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At 9/30/08 11:11 PM, edog2 wrote: i hate the britush the candians and asins you british are little candy asses candiands need to grow up and asin freak me ooutmy feelings
i donnt hate im note rasist you guys just asked

...
You HATE the "britush"....
You donnt hate....

Hmm. *barely contained laughter*

Hell, I know SCOTSMEN who still bear a grudge against the English just because of wars that happened 700-800 years ago. (Walk though Glasgow wearing an England flag, and I guarantee you'll regret it.) If there's some Scotsmen who bear a grudge after so long, I'm sure there's some Americans who do the same.

But by-and-large, I've never met an American I didn't like in a face-to-face conversation. Generally, they're quite amicable people, in my experience.

In saying that, I have serious worries and problems with their political system. But that's not my problem, really, is it? :P

Whilst looking in the art forum today, I came across a rather interesting opinion on the matter of voting, and it got me thinking.

Basically, my view on voting is that you have the right to vote, but also the responsibility to vote responsibly. Don't waste your vote by voting just because you feel you have to. A blind vote is a bad vote. If everyone votes blindly, then our next leaders are chosen purely at random, not by quality of policy.
I think that there are some situations where choosing not to vote is the right decision, and those situations are:
- When you don't have an adequate understanding of the current political climate, both at home and abroad. (Don't vote for a bull when you're standing in a china-shop)
- When you have a lower IQ than a glass of water.
- When you don't feel that any of the candidates put forward truly represent your views, or stand for what you believe is in the best interests for your country.

However, it appears that some people believe that "Not voting is a vote for the apocalypse." That you, as a citizen, have the right to vote, and therefore, you shouldn't squander that right by not voting. Your forefathers have fought and died to preserve this right of suffrage (among others), and so you must use it lest they have died in vain.

Personally, I feel that this type of mentality is what leads to dangerous people getting in control of countries - People voting just for the sake of voting.
Inversely, Others might argue that it's because of people not voting that dangerous people get in control of countries. - Only those who support the dangerous party bothered to vote.

I'm interested to know how the citizens of NG feel about this subject.

Personally, I have very mixed views on the role of religion in modern society.

On one hand, religion can inspire people on to do some wonderful things for themselves. I've seen religion get people off drugs, get people off drink, cure sex addiction, cure depression, and all manner of disorders which are so inherant in our modern society. So, if anything, religion can still serve a purpose in our daily lives.

However, I also believe that the current religions are archaic, ancient, and outdated, preaching conflicting stories of both hatred and love. Religion can so easily be manipulated by the wrong people to inspire people to do the wrong thing. Two good examples are Osama Bin Laden, who uses religion as a means to inspire people to take up arms against the Western World, and the early Popes, who comitted too many atrocities to list here.

Religion is, by my own, admittedly rather cold and sterile definition, a mental disease, whether beneficial or detrimental, that's what it is. It's a lapse in the logical, reasoning, rational part of the brain. Now, whilst this can improve the lives of some people, giving them a sense of hope and purpose, and a feeling of belonging, it can also be used to cloud the truth from those who would seek it.
It's a form of hypnosis/indoctrination that passes from one person to the other, usually from parent to child, a pattern that can be observed in many mental illnesses.

Really, my overall conclusion on whether or not the modern world needs religion is that there is a place for religion in the modern world, but not THESE religions. Perhaps what we need to see is a new, peaceful religion which takes all the love, support, and community spirit of the current religions whilst leaving all the hell-fear-mongering and hatred behind. If religions such as Catholicism, which are very stale in their methods and ideas wish to survive, they will have to drop all the hate.

...

Otherwise, they are not invited to the barbecue! :P

If you disagree with this post, then I would be happy to discuss my thoughts with you, but let's keep it rational and sane, please?
-Y

Your toons are actually pretty damned impressive. I particularly like the emotive "disney-style stretchiness/squashiness" properties that I see in your animation frames. By any chance was Disney one of your primary inspirations for your style?

At 9/22/08 01:56 AM, Katzenjammer wrote: and coincidentally, not voting is the same as an apocalypse vote.

This type of mentality is intriguing to me, but I can't really say that I agree with you on this. I would be interested in discussing this topic further with you over in the Politics section of the forums, if you are interested?
But still, the cartoon made me giggle. The facial expression is priceless. :)

King Edward I of England.
Just to kick him in the balls, poke him in the eyes and send him back to hell using only a cheesegrater.

And maybe Jesus, so that the "Mary Magdaline conspiracy" theory can finally be put to rest - whether true or false.

You stand as proof that practice, patience, and abstaining from MS paint can yeild incredible results in a comparitively short period of time. Congratulations on a series of well-improved pictures.

I particularly like that volcanic one near the bottom. Very nice "glowing effect" you've got there.

-Y

Put more effort into your pieces.
You won't get any positive responses until your work shows at least SOME effort.

Honestly, I've seen six year olds doing better drawings.

This is my heavy-assault-vehicle-transporter frigate, designed and built in the awesome freeware package "blender".

It has eight double-barrelled laser cannons (four on top, four underneath) which can fire in almost any direction other than directly through the ship. The pointy bits at the front might LOOK like weapons, but they are in fact just a simple sensor array.

The ship is three hundred metres long, and carries sixteen drop-pods, with each one carrying a heavy assault vehicle such as a mech or large tank.

The frigate, as a transporter, is not designed for direct combat, but is more than capable of defending itself from the minor threats presented by pirates and other ne'er do wells. It would struggle to cope with a dedicated battleship, however.

Did mexicans use revolver pistols?

It's not bad. I've seen far worse first-strips for webcomics.
The humour is a little stale, but hey, everyone knows its better to stay in tried and tested territory for a first comic, rather than try something off the wall and completely new.

I look forward to seeing more of your work. :)

I agree with my esteemed collegues that when drawing muscle, less is more. Particularly in line-art.

I would also take a little time to work on your proportions. His arms and legs seem a little stubby, and his head is a bit too big.

Other than that, all you really need is practice. Good work. :)

P.S. - You don't have to host an image to put it on here. Just use the "include picture" function at the bottom of the "new post/topic" page.

Cracks are like snowflakes... No two are the same.

If you're trying to draw something like a crack, your best bet would be to look on google for photographs of cracks, and using these as a reference. That way, you can see all the different sorts of cracks, and decide which one looks best for your project.

However, in my experience, concrete doesn't really "crack" when excessive weight is put on it. It's more likely to just cave in and let the heavy object sink into the ground.....

But that's just my thoughts...

just to hop on the bandwagon of pointing out rules infringements....
You didn't start the topic with a piece of your own, original art work. You just started it with a heap of capital letters. This is not in keeping with the art forum rules.
Take it to general discussion, matey...

Er... Sorry to be the bone in your tuna, but the art forum rules state that you shouldn't start a topic without a piece of your own original art. You should have posted up an example of your own side-view art for us to see. It's not a big thing, but the art forum community do appreciate it.

Anyway, to parrot what has been said before - make some reference photographs of side-on-heads/bodies. That way, you know what you're aiming for.

At 5/8/08 01:22 AM, HighDefinition wrote: They say renal colic and passing kidney stones is the most pain a man will ever endure. Highly regarded as the equivalent of a women's pain to giving birth

Except women don't have to give birth umpteen times a day for three weeks during treatment. (I've been there, done that, and no longer take the ability to piss for granted.)

But in saying that, the worst pain I've ever felt was when I found my (at the time)GF of two years in bed with my (at the time) best friend.... How you feel after that is something I can't even describe.

On a lighter note, I can remember hearing about a footballer who severely dislocated his hip during a game, and when they popped the joint back into place, they caught his testicle in the joint.... Apparently, he tore his vocal chords from screaming.

Your mum. :P

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

One of my newer models.... (I don't do very many)

This is an inquisitor-scale (54mm) redemptionist conversion. He's armed with a flamer, which was made from the 40k-scale terminator heavy flamer. (With some serious chopping/hacking/greenstuffing.) Other than that, there wasn't much done to this model.

I don't know whether to slap you for vandalism or hug you for creative genius....

Maybe both?

If you don't put effort into your work, you don't put your work into the forum.

'nuff said.

Perhaps the biggest clique of all seems to have been missed....
The doofuses/nerds/geeks/whipping boys that everyone picks on...
Where are they hidin'?

If you're looking for crits, I would say that the neck looks a bit too long.

Other than that, it's a pretty faithful representation!

Here's the CGI version of A'Le Levitus....
It took bloody ages to fix the mesh to the armature, but I'm pretty happy with the way it came out.

Well, I know I've posted him a couple of times before, but here's my favourite evil robot of death.... His name is A'Le Levitus, and his hobbies include mass-slaughter, maiming and torture!

Everyone be nice. :P

I've got a couple of pictures of him, so I'll post those up in just a mo...

Just thought I should keep my art-dump up to date....

Here's my finished CGI model of A'Le Levitus (The concept art can be seen in earlier posts in this thread), which is now ready to be animated. Since this model has a pretty high poly-count, it took me a while to attach all the vertices to the armatures, but I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out.

You realise that this is the dumbest thing since Thomas Macabee decided that he could wipe his arse with sandpaper? (In fact, he couldnt.... Which he later found out, to his dismay.) The reasons that his is a stupid idea are (in order of importance):

1) Your starting picture sucks. Perhaps if you had started with some decent art, people would have maybe seen this as a serious protest. But your art shows that you haven't put any thought into this protest any more than you did your art. FAIL.

2) You are picking a fight with people who genuinely don't care about what you think. They don't want to turn you, they don't want to take over you, they don't want to enslave you. They want to kill you, and really, whether or not you like them is the last thing that's on their minds.

3) To my knowledge, NG takes an anti-controversy point of view on these sorts of things. So don't stir up trouble in calm waters.

4) This is just what the terrorists WANT you to do. If you become anti-islamic, then muslims will become more anti-American (assuming that you're American, if not, you gotta come up with a new excuse for your short-sightedness,) and this makes muslims more suceptible to being turned into terrorists.

5) In posting this, you're poking an already angry bull in the eye. Unless you want a pair of sharp horns in your testicles, I would advise you to stop.

6) The fact that this topic - due to it's terrible art, and liklihood to just descend into a highly aggressive bees-nest of contraversy and hatred - will probably just get blocked, and you will probably just be banned.

7) You used Agnry Faic for your starting emoticon. I always take a negative view on anyone who uses it, because most people who use it are just whiners. By using the Agnry Faic, you show that your message is not calmly thought out with a cool head, but is hurriedly scribbled down in hot blood, and isn't properly thought through.

8) You're a dumbass for bringing this sort of argument into the Art forum. If a flame-fest should happen anywhere, it should be in the general section. (Because this is a place for art, not contraversial bickering.)

At 3/21/08 08:52 AM, ChillyCheese wrote:

At 3/21/08 07:01 AM, Ynek wrote: Stuff.

While I agree with the fact that a person should try and focus on the things they arent good at, and not avoid them. But there is a difference between a style, and utter shit made by a person claiming it's stylized.

If you can draw The way you like to, and the way people wanna see you (draw) Then In my opinion, your set.

You make a valid argument. If you are enjoying your work, and others are enjoying your work, then where's the harm?
Well, it could similarly be argued that if musicians just want to play arbitrary, amelodic notes picked at random, and people listen to it, where's the harm?

Well, it's a bit of an "I'M SPARTACUS" moment, really, because the traditional artists, who have spent many years learning all the necessary techniques, are drowned out in a sea of bad MS paint / terrible "style" artists, who learned how to draw in three seconds. "Select the pencil tool, click down the mouse, and go wild!!!!"

If you're quite new to model-painting, I can advise Citadel's inks. Generally speaking, if you're an experienced painter, then I would advise you to just stick with what you know... The inks don't give as nice a finish as you can get from good old fashioned techniques such as blending.

I think I've got a comparison pic somewhere of "drybrushed" finish versus "inked" finish versus "blended" finish versus a heap of others... I'll try to look it out for you.

In my experience, "Style" is a means by which artists can hide their inability to make decent artwork.

If ever you have to say "It's in style, it's supposed to look like that." Then you're a bad artist hiding behind a style that deliberately breaks the 'laws' of art.

For example, since I practice art on a fairly regular basis, I can draw an in-proportion, nicely shaded, good perspective, good lighting effect, (attempt at) photorealistic piece of art. This takes a lot of skill, and a lot of practice.

And a bad artist, instead of practicing good lighting, good persepctive etc, will simply make a style that completely avoids all the 'rules' of art, and makes it easy for them to draw. For example, if they have trouble drawing in perspective, they decide to draw in 2D instead. If they have trouble with shading/tone, they'll do line-only-art, or block-colour art instead. If they have trouble drawing things in proportion, they'll deliberately deviate from proportion, giving their characters HUGE heads, big hands etc. to make it obvious that they are not trying to draw in proportion.

By avoiding the things that you are bad at, you will never improve on them, and for this reason, I usually take a very bleak view on any style that avoids conforming to the rules of these skills...

It's like a martial arts student walking into a dojo and starting waving his arms and legs about like he's having a lunatic having a fit, claiming "Shut up! I am an *insert name of martial art here* Grand Master! This is just my 'style'!"

So, anyway, that's just my view on styles... Personally, I've never, ever, been accused of having a 'style'. But I guess that's in-part due to the fact that I never really took an interest in cartoons/comics etc. when I was a kid. Instead, I would watch the Exorcist and laugh at slasher films.... I was a strange kid.

Anyway, that's enough of a rant for now... Thanks for even taking the time to read my meanderings...

It's a dildo... in a dinner jacket....