Old school text treatment for all the Detective Ryan fans out there. Click on the t-shirt image to head over to CafePress and get yours today! :) More t-shirt designs inspired by Castle are coming.
]]>School:
I started back at school during the summer, partly to stave off the student loans, partly to work on a new direction for life and work. I started in the direction of Business Management, but I found that I wanted to go a different direction than that, so after the Summer Semester, I switched my major to Software Engineering. That's where I started back in 1991, when I first started in college. It's going ok. It's hard to keep going to school when life just gets you tired. It's good though. I finally get to learn something that I hoped that I could have learned back 20 years ago, C++. It should be a good thing if I can survive another 3 years of school... granted, I'll be 38 years old by then. Not sure anyone will want an old graphic designer and programmer at that point, but we'll have to see what happens there.
Work:
A little over a month ago, I quit my part-time job at BYU and was brought on at a new company that had a full-time job there. They had me on a one-month contract, which is fairly standard in the design industry. Things were going ok until the guys that brought me in quit. When all was said and done after the month was up, ultimately, things didn't work out. So I'm running in unemployed/self-employed mode right now. Fortunately the financial aid from school and the money I made from the full-time will keep things going for a while, so being out of work won't hurt too much, but I'm going to need to get some freelance stuff going to make life a bit less painful.
With all that in mind though, I've been planning to work on an iPhone application for a while now. I'm working through the initial production phase for the app. I got all my iOS developer stuff set up and I hopefully will be able to get something going in the coming months.
Cons:
I also have been cranking away on stuff for the anime con here in Salt Lake City, Anime Banzai. The con is this weekend, so it'll be a good distraction. It'll be good to have it done as well. It's been a long year of prep.
Books:
A couple months ago my Kindle died. I decided that with a dead Kindle I was going to evaluate my eReader setup. After doing a bunch of research, I went with the Barnes and Noble nook. The ability of use ePub documents was the thing that pushed me that direction. And the fact that the nook has a user-replaceable battery, which is what ate itself on the Kindle. Having an actual brick-and-mortar to go to for parts is good too. I've never really been a big reader since I got out of grade school. I did something the other day that I haven't really done in years (probably close to 10...) I read a new book. I broke down and tackled The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It was an excellent read. I have the other two books in the series on my nook. Just need to take some time to finish them.
Writing:
Reading The Hunger Games reminded me one reason WHY I hate reading. It reminds me that I have all these ideas for stories and don't have the stuff to get them into a form that is meaningful. I admit that I don't have a great fondness for writing, even though I'm fairly decent at it. I'm playing with the story that I wrote back almost 20 years ago, working on a re-write. I think there's a good base there, but it needs a lot of work to be something that is even close to readable and exciting. Where that will go, I don't know. We'll see how THAT ends up.
Art:
I'm never sure what to do here. I want to draw, but I'm a lazy person. It's hard to want to draw sometimes, especially when you're feeling like you're at a wall. I have a set of drawings that I want to do. I've got some generic sketches for a beginning, but I need to get some drive to want to actually DO it. Need to work on that.
Overall, things have been kinda strange around here. I'm kinda glad for a break from work right now, but we'll have to see how things will end up. Only time will tell.
So as I sit here staring at this computer screen, I have to wonder. Is it even worth the time to do anything creative on my own anymore? I've got lots of projects that I work on that, frankly, don't ever amount to anything. I'm wondering if it's worth it to keep pouring time and effort into these things. Should I just kill them all and try to move on to something else? It's quite the quandary. And I don't really know what to do. Art. Design. Writing. Photography... it all seems so worthless if there's no one to look at it or use it. It's even harder a thing when you think about the fact that I've been doing all this stuff for more than half my life. It's really all that I know.
I've been trying to figure out how to move forward. School will be starting up again in a few weeks. I swore to myself that I wouldn't go back, but I don't think I really have much choice. I'll be going a direction that I have a feeling won't be an easy one. I'm starting into Business Management with a Marketing focus. I have to be honest, I hate the business side of business. I really prefer to do the creative stuff. But after almost 20 years in the design world, I don't think I can get anywhere in that world anymore. Being a designer just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. I don't want to go into management, but after 20 years as a designer, management is the only place for me to go now it seems. Having a job where I won't be able to design isn't what I think I'll like, but there's little else for me to do without changing fields completely and I don't want to do that either.
And then there's the bad economy.
It's quite the dilemma. And I don't know what to do.
I'm tired and just want to move on, but it seems that I can't. Somewhere, there's an answer. I just hope that I can find it.
]]>Old school text treatment for all the Detective Ryan fans out there. Click on the t-shirt image to head over to CafePress and get yours today! :) More t-shirt designs inspired by Castle are coming.
]]>And with that, I have a bit more time to do artstuffs. I've got the beginnings of page 38 of Beyond Neverwonder going. I hope to have that done for this coming Monday.
I also took some time and finished up an OLD image that I drew back in 2007. I did a drawing of Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series and I got the base colors done and then the poor thing sat there for 2 years. As I was looking for new pieces to put into the gallery here, I came across it and decided to finish it up.
And then... there's the new version of the website. I simplified things so it's a bit more streamlined. I still have a few things to update, but beyond that, it's all good. Here's to hoping that things get going again in a good direction. And thanks for visiting.
]]>Now if I could get a new Neverwonder page done. Wouldn't that be amazing? I think things are going to be on hold there a while longer though. Now that school is finally over (forever!), I'm in the process of looking for a full-time job. With the part-time job still there and then looking for new work, it takes a good chunk of time. Hopefully something will happen soon. Until then, enjoy the new site!
]]>Now that school is basically over, things are starting to get back to abnormal again. I've got a new Beyond Neverwonder page going and should be posted later on tonight. I hope that I can keep on schedule. I'm sure it'll be a bit of a curve trying to get back into a pattern of doing the comic after having not done it for like 6 months. I'll try my best though.
:: crosses fingers ::
]]>
I'm a day late for Christmas, but I was enjoying being lazy yesterday, so I'm using that as my good excuse. Hope everyone out there is having a wonderful holiday season.
]]>I got AtomicFoxtail set up as an LLC a few months ago and hadn't had a chance to get the new version of the site done until now. I decided to consolidate things. I migrated things like design and publishing services under here now. It's all looking pretty good. I have a few things that I still need to finish up, but the main pieces are there.
And as you can see, I've resurrected the blog again. I probably won't use it too much, since I'm a total slacker, but it'll be here for general announcements. I have a couple things that I'm still developing, like the Design Blog and the Online Store, but the main site is ready to go.
And, so this entry isn't a total waste, today is World AIDS Day. In our efforts to help support the cause, we recommend that everyone go to Starbucks and help them celebrate World AIDS Day with (Product)RED. They're donating a chunk of each of their specialty (RED) drinks to the Global Fund. It's a great cause, so if you're Starbucks-Inclined or just want to help, hit up Starbucks and snag a drink. It's tasty and it's helping the world. What's better than that? :)
In other news, there's a new webcomic out today that is exceptionally cool. It's called By Moon Alone and it's really good. Hai has done an excellent job with getting the beginnings of the story and the art is just wonderful. Click on the banner and take a look. It's definitely worth the read.
More when I have it. :)
]]>Since things haven't been rather noteworthy around here, here's an iKit Shuffle for the month of October.
I think that's it for now. More babbling when I have it.
]]>October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
According to the National Cancer Institute, in 2007 there are an estimated 178,480 females and 2,030 males that will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. Of these, an
estimated 40,460 females and 450 males will die from the disease.
Show your support for finding a cure.
Visit the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month website and help "Pass the Word".
Check out Moonbeam13's News item on deviantART about the Weekend to End Breast Cancer for more ways to show your support.
Or if you're so inclined, we've designed up a poster and some wallpapers so you can show your support.
 |  |  |
| Poster 8"x10" | Wallpaper - Widescreen 1900x1200 | Wallpaper - Standard Screen 1600x1200 |
So, think pink and be aware. Donate, wear a ribbon on your person or on your screen and we can help to keep breast cancer from taking any more lives.
That one's for free.
]]>Oh well, class is about to start here. More later. :)
]]>For now, I'm just getting ready for school to start up again next Wednesday. I got final grades back and I did better in my Art History class than I thought I was going to do, so it was good there. Now I just have to wait for Financial Aid money to arrive. The school was generious enough to delay my check because Summer grades weren't posted until yesterday. So I prolly won't see that until Wednesday, so I won't have any supplies for class unitl after the semester starts. Translation: Next week is going to be fun.
]]>As far as vacation went, lots of Disney was done. I was happy to be able to get back to Disneyland again. It had been a few years since I'd been out there, so it was good. I didn't get to do much at SDCC this year. I was down there on Friday and when it was all said and done, I was only there for like 3 or 4 hours. But you know, it was enough to get done what I needed to do. I was able to grab the Jack Sparrow poster that my mom wanted. I was able to get a wallet for my COPIC markers. I was able to get some other supplies that I had been looking for. I got to look around most of the exhibit hall. It was ok for what I needed to do. Next year, the family won't be coming with, so I should be in San Diego the whole week next year. Of course, we'll see what happens...
One other thing that I did recently is get some new business cards printed up. These things aren't the normal business cards though. I had run across someone having mentioned a little printing company online called MOO. (You can get to them at www.moo.com.) They do these cute, little "MiniCards". They're like half the size of a normal business card, you can upload your own images for the front and then type some text for the back side. You can order one box of 100 cards for $20.00 and you can upload up to 100 images, so that every card can have a different image on it. I had a set of 11 different images uploaded, featuring some of the AtomicFoxtail comic characters, from Beyond Neverwonder and from my other series that's on the back burner, The Secret of the Sunsword. They arrived today and I have to say that they turned out REALLY nice. They'll be cool to hand out cause they're definitely different. I'll have to take a pict and post it so people can see what they look like. Cool stuff. (Click on the image to the right to see the cards.)
Beyond that, just trying to get back into the groove.
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