A Musing 7: 10 Tips for Digital Beginners

I was asked yesterday if I had any tips for digital painting I could share.  The answer to that is "Yeah, I do, but it might not be much help to you." Which isn't terribly useful, but is potentially true.  My way of creating art isn't necessarily your way.  I can give helpful advice and tips, some of which may work for you, and others won't, depending on your style, chosen subject matter and so on.  Use what works for you, ditch the rest.

So the following are some tips for those just starting out at digital painting (as the person who asked my advice was). For more advanced things... well, see point 3 below.

There are no images in this post - I might rectify that at some point.


1) Know Your Software

When people think of Graphics software they usually think of Photoshop.  If you have Photoshop you don't need anything else right?  With Photoshop you can do everything!  Well, yes and no.  It's true that there are very few two dimensional tasks you can't do with Photoshop, but that doesn't mean Photoshop is the easiest way to achieve them, and also not the best way to learn to do them.

When I was first learning to paint digitally...  Sorry, relearning to paint digitally, and of course I still am learning... I thought Photoshop would be the way to go.  I have many years of experience with it after all, and, well, it can do anything.  It wasn't though - the way I'd used Photoshop was to do specific things, and paint (textures mostly) in a specific way, and I discovered that Photoshop is crap for some things you want to be fairly fluid, like changing your color.  It's improved a lot in that regard in the last few years, and of course I use it a lot for painting now. Still, there are enough technical restraints in place that it can detract from the process of learning to paint digitally in favor of just learning to use Photoshop.

There are other options, some of them much cheaper.  Some of them you may take to like a duck to water, and others you may despise and never want to use again.  Fortunately for this latter point, a lot of commercial software has a 30 day demo.

Personally I like ArtRage.  It's what I started reteaching myself on, and as well as having a very naturalistic feel it also has a very intuitive UI intended to make painterly tasks such as switching or mixing color very easy.  It has a limited set of default paint tool types, but a 'sticker' spray that has more Photoshop like power should you need it.  It encourages 'real' painting, where once you put down a brush stroke you're more or less stuck with it, lacking many of the manipulation tools that Photoshop has (it does have some, but they aren't anywhere near as powerful, and of course you can undo, so you're not really stuck with it).  As well as all of this, it's also extremely cheap!  I believe the current price is $50 for desktop, $5 for tablets.

Other popular packages include PaintTool Sai (small, shareware, has a trial), Autodesk Sketchbook and Sketchbook Pro (smallish, cheapish, available for tablets), and Corel Painter (complex, pricey, powerful, has a trial), but there are dozens more, including the recent Paintstorm Studio, which has some bugs, but is currently very cheap and has even more powerful brush options than even Photoshop.

Even if you have several of these packages, it's worth taking the time to get to know what they can do, and how easily they can do it.  As I've said, for what I wanted to do Artrage was the best way to go, and I've taken what I learned there and applied it to other packages (mainly Photoshop).  Each package is capable of supporting a wide range of styles and techniques, but in some ways they're just like traditional media in that each one has it's own pros and cons, its own feel and limitations, and its own learning curve.  The better you learn the software the better the stuff you can create with it, and just like traditional media, where you need something that makes a mark in order to produce 2D art, you need software to do it digitally (even if it's Notepad - yes, really).

So pick the one that feels best to you (within your budget), and stick to it for a while, branching out when you're more comfortable.

2) Pick Useable (but cost effective) Hardware

If your software is the pencil lead making the marks, then the hardware is the barrel of the pencil that you actually hold.  If your pencil is too thin or too thick or too long or short then it's going to make creating with it more difficult, no matter how well sharpened it is.  Same for computer hardware; I can paint with a mouse, but it's going to require more time and frustration than using a tablet, and the results won't be as good.

Tablet in this case can mean two things - A Graphics Tablet, such as the Wacom Intuos, or something like an iPad or Nexus.  I don't much like using my Nexus for painting.  I can do it, but I miss the pressure sensitivity the Wacom for my Desktop brings.

The price of these things may be an issue, but while I'm 'upgrading' to a Cintiq in the next week (like a monitor with a pressure sensitive tablet built in), I've been using the same small first generation Intuos tablet for the last 15 years, and it hasn't failed me yet.  So they can cost a fair penny, but you don't need a large one, and they can last an extremely long time (I'll still be using this one to supplement the Cintiq).

The pros and cons of the Wacom style tablet are that it's highly sensitive (pressure, tilt, etc), and much easier and more accurate than using a mouse, but it takes some getting used to having to move your hand here, while the cursor moves over there.  Cheap alternatives are available, but almost every professional will pick the Wacom brand over anything else.

A Nexus style tablet on the other hand has the advantage of being able to see exactly where you're going to put a stroke.  On the other hand you lose a lot of the sensitivity, and keyboard shortcuts become problematic (there are gestures though, but they're on the same screen you're painting on).

I wouldn't recommend a Cintiq to someone starting out - they are extremely expensive, and surprisingly quite a few digital illustrators actually don't like them much.

And despite what I said above, it is possible to create amazing work with a mouse, if you have the patience.

3) Learn Art

This is of course a given, but it's surprising how many people don't realise it.  Digital tools make art easier, a lot easier in some cases, but they don't replace the need to know the same fundamentals of art that traditional media requires. Things like composition, colour usage or anatomy.  If you're a good traditionalist, then move along, but if not you'll still need to work on the same skills, just that you can work on them digitally and take advantage of the Undo option.

I'm not going to cover the fundamentals of art here, but there are a lot of tutorials out there on the web.  I'd recommend the blog of James Gurney, Muddy Colors and Proko as reasonable places to learn more about the basics (and some of the more advanced things - you'll need to dig a little on the blogs to find the learny bits).  You can also check out Deviantart or Pinterest and do a search for tutorials.  There's libraries too - a lot of knowledge found in books has not filtered onto the Internet yet, which is why I have a bookshelf groaning under the weight of art tomes.

Anyone can learn to be a reasonably competent artist, but you need to work at it, Digital or not.

4) Take It Slow

So you've got some grounding in art, and you've moved to digital and... well things just don't look as good as when you use a pencil or a brush, what gives?  Or maybe you don't have a grounding in art, but you can draw a stick man, and can't do one digitally.

Well, if you were an artist versed in the use of colored pencils or marker pens, you wouldn't be surprised if your first foray into oil paint wasn't a great success, because even knowing the fundamentals all the details are different.  Digital is no different.  Before you can really produce masterpieces (or any pieces really) you need to work out how the software (or the software's individual tool) handles color mixing, or blending or how big your brush is at any one time.

Unlike the previous point though, learning software doesn't take very long, and has some advantages if you need to make use of them for learning.  The undo tool is of course the most obvious.  Make a mistake?  Undo it like it never happened.  Most modern software has multiple undo states, so you can make quite a few strokes before you realise you went wrong and need to remove them.

One thing people used to painting traditionally - or who just learned about colour at school - can have difficulty is the way computers handle color.  They use an additive system rather than the subtractive one most children first learn and painters are familiar with.  This is less of a problem when you can see the color wheel right in front of you, as is quite common now, but it can be confusing when you need to mix red and green to make yellow rather than yellow and blue to make green.  Just experiment with it for a bit and it will become second nature as will using the software in general.  Don't work on serious pieces right out of the gate - simple experiments that don't take long are more disposable, and teach you just as much about how to use the tools (I should take my own advice going the other way there, and do small practice pieces with real paint).

5) Show People

Whatever you do, share it with people.  If you want feedback or help then ask for it, there is probably someone willing to supply it.  One nice thing about sharing (even the 'bad' stuff) is that people will see when you're improving and remark upon it.  Artists are usually their own worst critics, and so relying upon their own view of their works can be discouraging.  It can be difficult to gauge the quality of work without having fresh eyes upon it.  Equally though, it is more than possible to get so hung up on that bit of the painting you hate that you completely missed that it looks like a flying penis instead of an angel (this has happened, allegedly).  So again, getting other folks eyes on it occasionally can help.

One thing about critiques though; a well reasoned critique can help a lot, but you should never take a critique personally no matter how instructive or blunt they are.  Some folks are not artists, but can still critique your work with valid observations.  Other folks are artists but are terrible at supplying useable critique.  "It sucks" or "You suck" is not helpful to anyone.  If you get such critique you should ignore it, or at least ask someone why it might suck.

On the opposite side, if someone compliments your work, bask in the glory for a moment, thank the commenter, but then ask yourself why it's good. Or ask someone else.  "This is awesome!" is technically no more constructive than "This is awful!", but it can still be a learning experience either way.

Positive comments do help the ego more though, and might result in more artistic drive, but that shouldn't be the only reason to share your work (if it is then the eventual "This sucks" will hurt all the more).  Sometimes those compliments might make you feel odd that nobody can see how awful that piece is - it happens.  Learn from it anyway.

6) Study Others

In addition to books and other sources that can tell you how to approach things, you can also learn a lot from studying how others do things.  A lot of artists (of which I'm one, as are some of the amazing illustrators on Muddy Colors) will happily share their processes.  Others will record video of themselves working and put it on YouTube, and some post their works to Pinterest as well as their own sites (or others post 'for' them - Often with no credit sadly).

Having someone walk you through it might be better, but you can still glean a lot from someone just demonstrating how they do things. Yes, it may be that is still seems like magic as they work, but they've studied at least a bit, and have been doing this longer than you.  When you discover how a good magician does a trick, it doesn't mean you can automatically copy them.  In fact for me it actually increases my level of respect for the amount of time it must have taken them to master something so complex and make it look simple and natural (or supernatural, given they're a magician), or even something so simple, yet make it look so very complex that nobody can work out how it was done.

The same is true of art. An artist is much more likely to share their 'tricks' with you than a magician, but it will still take a lot of practice to pull that off yourself.  Even so, at least you know how the trick was done from the study of it, which  puts you a long way ahead of those who think it was produced out of a hat with nothing more than some mythical natural talent*.  It can also ground you with regards to how much work can go into a really polished piece, so you don't beat yourself up that you're not as good after only 30 minutes.  Yes, they might be faster and better than you no matter what, but again, they've been doing it longer.

*There is such a thing as talent, but it just gives a head start - you need to work at it just like anyone else to make the most of it.  That's the topic for another post, eventually.

7) Begin at the Beginning

No matter which artist's work you look at, the chances are they all started each piece in more or less the same way - they started simple, and built up from there.  Starting simple can mean working out a basic line drawing or guide first, or it can mean building up layer after layer of successive detail.

Whatever it is, working simple first means you can often identify issues early and correct for them before you spend a lot of time on a piece.  If a progression image consisted of a piece just filling in in a clockwise direction it wouldn't be very interesting, or very useful to you as a thing to study.  Fortunately this is usually not the case, and you can see how the artist builds up the image in stages, with each successive stage including more and more detail or refinement.

The same applies to anyone, including you.  You can't paint a room effectively without putting down primer first. Why would an illustration be any different?  keep it simple to start, and build up on it as you go.

8) Use the Tools to Learn

Once you've dug into the software you've chosen for a while you'll notice that it has a lot of tools that can be used to make your life easier.  Generally I try not to use too many of them as I don't want them to become crutches - but I do know how to use them (well, some of them) if I need to.

How you use them is up to you, but don't be afraid of them.  I very rarely use a color picker tool to directly use the colour from a photograph these days, but I still use it on a regular basis to get a true sense of how much darker Area A is than Area B (see the previous A Musing posts on optical illusions if this being difficult is news to you).  I don't use either of those colors, but to me this is the equivalent of viewing a scene through a pinhole in a black card in order to gauge true color (yes, many artists do that.  Not all, but enough).

So learn to use those tools, and then use those tools to better teach yourself.  But be honest about it - if you picked colours directly from a photograph it's okay to mention that, and there's less backlash if someone realises you have done so and never mentioned it (you don't have to recite a list every time, but if someone asks, be honest).

9) Embrace the Format

Digital painting is an odd thing.  In a very real sense any piece you've produced doesn't exist.  It's just a series of 1's and 0's floating around on a hard drive platter.  And yet in another sense it has more presence than a real painting in today's society.

When was the last time you saw a real painting?  If you own one it may have been this morning, but for many people it was the last time they visited a gallery, and it's slightly depressing how few people make it to even their local gallery every year (I'm sad to admit I hold myself in their number - I've not been to a gallery in far too long).

So the last time you saw a 'real' painting was probably online, or in a magazine, and in most cases such things are poor reproductions of the originals that can use paint in a way that catches the light and produces particular effects.  You can't really see silver thread in a magazine or on a screen, you just see a photograph of it.  With digital art though, what you see is what you get.  You're painting it in the same basic medium that most people are going to see it in (well, there is some loss if it's going to be printed, but not much comparatively).

So embrace that.  And embrace the things you can do with a digital work that you can't do easily, or perhaps at all, in a traditional work.  One thing I love about painting digitally is that thanks to layers I can go back and work on the background separately from the foreground, and work on it as though the foreground isn't there.  I don't always; a lot of my speedpaints are done on one layer, but often I do, and it's wonderfully freeing to be able to fully adapt the background without worrying that it might damage the foreground (you can mask a foreground in a traditional piece, but it's not as easy as jut adding a layer).

The end result, no matter how many layers are used, or which blending modes, or which post processing effects, is what you see on the screen - and it will be the same - bar some calibration issues - on the screen of the viewer.  So use what you have at your disposal as you need to, to improve that final result.

10) Have Fun

At this stage, if you are a digital beginner, you're probably just doing it for fun, or as a learning experience.  Well, the best way to learn is to do things you enjoy, so have fun with it.

Nothing is off the table as long as you're having fun with it, and learning as you go.  If it's not fun, and it's not making you money, then why do it?  You might be creating works that seemingly nobody else likes, but if it's fun for you who cares?  If you want to make a career out of it then at some point you'll need to do things that are less enjoyable to you and more acceptable to others, but in the meantime do what you want to, do it how you want to and 'cheat' all you want (but be honest about it - I'm not sure it can be called cheating if everyone knows what you did because you told them)

Do it for yourself, don't be ashamed to be learning, and if others like it too then all the better for everyone.

Note: This was an impromptu post, and eventually I will get back to the A-Musing series I started way back when once more. Have patience, it's been a busy year.

Social Profiling № 10: Headphone Fun

Well, it has been a while hasn't it? This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention this year, so instead of prattling on about it I'll just get on with the post.

This is the last of this years Facebook Profile pictures, and given how long it's taken me to get through them this year I don't know if I'll be doing another set.  Certainly not next year, although I might still paint the occasional similar picture just for fun.  If you've no idea what I'm warbling about click here and work from the bottom up - all will be explained.

This latest one was one of the smoothest of the lot.  As a result there aren't all that many images in the following post, which is a shame in a way, but great for me as I've less to write.  Oh, and there's a short tale behind this one too.

So a long time ago I was in a group with a bunch of people (I'm not going into the group itself, that's for another time), ages ranged a bit from about 12 to 18 and I was in the upper end of the range.   The woman, then girl, who this picture was for was a couple of years younger than me, and we got on well as friends.  Fast forward a bit and I left town to go to University and what not, and we fell out of touch.  This happened a lot in those pre-Facebook days, because I am hopeless at staying in touch with people.

Anyway, I was back in my hometown a couple of years ago, out having a few drinks with some friends I had managed to stay in touch with (partly through my brother, who still lives there, and partly through Facebook, which really does have it's uses).  I say "A few drinks," but in actuality I was plastered.  This was a grade A bender that took us half way across town, visiting various pubs along the way, and when the pubs closed we hit the clubs.  Clubs are crap for catching up though, because they're loud, so we moved from one to another in the hopes that one of them would be more suitable for people wishing to continue their drunken slurring at each other.

We ended up at a club that can best be described as somebody's basement.  I'm not kidding here, it was a basement in a house that had at some point years before been converted into a club.  Even though this club had been there since before I could drink (many moons ago), I had somehow never been there.  I'll probably never go again - it's a bloody basement!  Anyway, while drinking up the drink I'd bought so we could get out of there I got a tap on the shoulder and a "Blimey, it is you!" in my ear.

Indeed, it was me, and the speaker was the girl I'd not seen for 20 years, who was now the mum of the boy in the painting you see here.  We traded details, and then after a fairly long chat I staggered out and decided to call it a night.  So, that's why this painting exists, because of a chance encounter in a basement while I was blind drunk at two in the morning.  Crazy days.

Oh, and she's also in a relationship with a bloke I used to work with around the time we knew each other.  Nothing to do with the story, I just thought it was a fun thing to note.

None of this has anything to do with the process of painting the picture, which was fairly unremarkable.  I did it in ArtRage 4, and the only thing of any note was that the Photograph it's based on was black and white, so I had to colour it as I went along, and I tried a new technique at the end to soften the results a little.  The end.

Social Profiling № 9: Smile!

And here, finally, is the post I was planning to put up last week.  All the prep work on the images was done for that post, so this should go fairly quickly.

Before I begin though, I'm going to digress and mention (for my own future reference, as much as your general interest), that in the last week one of our cats has gone missing, and we have a large hole in the house boarded up with plywood from where the new sliding door was supposed to go in, but couldn't because of rot in a support beam.  The frustrating thing about the later being that the former could have come home, but would have no way of letting us know because his usual entrance is now covered with boards.  Bugger.

Oh, and a stray cat showed up at one point (possibly to relay a message from the missing one, which was useless since we don't speak cat), stayed over night but ran away when it was time to call animal control.  One of those weeks.

Anyway, enough about me, and on to the wonder of fake paint!

You may note that there are two versions of this painting above, each a slightly different colour.  No I'm not trying to riff on Andy Warhol (but running out of steam after two images), I just can't decide which version I like best.  The original is on the top, the second one is colour tweaked in Photoshop.  Neither of them is the colour of the original photograph, which was straight black and white.  You can enlarge all the images by clicking on them by the way - some of them you may need to.

So, learning from my terrible layout sketch from the last one I decided to A) Forego all that m'larky up front and just start painting and B) use a grid this time.  I didn't use a grid for long, just long enough to get the big bold shapes in roughly the right places.  I stopped using it somewhere in between the first and second stages above.  Even then I put his eye in the wrong place.  It didn't take long for me to notice and fix it, but long enough that  it irritated me when I did.  It's more or less right in the last of these stages here.  For this one I saw no reason to change the composition of the Photograph at all - the original photograph was already fantastic, so I left it as was, but just painted it in sepia tones.

Here's me, refining the facial features.  There's really not much else to say about this one.  Hmmm, OK, so the photo this was based on had a fair amount of damage in places, so I had to infer quite a bit about the left side of his mouth and chin.

This piece, by the way, is of the person's father, who has passed away - as has mine, you may recall.  This bit is relevant.  So when my Dad died my mother commissioned an artist to paint his portrait to give to my Grandmother.  I was never terribly impressed by the painting (though it is vastly better than I could do, especially with real paint), there was something off about the eyes that lost a lot of his character.  Anyway, I didn't want the same thing to happen here for someone else, so I put more work into it than I probably otherwise would have.

I have no idea if I succeeded in capturing that character or not, but I did the best I could.  Oh, and another coincidence - this person has also hired me before.  Two out of four - it's not like I get hired all that much! Very strange coincidence.

Oh, and I cropped it off, because it hadn't changed before the next set of pictures, but I'd blocked in his left hand here too.

Some very minor work continuing on his face, mostly at his hairline and at the base of his nose, but the majority of this sequence is spent on his right hand and shirt.  I never did get around to detailing out his little finger, but I don't think it's noticeable in the final piece unless it's pointed out... Which I just did...  Way to go me, now you can't unsee it.

Not much to say about the shirt, except that I've shaved off an awful lot of his shoulder since that first block in, giving a bit more definition to the cloth and his neck.

I've also painted in some of the damage that was in the original photograph in the third one here.  The small pieces of damage I didn't do, because they weren't helping the piece, but this big swath of light burning in the bottom and the right of the picture I thought looked great, so I added it here.

Finally getting to making the camera look like a camera.  I debated over whether to do the lens freehand, but eventually I used a stencil (I argued, with myself, that if it was a real painting I could cut a mask out of a piece of card for this bit).  Only the outer circle was done with the stencil though, and I painted over the result afterward so that the circle wasn't too perfect and in conflict with the rough nature of the rest of the picture.  More on the camera in a moment.

Here is also where I painted in his hair, and did some general blending before adding the trees.  Painting his hair was interesting - I went a little too detailed to begin with, and you can still see the remainder of this as a slightly noisy patch right at the top of his head.  Painted over that with a bigger brush though, and ended up getting it to look like his fine buzzcut even though the individual strokes are quite large.

I faired less well with the trees behind him, but I got them to the point where they weren't too distracting.  I was tempted to leave the background being much more stark and graphic, but I wanted it to be evident that he's outside, so the trees had to happen.

Finally I took it into Photoshop and played with the colour values for the second version.  The bit in Photoshop took all of 10 minutes.

If you're interested, the camera is a Falcon Minette, or a Miniature, or a Minicam Juniour (my money is on the former). Apparently these were made back in the 40's, which feels period accurate to the photo, though I had it pegged for the 50's when painting (which it could be - they made things to last back then).  The easiest way to tell is from the label around the lens.  Amusingly I didn't think of doing the corrections to see what it actually said until I was finished and working on the thumbnail for the post, at which point I'd painted the logo from a reference that was backwards and rotated and blurred.  I'm quite pleased at how close I got to the real thing as a result.

And that, for this tale, is the end.

A Collection of Pleasingly Structured Lies (№ 2)

I had meant to do a speedpaint tonight. This would allow me to write a blog post about it tomorrow, which would be good, since my artistic progression is probably the main reason people read my blog (Actually, that's not true - I get more views from people who want to know about my book covers, Red Faction or how to trace a picture of Mickey Mouse - but I'll take what I can get).

Anyway, I didn't do the speedpaint. I had read an article on io9 earlier today that inspired me to write some fiction instead. I'll link the article at the end of this post so as not to spoil the story that follows, assuming you actually want to read it.

Despite this having happened a few times recently my writing fiction is not generally a common occurrence, so it might be months or years before I'm inspired to write any more. Either way, you are free to ignore my random writings, and I assure you I will get a speedpaint done, and an art based post up in the next few days.

I wrote this pretty rapidly over a couple of hours, and it's now gone two in the morning, so I hope you'll forgive a few grammatical and spelling errors. If it transpires that anyone other than my wife actually bothers reading it I'll clean it up a bit (she's a good proofreader - well, she's good at most things, so that's no surprise).

OK, I'll cut to the chase and get on with it.

Die Zukunft (The Future)

The young man headed for the door to the heavy pounding, wondering what could be so important at this time of the night.  He hoped the thumping was not enough to rouse others in the dormitory; he was unpopular enough as it was. Tying his robe he opened the door, and was confronted by a familiar looking older man. He looked much, but not exactly, like his father.  A lost uncle perhaps? Possibly a cousin? He felt certain he knew the man from somewhere at least. The young man took in the elder's clothes, and found them to be unusual, certainly not suitable for this time of night at this time of year.  Perhaps this was why he appeared sick?

"Do I know you?" he asked, "Are you all right?"

The older man had sagged against the door frame, his skin a sickly grey pallor.  Sweat stood out on his forehead and he gasped as though he had exerted himself recently.

"Oh, you know me," the older man gasped, "Better than you think.  I am not all right, but I think sitting may help, if you would be so kind?"

The young man took his arm and led him to the seat in his small room.  That done, he seated himself on the narrow bed and awaited an explanation.  He thought he should be angry at this interruption of his sleep, but the man looked so frail he found that he was filled more with concern.  He noted the bag clutched to the strangers chest with some curiosity - it was of an odd material not dissimilar to leather, but with none of the texture that a good leather bag might have on it's surface.

The elder caught his breath and began to speak.

"You will find this difficult to believe," he started, "But I bring evidence to convince you of my words.

"I have travelled here from the future, and I am you."

These words were so alien to the young man that he did not immediately comprehend them.  He knew of the concept of time travel of course, having read Mr. Wells' Die Zeitmaschine. But that was a fiction, a magical tale to be sure, but still a casual nonsense not to be taken seriously.  And this man being himself?  Preposterous!  He had a familial resemblance , yes, but surely this was not the face he saw when he looked in the mirror each morning, even accepting years added to it.  He looked again, trying to see past the pallor, the age and the moustache, and gasped.  Could it be true? They looked far more similar than he had first thought, though in the dim candle light of the room, along with the other factors, it was hard to be sure.

He realised the older man was still speaking - he had tuned out the words in his shock.

"... brought with me a device that might persuade you of the truth in my words, for it is vital that you believe me before I can tell you my purpose for being here."

The older man pulled from his bag a small box, about the size of a thick book.  It was made partly of what appeared to be glass, and another material the youth did not recognise.  It had the appearance of luridly painted, heavily lacquered  wood, but again not with the texture he would expect of such.  Along the side of the box were four silver buttons, and protruding from it was a length of cord, ending in a curve of metal.  At each end of the curve were two disks of a black foam like material.

"This is a music player," the older man stated blandly.  Clearly this was a common device to him. "You place this over your head with these disks upon your ears; they are called headphones.  I will then press this button and you will hear music from the future.  Once you have heard it I will let you examine this device, so that you can see that there is no trickery.  I hope this will be enough to convince you that what I say is true."

The young man took the 'headphones' and hesitated.  This looked like some strange instrument of torture - what if the metal band carried electricity from the box to his ears, electrocuting him?  He was no expert on electricity - he still relied on candles and gas lamps, though the library downstairs had some electric bulbs. His hesitation was momentary though; why would this man come here to electrocute him?  There was no reason, and as insane as his claim sounded it seemed somewhat less insane than randomly electrocuting a destitute.

He placed the band over his head, the discs on his ears, and as he had promised, the older man pressed a button.

The sound that filled his ears was certainly melodic, but like nothing he had ever heard before.  He heard a man singing in English (which he did not understand), and mixture of known sounds and instruments unlike any he was familiar with.  All in all, while obviously music, the sound that filled his ears was quite dreadful. He quickly removed the headphones.

"Is all the music from your time this ghastly?" he asked.

"You are convinced then?  That I am from the future?"

The young man considered. "Yes," he said, "That much would seem to be clear, though I am less convinced that you are me."

"Proving that much is simple," the old man responded, and pulled a worn and battered book from his bag. The book was intimately familiar to the young man as it had belonged to his father, and there was an inscription within; "Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag, Alois!" The book had aged greatly, but the inscription was as clear as when he had last seen it.  He was convinced.

"Now," The older man began after a heavy fit of coughing into a handkerchief "The reason for my being here."

"In four years time there will be a war.  The greatest war the world has ever seen.  You will serve in that war, as I did, and will be decorated for your bravery. Many on all sides will die, and ultimately our country will lose the conflict.  I do not believe anything can occur that will alter these events, as there is no time for you to gain a position to prevent it.  Germany had a difficult time for many years after this war, and times were hard, but eventually there was a ray of hope.  A man came to power who galvanised the nation. He made Germany feel vital again, and began the fight once more.  Rapidly he conquered much of Europe, and was held back only by the might of Russia, and the channel of water between France and Britain.  He recently allied with Japan, in the hope that they could come at the continent from the other side, and Italy to aid him heading south.

"It was not all good though, and despite bringing glory back to the nation the man was seemingly driven insane with his power.  Millions have died, anyone who does not live up to his ideals has been persecuted, and his tactics mean that people are fearful to speak out against him.  He has caused as much harm as good, and when I left it seemed that another war, far worse than the last, was about to break out.

"With this in mind, a team of American and British scientists came together to create a machine capable of sending a man back to stop this lunatic before he came to power.  The project was called Chronos, and the machine that came from it was known as Zeus."

There was a pause while the older man coughed again.  This time when he removed the cloth from his mouth it was flecked with blood.  Stable again, he continued.

"With our heritage and skills it may surprise you that I was called upon to work on this top secret project, but I traveled to London to help fight our dictator when it became apparent his rule would do as much harm as it would good.  I was given the task of drawing illustrations and floor plans of various buildings of government, many of which I have worked at over the years.  I fear to say that I had held a position that was little more than a glorified cleaning manager, but it gave me an intimate knowledge of the buildings few others have.

"The details in these illustrations drew the attention of the Chronos team, and they brought me aboard to do more of the same, this time focused on how these buildings looked in the past.  I have not been on the project long, and there are many things I still do not understand about it, but due to a quirk of fate, that I have neither the time nor inclination to describe, I was sent back accidentally, with only a small bag of random possessions and some money.  I found myself in London still, five weeks ago; fifty years in my own past. It has taken me from then until now to travel here to Vienna, as I knew you would be here at the Männerwohnheim.

"Since I am here, I believe you can stop this monster before he starts.  You can bring him down using information I have brought with me."

Another cough racked his body, and taking this pause as his opportunity the young man asked the many questions that had come to him.

"Who is this man you wish me to stop?  And how can I do this? You have told me already the way of the future, if I change it how will I end up in London, on a project that only exists because of the man I must stop?  This Zeus will have no reason to exist. I, as you, will have no way or reason to come back and have this conversation. And why are you sick?  Have you been poisoned?"

"Not poisoned as such, no," the elder began again, "A side effect of the accident. I fear I do not have long to live.  A week, a day, perhaps as little as a few hours.  I have been deteriorating rapidly, but if you can change the future this will have been worth it.

"I believe you can change the future still.  I gathered from overhearing the scientists that time can be overwritten, much like the tape in the cassette player from which came the music you heard.  There is music on the tape, but other music can be written over it, replacing the original.  The original music was still there previously, and can be recalled by the listener even though it has gone.  It seems that time too works this way, you will erase my past, but my past will still have happened in a sense, and I will still have travelled back here to -"

Another fit of coughing.  This one interspersed with dry retching and a horrible shaking.  A small trickle of blood came from his nose.

"Perhaps not even hours then," he said quietly, before changing tack.

"In this bag is a folder.  On my journey here I have written in it everything I can remember from the end of the great war until shortly before the rise of the Führer.  Use this information to hunt this man down and destroy him before he can bring ruin to the world."

The older man paused now, a slight glaze came over his expression.

"Funny," he said, "In my haste to write this history It did not occur to me to actually put his name in my notes.  What a ridiculous oversight." He sighed, the light fading from his eyes, blood now running freely from his nose and into the Handkerchief.

"He is a Jew, a Jew by the name of...  Of -"

He stiffened briefly, and then his body sagged.  The bloody cloth fell from his now limp hand, landing in his lap.

"Of what?" cried the younger man, rising to shake his older self. "By the name of what?"  But it was too late, the elder was dead, the name of the dictator, the Führer, the monster, taken with him to his grave.

He would have to deal with the body before dawn, but first curiosity gripped the young man.  He reached into the bag, already plotting how to eliminate an unknown Jew among millions, and pulled out the folder of papers within.  Despite what he had learned over the past half an hour he was still surprised to find his own familiar handwriting on the cover.

"die Zukunft," it read, "von Adolf Hitler"

The article that inspired this was published on io9, and can be found here.

A Collection of Pleasingly Structured Lies (№ 1)

I have depressingly little to report. I have started several pieces, but most of them are some way off from being something I can show. I scanned two months worth of sketches, but have yet to arrange them into something I can display (and if you're a regular reader you'll know that's a pretty major undertaking, which is why I decided to do it less often, but now I realise that just means I have more to do when I get around to it). I haven't done any new speed paints (though I'm hoping to do one today), but I have done some speed sculpts. Digital sculpts you understand, if it was real sculpting materials I would just be showing off a blob of Playdough.
I also started a new painting class with Paula McCarty, so there may be something to show there in a few weeks. Other than that? Not much. Nothing to show anyway. But I don't want to leave you hanging, so since I can post pretty much whatever I want on here you're going to get a little fiction.

I don't write. I am not a writer. I am a story teller though, as I suppose many people with kids are. At bedtime my son insists I tell him a "Story from your mind," whereby he picks two random things (invariably robots and something, or, when that is banned for being overused, a cat and a refrigerator), and I have to tell a story about them. I have yet to write any of these down, although some of them may be worthy of me doing so.
I had to write this down though it wasn't a story for my son, it was a story for me. I had an incomplete dream (I rarely remember dreams), and decided I had to know how it would have ended, so I wrote it down and completed it. I'll leave you to it, and hope you enjoy it, as my tale telling is rarely something I draw attention to.

Until the next time - fiction!

Quite Another Dimension

Two men sat in the sunlit room, one either side of the table. Both men were highly regarded doctors in their respective, but unconnected fields.

"So," said one, "You claim you have succeeded in your attempts at trans-dimensional travel?"

"Claim?" came the others response, "Yes, I suppose 'claim' is fair, as I have no physical evidence that my experiments were successful."

He elaborated, "It is not my physical being that travels you see? Such a thing would be a physical impossibility, and in some dimensions a liability. No, it is not my person that travels, rather my consciousness is transferred into my closest biological equivalent in whichever dimension I arrive in."

The other doctor looked interested, "Closest biological equivalent implies you do not always transfer into your physical duplicate. Have you transferred into others?"

"Quite so. There are an infinite number of dimensions you see? Thus an infinite variety of alternates, only a small number of whom are my biological duplicate. There are a few billion versions of me out there, a few trillion at most. In the vast majority of accessible dimensions the closest thing I can transfer into is very little like myself. I have been a potential sibling a few times, some of them women; I transferred into my father's duplicate twice, once my great-great grandfather, and on one memorable occasion a snake."

"A snake?" the other cried in disbelief, "but how could you possibly operate the controls to return?"

"Well, I didn't need to. The machine works on a timed mechanism. As I said my physical being does not travel, and this goes for any other physical object as well, so taking controls to bring myself back would be quite impossible, and, as you have now realized, quite inconvenient.

I said earlier that this lack of physical transfer avoided some liabilities, one of them being that I may appear in a dimension where the natives breathe a mix of nitrogen and methane. Quite inconvenient to arrive as an oxygen breather in such an environment. But the problem is avoided, as is the problem of operating controls. the machine brings me back after a preset time, with my physical form being seated in a chair within the machine while I am gone."

"In the machine... unconscious?" The other doctor seemed to find this possibility even less believable than the snake, the incredulity evident in his tone.

"From your tone you will be happy to know that I am not unconscious during my travels, no. My physical form must have quite an interesting adventure of its own I gather, as the consciousness of whoever I posses in the other dimension must go somewhere, and so it temporarily occupies my form here. I discovered this the hard way when I returned to find some considerable damage in the lab. I couldn't afford to risk the machine becoming inoperable while I was out of my body, so I installed timed restraints. They lock when I leave, and release when I return. Quite simple really."

The other seemed impressed by this solution to the travelers problem, and made a note on the pad before him, one of many he had written in the last few minutes. He looked up again.

"Tell me Doctor, have you done this often? Does it hurt? And when will you do it again, I would be most interested in observing."

"Why yes, I have done it several times, although after the partial destruction of my lab I have done it less often, and to a more strict schedule. I had to change locations after that as well; the others in my building were quite disturbed by the violence of my dimensional alternate on that occasion, as well you might gather.

It is interesting you ask about pain. early on in the experiments I had very little, just a slight discomfort, but recently I have returned with a level of quite extraordinary pain. I had not thought to wonder why this would be until now, but it did seem to start when I moved labs.

As to when I am trying this again, I believe I have scheduled time in the machine tomorrow morning at about ten o'clock, if you would be free to attend then?"

The other stopped his now relentless scribbling and looked up once more.

"Ten AM? Yes, that sounds perfect. If you'll excuse me though I have other matters to attend to now, and I'm sure you could do with some rest before tomorrow."

He reached over to the intercom on his desk and pressed the switch,

"Orderly, would you escort Doctor Frederick back to his room please?"

After they had left he turned to a third figure, shrouded in shadows and obscured by sunlit dust motes in the corner of the room.

"I believe I'll see him in the morning for his scheduled cranial electro-therapy at ten. I'm afraid he's still quite delusional, although seemingly quite harmless. I doubt we'll have a repeat of his performance at the Davidson Institute here. Are you agreeable to the continuation of his treatment?"

"Yes," said the woman, the Traveller's wife, "He clearly needs all the help we can give him."

Interlude: Thoughts on the Blog's Future

So I've been debating with myself for some time over certain aspects of the Blog (there's probably a dirty pun there if you look hard enough). Every post so far has some images, and those images are either exclusively by me, or reference for something done by me, and this was fully intentional.  This has its advantages; after all, this is an art blog, but also some disadvantages.  For one, it means that I can only post about subjects I have images for, rather than any old thing, and for another it means I can only post as often as I have work to show.  Sometimes though I want to talk about other things, sometimes art related, sometimes just random things that I want to vent about.  Sometimes I want to write something that may require images that I didn't take, or paint, or use as reference.

I think this post is only the third time I've written written a post with no image content, although this one at least has an icon, the others didn't.  Interested in what I have to say rather than show?  Carry on then dedicated follower (you mad crazy fool).

I've decided that since I have a perfectly good blog here I'll use it for more than posting my artwork and progression.  Not all the time, I won't be posting about what a delicious Sunday Dinner I had on Monday (although I did as it goes, the Yorkshire Pudding was amazing), but occasionally. Could be movie reviews, could be my thoughts on a book or TV show.  Probably won't be political or religious (why bother? I don't follow either to a great extent and it would likely upset people).  Irregular, as I said, whenever the mood strikes me.

More frequently (I'll be aiming for probably once a month) I'll post a something brief about another artist that impresses me, or inspires me.  Those may be of more interest to the regular readers of the blog, over some random artist's thoughts on the latest J.J. Abrams film (extremely fun, if rather vacuous, if you were curious).  There will also be the existent A-Musing posts as well, except now I won't feel duty bound to supply my own images if others are perfectly sufficient (they'll all be credited where possible though). I don't have titles to distinguish the new types of post from the regular ones as yet, but I'm thinking something along the lines of "Mad Ramblings" and "Artstanding".  They'll carry icons similar to the one heading this post as well, as a more visual indicator.

All that should mean that the blog gets updated a little more regularly (I'll be happy with three times a month), even if it's not always with my own personal progression.  Regarding that progression, to be honest I've had difficulty keeping my motivation up lately (you may have noticed a distinct decline in speepaints or more finished works).  I'm really not sure why this is, but I'm fighting to not simply stop altogether as last time I did that I didn't start again really for a decade, and this blog is the result.  I've recently finished another book cover, although you probably won't see that for several months, and I've started on the next (the most ambitious so far, and possibly the most ambitious of all of them).  I've also begun work on a painting I've been putting off doing for about 18 months.  I think getting it done will clear that aspect out of my head and allow me to move on.  Who knows, it might be the issue... But more likely it was looking back on old work for the retrospective and realizing I still wasn't terribly happy with many of the things I've produced.  Practice makes perfect and all that, which is another reason I refuse to give up n this long term growth project.

If you've made it this far then well done, you deserve a reward.  Do you want one?  Well, maybe if I get some comments regarding your thoughts on the above I'll have a competition or something.  Do a sketch for you to win, or a digital piece of your choosing or something of that ilk.  Since comments are rare I'm betting I won't have to follow up on that promise, but it sounds like fun if there's enough interest.

That's all for now folks, next up should be a speedpaint post, unless I decide to write one on Doctor Who or Orphan Black in the mean time. I can do that now, how liberating.

"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.

Fireman Sack's Big Birthday Adventure

Before we begin I may as well point out that if you visit the blog for the art (You poor fools) then you might want to skip this post because there's no art in it. Well, some sort of art, but not the type you usually get. I'm not really sure why I'm even making this post - it doesn't really belong on here, but I guess it does explain part of the reduction of art output over the last two months. The rest of the reduction I've gone into before; and I've mentioned this too in passing, so you may as well see it.

Little Big Planet 2 may be the greatest time suck ever invented by man. It's a game, but unlike other time sucks such as RPG's or MMO's the actual game is really quite short. It has that in common with those FPS games with a focus on Multiplayer like Call of Duty or Homefront (Which you should totally buy...), but it's online experience isn't really the focus either, although it has 4 player co-op and verses portions. No, Little Big Planet 2 is a time suck because it allows you to make your own levels. The original LBP allowed this too, but LBP2 takes it to another level entirely (Har-Har).  My son loves the game proper, and I'm addicted to making (mostly dreadful) things.
So with my Son's birthday approaching I thought it would be nice to merge these two things.  I would make him a level as a birthday present.  Yes, yes you capitalist mooks we bought him a real present as well - it's a bike; he loves it.  But where's the care and attention in that?  By making him a level it could be custom tailored to his likes and interests.  I was off the mark a bit since he got into pirates in a big way when it was half finished, but thankfully he didn't completely go off fire engines.  Anyway, lets get on with it.

This is close to the start of his level. When it begins he meets a Sackbot bearing a remarkable resemblance to Fireman Sam's Station Officer Steele who tells him he'd better get off to work or he'll be late. Sackbot's are just programmable characters in the game. In the game's levels proper they look like cardboard robots - that's my Son's character in the screen above(which looks like them) - but they can look like anything really - this one looks like a potholing Steele, since Steele likes potholing. Anyway, you travel through the caves for a bit. The screen above is right before a cave-in, which is handy since without it you couldn't continue.

Here's a random skull inset into the wall. It's possible to "lethalise" the level at the beginning, making it harder - When you do that the skull jumps out of the wall and laughs at you, but usually it just sits there as decoration.

As well as the cave-ins and the random skulls this quiet cave in Wales also turns out to be an active volcano.  Who'd have thought it?  You have to use a grappling hook to traverse to the far side.  He's 4, it doesn't have to make sense as long as it's awesome.

This bit is in a cave with a giant electrified 4 in the background. In order to proceed you have to grapple up a wall, but when you do so the wall splits off from the cliff and falls down to form a bridge (With a jump pad on it allowing you to ascend). The arrows at the top there tell you where to go once you've made it up there - they light up and everything.  Complicated stuff this you know...

Eventually our hero is ejected from the caves through this well looking thing.  I was going to have it be a mini volcano, but then I forgot, so there's just a big spring that kicks you up to the surface.  I claim no responsibility for the awesome background as it comes with the game.  Actually most of this comes with the game - everything is built of preexisting materials - you just reshape them to your needs.  And yes, everything has a sort of homemade crafty look to it, hence the stitching on the grass.  Those water droplet looking things are score bubbles by the way - you collect them for points.

Around the corner you meet Elvis the firefighter who's forgotten how to drive the fire engine.  He's the only character who's actually named, which is relevant to a joke later on.  Of course it's only a joke if you know the show it's based on, and are 4.  It has nothing to do with his name - Elvis, as far is my son is concerned, is a Welsh firefighter, and not the King of Rock and Roll. Thankfully I don't believe he thinks Mr. Hitler is a greengrocer (though he knows he only has one ball, but has yet to realise this means testicle).

Here's another picture of the fire engine. I spent an hour building it, I may as well get some mileage out of it.

This is the halfway point of the level (and this post).  Yes, really, it's quite an epic when you're 4.  In this bit you drive the fire engine around the city putting out fires, like this one:

No, the city really isn't all that pretty is it.  That's because I was running out of the time I already didn't have.  I'm working on a prettier version of this that I can take my time over.  It will be quite some time coming what with everything else I have going on.

Once you've put out a few fires you get called tot he mansion that's now ablaze. When you arrive you get out of the fire engine and are greeted by this little cutscene showing you that you need to rescue this ostentatiously dressed woman. The female firefighter at the scene informs you that you can't use the big hose on the engine until the house is empty (and I think that sounds vaguely rude personally).

You both don your fire helmets with built in hoses and wade into the fray.

That's quite an inferno.  The hardest and most time consuming thing to do in the entire level was to have the other fire fighter follow you into he building and then go off and fight the fire downstairs while you go up.  Then, after the rescue she gives it up and follows you out again.  It sounds so simple but it took hours to work out, with many minutes of me yelling "Stop following my guy upstairs you tart!".  It made doing the end sequence a lot easier due to what I'd learned doing this (seemingly) simple bit though.

Once you save the unnamed and overdressed woman you hop into the fire engine and use the big hose to douse the fire. Then the Woman says "Thank you so much, if you go in the back room there's a reward for you." Up until now the back room has been blocked by fire. This shot is from the now fireless house on the way to the room. Before you get there though all the lights go out.  When they come back on it's to reveal a cake in the shape of a 4. Then the camera pulls out to reveal your firefighting chums who shout "Surprise!"

"Happy birthday" says faux Officer Steele, "Elvis has baked you a cake."  "Yes," continues Elvis, "It took me all morning to make."

The number 4 cake promptly catches fire and Elvis looks devastated (This is the Elvis joke - Elvis is the worse cook in the world). Shortly afterwards the cake explodes, but not before the fire has popped the balloons. How sad.

It's all Okay though because then a whole host of assorted characters run into the room, fireworks fly, holographic sun and moon start whizzing around and basic insanity happens. Officer Steele looks confused and Elvis looks crushed but everyone else is having a fine time. The end, fade to black, and then the words Happy 4th Birthday.

The whole thing took a few weeks to make (it might have been less but I was busy with work and sick a lot of course) and he loves it, or seems to.  We had to play it through 3 times back to back, the final time with the lethaliser sticker in place (He just about died himself when the skull popped out laughing at him).  So all in all quite the success.  I put it up online for others to play (You have to in order to have multi part stuff like this as it won't all fit in the game's memory at once) and a grand total of three people bothered to try it, and one of them didn't like it.  Well, bollocks to them, my Son did and it's his present, so there.

If you're interested in actually experiencing this epic adventure yourself (and have Little Big Planet 2, and have in fact made it through to this point in the post), you can find it under my game name (which just so happens to be the same as the one I write the blog under; HarlequiNQB), just do a text search in "Community" and this and my other levels should pop right up.  Or you can search for "Fireman Sack's Big Birthday Adventure" instead, but the first option is quicker.

Okay, now that's out of my system I promise not to wrote another post specifically about a Little Big Planet 2 level ever again.  Unless I do something completely awesome...