Blitzkrieg and Ramble

Chaos Cavern, House Immortalis, Golden Margaritas

Difyance — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:45:48 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve updated, and I have no excuse except depression from being out of work and having to scrape and spare at every opportunity to make it through this month and last. I don’t know why I can’t get a job, lots of calls come in but they stop calling back after a certain point. It’s nice to be able to get up whenever I want, and not have to go to a job I hate every day, but at the same time, it was nicer to have money, know that the bills would be getting paid, and be able to go out and buy something when I needed it. *sigh*

Anyway, I designed this site a few weeks ago, built it tonight, and will be building upon it more over the next few weeks if I’m lucky. Chaos Cavern will hopefully be the gaming center than K. and I open up when we get our shit together. Or somehow fall into the start up funds for it. We’re so focused on this project now, and all the details that go into starting a small business, that everything else is taking second place to me. Maybe not a good thing, but at least with this site I will be able to produce a finished product in a reasonable time span, as soon as we agree on a color scheme. I think I’m going to end up switching out most of the purple in favor of some colors from the green banner. We wanted to do it in green to start with, but because GameFrog is becoming a franchise down in NC, I worry that we would be copying them a bit too closely, and I don’t need to end up with copyright suits against me before we even start. So, I’ll work on it.

I’ve been also working my way through a Drupal book, trying to set up House Immortalis in a more community-oriented direction. Right now just the barebones are there, and there’s still a lot to do from what I can tell in order to get it working the way that I want, but at least it’s a start. I have yet to reach the chapter that tells me how to theme it, and I don’t know if I will be using the design that I already have for it. It seems a bit heavy for this site, but it could work. I love designing sites, I get sidetracked when trying to build them. Also registered it as a subdomain of my site so it’s easier to find. I’ll update the link on my Projects page once I actually get the design laid on it. I don’t really want to direct a lot of traffic to an unfinished site, but for you few who read this, the link is here.

Other than that, I have taken up a contract with a company that outsources web design and dev work to freelancers. I have only been actually getting work this past week, so I don’t know how much it actually pays, but I should be finding out soon. It’s hard for me to willingly pull the projects down into my pipeline, because I have such bad phone anxiety, but I’ve found that when I get dressed (as opposed to sitting here in my undies) I actually feel a bit more secure and can really bang out the calls. The work is easy, and I do most of that at night. If I can work out a system where I call people earlier in the day and work later at night when my creativity and logical reasoning skills are high, I think I might be able to get more done. More done means more money, which I really need right now.

Oh yeah, I also created a new logo for the bar that my mom wants to buy, as soon as she straightens out her finances. I’ll be getting a lot of graphic design requests from her, so I guess with experience will come opportunity, even if I’m not a graphic designer. Examples found here.

~D~

New website in the works

Difyance — Sat, 23 May 2009 07:06:52 +0000

Despite our falling out after the great BUCEC “shitshow”, I decided to go ahead with the plan of making a website for my coworker’s design idea. I had started on preliminary sketches, all which were vague and lifeless, while promising myself that I would come up with a better design once I put it into production.

I wasn’t sure if I should still make an attempt at it. She had given me little instruction other than the basic layout of all store sites, and a couple of color choices. I decided to scrap my drawings and just dive in head first. The front page design is now complete, after starting it yesterday, and I am extremely content with what has been produced. I sent her a link to the image, which I embedded in a web page for visual alignment, and she seems with what I’ve created. I’m waiting to hear back to see if there are any changes she wants made, and then I will put it into production.

Link

It feels good to finally be producing things worthwhile. This weekend I’ll be working on catching up on homework, and next week will be a glorious mix of my second animation (which will be produced with much more care) and possibly building the databases for one of my hanging projects. Or I might work on some coffee shop templates. There are quite a few around here who could use a good website.

~D~

The Rise of Fred

Difyance — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:30:30 +0000

My first animation experience has taught me a lot. I now know that it’s not that hard to make something look fancy in Flash. I’ve learned that it takes patience to come out with a satisfactory product. I’ve learned that when it’s 3am and that shape just isn’t coming out right, it’s time to go to bed, and if it’s 3pm and it’s not coming out right, there’s probably cat hair on the tablet. I’ve also learned that I am going to have to find a way to record my own sound effects. I think I spent two hours trying to find the two clips that are in this short, both found on freesound.org.

Overall I’m satisfied with this first attempt. I have a long list of scribbles that I hope to make into additional segments of this piece, with the possibility of redoing the intro to add more detail and better movement to it. Before that happens though, I think I will make shorts of the other main characters. It didn’t take too long to make this one, with my limited knowledge of animation, but I think I will take my time with the others. Mostly I need to develop an art style that works well with Flash, while trying to maintain my pencil style. I’m excited to see what happens.

Check out the short here: http://www.difyance.com/animation/zombie1.html

~D~

10 X Reality = Success?

Difyance — Tue, 05 May 2009 06:00:32 +0000

I did some minor editing to my website, as I learned just a few days ago (or was it weeks?) that it was not working properly in Internet Explorer. Hopefully these latest changes will fix that. I also added a PHP contact form, which I may or may not keep, depending on how much spam I get. I really like contact forms because they are an easy way to send word that something is up, but at the same time, I worry that the ability will be abused. If it comes to it, I will just take it down, leaving the JavaScript email link up.

In other news, I’ve been getting some good pointers on freelancing from an experienced freelancer. I’ve seen tons and tons of pages with tips and advice of how to get started, how to market yourself, how to make connections, and all that, but in reality, I’m just not that confident when it comes to talking to people about what I do. I love what I do, don’t get me wrong, but at what point do you realize that you are good enough to advertise to other people?

I am done with the layout for the Immortalis site, and have only to build the databases and create the libraries before it is finished. Unfortunately when trying to contact the person this site is for, no response has come back yet. I wanted to put what I have up on his server before I build the databases, because that should be done on its permanent home, but it looks like I’m going to have to beta it on my server, and then rebuild them on his once he gets in touch with me. Because of that, I’m kind of put off from wanting to do anything more on it at this point.

My next focus will be on the t-shirt site that my coworker requested. It shouldn’t be too hard to build, but the design needs to be unique, and I may end up striking up conversation with an old friend to see if she’d be willing to submit some design ideas. The site will need a logo, something recognizable, and at this point I’m drawing some serious blanks.

In the mean time, I’ve started drawing my bunnies again, and may, once and for all, get some toons up for the world to see. I have been getting a lot of practice with my tablet while at work, drawing in Flash, but drawing none the less. I think I may have to drop the initial idea and try something else, because I’ve attacked it from every possible angle and it’s just not coming together the way I want it. I will have to come back to it later, and I’m okay with that. If I can actually start getting drawings up, and really stick with it, I think I’ll feel ten times better about my progress. It’s always better when you have something to show.

That’s all for now. Once I accomplish something, I will probably feel inclined to post the details of my journey. It’s not easy trying to make something awesome from nearly nothing. There are those few who can accomplish it, and I am starting with a lot more than nothing.

~Difyance~

Redux

Difyance — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:25:36 +0000

I’m rethinking my methods. There will be more updates soon, promise.

Flash Tricks

Difyance — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:20:15 +0000

I know I’m a bit late with this, and I really have no excuses, except the boyfriend wanted to game this weekend, and I have no choice but to appease him when it comes to this matter. So I got the new image up last night, it’s on the about page. It’s nothing too fancy, just something other than Shade on all pages, and I will be adding more as I get them done.

The funny thing about these images is probably the way I’m doing them. A while ago I decided that it’s much easier to draw cartoony graphics in Flash. The tools that are there are perfect for creating those thick, smooth lines that are trademark of a good-looking comic, and the ability to layer the lines or keep them together to move and shape them makes it a great program for editing and manipulation. The problem I ran into was trying to export a good-looking graphic. For some reason, using the image exporter that’s built into Flash gave me a choppy image with unsmoothed color blends and pixelated edges. I tried everything I could think of, bringing it into every other program I have, trying to copy and paste all layers, then sending to the program. Nothing seemed to work. Every time it would come out flat, and bad.

Then, with Shade (the front page image), I suddenly realized what I was doing wrong. In a moment of inspiration I simply pressed the “print screen” key, made a new document in Photoshop, and pasted it in. I cropped out the bit that I wanted to use, edited the background to give it a smooth base when brought into the web page, and saved it for the web. Couldn’t have been more perfect, and I kicked myself for not thinking of it before.

So with that, I’m now trying to decide what I want to put on the other pages. Just a few more. I’ve also been working on the HTML/CSS design for one of my sites, and I started to finish a painting last week as well. My second week of class is almost up, which just leads right into the third, so I’m trying to keep up with homework and all that too. On top of that, I’m still trying to find a new job. I really want to do something in web design/developing, but no one wants to hire a semi-experienced developer who just wants to work under someone, taking over the coding part. They want people with years of experience to lead their project, manage it all, and get paid beans for it. It’s really quite frustrating.

~D~

Late night updates

Difyance — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:23:49 +0000

So I have added the final pages to my site. The very basic groundwork has been laid. I feel extremely confident that I will continue to improve from here, and I am ecstatic at the current look of the site. It’s comfortable, it’s simple, and it’s easy to navigate. Though there is much to be said about innovative design, it was way too much work to try to make that happen as my first attempt at a portfolio site. So, the old design will be going into the inspiration folder, and this one is taking front for now.

I have a lot of art to do now. I want to put different graphics on each page, and I want to start getting my comic work up. There are a lot of simple jokes, things I say without realizing it that other people find hilarious, and references to games I’ve played that possibly only people who have played those games will understand. The comic section will not be a single story line, but a mesh of different ideas that will be posted as they present themselves to me. It’s an exciting journey, looking ahead, and I’m feeling so accomplished right now.

On top of that, I completely revamped my resume today, adding the things that the recruiter I talked to suggested, and using a unique template that I think really works for me. I can’t wait to learn more things so that I can add to my list of skills and sites.

Trudging up the trail, the journey has begun.

~D~

New Site Design

Difyance — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:15:23 +0000

So I spent the better part of today coding up the new design, and even though the styles seemed to muck up when I transferred the files to the server, I think it’s looking exactly how I want it. It isn’t extremely glamorous or up to par with some of the greater portfolio sites that inspired this design, but it will do for now, and is a better placeholder than what was there, in my opinion.

The link is the same (www.difyance.com) and there are still only the two links to my current projects on it. If I can keep this up there will be a lot more work to be added though, so stay tuned.

~Difyance~

Blitzkrieg and Ramble: Day One

Difyance — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 05:30:21 +0000

I’ve always been interested in art. It’s on the top of the list of things I love to do. My grandmother wanted me to be a write. “There’s no money in art!” she’d say. When I started looking at colleges, I learned about graphic design and animation and how artists can make money by going digital. Sadly, I ended up at a community college (in a backwards state) that had no real idea what technology was about, and after four years I came out with a degree in Internet Technology, even though I had gone in pursuing computers in the Information Systems field.

Throughout it all, I found that I really do love working with computers, and I still love my art. After years of putting off projects and coming up with ideas but not pursuing them, I have finally decided to get myself on track, create these wonderful things that are dancing inside my head, and start to make a name for myself, and my work. Blitzkrieg and Ramble is the foundation of that.

Through all the years, I have written stories that were never read, poems that never saw light once the notebook page was turned, and journal entries that were more me ranting than actually writing. This collection became known as “Mindless Ramblings.” A rather fitting name I think, because most of the time I just free-wrote, without thinking about what I was writing.

My art started to die when I got stuck in a very bad relationship. The only good thing that came out of it was the first sketches I did of an evil bunny. It wasn’t intentional – when I don’t know what to draw, I just trace the lines I see on the paper until something forms. It was an angry looking bunny, but the idea was kind of neat, so I started to refine the drawing, and came up with more sketches of more bunnies. Before I knew it, there were a whole fleet of them, and they were all angry, and all they wanted to do was fight. This is how Blitzkrieg Bunnies was born.

I had been hoping to go straight to Flash animation with the short stories I had in my head. Each one has its own story to tell, but I realized quickly I had no idea how to create a complex animation, and I didn’t have the patience to draw out every single frame of a scene (I still don’t). So Blitzkrieg Bunnies went on the back burner.

Today I recreated the front page of my portfolio site. I am bringing back the bunnies, and the ramblings, and combining them to create a single source of inspiration and focus so that I can finally get something done. This is a new chapter in my life, one where the flame of creativity is rekindled, and my hope and faith in myself is restored.

This is the beginning of Blitzkrieg and Ramble.