Over the last two years I really haven't finished much artwork. I've been doing mostly freelance web design. This weekend though I was inspired to put my brush into action by my friend Kevin who was showing me some of his work. It reminded me just how much I miss painting.

The first thing I did was dust off all of my equipment. Literally, dust had collected on all of my brushes, and most of my India Ink had gone bad (solidified). After cleaning everything and rushing out to replace spoiled materials I opened my watercolor tray, lucky the paints inside were still fine since I use a tray with a seal able top.

to start of with, I printed out a few copies of the scan I had made of the final sketch. I used the first to copy the tight sketch onto the watercolor paper. I used the rest to make quick 10 second heat maps of the painting. One of the things I always admired about Tony DiTerlizzi's work is his use of warm and cool colors to create form. I've tried to analysis this and apply to my own paintings.

Then, following another practice that I learned from Tony (via his blog), I made a warm up painting of similar content. although I was also told to do this in college I never really took it seriously until I found out my favorite artist did it all of the time. I painted it directly from a photo without prior sketching. I was focusing on what specific colors to use and what kind of brush strokes were most effective.

Next I filled out the entire image area with light washes of Grumbacher's Umber and Payne's Grey to make off my warm areas and cool areas. I also did this to make sure that I wouldn't miss any small spots and leave them blank.

I let that first layer dry completely and then inked in the outlines. For the heavier outlines I used a medium sized Chinese brush and Winsor & Newton India ink. The lighter and internal lines I used Winsor & Newton Sepia Calligraphy Ink with a standard crow quill pen.

I then started to bring the color's out more with Van Dyke Brown, Brunt Sienna, Sepia, and a touch of Ultra Marine. Once the values were just about right I started making the fur texture with a micro brush and fairly thick water color. Once the whole thing had a thick fur texture I went back in with a big brush to wash out and soften the area's of the fur's highlight. finally, I finished up the details of the swords, the arm wraps, and the face.

So, what do you guys think?

What is a disposable assassin? It a solid gold killer robot you buy out of a vending machine that explodes after it kills it's target. What is a comic book? It is an ongoing or encapsulate story revolving around a protagonist. For ten long years Scud only met the former definition. In 1994 artist Rob Schrab started Scud, but in 1997 issue number 21 ended in a cliffhanger. No further issues were printed...

I gave up hope, I stopped looking.

Then, it happened I was randomly in a comic book shop and discovered that in 2007 Rob Scharb came back to Scud, and finished the series with four final issues. I highly recommend anyone who followed this in the 90s to pick up these comics.

Making forms look good is often one of the most challenging parts of being a web designer. Select boxes specifically are very difficult. They look completely different in different browsers. Lucky, there are plenty of ways to replace them with hidden input fields. However, recently I've had to deal with 3rd party custom tags that generate dynamic select boxes. The only way to style these is by allowing them to load and then use the DOM to manipulate or replace them. I couldn't find any example of his online, so I was forced to figure out how to do it myself. I hope the code below will help someone else out.

Sample:

The code:

It's so beautiful...I'm speechless. As a life long geek I can tell you one of the most difficult issues to deal with is "where are we going to play?". It seems like there is never enough space, and dinning room tables just don't cut it. They are always too high, or too low, and dice are always getting lost underneath them. You always have a mess of papers and book in front of you that ends up cluttering up the game area. Plus, drinks end up getting spilled all over the place. Finally, someone came up with a brilliant and tasteful way to alleviate these issues.

Built in desk stations, book shelves, slide out cup holders, built in dice towers and channels, fig. storage chambers, pencil and dice corals... And last but not least, an enormous dropped playing table that is transparent so you can draw on it with dry erase markers and not screw up you maps below it. *sigh* if only I had the space to put it somewhere I might consider buying one. Despite it's over-whelming price tag of $8,000+

You can learn more about the Sultan Gaming table at GeekChicHQ.com, or click on read more to see a brief video showing the features of the Sultan Gaming Table.

And now, a toast to two-headed cows everywhere...

I started watching this show a few weeks ago, one night I couldn't sleep and watched the latest 3 episodes. Since then I've become completely addicted. The story is about a high school chem teacher who finds out that he is quickly dieing of lung cancer. He quickly realizes that he'll be leaving his family behind with nothing. So, in an effort to make some money to leave them when he dies he starts secretly cooking Meth. Which he sells with his partner, a former student of his.

Download all of the photos: Mikes Wedding

I haven't really been paying attention to this news story, even though I'm sure that I should be. After all two kids on the same train line as me have confirmed cases of Swine Flu. Then again... I didn't die from SARS, the Bird Flu, or West Nile. I guess the guys over at the CDC are good at their jobs.

Despite that I just called everyone on Skype that will read this, I'm going to write it down anyway...you know for posterity or something. This weekend wasn't bad. Work has been frustrating and I've really missed Shari a lot. Most of this trip has been a real pain in the butt, but at least the weather cleared up and I got to walk around a bit.

Saturday Derek and I went to the museum of fine arts in Hero Square. I got to see one of my favorite El Greco paintings, and a great Gustave Moreau exhibit. I realize not everyone knows what I'm talking about (dad), so I posted some pictures below.

Salome Tattooed by Gustave Moreau. It's really hard to tell from this, but all of those white lines look like alchemic symbols floating in the air. It gives the whole painting the feeling of being "tattooed".

El Greco (the Greek's) The Disrobing of Christ. Again, the tiny rinky-dink photo I've posted doesn't do the painting justice. The reflections on the knight's armor are amazing, and Jesus has these eyes that make him look truly beatific.

We also saw some really cool mummified Egyptian crocodiles in the Egyptian section of the museum. Neither Derek nor I knew that the Egyptian"s did that. It's amazing what you can learn by looking at what people have robbed from graves.

after that we really were feeling pretty beat and took the rest of the afternoon off. I snapped a few pictures on the way back.

That night we went out on a pub crawl with a few friends from work. We met up with Miklos, Barbie, Adam, Gerzson, and Barbie's husband Dave. I didn't take an photos of that night, sorry. Sometimes it's better just to do it than to worry about trying to remember it. Miklos is a really cool guy, he's funny, interested in beer brewing, and knows all of the good communist bars in Budapest (apparently not a joke). I told him that the next time he is in the states I'd take him out to the Sunset Grill. Maybe we can go through a few hundred of the beers they have on tap.

Eventually Derek and Miklos took off and the rest of us made it to a place called "instant" that had a cool looking dance floor in the basement. It looked kind of like a disco version of the inside of an old castle. Actually, if you have ever seen "An American werewolf in Paris", it looks like the club in the beginning of the movie; except no werewolves... or Neo-Nazi... it's a weird movie. Anyway, even though I thought it looked cool on the inside, the lights started to make me feel sick. Damn strobes get me every time. Luckily, we didn't stay there long and I made it safely back to the hotel around 3:30 am.

I didn't get much sleep that night because I had to get early on Sunday morning. Derek and I had agreed the night prior to go to church the next day. Church really isn't my thing anymore, but Derek goes every Sunday and I felt obliged to go with him. He is my friend after all.

It was all wasted effort on my part though. Derek failed to wake early himself and we kind of missed our window of opportunity.

With no real plans for the day in mind we sat down in front of a tourist map of the city and looked for anything that interested us. I pointed out the Museum of Military History on the other side of the river and suggested that we go there. Derek thought it was interesting too so we headed out on foot.

On the way we passed by St. Stephen's Basilica. We took the chance to photograph it again. I had taken a few shot of it the last time I was here, but it was at night. This time, the doors were open and we went in for a look around.

outside above, inside below.

I lit a candle for my Grandmother who is fighting cancer. I'm not sure if my prayer's will get answered, but I know that praying will make her feel better.

After that we discovered this guy in the Square nearby. He looks remarkable close to a drawing I drew only a week before. Except for the hat in the drawing that is...but now that I've seen this guy I might redraw it to match.

I have no idea who this guy is...he just jumped into the photo and gave a big smile. Maybe he's drunk? I don't know.

Eventually we made it up the hill to the castle that I posted photos of last time. I took a bunch of photo's here, but I'm not going to post them all until later on. Here are a few highlights:

The view from the bridge.

A guy wary of the Falcon next to him.

Derek goofing off.

A cool statue.

the view from the other side of the castle.

Then we made it to the Military Museum and I took a lot of photo reference for The One State.

After that we went and got food, then went back to the hotel. I took a nap for a while because the jet lag was still bugging me. Around 9ish derek came over to my room and we watched "Robinhood: Prince of Thieves" on my laptop since we were both bored and too tired to go out.

That's all folks. I've been back to work since.

(Szimpla Kert on the left) Have you ever noticed how all of the impressionist paintings end up looking like this? Really colorful and fuzzy... Monet must have been smashed 24/7.

The end of my week has turned out pretty good. Just before the end of the day I finally (and for all time) fixed sIFR. The design team has been trying to push the use of a new piece of CSS/JavaScript/Flash technology called sIFR with the new website we are building. Basically, it allows us to create webpages with any font we want rather than be limited to Arial, Tahoma, and Verdana. sIFR on its own works great, but when we combine it with multiple languages and and a specialty font like "Info" it tends to choke on some special characters. For example, like these; ² and ℠

So how did I fix that? I created my own font. oh yeah, I rule.

The company bought three rooms worth of these little sandwich thingies, and 25 bottles of champagne.

Gerzson (design director)

Barbie (designer) and Kata (localization). They are both a little camera shy.

Adam (principal designer), my new boss is also a little camera shy... he actually said I stole his soul... hehehe.

Derek (designer) being a little lame and not drinking. It's ok though, it just isn't his thing.

Sean Jorden (with drink), perhaps the coolest guy working out of the Budapest office. He actually took Derek and I out one night the last time we were here. He saw me on the street today (random) and couldn't figure out where he knew me from. I'd be hurt, but he just flew in from Cuba and was jet-lagged too.

Me!

After most of the people went home, it was just Derek, Kata, Gerzson, Adam, and I left. We killed off the last two bottles of champagne. I personally had six or seven glasses, and was having a really good time with my friends.

Eventually we had to leave too, but the night wasn't over. There was a Rescue after party at Szimpla Kert; the beer garden that I had a really good time at on the last trip. Derek just went back to the hotel, which left me to walk there on my own. Lucky I had the forethought to look at a map and memorize the directions (5 block down, 2 to the left). Once I got there I didn't drink much more, but I ended up staying there with Sean, Lazslo, Kata, and Gerzson until around midnight.

Lazslo, Gerzson, Kata

Sean making friends