[ ever failed. ]

twitterthecomic: Last question.Obama what about womens...

Sat, 04 May 2013 17:34:15 -0400

Last question.Obama what about womens rights?Wo-I got this *Biden steps in* women have titys *puts on shades* I love titys, we love titys

— Pajama BenLaden (@PajamaBenLaden)

April 9, 2013

HAHAHAHAA wat.

mugrumblr: This guy croons outside my dorm every night. We get...

Thu, 02 May 2013 18:13:37 -0400

mugrumblr:

This guy croons outside my dorm every night. We get it bro, chicks dig guitars.

It’s like Bowles serenading Stern every Thursday night!

(Except I’ve never seen that in action.)

I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet

Thu, 02 May 2013 05:29:22 -0400

I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet:

I was wrong. One year ago I left the internet. I thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was “corrupting my soul.” It’s a been a year now since I…

wow.

I AM SHIRLEY HEAR ME ROOOARRR <3 Credit goes to the most...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 02:42:39 -0400

I AM SHIRLEY HEAR ME ROOOARRR <3

Credit goes to the most amazing sleepypandie~

"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible..."

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:55:35 -0400

“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

- Charles R. Swindoll

The Mighty Pencil Guide To Figurative Drawing!

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:47:30 -0400

themightypencil:

This year I’ve been on a bit of a quest to improve my figurative drawing, most of my own illustration work (commercial and personal) usually involves landscapes and animals, so it’s an area I’ve not really moved around in much before. So I asked for some tips from a few of my insanely talented illustrator friends, who are all masters of figurative illustration in one way or another. I’ve collected together some of the best tips for anyone else out there, whether you’re starting out in the illustration world or (like me) fancy evolving your subject matter a bit into the world of figurative illustration!

~ Ben O’Brien

Andrew Lyons - “I often look at photo reference when I’m getting warmed-up, stock photographs, or a few Photo Booth shots of myself, and draw from them. Shadows really make the difference for me and turn a fairly plain looking figure into something much more interesting. The pose you choose is everything, some will look good or interesting when you draw them and others just lack any impact or interest. I always illustrate figures first then build my backgrounds around them, but this process could depend on the illustration style.

I tell a story primarily through the use of the figures and their body language. In order to get the right references to work from I sometimes act out scenes myself in front of the camera, making expressions and trying to use certain poses to carry the meaning of the illustration. I tend to break up my illustrations into a kind of collage of different elements, with each different ‘panel’ telling a different part of a story, a bit like the way a comic strip works, except my way of doing it is a lot less organised!”

Check out Andrew’s portfolio!

Follow Andrew on Twitter!

Gareth Axford - “I approach drawing figures from an animator’s perspective, one very important lesson to be learned from classic animation is the importance of a strong silhouette. If you can tell what a character is doing or how they are feeling just from their outline then the image is much easier to ‘read’.

A strong silhouette should go hand in hand with a clear line of action (as defined by the mighty Preston Blair, ‘An imaginary line extending thru the main action of a figure’). If you start with the line and build your figure from there you should find your drawings have a lot more dynamism, weight and movement in them. One important thing to remember about the line of action is that is should never be straight or squiggly, one simple arc (or two separate arcs if necessary – one for the body and one for the arms) is all it should take to help you pose your figure – too straight and your character will seem stilted and stiff, too wiggly and you lose any force or dynamism.”

Check out Gareth’s portfolio!

Follow Gareth on Twitter!

Marc Aspinall - “Getting figures right takes a lot of practice; and even then there’s always tweaks, ways to improve. Currently I’ve been using an 18” articulated Spiderman figure as reference, shooting him in different positions, pertaining to my working sketch; it’s helped my figurative work a lot, placing those awkward angles and solving foreshortening woes. But adding soul and character to figures isn’t coming from a plastic figure, that comes from my mind. I find with most of my work I tend to overshoot poses slightly, exaggerate expressions; not caricaturing but a halfway between realistic and those of Sasek, Kiraz etc to ensure a lively illustration and something that’s easy to read. A lot can be said with the hands too; they can direct the narrative even; if the face isn’t visible.”

Check out Marc’s portfolio!

Follow Marc on Twitter!

Steve Antony - “Carry a small sketchbook with you and draw people from observation. Don’t think about styles or how it should relate to your portfolio, just draw with an open mind and try to capture movement without worrying too much about anatomy. For that reason I advise against photo references, but if you can’t get out and draw, then use video as reference. Try drawing family and friends when they’re not looking. I have heaps of sketchbooks of people and it really has helped me become more confident with how I render people into final work. Observational drawing all the way, I say. Once you start thinking ‘how do ‘I’ draw people?’ it’s easy to fall into a trap where your drawings are contrived. I find this approach works for pretty much anything. It’s all about confidence and ‘knowing’ what it is you are drawing. By building up a good sketchbook of observations you are in essence creating a vocabulary of marks that will inform your work.”

Follow Steve on Twitter!

David Cousens - “It’s important to always consider what your characters are feeling when you’re drawing them. Give them a story, even if they’re in the background. Once you’ve chosen your story, before drawing anything, quickly act the poses out in front of a mirror. There are a whole manner of things that you won’t consider until you try to do it (humans shift their weight in very unique ways depending n their mood/clothing/environment). Take a photo as reference. Using photo reference is good, but do it with restraint as images that are slavishly copied from reference look a little flat, be informed by your reference but not limited by it. Additionally, drawings of people are best exaggerated like performers do on a stage, the exaggeration helps the audience read what’s going on and offer more than simple photography can.”

Check out David’s portfolio!

Follow David on Twitter!

To keep up with more super illustration advice and news, follow us on Twitter and check out TheMightyPencil.com!

This is what happens when I don’t have Microsoft Word on...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:21:24 -0400

This is what happens when I don’t have Microsoft Word on my laptop, and use Illustrator to write a letter instead…

(Pardon any grammatical mistakes, it was late when I did this.)

this is how people react to me.

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 23:31:01 -0400

this is how people react to me.

Photo

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:05:44 -0400

I look at others’ beautiful art, and I am filled with joy and a dash of jealousy. ”I...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 01:02:59 -0400

I look at others’ beautiful art, and I am filled with joy and a dash of jealousy. ”I can do that too”, I try to convince myself.

But I don’t.

Because I am filled with fear upon fear, creeping through my being from the edges - that I can’t create. That I can’t create beauty that I love, that I am incapable. I am limited by my fear of my limit, and I haven’t broken out.

But goddamn, I want to break out.

Pictures fill my brain, light and airy and beautiful only in my brain, because I am too afraid. Too afraid that when the paint spills onto the paper it will cease to be beautiful. That I have held my own expectations too high, and yet again I will disappoint myself. That others will tell me I have good skill, but that is all I ever have - good skill. But no emotion because I am too afraid to let the love spill into the ink and bleed into the edges of the paper and the rest of my being.

It’s painful.

But I yearn and yearn, yearn to one day create a piece I can love. I yearn so much that it’s painful. ”Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will sketch that piece that’s been infesting my mind, I will give color to my creation and I will love it.”

But tomorrow never comes.

Dear Daniel, Thank you very much for sending me Flat Stanley, I...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:49:24 -0400

Flat Stanley attending a meeting with me

Flat Stanley code reviewing my work.

Dear Daniel,

Thank you very much for sending me Flat Stanley, I feel honored and excited about the adventures we will embark on together!

Unfortunately, Stanley arrived in my mail this Tuesday morning, which means I could only take him to work with me. He seemed to enjoy it though, and even sat in a meeting with me. He told me he particularly liked the Mac-mini as his seat, since it was quite a good height for him. (Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him that a Mac-mini is really a computer, and not a chair. I didn’t want to burst his bubble so early in the morning.)

I also showed Flat Stanley around the office, which he agreed is a pretty cool place to work. I work at a company in San Francisco as a “software engineer”, which in my case is really just a fancy term for “I make pretty things on the web”. Not all software engineers do that though, mind you. I promised him that I would take him around the fun places in our office tomorrow, and he seemed pretty excited, but today he just stayed with me at my desk and watched me code. He even pair programmed with me a little bit, which is just programmer-speak for “he watched my back and made sure I didn’t have horrendous bugs”. Bugs are what causes a program to crash. Isn’t computer-lingo weird?

Alright, Stanley and I are off to bed - we’re exhausted! More to come tomorrow.

Sincerely,
Shirley

April 2nd, 2013

This morning, I got the most adorable package from my...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:24:00 -0400

This morning, I got the most adorable package from my seven-year-old cousin. Daniel’s a second-grader over in Maryland, and as a school assignment, he was told to mail his new friend Flat Stanley to any friend or family. He decided to send Flat Stanley to me, all the way in San Francisco, California (he apparently mailed this March 23rd, and I just got it today, April 2nd - Flat Stanley has indeed traveled a long and arduous way).

I am to take him around as I would any friend or relative visiting me, and to send him back by the end of the month with a detailed account of our journeys together. I already have exciting plans (exciting by my standards, at least) bubbling in mind; I plan on taking him to my favorite cafes, tea houses, brunch places (my life revolves around food), and perhaps even Golden Gate Bridge and Park if he’s lucky and I’m not lazy. I may even take this opportunity to go to some museums I’ve been eyeing, and help Flat Stanley get some souvenirs. I will of course take him over to UC Berkeley, and fill him with Cal pride, and send him back with Daniel-sized schwag (and some for his older brother Max).

I only hope that the wind won’t blow Flat Stanley away on some of these adventures.

not sure how i feel about the typeface…

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 02:49:38 -0400

not sure how i feel about the typeface…

My curious wading into computer memory

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:58:00 -0400

I get lots of interesting links while at work, sent from friends and coworkers, and I never have the time to read them while at work. They kind of just sit in a tab at the top of my browser, and some of them have been there for months. When I get home, work is the last thing I want to think about, and so by association, the interesting links I received fade into the black hole of my mind.

But there are certain things that I do want to learn about, so in an attempt to have the links persist into my personal life, I have documented them here in this tumblr post.

My latest curiosity has taken me into the realm of memory, of stacks and heaps. I slept through majority of these topics in school, so now I’m left with only a fuzzy impression of how they work.

And now that my full-time job is front-end web development, I rarely have to even concern myself with memory management. But on occasion, I’ll pause in my code and think, if I create these three instances of this object, what’s the impact of that on performance? And if these objects become large and plenty enough, will it crash my app? What’s the threshold at which my browser of choice will completely overtake my laptop’s memory? Highly unlikely occurrences with very low probability, but they’re fun musings.

So here I present, the first four links to satisfy my curiosity - that hopefully, by the end of, I can answer those questions above and a myriad more.

Stackoverflow: what and where are the stack and heap?

Why is heap allocation slow?

High Performance Networking in Google Chrome

What every programmer should know about memory

Understanding Java Heap Space

omgahhh adorbs <3

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 18:44:53 -0500

omgahhh adorbs <3

lizclimo: what a nice guy. awww fwends <3

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 17:09:05 -0500

lizclimo:

what a nice guy.

awww fwends <3

sweeetest moment ♥

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 02:21:03 -0500

sweeetest moment ♥

"If you want to do something big, something daring and grand and huge, then don’t automatically shrug..."

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:23:15 -0500

“If you want to do something big, something daring and grand and huge, then don’t automatically shrug and assume that you’re too young, too old, too weak, too busy, too pour, too frazzled, or too small. Learn, persevere, sweat. Take the time to figure out how to do it correctly, then go to it with a giant spirit of adventure and enjoy the climb.”

- Patricia Ellis Herr, Up: A Mother and Daughter’s Peakbacking Adventure (via rainydaysandblankets)

Photo

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 23:31:15 -0500

Photo

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 01:40:07 -0500