(in shock)

I am a HUGE fan of Dancing With the Stars. And this season has been the most dynamic and fun to watch yet. So many talented people, dramatic moments, great entertainment...

But tonight's results show just left me staring at the television thinking "What the f**k?!"

Sabrina Bryan, by far the most consistently talented and entertaining dancers on the show, was sent home. She did not deserve to go home, not when we're left with somebody like:

Jane Seymour--who is extremely graceful and elegant, but doesn't give the sort of varied performance that Sabrina did.

and Jenny Garth--who's honestly failed to really capture my interest, partially due to the fact that she has a mini breakdown every week.



This is me right now (ugly gray jacket and everything!):

The new office.

Okay, finally! I just wanted to share some images of my desk and parts of the new office building. I don't have anything interesting on my desk besides a computer and my tablet..oh! and a desk lamp. But I plan to remedy that soon..

My desk...


The atrium...It's pretty epic.


More epic atrium.


The second floor entrance from the elevator.



And that's all I have for now.

Not bad, eh? I like it.

first sketch!

At least the first one posted here...This is Mari, one of the many characters that inhabit the world that Laura and I have created. She's from Naida, a country consisting of hundreds of islands, and was adopted by Harry and Kyan. She possesses a gift that's exclusive to some native Naidans: divination and psychic powers. Relatively quiet, polite, and easy-going.



More characters and environment details to come, sometime...

OK Go!! Oh-oh-oh!

Last night was awesome. OK Go rocked. Just look:



And here too! (they're singing a jingle for a karate school the lead singer saw when he was young)



And even after the concert ended, the awesomeness didn't. Laura, Jon, Kelly and I went to the Claddagh pub for drinks. We basically spent the entire hour or so laughing and drinking and generally just having a great time. It was the perfect way to end a day like that.

I've been seriously lacking in my "activities that twenty-somethings are supposed to do" quota. I hardly ever do things like going to concerts and going out for drinks. So it was a nice change, even if my throat still hurts from yelling at the concert and laughing at the pub.

Here's to good music, good times and good company! Huzzah!

Crash the Party!

You're not the prettiest girl in town
I'm not the only boy with sullied clothes and a sullen frown, so
To hell with Valentine's, to hell with perfume
To hell with chocolates and picnics
And Sinatra tunes
Cuz while the rest of the girls are drowning in roses and songs he composes
And while the rest of the guys are all trying
All trying so hard

Oh girl, let's crash the party
El Dorado on the lawn (hey, hey, hey)
Let's burn holes in the carpets
Kicking, shouting, dancing on the tables all night long

I'm not so good with subtlety
You wouldn't say that I'm the picture of urbanity
Never put much stock in suavity, courtesy, chivalry, gallantry
All that useless jewelry
But while the rest of the girls still sigh for the night he was smiling politely
And while the rest of the guys are all trying
All trying so hard


Oh girl, let's crash the party
El Dorado on the lawn (hey, hey, hey)
Let's burn holes in the carpets
Kicking, shouting, dancing on the tables all night long
(Oh girl, let's crash the party)
All night
(Let's burn holes in the carpet)
All night long



--------------------------------------------------------
(I'm looking forward to the concert tonight. Can you tell?)

The Name Game!

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car),
Sadie Camry

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie),
Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip

3. YOUR "FLY Guy/Girl" NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name),
L Smi

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal),
Blue Cat

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born),
Kathleen Indianapolis

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first),
Smila

7. SUPERHERO NAME: ("The" + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)
Turquoise Margarita

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)

Jerome Gerald

9. STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy),
Happy Heart Reeses

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother's & father's middle names ),
Gene Dickinson

And a few more…

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher's last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)
Lemon Lancaster

12. SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (your favorite season/holiday, flower).
Autumn Orchid

13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you're wearing right now + "ie" or "y")
Mango Shirtie

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree),
Donut Willow

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: ("The" + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + "Tour"),
The Drawing Fall Wind Tour

Pushing Daisies

Pushing Daisies is one of my favorite shows.

And I'll tell you why.

It isn't just the awesome cinematography or pretty colors or shot compositions. And it isn't just the quirky storyline or endearing, off-beat characters or even the heartwarming narration. It's the fact that this show combines ALL of these elements into a story that makes you want to climb into your television set and visit the world in there. You know, a place where a little bit of magic actually exists...

I actually do believe magic exists here. Granted, it's not as obvious as people touching corpses and bringing them back to life...Nobody's flying around, nobody turns invisible, nobody can make things float with their mind (at least not to my knowledge)...But there are a lot of little things you notice if you look. Enough to keep me from becoming completely jaded (thank God).

For example, all those little coincidences that kinda make you laugh. Like when I was given the job to create graphics for a donut game? There's a Dunkin' Donuts being built right down the street. Two work days in a row, during my lunch hour, donuts were featured in two seperate tv shows. Okay, it doesn't seem like much...but after months of not giving donuts a second thought, here I was being bombarded with images and stories about them.

All right, how about those moments when you're listening to your iTunes, the radio, even a CD on random...And you think "I'd really like to hear (insert song here)"..and it comes on? There was a day when I walked into a restaurant for lunch and RIGHT as I walked in, the song "100 Years" by Five For Fighting came on. Not saying that's my theme song or anything, but the piano intro is so pretty...and for some reason, just fit the mood I was in that day.

Hitting nearly every green light down Meridian is enough to make me believe in magic...It has happened a few times.

Sunsets! Last night, the sky was CRAZY when I went to get dinner with Laura. The clouds looked like rows of cottonballs, sort of...And they were all reds and oranges and that really interesting orange-pink color. I swear, if you would take a picture of that sky, it'd almost not look real. Wish I'd thought to grab my digital camera...as it was, I settled for the camera on my phone.

Okay, maybe this partial list of things seems kind of stupid now...

But I still believe in magic, damn it!

mmmMaksim

I don't like dancing myself, but he makes me actually want to learn.

That's all.

advice from a bumper sticker

The other day, I was driving somewhere and found myself behind a car with a bumper sticker that read:


Quit your job.
Buy a ticket.
Get a tan.
Fall in love.
Never return.


Now, ignoring the fact that this bumper sticker belonged to a vehicle with a Tennessee license plate that was in Indiana, I couldn't help smiling a little when I read it.

I wouldn't mind getting a tan someday...and I'm definitely looking forward to falling in love.

Someday!

oooOOOOOoooo....

For my 3D Animation class, I decided to model a grandfather clock. I figured it would be something complex enough to look good to the teacher, but (hopefully) straightforward enough for me to model with my (very) limited skills in Maya. So my mom and I took a trip to downtown Zionsville to visit the Village Clock Shop, which is full of clocks of all sizes, all set to different times, all chiming and ringing at random intervals. All in all, a pretty cool place. I found a grandfather clock toward the back of the store that I really liked. Very simple compared to a lot of the other models, with a slightly modern touch...but still extremely classy and elegant. I took about 50 pictures of it (no joke), and then we went about the rest of our day.

The next day, I was just poking around online to see if I could find the clock on the maker's website. Lo and behold, the clock was on the first page under the model name "Jerome". Which is incredibly ironic/awesome because that is exactly what my actual maternal grandfather's name was. Jerome J. Gatz. So this project took just took on a whole new meaning. I just hope I can pull this off the way I want to.






ps: Here's an awesome picture I got of the inside of the clock....I'm going to have to get a print of this made.



pps: I really am working on that whole "draw something every day" thing. I've been house-sitting for the past few days and don't have ready access to the internet.

irony of ironies..

About ten minutes after making the previous post, one of my coworkers returned and I was freed to go to lunch...and on my way out, I ran into another returning from her own lunch. And she came up to me and told me that if I ever wanted to grab lunch with her, to just ask. Because she usually gets lunch on her own too.

So right after having all these thoughts of "why isn't anyone really making an effort to include me?", something like that happens. I wish I could say this was the first time, but things like that basically make up my life. It's a little strange and a lot of awesome at the same time.

Oh, and by the way! Inspired by something my friend Colin was telling me about, I've decided to make an effort to draw at least one picture every day and post it here. I'm not putting any restrictions on myself, I'm just trying to kick into gear.

por que?

I've been left at the office alone around lunchtime again. There are only so many keys to go around, so at least one person has to be left to lock up or make the office look occupied, I guess. I find myself in this position fairly often...This time it was a little different. This time, I was one of five people in the office. And I had been planning on going to lunch in about ten minutes...when ALL four other people (all guys) decided to go to lunch and Best Buy together. Okay, so I'm stuck until someone else comes back. And I'm hungry...and I'm wondering why none of them felt inclined to either invite me or ask if I was planning on going somewhere.

Ah well...I'll just crank up my music and zone out until someone gets back.

But food would be nice right about now...

a mission and a little creative background...

I have no idea where this concept originated, but I thought it was neat. It's called Fanart100, and consists of a list of 100 prompts to inspire pictures featuring characters from any story that you enjoy. There's a whole community on LiveJournal with rules and regulations and stuff, but I don't have patience for that. Besides, I won't be using existing characters.

Rewind!

For several years, I've taken part in roleplaying online. No, nothing questionable, nothing used to pick up strangers...just a casual escape from the real world. About 8 years ago (can't believe it's been that long already), I started frequenting fantasy and anime themed AOL chatrooms, creating a character with a background that interacted with all the other characters present in the room at the time. It was entertaining, but rarely amounted to anything substantial.

Then I met my friend Cat, who introduced me to concept of breaking away from the chatroom atmosphere to roleplay with only one person, and between ourselves create a specific world and many different characters to populate and drive a specific story along. I had never heard of a creative outlet quite like it, and I found it hard to describe to anybody unfamiliar with the world of roleplaying. I've gotten a lot of blank looks while talking about the stories that have come out of the "skit", as Cat and I came to call it.

Fast-forward five or six years and we've started over countless times, added characters, dropped characters, branched off into new stories, re-vamped others, and we were beginning to run into a lull. We found ourselves joined by my current roommate and best friend Laura, who was the only person who didn't just listen and nod or stare at me blankly while I rattled on about the skit. After adding her characters and story ideas to the mix, it became obvious to me that she and I had more similar storytelling style than Cat and I did. We were also able to create a more eclectic mix of believable characters...even if sometimes their circumstances were unbelievable. So we got to thinking...why not start our own skit, using no copyrighted or existing characters or worlds, and tell a story that would be worth sharing with everybody?

Back to the present!

Laura and I have developed a very involved world, with a cast of core characters numbering in the 50s (at my last count). So we have plenty of stories to tell that have stemmed from this universe of ours....and it is THAT collection of stories that I will be drawing from for this Fanart100 challenge.

End of story, beginning of challenge.




The 100:

001.Beginnings.
002.Middles.
003.Ends.
004.Insides.
005.Outsides.
006.Hours.
007.Days.
008.Weeks.
009.Months.
010.Years.
011.Red.
012.Orange.
013.Yellow.
014.Green.
015.Blue.
016.Purple.
017.Brown.
018.Black.
019.White.
020.Colourless.
021.Friends.
022.Enemies.
023.Lovers.
024.Family.
025.Strangers.
026.Teammates.
027.Parents.
028.Children.
029.Birth.
030.Death.
031.Sunrise.
032.Sunset.
033.Too Much.
034.Not Enough.
035.Sixth Sense.
036.Smell.
037.Sound.
038.Touch.
039.Taste.
040.Sight.
041.Shapes.
042.Triangle.
043.Square.
044.Circle.
045.Moon.
046.Star.
047.Heart.
048.Diamond.
049.Club.
050.Spade.
051.Water.
052.Fire.
053.Earth.
054.Air.
055.Spirit.
056.Breakfast.
057.Lunch.
058.Dinner.
059.Food.
060.Drink.
061.Winter.
062.Spring.
063.Summer.
064.Fall.
065.Passing.
066.Rain.
067.Snow.
068.Lightening.
069.Thunder.
070.Storm.
071.Broken.
072.Fixed.
073.Light.
074.Dark.
075.Shade.
076.Who?
077.What?
078.Where?
079.When?
080.Why?
081.How?
082.If.
083.And.
084.He.
085.She.
086.Choices.
087.Life.
088.School.
089.Work.
090.Home.
091.Birthday.
092.Christmas.
093.Thanksgiving.
094.Independence.
095.New Year.
096.Artist‘s Choice.
097.Artist‘s Choice.
098.Artist‘s Choice.
099.Artist‘s Choice.
100.Artist‘s Choice.

(another) introduction

So I've already got a blog set up to showcase my professional portfolio, but I've found myself in need of another outlet that will allow me a little more freedom to say and post what I want to. I've never been very good at keeping up any sort of journal. I've started countless diaries in past years, joined LiveJournal, made a few posts on my deviantART journal, but I've never kept anything consistent and definitely nothing very in-depth. I don't plan on spilling my guts all over this blog...at least not in words. But I will be littering my posts with sketches, doodles, and finished drawings that are all like little parts of myself. This blog is my way of forcing myself to keep doodling.

I'm making promises to myself right now:

I will draw for more than just work or school.

I will keep everything that I draw, good or bad.

I will get better!

Damn it.