XO XO XO Merry Christmas!

Merry Space Xmas to all! And to all a good space night! (Night is eternal in the darkness of deep space...)

XO XO XO... it's either hugs and kisses or pronounced "ZO ZO ZO," it's like space talk for "HO HO HO," if that makes any sense. Anyway, I hope you've all been extra good this year so our planet can be visited by the illustrious Space Claus! I don't know where in the Universe he resides and he sure is more impressive than regular Santa. I mean, Santa delivers presents to all the good boys and girls of our world... but Space Santa does that for every planet with life on it! ;) That's like, a Trazillion more deliveries than regular Santa.

XO XO XO, MERRY SPACE XMAS! :D

Christmas Time!

It's that time of year that consists of eggnog, lights, mad shopping, and various festivities. I enjoy spending time with family and friends. I enjoy the food. I enjoy giving gifts and appreciating one another. Also, I enjoy the Christmas movies and cartoon specials!

A couple of my favourites are Nightmare Before Christmas and the Spongebob Squarepants Christmas special.

La-da-da da-da da-da da

Some other great Christmas movies and shows are Elf, A Christmas Story, Charlie Brown Christmas, Jack Frost, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Jingle All The Way, and Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. They never fail to put a smile on my face.

Christmas trees are always pretty to look at and really bring the holiday spirit indoors. I helped decorate my girlfriend's tree this year - it's Venetian inspired and has lots of masks, mirrors, little shoes, and bows on it. My Mom's tree is covered in cute marshmallow ornaments!

I also helped make some wintery wonderland sugar cookies! They're delicious and look fabulous! The sleds are the hardest ones to make with their thin pieces. I had to use a butter knife, a spatula, and plenty of flour to get them out of the cookie cutter and onto a pan. There's also a Triangle Dude cookie below!

Pokemon Black

I'm super behind in my games - and I don't even want to consider the backlog in my steam account! Xenoblade Chronicles, Wonderful 101, Rayman Origins, Little King's Story, Pokemon Y, and a whole slew of others on steam (including XCom and the Bioshock series). However, I recently beat Pokemon Black! Yes, I'm that far behind - nearly 2 generations - it came out in 2011. Wow. However, it's been lots of fun, but I've still got to finish the post-game content. Here's my team!

Emboar, Swanna, Excadrill, Scolipede, Reuniclus, and Vanilluxe.

A few of them are slow or otherwise very fragile, but I still like them. :) Emboar is pretty good all around. Swanna is decent and I just got to have someone with Fly. Excadrill is pretty powerful and resistant. Scolipede is a giant centipede so that's just awesome. Reuniclus has saved my butt more times than I can count. Lastly, Vanilluxe is ice cream! He's a little slow, but it's nice to have an ice pokemon for when I face those dragon types.

My dream team would be hard to pick because there are so many Pokemon I'd like to have on a team! I started collecting many of them in Pokemon Platinum - it was the first time you could get such a wide variety of them. I plan to trade them up to Pokemon Y at some point. Some of the Pokemon I'd really like to train up are:

Besides all the starters there's Magnezone, Tangrowth, Alakazam, Gyarados, Kabutops, Crobat, Ampharos, Slaking, Metagross, Aggron, Regigigas, Bastiodon, Bronzong, Garchomp, Toxicroak, Dusknoir, Crustle, Archeops, Haxorus, Golurk, Hydreigon, Aegislash, Goodra, Chandelure, and more!

Afterwards, I'll be onto Pokemon Y! I picked Froakie as my starter and I can't wait to get a Greninja. I've also started to use Greninja more in Super Smash Bros. and it only adds to my excitement!

There's some awesome websites out there as well for all things pokemon. Some of my favourites are Bulbapedia for information on just about everything, and Smogon for a list of competitive Pokemon builds. Also, Pokemon Showdown is neat for watching replays of Pokemon fights online, and you can even make your own team and battle as well!

Learning Form in Anatomy

I've spent a good chunk of the last half of the year (though I've been pretty busy the last couple of months!) working on developing my forms. Riven Pheonix introduced me to a new way of thinking and how to build a human body from the imagination. Andrew Loomis has helped me hone my proportions and reinforce the landmarks of the human body. Things were coming together, but it still looked a little flat. Something was missing, and that was my 3 dimensional sense of form on a 2D piece of paper. Enter, Michael Hampton.

This book has helped me immensely and is probably my favourite life drawing book at the moment. I haven't quite gotten through it yet, but I can already feel, and see, the improvement it has made. I feel like I've still got a long way to go, but I'm on the right path. There are areas I still need to visit like facial expressions, body types, setting a scene, clothing and drapery, and colour. All this leads to the ultimate goal of producing a graphic novel, creating concept art, my own stories, and perhaps even one day making paintings. I've covered a lot of ground, but there's more to go!

Mother Mother

Not too long ago I went and saw Mother Mother with my family at the Orpheum in Vancouver! It was an incredible show. They played a great mix of new and old songs. USS (Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker) opened and got the crowd pretty pumped up. Their music is a little different from what I usually listen to, but it was pretty good! They have excellent stage presence and tons of energy. Their music reminded me a bit of Linkin Park, and they did a nice cover of Hey Ya! by Outkast.

Mother Mother finished their tour up in their home town of Vancouver and put on an unforgettable show. They were impeccable as usual - seamlessly transitioning from some songs into others and putting new twists on old songs. I've seen them three times now and they just get better and better. They played so many of their hits, and hearing them live was great. I forgot just how many hit songs they have, and their new album is awesome. Some of the great songs they played included Hayloft, O My Heart, Get Out The Way, Infinitesimal, Ghosting, Wrecking Ball, and Monkey Tree.

Here's a couple of my favourites :)

The Orpheum is also an excellent building. It's ornate in every way, shape, and form. The molding, and sculpture, and everything is amazing. I could stare at the building alone for hours on end - but I made sure to watch the performance as well! :P

Here's a short video someone at the concert recorded of them playing Infinitesimal.

Some Groovy New Music

Not too long ago Modest Mouse stirred up some attention. It's been about six years since their last album, and I've been kicking myself for missing their last tour in 2008 ever since. They recently released a brand new single off their forthcoming album "Strangers to Ourselves". The new song, "Lampshades on Fire," is spectacular. I can't believe how much I missed Isaac Brock's voice.

I love everything about the song. The singing, the lyrics, the funky guitar - everything about it screams Modest Mouse, but with a new edge. I can't wait for their new album, and if they go back on tour again I won't be missing their Vancouver appearance like I did last time!

Also, Emily Haines from Metric did a solo song in collaboration with Goldie Blox. Goldie Blox is a toy company whose mission it is to encourage more young woman to pursue careers in engineering - a valiant goal! The new song, "Lightning Strikes," and it's accompanying cartoon music video inspires you to not give up. If at first you don't succeed - try again. Just like any science experiment or attempt at new learning we can't let defeat deter us from our goal. It's a great motivational song and video.

Space Santa

This year I've decided to make some Christmas cards for friends and use the real live actual mail system to deliver them! It's fun to get mail! I have a sneaking suspicion it's double the fun to get real mail around Christmas and triple the fun if it has a Triangle Dude inside. I'll remember to post the full version of the card a little while after I've mailed them out - no spoilers! Here is one spoiler though. Space Santa!

Super Smash Bros. Wii U

Wow. I'm almost intimidated by the amount of content in the new Super Smash Bros. games. It's bursting at the seams! I had picked up the 3DS version a little while back and was instantly satisfied with how nicely it looked and controlled on a portable system. Between the 3DS version and the Wii U version I'll be busy collecting trophy's, setting high scores, beating game modes, and battling others. I can't forget to smash with others!

I also finally grabbed a Wii U Pro controller to go along with my Smash Bros. purchase. It's pretty darn heavenly. The way it feels in my hands is enough to make me stop this train of thought. The controller is light and doesn't feel too bulky in my hands - all the buttons are easy to reach. It has that glossy finish which looks nice for all of 5 seconds until you hold it, but I'll be too busy looking at the screen anyway. A fully charged battery lasts up to 80 hours! It charges via a USB port (a Wii U USB port is recommended specifically) and only when the system is on - which is kind of weird. However, the charge lasts so long it's not a deal-breaker.

Oh Nintendo - I was on the fence with amiibo's, but got one anyway. They're only $13 and look nice regardless of whether they get used so I picked one up. Peach! I'm so glad I did. It works really well with the Wii U and it's almost addictive training my little Peach figurine and leveling it up. I wasn't completely sure which one to get, but out of all the ones released at the moment I feel like I'm best with Peach as a fighter in the game. I nicknamed her Peaches and began training - 1v1 me and her, or 2v2 teaming up against randoms. She is definitely learning my play style and is getting tougher and tougher. So much fun! I'm definitely going to get another one, but I think I'll wait until the next release of characters.

For the most part I'm rolling with Peach, but some of my other favourite characters to play as are Dr. Mario, Olimar, King Dedede, and Diddy Kong. I'm hoping to get better with Greninja, Bowser Jr., Palutena, Shulk, Robin, and Rosalina and Luma. There's so many characters! The mii fighters are fun too! Once I play some more locally and beat some game modes I'll head online more. Watch out for Vorgus!

Game of Thrones Exhibit

This is a little late. I went to the Game of Thrones Exhibit on August 23rd. You're fully encouraged to take photos as you walk around. It took over an hour and a half to get through the line and the sun was beating down on us hard that day. Yes, I got a sunburn. Once you managed to get inside though it was really neat!

They had lots of props and costumes from the show and a couple of replicas and backups because the actual costume was being used somewhere at the moment. The Danaerys dress isn't the real one because it was being used and filmed somewhere in the world. I got a pretty good haul of photos and some nice close-ups of some of the details for future drawing reference ;)

Here's a few of the photos from the excellent exhibit!

Update!

It's been quite some time. Seems every time I get around to making a new Triangle Dude or writing a new post I'm saying how long it's been since the last one. Life gets busy.

As you may have noticed - things look slightly different around here. It's going to keep getting different in the near future and hopefully I'll revitalize this blog. I'd like to blog more about my artwork, about video games, about interesting things in general, and of course, Triangle Dude. GASP! There are a couple of comics in the making (they have been for a while) and I'm hoping I'll get to an update some time before the new year.

Also, here's a picture of mine and my girlfriend's Halloween jack-o-lanterns. I did the great elder god Cthulhu and she did a minion from Despicable Me!

In the mean time I'll share some of the sketches and doodles I've been making this past year. Plenty of what I've been doing could be called educational - strengthening skills and deepening knowledge. I started keeping a record of it and posting my progress at ConceptArt.org. Check out my online sketchbook at Sketchbook Vorgus. Warning - it's extremely image heavy and possibly features some NSFW life drawing.