"Daddy, Can You...?" Episode One

In what is likely to be a very occasional ongoing series I bring you some of the wild and crazy things my Son has asked for that I have needed to build, draw or otherwise create. Usually at the drop of a hat.
Yes, I could be posting some badass Halloween picture I drew last night or something, but I didn't do one. What I did instead is right there to the left of this paragraph. And yes, I think that's the first photograph to ever appear as a thumbnail for the blog, and I didn't take it (my wife did). But more on that later...

Flames - Christmas 2010
We start quite a while ago. My Son loves firefighters and anything to do with them. Looooves.

He has a collection of many firetrucks from the very small, to the very large. He has a dolls-house thing from Sylvanian Families that exists primarily to have fires fought in it. He builds Lincoln Log structures just so a "fire" can spontaneously break out.

You can buy a lot of firefighting paraphernalia for kids, but my Son hit upon the one thing you can't buy - kid friendly fire. As tempting as it is to burn his dolls-house down it's not really very safe.

He has firefighters, yet they have no fires to actually fight. He pointed this out in his Christmas list for Santa last year, which I dutifully transcribed: "Fire, for my firefighters to fight." Sound logic there; doesn't miss a trick this kid.

So, what's a Dad to do? That's right, I sent off his Christmas list to Santa and let him sort it out. But he couldn't. On the phone he was the very next day (Post to both Greenland and The North Pole is very fast these days).

"Mr. Taylor," Santa says "I cannot bring your son fire, it's not safe!"
"Yes Santa, but he really wants some - I was hoping you could come up with a child friendly solution."
"Hmmmm," replied Santa, and went dead quiet.
"What you could do," I said, interrupting his no doubt unprintable thoughts, "Is take some coloured foam and stick it together in the shape of flames. You could do two versions, one with regular flames, and one with sort of pixelated ones for use with Lego."
"Yes," and unconvinced sounding Santa drolly commented, "I could do that, or rather the elves could." and he rung off.

Unconvinced or not, on Christmas Day there in the boy's stocking were two sets of flames, one regular, one pixelated, just as I'd suggested. Brilliant!

I don't have any photos of the regular one, but here's a couple of shots of his Dolls-house aflame, with the various Lego firefighting kits he had along with them. I have to admit I'm including the second one because it makes me laugh.

Update: My wife managed to dig out this slightly blurry shot of both flames from Christmas morning. Bless her.

"Droideka" Destroyer Droid
"Daddy," came the question, "Can you make a Destroyer Droid out of Lego?"

I have no idea what a Destroyer Droid is, so I look it up online. Oooh, it's a Droideka from the Star Wars prequels. I've never heard of them referred to as Destroyer Droids before (but then I avoid as much to do with the prequels as possible - apparently he saw one in a library book, and of course they're in the Lego Star Wars videogames).

I agree, and set to work. I spent ages on it, over thought it, made it far too complicated. I got fed up, finished it, hated it, went to bed.

He woke up, saw it, loved it. Kids eh?

But I could do better - if I cheated! I would look it up online to see if anyone else had made one. I would copy their design and, like the very best supervillains, claim it for my own! (Only to my son you understand, I was planning to be very honest about the whole thing to anyone to whom hero worship wasn't on the line).

I found the plans, I stole them, cackling and grimacing with glee. I finished it, loved it, went to bed.

He woke up, saw it, went and played with the original! I fessed up after that.
"It's not as good as yours Daddy." Kids, melt your heart so they do.

Here they both are - The one on the white background is mine, the other you can find all over the net. Yes, I think theirs is better, my son doesn't, so neeer.

Jack Skellington
I've been messing around with a piece of Software called Sculptris. For 3D Artsy folk it's a bit like Z-Brush for morons, for everyone else it's a bit like sculpting clay, but on the PC. It's free for download (currently) so go search for it if you're interested.

Anyway, my son had seen me flailing around with it and asked if I could make a head (which was what I had been doing - badly). I hummed and hawed and eventually asked who's head he wanted me to make. The reply, as you may have surmised, was Jack Skellington; the Pumpkin King.

OK, that should be easy, he's just a ball with some skull details in. And it wasn't to bad, right up until I had to add the inside of the mouth. This did not go so well, as you can probably see from the image. Not very exciting, but he liked it, so that'll work.

Interesting side story - he loves Jack Skellington because he's heard and loved the soundtrack to A Nightmare Before Christmas and seen pictures. He'd never actually seen the film. We decided to rectify that, since it's Halloween and all.

He got through 20 minutes of it, hiding under my arm for the first 10, and my wife's for the second 10 before we had to turn it off because he was shaking. After he went to bed he woke up from nightmares on a few occasions, one of which memorably began with him screaming "But I just wanted to watch Cars!" Parents of the year here... "Children's film" my arse.

C-3PO (on acid)
"Daddy," came the question, in the now instantly recognizable cadence, "Can you draw C-3PO?"
For once this would be easy! I could do that! It's C-3PO! How naive I was!

I knew things were not going well when he handed me my designated drawing materials: My newsprint sketchbook, a broken red pencil and yellow and black felt-tip pens (running out). I asked if I could at least use my pencil as well, and he said OK (Phew). That's really all there is to it, I was quite pleased with getting orange by blending the two felts and the red pencil together, but other thand that it didn't go well (and scanned even worse) - here's the result.

Link's Hero Shield (and a sword) from Windwaker
Link is the hero of the Legend of Zelda series of games, and Windwaker is a cartoon styled Zelda game that my son happens to love. He's never played the others as he's seen shots and had deemed them "Too skeerwy". He wanted to be Link this Halloween.

My wife took on the task of making his costume, while I was left with making the sword and shield. The sword was easy - he had a foam buccaneer sword from a while back that had broken, I just chopped up the handle and cut it down to size, glueing the end onto a part further down the shaft. It's not a very authentic Link sword, but it's the right length and looked cool.

The shield was a bit trickier. I wanted to make it out of polystyrene and then glue foam to the outside to colour it and give it a nice texture. The problem was that foam and polystyrene don't have many compatable glues that'll actually hold anything. I tried a few tests - Super Glue? Nada. Gorilla Glue? Nope. Foam Glue? Zip. Polystyrene Cement? Hahaha!

Eventually my wife took pity on me and suggested a hot glue gun. I ignored her, convinced that the hot glue would damage the polystyrene (and also secretly thinking that I knew better, what with helping Santa out with that flame idea last Christmas), but in the end I tried it out on a bit and it worked brilliantly. Rule of thumb: always listen to the wife!

After that it was just a case of cutting the bits and gluing them on (and gluing various bits of myself to both the shield and other bits of myself). I wish I'd bought more foam as I could have done the front surround in one piece if I had, but without it I still managed, with some unsightly seams here and there. I also had trouble attaching the sides to the front, so there's a gap there too. Hindsight is always 20/20 and so on, but the wife joked they were the lines from the cel shading (look it up if that meant nothing to you).

After that the only problem was attaching the straps (which were strips of elastic), but eventually the hot glue gun came to the rescue again, this time in a number of layers - one holding the elastic to a layer of foam, one holding a pin that went through the elastic and foam to the polystyrene backing, and one final layer holding the foam to the polystyrene very securely in those contact points. It held up pretty well.

I though the result was a bit crap, but it was all I could do without buying more stuff. He, on the other hand, thought it was the schizzle. Even better his costume in general, and his shield in specific, got quite a few compliments throughout the day, and savvy gamers were even able to identify him as being from Celda (as Windwaker is occasionally referred to. So, chuffed parents are we. It almost made up for the Nightmare Before Christmas fiasco. Almost.

Here he is in his full garb. The wife was especially proud of finding those boots, which were pretty much perfect, and his hat.  You can't really tell in this photo, but the shield is curved ever so slightly - I was quite pleased with that.

All Work and No Play... (RFA Part 3)

Wow, what a long month! It seems like an age since I last posted, though it was only 19 days ago. Madness! (No, Sparta!). It's been a strange month too; usually I fill maybe 5 pages or so of my sketchbook and then condense that down to share the best and the worst with you lot (all three of you). This month - 13 pages. 13! Madness! (No, increasingly annoying tendency to shout Sparta!). But I can go on about that more next time. This time It's the grand finale of the work I'm going to share with you from Red Faction: Armageddon.

So this will actually be a pretty short entry - there are only three of my pieces left to show, and they all have the distinction of being cut from the game. Actually they do appear, but not in the condition I made them - they were changed from vehicles (which use a special vehicle system), to environment props (which use a different system) and have to be optimized for use as such. My friend Angela did the conversion from vehicles to props, so I can't take full credit for what's actually in the game. Yeah, yeah, I get it, you just want to see pictures. OK, here's a few (Click em to make me embigerize)...

Civilian Transport (C-Tran) #1 "Grub"
Art Directed by Chad Greene & Susan Cenci. Concept by Steve Holt

Don't you love that name. Why "Grub"? Well, the arm rests with the headlights look like grubs, at least to me. I've only got the game engine renders of this one for some reason. I did have some nice renders of the high-poly mesh too, but I appear to have lost them (In case you'd forgotten, or I never got around to mentioning, this is for a technique where you model or sculpt a very high detail model and then a low detail version of the same - you then create a 'normal map' texture from the differences between the two models and apply that to the low detail version which makes it appear very similar to the high detail version. Yes, it hurts my head too, and I do it on a regular basis).

This had the triple distinction of being my first vehicle made for the game, my first ever high-poly model and also it was the first vehicle to be cut. Wheee!

Not much more to say about it - it did appear clearly in the game, but only the rear of it, and it was in bright orange rather than blue - it's the truck Kara is loading when Darius gets useful with the lightning gun.

Civilian Bulldozer "Frog"
Art Directed by Chad Greene & Susan Cenci. Concept by Steve Holt

Why "Frog"? Because it looks like a really happy one. No, really, seen from the right angle it looks so much like one that I traced a picture of it, painted the resulting line-art green and stuck it inside as a Frog decal (you can sort of see it in the thumbnail to this very post. Don't look to hard for it because once you've seen it you can't unsee it, and that would be sad.

I was really pleased with this one, and pretty sad it got cut, but other than that, not much to say. You can see it in the game when you first descend into the pit in the Mining Exo right near the start of the game. It appears elsewhere, but that's the most obvious place.

Red Faction Battle Tank
Art Directed by Chad Greene & Susan Cenci. From a concept by Wingking

If the tank ever had a name I'm afraid I've forgotten it. The poor thing was cut almost as soon as I finished it, so I didn't spend any time thinking up a name for it. It should have been called the "Tarantula," since all the vehicles were named for wildlife, and this has a big spider type shape to it. Again these screenshots are all I have available; and the treads are missing - sorry; they look pretty cool when it has them.

It looks very similar to the original concept (Which I don't have to show you), except I made it a little more practical for the sort of terrain it could be navigating and redesigned the turret so it could actually rotate (The original concept was that the whole tank would rotate, which didn't seem to serve any need since all the stuff needed to have a fully functioning tank was already available).

I didn't like it when I was building it, but I do in retrospect - it's an interesting mashup of Tron and Batmobile styling.

It appeared as being under repair in the actual game, and then you got to drive it in the downloadable content; something I only realized today as somehow I missed that it had been released back in August (it may have been while I was away, which would explain my missing it).

And that's it. I have other, older games I can cover if I get around to it, and we have a new game coming out on November 15th; you may have heard of it - Saints Row the Third? I only did two vehicles for it, but I also did some ships... We'll get to that eventually no doubt.

is there any objective type questions in math board exam?or purely computation?how about GEAS,COMMS,ELEX?

There is objective type in math, around 4 to 7 questions out of the total 50 questions. There is computation in GEAS, EST, ELECS but it is formula-based (plug in) for around 20-50 questions out of 100. There are too many formulas and many of them will be very difficult to remember when you're stressed/in panic.

Ask me anything, I will answer it.

i failed in the the ece board 3 times.what will i do now?

Did you try enrolling in review centers? they are a big help. I suggest you take it until you pass but you have to start working since you cant be idle for too long (companies dont like that). The ECE license is seldom used since companies that require them (Smart, Globe) pays very little (small salary). The IT field is the most popular nowadays because of big salary and large demand even overseas. However, you will never know when you will need the license. You can't take the board when you're really old since your learning capability will diminish. So I suggest you take it until you pass. I know it will be difficult, but I think its worth it.

Ask me anything, I will answer it.

in geas, ano mas maraming question objectives or problem solving

objectives but for problem solving all you need is the formula. be careful since wrong answers (wrong plug-in) is in the choices.

Ask me anything, I will answer it.

answer to synchro gyro, and micro

it is uploaded. it is found in our neets page.

Ask me anything, I will answer it.

may reviewer po ba kyo ng pang ECT board exams?

Please provide topics/subjects so we can upload them in the website.

Ask me anything, I will answer it.

The Best and Worst Sketching of September

You may be wondering why it's more than a third of the way through October and I'm only now posting about September.  For once it's not because of the effort involved in getting all the images together nicely - nope, finished that on the 2nd.  It's because I was monumental depressed (as you may have gathered in the last post) and just couldn't be bothered.  Couldn't be bothered to speedpaint either, or paint anything else for that matter.  I did sketch a lot though - most of it was dreadful, but you'll get to see that next month.
Odd thing though, today I feel much better.  I felt much better when I got up, I felt even better when the thing I've been working on at work started to come together, and pretty awesome when I won a raffle for a set of snazzy Saints Row the Third headphones (oh, that's the Saints Row the Third I worked on by the way - check it out next month when it hits the stores... if you're old enough).  So, here we are all happy and jolly; better write a blog post while it lasts - hey, I'm placing you lot above painting again, be thankful! ;)

The Best

 

Now I know this isn't exactly da Vinci, it's not even Rolf Harris (who's awesome by the way, I don't care what you think - did I mention I met him?  Oh, yeah, I did didn't I...), but I'm still really pleased with some of these.
Bloke looking all sheepish top left - reminds me of young Rutger Hauer for some reason.  Doesn't look like him, but reminding me is enough, plus I like his expression (I gotta work on those, and, y'know, everything else).
Middle top, I love - The universe needs more badass Black Elves with awesome Afros.
Repairman Joe on the right there looks grumpy, but I think that's the first time I've ever drawn headgear nicely without reference. Pretty much nailed it too.
The figure lower left is far from perfect, but shows progression on trunk anatomy (I still suck, and you'll not the lack of arms and legs - yeaaaah).
Small figure next to her just looks cute (if inaccurate), and over from her is someone looking rather angry - best angry face I've drawn without reference).
Yes, that man looks like he's reaching for the toilet paper... maybe he is, but he was supposed to be pointing, and then I hit the edge of the sketchbook ;).
The face below that is the only one from reference - National Geographic.
The scribbled one may make you wonder why it's there - well it's part of my new 'scribble drive' to rapidly get ideas on paper (without worrying about quality) it works maybe 50% of the time and mostly aren't worth showing even when they do.  That particular one was drawn with my left hand - yeah, I'm not exactly ambidextrous.

The Worst

Oh gosh, do I have to talk about these?  Really?  Well, I refuse, I'm in a good mood and you're not going to ruin it for me.  Suffice to say that as ghastly as these eyesores are they're far better than the worst batches from a year ago (I hope), so at least I'm showing some improvement on the bottom end, not just the top (horray).

Now, hopefully I'll have enough material to do another post before the end of the month after that dry spell, but if not rest assured I'm working on it and there'll be plenty to post come November (when I'll be to busy playing Saints Row to bother ;)).  Oh, actually I've still got some RFA stuff to post - win!

3 WEEKS TO GO BEFORE THE BOARD EXAMS!!!