_Story_

[ QUOTE ]
just a note... sorry for the delay anyone who's been waiting on stuff from me. I've had some health issues come up. I recently had a CT Scan done and they found some nodules on my thyroid gland. I just spent a very pleasent (i.e. NOT) day yesterday getting biopsies done on all 4 of them.

Now I get to sit and chew my nails for a few days until they figure out if I have cancer or not

[/ QUOTE ]

In the meantime adding some green tea or some acai (AH-SIGH-EE) berries to your diet wouldn't hurt. Both are packed full of anti-oxidants and cancer fighting vitamins and stuff. Garlic and onions are good as well. What else is there... ? Anyway, best of luck to you. I'm not the religious sort, but I do wish you well. Live long and good health.

Hey, if you ever need anyone to talk to about anything just give me a shout.

Subarashi!

And my +favorites and +watch lists grow a little bit larger.

*sigh*

The more bookmarks I have to add the more bookmarks I have to sort through so I can find all this awesome stuff. Of course it's an even harder task to find things before I've got everything sorted. I have so many bookmarks and so many +favorites on deviantART, and . . .

*gasp*

Links? To other artists?

*much clicking and bookmarking takes place*

No! What have I done! So much awesome stuff, but so little time! On top of that . . .

*checks commission prices*

Monies! I needs more monies! Many greats artsies are possible to be happening. Many many great artsies! I must be makings more monies!

*face twitching*

Halp meez! Brains goins squishy!

*faints*

Nice work Tex.

I was going to wish you a happy birthday but I got distracted by the cute Japanese lady in Powervore's avatar.

>_<;

Not long. Not long at all.

=O.o=

There might be a slight delay on getting my first font commission out. Work has been taking up a lot of my time recently. I'm also having to separate each of the letters into their own image files as I found that I can't just import the main file. So things are taking a bit longer than I had first expected. I'll get it done as soon as time and energy allows. Just wanted to post an update here at the very least. It's payday today so at least the work has been worth the trouble. My MasterCard and cable bill will be paid up in full and up to date. Woohoo! Now there is only the Visa and my bank overdraft to go and then I'm in the clear!

I'm talking about having monies after I have bought all my chocolate for the month and have something left over to spend on other goodies like art.

<('.'&lt

^( '.' )^

(>'.')>

Kirby dances for new art monies!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And TA continues to be the RoxXor...

*watches TA wander off into the sunset*

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you're a TA clone, personally You guys both love art so much

[/ QUOTE ]

Did I hear someone mention art enthusiasts? Have you checked my dA favorites lately? I've also been starting my own collection of commissions finally. Having monies is good. Very good.

<^o^>=b

I like the female marine at the top. She turned out the best in my opinion.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I've been animated! Yay!

[/ QUOTE ]

That's all your going to say? You're not going to thank him for the really cool avatar?

[/ QUOTE ]

I was in the middle of a couple important things at the time, like figuring out payment and stuff. Though it is true that it is a really cool avatar and I should say something to express my thanks. How about this then:

Yay!

[ QUOTE ]
I've been animated! Yay!

[/ QUOTE ]

That's all your going to say? You're not going to thank him for the really cool avatar?

I'm already in contact with HugoHugo. I'm still trying to decide what to get him to draw for me though.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm still learning to focus on one thing at a time and not let my mind spaz from one thing to the next. Is there anything I can do to help me maintain a mental image long enough to get it down on paper? Should I also try developing my skills outside of this practice so that I at least have some foundation skills to work with while trying to get my mental image down on paper/canvas?

[/ QUOTE ]

I often get an idea for a picture and can see it complete and rendered in my head. Then it fades away as I start to draw. I'm at a point in my development where I can still move forward, but after the initial idea the execution becomes a real chore and I usually despise the picture by the time I'm done with it.

I would suggest you do a lot of copying, perhaps even tracing pictures, so that you can develop coordination in your hand without being burdened by the question of what to draw. This would be a good time to develop a sense of anatomy and proportion as well.

Then when you do something from your head, be open to your subconscious impulses. If your thoughts move on to other images, let them. Sit down and draw on a piece of paper. Just doodle whatever comes into your head. It doesn't matter if things overlap or are cluttered. Then put it aside for a while. When you come back, see if there are any interesting images in the page and, if so, redraw them without all the other clutter.

This 3d model started out as a box. I was just practicing doing 3d heads. As it developed it started to remind me of someone, so I continued to shape it in the ways that seemed familiar. Eventually I realized that it reminded me of Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor from Smallville) so I got some refs of the actor and made some of the details more precise. I think its one of my better 3d busts precisely because its not something I'd consciously choose to do.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've actually thought about doing the copying/tracing thing. Next paycheck I'm going to buy a large pad of printer paper and go to town on a couple of ideas. I may need to get a small lamp to to put under my small glass end table. If you'll notice from my deviantART gallery that's how I used to get my ideas onto paper originally. I'm also working my way towards a scanner and printer which will probably help with this as well. I can scan in reference materials and edit them for what I need them for in Photoshop or another program and then print them to trace with them. Hopefully this all will help my art in the long run. Thanks for the feedback. It looks like I was heading down the right path with a few of my ideas after all and knowing that someone else is suggesting the same thing makes me feel more confident in my choice.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
<a bunch of really long quotes and stuff used to be here but I shortened it down a bit>

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you use photoreference at all? That might be a way to break through. It might not be exactly the picture that you have in your mind, but it will discipline your hand/eye to a degree to work together (I always use photoreference, because my mind gets too jumpy and I lose the mental image once I start putting it on paper, because I just don't have the skills yet to translate what my mind wants onto the paper. So I make due with what I have.)

Another suggestion? When I get mentally blocked from drawing, I try another creative outlet. Generally writing. All of the characters I draw regularly for myself and my bf have rich backgrounds and intertwined stories, so I go write for a while. I don't have all of the backgrounds down on paper, so I work on that. It's a creative outlet, and gets the mental juices flowing. And I find that before long, I want to draw again. I need to express visually what I've been describing in words.

I don't know if this will help or not, but it helps me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Those are some good suggestions there for me to try my hand at. Thanks.

I've been animated! Yay!

[ QUOTE ]
That's pretty cool!!!

And yeah, go see the movie. It, amazingly, didn't suck in a most awesome manner.

[/ QUOTE ]

Transform and roll out!

I was surprised by the fact that people actually died in this movie!

[ QUOTE ]
oh, another thing... I removed redundant letters (C, F, H, X) and either replaced them with grammatical modifiers (rather than a letter for "H" I just have an icon that modifies the word as an H would) or substitute the appropriate phonetic character (eks, for X, P modified with H for "f"... K or S instead of C)

will it be possible to incorporate that? (I was thinking perhaps using the H moded letters as their "upper case" versions for those that apply... and just having "C" have the same letter as "K" would...... would that work?)

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe that is possible. As long as you let me know what letter each image is supposed to represent than that should work out fine for creating your bare bones font set. Anything that doesn't translate directly into an existing font character will be something that you'll have do do that key combo thing for using extra characters. Realistically someone could create a font that included all of the English, Greek, Cyrillic, and other Roman characters all in one font. I'm not sure how the Asian fonts work as I believe they work slightly differently, but I'm guessing you could incorporate them as well in some way.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

oh... also, I have no scanner... if I was to take a picture of them, would you still be able to use it (either by manipulating the photograph, or re-copying the letters down yourself?)

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure how much time Persona has for this, but as a backup if he can't, I'll copy them down for you if you send me the picture. Just try to make it the best quality you can

[/ QUOTE ]

Depending on how things are going in real life, I may have all the time in the world or I may be to burned out to do anything other than sleep. Fixing up something usable for me so that I don't have to do all the work is very much appreciated though.

[ QUOTE ]
Oh my god... I totally was gonna ask about this for like a week.


you're able to adjust the images around right? like place them apropriately along the base line?

oh... also, I have no scanner... if I was to take a picture of them, would you still be able to use it (either by manipulating the photograph, or re-copying the letters down yourself?)

[/ QUOTE ]

Depending on the quality of the photograph I may be able to use it as is. Otherwise additional work may be needed.

[ QUOTE ]
Ooh ooh, me, please! I am a total font freak!

What do we do -- just write the letters/symbols down, scan them and PM the link to you?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's pretty much all I need. As long as you include all of the above than you'll have everything you need for a barebones font file. Anything else is gravy.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd suggest you simply trust in two innate skills: the coordination in your arm (shoulder-elbow-wrist-fingers-drawingtool), and the coordination in your mind (desire-imagination-perception-learning). Your style will generally come from a combination of what you want to think about and what kind of strength and precision your arm has to work with.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is where part of my problem comes into play, mostly in part due to my Asperger's Syndrome I believe. This connection that most people share between these two, the body and mind doesn't work as it should with me. Even just speaking is problematic. I can say things very eloquently in my mind, but when I go to speak those words something gets lost between the mind and body (or somewhere between one part of the mind and another) and things come out worded entirely differently, awkwardly, slurred, sometimes stuttering.

It wasn't until recently that I noticed that this was happening with my art as well. I used to be really clumsy in gym but never took notice of it until I learned more about my Asperger's. I'm sort of surprised that I didn't make the connection with my artwork until recently as it's the same sort of thing.

[ QUOTE ]
This sounds like: you want to draw realism, but can't quite keep the visual in your mind while you're pushing your arm around.

I find that it's common to focus on the target in mind up until the last second before the arm starts to draw the first line, and then the target blanks out of the mind while watching the line being drawn. You end up focusing on the line, how thick it is, how the curve is coming out, all the imperfections of the surface, how it cuts through the whitespace. The goal is completely out of mind over those few seconds.

It's coming out cartoony because you're effectively focusing only on the lines being drawn, and you're good at visualizing a couple of lines on a page into a cartoon. (This is actually a good thing, but it does severely undermine attempts at realism.)

How do you turn this around? Well, it requires a lot of willpower initially, and a lot of motivation to practice. You kind of have to reject the natural tendency to focus on the line being drawn, and continually reimpose the image of what you're aiming to draw in your mind.

Working on strengthening your arm is good too, because lessening any flaws it brings to the table will also lessen mental distractions.

Unfortunately, this kind of process is slow and frustrating because it's really hard to go against one's natural mentality. But if you want to draw any particular style, you have to be able to get those images into your head and to lock them in while you draw.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that this most explains why I am having such a hard time with my art. My art has simply been just an application and evolution of lines on paper. I haven't been able to keep an image in my mind for very long while drawing. As soon as I begin drawing that image is lost and it's simply become mad scribbling to assemble anything that looks good, whether it looks anything like my initial concept or not. I wonder if this is due in part to the ADHD facet of my Asperger's or some other aspect?

I'm still learning to focus on one thing at a time and not let my mind spaz from one thing to the next. Is there anything I can do to help me maintain a mental image long enough to get it down on paper? Should I also try developing my skills outside of this practice so that I at least have some foundation skills to work with while trying to get my mental image down on paper/canvas?

As it is it's become very frustrating to draw. I get very apprehensive even just thinking of drawing again. My practice became less and less over time until it became non-existent and trying to start up again fills me with wave after wave of anxiety. I'm just noticing as I type that it seems like my mind is running on hyperdrive while my body seems only capable of running at impulse. It's like my mind is much to fast for my body to cope with. I'm finding this very frustrating, watching s the imagery in my mind evolves at amazing speeds and as the evolution of my ability to express myself not only fails to keep up but seems to be burning out and failing.

Is there anyone out there that knows of anything that might help me escape this metal trap I seem to have caught myself in and find a way that I can begin expressing myself again? I don't know if I'm ready yet to simply dive right into to the practice, practice, practice method of things at this point in time in my life. If there isn't anything that I can do in the meantime I think that I'm going to go insane as this mountain of creativity wells up inside of me without any way to express it. It feels like it's eating away at my insides, much like when people hold their anger in rather than let it out in some constructive manner. To think that creativity could be so destructive to oneself.

Want a font made from your own printing or handwriting, or have something you created using an art program that you'd love to have converted to a TTF font file instead of an image file? I figure while I'm busy working on my own fonts I can take a shot at making fonts for the people here. I have the program, so why not put it to more use?

The letters you will want to include for your font are as follows:

!"#$%&'()*+,/0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

If you want more than this you can open up your Character Map program under Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map and see what other font characters are available. I can also create custom symbols outside of the normal set. So any symbols, icons, glyphs, small clipart smaples and such would work. So this would mean you could include a signature stamp in your font for use in your artwork as a signature or watermark. If you have any other ideas then please feel free to suggest them.

One final note - everything has to be submitted as solid lineart. I'm not sure how well the program will handle shading or gradients. Everything you want in your graphic should be in solid black. Everything else you should leave empty.