3D Printing

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Printed in color, as one piece. Amazing!
(source)
Lately I've been hearing a lot about 3D printing, and it has me all kinds of excited. You can make models of pretty much anything--I've seen cups, crazy gear systems, a working crescent wrench printed as one piece, and lots and lots of heads. People love printing their heads.

In fact, Disney recently invited some annual passholders with little girls between ages three and sixteen to get 3D photos taken of their faces in order to make customized princess figurines. And they didn't invite me. That's just so cold. I mean, obviously I need a figurine of my face on Ariel's body.

Clearly that's the best use of this technology--creating dolls for narcissists. I'm getting a doll with my face on it, and that's just all there is to it.

The best place I've found for this so far is Clone Factory in Akihabara. Unfortunately, I was there a year and a half ago, before I knew I needed a doll with my face, and I don't think Poncho's going to be willing to make the trek back to Japan any time soon.

I just... I just really need a 3D printer. Life can be so hard sometimes. Woe.

Sims 3: 24 Karl Addison Tattoos

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

While looking for images to turn into Sims tattoos, I stumbled upon Karl Addison, who had tons of good stuff. Reincrab? Check. Turtle being ridden by a snail with a mustache? Check.

Anyway, here are twenty-four tattoos. The line art is by Karl Addison, but I added some color layers. These are not "accessory tattoos," and thus require the Ambitions expansion pack. Some of the one-channel ones looks kind of blah when made small, but I figure you can just delete them if you don't want them.




How to disable/enable these by gender/age
1) Open the .package file in s3pe.
2) Highlight the CASP file.
3) Click the Grid button at the bottom.
4) Set the thing to the thing.
5) Hit the Commit button, and save the file.


Credits
Tattooinator by CmarNYC
Art by Karl Addison

Manga Monday: Omae ga Sekai wo Kowashitai Nara

Monday, August 29, 2011




Omae ga Sekai wo Kowashitai Nara

    AKA If You Want To Destroy the World or Vampire Girl
Downloaded from Goldlily's Media Gallery  ~
Mangaka Karou Fujiwara
Genre(s) drama, historical, horror, josei, mature, mystery, romance, supernatural, tragedy
Year 1999
Volumes 3
Summary  taken from Baka-Updates
Koizumi Kanna is infatuated with the man who came to the restaurant she works at and ordered a burger with no onions. Little does she know, Toujou Ren is interested in her as well, but for a different reason. Kanna just so happens to be the mirror image of a woman he knew a very long time ago. It is for that reason that he saves her when she nearly dies in a car accident. But the life he gives Kanna is far different from the one she lived before, and she's not certain it's the kind she wants...

Scanlated by Storm in Heaven
Translation A+
Scan Quality A+
Editing Quality A+

Review
This starts off sounding like a manga version of The Vampire Diaries, but it very quickly turns into something different. Though it does get a little after-lifey, it's probably the most realistic vampire story I've read--no werewolves or turning into bats or sparkling--and has a nice murder mystery vibe to it. The whole story goes a direction I didn't expect, which was refreshing. The romance element isn't overdone or cheesy, and in fact leads to what I think is one of the better manga endings I've come across.
Story      
Art         

Tilt-Shift Your Way to Glory

Friday, August 26, 2011

I'm kind of obsessed with tilt-shift photography. Which is a shame because I've only been able to pull off a tilt-shift once so far.

Tilt-shift refers to the practice of adjusting the focus of a photo or video in such a way that the content looks like a miniature model, preferably complete with little tiny people bustling around. Fancy-pants people accomplish this with a tilt-shift lens on their fancy-pants camera, but the effect can be accomplished well enough in Photoshop. In fact, the Camera 360 app I have on my phone has a tilt-shift option.

by Jack Ambridge
The part I find tricky is finding locations high enough to take a good shot from, as you kind of need to be... up to pull off a good tilt-shift image. If you search for "tilt-shift" on Flickr you will find an excess of examples of people trying to make a tilt-shift image out of photos that are just plain too close.

So, if you're going to try this, be sure you're taking your photo from far away and from above. Or below, I guess. It's possible to make a tilt-shift photo from ground-level, but I've seen very few examples where it hasn't come out looking lame. Once you've got a photo that you think will look cute all fake-miniaturized, here's a good tutorial on how to get the effect. Or just upload it to TiltShiftMaker.com. You know, whichever.

The one I made was done in Photoshop, and I took it from the top of Mickey's Fun Wheel in Disney's California Adventure park.


To Craft

Thursday, August 25, 2011

I am way too easily excited. A while ago I started seeing Disney Princess couture jewelry, and it was kind of cool, but also way not my style. In order to reconcile my feelings of desire and displeasure, I decided I would just make my own princess inspired jewelry.


While scouring the internet for the parts for these, I found other crafty items I liked. So, of course, I had to buy them. Thus, I have gone way overboard. As usual.

And this is just the beginning.
My craft room is exploding with beautiful trinkets and bits and parts and goops, and I fiddle around in there like a kid in a... store of some kind. But not a candy store because this is better. On one hand I want to keep it all, but on the other hand I don't need twelve of everything, and on the magical third hand I need to do something to support this craft habit.


My new Etsy store is called Sweet Whatevers. Because they're not nothings--they're whatever I feel like making. I'll be adding new stuff every few days for... a while. I have a handful of things already done, another handful half done, and yet another handful already sketched out. I'm mostly waiting on a new order of chain to come in.

Also, since I mentioned it, I wanted to post this Disney couture jewelry, which I originally saw on LiveJournal. Here's Pocahontas, The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast.

Being "Immune" to the Zombie Infection is Just a Nice Way of Saying You have No Brain

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

A while ago, I posted a review of the stupidest book I'd ever read. That was until I read the sequel, The Dead Tossed Waves. What can I say? I'm a competionist when it comes to books, even if it's garbage. And, yes, the sequel was garbage, but not in the fun What the hell are you doing?? How have you survived this long, you stupid whore?? kind of way like the first one was.

It was boring. In fact, I skimmed maybe even most of it. There were a lot of pages where I read one sentence, just to be sure the author was still describing the same thing. It took twenty pages for two people to cross a bridge. It's like the Dragon Ball Z of trite post-apocolyptic zombie romance.

The basic story takes place maybe almost thirty years after the first one. Stupid Whore is grown up and has a daughter of her own. Stupid Whore Junior is the opposite of her mother--she doesn't give a hoot about traveling to another place just for the hell of it, doesn't think it's a good idea to run through zombie territory for any reason, and she's blond. Her friends try and convince her to hop the fence with them to hang out at the abandoned amusement part, to which she says screw that... until the boy she likes asks her to come.

So she does. And they all die. Because you don't hop the damn zombie fence, you retards.

Well, obviously, she doesn't die. And neither does her boyfriend, even though he's been bitten. It turns out he's immune to the virus, and is now a carrier. Which means that they cannot make out any more. Which leads to many scenes with them pressed up against each other and breathing heavy.

...

Anyway.

They run away together. With some other guy who just randomly came out of the woods and decided to start following Stupid Whore Junior around. She spends a lot of time breathing heavy with him too. In fact, she alternates. And she doesn't even seem to feel bad about it. Can't choose between the two guys you're traveling with? There can be only one solution: Dry. Hump. Everything.

Oh, and Stupid Whore Junior murders someone before she leaves. Like straight up stabs him in the torso and flees. So they run into the forest, being chased by some army guys. The army guys mostly want to bring in the infected but immune guy. Why? Because the zombies won't eat him, which means he can kill them easily. He can, like, walk into the middle of a group of them, hand one of them a bomb, and then walk out. Or he can go get supplies without being attacked.

At this point I'm thinking... this party basically consists of a girl who murdered someone so that she could flee and be with her boyfriends, and a guy who could really help the anti-zombie effort but doesn't feel like it. And I honestly don't think the author realizes she's turned her protagonists into the bad guys here.

Despite this, for some reason I cannot fathom, they're running away from the army guys and towards the capitol city... which I'm pretty sure is where the army comes from. Which probably makes the least sense of anything that has happened in either of these books. They don't even get there by the end of the book. It's just, like, over.

There are, however, some highlights to this flee-and-chase fiasco:

After making out with Random Tag-Along guy, he's all smiling and walking down the path backwards... and steps right off the edge of a cliff. Seriously. All this fleeing from the army and from zombies, and he's done in because he can't watch where he's going. They pull him up, but his leg is broken so... they leave him and move the heck on, of course.

This is good, though, because it leads to one of my favorite moments in fine literature of all time. So Stupid Whore Junior and her infected boyfriend are still being chased by army guys when they come across a school bus. Upon further inspection, the bus is full of first graders in matching little blue sweaters. Hundred-year-old zombie first graders. The author even describes how they look almost alive and have pig tails. How do our protagonists react? They start picking up the zombie first graders and chucking them at the army guys.

The "good guys" pick up. Dead six-year-olds. And throw them. At soldiers.

The whole scene was just beautiful in its insanity.

So the third book is out, and, on the one hand, I'm kind of excited to find out what shenanigans the author manages to conjure up this time, but, on the other, I'm not sure I have many more brain cells left to spare.

Sims 3: Tattoos of Tentacles

Tuesday, August 23, 2011


I built a tattoo parlor for my Sims' town... and promptly realized I had no custom tattoos. Most of the tattoos available for download are tribal, and I am not in a tribe, so obviously the solution was to start making tattoos for my Sims. As with most things, I've already started to go overboard, but at least I got one set done already.

These are mostly sea creatures with tentacles, hence the title. A few of them don't have tentacles, but, whatever, I tossed them in anyway. These are not "accessory tattoos," and thus require the Ambitions expansion pack. They are available for males and females, teen and up.





Credits

Manga Monday: The Rêverie of the Red Shoes (Oneshot)

Monday, August 22, 2011




The Rêverie of the Red Shoes
Mangaka Yun Ji Woon
Genre(s) drama, josei, romance, tragedy
Year 2003
Volumes 1
Summary  taken from Baka-Updates
What happens when you trade your soul for material goods? Is there a way for redemption? A spin off from the classic tale "Red Shoes," this is the story of a woman's obsession with worldly goods and the consequences of that foolish desire.

Scanlated by Project NOIR
Translation A+
Scan Quality A+
Editing Quality A+

Review
One shots are a great way to keep myself entertained for a few minutes, but whenever I read one I can't help but either wish the oneshot was not a oneshot, or feel that I just wasted those few minutes. This, fortunately, falls into the former category. I liked the story, and I liked the end, and I would really have liked it if the story had been fleshed out to, say, two or three volumes. I suppose asking to get attached to characters that only have a thirty page story is asking a bit much, but if you want to read a oneshot then I would say this is a good one.
Story      
Art         

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