Once again, Tom asked me to draw him something, to use as a base for a 3D model. He wanted a four-legged something, that he could try to animate.

I've spent the last hour sketching in Photoshop, and it was crappy to start, but then I wound up with this little fox thing. It was cute. I made it stick out its tongue and gave it foofy ears. It made me smile. I found some reference shots of foxes to get the legs right, and some reference shots of Arabian horses for the tail I had in mind.

Tom wandered downstairs just now, and took a look.

"...it's the same problem as when you drew me a person. Everyone knows what a person is *supposed* to look like." Thus, the animator's dilemma - if you're doing something people are already familiar with, they won't like it unless it's identical. It's really, really hard to give people a model of, for example, a person with an extra-long torso or something. It looks "wrong". This gets even worse when you go to try and animate the thing.

"This is a dog."
"I knooowwww, it's really hard to invent an animal! But that's why I started making it a little different..."
"You added fur." Which is notoriously hard to not only model in 3d, but also animate. And isn't an actual body structure anyway.
"... ..yeahhh..."
"You're useless to me."
"...isn't this what happened the last three times we tried this?"

As exciting as the idea of Tom'n'Melissa art collaboration is, I cannot do basic blueprint sketches of things to save my life. It's insanely hard for me. Doable if I have some actual object in front of me, but, honestly, doing a head-on shot of anything with a face and limbs and things is crazy hard. Plus it looks unnatural and unemotional and thus just doesn't interest me to draw. bleh.

Also, I do not do "manly" drawings. ever.

But my little fox is still cute! so there.

Labels: art, drawing, life in general

 
So... if you buy a digital music album.

Where do you go to find the liner notes?



I just bought the Hope for Haiti Now album on iTunes, and I was listening to the track with Bono and Edge, and I was curious as to who was drumming. Because in places it sounded like Larry. I pulled up the file info...and there's nothing more than the main four artists. I poked around online to the places selling it - nada. There's no listing of production credits or any of the other usual goodies.

That is going to really, really bother me, if music is (as is likely) going totally digital. I love reading through the liner notes, being all happy when a favorite band has the same producer as another favorite band (Coldplay and U2 share Eno, Guster and U2 shared Steve Lillywhite...I'm such a nerd), or when I spot names I recognize in the U2 thank you blurbs (yay Gavin!). Bad enough that album art has become the size of an lj icon, and with less importance. ick ick ick. There goes my dream job...

p.s. If you're a U2-spazz like me and were willing to buy an entire album just for some new Bono listening.. he sings back-up to Rihanna and you can hardly hear him. Doesn't even get a little verse of his own in the live version, which is by far the better. booo. Fortunately, there is a plethora of pretty sparkley Edgeguitar...and the song itself isn't bad in general. ;)

Labels: griping, music, U2 spazz

 
Also of note: coworkers have finally gotten around to posting pictures around the intertubes, so there are some freaking cute pictures over on facebook from the Christmas party, as well as some poorly-lit shots of me looking awkward on our trips downtown.

(note: links will only work if you're a facebook-er.)
This and this are my two favorites, though the one of all of us on the staircase is incredibly nice to have. :)

This is what happens when you work at the Paper Factory. (If not visible through link, it's now on my profile somewhere.) This picture was taken in a public location. Downtown Fredonia outside a packed bar, in September, when there were people out because it was not so cold that people drank at home. oh PF crew...

Labels: being social, friends, photos, work

 
Superbowl food menu:
- Pepperoni pizza from Blasdell, because Tom was starving.
- Chicken Wings by Tom - started out with a recipe, but he decided to wing the ingredient amounts. Largely bbq sauce and honey, everything in the slow cooker. meat LITERALLY fell off the bones. absolutely delicious.
- Chicken and Peach Wontons - because I'm a sucker for wontons, and wanted something a little different. These were pretty delicious, a little heavier filling than I'm used to, but very good. Tom wasn't keen on, but that was okay. Frying in a giant pot instead of a giant pan = win.
- Sausage Jalapeno Poppers - Halved this one, and glad I did, since it ended up being just Tom and I for Superbowl-watching. These would have been better if I'd broiled or something for a few minutes, and gotten more of the grease off the bacon. Filling wasn't quite as awesome as anticipated, but these were still good. Wearing plastic gloves while hacking up pappers = win.
- Smoky Cheese Ball - It was an *insanely* close call for Tom, which food was best, the cheese or the wings. The wings won only because it was football food. This silly thing is DELICIOUS. And huge. Made it with smoked gouda, coated with pecans, and it's all so sweet and creamy, and was ridiculously simple to make. I don't know why I thought it would be difficult, but, holy cow, it's awesome. And despite the fact that Tom keeps eating chunks of it at a time, totally bypassing crackers, we'll still be eating it for a week.
- Drinks were some Smirnoff ice and Coke + vanilla rum and Coke + lemon vodka.

Unfortunately, I wound up with a migraine not far into the evening (I blame the bad light in the basement at work, where I'd spent six and a half hours that day), so I didn't get to enjoy everything a whole lot. It didn't get bad until a little ways into the game, so I still got to munch and things, and keeping a hot cornbag on my head and neck meant I got to stay around and enjoy somewhat at least.

~ ~

What else is new...

I made a giant batch of chili (based on the classic BHG cookbook's recipe, but with spices according to my own tastes - smoked paprika for the win!) a week or two ago, and Tom had to admit that good food CAN come out of a slow-cooker. (He was a little traumatized when his mom got obsessive with hers for awhile during his childhood.)

~ ~

We have been SUPER-cleaning. I had one of my totally arbitrary breakdowns a few weeks ago, and couldn't deal with the mess in the apartment. So Tom proposed the reasonable plan of tackling a different little section every day that we could. That worked wonders. We had a day off together, and went to freaking town around the couch. The result? I'll have a picture later because I'm obsessively happy - WE HAVE A BOOKSHELF!!!!! I had books sitting in crates and boxes alllll down the living room wall, and it was madness. WalMart is awesome for cheap furniture, so $45 got us a bookshelf that is taller than I am, *and* a littler one to hold movies. It's so exciting. Only trouble is...our books don't all fit lmao. Tom has ONE shelf. His mega-box of Star Wars books is a project for another time. There are like two shelves of all my antique books. One shelf has my giant U2 books and old textbooks and things. One has other random stuff. There's a smaller bookshelf (like three, four feet high.. the kind of thing that's all most people need) that holds a lot of my other random books, and a little freestanding thing that I discovered I can put things back-to-back, and hold both my manga and often-reread things like Madeline L'Engle, The Dark is Rising, etc. There is also a crate upstairs of Choose Your Own Adventure books and other things that I'm not sure count as real books.

We have a buttload of books. I cannot wait to own a house, so I can have a library. If we have this many when we're still semi-poor recently-college-kids...

Side note: Our movies didn't all fit either. One shelf for me, one shelf for Tom, one shelf for vhs. The vhs (almost all mine) are arranged two-deep. The other shelves have a bit of space, since I put the four seasons of Futurama and assorted amounts of seasons of Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Monkees, Jem, etc., on top of the bookshelf. We actually physically own a lot more movies than I think either of us realized.. we honestly don't buy all that many right now. (And yet, we own Road Warrior on Bluray. sigh.)

On another media-note: Tom was unaware that my whole little rubbermaid cabinet is filled with cassette tapes. It's probably best that he's also unaware of just how many records I have stashed back home somewhere. The three-and-a-half towers of cds terrify him enough.

~ ~

Books! I finally got around to reading Mel's story, since she sent me a .txt which I could put on the Kindle. While that may have contributed to it feeling like a real book to me...it's also pretty amazing. You will say I am biased, and I might well be, but it honestly sucked me right in. Couldn't put the silly thing down whenever I picked it up. I'm going to help her super-edit and fix some random wording issues, but, I'm so freaking proud that my little sister wrote the thing. If I'd bought the thing at a bookstore (once an editor fixed the "its" issue!), and paid money for it, I would have been happy to have it on my bookshelf. :)

~ ~

Katie and Jane came down to visit.. a week ago? ish? It was really great to see them, it had been way longer than I'd realized. They both seem to be doing really well, which makes me happy. :)

In other social news, Tom and I went to a party at DJ's, and got to feel all special... because DJ wound up spending most of his time talking to the two of us. Like Tom's ego needs any more inflation lol. But it was interesting... since Tom only knew one or two other people, and I didn't know anyone, we people-watched, and it was amazing how well Tom could analyze peoples' relationships. For as much as he claims to dislike people in general, he's insanely good at understanding them. His and DJ's readings can be a liiiittle bit off when they're looking at the other gender, but, well, that's where I came in. It all reminded me so much of those days back in junior high, high school, where we'd sit around Elizabeth's basement and "psychoanalyze" every boy we even remotely had crushes on. <3

~ ~

Still crocheting. Made my first money from it!!! woo!!! My coworker Luke requested a giant rainbow scarf, which I was more than happy to make. :) Finally nearly done with the hat I'm making for Sue Mac - she saw mine and loved it, so we picked out some colors to match her coat, and it's looking awesome. I love having the knowledge to make things work for people - like, Luke just wanted bright colors. So I picked out some yarn that was cheap but also wool, and made sure he didn't mind not being able to throw it in the washing machine. Mac, meanwhile, knew she wanted machine-washable, and when I showed her some color swatches in my trusty Knit Picks catalog, she totally picked out the exact colors I'd been thinking for her. :)

I am also semi-working-on slippers for Tom, at long last. I have a much-worn copy of "The Happy Hooker", which was my very first crochet book, a gift from Shannon. In it, there is a pattern that she actually wrote, for adult-size fuzzy bunny slippers. They're adorable. More importantly, I actually totally understand their construction, and could figure out how to make them man-sized. I pestered Shannon about the yarn (the book calls for expensive yarn, which I was not going to waste on boy-feet; turns out, Shannon originally used cheap yarn, yay!). A trip to WalMart turned up Lion Brand's Hometown USA, which is actually a super-bulky yarn. It is HUGE. And very cushy. And acrylic, so I can wash them without having to handle things that have been on boy-feet. This yarn is SO much bigger than what the pattern uses, that I ended up not having to increase the size at all - I'm just working with a way bigger yarn, way bigger hook, and actually leaving off a row or two here and there, and voila! Big enough for Tom!

Also, super-bulky yarn? Works up SO. FREAKING. FAST. In like half an hour, an hour, I had the sole of a slipper done, and that's including time spent waiting for Tom to reach a stopping-point in his game so I could compare my giant oval of yarn to his foot.

~ ~

I need to shower. And probably do laundry. I'm so not motivated to go out into the cold. I got through most of my taxes today, and finished Mel's story, that's some accomplishment for the day... If I'm really ambitious, you may start seeing all the photos I have taken since I last plugged the camera into my computer. That appears to have been April or May.

Labels: apartment, being social, books, cooking, crochet, family, friends, life in general, movies, music, writing