Oh, it was a good year. A mighty good year. My folks got me a Wacom Bamboo "Fun" tablet, so my digital art experiments can continue. This is the part where I beg Scott to show me the ropes in Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter, because brother, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. My wife and I bought a new PC, and it's fantastic apart from the fact that it doesn't support our scanner. It prints fine, but you have to scan from Paint, so much control is lost. My abelisaur discussion might be postponed until I iron this problem out. A new scanner might be needed...
But that's not all, kids. My brother-in-law, Justin, got me LittleBigPlanet, a game everybody should play. Everybody. If you're creative, and you like gaming, this is the game you need to buy a PS3 for. Even the narrator is great. How great? Well, I don't have a Playstation Eye, but I sat through the tutorial so I could hear him narrate it. He also got me a hilarious and very old "how to draw dinosaurs" book featuring a caveman, published in 1982 (so was I, actually). And here's a funny story for you: My birthday list to my in-laws included Tomb Raider: Underworld and Fullmetal Alchemist Season 2, Part 2. They sent me a gift card, which I used to buy both things. For Christmas, they sent Tomb Raider: Underworld and Fullmetal Achemist Season 2, Part 2! Hilarious! They also wisely sent a gift reciept, so today I returned both and got a big fat gift card in return, which I used to pick up Prince of Persia and...I'm gonna hang on to the rest for now.
But they also gave me a singing rubber duckie and a glass block with my wife's senior picture in it. Really awesome, my favorite present of the year. It will live on my office desk, and make everybody jealous. :-)And whatabout my wife? We gave ourselves a PC and a trip to Maui, so it was just stocking stuffers for us. Gina gave me candy, The Dark Knight, a stuffed Godzilla, and Pixelblocks. These little blocks are the best thing since Legos for a gamer like me. Unfortunately, I didn't get one thing I really did want this year: a tuatara skull from Skulls Unlimited. I suppose with all the money I'm saving on PS3 games and movies, though, I might be able to afford it!
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3 comments:
If you wanted this one, then you didn't miss out on much. It is not museum quality at all. My boss has one in his lab.
I got one of the Bamboo tablets for Christmas last year - and boy, do I love it! Very handy for processing all of that CT scan data.
And I agree with Nick. . .I wasn't overly impressed with the tuatara replica, either. . .not nearly as much detail as I would expect.
Nice score -- especially the Bamboo.
I'd suggest that you start out by familiarizing yourself with selections and layers. These will allow you to isolate particular elements of a piece and work on them without affecting the rest of the drawing.
Layers are like pieces of tracing paper or acetate -- they are stacked on top of one another. Look for them in the Window menu.
Selections are like old-school friskets for airbrushing -- they define specific areas of the image that can be worked on. There's a whole Select menu -- look for the Save Selection and Load Selection commands.
Once you've selected an area you can Save Selection and the computer will remember it and apply it when you choose it from the menu that pops up when you use the Load Selection command.
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