I´ve got 512mb, why don´t you RAM it up your butt?

Oh boy, how I love
technology. Remember I bought RAM?
512mb? 400mhz? (yeah, RAM has megahertz! I
couldn´t believe it myself!) DDR-RAM? Those specifications
should be enough, am I wrong? Turns out I was.

The little number CL2.5 on one memory unit and
CL3.0 on the other indicate something with "timing".
So after I inserted the new RAM and Windows accepted
it, my PC started to behave irritating. Sometimes
everything locked up and the screen went blank.
Navigating my folders took longer. Booting up
took longer. Editing pictures took longer.
Making long posts took longer. Making even
longer posts took even longer. EVERYTHING
took longer.

Took new RAM out, PC working fine.
80 euros down the drain. I can´t even return
it because it isn´t broken. It just has another
timing than my other memory unit - nevermind
it is the same TYPE and has the same MEGAHERTZ.
This is the last time I open my PC to
put any pieces in or out. I will instead
simply buy a new PC every year. I will stack them
up until they reach the ceiling.

I really wonder how PCs could get this
successful and widespread even though
operating them is so frustrating, counter-intuitive
and irritating. Ever installed Internet?
Most complicated procedure ever.

_________________


Before you fall asleep and your head
damages your keyboard or the mouse, please
check out this new blog from Meg Hunt:

Trade Secrets

She trades secrets about illustration,
promotion in particular. Very worthwhile.

IF: Red

Poor boy!

I´ve been incredibly bored by my
recent way of drawing, so I approached it
differently today - more open, twitchy
lines, instead of the strict and controlled
lines I did recently. A bit more natural, so
to say. I don´t know. It was fun, though,
and it goes to show that restricting
yourself to one specific style will be
a dead end if done for too long.
I hope you enjoy the diversion.

And personally, I think
this could be more successful in the long run,
seeing how certain slick and vector-like
styles emerge in huge amounts recently;
I BET that after a couple of years people will hunger
for more hand-made looking, looser, emotional
work.

And by the way: There are styles
that are perfectly suited to be carried over
to digital ways of working. This is not one of them.
It REQUIRES paper and ink.
Illustration Friday is a perfect way to
test what people respond to, and I believe
that the emotional side is the most important
of all. Many people make sure to do shiny,
slick and technically flawless work, but if
one fails to carry over a certain expression,
then it misses the point. Not that it won´t
be able to sell, though.

I need sleep

*zzzzzZZZZZZZZZ*

Fresh hot new work in progress

I started working on this ridiculously big
BLANKET of Bristol board (which is perfectly
suited for my way of drawing - I consider picking
up some more, maybe it gets cheaper in big
amounts) but scraped it halfway through.
Actually, I hardly started, because drawing
on a surface that is as high as half of your body when
you´re used to pretty small paper sizes is
very disorienting. I felt that I have
absolutely no control over the paper,
let alone proper composition and such...

And besides, there was no reason to do this.
What should I do with the added space? More
details? The lines from my ink pen is laughably
thin in relation to the whole image. So what you see
above is roughly double the size of what I use to
do my day-to-day pictures in (a bit shorter)
and I had to scan in the top first, then the
bottom, and then combine them. Wasn´t as
much hassle as I thought, so I have
the whole tomorrow for colouring and
cleaning the image up (there are a couple
of lines that need to be erased, and the torso
of the right character will not be filled with
a solid black).

Too bad I will have to buy a truckload
of RAM tomorrow. Fooling around with this image
in grayscale was pretty OK, with waiting periods
only when saving and skaling, but changing the file to
COLOR is a WHOLE different story. And GIMP,
as nice as a free software can be, crashes from time
to time, and working in this size will be a nightmare
with only 512mb RAM.

And to further complicate
this whole business, I have absolutely
NO idea what kind of RAM I need. My
interest in computer hardware ended when
I turned 16 - I guess I´ll have to open my PC
and check out what´s inside. God, I really
don´t want to do that, but I guess I have no
choice.



And for those who missed it, the topic
of this illustration class assignment is
"Managment of hospital workflow".
We still have a lot of time for the final
illo, but in all honesty, I want to finish this
one now to have it off my back, and be able
to MAYBE come up with an alternate version
without any pressure.

Why do you hate me so much, Blogger?

Okay, I was about to show you a snapshot
of my sketchbook collection, but Blogger refuses to
upload the data, so - meeeh.

Anyway, you should check out
Jo Mateix
(I HOPE this is your name, correct me if
I am wrong). As some of you have already
seen, he portraited me, and it turned out
very excellent. He´s very talented, that´s
pretty much all I know.

I have to say that I almost
overlooked his comment, since it was a
(broken) link and I thought it was spam
or something. I wish I could upload this
piece, but, you see, Blogger... man, what´s
up with this. Usually, Google stuff simply
WORKS.

(And I am a bit ashamed, but I am not even sure
what language your blog is written in. It looks like
a mix of french and spain to me. Please let me know.)

And don´t expect much updates till maybe
saturday, I am busy doing this calendar piece.
I bought paper in the right size today, and
it´s 60x75 centimetres, which is HUGE.
I have no idea where I should put this kind
of space, let alone draw something on it.
Of course I could do something smaller and
upscale it for the calendar, but I guess I want
this challenge.

I can´t even just put it on my desk.
I will have to draw on the ground, or put
it on our big kitchen table.

(Japanese emoticon following:)

"o_O"

Ich hab auch die Möpse schön!

Okay, long time no see dear dudes and dudettes, so here comes some assorted stuff from the past few days. I´ve been slacking around in a way that isn´t funny anymore, to the extend that I wasted my time so much that only a cancelled class saved my butt, giving me another week for my calendar class concepts.




So I sucked in some Bobby Chiu motivation videos on YouTube and scanned in a couple of sketches, which I present you now. I really have to get going to be able to show something impressive this Friday (my class, not the IF this time). So I´ll skip "Superhero" entirely (even though I COULD submit my "Bedman", like Ariel suggested), and focus on my proper work. It´s already 2:54 am here, but I wasted this day playing Castlevania on my Nintendo. And since I haven´t anything to do tomorrow (or in general) I might as well go at it now. I can´t go to bed with this new-found motivation. No way.

Title? No, thanks.

Spongebob is great.
Just wanted to say that.

People are people

At first I was lazy but now I am not

Oh my god, he´s peeing on the ground.

IF: Eighties

(Click to enlarge)


Okay! I am feeling a lot better today
and fired up my engines to the max gear to
serve you with this IF submission. And after
a couple of rather meager days and posts I am glad
to come up with something better today.

And as you may have noticed, I took out
my blog header because I found it too
otrusive. Unfortunately, I can´t change
the blog titles size somehow - Blogger really
hates me personally recently. There are
many occasions where it simply won´t let me
upload images, or apply changes to the
layout. Anyways, no header, but it makes
the new posts stand out a lot better.

And last but not least; thanks everybody
for the comments as always, but in the last
time I didn´t have much power to answer
to a lot of them. I hope you don´t think
I am a selfish arrogant old
dirty german sauerkraut bastard, it´s
just, you know - real life!

One of my absolute 80ies pop
faves:
Billy Ocean - When The Going Gets Tough

Everbody must dance

Making myself a pizza now, even though
I still suffer from hellish pain when I swallow
something. I don´t care anymore.
I wasted the past three (err, four) days
with self-pity, but I think Merle is starting
to be annoyed by that, so I am switching to the
"taking it like a man" strategy.

Schwere See, Schwere See - Mein Herz

Mister Buzzcut. Not associated with
Buffcoat & Beaver in any way.


Turned out my cute little sore throat
is a proper inflammation plus some little
dots of herpes. Urgh. On the bright side,
I take penicillin now and am officially sick.
So I layed around in a haze for some hours
listening to some new CDs, and now trying
to get something done very carefully.

(The title is a quote from a very
good song from a german band called
"Element Of Crime" - I like the idea
of you people seing that line and thinking
"hey, that must be german".)

My doctor is just a few meters down
the street, and this saved me a waiting
period of 45 minutes, luckily. He is a
nice young guy and as I said how much it
sucks that I won´t be allowed to smooch
Merle (you might recall this topic) for two
days, he replied "Well, Salvador Dali
never kissed in his whole live".

Yeah, and Van Gogh cut of
his ear on a drug trip. I have no
idea what he wanted to say with that.

PS.
Who are those people that submit
their IF links TWICE? I want you to know
that I NEVER click on links that try to
grab my attention by taking up more space,
ever. Really. It looks so desperate.

Arrrrrgh

I guess you have noticed a heavy slow
down in updates on my blog in the last time...
Well, for one, I am having a sore throat and right
now it´s the third day and every time I need to
swallow I get more angry. Adding to that I can barely
sleep at night, because lying in the dark takes
away all distraction from this nasty pain.

I mean I have headaches quite regularly, but
sore throat is a different beast for sure. It makes me
go nuts. Right now I stopped eating pepermints
and sage drops and switched to drinking lots
and lots of hot tap water. I hope that this will
help. At least it will keep me hydrated properly.

In the meantime, I hope that I can do
a IF submission, or some sketches at least.

And if anyone knows a quick cure
for sore throat besides Harakiri,
don´t hold it back. Please.

This picture I found is not related to this post at all, but
seeing Ernesto "Che" Guevara surrounded by
a crowd of vector editing windows has big
comedic potential, but I am feeling to sick to come
up with something fitting. One thing is for sure,
though: The font right under his chin ruins this
classical piece totally. I am not sure yet
how a revolution should be started, but certainly
not THAT way.

We are the robots

Robots don´t need scarves,
they just wear them because they
think they are fashionable.

This one isn´t coloured either
(as you can tell - if you don´t have ADD or
something), because I am trying to get off
the PC a bit in general, and spend more
time doing other stuff, reading,
cooking or whatever. Or smooching Merle!
Or finally doing the dished on a daily basis.

Staring on the same boring screen for hours
isn´t that fun to begin with, and colouring is
still a chore; so I´ll spend those hours on
more drawing (and smooching) instead.

qwertz

abcdefghijklmn
opqrstuvwxyz.

Hey, at least I am
writing something!

Slash at dot com at dot web org de (Flash plugin needed...not)

Above: Weird shapes


Let´s all take a look at the header of this
blog, shall we? ("Shall we?" comes up
frequently in two of my favourite YouTube
subscriptions, and it gets annoying after the
tenth time or so.)

Yeah, it´s a new one - I intended it
for my website I am trying to rebuild since
a couple of weeks, but unfortunately, drawing
stuff and posting here always gets in the way.
I only know basic HTML so this is not going to
be much actual work, but it´s not very exciting to
do. Well, at least I am not going to use
Flash. Boy, I hate Flash. Not in places
where it is actually doing something useful,
but I find illustrator sites that have "Loading!"
bars and moving stuff plastered all over them
replusive. I am not a web designer.

I also believe in functional aesthetics - something
that just works without any bells and whistles is
fine with me. I believe that the reason Google
got so popular as a search engine is not because
they are so good (I don´t think they find things better
than Yahoo or Lycos or whatever; I could be wrong though,
but I do not care) - but because it´s the title, a search bar,
and a "search" button (well, there´s more to it,
but let me simplify it as an example). So there aren´t annoying
ads, moving stuff, Loading! bars, scrolling crap,
embedded audio, auto-loading video clips, add-ons you
need to, well, add on - everything is stripped down
to the essence, and there you go.

Things should just work. There are
thousands of products out there that try to do
more and fail at the most basic level:

Hip looking jackets with no pockets. Parkas
that don´t even cover the kidneys (Ariel knows what
I am talking about). Cell phones that have cameras
and mp3-players in them, yet choke at every button
press I do. Micro-backpacks that carry a can of
soda, maximum. All those coffee machines that
cost a thousand bucks when all you need is a
ceramic filter to put on top of your cup.
I could go on and on.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I
think this is also reflected in my illustration work.
I am trying to strap my repertoire down to the most
interesting parts, putting more tension into it, and leaving
the distracting, useless information out.

Whoa, my first rant. I don´t like the word
"rant". Sounds pretentious somehow. Someone
should do a rant about rants.

And I hope you like my new "piece" (that´s
a stupid word too). My girlfriend is doing Sudoku and
swearing a lot because of it just as I´m typing this.