OH SNAP! SUPER DOUBLE EDIT!

NOW YOU GET TO READ THE WHOLE THING!
~It was taken down for repairs~

Yikes, this month has gone by screamingly fast. It's probably been fast for me since I've done everything possible to avoid my house for the past 2 weeks. To handle the problems this month has thrown at me I decided to put more of myself out of this house rather than in. Had I spent the time just sitting here and sulk all the way through through it would have just made things worse. Being in my house has always given me way too much time to dwell on the things that make me unhappy. I've been "drowning" myself in my friends, not to use as shoulders to cry on but instead people I can be around. Their presence alone sometimes helps me cope, even if I'm just in the room playing videogames or on one of their computers Photoshopping a funny picture.

That leads me to the next topic. I've read a lot recently from other people about their writing. How they feel they're not good enough, or what they aspire to do with their writing. I have never considered myself to be any good at writing. My dialog is clunky, robotic, and stale. Eventually any sort of purpose or meaning gets drowned out in too much description. It's one of those situations in which you find out that what you want to be talented in is out of your reach. I've always wanted to write great pieces of fiction, but I'm much better at writing pieces of non-fiction. Or hell, skip the writing business all together since I'm much better at creating random cooky images than I am at entertaining anyone with my writing.

That's been pretty much the main purpose of this blog. Since April, 2000 I've been fooling around in Photoshop. I originally obtained the program so I could make web page layouts and edit images. I was making a fan made art gallery for all the AMANO YOSHITAKA images I collected over the years. Of course when anyone starts out using the program, they start screwing around with filters and other little effects features. It takes a long time for someone to realize their potential with the program and how to use it as an effective tool to create art. It wasn't until October of last year when I was finally inspired (more like "depressed into the realm of no other choice") to create something that had been lingering in my head for a long time. This is an image that left an imprint in my mind and refused to leave.

I'm sure you have all seen this picture before.

After creating that image, a realization came to me. I almost recreated something in my head into some other medium besides my imagination. The unfortunate thing is just what kind of image it was. I was expressing how I felt, which at the time I felt pretty damn shitty. I really did feel like some hollow husk of a person crying out in agony. However, the excitement of creation was too much for me to pass up. I kept making images like this as you can see in the archives on this page. This has lead to a problem. With each new piece of work, the images kept getting more sick and depraved. Certainly no one needs to see the Natalie Portman zombie or the zombie baby picture again, but you get the idea. The worse I feel, the more horrible I can make the image. Once the image is created, it just adds to the cycle. I learn new ways to create horrible things and make them look more realistic each time. When you do something like this, you don't realize how it changes you as a person. As I am making these images, all I'm seeing is roots, rocks, and teeth. Once it's done, and it's been up for a few days... I finally get a chance to look at what I made in the same way that everyone else does. Sometimes it really does make me feel sick to my stomach. It's understood that this is how I make other people feel when they view these kinds of images. Do I have some deep seeded desire to make people feel awful?

There's also another issue that goes back to writing vs. Photoshop. It would seem that writing and other forms of art seem to be more prestigious. While it's true that Photoshop does make it easier for me to manipulate images rather than to try to recreate them entirely by hand, it does not mean that I don't put a lot of time and effort into certain images. People tend to believe that anything done on a computer is quick, easy, and less profound. This can be anything from photo manipulation to 3d animation. A lot of this is very intense and difficult work. Photoshop can also be very frustrating when you're trying to manipulate and control 15+ layers at a time. Of course no one really understands this until they try to do it themselves. I never understood just how impossible and frustrating 3d animation could be until I got myself a copy of 3ds Max and just tried to make a cylinder. There just seems to be a stigma attached to making art with a computer in way that makes it seem inferior to writing, painting, sculpting, and photography.

What does all this mean? Why the hell did I just type all that out? Probably to get a few things off my chest, that and I'm afraid if I try to make a zombie right now it will be the most horrifying thing anyone has ever seen. So to combat that fear, I'm going to post a picture that always cracks my shit up whenever I look at it.