As mentioned before, this has been a period of rebuilding. After the computer crash and reboot to this whole project, I am ... at this point ... one program away from being up to speed. And I can happily say I am in fact, in a better position than before. This has understandably meant a bit of reloading and updating. So after a very pleasant talk with my cousin, Eric, I decided to lease the Adobe Suite CC. These are the same people who created Photoshop and Flash. They no longer sell their products outright but now take a monthly subscription. The CC designation stands for "Creative Cloud." Their reasons are understandable. People have be pirating these programs for years and this business plan should control that ... for now.
The pluses to going in this direction is that I will access to just about every kind of programs that would fill my various needs and be less than $5 apiece. If my calculations are correct, the amount of my lease over 4 years would equal the price of a CD-ROM version if they were selling it. A price I would be sore put to come up with at the moment. Finally, it means upgrades come to me automatically. The only downside I have found so far is that now, I have an additional monthly bill to come up with.
Hoozah! I am now a legal beagle.
I better start saving my pennies.
I am including a discussion from a vlogger on YouTube for those who might be interested.
52 years ago, I was loaded in the back seat of the Rambler with a stack of comic books. We, Dad, Mom, myself and my turtle Yertle were whizzing down the road to Atlanta to see their Civil War cyclorama. I was well into a copy of my then favorite comic book, "Superboy." The story concerned Clark expressing his wish that he knew his birthday so he could celebrate like the other kids. Ma Kent looked up on the calendar and noted it was June 12 ... the anniversary of Clark arriving to earth from the planet Krypton in the rocketship. I looked up and realized that this was that very day ... June the 12th. I continued reading and got as far as Ma Kent and Clark deciding that would be the date to celebrate his natal day.
At that very moment, my Mother turned around with a big grin on her face. She explained to me that today was a special day ... a very special day. This was the anniversary of the day my Mommy and Daddy got married. My face brightened and so did hers as I showed my excitement. That lasted until I blurted out like only a 7 year old can ... "Wow! How did you manage to get married on Superboy's birthday?" Her face fell, so thinking she didn't understand the gravity of the situation, I showed her the comic book and read her the pages.
It is a credit to Dad's driving ability that he did not drive off the road, he was laughing so hard. Thank goodness, Mom too was born with the gift of laughter, as she forever after that referred to their anniversary as "Superboy's birthday." As remembrance of that special day, I am sharing a clip of a show that is at least 30 years old and that I think was filmed in part in Orlando ... The Adventures of Superboy
All this time ... I have been promising ... and promising ... and promising one thing ... Art work! I have even teased with the old bait and switch ... posting about my friend, Walt's paintings. But today at last I am posting artwork that is my own. A landslide ... a plethora of pictures ... a major overload. Some where about 10 years ago, I was invited by my friend Frank Tona, to join fellow friends, Troy Carter, and Mike Jones in a superhero styled role playing game. We would meet weekly at Troy's house (Thank you, Denise, for putting up with the lot of us!) and have adventures with perhaps some ... less than inspired ... characters ... that might bear some resemblance to a few copyrighted intellectual properties. Frank use to jokingly complain that I was infecting his Marvel Universe with my D.C. characters. It was a lot of fun. And some of the scenarios actually foretold some trends that later took place in the media. The one that comes to mind, is the TV show that was named, "Who Wants To Be A Meta?" (our name for super powered individual.)
We even had fun writing stories in which our characters were blogging their adventures. I even drew a few supers in a drawing journal I was keeping at the time. Occasionally, Vince Skinner and James Wolaver would visit from afar, and join in the fun. Jim enjoyed himself so much that he started writing what could at best be called fan fiction of this plagiarized world we had created. He has recently come back to this project, picking up where we stopped playing. I am pleased to see his creative efforts and enjoy the addition of 3d modeled pictures to his stories. If you want to see what Jim is up to ... check it out: http://asylumreraiders.com/ So the reason for this post is so Jim can see the a fore mentioned journal pictures. While I was at it, I thought I would share them with you. Call it ... collateral damage. Hope this helps, Jim. Please remember they are only sketches ... done 10 years ago ...
Cobblestone
Hardware
Doom
Claw
Queen Bee
Tor
Widow Maker
One of New York's Finest
Photo Bomb
Kraken
Shaman
American Liberty
The Bat
Le Sol
a solar powered Iron Man
Blackwing
The Shoveler
The mask of the Blue Banshee
The American Gladiator
And as an added bonus Terri Castle ...
My spin on a special character that Frank created
for his brother, Matthew.
These drawings, to me, represent pleasant memories, and past good times. I miss our games and the gathering of fine friends. It was something I shared with this group and with it's other friends in other campaigns, for almost 30 years. Sadly Frank passed. An empty chair at the gaming table. It is still hard for me to imagine that he isn't out there somewhere, scheming some dastardly plot for us to solve. I miss him.
Isn't this great? It's done by Walter Deanovich, a very talented artist and my best friends from college. We both attended St. Petersburg Jr. College ... affectionately referred to as "5th Ave U." due to the southern border being 5th Ave.
I met Walt in art classes and we hit it off famously. He introduced me to a circle of friends, that would gather weekly and watch silent movies. I can say I learned more from these gatherings about film and animation than from my actual college classes. Not only was this because of the well read individuals ... but because we actually saw the films we were reading about, and could draw our own conclusions. After I transferred to USF, in my art history class, I was required to do a term paper that would be the equivalent of a third of my grade. Walt loaned me his print of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and with a special camera, I augmented my report with frame blow-ups. Today, with a computer and a movie making program, one can do this with a push of a button. Back then, it was impressive enough to have Dr. Nichols say that what I had turned in was on the level of a doctoral thesis. Also, when I did 2d animated cartoon for my film class, I got Walt's permission to use his character.
Sadly, when I left for Disney, we drifted apart. But about 4 years ago, I got a message through Facebook from Walt. You might say we are making up for lost time. Every week we religiously phone each other. And boy can we talk!
Walter works in acrylic, watercolor, colored pencils and charcoal. His work can be described as whimsical or fantastical, as he paints anthropomorphic animals, drawing from child hood memories. His influences are Maurice Sendak, Mary Blair, Denslow and J.R. Neill as well of the cartoons of Disney, Fleischer, Columbia and Terrytoons. Walt has had success at art festivals and has his work on display at Articles Art Gallery in St.Petersburg, FL.
Ok ... So I hate when this happens. But then, I don't know anyone who does ... I am learning quickly that blogs are strange animals. They are unruly. You try to herd them in one direction ... off they go in the opposite. I had several posts already planned ... all lined and ready to go ... and then this happened.
Yeah ... The only people who likes this screen shot would be the Geek Squad from Best Buy. I hadn't downloaded anything in a long time. Nothing questionable. The only thing we did was update our internet. The cable guy was a contractor and the site he went to, to test the speed looked a little dodgy. Hmmmm!!! So there I was looking at the blue screen of death ( And did I mention that Windows 8, their version has a frowny little emoticon that is just so sympathetic. I just know behind the screen, it's laughing at me. )
Looking at the silver lining to the rain cloud is that I am upgrading software and reorganize things. dug out my old computer and am going to set it up as storage. It does mean that time wise things are pushed back. But at this point ... does it really matter? I promise art is coming soon! Really!
The pluses to going in this direction is that I will access to just about every kind of programs that would fill my various needs and be less than $5 apiece. If my calculations are correct, the amount of my lease over 4 years would equal the price of a CD-ROM version if they were selling it. A price I would be sore put to come up with at the moment. Finally, it means upgrades come to me automatically. The only downside I have found so far is that now, I have an additional monthly bill to come up with. 
