President Firstlady
So the whole Middle East is bursting into flame, the Mid West is exploding in union thuggery, public broadcasting is disappearing up its own asshole, they’re holding hearings on radicalized Islam on Capitol Hill…ummm…two wars, economy in meltdown, and the President of the United States is holding a two day summit on…bullies?!
Are you fucking kidding me?
Is there no-one in his entourage who gets how big the office is, and how small this makes him look? This is the kind of pointless frippery First Ladies wile away their tenure on. He looked more presidential pardoning the freaking turkey last year.
All politics aside, this is not good. These are serious times; an unserious president puts the whole West in danger.
March 11, 2011 — 12:42 am
Comments: 29
Fact check? My ass!
I swear to god somebody in my Twitter stream or a blog or Drudge or something said today was the anniversary of the founding of the GOP. So I did this stupid drawing, and then I went to authenticate the story. As far as I can tell, February 28 has no significance what-so-ever to the Republican Party.
Shit.
Screw it, I’m running with it anyway. This thing has Monday written all over it.
First person that says “measure twice, cut once” — I’ma pop you one.
February 28, 2011 — 11:31 pm
Comments: 23
A-HEM!
Dear Koch brothers,
Like my hat? Yeah, because…ummm…it’s empty.
I’ve been reading all over the blogosphere lately how you guys have bankrolled this “Tea Party” stuff and I’m just wondering — where’s mine?
I’ve got this wingnut schtick down. Really. Really, really good.
Do you not know where to send the check or something? Because my email addy is right there in the header. Just drop me a line; we can work it out.
See, if this gig doesn’t start paying off soon, I’m going to have to slide on over to the progressives. Because we all know they’re actually right about stuff.
Hey! Am I right?
The only reason anyone would be a conservative is for dough. Or because Sarah Palin says it’s what Jesus would do.
So, c’mon guys, pony up! Fair’s fair! I’m really hurting over here.
If the Mossad ever stops buying favorable blog copy, I’m screwed.
Love,
Stoaty Weasel
February 25, 2011 — 11:45 pm
Comments: 27
You musta beena beautiful baby…
Yeah. Sorry to do this to you for a second day, but I just cannot get enough of Moammar Kaddafi’s face. He looks like he’s carved out of a giant cube of decomposing luncheon meat.
Pimiento loaf, perhaps.
February 24, 2011 — 12:09 am
Comments: 20
I see Moammar dressed himself today
Seriously, world? How have we all, collectively, let this homicidal nutcake run around loose all these years?
When I saw this, all I could think of was this.
February 22, 2011 — 7:16 pm
Comments: 23
Pixar, here I come!
So, Nina asked me what I could do with all this modeling stuff. Well, Miss Smarty, I can make a shiny disembodied gray chicken head float around and chew gum. NOW don’t you feel silly for asking?
Actually, the alert viewer will observe that he’s not really chewing. His bottom jaw has become dislocated and is flying around randomly inside his skull. Darn you, learning curve! Darn you to heck!
Have a good weekend, y’all.
February 18, 2011 — 10:57 pm
Comments: 47
MOAR FREE TOY!
Oh. My. God. This is so turbly, turbly fun to play with.
Pixologic, the people behind the astonishing but pricey Zbrush, offer a free tool called Sculptris (download link is at the bottom of the first post).
Fire it up, and there’s a big gray ball in the middle of the screen. You use your mouse to poke it and pull it and crease it and smooth it until it looks the way you want it to. Then you can output a mesh for use in other programs.
It takes about two seconds to learn the interface (start with D for draw, X to toggle whether you’re poking or pulling, [ and ] to make your brushes bigger or smaller, and Alt-LeftMouse to rotate your viewpoint).
Even if there’s not an artistic bone in your body, I bet you’ll enjoy mashing on this big ol’ digital ball of Play Doh. G’wan, it’s free!
Thanks to gogman for the recommendation. Sorry for all the artardalation this week. When I’ve got new toys, there’s NO getting anything sensible out of me.
February 16, 2011 — 11:06 pm
Comments: 10
Better, faster, stronger…
Oof! Spent my day fiddling around with tutorials. I hate tutorials, but I am wise enough to know the quickest way out of tutorials is through them.
Messiah:studio’s gamble paid off and I get my software. Turns out, though, everything I wanted to do I could do with the totally free Blender. Oh, well. More toys.
And just because this is the only thing going on in my head at the moment, here are the components of a 3D animation program, from the ground up:
Modeling — where you take spheres and cubes and planes and stick them together, cut pieces off and wiggle their bits around until they look like something. Here’s where you get to build materials, too — red or blue, shiny or knobbly — and apply them to your thingamabobs.
Shiny. I like shiny.
Then you set up the scene: lights, cameras, backgrounds, atmospherics (fog and so on). I love this part.
The renderer is the bit that makes a picture out of all this, the under-the-hood part. I suspect most modern renderers are pretty good, but this used to be the differences between the good stuff and the not-so-good stuff: whether the rendering engine could make things like glass and water look realistic and take proper reflections. If you have a lot of lights and shiny mirrors in your scene, it can make the render very, very slow — and there are thirty renders for every second of animation.
The animation module is where you make your things do stuff. This includes rigging — building skeletons inside your thingies to help them move right — and things like hair dynamics (check out this dude in the middle of the page and imagine trying to animate that without some kind of automation). Rigging and modeling the movement of soft things like falling drapery is apparently what messiah excels at.
Anyhoo, it’s a hell of a process. I’m not planning on trying to do anything for reals with it. Lord knows I wouldn’t want to run the risk of doing anything practical or lucrative with my time.
I just really, really like shiny.
February 15, 2011 — 11:47 pm
Comments: 27
Kung Hei Fat Choi, y’all
It’s Chinese New Year — the Year of the Rabbit — though I’ve read that ‘rabbit’ should really be translated as ‘hare.’
Phun Phact: rabbits are not indigenous to the UK. They were brought here by the Romans for food (as was the ground elder that is utterly pwning my garden. Fucking Romans).
The hare, however, is native and fairly common around these parts. We narrowly missed hitting one that darted into the road in front of us one dark and stormy night. Big, lean, rangy beasts — almost dog-like.
Anyoo, Won Hung Lo!
February 4, 2011 — 12:02 am
Comments: 16
No post. Sulking.
Meh. We had a power outage and lost the artwork for tonight’s post (it wasn’t great, but you don’t know that). Then my server fell over and waved its legs in the air for a while.
Not my night. No post. Drink now.
January 21, 2011 — 12:11 am
Comments: 22