Peter, Again

29 May 2006 | Hisham | | Artwork, Comics
 

Some time last August, I drew Peter with Panter Classic.

Here he is once again, this time with the new armored costume Tony came up with for him while MJ and he works as a New Avenger. It has bulletproof armour, enhanced computer-display visors and those extra pincer limbs not shown in the illustration below.

I like the design, though because Tony came up with colour scheme, the outfit is red and yellow.

Kinda looks a bit like Shiro's costume.

 

Time To Abandon Ship!

28 May 2006 | Hisham | | Artwork, Star Wars
 

Time To Abandon ShipIt's time for another round of SWAG's Member Theme Art Contest!!!!! Well, actually it's my first submission, and it's only the second topic ever. The topic is Time To Abandon Ship! and I wanted to do a free-for-all (during the pencilling I decided to pit Wookiees against Imperial stormtroopers). The guy abandoning ship is the one in the back, not involved in the brawl.

It took me the entire length of the movie Regarding Henry on TV for me to digitally pencil, ink and colour this piece. Apologies for the shoddy colouring, by the way.

Click on the thumbnail to see the full image, or if you're game for an even larger image, head on down to where it's at on deviantArt.

 

Afternoon Storms

26 May 2006 | Hisham | | Recent News
 

For the last month or so, the late afternoons, before the onset of dusk, is usually time for heavy rainstorms. They're so heavy that sometimes, the hills in front of the apartment on the other side of Pandan Indah are totally obscured. Lightning tear across the sky. Thunder shakes the windows.

Each time it hits, there would come a time during the storm when the lightning and thunder would coincide, which indicated that they were extremely close. This could be very disconcerting up here on the tenth floor.

But today something new occurred. Not only there was an extremely bright flash of lighting coinciding with a loud thunderclap. The event also producted a strong electromagnetic field which caused my computer CRT monitor's colour to go all purple.

Fortunately, a quick usage of the monitor's degauss function immediatedly rectified the problem. Thankfully the computer wasn't damaged in any way.

 

It's Been A Year Already?

23 May 2006 | Hisham | | Family Pics, Recent News
 
Alert! More happy years ahead!
 

Illustration Friday: Sorry

22 May 2006 | Hisham | | Artwork
 

A late entry to this week's Illustration Friday is my version of the current topic: Sorry. Once I read the topic, this image popped in my mind and it'll bug me to death if I didn't realize it. Well, enough gabbing; let the illustration tell its story.

 

Brief Pahang Incursion

21 May 2006 | Hisham | | Family Pics
 

Ain's good friend from Univerity Malaya, Jalilah, got married last Saturday.

It was, of course, another Family Trip to parts unknown; this time to FELDA Lepar Hilir 1 in the state of Pahang to the east. Since the car's suspension was repaired a couple of days earlier, I felt confident in making the trip without having the car losing its tyres halfway there. So, at 1030 hours on that day, we left the house for Pahang. We didn't take the new East Coast Highway, cause I miss driving on the old Federal main road east through Karak, Mentakab, Temerloh and Maran, which have better roads now and less traffic thanks to the new highway.

It was quite a feat, trying to locate the bride's home via the map that was on the invitation card. And who would have thought PMG meant "Pusat Mengumpul Getah" (Rubber Collection Centre).

 

Random Banner Images

17 May 2006 | Hisham | | Hishgraphics.com
 
Now thanks to Pivot's Rotator v1.0 extension, the weblog's banner up at the top of the page randomly rotates through a bunch of images I made up just for the occasion. More images will be uploaded for quantity's sake. Refresh the page, or just read the entries to see it in action.

 

Exsanguination Day at the Mall

15 May 2006 | Hisham | | Family Pics
 

Because Irfan's Cik Emma missed having her blood drained out of her body, we took a drive to nearby Cheras Leisure Mall where a blood donation drive was underway last Saturday. Cik Su F, a-visiting from MIAT, was along for the ride.

There was a great number of people in line signing up for the blood donation. As Cik Su F covered Emma's six, Irfan, Ain and I traipsed around the mall window shopping.

 

Illustration Friday: Angels and Devils

14 May 2006 | Hisham | | Artwork
 
The topic of this week's Illustration Friday is represented by two individuals, a father and a daughter, who each has the gift to see either of the topic subjects: angels and devils.

Anyone care to guess who they are?

 

Newspaper Snippet Generator

11 May 2006 | Hisham | | Role Playing Games, Trawling The Net
 
Here's a great tool I discovered by way of Midnight Flights:

A Newspaper Snippet Generator.

Just fill in the fields with some words and letters. Stretch your brain a bit to come up with some interesting text.

And voila:
I made this!

You could either play with this for hours coming up with weird newspaper stories for no particular reason, or for role playing gamers who play in contemporary or near-contemporary settings (d20 Modern / various GURPS / Call of Cthulhu / World of Darkness, among others)... you now have a tool to create awesome, authentic-looking images of newspapers as visual game aid.
 

New Blockquote CSS

10 May 2006 | Hisham | | Hishgraphics.com, Star Wars
 

I noticed that like the old comments style, the blockquote style for this website is just a bunch of indented paragraphs. So, to ensure the blockquotes are easily seen, I've added a bunch of lines to the css file, causing anything in blockquotes to resemble:

Click here to watch the Robot Chicken representation of how Palpatine reacted to Vader after the first Death Star blew up.

Hilarious.

A quote from my recent post from this thread in the Holonet Forums.

 

Noumenon Sample Download

09 May 2006 | Hisham | | Role Playing Games
 
Within the Silhouette Rouge

A free sample (see final paragraph for download link) of the Noumenon RPG from Abstract Nova is online with some intriguing write-up of the Sarcophagi and the Silhouette Rouge, a primer into the Noumenon game millieux, as well as the rudimentaries of the game mechanics which of all things involves dominoes!

And no, none of the vignettes which I wrote are in here. (I wasn't involved in the illustrations at all.)

Here's a sample text from the free download:

Rebirth

The Sarcophagi are creatures born of mystery and devoid of past. They have been resurrected from flawed and meaningless lives into a new existence. Memory and history are lost to them; their old lives cast aside like a cocoon that has been outgrown. Once the Sarcophagi were human, but now they are something else. Their compound eyes see the world differently. Their four arms manipulate reality in new ways. A chitinous exoskeleton protects their fragile souls.

The Sarcophagi are insects that walk as men.

The Sarcophagi are explorers. They wander the Silhouette Rouge, seeking to divine its truths. Only by doing so, can they escape this place and progress to whatever destiny awaits them.

Menagerie

The Sarcophagi are not alone. Strange, wayward souls haunt the Silhouette Rouge. Known simply as the Others, each of these entities is unique. Some understand the mystery of the Silhouette Rouge, while some are as unknowing as the Sarcophagi.

The Others have been here for a very long time.

I really hope I'll be able to run this someday, when I get the old crew back together... or muster a new crew somehow. Watch out for the full release of Noumenon in June.

Right click and save here (720 MB) to download the freebie in PDF format.
 

Abrams Bloodbath Week

06 May 2006 | Hisham | | TV
 

Apart from the release of Mission Impossible III this week, J.J. Abrams seems to have both his TV series Alias and Lost slated for bloodbaths where major characters die violently in surprising turn of events, and those who die do so in similar ways within each show even if they don't die at the same time and place.

And there are four more hours to each series until their respective season finales... and for Alias the series finale.

Cue Michael Giacchino music for both opening titles

A fine week for television.

No, I ain't posting spoilers.

 

Wild Ginger

05 May 2006 | sila | | Books
 

Following Perdido Street Station, I went on to read a smaller book called Wild Ginger by Anchee Min. A completely different genre than my previous read, Wild Ginger is the story of a girl growing up in the 60s and 70s during the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China.

 

Comp Copy Number 1

03 May 2006 | Hisham | | Family Pics, Role Playing Games
 

The Game Mechanics
The complimentary copy came in the mail today, the first RPG book in which I had a hand in creating: Future Player's Companion published by The Game Mechanics and Green Ronin Publishing. Thanks to Gary again for recommending me for this gig and everyone at TGM (Stan!, Marc and JD) for giving me a chance illustrating part of the book.

The feeling of holding the book in hand and flipping through the pages is great, although going through my artwork in the book I would like to say the first batch of pictures for the first PDF I drew looks embarassingly bad. The final batch, even with its shortcomings, are the ones I'm satisfied with.

 

Perdido Street Station

03 May 2006 | sila | | Books
 

Since Hisham updated the blog and enabled sort by categories, it became woefully clear that our Books category is sadly lacking. Which is a shame, considering that Hisham and I are both avid readers.

I've decided to start blogging about the books I'm reading as sort of a book review (while trying not to put out too many spoilers). I finished reading Perdido Street Station by China Mieville on Sunday. Let's start here, shall we?

 

Cake on the First of May

02 May 2006 | Hisham | | Family Pics, Food
 

May 1st is Irfan's Cik Su F's 19th birthday. Her sisters, including Ain, chipped in for a cake for a little get together. The cake had oranges and strawberries and mangos and kiwi fruits and grapes. Irfan also wanted in on the cutting of the cake, as usual. For the main course, Ain made bihun goreng, which was delicious.

It's all gone now. Snif snif. :\'-(