I realise that since this blog went online, there hasn’t been any entry that features some sort of fantastic anecdote that happens to me during the day. Like being at the zoo and a herd of rampaging rhinos escape their pen, or my needing to jump from one rooftop to an adjacent rooftop to save my life, or a meteorite that crashes and irradiates me, ultimately endowing me with super powers… One of the reasons is because I’m working full-time to get my e-book website online, I don’t go outdoors as I much as I used to anymore. The good old days were when I was working 5 days on, 5 days off in Terengganu on the east coast. 5 days off time and being aimless gave me a lot of opportunities to get into adventures. And when I worked in marketing at the advertising company in 2000, I was […]
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The Blog’s New CSS Layout
So now our blog is mostly dark blue and greens with dark red links. I thought we needed some sort of a change, and I thought I’d have a go with the css and the Pivot templates. I also put one of the nifty non-IE codes that gives a small radius to the corners of the blocks on the right and left columns. So if you’re on IE, you’ll only see the normal sharp corners. I’ve also tried my best to format the pages so that anyone with 800×600 screen resolution would have no problem with the frontpage. But although it works with Firefox, IE seems to make the right column overlap with the centre column a bit. Also, I’ve reduced the number of entries on the centre column to 10 and provided 20 most recent entries on the block at the right column. And finally, each entrypage is given […]
Continue readingSuperman: A Dick and Loving It
When you think of Superman, the first thing that comes to you mind is a virtuous, heroic, superbeing who strives to save innocent lives from disaster, and defeat the devious plots of super villians and invading aliens. But Superdickery.com has a collection of images from early Superman comics (some not so early) of Superman being a dick. Not just an annoying dick, but a real self-centered and dangerous asshole, even to his closest friends. And not once or twice, but repeatedly. For instance, can you imagine Lois Lane actually finally marrying him in the 90s after putting her through things like this dozens of times? [[image:superdickery1.jpg:Superdickery1:center:0]] There must be an easier way of not wanting to get married. Which, of course, would lead Lois to fabricate mind-bogglingly bizzare schemes in order to get Superman to notice her as shown thusly: [[image:superdickery2.jpg:Superdickery2:center:0]] For God’s sake… deal with the devil??!? Haven’t she […]
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Illustration Friday: Reflection
After two straight weeks of cheerful pieces based on the titles given by Illustration Friday, I present to you something that’s on the other end of the scale. Here’s this week’s Reflection. Hope you like it. Or not. Medium: Digital painting
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Hishgraphics.com is Now Online
Good news, everyone. Well, I hope it’s good news to at least my 5 regular readers out there. (Okay, 4 regular readers I admit. Happy?) It would appear that hishgraphics.com, the website I’ve been working on is 90% finished. I’ve removed the “Under Construction” label on the index page. I still need to work on the copy on most of the pages here. CSS and some of the site design are still screwy to me, but it should be transparent to you. But most important of all, the first product, the e-book named The Secret Library is finished. You can check out the black and white free download of the book on the site. Check it all out at www.hishgraphics.com.
Continue readingNYC 2123
[[image:nyc2123.gif:NYC2123:center:0]] We’ve seen online graphic novels before. But we haven’t seen one like NYC 2123, which is the first to be optimized for and downloaded for viewing into a PSP. Like the title implies, the story takes place in New York City in the year 2123; a post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk dystopia which is a cross between William Gibson’s Neuromancer and current computer and information technology trends. Who needs a brain jack when you have wi-fi neural connection? Everything is open source, even drugs. The bodysculpting subculture is also briefly seen. If you have a PSP, download it and view it whenever you have the time to read. If you don’t have a PSP, like me, just enjoy the online version of the story.
Continue readingIrfan’s Aunt Emma’s Graduation
As was reported in an earlier post, we were all at Universiti Malaya for Emma’s graduation ceremory. Irfan’s grandparents along with assorted uncles and aunts were there for the occasion. They spent the night at Rumah Universiti, booked many weeks earlier to avoid being sold out. I was worried of the day being ruined by thick, smothering haze that’d been plaguing us for the previous two weeks. But like a miracle, the air cleared. Not a bit, not even moderately… it cleared almost totally. So we had blue skies and could clearly around us during graduation day. [[popup:um01.jpg:(thumbnail):Coming down Rumah Universiti:center:1]] After eating lunch in the hotel room, we headed down toward the crowd surrounding the Dewan Tunku Canselor. Irfan was curious about the drains as usual. Because the the crowd hasn’t surged yet, I was on photography detail. Later, to ensure Irfan’s safety, I had to take him in […]
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Illustration Friday: Wisdom
Someone with great wisdom would be revelling in relaxation, high above the hustle and bustle of the tedium of mediocrity that is the life of regular people. Medium: Physical 2B pencil, with digital colours.
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Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrow’s Foundation
GenCon Indiana will be on later this week at the Indiana Convention Center, Indianapolis. That’s when The Game Mechanics will be launching Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrow’s Foundation, a game supplement for d20 Future. Where my professional artwork in the game industry will be published. The document will be an e-book for now, and will have two other volumes following it later in the year. To see five of my ten illustrations created for the book, click to read the rest of the article.
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More Like His Old Man By The Day
There were thousands of humans swarming the area before the Dewan Tunku Canseler in Universiti Malaya today. I swear if I didn’t know there were individual consciousness behind the motile meatbags I’d say they were subject to nothing more than Brownian Motion. And so it came to pass that it was Ain’s sister Emma’s graduation convocation today at UM, or commencement, as some of you might call it. Ain, Irfan and I were at the Dataran Canseleri during the afternoon waiting for Emma and my in-laws to be let out of the Dewan Tunku Canseler, the university’s main hall, so we could take pictures, just like the several hundred or so other families that were there today. At this point, the number of people swarming the area was phenomenal. Also because of that the noise level of the crowd was ear splitting. Irfan was running around, weaving in and out […]
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Haze: Returning With a Vengeance
One of the things I hate most about living here is the periodic invasion of unhealthy particulates that floods (and I mean floods) the entire region, known in local jargon as haze. Once I thought why not call it smog cause that’s what it essentially is, but know I know that such an evil, soul-sucking phenomenon should have its own unique name. Now, I’ve reported this before back in February but that old thing was nothing compared to what we’re experiencing now. This haze should have been declared a major disaster, starting early this week. The haze and I go a long way back. The last major haze activity occurred in 1997, but that was caused by burning in Borneo to the east. West-blowing winds smogged up the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, which bore the brunt of the onslaught. Of course I had to be working there at the […]
Continue readingMy New Hobby
I thought and thought and thought about my new hobby – bread baking, and I wanted to write a long paean to it. But now the days keep passing me by and my workload has not lessened. The summer is zooming by and I’m sure Hisham thinks I’ve totally forgotten that he’d done all this work to get my pictures formatted for the blog. Well, rather than research bread and write a history of bread, this will mostly be a photojournal of my new obsession. For my birthday this year, Vin bought me a KitchenAid artisan 6 quart stand mixer: [[image:bread01.jpg:Toy! My Toy!:center:0]] It was exactly what I wanted, given that I’d been dropping hints and marking my Kitchen.com catalogs for months before my birthday. Vin finally just sat down, pointed it out and discussed with me what size, what features, what color, etc. I wanted. So I got exactly […]
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Illustration Friday: Empty
My first Illustration Friday piece, with the title Empty. I had a bunch of concepts for this, but somehow I took the easy way out and just painted a somewhat empty room.
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So That’s Why Cally Joined Up
Found on Scifi.com’s Battlestar Galactica forums, obviously cobbled up after (and in context of) the episode Fragged, two Fridays ago. Made me laugh quite a bit. Or at the very least, chuckle out loud like a nutcase.
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Illustration Friday
Last week Lilian brought my attention to Illustration Friday. It’s a website that posts an idea for an artwork every week, and links the artwork you made in that particular week. Sounds like a great exercise for me and the Wacom. According to the Welcome page: Illustration Friday is meant to challenge participants creatively. We believe that every person has a little creative bone in their body. Illustration Friday just gives a no-pressure, fun excuse to use it. No clients looking for a particular thing. No one judging the outcome of the work. It’s a chance to experiment and explore and play with visual art. Curious about collage? Try it here. Never even picked up a colored pencil? Why not now? Just have time for a doodle? That’s okay, we’d love to see it. You don’t have to be an illustrator or an artist to participate. Just pick up a […]
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My Faux Star Wars TV Promo
A new Star Wars TV show? Sadly, no. Yesterday, as I was monkeying around with Painter, I remembered that once I thought of making a opening credits-type of video of my IRC Star Wars RPG gaming group, Sabredart. So I figured, why not just do a storyboard for the credits. Then it hit me, how about a storyboard for a promo using images like the old Justice League opening credits (before they became Justice League Unlimited). You can check out the storyboard on this SWAG thread, and as an added bonus, my good buddy Derek Jones has actually made it into a real quicktime video, which you can download from the page. (Note: Thread has since been nuked. Click here to view the video on Youtube.) Edited: 12th June 2013
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