Video Intro

As usual I forget about my blog until I realize I actually have one. And with my current class for Game Design on assignment was to make a blog and upload a video. This is that assignment, using my current blog which I haven't updated in more than nine months (and no, there is no child). Here is a just a video introducing everyone to my blog and you get to see my ugly mug. I took this small video while at my overnight job, which I have been doing for the past 14 months now. I will be posting more content very soon and hope y'all enjoy it.

Trying To Get Back

Damn, it has been awhile since I've posted anything. Well I had two classes for the Summer Semester here at Florida State. I even ended with a job as Night Staff for Housing here, the hours aren't the greatest (usually 10pm-7am the next day). But the jobs not bad, and hopefully once the Fall Semester starts I'll be able to utilize it and do majority of my homework there.

Ok, now to some new art. I took Digital Photography this summer, I even had to go and buy a DSLR. I used to have a film SLR (Single Lens Reflex) Camera back when I was in Community College doing Film Photography. So I kinda had an idea about aperture, shutter speed, ISO and all that knowhow when it came to cameras. For my final project, I took night shots of various graffiti I found around Tallahassee, most of if was centered around Gaines Street since it's the art venue area of Tally.

Most of them are long exposure (10-20 secs shutter speed) and messing around with a flashlight since some of the areas had little to no light around them. Either way, I'll poste them up and you can decide if you like them or not.

Also, I'm attempting to open up a Etsy store to sell some of my previous work. So if want a one of kind "Geno" hanging at your house let me know. I'll post the site up soon so you can check it out and help me pay for some bills (i.e.. booze).

Desk Cell Shade Attempt

Good Morning and Happy Monday Everybody!

Well I'm still on a roll of inspiration right now and woke up this morning, had my coffee and multigrain waffle and decided to work on something today. I took a photo of my desk and decided to mess around with an attempt to give it a cell shade effect. At first I was looking up a tutorial on how to give a photo a retro color look and from there I thought, hmm what if I add some more intensity to the outlines and try something else. I created a copy of the background and made an outline of the objects on the desk.  I'm sure it's not the best but I figured it turned out alright with doing it under an hour. Enjoy and tell me what you think. I will post the original photo and the finished result. I think I could have brought out the outlines a little more and noticed the blues turned green but I don't mind it. Now off to class!

The original photo

The end result

It's been awhile

Well I started the summer semester at Florida State University back in May and haven't really been working on either art or photography.  Plus my currrent laptop doesn't have Photoshop installed but really I'm just making excuses and I am sorry. Awhile back I found some photos of my mom when she was a young woman and a little girl, they have some deep scratches and I figured I would attempt to restore them for her. I completely forgot about them and then I had to restore my OS on my desktop and didnt finish the work. Well I found out that one of libraries at FSU has photoshop installed so today I decided to finish one of them up.  I didnt' really mess too much with the levels or contrast but I used the hell out of the clone stamp to get rid of the scratches.  If you can see where I fixed them then you truly are a photoshop master and you must teach me your ways, but hopefully for the untrained eye it will be difficult to see. I have to find the original photo so people can see the work I've done but for now I will showcase the finished work. I do hope to get back to blogging and hopefully in the future I can buy a new laptop and the new CS suite of Adobe. If you are feeling generous and want to donate to my cause, please let me know.

My momma when she was little girl.

Guh?!

This is a quick doodle I did today while eating lunch at Panera Bread with my momma. We actually woke up early this morning since we both signed up for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K Marathon being held today in our area.  We walked the 5k and did ok, I don't run in marathons simply because I can't run. Maybe in the future it is one of those things I would like to do and hopefully this gives me a little bit more motivation to start walking/ jogging.  I have started going to the gym, there is one close by to my house which I will usually walk to or ride my bike. Cardio is just one of those things I hate doing, lifting weights is not a big deal for me. I actually have quite some more photos I will be posting up during the week, they are from my nephews 8th birthday party. But for today you get a quick doodle done in a red sharpie while eating at Panera. I actually left the napkin there and wonder if anybody threw it out or kept it. Should have put my friggin signature on it now that I think about it. Oh well.

MegaCon 2012

Hello folks,

Sorry I wasn't able to post up anything last weekend. I went to Orlando, FL to attend MegaCon and stayed the whole weekend. It was a lot of fun and hanged out with friends.  Since I drove over there it took me about 3 1/2 hours to get there.  I took the scenic route up on SR 27 and passed through towns such as Lake Placid, Sebring and Winter Haven. Also it was a lot quicker than taking I-75 then go through I-4.  Also thankfully this year the traffic wasn't so bad getting into and getting out of Orlando when I left on Sunday.  I stayed at the same Hotel I stayed at last year, The Rosen Center.  It is a really nice hotel and thankfully I got a great deal and stayed the two nights for the price of one.  I arrived Friday and was able to check in right away which is good since I didn't want to unpack all my stuff later.  Another benefit of staying at the Rosen Center is that it is right across from the Orange County Convention Center where MegaCon was being held. The hotel actually had a bridge to walk into the Con which made it really convenient.  Now for those of you who don't know what MegaCon is it is a convention that showcases comics, anime, games and sci-fi. Various comic artists and stars from Sci-Fi and anime attend for this event.  They also have various vendors and panels, gaming posts and tons of all things that celebrate the geek world. Last year was the first time I ever intended mainly because Stan Lee was the the guest of honor and I had to meet him. Stan was also the Guest of Honor this year which is always exciting to meet him.  Also this year had Tom Felton who played Draco Malfory in the Harry Potter films and various celebrities.  Famous comic artists consisted of people like J. Scott Campbell, David Finch, and many others that would take too long to name.

My main goal for this year's MegaCon was to get various comics autographed by their respected artists. My backpack was filled with comics from George Perez, Arthur Suydam, David Finch and others.  I took with me a sketch pad as well to get autographs from artists who I didn't have comics for them to sign and also get sketches from anybody willing to draw in it. Also I picked up some dice that I needed since I've been playing some RPG table top games with my friends. I've felt weird that I didn't have my own dice and had to be borrowing from them so now I have my own. I also did attempt to cosplay this year at the Arkham Madness After-party and failed somewhat.  My character was to be The Penguin but the nose I had kept falling off since the adhesive didn't work. But as see that as a learning experience and know what to work on in case I want to get more serious about dressing up for next year.

The highlight of my trip would definitely have to be hanging out with Matt Senreich the Co-Creator of Robot Chicken and Zeb Wells who writes for Robot Chicken along with various Spider-Man books and Carnage USA.  I talked with them earlier that day on Saturday at the convention and had Mr. Wells sign my Issue #1 of Carnage USA.  That night I went out to the After-Party with my friends Brand and Mandy, and in the party ran into my friends from home John, Chris, Drake and Rollie (sorry if I spelled your name wrong). As we are hanging out Matt actually was next to us and recognized me from the convention earlier that day.  We got to talking and just hanging out with them which was really cool. Just talking to them and joking was great and I am still currently on that high for right now. The only thing I regret is not taking a photo with them but at least there were numerous witness, although some may not be considered reliable.

The low-point of the weekend would have to be me running about the convention floor trying to get a good photo of Stan Lee.  I was crazed like some sort of teenage groupie crying over the latest pop sensation, it was pretty bad.  But other than that I had a great time, bought some pieces of art and got to talk with some cool artists and celebrities.  Hanged out with friends and had a really good time.  Hopefully I will be able to attend next year but since I will be at Tallahassee next year I'm not sure how it will happen, I'll worry about that when the time comes. I also posted links to the photos I took from my facebook and flickr page.

Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thabmg60/sets/72157629394368035/


http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.223842814378481.48552.100002582929325&type=3&l=c1599cc572

Imagination

Found another one of my burn in photos that I created. This one I exposed the negative of the manufacturing plant, then I had a cut out stencil of a Godzilla sticker I found online and placed it over the photo paper before placing it in the developing solution.  I lowered the exposure light and used some tools so that it would come out lighter than the photo underneath this technique that I used is called dodging and burning.  This plant facility is actually right by where I live and pass by it anytime I head out somewhere. I always imagine in my mind Godzilla smashing though it like in the old movies.  The only draw back was there are water spots from the developing solution that stayed on but sometimes I think that actually adds to the photo and gives it a retro/ classic feel to it.

Burn in Photo I created

Ok I finally found one of my pieces I did for my Photography II class in Edison State College last year.  The project we were working on was to do burn in/ dodging images onto another photo. This piece is part of the work I did, the stencil and graffiti are not part of the original photo. I exposed the negative of the wall onto the photo paper first, then I placed a stencil I created on top of it and then exposed light on top of that stencil. When I put the photo paper into the developer this is the result. I remember working on this and figuring out how I can pull this off with out over exposing the background. Because if I just placed the stencil and leave the rest of the area blank, the light would cause the rest of the photo to go dark. So what I did is place the stencil on top of a blank photo paper then exposed that to light, devloped it and this became my stencil.

This is the stencil that I created so you get an idea of what I'm talking about, I designed it to be backwards so I could just lay it on top of the already exposed photo paper and the letters would come out in the correct order and not backwards. I think it worked our really well since the only part that was exposed whas the white areas and kept the rest of the background photo intact. 

Ever since watching the documentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop", I have been infatuated with  Street Art.  I've always like graffiti but the street art shows a side that people don't always get to experience.  Yes I do know that vandalism is a crime and don't reccomend or encourage it.  This is my "safe" version of street art/ graffiti.

The location of the wall is actually at Coconut Point Mall in Estero, FL.  It is behind the store called GQ'z or Men's Palace. If you go there you will see that this stencil isn't there or any signs of being painted over in case you don't believe me.

I have some more photos that I attempted with the burning and dodging techniques that I will attempt to place later on during the month. I found making these type of photos to be rather difficult and exciting to do since I was working with film photography and didn't use photoshop or any other type of editing software to creat the photos. If I could ever get back into a film studio I would do more of things like this.

Another photo of Jackson

Well I'm currently trying to upload another photo of my new cat Jax but for some reason it is failing to upload.  Could be IE 8 that is the issue but who knows. I did some minor tweaks using Windows Live Photo Gallery since I am using my laptop and don't have photoshop installed on it. I still have a few months before I leave to Tallahassee since I decided to push my entrance back until the summer term. Thankfully I have majority of my paperwork needed completed now. Just as soon as the application is reapplied I can then apply for on campus housing and complete my FAFSA.  As for Jackson, he is fitting in rather well and loves it in his new home. Like any good kitten he loves to play, is very curious and explores around the house. I see him learning his abilities as to how far he can jump or where he can go. My sister says that I've become his over protective mother since I constantly worry about him and I know I have. Since we are always together we have bonded rather quickly.  I am thinking about taking him with me to Florida State but I don't think they will allow pets in the housing units. If not I will do my best to visit him.... I mean my family as often as possible.

Behold my latest creations!

So Halloween is coming up and I decided to get into the spirit and do some pumpkin carvings.  I've never done them by myself before until this year so I was excited and scared at first.  I started with a Styrofoam pumpkin and made Jack the Pumpkin King from "Nightmare Before Christmas".  The actual pumpkin that I carved into, I decided to do the Gears of War Skull/ Cog insignia.  I'm really proud how they turned out and also enjoy the photos I took of this tonight. I think the reflection of the table is really good and adds additional effects. I still plan to do make another pumpkin and actually started working on the sketch. The Pumpkin King carving took me about 1 1/2 hours, the Gears pumpkin took me about 3 hours.

Messing around with Photoshop

This is just something quick I did in about half an hour.  Just messing around with different image filters and brush strokes, This was a photo of a dead tree I took photos of at the beach in Lover's Key State Park in Bonita Beach, FL during Easter of this year. I have different photos that I have yet to adjust but will post them up later on.