So I've been thinking. What if I put together a mess of my drawings, sketches and doodles and made a book to sell? Would it be worth it, and would it cost me any money? Apparently it's not as hard as some people make it out to be. Specially since there are places like lulu.com out there. They will help you build a book, set a price so that the print charges, their charges and your royalties are covered for as low a price as possible. In fact, if I made a small, 32 page, black and white sketch book, it would only cost people $24 to buy. A color one would be $26.
I didn't think the price was too bad. At those prices, I would be getting $5 from each book sold. Doesn't sound like a whole lot, but if I were to sell a good amount of them, thats some extra spending cash. I would just need to FIND people to buy them. I have quite a few people on dA that watch my gallery, but none of them are really very active. I have friends and family, but I foresee them saying and thinking "well I can look at them for free". So that would be where my fall out would be. Unless I make said people show off my book to friends and such and see if I can get buyers that way.
The other problem? Coming up with a minimum of 32 pages worth of work thats good enough to print. I have a lot of drawings and such, but nearly all of them fall into my "crappy" pile. Some people beg to differ on their quality.
But, we'll see what happens. First things first, I need art for said book. So when that step is complete, we'll go from there...
Aaahh Halloween. If there's one day in the year I need to have off and celebrate, its this day. Skeletons and pumpkins, ghosts and monsters. You can keep your Christmas and Turkey Day, just leave me in October.
This year we had a bit of a scare. I picked up a 2nd job for the holidays, which in itself is fine. We need the money, even if its for a short amount of time. But normally I only work one job, and things like Mark always giving me Halloween off don't seem to really sink in. Luckily the dude at Gamestop is pretty cool. I explained that I had completely forgotten about even bringing it up, as I'm used to just NOT working that day. He said it was no problem, he was sort of late giving all of us notice about the midnight shift anyways. So I'll be going in on Tuesday to finish my paper work before I have to race off to Petco for truck night.
This year I live in a slightly more kid friendly area, as we're between an elementary and a Jr High, literally blocks away from each other. So there should be a good amount of kids this year. We'll be having some friends over for movies and games and such. Normally I would just wake up and get into costume and spend the day in it, but this year I'm rocking out my new RenFair costume. I'll have to wait for Mike to get home to help me into the corset. I'm still toying with the idea of adding some of my Woochie makeup to it to add a little gore. But we'll see. I'm not sure if I want to chance the blood gel and such near it.
I do need to go through our DVDs and see what we have for monster movies. I borrowed dad's copy of the new Wolfman, I will of course toss in Nightmare Before Xmas, and from there I guess we'll see what happens. Normally I watch the live Ghost Hunters episode, but over the last few years, it's been getting pretty dull.
I still need to go out and make sure the fog machine is still working alright, figure out where it's going, along with my newly fixed up skull fogger. I have to hunt down the spider webbing and get that up since we will be having a dry night this year. And, move the pumpkins out there. I want to make sure it's all ready early, since everything is happening on a Monday and all the kids will be out pretty early. I figure being ready to go by 4pm is a good goal.
This post will be a little different than normal. I'm actually going to put more than one photo in it. The rest of the photos will be at the end of the post though.
Recently I hit up B&N for some new books. I had read everything on my overly piled book shelves at least 3 times or more and needed something new. Thanks to Nate, I have a new set I'm getting into, so I needed the 2nd book. And on my way up to the register I stopped at the bargain and discount shelves. They had all sorts of Halloween/monster/ghost story books on sale, and Gods know I don't love myself some Halloween. This one book happened to catch my eye pretty fast. Usually I trust that instant grab of attention, so I picked it up and gave it a once over. Seemed pretty cool, and I've always wanted to read old Japanese legends and such. So off the register it went with me (along with another book about monsters, but thats another post).
I have to say that after I finally opened it up and read a little bit, I was extremely happy I grabbed it. The book is made up of a collection of stories Lafcadio Hearn translated from old Japanese texts while visiting the country sometime between 1850-1904. So they're not "retold" or "altered". Just translated over to a new language. Along with the stories, which are pretty cool in themselves, there is a ton of very old Japanese art work that was painted for the stories hundreds of years ago. So the whole book is pretty awesome to just look at, let alone read. They also kept some of the Japanese words in the stories with sub-notes on how to say it and what they mean or stand for. Luckily for me, I've been watching anime for years, so I've got a pretty good grasp on how to say some of the things without completely murdering it. Probably not saying it perfectly, but better than normal. I even actually recognized some words right off the top of my head and didn't need the sub-notes.
So yeah. If you're looking for a really nice book to read and gawk over and love scary stories, check this one out. Currently its being sold at B&N for $7.98. Not sure if they have a digital copy out, but I think this is one of those books you need up close to really appreciate the art work in it.
Story title pages look like this.
Smaller pieces of art are scattered through the stories.
Along with much larger pieces at the end or middle of the stories.
I really am curious if this post's image will be animated like it should be or if it'll sit there doing nothing. The animated one is awesome. So here's hoping.
ANYWHO. I'm amazed I haven't put up a post about this yet. Specially since I sat for a week straight and read 6000 pages, painstakingly, making my eyes almost bleed from so much monitor exposure. But Homestuck is one of those things. Those things you can't stop looking at, or reading, or watching. There is so much... random going on that you can't help but want to keep going just to see where the chaos will lead next.
I have to say that I probably wouldn't of even thought of reading it if it wasn't for a few fanarts I saw on Deviantart one night. There were drawings of these odd little grey skinned, horned kids wearing zodiac symbols. And even though they were all by different people, they all matched. Was it some new Japanese anime out? Was it some game I had missed? Nope, it was a new-ish comic out by Andrew Hussie, the same guy who spewed out the older, and just as popular "MS Paint Adventures". So I looked it up, and the first page wasn't exactly exciting. I figured I'd give it a shot, and about 25 pages in I was hooked. I really had no idea what was going on, but it was... different. By page 100 I was flying through the comic wondering what was going to happen next. A week and 6000 pages later I was staring at the "Next Page" button going "Y U no have MOAR PAGES?!".
Now, I am one of like a million people waiting, ever so patiently for 10-25 when the next page, which will be flash animated, comes out. I have to say that I am extremely excited to see what happens.
Dear Mr. Hussie, it better be good.
So I got bored and played with some settings. I even made myself a nifty title banner in adobe. I think it looks a little less boring now.
In other news, I got myself a 2nd job for the holidays. I should hopefully be starting soon at GameStop, for, like I said, the holiday season. Maybe if I get lucky they'll keep me after that. But, I've learned to never keep my hopes up on things till it actually happens. I figure this will help out a bit, even if just for a little while. I will though still keep my eyes open for a full time job. That's my ultimate goal of course. Mike and I agree that a full time job at min. wage is better than a part time job at nearly $10/hr with nearly no hours.
I really should update this more. I usually have all sorts of ideas on things to put up, but I'm obviously too lazy to actually follow through. ANYWAYS....
I've come to the conclusion that I would like to try out a micro-reef tank. Actually, I plan to convert Napoleon's tank, when he passes away of course. "But I thought salt tanks had to be big?" is what everyone keeps asking me. And no, they don't NEED to be big, big is just generally easier. And most fish people want to keep require massive tanks. But, if you stop and think and look at the tiny critters that live in those tanks, you can set up a very small reef.
What small critters am I talking about? A Yellow Watchman Goby/Pistol Shrimp pair. They stay pretty small, and have a symbiotic relationship which makes them interesting to watch. The shrimp has poor vision and can't keep track of everything going on around him, so the Goby keeps watch (like the name suggests) for predators and dangers. How does the shrimp pay him back? By building them a home, as the shrimp is a great tunnel builder.
What stuff will I need to accomplish this task? Actually, not a whole hell of a lot. But, that small list does cost a little bit. I'm guessing I'll spend about $150 to convert the tank over fully. Better filtration will be done with a Zoomed 501Nano canister filter($50) Lighting will be done with a Ultra Reef mini bulb ($10) I'm hoping to get my starting water, substrate and live rock from Donna for a small monetary contribution ($50) and then the actual live stock. I've looked around online and the average cost of a set pair of goby/shrimp is around $30. So I'll probably go someplace like ABCReef to see if they can get something like that in store to save me the crazy overnight shipping costs. Also, a heater ($20).
Of course, I have a few years to plan this out. Napoleon is doing very well. So It'll be something I work at buying over a course of time and setting aside.
