AN EVENING IN ANOTHER MAN'S PANTS

After finishing up with the first of my set of job interviews yesterday, I spent a little time with my friends Brandon and Brian. Yesterday was Brian's 24th birthday, so most of the day was spent at Eatza Pizza and playing Worms 3D. Yesterday was also wendsday, meaning that there was much volleyball to be played out in Kiwanis Park. The Kiwanis volleyball experience is interesting since it differs greatly from the traditional Sunday volleyball experience out in "pop-up" park.

The first and most noticeable difference is that most of the players are people I don't know. These folk are not my usual set of friends which I play volleyball with. Whenever playing against people I don't know, I tend to play better or at least play with more intesnity and focus than usual. The reason for this is that I don't want to look like an uncoordinated chump in front of people who don't know me. Come on now... I can't look bad in front of almost complete strangers. STRANGERS CAN JUDGE YOU! Okay, I'm kidding about all this, but for some reason I do put on my "A" game while playing against unknown groups of people.

The second but just as easily noticeable difference is that the volleyball nets at Kiwanis are much higher than what can be found at "Pop-up" park. The courts out at "pop-up" are torn to hell and sag miserably close to the ground. This is not the way to play volleyball as it provides an unfair advantage for spiking and serving. Additionally it's a pain in the ass to try and save the ball once it hits the net. The ball will just fly right through the net with next to no rebound at all. Clearly the playing environment at Kiwanis beats out this experience.

Before all this vollyeball fun could go on, I had a problem. Fresh off of a job interview that day, I was still in my "professional casual" clothing. This set of clothing is not in any way suitable for volleball playing. Luckily Brandon had a spair pair of pants and a shirt for me to wear for our upcomming rounds of volleyball at Kiwanis park. The shirt fit, but what shocked me the most was that the pants fit just fine. This is significant for me, since at the beginning of december I was wearing size 38 waist pants. These pants I wore last night were size 32, and they still felt a little big on me.

I've always considered my two friends, Brandon and Nick to be the thinnest of all my friends. Last night, I was able to fit into one of their pairs of pants. For almost 2 years I struggled with a bit of a weight problem. I was nearly 205 lbs. and not looking too pretty. During that time, there was plenty about myself physically I did not like. In addition to have a large frog-sack like neck, I hated having love-handles on my sides. Now I look to my sides, and the love handles are gone. It's truly amazing what a little change in your lifestyle and diet can do for you. Additionally it's even more amazing to see how extreme amounts of stress and emotional trauma will eat away at the human body.

Things are going well. At 6'1/2" I'm only 158 lbs, and soon I may get a job. Now I don't want to tie an albatross around my neck, but I think it's safe to say that I'm doing okay for once.

Sorry, this place has been a little sparse lately. With Brian (happy birthday, buddy!) hiding out at my place for the weekend there wasn't a whole lot of time for vector tracing and the internet. By the way, Levar Burton has come back from retirement to give me a special message.



Thanks Levar. Levar is congratulating me because somehow I managed to set up 3 job interviews this week. That's right... not one or two... but 3 interviews. Perhaps fortune has finally decided to smile upon me for once in this miserable millenium. The first interview starts tomorrow at 9 am tomorrow morning in central Phoenix. I should be in bed right now.

Good night everyone!

THE WORK-IN-PROGRESS

PART: 3

ED IS A FUSSY LITTLE BITCH

Many hours into the night and I'm FINALLY finished with vector tracing ED in my little Cowboy Bebop desktop project. Unlike Spke Spiegel or Jet Black, vector tracing Faye and Ed is quite difficult. In the original image, the characters Ed and Faye Valentine are further into the background, and because of that... to make a fine tuned recreation of the characters is difficult due to distortion. Both Faye and Ed will have to be interpretations rather than direct tracings. But here, have a look at ed.



The good news is, all that's left is Faye and the damned thing will be finished. I'm still happy with how this is turning out and I can't wait to post the final results. In the mean time, enjoy the preview.

THE WORK-IN-PROGRESS

PART: 2

I managed to finally vector trace Spike Spiegel in my upcomming CowboyBebop desktop background extravaganza. I know I said I'd do this 2 nights ago so I'm sorry that didn't happen. Once again, here's a sweet little preview.



I'm very happy with how well I can manipulate the cruves in Illustrator now. For the most part, I think the coolest part of this tracing is the fine quality of the hair and the shadow on the gun. By the end of the week, Faye and Ed will be added. They will be the easier part of this whole damned project, but working on them might have to be done at a later time. Right now my priorities are:

1. Get a job.
2. Install Linux.
3. Complete Ed Carter's perl assignments

So if you'll excuse me, I need to burn some dvd's and free up hard drive space for a new linux partition. For now, enjoy the image and marvel at the wonders of vector graphics. Perhaps in the future I'll be able to produce high quality work similar to the work found on the webpage "Life in Vector."

Gmail is here, and I have signed on. Honestly... a whole freaking Gigabyte for email! I'm sorry mail.yahoo.com, you have served me well but I must move on.

My new email address is david.dobell@gmail.com

Pretty simple huh? So from now on, if anyone I know claims that they don't know my email address... well then they just can't be my friend anymore. Nah, I'm kidding of course, but it would be sad if someone can't remember an email address as simple as david.dobell@gmail.com

Later tonight I'll have all of Spike Spiegel vector traced and the results will be posted once I get home.

THE WORK-IN-PROGRESS

At any given time, I usually have at least 3 projects to work on. One of which is a vector tracing of a really cool but really elaborate Cowboy Bebop background. Seeing as how many of you have read through some lame posts for the past couple of days, it wouldn't hurt to be treated with a nice little preview.



This piece is the most elaborate vector tracing I've done yet. Most of Jet Black is traced out but as you can see, the gun needs a little work. Of course when the whole thing is finished it will be posted here with the typical roll-over preview image along with links to the desktop images in the 4 standard resolutions. It's now 4:42 AM and I need to retire for the night.

Well... that didn't go over very well with my audience. I deeply apologize if I offended anyone with my somewhat self indulgent testimonial.

But I wasn't kidding about changing the theme. I think a Cabinet of Dr. Caligari theme would kick some serious ass.

There are days in which I feel like smashing this computer to pieces, running away, and living like a hermit up in the mountains. Today isn't a very good day for me.

Oh yeah, many of you are probably waiting for FEAR: PART 2. Think of it more like History of the World: Part 2. It may never be released, but if it does then it will contain Hitler on Ice and Jews in Space.

Nah, I'll write it up one of these days, but for now I'm just being lazy. My excuse for being lazy you ask?

Shit man... I'm just being a mummy.

FEAR: PART 1

STEWART GILLIGAN GRIFFIN LEARNS A HARSH LESSON

Today there will be a series of posts about fear. To get you all started on today's theme, here's a vector tracing of Stewie learning a harsh lesson in terror and fear. Once again, you can roll over the image with your mouse to see what the original image looks like. This piece of vector tracing took me about 2 1/2 hours to complete. It's now 2:09 A.M. and I'm headed off to bed.



800 x 600 | 1024 x 768 | 1280 x 1024 | 1600 x 1200

You may remember a few months back that I made a post that brought to everyone's attention the comic art of insane Christian fundamentalist, Jack T. Chick. Well April is here, and Jack Chick is back... only this time I've modified his work to inform us of an evil far greater than Hell. Ancient Gods will return to Earth and devour our very souls along with our physical bodies.

WHO WILL BE EATEN FIRST?

**CLICK PICTURE FOR FULL SIZE IMAGE**

You will have to zoom in with the larger picture to read it. Also, read more from H.P. Lovecraft.

CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNK BLOGGER

It is 4:30 AM and I am writing to you all from Joey Moore's apartment. I wont lie, I got quite hammered this past evening. An old friend from high school, Edward Aubert Carter, has temporarily moved back to Phoenix. To celebrate receiving his first paycheck from Broadcom, Ed took my friends and I out to Four Peaks for many rounds of the precious beer known as "Kilt Lifter." Kilt Lifter is not like your average american beer, oh no. This beer contains about 6% alcohol. I managed to drink about 4 1/2 pints of this precious brew in under an hour. Amazingly I did not die... nor did I fall asleep at any time during the evening.

This is something to celebrate about as it is well known that even 2, 12 oz. Beers can put me out like a shorted out light bulb. The last time I consumed this much alcohol is back in the beginning of December. Of course back then I was drinking beers in rapid succession merely to forget the horrible heart break I was suffering at the time. That experience left me with a bad headache and a really bruised up knee. Tonight was different and I was quite shocked to find myself having a smashing good time. My good friend Ben even made the comment, "I'm quite suprised, David. For the first time in a long time you seem very congenial." Ed added, "Yeah... I see you finally got over all that stress that made you lose 40lbs. What did you do?"

I just smiled back at Ed and said, "I just stopped caring."

Of course that's not completely true, there's still plenty of people places and things in this world that I care about. As 5:00 AM approaches, all I can say in conclusion is "Thank you, Ed."

In this post, I will demonstrate how to make a proper joke involving Mormons.

The Curch of LDS has made a great assortment of motivational type posters. These posters are colorful and sometimes humorous reminders of the teachings of Mormonism. The posters are pretty harmless by being ridiculously hokey and corny.

Recently at the SomethingAwful Forums, a new photoshop contest has begun. The purpose of the contest is of course to take these Mormon posters from these online galleries and photoshop the hell out of them.

Here is my entry.


click here for the original image

Today I spent a over 2 and a half hours vector tracing a beautiful background cel from the first epsiode of Samurai Jack. I did this on Brian's computer with a gunked up traditional mouse and no wacom tablet in sight. Move your mouse over the image to see what the original looked like.


*click on picture for 640x480 image*

Here's an old "comic strip revision" from way back when. This time Garfield is the victim. If you don't get the reference then I suggest reading up on the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

According that little site-meter on the right, this blog has had 2,000 hits since December. Despite this website receiving a decent amount of traffic, I do not receive a lot feedback. I figure as long as people keep looking here for material, I'll do my best to keep providing that material. Of course this material will just be random images without any real content, but that's what I'm good for. With my ability to create meaningless eye candy, you'd think I would've tried to get a job working for Jerry Bruckheimer.

Soon I'll have some vector tracings of Fist of the Northstar up. Fist of the Northstar or known in Japan as "Hokuto no Ken," is an anime which no one in the United States has bothered to watch since the late 1980's. For good reason I suppose, since the show consists of a man who runs around in a post apocalyptic future and beats the living shit out of everything in his path. It's pretty terrible, but it appeals to my inner 14 year old.

Vector tracing is good exercise for someone like me, who up until recently has never done any work with vector graphics before. For years I was doing images in raster graphics on Photoshop without any cocern for that pesky little pen tool. Now that I've dipped my hands into the creative molten lava that is vector graphics, my hands have been charred with the painful but satisfying toil of manipulating curves and shapes. So for all you readers out there, email me screen caps of your favorite animated shows and I'll do my best to vector trace them into desktop sized images.

giiiultra@yahoo.com

FOOOOLISH SAMURAI

SOMETHING THIS SIMPLE SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN YOU SO LONG

I have spent a good portion of today vector tracing Aku from "Samurai Jack."



800 x 600 | 1024 x 768 | 1280 x 1024 | 1600 x 1200

ANOTHER TEST DOWN...

and many more to go, although I wouldn't say I passed the GMAT with "flying" colors. Unless by "flying" I really meant "get a shockingly average score."
What's left? GRE? Photoshop and Illustrator ACE? Maybe even an MCSE for good measure? SURE! WHY NOT?

I still have many items left on this list that I need to get rid of.

1. Build web server with John


2. Create new lay out for blog and other blogs


3. Create post about the wonders of drinking black lemonade


4. Create MAME box of own design.


5. Learn to how cook Agedashi Tofu for a pot luck


6. Sit in and use Dan McCleary's fabled computer chair


7. Defeat "Ghosts and Goblins" on the NES.


8. Finish and perfect my upcomming zombie tribute to DeChirico


9. Rewatch all the good movies from the past 2 years with Sara when she returns.


10. Study for and pass the GMAT with flying colors


11. Obtain MCSE certification


12. Get a job.


13. Go hiking in Havasupai


14. Go back to school

Just so this post isn't a complete waste, here's another twisted version of Family Circus made back in '01.

Well after studying for 4 hours straight and drinking 4 cups of coffee, I thought I'd take a little break and eat up some time.

Let's see what the crazy kids these days are doing with their quizes. Here's one for "what kind of classic movie are you?"

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

You have to wonder if these tests are accurate at all. I never thought of myself as being a thinly vieled adaptation of Heart of Darkness set in the Vietnam War. I would've prefered Dr. Strangelove.

Now let's see what type of famous world leader I could be compared to.

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

What the hell? Mother Teresa? She wasn't a leader at all! Man these tests are bullshit! Oh well, at least she looks like a zombie in that picture. I was trying to score for Stalin but sadly I failed. Let's just hope that this isn't an ill omen for tomorrow.

Sorry folks... with all this vector tracing and GMAT only one day away I haven't had much time to devote to this blog.

To make up for my lack of decent updates I will post a silly image. I can't believe it's been 3 years since I made this.

Here, I made a quick zombie in adobe illustrator.

MISSING HALVES

While working on turning my friend Brian into a Zombie, vector tracing a screen cap from Hokuto No Ken, studying for GMAT, and hanging out with friends, I've neglected this blog for a bit. Back on the 27th I read a post on this young lady's blog about the idea of soulmates.

"I believe its possible to have a soul mate, but it is exceptionally rare. I do not at all believe that everyone has one. I believe that it isn't 2 souls coming together but 2 halves. And the only way i can justify them having ever been separated is if they willingly separated. "

This post got me thinking of how to represent a person missing half of themselves. How to make the intangible self cause a visual effect on the human body when half of the intangible self leaves or is removed. The image is crude, but it gets the point across.



More importantly, how would someone respond if they woke up one day and realized that half of themself is gone. I too have felt the need to search out for something I feel like I'm missing. As if somewhere out in the world my other half is waiting for me to come and claim it. What if I unwillingly and unknowingly became separated from my other half? Perhaps my other half ran off to complete and solve someone else's missing half dilemma. Perhaps my other half simply could not stand to be near the half that is still here with me. In either case, I feel like an imcomplete person... abandoned by my other half.

For these halves to willingly separate, then an agreement had to have been made. Neither half shared the same view on what they wanted in life. They call it quits and split, but will always feel empty and incomplete while not being together. Of course they should be together, they're two halves of the same person, but for some reason these halves could not co-exist. If the halves figure out over time that they do indeed belong together, how could they find each other? I suppose that's the real challenge in life. How to overcome impssible odds and find one's self in this vast lonely world.

Trying to overcome that challenge could be made easier if one knows what they are looking for. In my case, I was considering the old fashioned "milk carton" method of finding someone.