see ya next week hunneh bunz

Let's reconvene next Tuesday.

My solution:

So I seemed to have fixed the problem now. Went in and completely removed the steelseries engine. Then I unplugged the headset usb from the back 3.0 port. I then did a restart with the headset unplugged, and it turns out that it was the headphone that was causing the problem. After the system restarted, I plugged the headphone into a different usb port in the back (still using a 3.0 port). Everything is good so far, no freezes when playing audio. Then I did another restart, this time with everything plugged in, and there ya go, problem fixed. I'm still hesitant to reinstall the steelseries engine and drivers, but it seems that the mouse and headphone still remembers all the settings from before.


Problem before:

So I have a Steelseries Diablo3 mouse and Steelseries Diablo3 headset. A problem occurs where whenever any audio plays, it freezes the mouse for as long as it plays, and when the audio stops, the mouse resumes or unfreezes...

So far I've reinstalled the entire engine and updated both drivers on the mouse and the headset and nothing seemed to work. I've disconnected and reconnected the headphone from the back 3.0 port and it seemed to fix the problem until the next system restart, then it happens all over again...Anyone else have this problem?

God I hate steelseries and their shitty drivers that actually breaks their hardware.... : I

Thank you to everyone who came to wish me a happy birthday!!!! Now I'm old....

"You're gettin olddd John!!" -Bennett

Will update with more art as soon as I have some down time

Till then stay frosty!

-Jimmy

So I just beat the game yesterday, and.... YOU know that feel when you've played a game that was SO well put together, and after you have beaten it, your brain still refuse the fact that it's over and you're left SUPER sad and wanting more???? Yea that hasn't happened to me since I first beat the first Bioshock years ago. Seriously, I went in with pretty high expectations, and even though I was convinced that many people said that it wasn't as good as it should've been, I kept my hopes up. Some how it exceeded my already high expectations. Everything from voice acting, to the music and pacing of the game, and the intricate plot twists made this game worth the delays and wait.

Not gonna give any spoilers but, the plot twists and turns at the moments you least expect them to, and when it did happen, my mouth literally dropped. Many times.

Hghhnnnnnn now I'm so sad that I finished it... Oh well, you know what that means. FAN ARTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

Other video game developers can definitely learn a few things or two about great story telling from Irrational.

YEHHhhhhhhh So I guess I'll just make a general post about this. So like the title says, every Friday night at around 9:30pm EST I'll be doing livestream paintings right here:

===>[link]

Sometimes I'll rant, sometimes I'll be drunk, sometimes I'll just talk smack about random things!

But definitely I don't have enough of a life to do sociable things on those evenings. So if you are also not having anything better to do or JUST DON'T KNOW BETTER, please drop by and be sure to say how garbage of a drawing I'm making!

-J

[link] <===== cuz you don't have anything better to do on a friday night. Come watch me rant and paint.

Add me up on battle net!!!!!!!!111!11!1111!!!!!

or note me to add if ur interested! I need to learn about the new units.

Sorry everyone, something random came up today, so I have to postpone tonight's stream until some other time, maybe tomorrow night?... I donno, but I can't do it tonight. SUPER SORRY :' C

Thanks for tuning in and watch me paint the terribru art. More to come next week!

So it's been pretty obvious that the VFX company that did the effects for the Life Of Pi underwent huge financial disaster and a large layoff among its very talented staff. It brought the world's attention to a much needed part of our movie industry, and that part is where all the fictional aspects of movies became a reality, so to speak.

However, this is NOT something that only happened yesterday or this week. VFX studios declare bankruptcy ALL the time due to various yet clearly avoidable reasons such as an over staffing of management and under staffing of artists and technicians. Studios constantly underbidding each other simply because the budget just can't afford over 40 mins of quality CGI but needs over 70 mins of it.

Now from a smaller picture, we can clearly see that there is an unequal distribution of budget and funds, and due to poor management of pipelines and a lack of constant client work can put the entire studio out of a job in today's already disastrous economy. But what if we looked up the chain of command and investigate the potential leakage of this already sinking ship?...

Anytime you go to see a new release in theaters, it will play a bunch of random trailers for movies. To be frank, most of those movies you've either heard of them as a child because it literally is a modern day remake of a classic fairy tale, OR it's Jennifer Aniston and some generic looking white guy hooking up, fall in love, hit a bump, then gets back together again. Repetition breeds mediocrity. How many times do you hear a movie that has over 200 - 300+ million dollars budget, only to make back less than $50 million within the first week at the box office? There are very, VERY few exceptions for incredibly successful movies on opening box office weeks, and usually the pattern shows that A: it's based on a huge fan community B: it's something that the audience has not seen in a very, very long time C: incredible acting, and combines elements of either from A, or B, or A + B.

See the problem isn't the lack of budget we throw at a production line. The problem is that film companies and its financial people keep playing it 'safe' by okaying movies that are

1: Extremely mediocre in story and underlying message
2: Throw in a bunch of veteran actors and a huge budget (that will most likely be extremely unbalanced in terms of distribution) because that will guarantee a lot of people seeing the movie
3: Directed at 12 - 14 year old audiences
4: An extreme lackluster of story telling, unbelievably fake overly forced acting
5: It's totally fine because we jam packed it with explosions and CGI, you literally get the bang with your buck.
6: Don't invest in proper stories and just rip off an old old old old old fairy tale or make a half assed movie version of highly successful video games.
7: We have an extremely tight budget and deadline, but we still want grade A results, so find the cheapest place for the highest return and let them dog-eat-dog.

Do you see where this is going?

The film industry in this continent constantly produces fast food quality features with extremely high budgets, yet it does not entice enough people to see their works because it fails to engage the audience on a fundamental level of storytelling. As a smart business, you are providing either a good or a service which the consumer will feel genuinely ready to invest their time and money in, and hopefully by the end of that transaction, they will feel safe with the choice they made by doing business with you. If you destroy that customer trust by providing cheap and predictable services, what's the guarantee that more and more will return? How would you meet your yearly quota if the quality of your work diminishes and less customers are returning? You will be forced to carry out budget cuts, and people will wonder why these talented artisans at prestigious studios are constantly being let go.

The solution I believe, is not simply to pay more money to VFX places to keep them from going bankrupt, but to fix the fundamental problem of the film industry itself. Invest in great writing, invest in great picture directing, establish a solid core for your story, and then worry about the icings on top. Reinvest in quality again, demand for higher philosophical experiences on the silver screen, and make those consumers feel that their time and money was worth every penny.

Seriously?... 99Designs was awarded People's Choice Award for mass crowd sourcing??!.... FUCK YOU. For those who don't know what 99Design is, this is how they operate.

1. Say for example that you are a client who is looking for a logo design.

2. You pitch what you are looking for and a budget onto that website.

3. Massive number of desperate and ignorant graphic designers 'compete' to submit MASSIVE amounts of designs, and the winner gets paid mayyybe the cost of groceries for a week.

This is essentially Craig's List... but endorsed on a professional level.

Hey you want a good design? If you see one that you like, YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!!! Just hire another schmuck and copy that 'winner's' design and you'll have a FREE logo!!!! INSTANT PROFITTTTTT

If you don't believe me, go on their website and read their client testimonials ===> [link]

"When you hire one designer you're stuck with their aesthetic and their concept. With 99designs, you get ideas from many different people."

"We have a designer, but he can't do everything himself. [With 99designs] we got ten times the results for a fraction of the cost."

"[If I hired a single designer] I would have no guarantee that the actual outcome would have been anywhere near the same."

REALLY?!??!?!? Tell me you also keep starved Mexican and Chinese kids in your basements doing all your projects for your big clients!!!

Seriously.... how does a website like LinkedIn or New York City give you a Webby Award for your scumbaggery... Go kill yourself 99Devil's Dick.

[link] Please watch video first then read my thoughts and then voice your opinions.

Again I will not sugar-coat anything I'm about to say regarding to our graduate economic crisis.

I graduated with a BA in the Arts last April, and have been working full time since last June to the present day, while doing a lot of freelance gigs on the side, but there are a lot of things that plague my fellow graduate friends, and this could apply to people who graduated with higher education regardless of territory. The following are my opinions:

1: Our government and economy constantly acts like the corporations' lap bitch, and we all jump in on the globalization neo-liberalism business strategy to leak jobs and money out of our country.

2: A lot young people are not taught to develop a passion/hobby at a young age. Ontario has some of the highest high school dropout rates in North America, how is that even possible? You'd have to try extra hard to fail at the easiest subjects. So by the time they reach their mid 20's they still have no idea what they want to do, so they take up a degree they know very little about in hopes to let that degree get them a job without actual experience in that field. Thus inflating the pool of higher education graduates without work experience.

3: We need more half academic and half practical training in post secondary educations, instead of letting those institutions solely sell papers and let students fend for themselves afterwards. Education institutions should work FOR aspiring future generations rather than sell them education in a package without proper guides and prospects for the future.

4: Companies who offer 0 compensations for their interns. Your intern shouldn't be doing things that paid employees are paid to do. The training that the internee undergoes must be critical and beneficial to their career experience development. Also you must treat that unpaid internee with the same respect as your paid employees.

5: Be a jack of all trades. Don't just be satisfied that you only know how to just do one set of skills. Specialists positions in any field are becoming more and more rare. FOLLOW where the technology goes and engulf yourself in its limitless possibilities, because in this rapid developing age of cyberspace, skills in computer programming and electronics is the just one of the many new languages that you'll need to know for a job.You want to do something with science and outer space later on? Get interested in building rovers or remote control stuff in your family's garage, make functional robots or simple calculators out of scrap metal. Want to be doing something in the medical field? Bury yourself in medical books and volunteer at hospitals. Start small and you'll be surprised with what time and persistence can do for you.

6: The government and the people both need to take full responsibility in order to take back control of the economy. As soon as governments allows themselves to be deregulated from the consumer market, the companies can do just about ANYTHING in order to maximize profits at any cost for their shareholders by gutting out the hard working lower and middle classes. And people themselves need to realize that it is you that have to start investing your careers at a young age, and not be mindlessly droning to stupid bullshit you see on TV only to wake up in your mid 20's realizing that you're not good at anything and you're still undecided on what education to take for your future. Inertia breeds mediocrity.

7: If you're STRUGGLING or failing a lot at what you're doing in university/ college. Be real honest to yourself, is this really what you want to be doing? Or are you doing it only for the possibility of making more money (if you even graduate from this program). Because I SURE as fuck don't want you to become MY financial adviser if you only graduated accounting with a median of 75% Or living in any buildings you designed if you graduated from civil engineering with an < 80%. Again this has to do with having that solid passion as a child of doing what you love to do, and then turning that passion into a future, don't just randomly apply to a place because it may please your parents.

You have a powerful mind and creative potential, don't allow stupid mainstream television put garbage in your brain, because as soon as that happens, no one else has anything to fear about what's inside your head.

Pick up a book, draw some pictures, get interested in science and the economy, buy what you can afford and save for a rainy day. Stop going out to club and bars so much when you're still young and full of energy(that saves you a lot of money as well) and invest that youth where it counts. Do not act like You only live once, but act as You live only once, so how will you impact those around you?

I've never played any Zelda games. I never had an SNES or N64 or Gameboy while growing up... I just drew pictures all day long.

Just got it through the mail today, anyone up for some co-ops in that?

Alright I guess I'm gonna make another rant, and this one's been bugging me for the longest time. And I'm going to be as BLUNT as I will be and not sugar coat anything I'm about to say.

Often do I hear things like:

"what custom brushes do you use"

"how do you achieve this blur/ focus effect"

"how did you get the colors to go this way and that"

"what technique or computer program did you use"

What I rarely get asked for is:

"What did you study to be more efficient at drawing."

"What is an efficient way to study how to render certain types of materials"

"How do you practice proper lighting when painting?"

and etc...

Guys I'm just gonna say it now, there's no shortcut to art. I work primarily in digital mediums now but I do have a solid foundation in traditional mediums. I didn't simply go out and buy a $400 tablet and instantly got to where I am today. I use custom brushes and special effects in my pieces, but they only take up less than 3% of the overall work. There's still considerable amount of work that I apply in terms of composition, lighting, rendering, tonal values, colors, and dynamic flow of view. Special effects and custom brushes should not make or break the painting, what does make or break it is your ability as a competent artist to understand and convey your fundamental knowledge of painting and story telling to an audience.

I carry a sketchbook and draw in it everywhere I go, and the best thing about practice is, if you are doing it, you will get better. And if you see something anther artist does. Don't ask how he/she does it and expect an answer in a package. It doesn't work that way. A lot of artists out there including me started at a very young age, we practiced and kept at it no matter what, and that's how we are doing this today.

Whenever you see a piece be it traditional or digital and if the piece has a cool effect to it, and you really really want to replicate that effect, just start experimenting. MAKE MISTAKES! If you got the answer right away for 'this is exactly how I make this effect' (and I'm pretty sure you can google it up), what's the fun in learning? You'd be surprised at the amount of new things you can discover for yourself if you start to experiment, most likely what you sought after in the first place may not even end up being the thing you wanted.

You only benefit yourself from practicing, and often practicing the right way.

You want to learn how to be more efficient in human anatomy? Buy books on anatomy, go to life drawing classes and apply what you've learned from the books, practice, and repeat. Carry a sketchbook from you and draw anything you see.

You want to be more efficient at compositions? Watch movies and study how they place shots. Read a lot of graphic design magazines and pay extra attention on how they lay out sections of words vs. an image. Look at cubism, photography, and abstract paintings.

You wanna be more creative with your designs in terms of characters, creatures, and environments? Be a nerd and read the encyclopedia, read up stuff on different cultures and their history. Look up different religions and their history.

Wanna design cool and practical looking mech? Look at real military and civilian industrial hardware.

At the end of the day, I believe that a strong artist should focus less on custom brushes, special effect shortcuts. Yes you can get a custom brush on painting hair, yes you can get a custom brush that'll draw boulders and rocks in 2 seconds, and yes you can get a brush that draws 20 dicks in one stroke. A wise man once said "custom brushes will only make you faster at rendering, not a better artist".

So go out there and practice, make a lot of mistakes, and become a walking encyclopedia. Because it'll be 100x better than simply asking for a shortcut.

EZ

Please take 6 minutes of your life to watch this ===> [link]

Seriously, too often do I get emails and notes regarding to doing work for a stranger or having a stranger asking permission to use my art, and often their compensation will either be non existent, or potential exposure.

And I know I've made a journal entry about this last year but still it never hurts to remind ourselves of what's happening with our industry.

I can't stress enough of how frustrating it is trying to explain to those who are doing work for free because they're desperate, or those looking for artists to work with but have zero idea how this whole infrastructure operates.

If you are a person seeking an artist/craftsman's time and service, be prepared to offer compensation just as you will be needing to pay after eating at a restaurant, or having a plumber coming into your home to fix your clogged pipes. And if you're new to seeking out the aid of an artist for your project. Be prepared to do the researches necessary on how to fund your goals. Google is an amazing tool in this day and age. And the art community is very small, and us artists are always on neighborhood watch against those who offer 'work'. You are paying for a service that you cannot do, so have some respect for those who spend years practicing and using that trade.

Artists, I'm just gonna bluntly put it out there. Don't be a dumb scrub and take work for free because they said they have no budget but is willing to work with you, and by chance in the future the project will get recognized and elevate your status to MegaPussyDestroyer. That will NEVER happen. Don't EVER take work for free. Like Steve said in the video, their time is precious and so is yours, and if they're not putting the effort to compensate you, what makes you think they'll take you seriously?...

For the exceptions that Stephen mentioned regarding to doing buddy projects on your own time is totally cool, but don't forget to treat your friends on the projects out once in a while, buy pizza, write a thank you card with a penis drawn on it, help them walk their turtles or something. Respect the bros and brodettes who work on pet projects with you, and that will oil the gears of friendship, not bullshitting you.

So keep it smart you art peeps out there, and always have a third eye when approaching 'enticing offers at opportunities of fame'. And if you're not totally sure on what to do, ask someone you know and trust in the industry.

EZ

Does anyone use it? I finally started using mine today, and checked out the HangOut feature. Would be cool to do some streaming thing with that sometime with a bunch of people, or art jams.

If you like, please note me for google+ contact.