It is ironic, I think, that the part I seem to practice the most (that is, realistic shading), is the area I am most unhappy with (more, shading in general).

Anatomy has a ways to go, but at least it seems to be improving slightly.
Still so much testing to do

Alright. As is probably apparent, I'm not particularly happy with my art style. I keep chopping and changing every couple of images, and I imagine it might annoy people since it defies the point in watching me: I might not replicate the style for which you watched originally (at least for a while).

So, that said, here's your chance to let me know.
What do you like to see? What's weak? What's strong? What should I work more on? Do you want to see something else entirely?
Anything you think might be valuable, really.

One game that I like to play every once in a while is to find an artist or picture, starting from FA's front page and only using certain links corresponding to the difficulty level I'm in the mood to abide by. It's fun because you get to find new art/artists, but you have to make sure you're not so single-minded that you just ignore gems searching for your target.

Incremental, ad-hoc rules:
Super Easy: Follow all links, but no typing allowed!
Easy: Can't use the "full list (x)" links on user pages (so you're limited to the 12- that appear directly.)
Medium: Strictly no tabs, no using your own userpage.
Hard: Can't follow links to images; i.e. no URLs with "/view/" in them. Can't use browser history to back-track.
Super Hard: Only follow links to which the current artist explicitly displays, i.e. artist names in "favourite" images, direct URLs. No following links left by other users, comments, etc.

It's interesting to see how many jumps you need to find what you're looking for.
Whelp. I guess that's this quarter's journal. See you in another three months.

So. As long-time watchers no-doubt know, last year I came up with a non-religious alternative to the advent calender. It goes roughly like so:

Step 1) Divide 3 A4 pieces of paper into 24/25 square-ish shapes.
Step 2) Write an inspirational quote/etc. on one side of each.
Step 3) Wrap around maltesers/whatever, making sure writing is on the inside
Step 4) Muddle them up and write the numbers 1-24/25 on the outside.
Step 5) Hunt out the day's quote and enjoy with treat

Doing it again this year.
It's actually December 2nd here, but I'm going to pretend to be American for a few hours so that I'm not late :P
Also, since I've a Twitter account this year, I'm going to post each day's quote: Go check for some life advice!

Anyway. Other news: life is somehow still very busy (I'm sure you'd all be more surprised if I ever said it wasn't), art is slow, commissions open, official education finished, work begun and several things currently in the fire. I will try to be on MSN more often, though. (Sorry to those who caught me when I was away and didn't get a response!)

Anyway again. How is everyone.

Okay. This is a journal of two parts.

1) FA Update [?3.6] 'Sigma'
●It is...acceptable. The new "Browse/Search/Submit/etc." bar, I like the design of (and it kinda makes sense, as it now acts as an actual 'interactive' menu), but the designers seem to have put more of an effort into using vertical space than horizontal - as demonstrated by the very top-to-bottom layout. This is something I don't particularly appreciate, but is more-or-less just a difference, so fine.
●I /don't/, however, like the new emphasis on adverts, which are starting to become very intrusive. Either they are at the top of pages, or, worse, between the image and the comments. This makes it harder to tell when an image already has comments on it, since before you could at least see the top of a comment-box.
●On the plus side: Activity session management! Woo boy, that's pretty cool. You can have several separate browser sessions active and /labelled/ without having to keep logging in. Especially useful for those of us who switch between different operating systems. *ahem*
●Also, a quick mention to temporal localisation: you can set what time-zone you're in so that the timestamps are more actively useful. Yay. And the shortcuts to notes and your journal, also a plus.

2) Tab Candy and Minefield
● OMG, Ninjaman. Like, THIS is amazing and totally what I need for my constant tab-whoring: grouping tabs in a visual manner. I can't possibly do the explanation justice in this blog. Just...watch the video
● In order to test Tab Candy, though, you can install the FireFox 4.0 Beta 3 Preview, codename Minefield. Runs well, seems fairly sleek, but was built on top of the FF3 engine, so that's to be expected. Not sure I appreciate the "tabs above the address-bar" look that they obviously stole off of Chrome, but it actually kinda works, so I'll forgive them.
● The "to fit in with Windows 7 orange button in the top-left corner instead of a titlebar and toolbar combo" I don't like, but you can turn it off, so fair play.
● However, the "to fit in with Windows 7 all tabs show in the taskbar-preview" you can't turn off, and I despise. I /reaalllyyy/ hope they get that fixed. [EDIT: Yay Open-Source configurability. Go to "about:config", and set "browser.taskbar.previews.enabled" to false :) ]
● Also, the Inspector. I'll probably never use it, but it's a funky tool all the same.


Umm. I think that's all for now. At least that last journal's finally gone now, right?

SO MUCH WORK.
Okay, so I haven't really uploaded or journalised anything since before I left for my parent's last time. Not sure anyone /really/ cares, but whatever.

So. Update. Haven't really done any art. Many reasons.
1) Nearing the end of Semester 2 now, so LOTS of work. And when I'm not working on my main coursework, I have other coursework. And when I don't have them, I have money-based work. And when I don't have that, I have rl-based chores. So yeah, no time.
2) Foal was kind enough to give me her A4 tablet because she got a new beast. Unfortunately, it doesn't work under Linux (despite my getting a tablet of the exact same make to work before), and only works on one screen under Windows, which I can't really do. But testing it stopped my other tablets from drawing. So yeah....no digital art from me for a while, at least.
3) Art block, of sorts. Because I've had no time to draw (even doodle), the odd time when I do try, I've become un-practiced so much that I stop after a short while. Bad from an artist's point of view, but good in that it gets me back to work quicker. Ho hum.

Anywho, I'm only updating this journal because I'm waiting on one of my team-mates to upload some files that I need. How is everyone else.

Oh. And Halo:Reach demo on the 3rd. Need to figure out of the university network upgrades will get me online, or if I need to hijack someone elses connection.

Because I honestly don't know who your face is."

Hokai. I wasn't going to make this a journal, but my last one was a month ago and I'm a bit bored because physics isn't working properly.
SO. You know the tos/aup/sa was updated recently? Of course you did. Well, some things changed, obviously. AAaand it's come to my attention that some people are assuming things that are blatantly false, but because no-one /actually/ reads these things, a couple of lies are propagating through the fandom (I say propagating...crawling's probably more accurate) wrongly suggesting FA's move towards draconian rule (Har-de-har har).

So I read through the documents (which aren't that bad), and have weeded out the lies from the....well, no, there were just lies, actually.

---

1) You can't post commissioned artwork.
"Fur Affinity allows users to post Submissions created for them provided they have the original artist's permission to repost said work." - AUP, Paragraph 1, Section 1.
Because the site would probably tank if people couldn't submit commissions. Think about it.



2) You can't post photographs of meets, /or/ of fursuits!
"Fur Affinity allows Users to post photography provided...(p)hotographs of poor quality (...) or images meant to showcase personal collections (e.g. commercial items, toys, games, movies, stuff animals, etc.) must be uploaded to Scraps." - AUP, Paragraph 3, Section 1.
Also, they are allowed if "Photographs (are) of art, or items which are in full compliance with (AUP Paragraph 1, Sections 1 and 2)" - AUP Paragraph 3, Section 1.

They say /nothing/ against fursuit or meet photos, though, not allowed are photographs of "sexually modified fursuits" (AUP, P3, S2), but I really hope people don't need to care about that one.



3) You can no longer post fractal patterns
"Fractal and landscape generated artwork may be submitted" - AUP, Paragraph 4, Section 3.
I think this one was more controversial while the AUP was still being written, but I'm interested to see that they're allowing it officially.

---

I hope this helps clear up some confusion. Because I have a thing against inaccuracies. Like, when people use "Because" to start a sentence. Gah, I hate them. On a lighter note, going home in a few days. Woo. Need to get my coursework in a better manner before then! D:

Vidja

My XBox needs fixing.

Step 1) Divide 2.5 A4 pieces of paper into 24/25 square-ish shapes.
Step 2) Write an inspirational quote/etc. on one side of each.
Step 3) Wrap around maltesers/whatever, making sure writing is on the inside
Step 4) Muddle them up and write the numbers 1-24/25 on the outside.
Step 5) Enjoy once a day.

The other day, in an unfathomably rare display of creativity, I came up with a nice cheap alternative to the popular 'Advent Calendar', which meant I didn't have to spend anything. Having already obliterated my sleeping pattern, I accidentally woke up at 10 to 6 this morning, in a surprisingly good mood, and proceeded to go about realising the idea.

Actually thought up step 2 this morning as well, so the right hemisphere must finally be stirring from its life-long slumber. I don't care much for little pictures in chocolate (om nom nom), but a nice quote at the right time is never a bad thing. Took me a bit over an hour in total, and the concept's quite flexible, so I figure it'd actually probably make for a good exercise for children. Except it's effort, so I don't know...

Anywho. I know I've some arts to complete. I am on them; it's just the crunch time's crunch time at the moment: Coursework hand-in is next week...and that's just the academic stuff....

Well, that was fun. Looks like my psyche is better now. I actually suspect that half the reason it broke is because I subconsciously knew the university network was going to go down and that I didn't have the time to wait for it to come back up for my coursework, so it kept me working the only way it knew how: by affronting my logical brain. Thanks, I think.

In other news, thanks to everyone who commented. It's nice to know that there are people who will be there when spending 85% of my waking time on coursework does eventually get to me. :3
Except for Foal (who is a Cattist (that's right I went there)).


Riiiiight. Back to finishing my particle emitter, because tomorrow starts my 24-hour pixel-shading assignment. No time to waste.
Seriously, this year is a cake walk. =\

So here I am, waiting for the kettle to boil just before my next lecture.

Didn't get any sleep. Been having not good dreams the past couple of days, which got so bad last night that not only could I not sleep with the light off, I couldn't sleep with the light on. Spent the rest of the night coding.

The good news is that my particle emission engine is about 90% complete, which puts me quite ahead of schedule. I just hope this isn't gonna be a regular occurrence. Stupid brain.

I don't know why I'm announcing this. Probably sound stupid. But I'm tired and I haven't had a tea, so blah. Also, this thing hasn't been updated in ages.

Alllright. Almost everything is packed, apart from IAMBeC (as you no-doubt can tell by the fact that I am writing this). Like I said before, I don't know how active I will be over the next month or so, on account of having moved into my Parent's whilst also being in full-time work.
HOWEVER, sketches have been sketched, and inks are being inked. So with a bit of luck requests may get done ("Fi-nally.") soon despite all the gloom-and-doom. Once again, thanks guys for being so patient. At least, later drawings will benefit from (slightly) improved artistic skills, so there's /some/ silver lining, I'm sure.

Oh well, I'm out to get Legendary Fish and Chips so I don't have to wash up tonight. CATCH YOU ALL LATER.

(Oh, also. I Love Sonata Arctica more with every song I hear: http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/son.....White/10573153)

First of. The Misadventures of Flapjack are awesome. Go youtube them. Or watch them on Cartoon Network.

Secondly. Graduated yesterday. Yay me. Officially a Bachelor of Science now. Woo, and all that.

Thirdly. I /know/ I haven't been doing much on requests at the moment. They will come, if slowly. Problem is that full-time work drains my Social Points, which I need to do social things, like draw for other people. Also, I only have small tablets to work with at the moment, 'cause my other one got sick and these ones are highly sensitive (Well, A5/A6 controlling two 21" monitors...what can you expect?), which isn't amazing to draw with. Although I should be grateful that I at least can. Mouses suck for that.

Fourthly. I also /know/ I haven't been online much. Same problem, lacking Social Points. But I'm trying to fix that, since when I move back into my Parent's house in a few weeks (for the month preluding my exodus to Hull accommodation) I'll probably be permanently offline. "At home, no-one knows you're a furry". Well one does, but whatever. I was trying to quote. Shut up.

Alright. What else? Oh, I'll probably be arting still, just not particularly active. "But how's that different from usual?" Shut up, that's how.

Errrm. Oh, looks like I'm heading to the Bristol furmeet on the 22nd. Who else is going? No-one? Oh. I guess it will be lonely, then.


Now look to your left, then to your right. Then in 9 other directions. 12 of the people next to you will fail.

Aaand another journal entry.

Right; after much ado about nothing, I finally got my tablet back and working under the new Linux subsystems (turns out the Wacom drivers were the right ones, they are now just rejecting non-official tablets. Luckily us Linux users can alter that fairly easily.)
On the flip side, to try to counter some of the jitter, I opened it up. The wrong way. It doesn't jitter so much any more, but there are two horizontal lines across the tablet where the pen isn't detected. So yeah...drawing's gonna be a bit...interesting.

BUT. Drawing will happen. So hopefully, the art queue will start progressing again. Though, probably not too quickly, since I'm now at full-time work during the week. Bah. But I will try. I feel genuinely bad for how long you people already in the queue have had to wait just to be told you've still got a bit to wait.

I'm sure I had more to say here. Oh well.

Oh, yeah. I realise I'm not doing very well in keeping in contact with people. Sorry about that; I'm letting my anti-social side take over to such a point that I wonder if I actually can handle friends on a fundamental level. Don't worry, I'm not ditching anyone or becoming emo or anything like that, just thinking out loud so I've at least got an (pitiful) excuse for disappearing so often. Hopefully I'll be online at some point.

Onwards and upwards!

Fffffffff.
Back. Will try to post a fuller journal later, but the main bits:
- Wales has awesome scenery
- Transformers 2 is awesome.
- Collecting tablet on Monday/Tuesday, before continuing to get it actually working again
- Almost 300 FA updates to shunt through
- Was hit by numerous e-mail error replies, spuriously in reply to my address. Awesome.


#end#

[EDIT] Oh Fff I have no milk for tea.

So! My Cartographer is back, which means that soon I should be able to resume arting for people. Might need to warm up a bit first, though.

However, in a bid to get Compiz working properly on my computer, I effectively destroyed it. And then I decided "well, reinstalling Windows fixes everything, so it should be the same under Linux, right?" Yeah, whatever. That's why we /fix/ Linux installs...because the system itself is very robust. So I'm setting up my computer once again, but without any Compiz support. So that might take me a small while longer, too.

Also, Uni's all but out for now. I've got an exam on Monday and another the Monday after that, and then it's just waiting for my results. But don't think I'll be lazing around...oooh, no. There's no such time as free time! X3

Catch y'all soon!

What? A journal update?! Never!
Yup, it's true. Just to let everyone know I'm not really dead. Hopefully I'll get my tablet back next week sometime and things can proceed as normal. Well, it'll probably take another week, since I've got 3D animation coursework in for next week and will have to help my family for a few days. BUT maybe after that, it'll all resume normally...

Also, I would have posted more traditional art recently, but I remembered why I hate it so. There's very little ability to erase biro, so I end up having to see all of my horrible warm-up excercises and it's terribly depressing. Blarg. Also, no transform, scale, undo functions, etc...Trying to Ctrl+S paper also doesn't work. I'm not looking forward to trying to art again...I'm going to be sooo out of practice =\

Also, will probably be disappeared from the interwebs for a few days. Gonna trip across to  shima to meet him and  coltonwulfpaws for the extended weekend. Woo; finally meeting people from the intarwebs. Should be fun. I'll update when I return :3

Yes, Burn, by the Cure. Well done for recognising :3

Aaaanywho, yesterday, my Cartographer was lent away for about 3 1/2 weeks. So now I am without digital art ability, so pretty much everything is stalled for now. As I mentioned before, I might upload some traditional stuff, but that would require drawing it. And unlike with computer-based stuff, I can't just erase everything that looks rubbish.

Ho hum. Was just starting to get back into my groove too, but I guess that's just Murphey's law. Oh well. PoseManiac's 30-second pose training is awesome, and helped a lot. Props to Dirtiran for linking that in one of her image's notes.

Pretty sure I, once again, had more to say, but blah. Edit can deal with that when it returns, if it exists.

No, I didn't fail building the KDE4 modules on my PC! Shut up! D:<
Though I did accidentally uninstall Gnome. Don't worry; re-installed it before my session ended :3

In other news, ART BLOCK. I guess it shouldn't make that much difference because technically I'm already meant to have lost my Cartographer, but it's still here until Tuesday. It's just my will to art that's disappeared. Mitigated slightly by some icon creation (though not much), but for the last few days I've barely done anything arty. Sucks.

Don't know how long it'll last folks, but bare with me. If needs be, I'll force myself back into the grind, but at least you know what's happening if stuff comes slowly for a small while. I've also been all over the place recently, which may or may not stop being soon, so now everyone knows that I've got a valid excuse for being offline so often. Well, that and I'm kinda anti-social.

In other news; listening to the Halo Wars music always makes me want to draw something, because it feels like an epic is happening, but I never have /any/ idea what. So I don't. Probably not something that's helping the block. I wonder if this happens to others. Blarg.

Also, finally worked up the courage to favourite a few artists I've been 'watching but not /watching/' for years now (though I'm sure there are plenty I've missed). Still need to work on actually /commenting/ on their stuff, though. Ho hum.

Oh, while I remember, I think there's going to be some changes to how stuff works soon. Or not. Maybe. Whatever. Damn, life becomes complex when you're not the only person in it, and there isn't nothing to do. Streaaamliining. I wonder how much of a wall of text this will become when I finally hit the 'Go' button.

[Edit] Damn, this journal was full of typos today. And since I'm back here; yay, I have two rashers of swine flu. I hope it doesn't taste like bacon. I'm one of yet another minority that doesn't like that. Oh well. I'm sure it's pandemically delicious.

Oh well, I guess that's all for now. Good luck reaching the next level, everyone.

Well, as people watching me probably care to know, I will be losing my tablet in a few days, for a few weeks. I've named it Cartographer, since I like naming my electronic stuff, which actually lends relevance to the above Halo reference. =3

It's literally because my sister, the real art student of the family, wants to borrow it to do some animation thing for her final year project. And since I'm just using it for hobby stuff, the rules of honour state that I must sacrifice it for this duration. I'll try to get as much done until then, this is just so that people know when my art queue freezes.

In other news, up-to-date drivers for the scanner part of my all-in-one printer were finally released, so I have a working scanner! Thus, I may be inclined to draw and upload some actual traditional art! Which will suck even more than my normal line-art, since I quite heavily use the GIMPs transform and rotate functions, though I have been trying to wean myself off of that recently.

Hmm. I think that's everything, for now. Peace.

Math jokes aside, that's my workload pretty much back to manageable levels. Still got a fair bit to do, but hopefully it won't interrupt my social activities for a small while.

In other news, I think I might try Gentoo again. I absolutely love Debian, and like any proper Linux user wouldn't even consider switching back to Windows, but Gentoo's been the one flavour of Linux I just can't seem to install properly (well...of the ones I've tried, anyway. Still got Fedora, OpenBSD, to a lesser extent, OpenSuse, etc to install) and now seems as good a time as any to get that done.

So yeah, if I'm still a bit slow doing things, it's probably because I'm chasing dreams.

Alright, peoples, that's the coursework crunch officially over. Handed it all in, to a total of just under 100 pages, I now have just one coursework, three demonstrations and some exams coming up before the degree is complete, but that's all in the coming weeks and won't need half as much effort.

Just so you know; while the crunch is technically over, there's now a fair bit of stuff that I need to catch up on fairly pronto like, And tomorrow evening I won't be home due to familial duties, etc. But fingers crossed, Wednesday will mark the resumption of social activities! Woo.

Also; does anyone else fine it humerous that www.remote-exploit.org is offline? No? Oh. Maybe it's just the final dregs of sanity leaving, then.

Hey peoples. The last journal was getting a bit stale, so I figured I should update it. Also, slight news.

Riiight; so I'm reeealllyy close to my next deadline: 23th April. I've got three bits of coursework due in for then, one of which is my final year project.
And since I've actually got an offer for my next university and my Specifications and Reasoning coursework I'm expecting was a fail, I /really/ need to make sure I do well on these pieces so I can get the grades. Thus, it's all paws on deck. So little arting can be done while I've still got so much to do, with a similar situation for socialising. So to all who might be missing me online, that's why.

Sorry I haven't already said anything about this, it kinda just happened. Hope everyone's still doing well, and isn't too peeved by my sudden absence.

Rock on.

Moar journals, yeah. So I was looking through my drawings, and I realise that one of the ample reasons they're not that good is because for some reason, my lineart quality sucks. I'm not so much referring to my drawing ability (I know that's practice), but it's generally just shaky and...I dunno...wrong.

I know the shaky bit is pretty much because my tablet's an unknown third-party one (i.e. not Wacom) and jitters terribly. That makes it very hard to draw straight lines and long curves. But what else am I doing wrong? Do any artists that might read this have tips I could use? (Line-art's currently done using the Ink tool in GIMP)

Also, sorry to anyone who's waiting on art from me. I've been kinda all over the place recently, not sure what to do. I'll get right on them very soon, but I've got a coursework deadline for Wednesday afternoon. At least you now know why, if it takes that long. Again, my apologies.

And if your status is marked as "Pending Communications" and I'm not on IRC/whatever, do message me! When I'm actually home, I'm almost always logged into FurAffinity (If only by nature of my 30+ IceWeasel tabs...).

So yeah; Figure I should probably say something about last week's Bristol meet. Summed up in one word? AWESOME. Met plenty of new furs, played some kickass games of lazer tag, and generally had oodles of fun.

Also, got a ukFurs t-shirt, which was a bit of epic. People who know me probably know I'm not open about being a fur. Not because I'm afraid of what people will say, just because I'm an idiot. I don't care about people I don't know, but the ones I do mustn't know I'm a fur. Sound strange? It probably is.
Well, I wore the ukFurs shirt to Uni today. No-one said anything, as I expected. But it was a moral victory: a symbol that I /can/ stop being such an idiot. Yay.

Well, I'm kinda getting bored of typing this, now. So yeah.