joe randel's art dump

6:00 am – Dog wakes me up and wants to be fed.  He tries to get up earlier everyday so he can eat that much sooner.  He’s a Beagle… what can I say.

6:30 am – Finally get up out of bed after listening to my dog whine for 30 min.

6:35 am – Let dog out for his morning wizz and then feed him.

6:40 am – Put lunch in bag then piss around on the internet until it’s time to leave and catch my bus.

6:55 am – It’s time to leave and catch my bus.

7:00 am – Sit down and break out my cell phone to listen to my next Japanese lesson.

7:01 am – Get DS out instead because I’m too tired to listen to my Japanese lesson right now.  Plays Mario Kart instead.

7:27 am-ish – Get off bus and walk one block to work.

7:32 am – Walk in to the studio.

7:33 am > 8:10 am – Have breakfast (organic fair trade dark hot chocolate, toasted homemade bread and an organic yogurt), check my sites  kotaku, TIGSource, Insert Credit, PvP, Penny Arcade, Engrish, 4 Color Rebelion, VG Cats (even though he NEVER updates), DA, Pink Tentacle, maybe some Danny Choo and then play a little indie game action until morning meeting.

8:11 am > 8:20 – Morning meeting.

8:21 am > 11:00am – Do general work, check other artists work, answer art related questions in regards to design and functionality in our project.  Maybe go to another meeting… probably doodle something in the meeting.  Surf the net a little while I work and usually have a show running in the bottom right corner of my screen.

11:01 am – Man… it’s not lunch yet…

11:02 am > 12:00 pm – Longest hour until lunch…

12:00 pm > 1:00pm – Woo!!!  Eat lunch.  Maybe draw, maybe play some games, maybe surf the net, maybe do some Japanese.  Dang… 1 hour isn’t enough for lunch.

1:01 pm > 3:00pm – Sit there and think about things that I should have done during lunch rather then what I did do.  Work.  Watch clock until break time.

3:01 pm > 3:15 pm – Break time!  Surf more net… have a wizz…

3:16 pm > 5:00 pm – Under the gun now so I put it to the floor to get done what I wanted to get done today.  I usually do ^_^

5:01 > 5:04 – Shut down PC and run out of building to catch bus.

5:05 pm – Sit down on bus and listen to a Japanese Lesson.

5:45 pm – Get off bus and walk home.

5:50 pm – Get home and say hello to wife and kids.  Play with kids until dinner time.

6:10 pm-ish – Have dinner with family which my wife made and discuss our day.  Everybody does.  I learn about what I missed at home, I tell my wife what I did at work and my daughter tells me what she did at school that day.

6:45 pm-ish – Dinners over.  Help clean table and then go play with kids until bed time and stories.

7:15 pm – Help get baby ready for bed.  Say good night to baby. ^_^

7:30 pm – Help get daughter ready for bed.  Brush teeth, go pee, pick out jammies and stories.  Read two stories before bed.  We have a large selection and yet we seem to read the same 6 or 8 books all the time. ^_^

8:00 pm – Say good night to my daughter.

8:01 pm > 11:30 pm – Go clean up the kitchen from dinner, make my lunch, maybe take out the trash and recycling, watch some tv with the wife, surf some net, or draw a little, play a little video game if I’m lukcy.  Talk to wife about things that we cant really talk about in front of the kids.  You know… adult stuff…

11:31 pm – Brush teeth…  Way too late…  I should have went to bed earlier…  why do I do this to myself… zzzzzzzz…

then do it all again the next day…

Over the past few days I’ve been watching Miyazaki film’s while I work.  Kiki, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle.  I love the painted backgrounds, they’re so beautiful and colourful.  Every time I watch one it’s like I feel home sick for the worlds I’m watching.  I need to buy some of the art books that came out for these movies.  I’ve seen the Princess Mononoke art book at a friends house some time ago and work here has the Spirited Away book and they’re fantastic.  I love seeing the process that goes in to film or games.  Productions notes, concept art and everything.

I guess if I had to pick a favorite, Kiki’s Delivery Service would have to be it.  I just love the city that Kiki travels to and the level of technology that exists in that world.  The innocences that is shown in the film is just wonderful and I fall in love with it every time.

Ahhhh…

I watch these movies over and over again and I never tire of them.  I should see if I can find the older ones like Castle in the Sky or Nausicaä.  Both fantastic stories as I’m sure most will agree.  I find these stories far more entertaining then what Disney can produce.  But to be honest… I never really found Disney animated films to be fantastic.  Sure they’re technically excellent but the stories rarely seem to grab me.

I get excited to show my daughter Kiki one day.  She’s only 4 right now so I’ll probably wait a bit to show her.  I want her to see that there can be more to animated shows then Disney made ones.  You know… make her more artsy and knowledgeable about such things.

Hopefully she likes it when she sees it eventually ^_^

On a side note… the box art for Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 has been released… Hot ^_^  All box art should look like cute ^_^

Well this weekend was Mothers day and I pretty much spent it with the family.  We took our kids to see Barney and Fifi Flowertot at little mall and then I let my wife buy all the flowers she wanted for her garden.  She’s such a garden nut ^_^

My daughter and I bought her new gardening tools to replace the ones her lost during a flood in our shed plus the shovel she broke ripping out a stump in our front flower bed… I bought her a mean, heavy duty metal shovel… man… this one means business.  Then I played with the kids to give her time to plant all the flowers she bought.

I also made her pancakes and a loaf of my famous orange, cranberry bead.

That’s pretty much all I have to report on.

Oh… and the last survivor was awesome!

I don’t own a 360 nor do I own a PS3 so I’m not playing this game.

Yet, I do want to.

Now I should stand out from the crowd and say that I’m not a GTA fan.  The only one I’ve ever played was Vice City and I picked it up at the local EB for nine bucks.  I figured, “why not… can complain for nine bucks and it’s one of the PS2 highest rated games.  I should try and find out why.”  I should also say that I’ve only owned a PS2 for just over a year.

I brought it home and started it up to try it out and found that I couldn’t stop playing it.  I found the game to be lots of fun.  Fun in the way that I could really play the game any way i wanted to.  I could do the missions or not and just piss around the city searching and messing around.  Such freedom was wonderful.  But as the game progressed I found that it started to get a little tedious.  Save up money to buy a business… do the missions… save up money to buy a business… etc… etc…  and if you didn’t have enough money you had to pis around the city and deliver pizza, drive taxi (which isn’t even close to being as fun as Crazy Taxi) and checking up on the business you do own to save up what you need.

B O R I N G

I asked around with my friends that played GTA games and none of them said they had actually completed any of them because they where too damn long.  Well, I set out to finish the game after that… and they where right.  I swore I’d never play another GTA after that.  It was fun in the beginning but man… if it didn’t drag out in the end.

So now GTA IV is out and I find that I would love to get my hands on it.  Even though I’m pretty sure that the game play is the same and I would have the same feelings at the end of it all… I want to play it.  I looks like such a well crafted, thought out game.  And that’s what I love.  A game where the developer didn’t push it out the door.  Things where well thought out and designed well.  That’s my love in game form.

When will I pick it up?  Well, I’m scared to buy a 360 due to the red ring of death and the PS3 is just too expensive for me so it’ll probably be a while.  Until then I just sit, wait and admire the craftsmanship of GTA IV

also… last chance at the two auctions I have running.  The both end around 11 PM I think.

http://www.furbuy.com/seller/joerandel.html

good luck ^_^

So how does one get art in the popular section of deviant art?

I’m not asking because I’m looking to have my art there.  I’m asking because I really can’t figure it out.  I see the “popular” pieces there and I’ll check them out, but I can’t figure out why they’re popular exactly.  Is it the artist that’s popular and not the piece it’s self?  Or is it the art regardless of the artist?  I try and check the page views and the number of times a popular piece has been viewed or faved and some times the number is high and sometimes it’s not very high at all.

I’m dumb founded.  If the point is to showcase art of all the artists and give more exposure to them then I’m not sure it’s working because I constantly see the same artists in the popular in the top slots.  How is this supposed to help the lower end of the fave scale?  I seems like it turns the whole site in to a popularity contest and that’s not right.

Now FA doesn’t have a popular section and I kind of like it that way.  Everyone gets the same exposure this way, and I think it works.  Again, I’m not complaining, I just can’t figure out the formula the site is using.

Sorry for the rambling…  I was just wondering is all.

Woo!!!  Joe’s going on a cruise!

It would seem that my studio is sending the whole staff to on a cruise to the Caribbean in June.  How much does that rock?  Oh… I think it rocks  a whole lot.  But see, I’ve never gone on a trip like this… ever.  I’ve pretty much never been anywhere.  So traveling is kind of scary.  Oh sure, I’ll be taking a vacation in a few weeks where me and the family will be taking a flight to Nova Scotia… our first flight… which is a bit scary.  I’ve never been quite so far away from home as I will be on this trip.  I’ve never been on a boat… well, I’ve gone fishing but that’s pretty much it.  So this is new thing for me.  I know I’ll have fun but I can’t help be a bit nervous.

I’m thinking I’ll take my laptop so I can message my family when I’m on the trip… but then I thought I’ll have to chain it to my wrist when ever I leave my cabin.  Same with a DS.  So maybe I won’t take anything but the essentials.  Man, this thing is hard to plan for, but I don’t want to stress myself out.  I just want to have fun.  It’s all paid for.  Flight, food, cruise… everything!  Except for things on the islands we’ll be visiting.  That I have to pay for myself, which is expected.

So I don’t know… should I just leave my fancy electronic stuffs at home or should I not worry and bring them.