Odds and Sods

The end of the month is rapidly approaching, as is the end of the year, and the end of the decade.  Madness.  So, before this year becomes next year I though I ought to do a final catchup post in 2010 so I enter 2011 with a fresh slate as it were.  Some of these have been floating around since November, a couple I drew just yesterday, but they're all things I had meant to post and either couldn't find the time to post them, or weren't worth a post of their own.  There's some good stuff within, but also some stuff that'll make you wonder why I bother (Made me wonder, I can tell you).  This might be a long one, so you might want to go to the loo while you can... All done?  Good, on with the show then:

Full of Christmas...

There's a little tab in Blogger labeled "Stats".  It's a fascinating button and gives all sorts of anonymous info on who's reading the blog, and when, and where (very roughly speaking - I don't have your address - well, yes, I have your's, but that's because I'm related to you, but I don't have your's, because I'm not...).  Anyway, it does show that my Wife is no longer the only person who reads the blog, and it also shows that the blog is surprisingly popular in Poland and Russia.  It can also show where the hits from the blog are coming from, and while most of them make sense (A Google search for things related to uDraw will often get you here eventually) some of them don't.  One of them is a renovation contractor in Russia (I had to use Google's translator to find that out, and the other is a porn site.  I've been to both (hey, I'm no prude, I just want to know why I'm linked to from a porn site) and can't find any logical reason why they'd be leading back to me.  It's very odd, but I shan't complain; a hit is a hit no matter where it comes from :).  Anyway, this is all beside the point!  I just wanted to get it off my chest that I find this fascinating (Especially since my only commenter's are all people I know personally).  Back on topic!

Shortly after December began I decided I should do Wintery/Christmasy speed paints.  Somewhere along the line these ceased to be particularly fast, so they ceased being speed paints and became Christmas-Paints instead.  Some of them worked out reasonably well, others were dreadful, as you shall see momentarily.

What I'm Thankful For

I am not an American. You may have gathered this by now. I do however reside in the US (legally), and my wife is American through and through. This means I now celebrate Thanksgiving, although celebrate is perhaps the wrong word for it. You see, where I'm from there is no such thing, and since I haven't grown up with it it isn't a big deal to me. I enjoy it, but the traditions are not my traditions, they're somebody else's and I'm just playing along (I like it, I just don't really feel part of it)

Yes, it's time for the Thanksgiving post, almost a month late. I have no excuses for the delay, or the relative dearth of imagery in this post, but I did feel it prudent to post about Thanksgiving before it was time to post about Christmas.

...uDraw A Crowd

For the first part of this story see this post. I split it into two for the sake of my sanity. Brief recap though: Volunteered to do a uDraw demonstration at an event at the local Children's Science Museum (The Orpheum), and was asked to do art for the poster. We pick up around the day of the event...

Up until the day before I was under the impression that we'd be showing the kids how to use the tablet and software, maybe walking them through colouring one of the built in pictures (yes, uDraw has a built in colouring book mode - something that proved extremely popular at the event). I was wrong though; while most of the volunteers did do exactly this, myself and another Volition artist (Jose) were to be doing a live demo of the software.

uDraw A Poster...

Today's lame pun post title is brought to you by the letter U and the number 500.

Several weeks ago someone thought it would be a great idea to do a cross promotion between the local Children's Science Museum and the local video game studio (where I work).  We wouldn't be promoting the studio's games though - those would be utterly unsuitable for a children's museum, rather we would be showing off the uDraw tablet which is produced by our parent company (as has been mentioned before).  This isn't sarcasm by the way, it really was a great idea.  Give away some goodies, give the local museum and the new tech some exposure and generally have a great time.

So, somewhere around the end of November there was a general call to arms for volunteers, and since I'd been using the uDraw for a bit already I felt duty bound to do so, and said as much in my response.

Playing Catch Up

I know, I'm terrible. I should update far more often than I have been. Let's just move on and pretend I'm updating regularly shall we? No? Oh OK, I can deal with that. What can I say, the new Assassin's Creed is pretty engrossing.

Actually today's post does have a little to do with catching up in general. I realised I hadn't posted any good/bad general sketching in... 3 months? Yeah, I think that's right. So this is a big catch up.  To save time I just threw the best and worst of the last three months into one image(With some exceptions that were prep sketches for things that may still happen).