So, that comic I was trying to make? I can't figure out how to draw it effectively so I think I'm pretty much giving it up I might try to do it in GMod and just draw over that in Photoshop or something, but I can't draw people that well, and having to draw several people over and over again would be a pain in the butt (and daunting as hell)...

Anyways I went trick-or-treating as Scout and afterward went to my friends' house and watching the new Rob Zombie remake of Halloween. It was kind of lame really... there were only a few parts were Mike Myers would walk out of a shadow or something where you couldn't see him before that were a bit scary, but other than that it was just a lot of blood and naked girls (yay slasher movies?).

How was your Halloween?

Holy cripe, an update from me?!

Yes, I know; it's quite shocking really. Anyways, for those of you who don't know (which is a lot of you, no doubt) my computer is dead. A virus stabbed Windows in its face and left it bleed out in some dark ally in downtown Detroit. Not really, but whatever. I have a comic-y thing planned for Halloween, but without a computer to work on I know I won't make the "deadline." Besides, I have quite a bit of homework that will eat up much of this weekend so there goes a lot of my free time to work on it. Expect to see this comic released sometime around Thanksgiving! (You think I'm kidding)

In other news, I'm going to be Scout from Team Fortress 2 on Halloween. The only part of the costume I have left is his weird headset thing. I already have a perfect pair, they just need to be slightly reshaped, painted, and I have to find something that looks like microphone.

Any ideas for a pumpkin/jack o'lantern? I'm out of them...

Looking back at my old journals I see I hadn't said was "DoaR" day was. Well if I haven't already told you, it means "Death of a Roman." Caesar to be precise; hence the salad and stab references...

Can't think of anything else to say...

On a rather tangent note (everything else had a point?): the fact that I can't do either underscores or italics in that box at the top bugs me a bit because of my inability to properly punctuate book titles...

Buddies (that still use this site [I think])

For all of you who when you see more than about 20 words at once you get an instant "TOO LONG; DIDN'T READ" reaction, just skip this large bit below. For those of you who wouldn't mind learning about a new program or just listening to a mild, semi-useless review of a good alternative to Photoshop read on:

So I was just lurking around on the internet and found this neat site (thanks to a link from G4 I believe) called Aviary. Although the title of this journal implies it could be better than Photoshop, it isn't quite THAT good, but given patients and time to learn the program you can definatly produce results comparable to Photoshop images. Aviary is actually a suite of four flash (it run completely within the browser; no downloading needed) programs (Phoenix, Peacock, Toucan, and Raven) each with its own purpose, but all fully integrated into Phoenix. Phoenix, the main, image-editing program, has a setup similar to Photoshop with its tools on the left and layers on the right. Most of its tools are the same as Photoshop's as well as some other miscellaneous function it can perform such as filters and changing the image size. Peacock is dubbed an "Effects Editor." What it does is combine different effects (ranging from rendering content to standard image filters like those in Photoshop) with a node interface not dissimilar to something like Terragen 2. With it you can combine the effects in ways Photoshop can't due to the dynamic ability to reorder and change the effects in real time. Toucan is essentially a color pallet making program akin to COLOURlovers.com and others. It has a standard color picker with hex values and sliders for all three color systems (RGB, CMYK, and HSL). What sets this program apart fro mthe others though is a color wheel that can pickup multiple colors based on color relations. It's a bit hard to describe, but simple to figure out (I think). Lastly is Raven, a vector based program like Adobe Illustrator. From what I have seen it actually looks really powerful for a browser-based, flash program. It has Bezier Curve based drawing, a fundamental part of vector drawing, and (like Illustrator) uses what I refer to as "Layer Styles" (each layer comprising of an outline and a fill). It also appears to have a good handle on gradiations. Now, personally I'm content with Photoshop and the like, but for someone who doesn't want to go out and buy the $600 program, or just someone who is daunted by learning all the intricacies that Photoshop contains that this is a great alternative. It's free (with the option for a monthly subscription, I haven't looked into what it contains however), it's relatively simple to learn, and has great results. SO if you have been looking for an alternative to Photoshop but don't want to sacrifice quality, Aviary is the best choice.

-----

I didn't proofread the above, so its probably riddled with errors up the wazoo, so if someone (Tiff) would be kind enough to point them out I'd appreciate it. Now on to some real journaling I suppose. The school art show is coming up! I really can't wait; I have a lot in it this year. What I really need to do is take my mom's camera and take some good pictures to upload here. What else... The atrium tours are starting this Thursday. I just finished the ID tags that we are all going to be wearing. Severely redone from what they were before, but still functional and I think a bit better laid out. After that long weekend with few plans. ~kyokatchan's party (yes, I'm going), and eventually hanging out with some friends and their college friends. And now because I can.

I just had the best salad, but more on topic, Happy DoaR day! What is DoaR day you ask? Well why don't you just take a stab it?

...me buying Mac OS X Leopard? I'm really thinking about getting it, but I'm still a bit on the fence with it... If I did get it I wouldn't overwrite my Windows system; I'd probably partition my second hard drive. Just wondering what people think of Mac, OS X (better than Windows?), and stuff of that nature.