Carja

Switch On the Sky and the Stars Glow For You

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Dec 132016
 

Hello top men and women. Welcome back to the weekly odds and ends that make up this blog. Thanks for dropping by.

Back in October, I let myself be seduced by the shiny trappings of Riot’s foray into board games. Mechs vs. Minions is possibly the most overproduced game ever. They really went whole hog on its components. It’s not a game that I would typically play either. But the pretty shinies included and the very attractive price point were irresistible. So I bought it and it was delivered to me in a timely manner. I opened the box and marveled at its contents. And then I put it away to wait for an opportunity to play. That opportunity I decided was going to be on Sunday at the Criq’s Game Day. I brought Mechs vs. Minions and a selection of other games I really want to get to the table. None of them made it until late in the day. I’d just finished losing twice at Yggdrasil and the group I was with asked to see what games I’d brought with me. This was it. Time to break out the big guns. If anything, they’d think, like I do, that it looks cool. And they did. One of the group was about to leave for the night but he said, “Well if that’s the next game, then I’m staying.” We played through the tutorial and had a good enough time that they were interested in getting together again to continue through the campaign. I got a text this morning asking to play tonight even though one of the guys had to drop out. Still, it’s a good sign that this game will get played. Woo! One of the guys seemed interested in Lords of Waterdeep as well. Double woo!

I did no drawing over the weekend. It’s been a while since I’ve been that unproductive. I finished my strips during the week though and I’m still far ahead on mash-ups but I can’t let that become a habit.

Christmas is less then two weeks away, but even more important than that, Rogue One is only three days away. There’s a Thursday showing at Biermans. I’ll be heading there straight from work to wait in line. I don’t expect the fervor to be as strong as it was for The Force Awakens, but I’m not taking any chances. 🙂 The few short comments I’ve seen about the picture have it looking good. I can’t wait. I suspect I’ll be seeing it more than once over the next month.

That’s it for this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

 

 

Flashback Friday – Teela

 Artwork  No Responses »
Dec 102016
 

Welcome to a special Saturday edition of Flashback Friday, also known as “Carja forgot Friday morning, got home way late from gaming, the site was down so he had to wait until Saturday morning to post” or the CFFMGHWLFGTSWDSHHTWUSMTP for short…it’s going to become a thing. Watch. In the meantime, remember to click on the images to get a close-up.

Teela. One of the three female characters from the original toy line (I wasn’t able to get any of them). The toy came with some pretty nifty looking snake-themed armor pieces that were dropped from the character in the cartoon. Her look in the show pretty much defines her now. She’s the adopted daughter of Man-at-Arms and biological daughter of the Sorceress (her biological father is at present unknown, but I wouldn’t put it past the current comic book line to explore that history someday). For the longest time, Teela is oblivious to the fact that Prince Adam is He-Man (a testament to his skill at playing a good-for-nothing). She does eventually find out in the aforementioned comic line, where she also learns of her heritage. Her character history is actually pretty interesting and more than the common toy line fare.

Sass is here to reprise the role of Teela. The pose is taken from the Teela statue from Pop Culture Shock and though she’s far from perfect, I’m proud of the way she turned out considering how hard it was to draw. I really had a lot of trouble with her lower body. I just couldn’t get the legs looking right. I eventually realized that the upper body positioning was off which made the legs look really off so I started over and finally managed to get it looking acceptable. This to say that I still struggle greatly with anatomy and posing. It occurs to me looking at it as I prepare to post that the tail is maybe a tad too long.

Here’s the comparison to the original mash-up. That original torso is really off and of course the spindly limbs detract from the action pose. The first mash-up is based on the toy while the new one is based on the cartoon. Since Teela’s and Evil-Lyn’s toys had the same body sculpt, I didn’t want the two mash-ups to look like each other (the same reason why the original Evil-Lyn mash-up was based on the Evil-Lyn from the reimagined toy line while the original Teela mash-up was based on the original Teela toy.)

That’s all for this week. We’ve got three more Masters flashbacks to go and then four new pieces before we move on to the next theme.

The Kind Mixed With the Wicked, the Will to Fight Until the End

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Dec 052016
 

Welcome back top men and women. Time for some more words. Let us see what they say.

After weeks of tossing and turning my way through the night, I was finally able to get a solid night’s rest over the weekend. Maybe it was the tryptophan from the turkey I had at the dinner party out at the lake (how much tryptophan in a single little slice?) but by 9pm I was too tired to even watch television so I just turned in and apart from a trip to the bathroom at about 4am, I was able to sleep all the way through to almost 9am. It felt GOOD.

I completed the set of banners for the sight. I decided on a much cleaner look than the original Barnaby banner that some of you may have seen last week. I haven’t found how to make transparencies in GIMP so I decided simple was better. I’m not fully satisfied with them, but they’ll suffice until I figure out how to make something better. My favorite is Skitter. He turned out pretty darn cute.

I still have two months’ worth of Masters of the Universe flashbacks to go but I started a sketch for the first of the Firefly set that will follow. It seems a little early for that though, but I don’t want to fall out of the rhythm. Maybe I can find the mojo to work on another project in the meantime.

I’ve been watching a LOT of Barney Miller reruns on YouTube over the last week. The mood struck me after reading about Ron Glass’s passing. The show has aged surprisingly well. It’s most certainly a product of its time but there was some good writing that remains timeless. Even though I’ve already watched at least half of the episodes so far, I’m tempted to add the complete box set to my collection.

I don’t order as much from Amazon as I used to since my entertainment dollars are mostly going to board games these days and sadly that’s one area where they’re simply not as competitive as other online stores. However, I did order some things for Christmas gifts over the weekend. Imagine my surprise to see a package waiting for me when I got home. Obviously Canada Post works weekends.

That’s all for this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries