Finally, some good news for me. A few weeks ago, I entered an art show in Chicago, and I got an email today saying I've been accepted for the show. Now, all I have to do is get my piece framed and sent and I'll be all set.

Ugh… it's not easy using this livery editor. Got a thousand layers to work with though. Decided to go and “buy” some designs based on the anime “Lucky Star”. Put it all on a Dodge Stealth (my favorite car). And here it is…




Some good news though… my car is finally up and running again. Mechanic found that the timing belt lost some of its teeth, instantly killing my car. Cost me $300 total for the repairs, including replacing my crankshaft, camshaft, and oil pump seals as the oil was leaking into the chamber where the timing belt was as well as the inside of the distributor cap. Hopefully the car doesn't do anything else to muck up my life. Mechanic tells me that I was lucky to be driving a Toyota as other car brands tend to keep going after the timing belt breaks, resulting on valves and pistons being broken…

It was interesting to see what life to see what life was like as a walker/bus rider. Found that a lot of drivers look down on people who walk or ride busses… something I never do as I've done a lot of walking and bike/busriding in my time. It's kinda sad, really… you gotta be really brave to be walking around at night despite all the dogs and robbers lurking in the shadows.

Now I'm tempted to try making a Pinky TA or a Skoolmunkee Xmas themed car… hehehehe…. :)

Lonnehart
I love the look of this car. Just one question though… what the heck are those two indentations in the hood of the 2005 Ford GT???

Air intakes. Because of the aerodynamic cowling, they moved the intakes to the hood instead of the front of the car.

As for the stealth, I prefer a dodge model that isn't just a retooled mitsubishi 3000 GT. Pull up a photo of one and you'll see that just about the only thing different is the front cowling and spoiler. I'm partial to the old 2001 Avenger's and the late 2 door Stratus RT's. The Avenger was less powerful, but more agile and responsive and the Stratus is just an upgraded and remodeled Avenger with way more power. Those cars were the base for the Spyder Eclipse too, back when the two companies were under the same roof.

I could yap on about those cars forever, just because I had one of the old stratus ES' which were basically just a 4-door version of the avenger with a different body and I wanted an avenger ever since I could drive.

Oz
Correction: not at all.
Hyena hasn't been around at all for about a month, look at the dates under her avatar in a forum post:
Joined: 11-13-2008
Seen: 11-18-2009

After a year, she's disappeared. O__O
I suspect aliens.

I couldn't find a post to check. I think she just did what Custard and a number of other folks have done in the last year or so and just left to focus on another part of their life.

i hope they're still alive. if one of us just dropped off man, we may never know it…

Took me long enough but my computer is back in business. Hope you guys didn't miss me or worse, forgot about me.

PIT_FACE
i hope they're still alive. if one of us just dropped off man, we may never know it…

I sometimes think about this, like if they actually died, there'd be no way to really know. :-(
But maybe it's better to think they've given up the internet and started a life of bangin babes and booze.

you know what would be the one of the worste things about poppin off right now? you'd miss the reunion of the big 4 next year!

im on this site so much i find myself thinking, like if i was in a hospital room, seconds from death, surrounded by my family, would i stop and say “hey…cough spatter cough….tell drunk duck i said so long!” bbbeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppp…..

it'd be nice that my audience and friends knew that i was gone, but man, i can't help be feel like a butthole, i mean that's the end of yer life! that LAST place ya wanna be a butthole.

the worst part is, is that pit is the mostly likely to go without a word….followed by me.

—————–

i showed up to fight night early….there was a jujitsu class going on…they were grappling…

i jumped into the fray, and didn't have my but kicked….god i miss wrestling so much…i got so tired, that i only stayed for 3 rounds of fight night.

I've been splitting my time lately between being lazy and creative. Still working on the b&w sketchbook (got 27 pieces now, right now aiming for 40 new ones and 8-10 older or reinked images so I'm still far away). Almost finished with the color one, which will be more of a hybrid sketchbook/artbook/short comic collection. Basically all I need to do is to tweak some text bits, do the insideback cover (and tweak insidefront) and send it off to proofreading.

I seem to have a comics job lined up for the next year: a four issue mini for a small publisher. Now if I can somehow keep myself afloat financially until that starts.

Oh yeah, another thing I'm wasting my time on (other than reading comics for “research” haha): watching UFO Hunters on youtube.

Aurora Borealis
I seem to have a comics job lined up for the next year: a four issue mini for a small publisher. Now if I can somehow keep myself afloat financially until that starts.

Well done; hope that goes well. In the meantime, invest in dried beans, lentils etc.: they'll fill the gap and last much, much longer than you hoped.

—

It's c-c-c-c-cold here! Some complain about the British climate but not me: it means we never get these nesting in our smalls:

What an attractive bug. Too many legs though. >._<

Ironscarf

Aurora Borealis
I seem to have a comics job lined up for the next year: a four issue mini for a small publisher. Now if I can somehow keep myself afloat financially until that starts.

Well done; hope that goes well. In the meantime, invest in dried beans, lentils etc.: they'll fill the gap and last much, much longer than you hoped.

I hope it goes well too. Can't stand beans though :P

Ugh… I'm trying to create a Pinky TA car design, but the amount of detail that Ozone put into her is way too much to try and imitate using Forza 3's livery system in one day. Looks like this is going to be one of those long stop/start projects… Too bad there's only ONE Australian car company featured in the game called “Holden”, and they only have racing cars (350k creds each). I'd put Pinky on those cars, though. :)

I suppose I could create a Skoolmunkee car too, but I'd end up putting that on a Mini Cooper S (one of my favorite cars because it's just so cute… even cuter than the Volkswagen Beetle). :)

It's official. I'm turning into the exact image of my father. Right down to the disfigured left hand. lol! I broke off a major portion of my left thumbnail and part of flesh on the thumb itself while cleaning the apartment the other day, and the doctor is telling me it's probably not going to ever grow back the way it should. She said we should wait and see, but if it doesn't they're just going to kill the nerve that's exposed so it's not constantly causing me discomfort.

I don't even know why this seems funny to me. It really isn't, but I'm still laughing. I guess that's just my normal reaction to most things any more.

ozoneocean
The trouble is that my hand now stinks like a dead thing.

Lemon juice is great for getting smells like garlic, onion, and fish off of hands… I'd give that a try :]

I just received a call from the top custodial guy for my district's Board of Ed and he wants to meet me before work today. I don't know why, either. Only that “there's going to be some changes going on we want to talk about with you and we'll still have a place for you”.

Cleaners have been getting laid off lately due to the state enforcing a square footage per janitor rule, plus the union hasn't successfully negotiated a contract overdue since summer, and a new governor coming in has vowed to cut the budgets harshly. For me, there's a lot of directions this could go, but most of them are worrying.

So yeah, I bought Rage Against the Machine in an effort to make it a Christmas No.1 here in the UK. Yeah.

Edit: I've downloaded it twice now.

Third day of heavy inking in a row. Three images today (four yesterday and three the day before that)…. I have enough sketches for tomorrow and that's it, then I have to finish few more and my sketchbook will be done, yay.

I was sick last night. Slightly upset stomach, terrible headache, dizzyness, nearly loss of balance. I couldn't sleep all night and I went to bed early EARLY morning. Fun…

I'm gonna have nothing to do this weekend but a stack of homework.

skoolmunkee
Lemon juice is great for getting smells like garlic, onion, and fish off of hands… I'd give that a try :]

In the end I lathered up and up and up with a whole heap of soap and then just rubbed it in without anymore water till it was pretty dry and absorbing into the skin like sun-cream or moisturiser…
Then washed it off quite a bit later. That finally worked :)

Nice hat BTW!

AQua_ng
So yeah, I bought Rage Against the Machine in an effort to make it a Christmas No.1 here in the UK. Yeah.

You know the UK No 1 is fixed.

Aurora Borealis
I was sick last night. Slightly upset stomach, terrible headache, dizzyness, nearly loss of balance. I couldn't sleep all night and I went to bed early EARLY morning. Fun…

Stop the heavy drinking?

Ozoneocean
“AQua_ng” Said:
So yeah, I bought Rage Against the Machine in an effort to make it a Christmas No.1 here in the UK. Yeah.
You know the UK No 1 is fixed.

Yeah, but selling the most and being kept at No.2 by fraudulent means is way cooler. Everyone remembers God Save The Queen, but WTF was actually No.1? All together now…

(X)Fac(tor) you, I won't do whatcha tell me,
(X)Fac(tor) you, I won't do whatcha tell me…

ozoneocean

Aurora Borealis
I was sick last night. Slightly upset stomach, terrible headache, dizzyness, nearly loss of balance. I couldn't sleep all night and I went to bed early EARLY morning. Fun…

Stop the heavy drinking?

Stop drinking what? Tea, water or milk? Cause that's the only three things I've been drinking for the last few months (and there was also tomato/apple/orange juice when I could afford it but that was mooonths ago).

Three nights, ten new inked drawings. I hope I can keep the tempo for two more days (and then two more to ink some older works for the bonus gallery at the end of the book).

Wow… I had no idea that the older Ford GT (called the GT40 MKII in Forza 3) was in the game. I saw the car as a child way back when I was around 5 or so years old. It also had those intakes on the hood that the 2005 Ford GT has and two large exhaust pipes sticking out of the back. Too bad it'll be hard for me to get it in the game though… 1,460,000 credits… that's a lot of racing. And no one's selling it in the auction house (at the price I set the search for anyway).

Ugh… first my timing belt, now my radiator. Luckily I've got something to seal off the hole, but I'm pretty sure before long I'll have to buy a brand new radiator anyway.

And it's still hot out here. And the humidity doesn't help much either. If these temperature changes weren't important to the balance of Earth's biosphere, I'd complain a lot more about it though… And if not for certain medical conditions I'd buy myself a 2 gallon tub of nepolitan ice cream and cool my innards with that… :)

I was thinking about getting another puppy…..but all the reputable breeders around here, require me to name the puppy with their name (ie: if i bought it from Florals Sibe Ranch, it'd be named Floral's Sibe Ranch ______) and i don't like that. a lot of them also required me to go to them for any procedure the dog needed. So even if there was an emergency, i'd have to have their permission, or they can confiscate the puppy. It's all in the contracts, which they wont sell, unless you sign….

I don't wanna risk buying from a puppy mill, and buying from someone's backyard only encourages wanton breeding…i looked for a puppy to adopt, but all the ones that are healthy, don't get along with other pets.

:(

AQua_ng
So yeah, I bought Rage Against the Machine in an effort to make it a Christmas No.1 here in the UK. Yeah.

You did it! You actually went and did it! With our new No.1 blasting out, Christmas dinner is going to be a whole different ball game this year!

Some of those that wear jerseys
are the same that carve turkeys…

Aurora Borealis
Stop drinking what?

lol! You wrote about days of “heavy inking”, I miss0read because they's something people don't normally write… :)

Ironscarf

AQua_ng
So yeah, I bought Rage Against the Machine in an effort to make it a Christmas No.1 here in the UK. Yeah.

You did it! You actually went and did it! With our new No.1 blasting out, Christmas dinner is going to be a whole different ball game this year!

Some of those that wear jerseys
are the same that carve turkeys…

It's amazing!
Good to know it's not like back in the 70's where they manipulate those lists…

But WOW, I just read. You guys had FOUR years of X-factor number 1s? o_O
I stopped listening to commercial radio years ago because of the crap music and the ads, I image that after 4 years of that a few more of you guys would've quit too, if it wasn't that you have at least 3 or four out of the milluion or so BBC radio stations there that would've been playing the same rubbish. :(

The Rage song is pretty good. The last part is a bit too Kuypol, but I've always enjoyed it. :)

Wow… won the Lamgorghini Reventon in the Forza Motorsport 3 auction house. And for a fraction of what the game would sell it to me too (2 million in game, but got it for 90k at auction). Did some research on it too… apparently only 20 of the things were made, so the vehicle is ultra rare in real life. However, that doesn't cover up the one sad fact about Lamborghinis in general…

They're hugely fuel inefficient outrageously overpriced machines that have yet to win a formula 1 race…

Now I guess I'll sit here and drool at its cool aircraft inspired design while I try to figure out how I want to paint the thing (stealth fighters come to mind)…

*drool*

ozoneocean
The Rage song is pretty good. The last part is a bit too Kuypol, but I've always enjoyed it. :)

Kyupol always struck me as a bit more of an Anti-Flag fan anyway. It always seemed to fit his particular brand of railing against government without going too in-depth on why they're against it. Only Anti-Flag almost has a valid point. So I just switch that part to say “Reptoids” repeatedly in my head.

This is kinda random I guess but it's kind of amazing how much a difference in the amount of snow there is once you get out of the city center. The area around my place has nothing on the ground and it looks all gray and dead, but as soon as you're out of the downtown, it's six inches and getting deeper. It makes me really wish it would snow more in town. For whatever reason, between the snow and old Stephen King books, I've been getting into writing a lot of late. My figure drawing is still at that stage where I can draw beautifully if I have a model, but for crap straight out of my head, so I can't do much with the stories, but it's been a rewarding challenge just to write them. I haven't had a headache like the one I did after finishing the last one for a while. But it's a good kind of headache, if that even makes any sense.

ozoneocean

Aurora Borealis
Stop drinking what?

lol! You wrote about days of “heavy inking”, I miss0read because they's something people don't normally write… :)

Haha, ok makes sense now.

As for inking. I've finished all the FORTY pieces for the sketchbook, inking the last five of them in an all day marathon. At this point I'm not stumbling in the dark as much with how to ink this part or that one, what kind of shading to use (and consequently lose 2-3 hours per piece due to redoing that again and again), mostly I just load the scanned pencils, do the outlines/basic details of everything and then start filling up spaces with whatever seems appropriate.

Meanwhile Moon Jade Angel (The color sketchbook/short comic collection thingie) is basically done (got the cover inside and out, all the interior pages laid out, everything's nicely placed where it's meant to go, text typed in etc) just waiting for proofreading.
Whereas Inkbook (the b&w sketchbook with nothing but full page art) is assembled but I still need to type in all the titles, do the introduction and cover design…. and then find money to order my proof copies from Ka-Blam.

Edit: Ohh, and my NaNoWriMo novel is doing fine too. It should return from proofreading/editing within couple of weeks :D

On the night of the blizzard of 2009 I got up early for my midnight shift and made certain that everything was in readiness. Had food, my insulated cover-alls, water, laptop; yes I was ready to go to work at the height of the snowstorm. Every road was awful and I never got above 25mph. It was almost a whiteout, Like driving inside of a snowglobe.
I got there only to get stuck in a snow drift while trying to park. Out came the shovel and ease forward and ease back and I got out and parked on the side of the street.
The guy from the 4-midnight shift that I relieved was plowed in so he slept in the longe of the Senior apartment building where we work. Cursing the whole time he arranged to work the following shift at 8-4 and then he'd try to get home. So I had no worries about getting relieved at the end of my shift. I posted all the “hazardous weather condiditons: go out at own risk” and “door blocked by snow signs” and settled in munching on all the cookies and candy residents had left the office staff.
At eight I leave coffee for the dead tired guy who slept there all night. What an awful day for him.
I made it through the first few stages of my trip home slipping and sliding because under the packed snow was a sheet of ice. Drive on the snow. I was having more trouble than I should but I didn't think anything was wrong. Until I got on the parkway.
After exit 109 I just couldn't drive and the car was all over the place. But the road was clear! I stopped, put on the hazards and my right front tire was blown. It was shredded. There I was on the highway, in the snow and now I needed to change the tire.
I couldn't get the jack out. It was screwed into the side of the trunk. The screws wouldn't move. I couldn't find the jack handle. It was hidden in the top of the cover for the spare. You'd think the manual would have a diagram? No because it's for four different models including the sedan so there was just a vague sketch. I got it out. Now to place the jack in the snow. It slides everywhere. Dig a nice hole for it. You think the jack handle was easy to use? Guess again. On level dry terrain, but not on a snowy roadside. Now I felt where to place the jack on the underside of car covered in snow sitting in several inches of snow. Can't really do that with gloves. Up goes the car. Those little jacks in a car take forever to jack up. I dug another little hole to turn the jack handle in. Has to be parallel with the jack which is at ground level. The people who design this stuff always assume you'll be using the jack in a garage or a driveway or a nice flat roadside shoulder rather than dirt or mud, in the rain or in inches of snow. Icy snow.
Off came the shredded tire, on went the spare. It looked a little wilted. It wasn't inflated. It's supposed to be at 60 psi. That's why I have a little electric pump.
This is when I see some guy walking by. This is a highway, no pededtrians are supposed to be around. That's when the State Trooper shows up. The jack is put away and I'm inflating the spare. The work is nearly done. The Trooper asks if I need a tow truck, but all I have left to do is inflate the tire so I say no. I figure out that the pump will go faster if I turn the car on and the trooper turns to the mysterious pedestrian.

I slowly make my way back on the highway, flashers on and the next exit is the one for home. That's why I didn't need a tow truck. I was only two miles away from my exit. Of course I miss the turn off to get onto the road for home and plow into a snow bank. My little All wheel drive Subaru just plows through and keeps going. Nothing will stop me now! (insert manical laughter here)
Except there was a foot and a half of snow in my driveway… No happy ending as I had to shovel that. Then get stuck in the snow bank trying to get into the driveway… all wheel drive…

Hardcore.