Rabbit Trail Galore

So the thinking process for this little project (which wasn't planned) may be a bit unusual. Who am I kidding, every thinking process that went into my projects are unusual.

It starts off with a text from a friend of mine, wishing me a Merry Christmas. That reminded me of my roommate, who is engaged. Unfortunately, after showing her the previous project with the outline of my old roommate, made her change the theme to her wedding. I told her the necklace that I had matched her theme. After returning from college, I asked what the name for the type of necklace I had was. It was a cameo necklace, and then I tried to make a cameo necklace in photoshop using the picture of my old roommate. After 6 hours (without the help of any tutorial), I made a somewhat decent cameo necklace. However, I will show respect and not show the picture of my old roommate (even in a necklace).

With that roadblock in the way, I decided to use a different picture for my necklace. However it didn't turn out the way I wanted with my previous try at cameos. While finishing up the project I chose to make it look like some ad for a jewelry store. Thus introduces my sister to this process. When I was thinking up a name, my sister brought up the Shy Guy. I added how he could be a psychopath and we laughed at the idea of a Shy Guy wearing a hockey-mask.

So there you have it: text from friend -> roommate -> cameo necklace -> Shy Guy -> psychopath. All I did to the Shy Guy was remove his mouth and add holes.

Whaddya lookin' at?!

God's Been Good In My Life pt. 4

He always is.

I think God likes to show that He loves me in small ways. That even the smallest detail could bring a smile to my face. It may not mean much to some people, but it means a lot to me. For instance, after evening church service on Christmas, I went to spend time with my extended family at my grandmother's house. To my surprise the ice cream truck came by, and my cousins and I bought some food.  It brought some memories back even though I looked silly ordering a triple cone while wearing my Sunday best. Later, I was feeding my little sister her food while she was playing Mortal Kombat 9 (but Mortal Kombat Trilogy will always be the family favorite). Then when we went back home, I got to see my other favorite movie, Behind Enemy Lines, playing on TV. I forgot to mention while driving back my favorite Christmas song was playing on the radio, Last Christmas by Wham! That song always makes me feel happy.

By the way, I'll post something tomorrow. Something that took more than an hour to make.

Whoa! Drive-by Inspiration!

Whoa! No really it was. I got inspiration last night and stayed up, along with my sister, to finish this up. It wasn't originally meant to be Kind Lady from DDR. But my sister looked at it and thought it had some similarities to Kind Lady. Maybe it was just the sunglasses our model wore.

I used the font Andes with a small pink drop shadow. And then I used a lot of brushes that looked like bubbles and sparkles/stars. For the model, I used a layer mask to get rid of the background and used the Threshold adjustment layer. Copied the same layers and finally merged the four layers into one for the model. I used a background that looked like city lights and changed the blending mode to Hard Light to bring out the pink in the background.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I changed the banner and background into an extended version of Kind Lady with more sparkles. Yay... Might as well end with the original song from DDR.

Mah Skillz in College

Yeah, I didn't have time to post yesterday. I was too busy watching funny videos and Toy Story 2. But enough about that! Here's one of two of the best projects I've done (which means these were the only ones that were graded the highest, a B). Yeah its pathetic but at least I tried.

Yep, this one actually got me the highest grade I've ever gotten in this class. I did some changes that the teacher wrote down to make it better. I changed some of the kerning and made "Includes" in smaller font. Another change was removing my name, for obvious reasons. Who would want to buy a hymnbook from a mental frog?

The theme of our hymnbook had to be from a particular hymn that we chose as our main song. I chose "I Believe In Miracles", my favorite hymn, and then include three other hymns. Since the theme was Miracles, I chose the aurora borealis as my background. I still can't understand how people don't realize God's hand in nature and everything else. The font I used was Noir-et-Blanc for the title and I forgot which font I used in the subheading. I'm not sure if I'll post the next project that I did in college since I would have to censor a lot of things. Not that it has bad content, but for privacy reasons. This mental frog needs to be secluded from the rest of the world.

Randomness At Its Least

Man, today was random and still surreal. Attending my home church felt weird, and meeting the folks there was worse. I'll be honest, everyone looked older, and I'm scared that I look older too. It shouldn't surprise me but it still does every time I come back from college. Oh well, that shouldn't matter. What does matter is the time I spent with my little sister.

We are pretty weird, but that's normal. No really, it is. We had fun watching Bollywood music videos, and looked up Bollywood actors, since we thought the Bollywood actresses were pretty. I'll be very honest again, it's not the same the other way around. So we just kept making fun of the actors. Then we looked up Japanese actors and had a fun time asking if the person was a boy or girl. It really is scary how feminine the guys were. Logically we transitioned from looking at Japanese actors to mullets. When were those ever popular? So how did we get on the subject of Bollywood? Well it was this video we saw from =3, and from then on we just went loose.

SWEET TEA!

I can't wait 'til I graduate. With mai skillz, I'll be able to make videos like this. Oh and I'll post a project I did in college tomorrow.

God's Been Good In My Life pt. 3

I should probably tell of how God had shown a great amount of mercy and grace yesterday. First off, I realized I left my actual photo ID in one of my storage bins before assembly. Not only that, I had to leave almost immediately after the assembly in order to catch my flight in time. But the Lord was so kind and I was able to get my ID in time to leave, and I was able to catch an early ride to the airport. This time, my flights weren't delayed (a wonderful blessing), my luggage could fit, and actually got to each of my gates early. On my last flight home, I got to watch my favorite movie on the plane (courtesy of the airline). It's no surprise that my favorite movie I got to watch was The Matrix. I was so happy, although a little nauseated. You see, in the midst of trying to get ready to leave college, I missed breakfast and drank only coke, drank bad coffee for lunch, and ate a sandwich on the plane. I guess eating on a plane and staying in the air for 4 hours isn't good for your stomach. Oh well, competing with watching The Matrix, the other best part of the day was coming home from a very busy semester of college.

But even that is a blessing. God has opened a lot of opportunities for me to work on my skills. In addition, God allowed me to meet a lot of new people, the majority of them were wonderful blessings to me. I'll be honest, some of them were thorns to my sides and they kept hurting me and brought me trouble without even knowing it. However, God allowed them in my life so I can learn. And I have learned. So at least this experience won't be in vain. Anyway, more blessings!

I think irony is one of God's many jokes. Why am I saying this? Well after leaving the airport to go back home, my family and I watched Con Air. The actor playing the inmate Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom later plays Pascal Sauvage, the owner of many prisons, in Johnny English. I just find that hilarious. A side note about irony, my sister and I were watching Day of the Dead (1985), and pondered over Steel. We thought, he probably is a really nice guy in real life. Probably teaches Sunday school to children and feeds the homeless, but is out in a role that makes him look like a really bad mean guy. Again, we were laughing at the thought and how it could be true. Oh well, I'll post up some projects soon.

I'll Be Home For Christmas

You can count on me...

Okay, now that bad singing is out of the way, I gotta say this "I'm back". And boy does it feel gewd. All I can say in a nutshell how this semester has been is this: BUSY. And that means I might show you guys some of the work I've done. Bear in mind that only a few are actually good. Oh well, I'm sleepy and tired, but oddly kind of hyper. It's kind of surreal. One of the things about leaving to and from college is that it numbs you a bit. Maybe tomorrow I'll bring some new work and news.