Stephen Torrence has done a great service by recording and sharing a number of his translations of songs that catch his attention into American Sign Language (ASL).

HowStuffWorks.com interviewed Stephen to get some insight into the process he goes through in writing his translations and the details may surprise you.  The effort he puts into each of his translations shows, and it’s no wonder!  Each one of his recordings are the result of take after take, he’s not simply taking the words of the songs and dryly regurgitating them—he’s  carefully performing each phrase and verse, employing full use of his face and manner to great effect.

So, if you have even a passing interest in ASL and seeing some impressive performances, I recommend you take a look at Stephen’s collection on his YouTube page.

And with that, I leave you with the song that got me here: Stephen’s excellent performance of Jonathan Coulton’s “Still Alive,” Enjoy.

Credit goes to Kit for finding this amazing video first.  He showed it to me a while back, and I just now got to watching it since my web speed was increased.

Here’s some before/after images showing my improvement after being enlightened by Andantonius.

Before:

After:

If one looks closely, the color blending, highlights,  and shading are of considerably higher quality!

Thanks to Andantonius, my future work is sure to be something I can take pride in.

Almost there...

It’s been a slow, and rather lame-ass march, but it at last seems like I’m closing the gap to that epic 5,000 gold in World of Warcraft that shall guarantee me the right to ride a flying mount capable of speeds in excess of 279% percent my normal running speed.  They are true SR-71′s of Outland, and after being badly beat to the finish line by Brian’s wife, Kim, I’m more anxious than ever to prove that I don’t totally suck at earning fake money.

Ironically, however, it seems that real money is holding me back from my position as a flying ace.  My WoW account runs out on the 7th of October.  I’m still kicking my self for not having been able to save up the 5k over the summer, but pulling off a stunt like that would require me to live as a hermit in an Internet accessible cave high in the Andes Mountains above Chile.

I have a plan to reclaim my glory though.  I’m going to re-open my status as a commissioned artist with a few tweaks to make dealings more streamlined.

Firstly, I will no longer be doing fully-photoshopped pictures unless someone requests so and has the means to pay fifteen dollars to me.  I find myself excruciatingly slow in photoshop, especially when under pressure.

Secondly, The standard commission will cost eight dollars, and consist of a very finished looking pencil drawing of either the client as a cartoon character, or something that they request.

On a lesser note, thirdly, these commissions are NOT caricatures.  They are drawings of people and/or things in a cartoon style of my own, not drastic accentuation of facial features.  I’m not a guy working at a mall kiosk.

Of course, I’m not asking anyone who reads this if they’d like to commission me.  You all already fall into my “Do things for free” list.  However, encouragement would be psychosomatically helpful. ^^

1. Played in the dark when possible, and
2. Played with slow, elegant classical music playing in the background.

The design of ships and attention to detail never ceases to blow my mind.  The proposed mass Sins match is still planned, by the way.  We need only to wait for certain conditions to be met.  These conditions shall be achieved as early as Tuesday the 16^th.

1. Thou shalt NOT use white paint…ever.
2. Thou shalt not add details on anything until all color is in place.
3. Thou shalt always work from “back” to “front” on a picture.

To name just a few.

A friend of mine’s painting of a mountain/forest scene in the same class right now is one of the most beautiful and downright kick-ass paintings I’ve ever seen in water color, and everyone else in the classroom agrees save for the instructor. My teacher says that it is too “over worked,” and that my friend “needs to stop now before ruining it completely.”

Of course anyone who reads this is on the outside of that issue and cannot provide an opinion on the painting themselves, but the argument on how good the work is is not my point.

It is from these two experiences following my studies in the U.S. Constitution (focusing on the separation of church and state part) along with my criticism of rigid structuralist psychology (the idea that the mind’s workings can be divided into definitive sections)that I have developed what I like to call the “Linear Non-Linearity Theory.”

The main idea is that one cannot apply linear thinking to non-linear situations in absolution. In the separation of church and state, the government has no control over what your chosen religion is. When they did, failure of the system was inevitable because one cannot place too solid of regulations on something that can change from person to person.

The same applies to too structural of looks at the human psyche. One cannot always predict or estimate the power of choice, as choice is non-linear and changes from person to person.

And thus I come to rules in painting. Art is the very definition of non-linear, of the human mind looking at the environment in ways never thought of, in making connections and conclusions that no computer-brain could fathom to understand. To my art teacher, she doesn’t seem to know the saying “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” Of course, I’m not saying that guidelines of conduct to achieve wanted appearances in artwork isn’t useful.

To better illustrate this, I’ve come up with the idea of placing an iron rod into a puddle of water. The water will not be conformed to the bar, but will remain in its random “puddle” shape. In fact, over time the iron rod will rust and deteriorate. That is the example of introducing rigid linear rules into a non-linear environment.

The correct way to introduce positive structural ideas into an arena such as art could be compared to a sponge. We start again with the same puddle, but we place a sponge in it. Much, but not all, of the water is absorbed by the sponge. One reason the hypothetical sponge does not get eaten away at by its non-linear host is because the sponge is flexible.

You can introduce guidelines and rules into an open subject without failure as long as those rules and guidelines are able to accommodate for non-linear change.

Comments? Questions?

PS: Nice ice-blue theme, Kit!

PPS: Oh…my…gosh.  The new banner is indescribably beautiful!

The whole reason this girl came into being is because of Lauren’s method of naming her characters. I figured “If you’re naming characters after celestial objects, what about all those countless things in the sky that have no real name?” I liked the sound of NGC-3982, a galaxy behind the big dipper, 68 million lightyears away. Since I first started drawing her, she’s become more detached from the Galaxy Girls and in my mind, and I’m certain her own, acheived complete autonomy. Her character is that of the computer-nerd/gamer/programmer. She also has some of Adam in her, and is a bit of a recluse. The closest any of Lauren’s characters came to being like her was found in Uranus. Uranus, although being highly intelligent and bookish, commands good work ethic and knows mostly usable information; thereby seperating her from NGC’s procrastinatory ways and command of useless trivia. Each character in the Galaxy Girls has a symbol that they wear in the form of earrings. I thought it fitting to have NGC-3982′s be the power switch of most electronics. She is a skilled runner of Linux and Microsoft, but like me, harbors a dislike for Macintosh. She is also a self-declared hunter of “noobs.” The developer console in the background is a section of copy-and-pasted code from the start up of Garry’s Mod. Feel free to ask me any questions about her character, since by far she is one of my most developed ones.

I decided to draw some fanart for her, and last night I shopped a promotional poster of sorts for Addy.  I think I’m starting to get the hang of photoshop at last.

Ars talks about the recently relased “demo” of GT5 titled Gran Turismo 5: Prologue

Racing games have not quite delivered for me yet, there’s an experience that I’m looking for in my next foray into the genre: multiplayer support.

I personally believe that the greatest enjoyment I could receive from a classic series like Gran Turismo was beating some human chap in a closely matched race.

My appeal sirs and madams is this: can this racing experience found on the console be replicated on my beloved PC?  Does it even exist?

Garry Newman’s outstanding HL2 sandbox mod keeps getting better and better, one of the most notable recent changes is the addition of new vehicle types: Chairs!

As veteran Garry’s Mod players will note, this is a huge deal—before this, there were only the heavy and cumbersome Prisoner Pods to work with.  So, kudos Garry!

I’ll post a couple videos of Garry’s Mod action soon!

Apologies for the poor YouTube quality, the video got over-compressed, I’ll have to upload a better take.  To explain what is going on in this video: I had created a flying vehicle (let’s call it the podcopter) and Sean had build this rather frightening looking car.  We decided to compare top speeds of or respective vehicles and well it turns out that Sean had superior acceleration but we ultimately had the same top speed.  Sean also had one surprise for me toward the end of the race, watch and enjoy

Update: Here’s the ‘higher-quality’ I promised, it’s the outside shot of my ‘hover-pod’ what do you think?