Best Laid Plans of the Quarantined

So I’ve been at work on these plans, or wannabe blueprints if you will, for a prop build I’ve wanted to do for quite a while now. And when I say prop build, I ain’t talking about propellers, folks. I’m talking about props. Y’know? Like the kind in a movie?

I was inspired to design an ‘engine gun,’ or a gun that partly or at least aesthetically resembled an engine, like a V8 (engine), for example. Sigh. Aesthetically. Another word that gets thrown around way to much!! Note to self: do not use the word aesthetically anymore. Carrying on.

I got the inspiration for this from Peanut M&M’s, of all things. I was buying these little M&M’s canisters. I had accumulated a little stack of the cute squat, yellow tubs, and started thinking about what I could do with them. After playing around with them a bit, an idea for a gun with an engine motif came to me.

Steampunk, you say? Heh, heh. No. This is yet another of today’s terms that has reached terminal acceptance. In order to stand out, one must actually...stand out. And I’m also going to take the time to shoot down all car nuts, gear-heads, motor heads, and whatever else you call yourselves. Nothing against you dudes and dudettes, but if you think I’m actually building a working machine that looks like an engine, or a prop made of car parts etc, also heh-heh, no.

Don’t know how it’s going to be yet, just know that it will. Got a lot to do from here. More elements to add, things to scale up or down, color schemes and textures to decide on. I’m nowhere near done, but I wanted to share anyway, to keep my weekly blog posting...thing...going. So...thanks for listening to my demented rantings. Later.

Below is version current of said build, subject to change.

SLiM

Sorta looks like a flamethrower, at this point.

Further Expediting the Results

Getting back to the plans for the model, for the tavern I hope one day to build, so I can photograph it, run the pics out to the library for Xeroxes, slip-sheet said Xeroxes and do a (fingers crossed) nice illustration for the scene I’ve written *pant, pant,* I’d have to say I believe I’ve made some improvements. 

Here is the original post, for those who came in late:

https://tckdart.blogspot.com/2020/01/expediting-results.html

In the original version, the texture for the dining area’s floor was way too bright and clashy, so after desperately trying to improve the kitchen’s floor texture, I had the notion to flip the two, and wouldn’t you know it, after a handful of gradients, and playing around with lightness, hue and saturation, I finally got somewhere.

I never liked the original texture for the bar stools, which to me looked like I had simply added a color, so I played around with the original texture (which came from Gettyimages), and tried making it look like green billiard table felt. The problem with this was, when I reduced the text, the finished result looked like a row of peas, lined up at the bar! It wasn’t too hard to turn that green billiard felt into a red-violet felt, the result of course is much more pleasing to ye olde peepers.

The original crates are outta there, replaced by better ones, the staircase width was lessened, I gave it an outer wall texture complete with wood paneling, and a significantly more fitting texture, I think, for the fireplaces. The first texture for the bar was a bit naive.

In Photoshop, I’d went into the Filters menu, selected Render, and had a go at Fibers, thinking the end result would look like ivory. Sadly, I’m still using the same textures for the new bar, tables and chairs, plus kitchen furniture, so eventually I must take my own pictures of finished wood and make them look like tables and so forth. The yellow things are supposed to be candlesticks, though the texture for them is not great. I even added a layer of dirt, spill and drip marks. If you’re wondering what all that is on the left, it is supposed to be windows and a long, narrow bench.

However, the whole build is very static, so what I must do from here is try to give the map the feel of something that is lived in. The stairs also suggest that there is more than one level to the tavern, and the other level in the scene I wrote had stairs going up. Those stairs look like they’re going down, so I think I’ll need to add a second staircase. Eventually, we will see levels one (cellar) and three (storage and living quarters).

Have a gander, won’t ya!! (Images Below) Thanks for reading. Be well.

SLiM

I've come a long way, and still have a long way to go, but I think I've made some wise choices here. The bottom version is the swanky new and improved tavern, complete with dance floor. LOL!!

Knuckles That Touch The Ground. . .

When I was in college, I was instructed to come up with both a letterhead and a logo that visually described my style of art, for a project in Graphic Design. What I turned in was a disaster, but every failure in life is a learning lesson, and failure in general is a form of learning. I love the people who say they never mess up. If you never make a mistake, how can you ever expect to learn anything? You have to grow.

Anyway, back in college (here I go again with the frickin’ past), I began taking an interest in the making of horror films. I had fallen in love with several Hammer Studios films, and was investing a lot of time and energy into these vintage classics, learning everything I could about how they were made. When the time came, I was certain without a doubt that I had to buy a video camera and start making films of my own. I needed to create a logo for my productions that fit the type of stories I was trying to tell. In the process of trying to come up with a good name, I sat down and went through the art I had accumulated in college, up to that point, looking for something inspiring. I had had quite a bit of schooling under my belt at the time.

What I noticed was that I had inadvertently developed a tendency to create things that were crude and unrefined. Early on, I was a very frustrated student, because I would watch my peers working on the same projects in the class we were in. I felt they were creating immaculate, iconic works of art, while my take on the project was sloppy, naive, poorly designed and lacking in many ways.

This is not me being overly critical and self deprecating of my work (this time). This was the truth. A grander portion of my inability to create quality works of art, back then, had largely to do with me insisting on drawing everything out of memory, without the aid of photo scrap, and without use of a light table or an Artograph. Another problem was my dependency on caffeine.

Not to knock the stuff, but if you’re anything like I was and you want to become a skilled artist, let alone one whose work demonstrates a strong understanding of design, color theory, proportion and perspective, then you might want to curb your caffeine habits. These days I keep it down to a cup of coffee a day, rarely more. I find it keeps my eyes open and I can somehow manage to relax while I work on my projects, without nervously scribbling my through it.

My point, and yes I do have one, when I sat down to create my own personal logo for this blog, I reflected on the lessons I learned in college, and how I struggled to make my art look the way I’d envisioned it. Basically, the Creative Knuckledragger is a nod to that early time in college, before meeting a certain charismatic illustration teacher, and before making the decision to take nearly every single class he taught. 

And these days, I’m deliberately trying to be crude. I think. Anyway, below is the precursor, if you will, to the blog’s title. I dunno why Neo-Barbarism, I just know that basically it was in the same vein. I'm still not sure why I went with the Celtic cross, but I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. I had taken the photo in a cemetery I visited on a family trip to Springfield, Illinois. Many's an Adobe Photoshop took place. Go ahead. Act Surprised. 

Thanks for reading.

SLiM

Live in the Now

I have a confession to make. Lately, I find myself stuck in a bit of a rut. To be specific, I am stuck in the past. Yesteryear has become a sad, tired old rerun, and it’s on every stinking channel. You see, a family crisis I prefer to keep to myself has brought me back to a place I never again wanted to revisit, and yet often find myself being drawn back to, proverbially kicking and screaming all the way! A place where every street, every shopping center, every business, and every building and every plot of land holds a particular memory. It’s as if I find myself in a vast cemetery, and I know every single gravestone, every tomb, every marker, every everything, right down to the grounds keeper's dwelling, and the towering centenary trees.

There is where I used to take martial arts lessons. There is where I went to junior high, but they’ve now changed the name and it’s presently a middle school. Here is where I worked my first job. It’s a parking lot now, and the new building was built behind it. The movie theater is now a boarded up shell of a building, surrounded by a tall fence. The toy store where I bought all my Star Wars, Masters of the Universe, Joe, Transformers, you name it, is a daycare center now. Almost every day, I drive past the house, where my friend from high school lived. He used to play drums in our band. He died rather tragically, a few years ago.

My pediatrician’s office is now a Dentist’s office. There’s my grade school, down the street from where my sitter lived, further down the street from which is where we held cub scout meetings. There’s the used bookstore my dad and I loved. Pop used to walk in and buy a mint’s worth of dated paperbacks, and I always made a killing in comic books, the back issue selection of which was rather astounding, for a little Podunk town like ours! The place where I used to buy Ral Partha and D & D miniatures is a parking lot. The used CD store where I bought many hard-to-find albums and traded in old VHS is gone, along with the local Blockbuster video.

See what I mean? If I were a character in a roleplaying game, I would swear I’ve descended into the Realm of Shadow, and am being tormented by ghostly reflections and spectral figures of the past. Thankfully, that’s not the case.

Often, we dwell on the past out of fear, guilt and regret. We take things for granted while they’re happening, but when that chapter of life is over, we miss it. Maybe we didn’t appreciate it at the time, and now it’s gone. And don’t fall into the nostalgia trap, folks. I mean sure, break out the trusty family photo album and take a trip down memory lane with the kinfolk, every now and then. Just don’t get stuck there! Because nostalgia can easily become an excuse that says that you would rather go back in time and have things be like that time-frame again, than do the best you can with what you’ve got today to get through “this thing we call life.” And at risk of further sounding like a classic 80s Billboard number, or a Dear John letter, I’m going to up and share with you the only way out of the Nostalgia dungeon.

Instead of focusing on all the things that didn’t turn out the way you would have liked, center on the lessons you have learned. Remember that what’s done is done, there ain’t no going back, and even if you could go back in time to change it all, it wouldn’t be the same. I think it was the character Oogway, in Kung Fu Panda (2008) that said (paraphrasing) yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present. So live in the now, man! And live well.

So...in light of lessons learned I shall now share with you a lesson I learned...Lorelei. I don’t know why I wanted to call her Lorelei. When working in Adobe Photoshop, I often give the file a name, even if it may not totally fit. And I never liked this project very much either, but I suppose at the time, I felt I had to demonstrate that I too could be the standard stereotype for my profession, by sitting around drawing beautiful shapely goils with big boobies and big badonks. Cliche much? I agree.

Don’t get me wrong, I dig that art too. I like a great Frazetta painting, like Goblin Queen, for instance. Also works by such renowned artists as Frank Cho, Jim Balent, and of course it only stands to reason that I better drop Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell’s names as well. Truth is there are far too many great graphic artists out there, so I guess I better stop naming names, or we’ll be here forever! But after this attempt at ‘pin up art,’ for lack of a better term, I decided that style wasn’t really my forte. I choose to never say never, but I think I’ll stick with cartooning cute and creepy characters, and Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Gothic Horror art, for now. Maybe if I actually get some skill, I’ll change my mind, but what I do now seems to be what I’m best at.

So, getting back to Lorelei, the oldest versions start on the left and go to the newest on the right, in the collage. I did the pale one with a red outfit and blue eyes recently. I still don’t quite know why. Nostalgia, perhaps.

Since this was a personal project, I had originally borrowed an image from an issue of Maxim, at the time, though I’ve obviously elaborated quite a bit. I used Sharpie and a Prismacolor black marker on tracing paper. The model was ascending a staircase, while turning and observing the camera, so her left arm wasn’t in the shot. Right then and there, it should have been common sense to get a different image, but I insisted on polishing away at that turd, like I always do. I copied her right arm in Photoshop, placed it on her left side, and gooned her left hand. And you can tell. So...there you have it. Do as I say not as I do. Start with a GOOD image, take your time and be deliberate, or don’t bother, as one of my illustration teachers often observed. You’re welcome. 

Thank you for reading, and I hope you find my little joke amusing. I could never decide between an R rating or a PG-13 rating, so I did both. The stars are a deliberate pun, based on the usual opinion, regarding nudity.

SLiM