I have yet to see the Lancaster in person. However, I have seen other planes. Namely the B52, the B2 Spirit and the F16 Fighting Falcon here at Andersen Air Force Base. All these craft are amazing up close, though I'll have to admit that if I saw the Lancaster in person I'd need help picking my jaw up off the floor…

Bravo1102 wrote:

What woman could resist this:

AH… nope. That there is Sean Bean, the ACTOR. :)
That's what I meant about “non-military” types who can look amazingly dashing in a uniform without actually being a soldier.

Sean's got a team of wardrobe experts, make-up artists, an expert stills photographer, director of photography and other specialists ensuring that he looks just exactly how he's supposed to appear in those shots. Not to mention the volume of shots they go through and pick from to get just the right look.
Those reenactors don't look nearly as good… if only they had a team behind them too :(
But yes, Sean does look good in his dolman.

Banes wrote:

Trippindicular!

Fantastic word!!!

lba wrote:

Etsy

Excellent suggestion!

For me the best female uniform is a white tank top… nothing else. Well, maybe a pair of army boots ^_^

- Modern US female formal uniforms aren't the best. They're just slightly tailored versions of male uniforms. Look at the Andrews sisters wearing a sexier version of the 1940s female uniforms. There are a lot of pics around of women wearing more attractive versions of the standard female 1940s uniforms.
Modern operational uniforms for men and women in most countries are just pyjamas… Practical but not worth considering in terms of style. It's straight out work wear. It's only interesting when you subvert it in various ways.

Kawai wrote:

Lancaster

When I was little I had an old catalogue filled up with lovely colour photos of the kinds of carefully painted, highly detailed models that Bravo makes- my fave things in it were the mysterious hussar model and his bizarre, unfathomable uniform… and the Lancaster

model.
It was highly detailed and very well painted.
I think the mixture of shapes that are clearly designed around an obvious purpose paired with the hih contrast of dark paint and bright yellow, red, and white accents for warning decals and markings is what makes it… these things engage the instinctual colour/shape parts of your thinking as well as the problem solving aspects as well in an appealing way.

My fave bomber was the B-17 Flying fortress… that's a common favourite I think, but it had a good mixture of spiky gunliness VS aerodynamic style…

My other WW2 big plane fave are the Catalina Flying boats, the ones with the two gun blisters towards the tail, they look like artistic, exotic insects.

lba wrote:
Personally, any girl who can just rock a pair of jeans and regular cut t-shirt has my attention.

change that girl to guy, and now you're talking.

I, for one, only think Miami Vice's Crockett could carry off the scruffy look – there's been way too many pretenders since then that just look unclean, and that's a major turn off for most women/girls I know. I'm betting that's why a guy in military uniform might be attactive: clean, trim, and cool. Note: NOT authoritarian. Biggest turn off for me are those short, white-haired (well coiffed they may be) men in $5K Armani suits. Those are about the biggest power-broking guys I can think of; they Buy authority and mold it to their own purposes.

It's the cool, the Confidence, that's probably the biggest turn on. That, and some nice shoulders. *sigh*

I'm like Banes. Something about the masculineness of a military uniform on a female figure and the bumps and shapes you just want to explore. Is that an MRE in your pocket or do you really have hips that can move like that… But I was a tanker. No female personnel in an armored battalion. But in the Canadian army… both their tanks had female crewmen.

There was an episode of Sharpe with a girl running aorund in a tight hussar outfit. It was quite the fashion back in the day.

Being a security guard some of the ridiculous situations about “this was the only size we had” for the female guards is funny. There was one who they stuck into a 16 shirt and 28 pants. The shirt was a tent and the pants skin tight. She just had to show me the safety pins on the pants. And then bending over, even with the top button closed you could see nearly to her belly button. I told her to put on the sweater and keep it on so as not to cause the seniors in the building a coronary. It was bad enough the regular receptionist was a Beyonce clone.

Then there was was this female cop who was a stunning blonde and police uniforms these days worn by the younger cops are tightly fitted like athletic outfits and have spandex in them. I found out later she was on watch over a corpse during my shift. Why didn't I go kep her company on that long cold night? Argh.

When I was in there always a few guys who could find a girl to pick up anywhere. And then there was the guys who'd make a pass at anything and fail. Then there was me. The silent guy who just wanted to enjoy his drink and egg on his pals and occasionally step in to stop fights or help someone to the bathroom to puke and then send him home. Though I once did wow a girl with my World War II British battledress. Which is exactly the opposite effect it had when an issue uniform according to all the accounts.

bombers

At last count I had at least one model of every RAF Bomber Command plane. I have four Lancasters, four Halifaxes, six Wellingtons, two Stirlings (no Stirling exists today) and so on. I have the built ones all over the house. I'm looking for someplace to put my modern Vulcan bomber when I finish it. There's one still flyng and that thing is impressive. A B-52 is a huge flying pig, but a Vulcan is just this gorgeous bird.

For modern bombers the US B1 and Russian TU-160 are very graceful, swan-like aeroplanes…
Just looking for B1 pics I found this bizzaro sexy lady anthro pic of a B1-B that'd probaly apeal to Lonnehart :D
http://zp92.deviantart.com/art/B1-B-Bomber-Girl-379679484

By the way my RAF bombers could be up for adoption to a good home. Lots of planes and no display space.

Heck, most of my models are up for adoption to a good home. No space to display. Give them a home so I can build more.

@Bravo - how will you be adapting them? real fire power? If so, where do you have your price list?

@ayes: I stole your idea for a still-alive-comics-thread!
—
I just got a job as a research assistant for one of my favourite profs, which may involve a trip if a grant comes through. : )
I seem to just be getting more and more busy, but with increasingly awesome things.

—

I am increasingly obsessed with Stromae recently. Understanding his lyrics is probably in like, the top 5 benefits of having done school in French.

Rainbow farting bears seemed like an improvement. I don't know why it reversed the image though.

I started a new strip, but the duck here doesn't seem to want to load the page to create a new comic. Not that the world so desperately needs to see perverted, hyper-violent robots making eye-sex with a microwave that I can't bear to not put it up on the duck. I'm pretty ok with leaving it on tumblr. They're disturbing enough to appreciate that more. I've attained a new type of laziness wherein I'm consistently and constantly cranking out new work, but have absolutely zero desire to do the normal marketing and promotion stuff you're always supposed to do.

I also met The Cake Boss today. He's a bit of a twinge. Really seems to think very highly of himself and his abilities and his “Italian-ness”. It was pretty entertaining to watch him stumble through a conversation with my mom's friend who owns the Sicilian place next to the theatre. Every one of these reality stars I meet ( I'm not terribly far from the American Pickers and they get around the nearby states here. ) just seems to reinforce the idea that these people are only famous because they're psychopaths. Really charming and polite, but ungodly invested in themselves.

@hippie- that is awesome news! Working alongside professors for research gives you a whole new peek into their daily habits. I would warm up fastest to the ultra left-leaning professors.

@lba- I have been waiting for new comic updates from you since 2008! Remember when you used to update daily? Hopefully we can read it soon on here, but in the meantime, do you have a link to your tumblr?

Oh yeah, and Cake Boss- I bet all those Italian Chefs have some connection with the Mafia. While watching TV, my friends used to mute Emeril and make up mobster dialogue while he was slicing a fish.

The tumblr is fistfightingrobots.tumblr.com. I only have one strip and a couple doodles I've done up right now. I'm working on a big batch of strips to upload to get it started where there's enough to share with people but I'm just busy driving a lot right now and it's slow work. It's a little more mature than the last comic I did.
I want to do another community based one though. Kind of like the site Illustration Friday, but called “one panel story”, the idea being that each week, I'd put together a little 1-2 paragraph story, that each participant would have to illustrate in it's entirety, using only one panel, no breaking it up or writing out the story beneath the panel. Everything in the story has to be at least alluded to in the page. I think it'd be a really cool way to keep those illustration and visual story-telling skills sharp.

Great. Thanks to a Cadillac commercial I'm now aware of a song called “Stacy's Mom”. It's about a young boy's fascination(crush) with his female friend's mother.

I love the music, but the song is disturbing.

And at 14, I had no personal crushes. It was more like “she wants to crush me… and grind me into dust”….
Yeah… I was pretty fearful at 14 (thanks to my own mother)…. O_O

@Lonne–Wait, Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne was released ten years ago in 2003. The video is just as inappropriate because it takes the lyrics literally and Stacy's Mom is actually a stripper. My guess is that ten years have passed so it is fair game to be used in commercials.

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
@Lonne–Wait, Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne was released ten years ago in 2003. The video is just as inappropriate because it takes the lyrics literally and Stacy's Mom is actually a stripper. My guess is that ten years have passed so it is fair game to be used in commercials.

So it was that long ago? I only noticed the song because I like the music behind it. The lyrics are what I find disturbing…
I sometimes like listening to songs to decipher what the lyrics are talking about. Like maybe this song…

“Love is War” English cover performed by Joy Dreamer (Original performed by Vocaloid 01)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc-WzsnB8GE

Near as I can tell, the girl singing is in love with a guy… who's with another girl. So the singer becomes determined to steal him from her rival?

time to go take some aspirin…. and something to cool my brain down. O_O

Lonnehart wrote:
kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
@Lonne–Wait, Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne was released ten years ago in 2003. The video is just as inappropriate because it takes the lyrics literally and Stacy's Mom is actually a stripper. My guess is that ten years have passed so it is fair game to be used in commercials.
So it was that long ago? I only noticed the song because I like the music behind it. The lyrics are what I find disturbing…
I sometimes like listening to songs to decipher what the lyrics are talking about. Like maybe this song…

“Love is War” English cover performed by Joy Dreamer (Original performed by Vocaloid 01)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc-WzsnB8GE

Near as I can tell, the girl singing is in love with a guy… who's with another girl. So the singer becomes determined to steal him from her rival?

time to go take some aspirin…. and something to cool my brain down. O_O

A movie was made about it too. I don't think it had anything to do with the song legally… They were just cashing in on the concept. It was low budget… Hahaha, I remember the plot now! The mum was actually a former porn star and their teacher actually worked with her in the old days. The boys (who are the film's proagonists) end up with a swag of porn feartung Stacy's mum, given by the teacher, and are satisfied enough with that to stop having a crush on her and start relating to girls of their own age group.
Or something…?
It wasn't a very good film. The best part was the cover.

I loved that song though. :)

Just don't go listening to any hardcore or emo music. The entendre would make your head explode with those genre's. Everything there is a metaphor or intended to say something other than it's obvious message.


I'm officially taking the first steps towards becoming a college professor. A lot earlier than I would have ever anticipated. I asked about why my old school doesn't teach marketing and design for non-designers and got told to start writing up the course proposal to teach it for next Fall semester. It still has to be approved and accepted by the school's board who makes all decisions on classes, but it's plain insanity to me that they aren't teaching this stuff, so I have a pretty good feeling that if I do a decent job of putting together this proposal, I've probably got a job teaching at least one class.

ozoneocean wrote:
Lonnehart wrote:

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
@Lonne–Wait, Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne was released ten years ago in 2003. The video is just as inappropriate because it takes the lyrics literally and Stacy's Mom is actually a stripper. My guess is that ten years have passed so it is fair game to be used in commercials.
So it was that long ago? I only noticed the song because I like the music behind it. The lyrics are what I find disturbing…
I sometimes like listening to songs to decipher what the lyrics are talking about. Like maybe this song…

“Love is War” English cover performed by Joy Dreamer (Original performed by Vocaloid 01)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc-WzsnB8GE

Near as I can tell, the girl singing is in love with a guy… who's with another girl. So the singer becomes determined to steal him from her rival?

time to go take some aspirin…. and something to cool my brain down. O_O

A movie was made about it too. I don't think it had anything to do with the song legally… They were just cashing in on the concept. It was low budget… Hahaha, I remember the plot now! The mum was actually a former porn star and their teacher actually worked with her in the old days. The boys (who are the film's proagonists) end up with a swag of porn feartung Stacy's mum, given by the teacher, and are satisfied enough with that to stop having a crush on her and start relating to girls of their own age group.
Or something…?
It wasn't a very good film. The best part was the cover.

I loved that song though. :)

Funny thing about Vocaloid videos… they actually made an anime of one. Blackrock Shooter, I think… Story doesn't make sense to me though… O_O

Oh… and Happy Turkey Murder/Eati…. um.. *cough* Happy Thanksgiving from where America's Day Begins!!! :)

We spend half of the year here under the cover of snow, but somehow everyone still forgets how to drive after the first big snow fall (which was significantly later than usual this year). I spent two hours getting home today(including a half hour wait for a bus which is supposed to come every 5-10 mins), a trip which usually takes less than half an hour. Everyone seemed a lot more hostile than usual on the bus, too - a guy got on with two young children so I immediately got up and offered him my seat, and no one else followed suit. Not even the other people in the priority seats. It was very strange.

HippieVan wrote:
We spend half of the year here under the cover of snow, but somehow everyone still forgets how to drive after the first big snow fall (which was significantly later than usual this year). I spent two hours getting home today(including a half hour wait for a bus which is supposed to come every 5-10 mins), a trip which usually takes less than half an hour. Everyone seemed a lot more hostile than usual on the bus, too - a guy got on with two young children so I immediately got up and offered him my seat, and no one else followed suit. Not even the other people in the priority seats. It was very strange.

You should move to where I'm at. It takes 10 minutes to an hour to get to where you want to go (depending on distance and number of cars on the road). And Guam is surrounded by beaches. Just some you need… good body armor to go to (Tarague Beach can really a number on the toughest of army boots while at Ypao beach the only things you have to worry about are the jellyfish (which are rare and are NOT the “box” kind) and the female Japanese tourists (mostly because any boyfriend/husband you bring with you or any ones here you're trying to catch will be eyeing them instead).

It's just about summer here, long, hot, sunny days and then the occassional rainy day where the drops pelt down like angry bullets. For those of us down in the Southern Hemisphere xmas is a summer event, but for some reason we still get xmas cards with winter scenes on them. We even try to eat traditional xmas fare on what is usually a smothering hot 25th of Dec.

Lonne wrote:Oh… and Happy Turkey Murder/Eati…. um.. *cough* Happy Thanksgiving from where America's Day Begins!!! :)

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” -Captain Kirk
“Or the one.” -Spock
The Turkey's death is not illogical.

HippieVan wrote:the first big snow fall (which was significantly later than usual this year

Absolutely gorgeous. I snapped this yesterday:

Though, waiting a long time for the bus, spending four times longer to get to the end destination, and dealing with grumpy passengers takes away some of the attention from the scenery.

Looks lovely. Wish we had snow.

Ah… some summer christmasses have been horrible- stuck inside with the family while it's sweltering, eating a hot roast dinner. But I wouldn't do without those dinners no matter HOW hot it gets!
Then you lie down for the rest of the hot day and melt.

——

I sewed all evening last night while I watched most of series 2 of the anime Slayers (slayers Next), some Star treck DS9 and Futurama on TV. Excellent night!!!
Creating with your hands can be so fullfilling… it's not just that you can touch and hold the stuff in your hands unlike digital art, I think the main thing is that it's a finite undertaking: You make something and you can finish making it and then have the finished product there in front of you.
With digital art it's all open ended- with every line, layer and version it opens infinity posibilities of what to do next… You just get lost in possibility. It's so much harder to stay focussed.

People reckon all those undoos make it easier but it's the exact oposite! It makes it much, MUCH harder. If we had undoo levels in life we'd probably still all be children.

Over the years I've picked up various techniques at “undoing” things in nearly every medium I've worked with. THen there is also all the ways I've learned to fix stuff without undoing. Make the so-called “error” part of the project and work to incorporate it into the finished effort.

To avoid the infinte possiblities of undo in my digital work I usually keep the default number. If I muck it up that bad I often keep the original image around so I can start again or I make do with how mucked up the image is and take a lesson from my model-building and think "How can I fix this without undoing?“ But that is born of a stubborn determination not to abandon projects because of how many I've abandoned unfinished in the past (looks at list of ”my comics" and sees Go a Viking staring back… yeah I keep you there to motivate me to keep plugging along on stuff…)

limitting undoos is only part of it… you can work on infinate versions of any stage- do a variation, save it at that stage and spin it off to a new peice… Or erase a major section iand rework it infinate times because there's no pnealty to the materials like there is with solid work; you can only erase something or rebuild something a few times before you destry it of=r alter its character too much.

This site is sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwww… :(

I've finished the silver strips on my trousers and they look magnificent! It's very hard to buy trousers with silver metal (or gold) stripes on them like that. Almost impossible ^_^

Jamey Sharp fixed the issue with the slowness!

My hussar trousers are so great I wish I could dress as a hussar permenantly!

ozoneocean wrote:
Jamey Sharp fixed the issue with the slowness!

Nooooooooooooooo heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee diiiiiiiiiiiiiiddddnnnnntttt…….. :(

(The site is being crazy slow for me now. I appreciate him trying, though!)

It seems to be running ok now. JNP has the code so he can fix it when it becomes an issue. :)

———-

Now that I have my definitive Hussar trousers done… maybe I should finally try and make a start on making the sabretache?

There are two borad styles:
1. simple leather, with a metal symbol stuck on it. With my style of outfit the skull and crossbones is the most appropriate symbol.
- I have the skills to make this one. This style is what they'd have for the field.
2. Wool facing with detailed embroidery done with metalic thread.
- I can mostly make this one, but coming up with a design is harrrrrrd, the bullion thread is expensive and actually stiching the design would be something I would have to learn as I go. I would love the chalange and love to learn new skills like that, but it would take ages and ages to make…

The other thing is that a proper embroidary design will invole more specific cultural appropriation (because I don't want to make a 100% fake one), which I'm not compltely comfortable with. The skull and crossbones symbol (totenkompf) is generic and was used by many units all across Europe.
BUT, I thill want my stuff to be as flashy and fancy as possible and for that you can go past a fully embroidered sabretache. :(

Totenkopf is overdone. Go for a stylish Z like the uniforms from the classic Hollywood Prisoner of Zenda.

Better yet an embroidered Oz logo. Tons to choose from or design your own. First Hussar regiment of Oz. Colonel Ozoneocean commanding. It is your adopted name after all.

Or your own intitials to look like the various cool royal initials hussar regiments used in the past. (few historical examples were: A, F, FW, FWII, GR, ER, VR, N, J etc) So an “M” in a wreath with a crown on top would be cool.

Great suggestions Bravo!
The totenkopf has apeal because it makes you look like a pirate, like Capain Harlock or something- but the connection with Nazi SS puts a really dark shadow over it. -_-
I like your initials suggestion because I could make that like a traditional design very easily - sewing will still be hard though.
The pirate idea is still so atractive… Maybe I'll buy a tottenkopf hat badge and some stainless steel and hammer out big sized replicas for a busby and sabretache to tide me over while I gather the bullion thread, wool etc and do the stiching for the initials version.

- wouldn't do an ozoneocean version, it's too contemporary… too anacrhonistic with the rest of the stuff.

Took my secondary in the game Neverwinter and invested the currency I had amassed (by logging in and getting the professions subgame going every day) and invested in a few things…
For one thing, since K'Tana Warblade is a Sun Elf, I got her the Sun Elf Regalia outfit, then used a couple dyes to recolor her threads…


And now her outfit matches her mount… a Dusk Unicorn (which is an accountwide unlock which means ALL of your characters past and future will be able to use it).


Now if I can only locate a matching sword… because Pink/White “Battle Princesses” are so overdone…