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Aldrin Begins! -
Years ago, I began playing an MMORPG called "Everquest". Frustrated with some of my character choices, I began a new character from scratch.
I imbued him with the qualities of my heroes: Percival William Williams, Don Quixote, Buzz Aldrin and others.
"Aldrin Moonwalker" quickly took on a life of his own in the game, became quite a well-known
character. He "earned" a unique title when he helped open up access to the moon Luclin, "Aldrin of the Nexus".
For a long time, whenever I grew weary of "xp grinding", I would make up stories involving Aldrin in my head. Sometimes I would share these
and other stories I thought up with friends and family, and was told I should write them down "...before you forget them!"
I've also begun work on my own 3D version of Aldrin.
Standing 3 ft tall, gnomishly handsome with flaming red (if receding) hair and Elvis-style sideburns, Aldrin is my hero. Beloved of Yelniak,
giant-bane, drachnid-foe... friend to dwarf and elf and man alike. Beyond his powers over fire, ice and magic, he maintains an impeccable judge
of character. If Aldrin doesn't like you, you must truly be evil.
Some people look to Batman, other's follow Ironman, Spiderman or the insipid "Superman" (who isn't, btw, a man but an alien). But my hero
will always be Aldrin of the Nexus.
So what's this all about? Well, I've decided to commit to finishing my Aldrin model, and creating environments for him to play in, and other characters
for him to play with. But I also intend to start writing a chronicle of his adventures. I don't know how complete it will be, but I'll worry about that later.
I will post updates as the stories develop.
A Shiny New Penny -
Based upon a tutorial on Planet Photoshop, here's a new style penny I fashioned. I learn more by toying around with the software
than whenever I'm actually trying to accomplish something. I use an image of Charlize Theron for the face, and added a cloud filter
to create the "shiny, new" effect.
Back in the Saddle -
I decided to place my Virtual Coke scene on the front page so people visiting will get the
idea that, yes, I can do graphics.
Nothing in the scene is real; I created everything from the tabletop to the lettering on the bottle, to the ice and bubbles, from scratch, using
Lightwave, Aura, and Photoshop. In my animation gallery I have a 'fly by' animation of the scene, and in the
image gallery I have the full image along with a close-up of the bottle.
While I can use Maya, I prefer Lightwave.
It's split model/layout workflow just suits the way my brain works, I guess.
Site Changes
I've just started updating the site again. Most of my web development (such as it was) has gone toward the Crowl site the past few years.
Originally run on NT 4.0, then updated to Suse, then Ubuntu, last week I changed server OS to Debian. I like the way it works, and I like
the name better than "Ubuntu". Over the next few weeks I'll be going over the site, page by page, cutting out unnecessary portions, updating
dated portions, and creating new content. I hope to switch over to a Flash based interface, with a database of my artwork, including descriptions.
I need to write the tools to update the database, too, I guess.
Monday, February 25, 2008
The website is undergoing major changes, Please be patient, and instead of reporting site errors to the webmaster
(my mail server is down at present), send them to:
My Hotmail Account
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