A question that I get asked a lot from coworkers, friends, and con-attendees is "What are your inspirations?". Well, I guess now would be a good time to come up with a rather comprehensive list of what gives me some of my ideas.

First category is music. One thing I cannot do is create something in silence. I have to have music. And if it's tied into what I'm working on, it makes it all the better. So, here's a little sampling of some of the things I listen to:

Faithless, Nine Inch Nails, VAST, Dead Can Dance, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM/MDFMK, Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Die Warzau, Leæther Strip, Velvet Acid Christ, Geomatic, Shpongle, Dieselboy, Concord Dawn, Black Sun Empire, Pendulum, Johnny Cash, Meshuggah, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Doctor Steel, Abney Park, Oingo Boingo, Tears for Fears, Simple Minds, Lamb of God, The Slants, Combichrist, Godhead, VNV Nation, Laika, Front Line Assembly, The Prodigy, Prince, P.M Dawn, Blind Guardian, Nightwish, Apocalyptica....yeah, that should be good enough for now.

Next category is movies. I like a wide variety of movies depending on my mood. Most of the time, though, I prefer a good thought provoker. A few movies that have inspired me are as follows:

The City of Lost Children, The Crow, Dark City, Cube, Twelve Monkeys, Fight Club, Alien/Aliens/etc., Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth, Mirrormask, Immortal, Nightwatch/Daywatch, Frontier(s), Uzumaki, The Ring, The Audition, Time Bandits, Event Horizon, 9, Tron, most Zombie flicks.

Well folks, I'm gonna have to cut this short. I'll write part 2 later this week. For now, I have to head to bed.

((As posted at my Myspace page since Facebook doesn't have a real journal feature))

While these items currently have nothing in common, I have this feeling that it won't be the case here over the next month.

First off, Dragoncon. I've been getting a good idea of what I want to bring with me to the show. While I'll only have 7 pieces hanging in the gallery proper, I will have a whole bunch of stuff at my bazaar table. Hopefully, I'll have a lot of new buttons and prints along with the possibilities of bumper stickers and magnets. The list of stuff that's gotta be done is really big. But now that I'm out of school, I'll have more time to do it.

And speaking of school, I have unofficially officially graduated! I got the grades back: A in Surveys of Research Methodologies, A- in Biology, and an A- in Game Art Senior Project. This would give me a 3.788 cumulative GPA, which means the Deans List for me. Now I say unofficially officially because while I have the grades to reflect graduation, I still don't have the diploma in my dark, massive hands.

Now for the headaches, and they aren't metaphorical either. For the past month or so, I've been having these off and on headaches that were pretty nasty. One episode actually had me heaving. Now, these headaches were also accompanied by sinus problems. So, I thought it was a sinus infection and I'd just ride it out in hopes that it'll go away...sometimes I can be a damn idiot. Well, this past Friday, I got a doozy of a headache and I finally threw in the towel and went to the emergency room. Deep down in the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital, I found the emergency room and signed in. I sat down and no sooner did I place my head in my hands, the devil child made its presence known. There was an infant somewhere in the room that had its lungs made by Black and Decker because its shrieks of discontent proceeded to carve and drill right through my skull. A little girl walked by with her father and asked, "Do you hear the little baby, daddy?" I muttered a curse and said (to myself), "I think the whole county can."

Anyway, I digress. I get called back to the area where they take people in groups and check temperatures, blood pressure, ask the usual questions and essentially prep you for a doctor. Well, after they finished with me, they sent me back to the waiting area with the other patients awaiting a doctor. Not a minute later, a nurse comes by and said that because of my blood pressure, they needed to take care of that before they could do anything else. This had me a little concerned. So, I go back with her to one of the small in-patient rooms where they put me on a gurney and put a needle in my arm and the blood pressure arm cuff. From here, it was six hours of checking my blood pressure, injecting stuff to get my blood pressure to go down, and ignoring me the rest of the time. So, what set off the alarms? 210/115 For those who don't know medicalese, it translates into JOSH SHOULD BE FUCKING DEAD!

Ahem...anyway. So, I find out that it's my high blood pressure that's giving me my headaches. So, what caused my blood pressure to skyrocket like a NASA launch? Let's follow this chain of logic. When you get a headache, what do you do? Right, you take a pain reliever. When you get head congestion symptoms, what do you do? Right, you take cold/flu/allergy medicine. Now, here's the fun part. Both of those products cause spikes in blood pressure. See the vicious circle? So, now I'm on blood pressure medication. And I'm gonna need it with this upcoming month of preparations for DragonCon.

And I've run out of steam, so I'm going to bed. Later folks!

I didn't know how else to title this journal, but I got an idea that will help get these WIP's finished and posted faster. My Game Art Senior Project class had me come up with an asset list of items that need finalization. So, I stuck a whole bunch of my painting projects on that list. So now I have to finish them since it's part of my grade. I just hope I didn't doom myself...twice.

I have a ton of WIP's sitting in a folder just waiting to get done....or not...depending on my mood toward them. I keep shifting ideas halfway through projects.

I'm also looking to go backward and work on the basics (IE: perspective and human shapes). I find that these two areas are my weakest points; sometimes working in unison as well.

Anyway, I did manage to post up a completed work from one of my WIP's. I have posted the final version of Bird on a Wire 2009. I'll be making prints of it for future shows.

And speaking of future shows, I will be at Metrocon in Tampa on an official capacity.

Well, that's all for now. Catch ya later!

Yeah, just like the title says, I have good news and bad news.

I'll start with the bad news first. I will not be going to ACEN. First off, I'm a bit leary of trying to rush school work in order to go. That happened last year and it cost me big time. Secondly, with this whole swine flu thing going around, the last thing I need to be doing is flying into a major metropolitan area, attending a convention with thousands of kids. My track record of getting sick after a convention hasn't been all that pretty. So, no ACEN this year.

Now for the good news. I GOT ACCEPTED INTO THE DRAGONCON ART GALLERY! WOOOHOO! Now comes the big rush to get everything ready to go. : |