会話ゲーム - Part 18

TOP Ten Photos of the Year

Welcome to the ancient kings’ house. I shot all of these with an iPhone 5 or my old iPad Pro. They were pretty out of date, but the right lighting helped them capture these survivors of the delete button.

Even though this is only nine pictures, most of them are of my favorite place on the planet, Luang Prabang, Laos.

Capetown, South Africa was a good memory. People there all had a great sense of humor and enjoyed my jokes. I got to meet up with an old friend from Korea I hadn’t seen since 2007.

When I asked these models for this picture they thought I was going to make it my new Facebook Cover photo. I wish I’d had something better than an iPhone 5 and fixed my tie.

These baby elephants eat around two hundred kilograms of food a day.

The southern islands of Thailand are always fun!

This came out pretty good. Too bad my friend’s man purse got jacked thirty seconds after this shot.

Stupas are one of the hardest things to shoot. I walked very far and was sweating like a pig in the hot sun, but it was worth it for this.

And the Winner is…

Not only was Lowcow one of the best dogs, she was one of my best friends ever. I truly believe that when dogs pass, they also pass on the light and stay with us as guardian angels. She was really tough. When we would play fight, she’d run at full power and take me down like a bowling pin. This may not be the best picture photoshooting wise, but it’s the winner in my heart.

Thanks for checking out my favorite pictures from last year. I should’ve done this for New Years, but I just thought of it now. Cheers!

INK: Ahsoka Tano

What will happen to The Chosen One’s failed Jedi apprentice?

Tools:

pencil
cardboard
technical pen
1.0 Gel Pen
iPad
Procreate

As a pencil drawing, this was just an abandonment. I liked drawing her eyes and lips, but couldn’t be bothered about the rest of Ahsoka. That technical pen really brings her right eye out compared to the left which was drawn using full force on the pencil.

Ahsoka, I just draw, to say, I love you.

And I mean it from the bottom of The Force…

We are one with the Force and the Force is with us. I have spoken.

Audrey Hepburn

I’ve always wanted to draw her, but didn’t get around to it until today.

I got this photo from her Facebook page. Isn’t it weird dead people having Facebook?

I wasn’t sure it looked like her at all yet.

It still looks off.

I decided to start giving details to the eyes. If I couldn’t get them right, I was going to scrap the whole thing.

I like drawing black hair. It’s easier than other colors.

A little technical pen helped bring out the important dark spots like the eyes, nostrils, and hair.

Thanks for checking out my sketch. Have a great day!

The Orginal Xbox

I despise ~~Microsoft~~. I think Bill Gates is creepy and I decided to boycott all ~~Microsoft~~ products for life back in 2008. I remember what a big deal it was erasing Windows and running only Linux. I asked my wife if she understood what it meant, but her only reply was that if she could keep watching YouTube, then it doesn’t matter.

The original Xbox came out before I felt that way and I still think it was one of the greatest gaming machines ever.

Hard Drive

Having a hard drive was something only for computers until the Xbox. ~~Microsoft~~ never really used it for anything other than letting you copy your CDs to it, but it made all the difference once you hacked it.

The Best Emulator

I remember showing my friends how the modded Xbox could play their favorite Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis games. When asked which games it had, the answer was very Sarah Palin, all of them.

Orginal Nintendo and Sega games were punny as well as any Atari games. Every single Super Nintendo game including the Japanese games added up to a few gigabytes. It wasn’t until you got to the N64 where you needed to delete any games to save space.

Speaking of the Nintendo 64, I have not seen a better emulator than the Xbox. It could play any N64 game smoothly, something a PC still can’t do today. It was really fun to still play Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, and Golden Eye (The no Oddjob rule still was in effect.)

Movies and TV

A modded Xbox was way ahead of its time. The experience you had using XBMC (Xbox Media Center now called Kodi) was better than some paid services today. You could steam videos and podcasts as well as play any files downloaded from torrents. HD files at 720 hadn’t really come along yet, so you could store hundreds of TV shows and movies on the hard drive, making it a must whenever you visited a place without internet.

Xbox Games

You could download and burn games to a blank DVD, but it had to be a certain type and burned a certain way, so it was way easier just to download the ISO file then copy it to the hard drive.

What about you?

Do you agree with me that the orginal Xbox was the last great thing ~~Microsoft~~ did? Has anyone else removed ~~Microsoft~~ from their lives completely and forever? I think Sony is going to crush ~~Microsoft~~ in the next generation. I haven’t seen one person excited about the new Xbox, but everyone is talking about the new PlayStation.

Midnight bike riding in Luang Prabang

My days usually start around noon when I wake up.

I’ve been dealing with this white elephant of a gift for a few days now. It was a nice bike until no one seemed to be able to repair it.

Carrying it across the bridge of death wasn’t any fun.

Then the best bike mechanic in town sold this to me for fifteen dollars. I did stripes with electrical tape then spray painted it pink.

The final product came out like this after adding white paint and nail polish.

It doesn’t have any brakes so I’ve got to go all Flintstone and drag my feet.

Are you ready to cross the bridge of death without any brakes?

I couldn’t separate these two mosquito repellents and broke one, but doesn’t it kind of look like the Death Star?

I added a Bluetooth speaker and a Nokia burner phone.

Does the red fingernail polish look like blood?

Like the purple sparkles?

I may have gone too far with the white paint.

Enjoy a Beer Lao and

Remember there’s a rainbow in the sky all the time.

LEADING: Splinterlands GUILD

Even if you sold our burned all your cards, you could still have fun leading a GUILD.

Here’s how I presented my GUILD, the MANDALORIANS:

Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of the women. Only those who have the hearts of true DEC warriors may become a foundling. Losers will only reduce their rank, while champions will rain in glory. Join us and learn the true nature of Beta victory. Rewards are to be ignored. Gold will replace them in time. Learn from your failures and superior enemies. Earn more monsters. Protect the rear and always be one step ahead of your enemies. We ALL need to contribute DEC or our DAILY QUESTS are earned in vain. If you don’t pay or play, then you won’t stay. We have spoken. This is the way.

Even though we’re three players short, we’re ranked pretty well for a level 4 GUILD. I’ll check top players without GUILDS and about one in five will accept the invitation.

I was lucky enough to take this snapshot when I was at the top. I don’t think the GUILD leader needs to be the best player. If you recruit a strong team and build loyalty, your team will pay DEC without you needing ask for it because everyone will want that extra percent of that DEC bonus.

Our GUILD is at level four.

It’s going to take forever to get to level ten, but we’re cruising along to level five now. If I understand correctly, this game is about to go digital Minecraft blockchain real estate soon. I really hope that GUILDS are are part of that.

Here’s what you get at level ten. I hope that if you’re someone who may have sold or burned everything, that you can still be a part of this revolution in gaming. If you want to join the MANDALORIANS leave a comment and I’ll invite three of you.

PENCIL & INK: Pocahontas

I saw Pocahontas in the theaters when it came out back in 1995. I was going through puberty and remember feeling attracted to her even though she was just a cartoon.

I married a girl who looked just like her and we have two beautiful kids. I used to call her Pocahontas too. Some strong women challenged me once in a casino thinking I was being racist, but I asked them to look at her and they just laughed. I explained to them that in Thailand, people don’t get all butt hurt if you make fun of their skin color or body shame them.

I used this picture as the inspiration and reference. I got it from here.

I drew, erased, and redrew Wolverine’s eyes so many times that they ended up looking like this a few sketches ago.

This time, I was going to make sure the eyes were right so the whole drawing wasn’t in vain.

It’s starting to look like her…

Tools

A4 paper
pencil
cardboard
Q-tip
technical pen
iPad
Procreate

My artist friend recommended this type of pen for doing pointillism sketches. It worked great for bringing out the eyes and hair.

I used a Q-tip to blur the pencil lead from her hair to her face for skin tone.

I was very careful not to draw her hair OVER her neck or shoulder. It took a long time to sketch all the hairs, but I drew it in a back and forth motion, so it wasn’t like I was drawing each strand of hair one by one.

By blurring on this rough surface, I was able to add some natural looking imperfections.

They must have had A4 paper in mind when they designed the iPad Pro because it’s a perfect fit. It works as a great sketchpad.

After adding so much ink and pencil to the hair, it started to curve and make the paper wavy. I started drawing this at noon, but didn’t take this picture until midnight. It was getting almost impossible to get a good photo with all the wavy paper and shiny lead.

It was time to finish this sketch with Procreate. The blur tool made her skin look much better.

The erase tool helped add contrast to her black hair as well as some careful digital penstrokes. There’s really no need to be careful because you can undo anything simply by tapping with two fingers, but I didn’t want any hair overlaps. I really enjoyed drawing her. Thanks for checking out my sketch today. May the colors of the wind be with you today.