Okay a little late for christmas but...

HERE YA GO!

MERIIIII KURISUMASUUUUUUU

Merry Christmas all. Seasons greetings to you and yours...

You know what. I think I can give the internets a gift. Don't get your hopes up but my next post may have something extra in there.

Goodnight and godspeed.

Manapul Art

A cover from his most recent run on The Flash: Secret Files

A page from his run on Adventure Comics

Renaissance

Artist Suggestions: Manapul

I decided instead of having nothing to present I could instead promote some artist's that I'm fond of on dA. Today's artist is Francis Manapul aka manapul on deviantART.

Hailing from Toronto, Canada, he is a comic artist currently working for DC. He does art for the most recent run of Action Comics, Superman/Batman, and most recently he is working on a new run in the Flash series called "The Flash: Secret Files".

He has a nicely polished style that involves using a fine-tipped brush for inking rather than a pen, with some spectacular results.

I'm not really a comic person, but this guys art - along with many others that I have discovered recently, really make me want to get back into it. If not for the stories at least for the good art. His run on the Superboy stories in Action Comics seem the most interesting to me.

I'm sorry I can't get anymore images, but I still can't figure out this image uploading thing. Maybe I can just leave the pics to another post.

manapul on deviantart

Go check him out!

Seriously though... why?

As in, now quite a bit of the time when I get a drawing craving it's digital these days, but no. I can't feed my craving.

You know with the hand problem, it wasn't actually constant. The hand would disappear and reappear whenever it wanted to, thus allowing me brief and few periods where Ps could be used. But no. That was too convenient. The computer has to completely shut down... Sigh.

At any rate. I can only do traditional sketches, at least until the comp is fixed. Which I suppose is not that bad since that's what i'm usually doing but... gaw! Even worse i think the only reason I want to draw digitally so much is because its not available to me. I only want what I suddenly and miraculously can't have.

RANTRANTRANTRAEGRAEGRAEG.

I uploaded two new vids on my youtube account jonoZOOM, making claims of putting effort into making videos. I don't believe it myself but you never know. I'm looking forward to my supposed epiphany.

If I can't even work for the things that I love then how can I work for the things that I don't love but I need. Sigh.

Emooooooooo.

Starstuff contemplating the stars

Okay everyone, it is official. The universe hates me.

Not only is my Ps continuing to cease to function, but on top of that, now my computer has stopped working... completely and utterly.

I don't know what you want from me oh great cosmos. Constantly spinning above us like some kind of infinitely complex Big Ben, only those like you can fathom your reasons. Unfortunately for my sake, I am not one of those.

I am currently typing this on my mother's laptop (I love you mawm!) and am thoroughly displeased at the current situation. GAW. SO ANGREH.

Articles of Association

Another aspect of the Big Ego mythos - My favorite and most developed - is the Articles. Around the fifth episode Chris is notified by Big Ego's on-board AI, Kel, that the Ardenne uniform based armor that BE wears is not permanently attached, and is instead can disengage and transform into a set of mecha known as the Articles.

The Articles are inspired off of the clothing in my closet. This means that not only does BE have a large collection of different armors he can choose from, but he also has a miniature army at his disposal.

In their robot forms, they are designed off of animals; existing, extinct or mythical. There are even a handful of humanoid articles as well. For example, one of the ones I am going to mention today.

BE initial armor is known as the Student Configuration. Chris can access many different armor configurations throughout the series. The Student Config is composed of 4 different articles; in descending order of awesomeness:

The Golden Scholar -

The first and most powerful humanoid article, it composes the bulk of the Student Config and is based off of a standard khaki uniform. In robot mode it is an extremely durable battle-ready robot, with golden blades that can retract into its wrists and concussion cannons that fold out of its shoulders. It has great speed, lacks flight capability but can make up for it with its powerful AI.

In Article mode he increases every aspect of BE, while disabling some of his design specifications. For example: outside of Student Config, BE has steam jets in his heels and his hands can form into guns. In the config, he can use neither but his speed and strength is heightened five-fold.

Come to think of it if I'm talking about the Articles, I should probably have talked about BE first... oh well! That's for another post.

Uh... right! Next is the Shining Navy Salamander.

It originally gave BE access to a laser array that folds out of its back, but I think I want to make it simpler. It represents the Ardenne tie, and its abilities in robot and article mode are pretty much the same.

It deals with light and flares and the like. Able to generate a beam of light so bright that, to quote Og of 'Mike, Lu and Og' fame "Point this baby at the dark side of the moon and there is no dark side!". It can also fire off flares to disrupt heat-seeking projectiles, call for help or disorient opponents during battle.

I think for a finisher, the tie can disengage and form a sword, that BE can use to slice his opponents into many pieces with the power of light. Where BE performs one slash the sword will produce 7 other equidistant slashes on the target.

Next is the Quick Brown Coyote , and it serves two purposes.

1) It represents a brown leather belt, and is the locking mechanism for keeping the now two halves of the Golden Scholar together while equipped to BE.

2) It gives BE access to two retractable rockets hidden in its thighs. These increase speed, jumping distance and can even induce temporary flight.

In robot mode it, like the others, can be used to attack with retractable claws and the like, but it is primarily used as a form of transportation for Chris. It has a third mode where it can transform into a hovercraft form just big enough for two, capable of reaching speeds of 200mph.

The last is the Rusty Rhino and it represents a pair of brown leather shoes.

Very durable in both modes, this article can topple the biggest adversaries using data supplied by an internal processor known as the MassCalc, on their size, weight, center of gravity and the force in moments required to turn them about their axis.

As shoes for BE it can produce braces from either side of each foot, that can lock into the ground ensuring stability when handling a weapon or grappling with an enemy. It is also equipped with a set of tractor treads, to give BE another manner in which to move about his terrain.

Next post I'm probably gonna talk about BE himself, but I don't want to give away too much on the web considering this information is only copyright protected through dA. I don't know how far that spreads.

Also to those who are thinking "Wow! It's a good thing you stopped yourself before 'giving away too much' and only stopped at the design specifications for the main robot.", I laugh at you. Why? Only because you may think this is a lot of info, but I'm just scratching the surface of how much I've put into this series. You haven't seen anything yet, and... your not gonna see much more. At least until I make this an actual series.

Also I need a scanner. I command the internets to buy me one immediately.

Reason for absense

Okay the problem now is that not only does my mind refuse to remember that I have to put something here at least twice a week (I mean at least), but also Photoshop is refusing to work.

I am currently faced with a problem where when I start Photoshop - I have probably complained about this before - no matter what tool I select, it always shows the hand icon for it. I've had this problem for a couple months, and I have been trying to find a remedy for the situation. Scouring many online forums I noticed that if this problem was mentioned at all, the overall consensus was that I should press Ctrl+Shift+Alt during Photoshop's startup sequence.Doing so would reset the user settings to default and hopefully solve the problem.

Say if I closed Ps with a specific colour or brush type applied. The user settings would be where this information is saved for when I come back to the program at a later date. With these deleted, even if there was some preference mistake that Photoshop generated or if this problem was a user error, going back to default should erase those changes.

After attempting this procedure the first time it seemed to have worked, so in a very unscientific manner I fell under the impression that it would work every time. It turns out that the hand literally goes away whenever it wants to, regardless of if I use Ctrl+Shift+Alt.

There will be times when I forget to do it when opening Ps but it works like a dream, and then there are other times when I pull it off perfectly and it tells me to talk to the hand. Piece of crap.

I need to reinstall it or something, like seriously. Unfortunately it was installed under most peculiar circumstances and I require assistance to do so. At any rate I am completely Ps-less indefinitely.

I do have other programs though. I mean, I have Corel DRAW which is handy but a little confusing. Also many moons ago I was introduced to an amazing program that resembles the love child between my two image-rendering-program-loves - Photoshop and MS Paint - known simply as Paint.NET. If you like the low-resolution of Paint or do a lot of Oekaki, but would love more flexibility in terms of layers and brushes and the like, then I would recommend Paint.NET.

Unfortunately I have not used Paint.NET in a while and have lost that spark. Alternatively Corel DRAW is so convoluted, whereas Ps is very pick-up-and-use. I can't go back to Paint either only because I'm too used to the freedom in brushes and layers that Ps provides. I used to be the Paint king though. I should show you some of my stuff sometime. But that's for another post.

In the mean time I may have to betray this blog's original purpose of being only for digital stuff, just so I have some content to submit. Well hey we all have to make sacrifices... some less sacrificial than others but still.