting quite slow over the past few years.  Sometimes I would be in the task manager I would just stare at all the things my computer was doing right in front of my face and yet, I had no idea.  What the hell where all those .exe files running in the background?  Sometimes I would do searches on them and see what they where.  Mostly they where all regular system files doing their job.  A few days ago however, during a search on .exe files.  I come across a link that will offer a free scan of my PC to rid it of all the extra crap that it’s running and slowing it down.  I was skeptical, but I clicked on it any way.  It took me to a site that had a download of a program that would do just what I described.  I downloaded it, but before I ran it, I did some research on it.  From everything that I read, it was a totally legit program (I can’t remember what it was called).  So I tried it and it worked.  My laptop ran a little fast and my Photoshop didn’t lag.  But then things took a nose dive.

It would seem that this program not only just kept run away exe’s in check, it deleted .dll files.  Important .dll files.  One that the computer need to run!  I rebooted my laptop to find that I was screwed!  I could get anything to load no matter what I did to try and save it.  I was going to have to do a full system recovery.

This sucked, but I’ve been meaning to do one for a while now, so this was as good a time as any.  I backed up all my art, music, photos and wrote down the programs that I needed to reinstall.  Then began the process that would take my laptop back to factory settings.  WAIT!!!  I forgot to back up my bookmarks!!!  To late…  they’re gone.  Sigh~

I guess it’s not the end of the world.  I only really visited a small fraction of them anyway and if that’s the only thing I lost… that’s not so bad.  On the plus side, my computer is really fast now.

So yeah, I totally learned my lesson.  Don’t trust anything you get from the internet.

During my 10th anniversary with my wife we went to see Rock of Ages in Toronto.  It’s a Canadian cast musical show of the same show that plays in New York.  It’s biggest draw is that all the music in the show is from the 80’s.  The glam rock era of the 80’s.  Now I was born in 1977, so I was only 8 by 1985, but I totally remember rocking out to Bon Jovi, Twisted Sister, Extreme and so on.  Ahh, the memories and totally an awesome show so run out and see it.  I highly, HIGHLY recommend it.

Also, just the other day I was listening to the radio in the van and Guns n Roses, Paradise City came on.  I was like “Oh yeah!” so I turned it up and felt like I was a teenager again.  Even my daughter sang along with it. ^_^

I don’t listen to new music too much.  I mostly listen to things I grew up with.  I guess it makes me feel young again.  I like to remember the fun times I had while listening to music.

What music brings out the memories in you?