i had such a frustrating experience trying to post that site. i tried at least 3 different ‘free’ webhosting sites, and none of them worked out. whether it was the pages were too big, the pictures were too big, or the bandwidth was too small- after i posted it on geocities, i wasn’t even able to look through it because apparently i had exceeded my bandwidth transfer for the hour!

eventually i spoke to my brother, who gave me some space on his shaw account. he lives in alberta though, so it wasn’t like i could run over there with my info stick and transfer everything over. SO i got to learn how to use an FTP site as well.

quite an experience.

does it seem like the dictionary is trying to be cooler or something?

i found this article on msn.ca today. it reminded me a lot of those bulky virtual reality head sets from ages ago.

what i found curious is that there was no discussion on the physical impact. aren’t you supposed to sit a few feet away from the tv screen? i’d think it would be fairly straining on the old eyeballs…

this site is pretty cool. they take videos of people’s actions and turn them into digitally animated images. the demo is neat, and i was really impressed by the way the mouth moved. one thing i noticed though, no forehead wrinkles! and that made a huge difference.

it’s funny how technology doesn’t seem to be capable of capturing every little detail that gets communication across that much better in real life.

holy smokes.

i just spent about 3 hours doing another comic. i thought i had a process down for it this time, but when i got to the last 2 panels i realized i hadn’t made enough copies of the background. which meant i had to improvise, because i didn’t remember what colour the wall was, or exactly how i did the eyes on the guys, so on and so forth. i was also surprised by how frustrating it is transferring the medium over. when i draw on paper with a pencil, i can easily erase just one thing. the lines aren’t blurry. it’s easier to get the eyes level, or to change the shape of the eyebrows, or to draw the hands. i used to have one of those pads with a pencil instead of a mouse. i wonder if that’s still kicking around somewhere…

it was a lot easier than the first one though. i think i’m getting the hang of it. the next one will probably go a lot smoother too. but i think i will wait a little. 3 hours is a long time to be hunched over photoshop.

http://technology.sympatico.msn.cbc.ca/Music+file+sharers+also+buy+more+CDs+report+says/NewsandOpinions/ContentPosting.aspx?isfa=1&newsitemid=tech-file-sharing&feedname=CBC-TECH-SCIENCE&show=False&number=0&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc

i don’t really trust everything i find on the msnbc websites, but i thought it was pretty interesting nonetheless.

second, the other day i was having breakfast at a coffee shop and was flicking through the province (another source i don’t really trust), and started looking at the ads and their placements. last year and the year before i took the history of journalism and the public relations media studies classes, and a lot of what we talked about had to do with the advertisers in newspapers. being a publishing student as well, i have a fairly decent understanding on the relationships between advertisers and publishers. what i found really interesting was how in this paper it didn’t seem like anyone had taken a look at where the ads were. on one page there was an article about a flooding in mexico or california or somewhere (sorry, memory of a goldfish). anyways, directly under the article, that included a picture of people walking through the streets, holding their belongings over there heads, was a caption talking about people losing their homes. and directly under that caption was an ad for an interior design school. and directly next to that, was an ad for the (insert store here) home furnishing sale. i felt a little embarassed. seriously, how rude is that?

r

i’ve been trying to think of different ways to present this project. i’m seriously considering moving all of the comics to photoshop and then making a very simple website. i don’t want the focus to be on the webpage- i’ve built enough of those and know that i can make them fairly well. although i absolutely adore photoshop, the majority of my time spent on it has been taking other photos and playing with the filters, or cutting and pasting. making this comic over the past two days has forced me to use more tools than i have before. i also need to work on the sizing…

i’m going to try and attach the jpg images that i’ve done….

this website has so much cool art on it. but the layout is so frustrating. i can’t figure out how to view the gallery in full because when you click on the picture to move it, it fades. and then when you click on it again to set it, you still can’t see the whole thing. didn’t anyone check this out before they published the page?

has anyone ever experienced this? doug, do you have any idea why it would burn like that? i didn’t think it was even possible.

besides having absolutely beautiful cinematography, and a wickedly warped story, i was really really impressed with the way it was presented.

in the beginning of the movie there is a narrator that explains the situation and circumstance of the main character. i didn’t notice exactly when, but at some point in time the action picks up and the narrator disappears. but then, near the end of the movie, he coems back in. what i really liked about that was how it gave such a fairy-tale feel to it.

anyways, twisted but beautiful. i recommend it.