Here’s a fun story about some nameless cheersquad members in line behind me at the Harry Potter premiere couple weeks ago…
As we’re standing in line 4 hours early to see “HP7P2″ we’re standing in the theatre lobby, the walls lined with posters, my wife and our friend and I find ourselves in front of the poster for RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES [which looks pretty bad-ass I must say] when we heard a funny conversation about said poster:
HighSchoolCheerCaptain: “Oh em gee, so I keep seeing the previews for that ape movie, and I’m confused…”
HighSchoolCheerLackey: “Yeah. About what?”
HighSchoolCheerCaptain: “So the movie like, takes place on Earth. And if it takes place on Earth why do they call it “Planet of the Apes”?”
It was at this point where the three of us cringed at the thoughts that these young women will some day give birth to a generation even less capable than our own. Sure, the girl was 17 and the remake of “Planet of the Apes” came out in 2001 when she was 7 years old, but her parents had to have known about the movie before, it was a long running series of movies that even the least pop-culture savvy people know about, it’s referenced in everything at some point. Those stupid ape masks, Charlton Heston, “damn dirty apes”! This girl probably has 600 friends on Facebook, not one of them has ever made even the slightest reference to it? EVER? I guess she wouldn’t have known about it since it wasn’t ever mentioned on “GLEE” and Robert Pattinson never starred in it.
[I know a lot of adult fans of these current "pop-culture phenoms" too, but luckily most of these people already knew of the things these shows reference. They lived a life before everything had to be remade and remastered and referenced. This is directed at them...]
This brings me to a fear I have:
This generation of “tweens” and teens don’t know anything that wasn’t directly referenced on something else in the past 72 hours. Having worked in the public schools for three long years, I am comfortable saying that it seems like the average student retains anything learned in a given day for only about 72 hours, after that it has to be relearned or made fun of on youtube. I hate that at age 25 I’m already the old guy in many ways, and today’s topic is only one of the many reasons. My direct subordinate generation is full of mindless techno-drones. Why is it the only pop-culture anyone knows about now is if it’s “Jersey Shore”, “GLEE”, “Twilight”, Family Guy, and Tosh.0.
Okay. It’s relevant to the current generation of reality TV based learners, but their parents bother me too. On a worse level. Did their parents never involve themselves in past forms of pop-culture? They had to of. These are the same people I hear daily talk about the “good ole days” OLE! NOT OLD! OLE. “GOOD. OLE. DAYS.” Where the gas was cheaper as was everything else, the only war we were in was the cold one, and capitalism was on the rise. Disco was on its way out and rock was back, rebellion was is, and this generation swore never to be like their parents generation. It was the birth of MTV, and they played MUSIC not SNOOKIE. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?
Why do these parents not seem to remember the 70s and 80s? Or do they remember them fondly and just never talk to their kids about anything?! My parents were always showing me their favorite books and movies from when they were growing up, I was immersed in pop-culture trivia as well as the parts of American History you don’t learn in school. This was my childhood, so you can imagine my surprise when I realize that even people my own age don’t get these references half the time, so why do I expect some girl who was 7 when I started highschool to know what the fuck “Planet of the Apes” was?!
The Digital Age has brought us a lot of awesome technological advances. 4 Million songs on a device the size of a credit card. iPod, iPad, iPhone, the AIDS cure [kinda], GPS on EVERYTHING, the interwebs in the palm of your hand constantly connecting you to the world. But for all that it is bringing us, our laziness and lack or appreciation is making us the dumbest generation with the best the world has to offer. So now my quandary is this: People no longer have any excuse not to know anything at any time, but at any given moment, I’m surrounded by idiots on smartphones. And yes, before you start in, I too have a smartphone, but I’m constantly looking up things I don’t know much about. I use it as much to learn as I do to play Angry Birds. If I hear people talking about something I know nothing about, I can look it up and learn about it. That’s what’s so cool! But why do I feel like one of the only people who uses it in a smart way?! FUCK!
Now that everything we want is constantly in our grasp, we never have to think for ourselves, we can just do what Apple tells us. Why?!
And why do 6-year olds need iPhones? If you need a kid to have a way to call you in an emergency, get them a track phone. Much like my video-game blog, I must also rant that smart phones are making kids dumber and less creative individuals over all. You don’t have to be around a TV or a computer 24-7 kid, what happened to running home after school so you didn’t miss your favorite cartoon? Now you just watch Ben10 while you walk home, then it’s someone else fault you got hit crossing the street because you were too busy looking at your bellybutton monitor to look both ways before crossing the street. Giving kids these devices so young seems to only be growing an entire generation of Darwin Award Winners.
I don’t even know where this is going anymore. I’m just crazed, but it’s nice to rant. I started complaining about kids and pop-culture, then parents and pop-culture, then parents and kids, then kids and technology, then just technology… I am all over the place.
I’m spent on this though. Basically, I hate kids, mostly teens and tweens. But even more I hate their parents. But maybe the Digital Age will weed out the bad teachers from the good, and also get rid of those awful “My Child is an Honor Student Whoopty-doo Elementary” stickers. There’s so much potential, let’s not waste it…
-zach
In the past 48 hours, Laura and I have got just under 5 hours of sleep. I’m about to go set up a yard sale for her and then go to work for a 6 hour shift. We haven’t even been tired. Just wide awake all freakin night. If you live in the area stop by the yard sale for some goodies, if not then you’re missing out.
I was able to get some artwork done up during my sleeplessness, however, not for the comic. As I’ve said, Fortress is on hiatus until Sept.
Submitted a graphic design for the Jay and Silent Bob Design Contest on facebook. Go check it out and please vote for my submission. See my submission here.
Tell your friends to check it out and vote!
Thanks guys,
-zach
Head over to the Case Mate page on facebook HERE and vote for my design, if I win my design gets slapped on an iPhone 4 case and maybe some cash money! You can vote every day, so please do so!
-zach
So I’ve decided I’d like to start a new segment where I can give advice and even ask for it in the world of “nerd hobbying”. In general I would consider “Nerd Hobbying” to be building and painting models for RPGs and table-top war gaming. I wouldn’t necessarily consider gaming itself in this writing, because gaming is best left as its own category.
I would like to pave the way for this segment by harping on a model hobbyist pet-peeve. BASING.
I’m talking about the base your models stand on. Many pewter models have a sculpted base built in tangent to the model [Reaper Minis are good at this]. Some models however are to be attached to blank plastic bases. For the war-gaming hobbyist [I play WarHammer 40k for instance] the latter is almost always the case. As part of your finished model always keep in mind the importance of good basing.
Games Workshop and Gale Force 9 sell excellent basing materials and a decently affordable price.
The best first step in basing your model is gluing modelling sand to the base of the model. You can use PVA glue [a higher concentrate of Elmer's Glue], but to get the sand on there nice and stuck to prevent chipping, I personally prefer low density [really liquidy] super glue. I then dip the glued base into the modelling sand and brush of all that doesn’t stick as well as clean off the edges of the base.
I prefer to use GW model sand, it’s a fine grain sand factory produced, so it won’t have bugs and foreign materials sand from your back yard would have. A tub of it is about $8.00 but I’ve based over 150 models and I still have over a half a tub. So it’s a rare purchase, but as far as I’m concerned a must. If I find a cool rock outside, sometimes I’ll pick it up, wash it off, and add it to the base of a big and/or important piece of my collection.
After gluing the sand to the base we hit a preference “line in the sand” [no pun intended]:
Can you consider the model based just because you glued sand and rocks to it? Technically I suppose yes. I believe, however, that this is only the beginning of basing. The regular grains of sand are not the right scale to the model you are working on in most cases, so simply glueing sand to a base of a model doesn’t give the model a believable feel. If you paint the sand to fit in with the feel of you army you’ll find that it drastically changes the scale of the sand and the intensity of your model.
Here’s my Four Step Basing Process:
1. Glue the sand to the base
2. Apply the main color of your desired base [I paint gravel so my base is black.]
3. Apply a lighter shade of this color using a dry brush technique [I use a mid level grey at this point lighting catching the top levels of the sand, leaving black in the recesses]
4. Apply an even lighter shade using the same dry brushing technique [I use a light grey at this point giving the base a dusty gravel/broken concrete feeling]
See an example of this technique here!
After this is done you can feel free to add some sort of grass or other embellishments if you would like, but you’re already off to a good start with a clean painted base.
I’ve seen beautifully painted models ruined by poorly executed bases. A great basing job can’t fix a poorly painted model, but a poor basing job can ruin an awesome model. The base is part of the model too, it moves with the model, the model sits atop the base, it’s all one display piece. Treat every model as a show piece, paint and base to the best of your ability and take your time. The games you play with these miniatures whether is DnD or WarHammer or anything in between will be so much more fun to watch and be a part of if the models are all a cared for and detailed as a bunch of epic little trophies.
Take Pride in your Hobbying,
-zach
In an effort to get my self more notice as an artist, I’ve decided that I need to constantly try new things artistically.
As readers of the blog and followers on twitter know, I’ve entered some contests lately, one of which voting is done and winners will be announced soon.
Laura suggested that I try to take place in more art contests from one of the companies I’d submitted to, and to more online contests in general.
Also, I’m pretty excited to start an idea I’v had for some time now. I’m going to work on my first series of art, individual pieces that all tie in to one another. I can’t tell you what the subject matter is yet, cause that would ruin the surprise, but I can tell you that I’ve decided to do something wacky medium-wise. I’m doing this series all in CRAYONS. I may do some prelim layout in pencil, but the brunt of the works will all be done in crayon. There will certainly be nothing like it in my portfolio, that’s for sure.
As I’ve said I’ve been wanting to try new things with my art. Usually I work in pen and ink and the digital media, but I want to try to use other mediums. I decided to use crayons for this first project because back in October I got a weekend gig doing portraiture at the local Renn Faire, and to give it and “Olde World” feel I thought I’d try pastels, turns out I didn’t still own any, so in a quick moment of panic and/or inspiration I ran to the store on my way to the gig and bought a box of crayons. The effect turned out great and I made a good chunk for collectively 8 hours of drawing. I’m curious now though how the experience will go now that I’m actually planning around the use of crayons instead of using them as my McGruber fix.
So I’m bouncing thoughts off any and all readers for this blog.
My first project will be: [subject TBA], medium: crayons, durration: 13 pieces.
Here is a list of other things I think I want to try after these 13 are done:
-Watercolor pencil
-negative space / white on black
-mixed media spackle
-stenciling / spray paint / graffiti art
-interior design of some sort.
We’ll just have to see what Austin, TX has to offer.
wish me luck,
-zach
