Game of Thrones special, how good writting of one series is ruining my enjoyment of others

I am a massive fan of Game of Thrones. I haven't read the books yet, and I'd imagine that short statement is going to send alerts to the snobby GoT book readers who want to ruin the enjoyment of this series to everyone who hasn't read the books because they're assholes. Jesus, what a way to start, insulting the only follower of my blog and making them run away. Upon finishing season 4, I went to see the new X-men movie which many people were raving on about it being so amazing and the best one yet. It's not, First Class is by far the best X-men movie (I tend to forget my opinion isn't worth as much as I think it is).

very minor spoilers of X-Men: Days of Future Past 

After finishing the movie, I had a bit of an awkward reaction. I didn't know what to feel. It ended on a really good note, and by that I mean the typical everything is dandy and happy. Now having watched Game of Thrones where bad things happen to good guys and good things happen to bad guys, it felt weird. Maybe 2-3 years ago, I would have just said allright and moved on. But this felt so Hollywood-like that I ended up being very disappointed for the ending, overall movie was a 9/10. Now maybe I am turning into the people I dislike that are wannabe critics who didn't get much attention from their divorced parents and want to be the most cynical people on the internet to get attention .. who knows.

Can dead characters just fucking stay dead?

Not to mention comics have always been known for reviving and bringing up dead characters like it's a fucking game, something that bothers me overall. You can't kill a main character, to make us all feel and thing bring him 10 issues later. Or you can always go about the way shonen manga and just kill them only to show them 3 chapters later that they're not really dead. Great job everybody, you're really giving me a sense of danger, especially knowing at the back of my mind that they will come back eventually for marketing $. Can characters just stay dead?

Game of Thrones makes me feel for characters, the sense of danger is real and not fabricated nonsense. I like that the bad guys had good qualities and that the good guys have qualities you see in bad guys usually, because none of us are perfect. We're all extremely flawed starting from me and then moving on up to much better human beings. I think great, realistic storytelling may have influenced my preference and opinion on storytelling after becoming such a big fan of Game of Thrones. Cheesy good endings have always irked me a little bit, but it's now more apparent after watching a series like GoT that's brutal in too many ways to list. I hope writers and directors take a note from GRRM and others like him to write more realistic storytelling from now on.

Unforeseen Problems in the Creative World

Unforeseen problems happen in our lives constantly, so it makes sense that they also happen for work as well. I have been using an Macbook Pro for roughly 5 years now. For as good as it has been even upgraded with RAM, it still isn't anywhere where I needed it to be for Photoshop and AfterEffects, and Cinema 4D at times as well. Last month, I received a maxed out iMac that I bought which should hopefully do well enough for the next 5-6 years before buying something better in the future. I make a youtube speed painting and release it on the first of the every month (or 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on when I have to re-upload it because Youtube flagged one of the niche songs I used by a company that is not connected to the publisher of the song at all). When I was rendering the video of my latest speed painting, I realized on Adobe Premiere that the quality of the files was not up to par. I even took the next day off work and worked until 9PM that night to eventually get a solid quality on the Premiere file with the issue being very few minor things. This caused the video to be released a day late which was frustrating. The entire process before took roughly 70 hours and the complications afterwards took an additional and grueling 20 hours.

The reaction we have to unforeseen errors.. well my reaction...

The point here is that if you do design, web design, illustration/concept art, motion graphics or 3D, unforseen issues will come even if you do everything beforehand to ensure that no future problems will happen. My best advice based on 2 years on the professional field is to do the work early. If you are working for a client, send them a timeline in the contract that is later then when you expect to finish it. This way when you finish it as quick as you expected, then you're ok and everything is dandy. You feel like a fucking superhero and can either relax or do your own personal work during the extra time you have on the contract. However if you get some random, unforeseen issue that no one could even predict, then the normal timeline gets pushed back by a day, 2, a week, 2 or even a month depending on what type of work and/or scenario. This is where the contract comes in because this way you finish it last minute and it ends up being the same quality as intended even with the issues you couldn't predict. However, your contract says 3 weeks because that's how long you believe it takes and an extra week gets added, you either send them a shitty product and lose a potential long term client, or ask for more time. Now if you have built a realationship and they aren't in a massive hurry, this won't be a major issue. If that's not the case, lots of complications where both the work doesn't end up being good and the relationship goes down the shitter. You are in a lose-lose situation since this is work you don't even want to put in your portfolio or your website at this point.

Youtube, the place for crap customer service

Ahh youtube, yet another niche song that I pick for one of my speed paintings.. yet another time I get an infringed mark from a company that has nothing to do with the music company that published it. Well done Youtube and Google, I can only hope that one day the monkeys that are running behind that lengthy programming can end up finding a better way how to not screw over the people that originally made them money. Google really needs to find a better middle point.. or rather to find a middle point. Do better testing in regards to what company calls for an infringement, and adding a human contact after contacting the 12 customer service robots and their answers after which you never hear from them again.

It's unfortunate the amount of suits making decisions for Google that have bit by bit, transformed Youtube into a soulless website. Hopefully in a few years, there will be a competitor because at this point, I don't see a company doing a cruder job than what Google is doing with Youtube. I would imagine this post will fall more in line of either people sympathizing with this ideology or calling me a whiny, entitled prick who should waste less time on things he doesn't like than the things he does enjoy.

Speed Painting 25: The World Cup 2014

If you have been living under a rock that's living under another rock, you may have missed that the World Cup has started in June. It's located in Brazil this year, Russia in 4 years, and the slaves of Qatar are ensuring that stadiums are ready 8 years from now. Before I start going on a rant that the entire population of two people that will ever read about this post on the Qatar bid, let me just try and get past the ADHD to get to the point. I love football (or sawker as the only two countries on the planet like to call it) and decided to make a speed painting about it. I created a bunch of characters and added a bit of flavor to the story to attempt to make it interesting to watch.

This is just a note after you watch the video. I had Suarez sketched up 1 day before a certain incident happened. If you would like to know what my thought process was in regards to the speed painting, head to either my youtube video and read the description, or go to the videos section of my website. I wanted to try something different as I sometimes do and instead of copying and pasting the entire description on my blog, I would instead talk a bit about the project from a different angle.

Football is my passion. You take the work I do professionally (illustration, design), and you get 1/2 things I'm most passionate about. Hopefully that passion translates in a fun 5+ minute youtube videos for the two people that watch the video! I don't want my massive following to be disappointed.

Speed Painting 24: The Last of Us

With a summer release of the hit PS3 game The Last of Us confirmed to be coming out in the summer of 2014 to the PS4, I decided to illustrate one of my favorite games for June. Since it's E3, and they will announce it what month it will come out, I thought it would be a good time to do it now.

The illustration was pretty basic (but too a while to do) and used 2-3 references to really recreate it. However, I added a few easter eggs for fellow Naughty Dog fans from their previous franchises. Can you find them all?

CG Hub down officially, potenially new website for designers, 2d/3d illustrators & more

CG HUB is officially down.

They have closed it and their reasoning is "because they feel like it".  One really has to question why they didn't at least sell it to several potentially, rumored suitors, but I guess they felt like it.  Exact reasons have not been given and a lot of this have been vague, but many artists are wondering why the fuck this has happened the way it did.  CG Hub for people that don't know was a website where artists in 2D, 3D, caricatures, concept art, and many more uploaded their work.  This involved anything from personal projects to movies, tv, videogames, and books.  Many of the best artists in the world uploaded their work there.

Besides CG Hub opining a "Pro" version which allowed many artists to pay for the full year and start to get a few extra benefits.  This happened roughly 2 months prior to the website shutting down.  So this if not illegal, is incredibly shady.  People paid money and got screwed over it since CG Hub decided to close the doors.

At the end of the day, it's their product and they have every right to do with it as they please.  However since part of freedom of speech has not been completely closed off by government officials on the internet, I'd say this is a pretty douchey and illogical move from them.  They could have at least sold it off to another company that would have kept going.

hope of a new website

However there is hope that there might be another website made in a very similar fashion to CG HUB, where they take the best design/UI aspects and take off the crappy variations.  There is a potential Kickstarter coming out soon, but until then I can just send you the link to the company creating the website, Shakuro.  I'm still skeptical, but at least it's something.

Link Here

Speed Painting 23: The Amazing Spiderman 2

With the new Amazing Spiderman 2 movie coming in a day, I thought I'd give it a shot since he's one of my favorite comic book superheroes. Also the idea of Electro and Spiderman meant that I could go crazy in terms of colors when creating the illustration.

I used part of a scene from the movie and change it around a bit to my choosing. Enjoy it!