24 posts tagged “wassy”

Here in the US, Monday was president's day which means that some people have a 3 day weekend. And this year for some strange reason, I was one of those people. We usually don't get president's day off (at least I can't ever remember us getting it off) so I was a bit surprised when they came up with the holiday list this year.

So my 3 day weekend started by going out to the movies with my friends. We went off to see Coraline in 3D and it was very good. Excellent visual style, engaging story and very nice use of the 3D factor. There were no old people talking like the last couple movies which was a very, very good change of pace. And it was a nice non-thinking type movie after having the brain work overtime while watching Revolutionary Road and The Reader. Highly recommended.

I also received an omelet lesson on how to make them all fluffy and good. So that should help my breakfast for dinner aspirations.

Sunday was a half relaxing half working day where I did my chores and a little bit of C++ programming and then I did some relaxing City of Heroes playing. I also spent a good portion of the day watching episodes of Firefly on DVD. Wassy mentioned Sci-fi had Serenity on the other day which made me want to watch Firefly and Serenity again. Which I did.

Monday was intended to be a programming day but instead of working on C++ stuff like I had intended, I ended up spending a good portion of the day (while watching firefly) moving Wassy's website from one host to another. It took about 2 hours longer than I expected it to take, but it ended up all going smoothly in the end. After that I was pretty much programmed out, so I just relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Hoping I can get through another chapter in my C++ book this week and maybe get started on a small little project with practical applications.

I mentioned a few days ago that Wassy was working on a piece of artwork for me. Well...it's finished.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece is a pin-up piece of my main city of heroes villainess. It is a bit risque. Tasteful, but risque. It's pretty tame as far as these things go, with nothing really showing (lots of stuff almost showing, but nothing really showing. Probably the most revealing part is she's wearing a thong to give you an idea). However, artistically done as it is, I would apply the label NOT SAFE FOR WORK to it. So if that kind of thing bugs you, I would recommend not viewing the piece.

With that said...the piece is here (EXTRA NOT SAFE FOR WORK WARNING). I really, really love it. The subject is one of my villains from City of Heroes (well, City of Villains more accurately). Wassy had come up with a really awesome idea for a pose and I agreed (after a little persuasion) to let her do the piece. A couple months later when she got to it (she was VERY busy for a while there)...it was just totally worth the wait.

I especially love her face, in particular her eyes. They're very intense. Along with the stray strands of hair  And also the coloring job she did on her skin. It's absolutely perfect. Everything is so soft and sensual. She really nailed the feel that I was hoping the piece would have.

As she was doing the coloring she was making comments about how good it was turning out, and even then..this just exceeded my expectations. This week had been kinda long and dragging quite a bit towards the end, for a lot of different reasons, but seeing the finished piece made it all worthwhile.

I was over at my friends apartment last night for our weekly mid-week gathering. Most of the evening was taken up by the watching of The Dark Knight that just came out on DVD. I still can't believe how awesome it is, especially Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker. Every single time I watch the movie I see something new in his performance that I didn't notice before. Truly, he stole the film and I really hope that he wins an Oscar for his performance. It was a supporting character role, but I really don't think there was anyone else who has even come close to his performance.

While we were watching the movie, Wassy was working on some drawing. Specifically a piece for me that I had requested about 4-5 months (I think) ago after she had described the pose to me. It's a pin-up (of the not safe for work variety, although there's nothing really TOO naughty being shown, part of the reason why it's so awesome) piece featuring one of my villains from City of Villains. Dark Frost, specifically. She's the one waving sitting on the wall in my last piece of artwork.

I had told her I didn't want to see it until it was totally finished, but she was over there drawing it and making comments about how good it was turning out so I broke down and looked. I'm extremely excited about it now. Well...I we excited before but now I'm even more excited. She gets the whole pin-up thing very well. VERY well. I can't wait for this one to be finished. The pencils she got done last night were awesome and I've been glancing at them whenever I can. Just has to hold me over for a few more weeks...

We also attempted to play Through The Fire And Flames on Guitar Hero 3 after not having played it for months. That didn't end well. Not well at all. Such a hard song to play, and we were way out of practice. Epic fail!

Video Screens At the Show End

If you may recall, my last blog post  mentioned the fact that Wassy and I were going to attempt to head out to Albany to catch a TSO concert on Sunday, but we were worried about a stomach bug that was going around. As it turns out, we were both fine to go to the show.

Then we (I) was worried about the weather as we were supposed to get some really nasty winter weather about when we were going to be driving out. So we ended up leaving at 11am (for a 3pm show, 1.5 hour drive in good weather giving us plenty of buffer time). The plan was to go eat lunch at place that we ate at before when we went to see Dream Theater in Albany (Jackbit and Joltz, an "australian" sandwich place), then head to the show, then to Chili's afterwords.

The title of this post contains the words roller coaster because that's exactly what yesterday was. The drive up was nice...no weather problems at all. We got to Jackbit and Joltz to find they had closed, but we weren't too worried about that as we has 2.5 hours thereabouts to find somewhere to eat. We ended up chosing a KFC that was of questionable quality (especially their Dr. Pepper), but at that point it was just adding to the experience.

Green Fire!

We had an awful lot of time before the show, so we headed out to Crossgates Mall to wander a bit. Wassy stopped by the Apple store and played around with the new multi-touch touchpads on the MacBook Pros in Photoshop CS4. She was sufficiently wowed by it. It did look really neat. We also discovered that there's an IMAX theater in albany. Which made us wonder why we drive to Rochester for our IMAX movies (it takes about twice as long to get there than it does to get to Albany).

After wandering for a while, we headed back out to the show where we hit a really huge snag in the form of INSANE traffic. I-787 was a parking lot so we ducked out at an exit and tried to navigate the streets of Albany to get to the parking garage. This was extremely slow going. Tensions and frustrations were rising and it was starting to look like we wouldn't be able to make the show in time. I eventually navigated down some side streets with the use of the GPS to attempt to circumvent most of the gridlock and we ended up in sight of the venue just before 3pm, still stuck in traffic. I told Wassy that she should hop out and head in because it might be a while before I find a parking spot and she hadn't seen the show before, so she went in and I was left to get to the garage. we were there late enough where I had to park on the garage roof.

By the time I got there it was after 3pm. I didn't want to wait for the elevator down so I sprinted down 6 flights of stairs and all the way across the parking lot building and the length of the times union center to where I could get in. As it turned out there were having some issues with one of the lighting pieces and that delayed the start of the show, so we were able to catch the whole thing. After the horribleness that was the ride in, the show was totally awesome.

I've said before, and I'll say it again. If you have not gone to see TSO, you need to go. Because nobody does a show like these guys. Case in point:

Fireworks!

See?? Wassy took some very aweome pictures during the show so that's where all these images are coming from. As per usual, the lighting was set up on movable trusses that reconfigured themselves as the show went along depending on the song. They added a  lot more uses of laser and pyro through the entire show and it was really nice. The new string master (female violinist, first name is Anna...but I'm blanking on her last name) was running around the stage and really getting into it and rocking out. At points she slid across the floor on her knees and bent over backwards to play on her back, and one time she took center stage and bent over backwards while still playing. She's very very nimble.

Obligatory Laser Shot

The first half of the show was the normal Christmas Eve and Other Stories set, which is enjoyable enough. It kinda lulls in the middle due to the presence, chiefly, of the song Old City Bar. it grinds the momentum of the show to a halt. We were in the PERFECT seats for First Snow. We It was "snowing" all around us and the lasers flashing off the falling snow was awesome.

The second half of the show was much more high energy and they threw in a lot of songs that they don't normally do which is nice for people who have gone to the show year in and year out. I really prefer the second half of the show to the first every year and this year was no exception. The new songs from Night Castle were good too, and I'm looking forward to that album. 2009 is looking to be a good year for music.

Before I get off the topic of the show, I just wanted to add this final picture from the grand finale. THIS is how you end a show:

\m/

This week has been mostly boring so far, so I haven't been posting much. Been trying to scrape together stuff to talk about. It's basically just a long slog between Thanksgiving and the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert coming up on Sunday.

However, there's a couple things worth mentioning. I recieved Chrono Trigger DS through Gamefly on Monday which I've been playing. It's one of those classic games that I never got around to playing so I'm enjoying going through it for the first time. It's very neat. About 6 hours in at the moment and I don't think I've ever played anything quite like it before.

Speaking of TSO, my friend Jay has gotten sick with a stomach bug and Wassy is doing everything she can to pevent herself from getting it...because doing so will seriously endanger the trip out to albany for the concert Sunday. So far so good I think, but I don't want to say anything else for fear of jinxing it. (EDIT: It seems she is sick this morning :( )

Which leads me to the reason why she stopped by here briefly last night for a cup of green tea. She had been tormenting me with the thought of a little gift that she had gotten me for a couple days and I was originally going to go over to their place to hang out on Wednesday, but since Jay got sick I wanted to stay away just in case. So she dropped by last night to give my my gift, which was a little penguin soap dispenser that's very cool and cute...although I feel a little bad shoving the spout into it's brain to get at the soapy goodness inside. It goes perfect in my penguin themed bathroom. Very very nice.

So that's the week so far...couple more days of boring to go.

It's time for another long weekend wrap up post! Well, not so long as it wasn't a terribly action filled weekend. It did result in the culmination of a plan, so I will recount that now.

My friend Wassy had been feeling a bit down for a while. Not really going to go into it as that's not really the point, but I wanted to do something for her. She springs little gifts and such on me when I'm feeling down, so I wanted to return the favor. I can't draw like she does for me, and writing a computer program for her wouldn't really work out all that well. But then I came up with the idea of getting her a little figurine of one of her favorite anime characters, Belldandy from Ah! My Goddess! I don't really want to go into the whole thing, but needless to say, it fit thematically too.

I had planned this since last weekend and it was really hard keeping it quiet because I wanted it to be a surprise. I succeeded, until Saturday that is. Normally we get together on the weekends, but she came down with a cold and was feeling very under the weather so we didn't meet up. The secrecy plan fell apart when I told her I was going over to my parents. I came back and she asked "What'd you steal this time?" to which I responded..."something". And it quickly dismantled from there.

I delivered the gift and it went over really well, so it seems I made the correct choice. Which, being a man, means I have now used up all of my gift giving abilities for the next year or so apologies to anyone who's expecting to get a Christmas gift from me. It probably isn't going to be very good. But I'm really happy this turned out good.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful. Just a lot of hanging out. I started trying to work on a cover of Blackfield - Epidemic on Sunday since I figured out mostly how to play the piano part (which isn't that hard) and wanted to get some practice actually trying to put something together. I got to the drums though and everything kinda feel apart. I am lacking in rhythm I've determined.

Last night I went out and got my hair cut. Normally I wouldn't announce this to the world or anything but I've been trying to grow it out a little bit because I got tired of how I've looked pretty much the same since I started getting haircuts. So I let my hair grow for a couple months until it was a decent length and went in last night to get it cut.

It's not a drastic change, really. Right now anyway. It's just longer than it has been in the past. I think I'd like to go for something just a hair longer than it is right now by the end of it. I've been told I look better with hair that's a little bit longer. I wasn't planning on changing over to the final style yet or anything, I just needed it to be a little more under control.

The title also references a change in the appearance of my apartment too. After my haircut I swung by my friend's apartment and picked up the print for my piece of artwork. It came out amazing. All of the little details from the digital piece are in there and it looks like she did the work by hand on that piece of paper as opposed to doing it digitally and having it printed. I'm very happy with how it turned out. I just need to find a good place to put it. I found something I sorta liked but I think I'm going to move things around a little more. My apartment really needs more room for art type things as I've gotten quite the collection over the past few years.

I also picked up Hannibal (because I finished Red Dragon and Silence Of The Lambs since I last posted a book update...working on it!) while I was out which I'm hoping I enjoy. It seems to be a very love it or hate it kind of book, and I hope I'm in the "love it!" camp.

Remember that piece of artwork that I mentioned I was having done a few posts back? Well, it has been completed and I'm very very happy with the result. Wassy has outdone herself with this one.

First Contact

Yep, it's another piece of art of my favorite City of Heroes character, Frost Magus. The way I figure it, you can't have enough! But this time it also includes my main City of Villains character, Dark Frost. Boring story time!

Dark Frost and Frost Magus are the same person, sort of. Dark Frost is a version of Frost Magus from an alternate dimension that was thrown down the path of evil when one important change happened in the timeline of her dimension that didn't happen in the hero Frost's. They both got their powers through a magical spell that backfired, however the difference was that Dark Frost's parents were killed in the accident while Frost Magus' survived. The loss of her parents gradually destabilized Dark Frost and she became cynical and selfish, only caring about herself in an uncaring world, so she thought. She turned to a life of crime to get by. Meanwhile, the hero Frost was using her powers for good.

Dark Frost was eventually sucked into the dimension where the hero Frost resided due to a lab equipment malfunction during an experiment. Not wanting to let the public know about what happened (because otherwise they would have to admit their research is pulling random people from other dimensions into their own...not a very popular thing you can imagine) they threw her into jail and tried to coverup what happened. Eventually Dark Frost escaped with help from Arachnos and ended up in the Rogue Islands, increased her power and proved that she was in fact one of the Destined Ones. All of that last bit is part of the City of Villains storyline.

While she was in the Rogue Islands though, she found out about the existance of the hero Frost. The more she learned, the more resentful and angry she got. Here's another her that got all the good breaks...all the breaks that she (Dark Frost) deserved to have. After she achieved the height of her power she decided that she was strong enough to strike out to Paragon City and meet up with the woman who had (in her view) stolen her real life.

And thats where this piece comes in. After getting Dark Frost to level 50 in game, I thought it would be very cool if there would be a Frost/Dark Frost piece...a sorta good vs evil type thing. I talked to Wassy who agreed to take on the project and off we went. Through discussion, this scene emerged. Dark Frost has planned out this meeting so she's confident that it's happening on her terms, so she appears relaxed on the wall. But she's ready to spring into action if things start going all unpredictable. She had just called out to Frost, making her presence known and Frost is whipping around trying to locate the source of that strangely familiar voice. And her shock is total when it ends up being her own face looking back at her.

I can't say enough good things about how this piece turned out. It's exactly what I was looking for when I thought that a combined piece would be cool, and in fact it exceeded my expectations when I got the final colored version last night (late last night or I would have posted this then). It looks so awesome, like it was a full page ripped straight from a comic book and all of the layers of meaning that I wanted in there are there. It tells a very important piece of the story of these two characters that can't happen in the game and it's also suggestive of a large scale battle soon to come.

I don't even know where to start. All the little details of this piece make it awesome. I especially like the subtle details of the shading in Frost's face and the way her hand is posed. And Dark Frost turned out amazing as well. And the background setting. And the lighting. And the little touches of detail. And the...well...everything. I'm in a very gushy mood right now, I just love it! I can't wait until I get the print. I need to figure out where I'm going to put the print first...I'm running out of wall space here. 

Wassy was over last night, as per usual on Wednesday nights. We spend the majority of the evening just hanging out and listening to music with her taking the time to work on the piece of artwork that I had mentioned a couple posts down (which is turning out very awesomely) and I spent some quality time with Civilization Revolution and my DS.

We also watched a couple more episodes of the wonderful anime series Full Metal Alchemist. We've almost worked our way through the whole series and I'm really liking it a lot. Very good story, and pretty easy to follow for such a long complex series. I can't believe that I used to not like anime type things and now I'm pretty into it. This portion of the evening also revealed exactly how lazy we both are. She was sitting on the couch and was trying to hand me the DVD to put in the player but we couldn't reach each other. So she tried to toss it but it fell short and fell on the ground where we just kinda stared at it for a while. It was kinda funny and sad all at the same time.

And now for some general comments on Civilzation Revolution after playing it for a few days. I'm still finding it very enjoyable, however there's a few little things that cropped up. First, I wish there was a difficulty setting between Warlord and King, because on Warlord I can steamroll the computer pretty quickly and on King it's the other way around, they beat the crap out of me. That's the thing with civilization games, I like playing a challenging game, but I don't want to lose because of the amount of time that I invest in the game. It's a tricky balance...but it's still fun to have my Civilization on the go.

So this concludes todays total grab bag of random stuff. At least stuff I can talk about. There's other stuff...hopefully I can talk about it at some point, but...we'll see.

I'm in a very excited mood right now. A couple weeks ago...or maybe it was a month. I've lost track of time since then, I had approached my friend Wassy about doing a commission for me. The basic premise is that I have two characters in City of Heroes (well more than two, but these are the only two that matter here), one a hero and the other a villain. The villain is an alternate reality version of the hero that got all the hard breaks making her a little crazy and moving her down a different path. So through a discussion with my friend, it was decided that the villain would be hunting the hero and this piece would be the exact moment where the hero learns of the villains existance (by being confronted by her near a park)

My excitement level has grown over the time since this was hashed out as she gradually had time to start working on the poses and the detailed penciles for both characters individually. But last night she did the background and put it all together and my excitement level shot through the roof. She nailed exactly what I wanted the piece to be. I was grinning like an idiot for at least a half hour after I opened the e-mail attachment.

I don't want to show it because it's still a work in progress and all that, but you can bet I'll show it off here when it's all done. Which shouldn't be too much longer now...

Wheee!