May 25, 2006
Role Playing introspection
Every year or so I rediscover Black Hat Matt's essays page. While I don't much like the styles of some of his contributing writers, Matt himself has voice that I find both insightful and interesting. He's very practical and he has great deal of experience to draw on when writing about gaming.
My very favorite (so far) are his articles about what beautiful players are made of (there are two of them). I stumbled across them years ago, via I know not where. They really changed how I used to look at being a player. I never really thought about my faults but was prone to see the faults of other players which I did not share.
While I definitely don't think his is the only way to look at "what I can do to be a better player", it helped me to be more introspective and consider my faults more objectively.
I'd like to think that I'm a bit more Apparent and have more Initiative now, because I chose to try to improve the flaws I have that these essays helped me to understand.
May 24, 2006
May 15, 2006
These pictures turned out horribly, but hopefully they'll convey the general idea.
I've finished my first head in polymer clay. My tentative plan is to make busts until I am happy with how the faces turn out. This way I'll use less clay and get some experience with painting their features. I keep thinking that compared to doing eyes on one inch tall miniatures, painting these will be cake, but I expect that some complications will develop in the actual process.
Right now I'm just using the water based miniature paints that I already have access to. I've read a couple of suggestions that Genesis heat set paints are the way to go, but since I don't have a heat gun, I'm going to stick with the cheap option for now. I've noticed that I can't do washes with the water based paints (they bead up on the surface of the clay) but other than that they seem to work fine. I can't speak to their durability, but they don't need to take all that much punishment, so I'm not too worried.
I'm not quite sure what to do with this head yet. Overall I'm optimistic about her features (at least for my first try). Her nose and lips both have issues, but I don't think they look too crazy. I don't really want to talk about her cheekbones.
I'll probably try to paint her today or tomorrow, then I have to decide what sort of clothing/hair/whatever she should have. I'm sort of thinking scarf and some of the sheep's wool I use for hand spinning, but I haven't really decided yet. I should probably consider covering her ugly lumpy shoulders as well.
A lot of the tutorials I looked at suggested making heads on a stick to allow for minimum accidental squishing. I tried to place her on a stick to start with, but she just pulled herself right back off as I worked on her. I'm not really sure how to handle that. I also managed to crack her when she was cooling. It was terribly exciting. The crack is hard to see and I expect if I paint over it no one will be able to tell it's there.
I read in several places online that one should not bake polymer clay on metal, but all of these places neglected to mention why. I'm probably going with a parchment paper pad inside an aluminum foil enclosure for now, but I would like to know why I shouldn't just be baking on metal.
May 14, 2006
When I wake from one of McKillip's books it is always like rising in the afternoon, muggy with the weight of dreams that latched on to me while I slept. For a while I'm not quite sure who I am or what parts of my life are really real. I look around and think, "wait, how did I end up here?"
To say that I enjoyed McKillip's most recent book of short stories would be likening the winds of a gale to the merest breeze. Every new story that she releases grips me and it seems that she is growing more skilled the more years that she lives.
Harrowing the Dragon is the introduction to her work that I wish I had many years ago when I picked up that first book of hers. It captures tiny bites of the dark and vivid worlds that I have seen her create before, but there is greater variety here; a little bit of all the faces that she shows to us in other works.
I am not a great writer, but McKillip's work makes me want to draw poetry from my bones and set it to paper. It makes me want to dream; to see all those worlds she finds hidden and scattered across her own life.
When I finally wake again to this life and shake off my imaginings, I know that I will never really be able to analyze McKillip's stories. They will always catch me and whirl me away into visions and scents, bright sights and sounds.
That's alright. Sometimes even the most mundane of us needs to dream.
May 07, 2006
Just in case you're like my boyfriend and only read things with RSS feeds...
I believe that Blogger has automatically made me an RSS feed.
So I decided to take a crack at polymer clay sculpture. I figured I'd start with something cute and small. I also saw this on eBay (its a little dragon sculpture who steals dice at night). I liked the idea of little critters stealing all those extra dice I have lying around. So I made two little dice stealing thinggies. They were supposed to be dragons, but one looks more like a demented, Egyptian cyber dog (I'm going to blame K9) and the other looks like some sort of fire hypocampus. I guess I still need some practice...
Also I'm currently knee deep in projects for my final semester of school. On one hand I'm happy that I'm almost done. On the other hand, there's a lot left to do.
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