After my enjoyable experience with Boopsie, I tried recreating the same tooniness last night in realistic Will, using only M3’s standard morphs. So, basically, inspired by my love for “The Girl” and the toony morphs of Boopsie, I tried to get a toony Will out of a realistic character and his realistic morphs.  Trying to get a toony character out of standard morphs made Will look like an origami lemur. I failed so badly and disappointingly that I’m not going to even show the results.

Fortunately, the creator of Boopsie also has similar custom morph packages for other characters. So I got Rayne, a set of toony morphs for V3. [V3 is the main female base I use for characters. Dolly nerds can think of her as a CG 1.5.] I will now be redoing all my characters, male and female, young and old, child and adult, on V3 bases with Rayne morphs…or on other bodies with V3/Rayne heads swapped on, if I can ever figure out how to work a head swap. Blllllaaaagh.

Poking around on the BoingBoing post about Plushie, I found that someone linked to another program also worked on by Takeo Igarashi. This program, called Teddy, is freeware allowing creating of digital 3-D models via freeform strokes. And — here’s the exciting thing for people who are interesting in 3-D modeling stuff — YOU CAN EXPORT YOUR CREATIONS AS OBJS! The OBJ format is a pretty-much-universal format for 3-D models — for example, the models that I’ve been using for my LHF digital characters are in OBJ format. Perhaps this program could aid in prop creation for LHF??

Watch this video demonstrating a new app. The app, titled Plushie, allows users to cut, shape and otherwise deform a virtual 3-D plush blob. As the blob is deformed, the righthand window shows a constantly updated version of the pattern pieces needed to created the blob out of fabric. It may be difficult to understand the narrator, a Japanese woman who speaks English as a second language, but the pictures explain everything clearly. Now if only the same principles could somehow be applied to doll sculpting….

I just saw some Spike porn [photomanipulations], and they were done with such obvious wanking love for the character [yay!] and such amateurish pasting, scaling and PSP brush effects [boo!] that my gorge couldn’t decide whether to rise or fall, so it’s still bubbling up and down somewhere around my trachea. I am going to run far, far away from the site and play with my agreeably scaled, posed, pasted and lit dolls and models. For all that I talk about sex, think about sex and run my characters around the subject of sex, I much prefer suggestion, double entendre and innuendo than explicit depictions.

I’m getting more mileage out of “The Girl” with a new morph pack, Boopsie, which I got with my $25 Daz gift certificate. [Tutorials that are accepted and published on the Web site are recompensed with store credit in the Web shop!!] Tonight I fucked off and made a Will “The Girl.” He looks, unsurprisingly enough, disgustingly cute as a toon. I’m sure other flamboyant LHF characters, such as Anneka, Velvette, Rori, Dom and Baozha, would also flourish fabulously in a toony style, but the other 50%, including Mark, Alexandra, Max, Minerva, Leonora, Chow, etc., deserve a more subdued and realistic rendering style. Forthwith, the fabulous, flirty and fun Will toon!!

My favorite icon in this set is “awake,” in which Spike is saying, “Who lit the bloody fire under my arse?!”  Doo nah, doo nah, I love James Marsters, which probably explains why I now never watch BTVS — because I love him so much.

“They just threw all the black and blue paint in my eyes and ran!” Since I successfully downloaded the merchant resource Gothifully Yours, I’ve been reveling in the pursuit of hyperbolic makeup. See Will below in a black and blue theme. Maybe I’ll make a whole black-and-blue texture set for a freebie… Please note that Will does not usually wear cool colors or drippy styles, but the result is pretty awesome, in an amusing sort of way.

Three layers of glittery eyeshadow, magenta lipstick and blush!!!!! I’ve been applying virtual makeup for the last few hours. My artistic vision is becoming reality. Who knew my artistic vision was so goddamned TACKY? :p

I’m drawing again…only, in the terminology of 3-D modeling, they call it “texturing.” But yeah, I’m drawing people’s faces. Last night and this morning I used a variety of free texture resources, Photoshop brushes, digital makeup kits [yeah, they exist] and some merchant resources [digital makeup you pay for], threw it all in the blender of my creative mind and came out with this… It’s a head texture in progress for Will. I thnk it could use more eyeshadow…or sparkles…or sparkly eyeshadow. But it still represents the elaborate and overdone style of makeup that is the pinnacle of attractiveness according to my drag-queeny imagination. [His head is a different color from his body because I’m only working on the head now.]

 http://www.sharecg.com/v/18206/poser/Paper-coffee-cup

http://www.sharecg.com/v/17602/texture/Makeup-Kit-for-Preteen-Vicky

http://www.sharecg.com/v/13356/texture/V4-Lip-Colors?division_id=6

Gothfully Yours sampler on Renderosity

5 seamless skin tiles on Renderosity

Mega lip guides by SnowSultan on Renderosity

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=1098&cat=57 V3 seam guides here

http://www.file-upload.net/member/download-3486/Face-intems2007.zip.html

making custom brushes in PSP http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=1643

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?print=606 making a full mat pose using Mat Pose Editor

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?print=60 another on making a full mat pose

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/tutorial?id=1142 making a partial mat pose 

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=37454&highlight=partial+mat+poses Daz equivalent of mat poses

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/archive_list.php

http://www.thebluesdragon.com/ftp/Tutorial-Skin.pdf Sarsa’s tutorial

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=66730&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=54 some supplements to Sarsa’s tutorial

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=2123 DAZ-hosted tutorial

And apparently there are some raw high-res JPEGS on Renderotica for texturing…

I should make my own base for people…dammit!!!
 

Wow! Finally, after months of tinkering with 3-D modeling, I finally rendered one of the basic units of an LHF comic: a fully stocked interior scene with a character. Below Chow sits in his study, reflecting. [Please note his poster of the Chinatown gate on the wall! I took that picture.] I overcame my difficulties with lighting by cheating. I stole some lights from a daytime exterior set. They were set not to cast shadows, so I added a spotlight over Chow’s table and set it to cast raytraced shadows. Oh yeah, I also removed the ceiling from Chow’s study so I could actually shine lights in because my skills are not sophisticated enough to illuminate a room with a roof.

There’s also a view of the full set below. Yes, I’m aware that Chow’s boot is running into the mat. But that’s never showing up in the final pictures, so I’m ignoring that comment.

 So E.R. is the serious medical drama show, and Scrubs is the comedic, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, clowning cousin — same subject, different tone. Likewise, while Supernatural is the serious, heavy-handed, philosophical and emotionally weighty show about monster hunters, Reaper, which I just watched [listened to, rather, at work] a few eps of, is the silly soufflee version. It concerns a doofus 20-something who is a bounty hunter for the Devil, returning escaped souls to Hell with the help of his doofus friends and the doofus person he wants to be his girlfriend. 

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=42376&highlight=transferring+morphs Morph Loader?

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=54215&highlight=export+obj+daz settings for OBJ export?

Streaming! Right here!

From left to right, Geordie, Baozha and Little Will demonstrate variations on my favorite clothing package, the Storytime dress and pantaloons. Geordie has the Clematis style dress and shoes. Baozha has a customized blouse and harem pants based on the bodice and pantaloons, and Little Will has the Rose style dress, pantaloons and shoes. Yup, it’s a versatile and pretty awesome clothing set.

 …is in the same hysterically anti-porn camp as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine Mackinnon, whose detailed diatribes against porn are, well, pornographic. See observations here. Well, he may be a pornographic anti-porn person, but I still think his points about masculinity, porn and anxiety are valid.

With wider cheekbones than take 3.

I tried to recreate Little Will’s features using only the Preteen Vickie built-in morphs. Good Lord, he looks like his parents are about to be murdered before his eyes. Don’t worry, sweetheart. That won’t happen till you’re 30.

…I am purchasing a 3-month subscription to PoserWorld and downloading like crazy…. At $30.00 for 3 months of unlimited downloads, it offers a staggering array of clothing for all figs, including lots of historical stuff…. The proportions of content offered are, interestingly enough, very similar to my own interests. About 50% of the stuff is fantasy fetish wear, and the other 50% of it is historical, casual, utilitarian sort of stuff. Just like 50% of my characters are meretricious, and the other 50% are historical and/or sober!

Hmmm, I see that my Preteen Vicky model has all facial and body morphs fully loaded into her, so I might try recreating little Will’s head with Preteen Vicky’s, especially since I can’t get my current version of Little Will soft enough in the face. The lines of his chin are still too harsh…. 

Here’s a picture of my latest draft of little Will in his little dress. I made little Will by using a Millennium Girls Preteen Vicky body and neck, then erasing the body of my Michael 3 Will and resizing and shaping it so that it looked young and the appropriate size for the preteen body. As a result, I realized that Will looks extremely cute, but also very anxious. You would be too if your mom raised you on gory tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses!!

He’s really a very cute little kid. Littlle does little Will know that he will grow up to become a dead guy with gender confusion and no fashion sense.

Please pay attention to the beauty of his dress!!

After many long hours looking for specific items of clothing [corsets for men, dresses for men, chunky platform heels for anyone, baggy T-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, winter coats, etc.] and NOT FINDING IT, I actually FOUND SOMETHING PERFECT today. Behold — a dress and pantaloons for the Millennium Girls and Preschoolers!!! 

With minor tiddlywinking, I will be able to use this outfit as a dress for a preteen girl or non-breeched boy from the 19th century. Translated by my good friend CrossDresser, it might make a good long summer dress for modern Will too, although it’s a bit conservative for his tastes.

In case you can’t tell, I installed my kid models this morning and just started to experiment with them. I have Millennium Kids Preschoolers, Millennium Girls and Millennium Kids Young Teens. I’m most partial to the Preschoolers, who, besides being really cute, come with very expressive poses such as Monster Time, Cannonball!, Bored, Defiance, and [the highlight, well-known to anyone who deals with the under 5 set] I Want That! Unfortunately there is no Tantrum pose with clenched fists and stamping foot…

Anyway, I don’t have the morphs for any of these characters, so I’ll probably just splice Victoria and Michael heads onto them, as I’m doing with little Will. Speaking of which, I think his chin needs to be softer….

Now I can do flashback scenes with Will and his mom and with little Anneka and her parents, even with her and Mamie and Minerva too!!!!!

This is a test; this is only a test.  The person on the left is Will between the age of 8 and 12. He has a second skin wetsuit only because I lack clothes for my new kid models. He should be wearing one of those dresses that boys in the 19th century were sometimes kept in until they were 6 or 8 or even [really REALLY pushing it] 10. [Most of them went to short pants by 8, though.] Also his hair is supposed to be in ringlets, but that is the closest I could find.

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to scale down my adult models to make child models, but I ended up not doing that. I scaled down a copy of my Will model and morphed its head to make young Will’s head, then erased the rest of the small Will model’s body, then stuck the small Will’s head onto a Millennium Kids Young Teens Mike body because the neck area of the small Will model did not look appropriately smooth and fat for a child.

Chinatown Gateway Coalition http://www.chinatowngateway.org/ A grassroots org to preserve and accentuate Chinatown’s geographic, historical and cultural heritage through strategic development of the Chinatown Gate area.

The Chinatown Blog http://bostonchinatowngateway.com/ A relatively new blog written by younger residents of Chinatown. 

Chinatown Main Street http://www.chinatownmainstreet.org/ A business directory.

South Bay Planning Study Documents http://southbayplanningstudy.org/documents.asp Documents about development plans for Chinatown, Fort Point Channel and the Leather District, including the Chinatown Masterplan 2000 [which is not, as the name implies, some sort of blender], Chinatown Community Plan 1990, etc.

Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center http://www.bcnc.net/index.php Providing social services to residents of Chinatown, the South End and South Cove.

Nightly patrols reduce crime in Chinatown http://www.baystatebanner.com/issues/2007/08/23/news/local08230713.htm An article about the volunteer Chinatown Crime Watch.

http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/186609 A firsthand account of the Chinatown Crime Watch delivering the smackdown on some fighting idiots.

 Instead of loading completely new kid figures into Daz, I should just be able to rescale my two main models, Victoria 3 and Michael 3, so that they have kid-like or teen-like proportions. As a matter of fact, I have been messing around with proportions a lot recently. I successfully created two teen girls, one in her early teens [Magdelena] and one in her mid-teens [Baozha]. 

I also created my craziest morph yet by tweaking and shrinking Victoria 3 so that I could get a fashion doll model. [And it really looks like a fashion doll, which is somehow extremely disturbing, despite my great experience with fashion dolls.] If I can make Victoria 3 into a 1:6 bobblehead with pointy little feets and gazongas bigger than her head, surely I can make her into an acceptable kidsy.

I’m nearing the point where the time I spend setting up a digital scene is equal to the time I spend setting up a scene with dolls. While working yesterday on 2 sets, Chow’s study and Will’s room, I spent about 13 hours, which actually is probably less than the amount of time needed to produce the same scenes in real format. [Digital format allows for much quicker deployment and customization of props!] After all that labor, both sets look very close to how I want them…

…Except for the shadows. I’m having a problem with them. Note to self: Find out how to make everything create shadows. Help may be here: http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/0/-/?

I’m also very comfortable and fairly skilled with Daz. How can I tell? Well, when I didn’t have any posters or poster frames for aforesaid sets, I instantly created some basic ones using the primitive shapes available in Daz. I didn’t balk at the thought of extending my existing skills; I just constructed something simply and quickly so that I could go back to the greater fun of scattering digital stuff all over Will’s digital floor. [I never knew he had so many shoes!]

Pictures later. It will be interesting to see how long a render takes with all the stuff in these scenes.

Finally, finally, finally, I got a decent French maid set from a temperamental Japanese Web site. Result below with strategic posture to conceal crotchlessness of underwear. Sometimes I spend so much time on details that never appear in the final version…

Photos or drawings converted into vector graphics look really cool. However, manually converting a rasterized file to a vectorized file takes a really long time. If you’d like to automate the vectorizing process, however, visit VectorMagic, a Web site hosted by Stanford where you can vectorize anything. No guarantee on how awesome the results will be, but, if you choose a rasterized image with a low number of artifacts and a relatively narrow palette, you should get stupendous and scalable results.

Below is an example. It is a picture of Will, made on “logo without artifacts,” “medium palette,” “medium quality” settings. I like the harsher, more chiseled look that vectorization supplies. The original picture is right here.

I am disturbed, amused and still carnivorous after checking out Suicide Food, an illustrated survey of self-sacrificing animal illos.

Will is one of them. He also looks good in second-skin fishnet. Also, as you can see, he has a new, much paler complexion, more character-appropriate makeup and reflections in his eyes. The reflections make him look more alive, which is ironic because he’s dead. :p

Frustration 1. It’s hard to make tight clothes look good on dolls. That’s because the dolls are not 1:1 scale, but the clothing is, so the clothing does not look appropriately form-fitting. It looks too bulky. Plus it usually limits the dolls’ movement. 

Frustration 2. Poke-through on 3-D models. This is when the position of your 3-D digital person is such that the person’s body part penetrates the clothes unrealistically. If someone’s arms are bent acutely, you may see, for example, elbow poke-through in the shirt. It’s not realistic, and it limits model poses.

Frustration 3. Memory hogging. 3-D modeling programs put a huge drain on computers. Every piece of clothing has its own construction, design, morph and texture information, which can get really complicated if you have a scene with 3 people, each with 1 hair, 3 items of clothing, 1 accessory, not to mention the set made up of 6 props. Memory hogging makes loading the files, saving them and rendering them really slow.

A partial solution is second skin clothing.

Here’s a picture of Rori wearing second skin fishnets. They are painted on her body mat:

Anyway, I’d like to make second skin clothes for my characters, so I’ve discovered some software that can help me. Zew’s Clother and Clothim give you men’s and women’s clothing that you can easily apply on any body mat to create custom second skins. They’re the same program, differing only in the base wardrobe supplied. Second skins will be very helpful for certain characters [Anneka, Will, Velvette, Dom, Pippilotta, etc.] who wear tight clothes. It will also be good for putting underwear on everyone so I don’t have to see their [lack of] genitalia.

Hee hee, check out the Clothim add-ons. Do you or do you not see a distinctly FABULOUS sensibility at work here? I mean, seriously…tank tops for men that don’t cover the nipples?  And over here in the downloads…underwear with a question mark on it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any guy wear clothes like this, except for at pride parades…WHICH MAKES IT PERFECT for my fashionless vampires! PERFECT I SAY!

Especially when they color-coordinate their horns, clothes, tattoos, lipstick, etc. This was done off a Will base, but I’m not sure that it’s him any more. Knowing him, it probably is….

On my lunch break, I inspected many offerings of 3-D content from Sixus1. They have a lot of therianthropic creatures with an emphasis on dragons, dinosaurs, werewolves, etc., all of them studded with teeth, spikes, claws and optional impractical [but imposing] armor. Like the Raptorian female with armor. I can just picture the designers saying, “What’s cooler than dinosaurs? Oh, I know…DINOSAURS WITH ARMOR! Hell yeah!”  Somebody loooooves the monsters over there. 

Then I went over to Meshbox, which is apparently staffed by highly literate horror nerds. They have thematically arranged sets of intricate design, including the admirable City of Vampires, which looks about as bleak and ominous as a Gothic cathedral in bad weather. My favorite element is the Old Library, where the vampires enter by flying in and out of a portal in the ceiling! It also has the only commercially available set of stacks that I’ve seen so far.

Anyway, it’s really too bad that my vampires are just dead, ground-based, non-transforming queers with no fashion sense who live in an actual city in the modern day where the monsters are stupidity, jealousy, rage, depression and homophobia. If only they were Gothic and fantastic, they could have some real cool shit goin’ on…

For almost a month, I’ve been moving the cameras around in DAZ with only the right mouse button, wondering why the heck I can’t get the camera to orbit around a figure. Apparently I can press down the OTHER mouse button and get more effects. Maybe that will keep me from cursing at the computer so much….

The Doll Maker and Other Tales of the Uncanny by Sarban

Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker

…by the greater modeling community. This is because I specialize in making rotund people, scrawny people, ancient people and — my forte — guys in drag. In contrast, all of the people I have seen in the greater modeling community are lean, tight, voluptuous and between the ages of 18 and 25. They are all wearing clothes designed for their sex.

Anyway, here is Mamie Sinquell. She is not Anneka’s dying grandmother; she is Anneka’s dying grandmother’s long-term partner. She was a mannish lesbian before people even came up with the term. She’s still as intimidating in her 90s as she was when she was the hard-ass headmistress of Endless Lake Boarding School. Since she was either skiing or hiking or running around taking photos in the Adirondacks, she has poor skin that’s probably on the verge of precancerous melanoma. I love her. She, on the other hand, is not impressed with YOU, but you knew that already from the picture.

This morning, I decided to write a re-intro to LHF, checking up on where Anneka and Will are now. Oh boy did I ever find out. They were yelling at each other, as is frequently the case, and they managed to throw almost every important detail of their histories in each other’s faces without sounding too much like they were reading from exposition cards. In chronological order, they hit the following touchstones, neatly sketching out the major players, their relationships to each other and their preoccupations:

Hot topics: lesbovamps.com, mermaids, La Biblio, Mark, Velvette, Janet, de Sade, Ovid, Minerva, Alzheimer’s, Mamie, Adirondacks, Maximilian, colonial New England, Alexandra, counseling, Leonora, fairy tales, Chow, the Hun, the MeMo, Chinatown, Boston, Wintermere, gender dysphoria, invalidism, bisexuality, cross-dressing.

About the only things that didn’t get in there were Viktor, Sibley, Pippilotta and Mark’s cacti! I do wish that I could wedge Viktor and Sibley in there, but this season focuses less on them and more on Anneka, Will and their families.

The inimitable Chow, redesigned, with better mesh and more appropriate clothes.

…because she’s awesome.

Janet Planet, semi-mad scientist, sister to Velvette Crush and creator of Viktor, shown in a heavily cropped portrait shot because I haven’t found appropriately baggy and formless clothes for her yet.

As much as I like messing around with cross-dressing and humorous sexual situations, that’s not my main reason for getting Daz. With tight angles and minute adjustments in posing, this Daz test represents the sort of things I always wanted to do with my dolls and my camera, but could never accomplish.

Viktor’s back!! This scene, which has two characters, a Cyclorama background, two props and an unknown number of clothing items, took about 60 seconds to render.

Now working with the Daz Cyclorama… Scrawny Will definitely looks better with his arms covered up.

Here’s Rori, barkeep at the Nightcrawler, out of her element in some strange forest. I’m using this as a background because it’s one of the premade ones included with Daz. Rori is so damn cute….

I started on Viktor and did Rori earlier today, but then went back to Will. I used another of those dark, shadowy and atmospheric backgrounds by Tony Hayes, whose work is deliciously melancholy and creepy. [He did the abandoned asylum too.] Anyway, I learned about lights for this picture, adding two spotlights, one over Will and one pointing toward his face, all with the hope that the lighting on him would be equivalent to the light in the background. I made this one extra big so you could admire the background!

…as I gore your arm with this harpoon in order to surgically drain you for my next meal.

Yeah, I know he’s really pale, and you can see the places where his skin textures are a wee bit too small, and he looks severely malnourished with a disturbing resemblance to Richard O’Brien, and he’s even faggier than before, with even more of a predilection for violent pink, and the lighting is probably off for this scene, and he’s not really holding the syringe, and his hands look like they are flexed unnaturally, but I don’t want to hear about it. I am proud of myself beyond measure because I finally figured out how to make someone use a prop that wasn’t hair-related and easy to stick on someone’s head. Now if I could just figure out a way to move props easily into position, I’d be all set.

I’d probably develop a hankerin’ for violently pink makeup too if I’d been dead and out of the sun for 130+ years. I’m not sure about the alarming fingernails, though. I didn’t know he had those until…well, they happened. I think nail polish is one of the world’s stupidest inventions, but apparently my characters disagree. At least it matches his outfit.

I need to fix the size of the body textures. Dolls don’t have seam lines like that….

GOOD magazine provides a comic view at the death industry. My favorite part is that all the employees of the death industries are shown as ancient Egyptian jackal-headed gods of the underworld Anubis.

…Dollhouse, an upcoming Fox series created and produced by Joss Whedon, starring Eliza Dushku and somehow involving Tim Minear [who was involved with Angel, Firefly and the rockin’ awesome Pushing Daisies], will go down in flames, despite a hyperactive cult following, only to be released on DVD in a year and a half with unaired episodes. I’m also not sure that the sexy but rather flat Eliza Dushku is the appropriate choice for a main character who is basically a Method actor bot. I don’t think she has enough range. It is amusing to note, however, that, in the linked interview, she’s very happy that the Red Sox Losers won the World Series.

I’m having some problems with the M3 mesh, so this is the only angle from which he doesn’t have strange lumps on his arms poking through. It’s also a characteristic posture. I would like everyone to know that I successfully subdued the V3 Ultimate Changing Ponytail and made Chow’s hair. He’s supposed to be dressed in a subdued and somewhat antiquated manner, befitting his personality.

With her short hair and straight eyebrows, she looks much more like me than the 1:6 version. She sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake….

http://netherworks-studios.com/shoppe/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=10&products_id=20 a download that will finally get me to fit V3’s Ultimate Changing Ponytail to Chow’s head!!!

Here’s Will again as he dresses for the Harvard Square midnight showings of Rocky Horror, which, he would like you to know, he attends very rarely, and he only played Riff that one time because he had promised the girl who usually played him that he would do it, and besides, he never would have done it if he wasn’t drunk, and the only thing he is going to say about the Short Skirts showing is that “madness takes its toll [50 cents please!].”

Renderosity:

AVA Gothica

U3 White Dragon

Valarie V3

V3 Angel

Elisa [Pippilotta?]

Raven V3

http://www.3digitalcrafts.net/studiomaya/1download/index.html Free hair and clothes, including an underbust corset

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=112 Dial Cleaner

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=81 Stakes and crosses

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=36 Squirt guns [change color]

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=27 Ancient book

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=2238&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 not free, but a corset for M3?

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=8829&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 underbust corset

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=5044&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 short short skirt, spike platform heels, underbust corset thingy

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=7251&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 underbust and lots of fishnet pieces

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=158&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 overbust

Find Glorious Goth for The Girl???

 http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=35878&Start=31&vendor=_samildanach_ the best corset thingy for M3 I’ve ever seen, plus arm sleeves

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=2083  Dumbbell tutorial

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=69557&highlight=using+primitives Merging primitives

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=52807&highlight=primitives How to play with planes

http://www.wings3d.com Wings3D

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showforum.php?forum_id=12445 an active W3D forum

Instead of buying some tombstone models that don’t look like the ones in the Old Burying Ground, I could use Blender to make them my very own self!!! 

Dear blender
Oh won’t you help a first offender
Oh, toaster
Don’t you put the burn on me
Refrigerator, why are we always sooner or later
Bitchin’ in the kitchen or crying in the bedroom all night

No thanks to you, Shock Treatment.

 As I’ve mentioned before, I’m keeping a running list [part I here, part II here] of BJD companies that I do not deal with because of dishonest, dubious and/or illegal business practices. Now I’ve got a new one for the list: Dollkot. In advertising a custom sculpting service, Dollkot committed a pile of egregious offenses. Instead of showcasing their own sculptors’ talents and results, they used photos from DIM’s MiniMee project to illustrate their concept. 

Okay, that’s dishonest, but it gets worse. Said photos from the MiniMee project were actually directly scanned from a magazine article in Haute Doll where MiniMee owners contributed their personal photos and comments about their MiniMee dolls. So, not only did Dollkot misrepresent its services, but it did so by doubly stealing: once from Haute Doll, which gave no permission for the article to be reused, and also from the MiniMee owners, whose photos and comments were reproduced on Dollkot’s Web site without permission. 

To add insult to injury, their inanely cheerful response to Armeleia, one of the MiniMee owners whose photos and quotes were illegally used, implies that they thought they could get away with it. They removed the pictures, but why were they even up in the first place?

I’ve done multiple playlists about queer characters and one about dolls and one about the ’80s. Now it’s time for…one or two or three about VAMPIRES! The A.V. Club has a good starting point. Although the article focuses on obscure novelty tunes, the comments have a trove of alternatives. I have to say…I’m surprised that nothing by Type O Negative is on the list. Or Vampires by the Pet Shop Boys from their appropriately titled Nightlife album, which makes explicit the connection between love, death, sex, desire, hunger and blood in these lines:

Do what you want
and then can I do it to you
You’re a vampire
I’m a vampire too
You’re a vampire
I’m a vampire too

It’s a reflex
Just a reflex
like fear or sex 

Edit: There’s more here: in a Philly paper’s special section.

Tonight I learned that you can put makeup maps developed for Victoria onto Michael’s face. However, when the designers made makeup maps for Victoria, they apparently erased her eyebrows and replaced them with thin, high lines that make her look revoltingly surprised. I ended up approximating Will’s makeup by pasting the eyes from Victoria’s map onto a map for Will. Then I just changed his lip color in the Surfaces menu, with some gloss from the Victoria maps. Besides all this, I also closed his eyes slightly so that he doesn’t look so much like a bug, then puckered his lips slightly, since his mouth is supposed to be short.  If anyone says he looks like an aging queen, why, you’re right. He looks a little softer with makeup on. It’s definitely an improvement from his stark look with invisible eyelashes….

Here’s the second installment of the Daz test comic. Will is distracted from his gender-related bitching by a mysterious noise. Strangeness ensues.

I don’t know what he’s doing. It’s just that this pose amuses me. I finally found him some underwear too, thank God, so he’s not flashing me any more. This is actually a more accurate rendition of the clothing that I imagine him wearing: short, bright and tight.

You do know that no one can take you seriously in these clothes, right, Will? It’s not the boots so much, and the underwear isn’t a problem because usually no one sees it, and even the shirt is kind of acceptable…but what’s with the dress?

Can you guess?Continue reading Why is Will smirking?

I finally got my CrossDresser program to work, converting clothes for female figs into clothes for male figs. I’m still running into problems with skirts for anyone, male or female, but I’m happy to report that XD successfully converted a ridiculously short, long-sleeved crop top [not shown] and some black pleather platform heels! Well, at least Will’s footwear [and certain shirts — he always did have a thing for crop tops] is accurate now. I’m going to go to bed and work on the skirts later… Heels below.

Me trying to make Will wear something more in his style. Every time he moves his legs, though, they poke through the skirt, so I have to fix that. Remarks were made that his is not a very sophisticated outfit. This is true. He can dress very much the macho part [with relative success], but, when it comes to his true tastes, they are either flamboyant or clueless or both… The best part of this outfit are the boots, which are textured with a picture of a swirling pink fantasy planet!! Please also note that he is flaming, as per the flames on his shirt. Nyar har har.

Today I learned some important things. 1) I can now keep characters’ pants or skirts on so they don’t leap out of them when being posed. 2) Clothes made for Victoria do not behave when fitted to Michael. That goes for shoes too…. 3) However, poses developed for Victoria 3 translate nicely to Michael 3, thereby expanding my library of poses easily! 4) Whenever Will comes out of his closet, his [lack of] fashion sense always startles me.

Anyway, here he is in another sartorial folly as only he can accomplish. [Pinstripe pants and red pleather… I weep.] He is in a Victoria model pose, which explains why he appears to be on the verge of spinal whiplash. [Modeling poses are pretty dumb, but he does look pretty anxious and intent.] I do like the lines in the pose, though. They really convey a sense of quick, focused motion.

“Fit to” vs. “parent and adjust:” http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=52607&highlight=parent+clothes 

Keeping clothes on and moving with fig: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=54638&highlight=loading+clothes

Putting clothes on morphed figs: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=68516&highlight=clothes+fit+pose

Overview of 3D modeling programs: http://www.canary3d.com/tutorial/3d-intro.htm

Organizing runtimes: http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=2231 

Possible organization for runtimes: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=50433&highlight=save+characters

Saving morphed characters: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=59134&highlight=save+characters  

Customized textures into Cyclorama: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=54947&highlight=cyclorama

How to make custom textures and MAT files for Cyclorama: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=54947&highlight=cyclorama

All right, here’s my second try on Will’s Pussy Part I. He’s now against a real live photo backdrop of the Charles River, along Memorial Drive between Western Ave and JFK Street, looking toward Western Ave. Now you can see the details of my photograph and of his bulge. I assume this is an improvement. No comments about the size of the bulge, please. It’s a function of the outfit, which apparently maps its textures directly onto his skin.

When in the latter days of LHF 1.0, I wanted to make my characters hanging out in recognizable Boston metro locations. I tried using photos of mine as backgrounds to achieve this effect. However, since LHF characters are all goddamned nocturnal vampires, I darkened my pictures to simulate night. While the low light was accurate to the time of day, the night effects effaced the detail in my characters, my backgrounds and my overall compositions.

I observe the same effacement in Will’s Pussy Part I. Therefore, I’m thinking that I shouldn’t go for full night effects. I’ll stick to dawn and dusk, which means I should only take photos early in the morning, early in the evening or on very cloudy days. On that subject, I took some photos along the Charles River between 7:30 and 8:00 AM today with clouds and light rain. Perhaps I can use them as part of a new scene for Will’s Pussy Part I. 

Here’s the first panel of a test comic that I rendered in Daz tonight. Will is standing in the pre-loaded Faerie [HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH] Forest scene that came with the program. The lights are on “night.” Auspiciously enough, my computer did NOT have a hernia while rendering a high-res character with a bunch of high-res props and a background. Let’s see what happens when the second character enters the scene….

Using only a few photos and some digital props, I am going to artistically recreate a 3-D set of the Old Burying Ground in Cambridge, my favorite cemetery, and then force my characters to hang out in it because I slaved so hard over it. This is, of course, assuming that my computer doesn’t go totally hemorrhageous from all those high-res textures.

My photos will be of the actual cemetery, hopefully projected using the Cyclorama. I have a sarcophagus prop, several gravestone props [with lichen!] and a Spooky Tree [TM] prop. Eventually my characters will be able to sit on top of the sarcophagus and at the base of the Spooky Tree. Oh yeah, and there’s a Light Dome to make it look like night.

I would really love to make an aerial view of Will curled up on the ground next to a gravestone, sleeping with his teddy bear and smiling. 😀 😀

After downloading the necessary stuff for actually getting shit done in Daz [base figures, face/body morphs, standard textures, some clothes, some poses, Will’s teddy bear, etc.], I spent several hours tonight tweaking Michael 3.0 in order to get Will out of it. He has the skinny body morph with a lot of tweaks to his face that make him look rather old. These are about the only clothes that I knew how to put on him without parenting something to body parts. A full report on the program and its usability ensues later, but so far it’s exceeding my expectations. Look at how close up I can get in the photos below. [Any resemblances to James Marsters and the character of Spike are completely intentional and probably accentuated by the outfit. I should have made the coat leopard print, but I was getting lazy.]

 http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=905

An easy tutorial for my later use!

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=1632

This tutorial takes out all the photorealistic details that I don’t need because I am supposed to be making comics with dolls, not people.  

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=755

This one is about how to make your own Cyclorama backgrounds….

Including dresses, gowns and skirts for Will, which were hiding under “robes” or “tribal clothing” or “Egyptian” because apparently you can’t search for “dress AND michael” [Michael = latest Daz 3D male character] and except to come up with anything, nooooo. I’m beginning to despair of finding corsetry. Forthwith, what I HAVE found…

Poser! It has collision detection, dynamic cloth and a mouse-based interface, plus a much larger built-in library of items, faces editable all over, editable hair, a sprawling user community with free items and…more realistic results than iClone. The base pack of Poser 7 is just around $250, and you don’t have to buy hundreds of extra bonus packs just to do simple things like make people naked or modify their clothes. Better deal?

Look…it’s Bang Ping, otherwise known as Baozha [meaning “explosion”] Bang.

This is my first all-around accurate iClone render of an LHF character. [Previous ones of Will were experimental and thus didn’t count. I also did Janet earlier, but she doesn’t have appropriate hair.] Everything about Baozha’s build, features and even clothing is accurate to her character. Her outfit represents my earliest pathetic attempts at customized clothing design. For example, her pants were made with a downloaded texture, originally in green and opaque, which I tweaked to look like bleached denim. Her shirt is an application of a fantasy industrial scene jpg with a clear reflection + yellow glow so it looks like it’s made out of plastic. [I foresee lots of shiny, slick and plasticky clothes for my characters.] As you can see, her face is going to freeze in that expression…

What’s this then? An av generator? Should I be caring? I don’t know… I’ll look into it later.

So…I got iClone 2.1 Hooray! I have yet to do anything substantive with it, though. From what I read, I should probably just wait until the 2.5 patch, released later this season, which will make manipulating characters, props and other elements much easier.

Oh yeah, and on a positive ranting note, I find the site Renderosity a great source of free 2D backgrounds and textures. I downloaded some creepy/industrial/Gothic/night scenes for possible use in LHF 2.0. The only disappointment I have with Renderosity is that it contains many Poser and 3DX files that I cannot use because I do not have the software. But the thumbnails sure are pretty to look at.

iClone Studio 2.1 $199.95 [the engine]

CloneCloth vol. 1 $97.46 [so they can wear more than pants and shirts]

Classic cuts vol. 2 $17.95 [more styles for guys and gals]

Saloon chairs and table $1.59

Mahogany round table and chair 0.80

Well, this set was intended to show Will’s naturalistic posture in my living room, knees curled up toward his chest, hands in his lap. Instead, I cranked with the levels, contrast and Dark Strokes filter to get these pictures. He either looks like he has skull holes instead of eyes or he’s been punched in the face…take your pick.

Assuming I want to use it…

iClone 2.0 Standard $79.95 [the engine]

Furniture Pack 1 $39.95 [because they need beds and chairs and tables, but that’s about it]

Working Fashion Theme Pack #1 $97.46 [because they need to sit, stand and talk — that’s all they do]

Total $217.36

Monetarily speaking, that’s actually cheaper than 1:6, given than I’ve probably spent $2K [?] on 1:6 in the past 5 years, maybe more. {We won’t talk about my BJD spending. Oh, okay, we will. I’ve had Zephque, Sardonix 1.0, Jareth, little Jennifer, Frank, big Jennifer, Submit, Sardonix 2.0 and Will, which is 9 dolls, not to mention their clothes. I’d say that I’ve spent about $9K on them in the past 3.5 years.] 

Alternatively, iClone 2.0 Studio is $199.95 and it comes with Working Fashion Theme Pack #1.

Cool Clones has downloads.

Cool Creators has a store.

I would like to try before making a commitment of several hundred dollars!

 Option: 1:6 dolls and backdrops

Option 2: Software like iClone

Option 3: Photos to line drawings

Option 4: Get a drawing partner

Option 5: Draw a simple sketch comic

Option 6: Draw a detailed realistic full-body comic

Option 7: BJDs and backdrops

Option 8: Export from something like Sims

melopoiea

 suggests a program like this, which converts photos into line drawings. I wonder if I could make this work for a comic strip. I could take pictures of characters in stereotyped positions, then mix and match parts…? I know that Oh My Gods!, a much simpler comic strip, uses preselected parts to construct the characters, and Two Lumps is just lazy, reusing images of the cats with different expressions. Maybe I could use a similar method WITH SLIGHTLY MORE FINESSE. [I miss LHF.]

One hundred years older…

Reaper is about a 21-year-old guy whose parents sold his soul to the Devil, so he has to be a bounty hunter for errant souls. Reviews say it has witty banter and comedy. I’ll bite, but I’m damn well spittin’ it out if it don’t taste no good.

Is “undead” a legit TV subgenre now?!

So saith my wife when she sees Frank and Will in their new-to-me fake fur Wicked Wigs. I picked these up today in a face-to-face exchange with DOAer SolarCat [Lauren]. I showed her my Soom Sabik; she showed me her Soom Kanoa, an irresistibly smirking little guy with a great pointy nose. She sold me the Wicked Wigs for 1/3 of list price, and I got two well-crafted wigs that fit closely to the contours of my dolls’ heads.

I’m pleased with the construction and quality and even more with the result. The length of short-pile fake fur is a much better approximation of Will’s hair as I imagine it in my head. Picture below [crappy, low light], with Frank just in time for Halloween and Will apparently anticipating Xmas.

Hi, I just watched the pilot of Pushing Daisies on ABC. Those of you who enjoy candy-colored, quip-ridden whimsy should check out this show before it is flushed down the inevitable toilet. Its well-balanced construction of consistently witty writing, neatly sketched characters, sun-drenched nostalgic colors and perky narration can only last so long before one of two things happens.

Well, I wanted to watch the Moonlight premiere last week [about the tortured cliche vampire falling in love with a stereotype human woman], but I missed it. Maybe I’ll catch it this week, although I see that Pushing Daisies, another show about a human/undead relationship, is premiering tonight, so I might want to catch that. Furthermore, season 3 of Supernatural begins this Thursday, but I don’t know if I will be able to catch that, which is tragic, given my current VIOLENT crush on Jensen Ackles [who plays Dean]. Dammit…so many walking dead, so little time.

I’m purchasing two fake fur wigs from Wicked Wigs secondhand. One is a patchwork of black and orange, the other a twist between white and blood red. Will’s wardrobe may never progress beyond leather pants and a black tank top, but he’ll have hot-rockin’ hair.

Supposedly an indie journalism site, Alter.net provides analysis under the major radar.

Especially with messed-up levels and high white contrast.

When you’ve been wearing make-up for 100+ years, it becomes very, errrrr, stylized….

…But it disappeared in my fascination with Will’s head.

Ultraviolet, a TV series from 1998. Contains vampires, naturally.

For some reason, those song lyrics are in my head. Here are some artsy-fartsy shots of Will with hair that approximates his actual length of hair.

 Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930 (Paperback) by Miriam Formanek-Brunell 

The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England by Alex Owen  

Garnered from the bibliography of the jargonlicious article on philosophy of corsets:

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England

Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity

Whether you believe that the universe tends toward good, bad or mediocre, there’s still the question of where to assign these capacities. Are people good, bad, good+bad, bad+mediocre, etc.?

Naturally he employs them to feel up Jareth.

More messing around with burn/dodge [on the eyes] and wild skewing of levels and contrast. Will just conduces this somehow.

Frank now combines the head of Volks Yukinojo, the body of a Model Doll girl [Bella Auden] and, for the most recent addition, Twiglimbs arms and hands made by twigling. Poor Frank has been languishing without arms since the end of August. A month later, I finally got around to reassembling him today with a pathetic improvisation of regular stringing elastic, round cord elastic suitable for tinies and 18 gauge plastic-coated steel wire.

I’m extremely pleased with the result. Ever since I got Frank’s Model Doll body, I disliked his narrow shoulders and scrawny, slender arms. Now with the Twiglimbs arms and shoulder cups, he has appropriately broad shoulders. His thicker arms and larger hands are also much more proportionate. Now his overall look is one of extreme muscularity and extreme curvaceousness, which is a much more accurate representation of how he looks in my head. The addition of his robust arms also makes him look less like a lollipop and more like the ambiguously sexed and gendered being he is. His arms have the squareness and muscle definition usually associated with men, as does his face. The rest of him, however, looks ridiculously long and curvy, like certain comic-book heroines. Success!

I like supernatural creatures. Partly I like them because they are a testament to human inventiveness in the face of the unknown and inexplicable. They’re beautiful creations of folk logic [“Well, if it looks like the corpse’s nails and hair are growing and it’s in a pool of blood when we dig it up, that means it must be alive and feeding on blood!”], fear and wonder. That’s why I will devour stories about them: because, as human creations, they are clever, rich and powerful, full of meaning… They’ve got a hold on us.

I also like supernatural creatures because they work as lovely metaphors, which partly explains their continuing fascination, even to people who do not believe in them.

I got my season 2 of Supernatural in the mail today! I’m so excited! I’m disappointed with Half.com’s “expedited” shipping, however. The default shipping method is media mail, which takes 2-4 weeks. “Expedited” shipping is regular first class.

Fine, right? Well, my “expedited” DVDs took a week to arrive from TN. First class mail, even a package, from TN to MA should take 3 days, according to the handy-dandy postage calculator at the USPS Web site. Why did it take double that? Why did I even bother “expediting?” [Answer: Because I wanted my dose of stupid TV NOW!]

Half.com is not the source for instant gratification or even slightly delayed gratification. The low prices are so low in part because the shipping is a flat fee for a slow postage method. Most of the time I can stand the trade-off, but I was especially impatient for these DVDs.

Back in February, 2006, Mercy on DOA put a call out for “celebrity dolls,” that is, BJDs made after famous persons, real or imaginary. I submitted information about Jareth and Frank. Anyway, out of the blue, Mercy PMed me to say that pictures of someone [I think it was Jareth] got into Doll Reader a few months ago, and she’s trying to get Doll Reader to send me a copy of the magazine. That was completely unexpected. So maybe some day eventually I will get a copy of a magazine with a picture of Jareth in it or at least a quote from me about him. Fascinating, I know.

I need to get this book.

When I look at Will with my eyes, I feel as if I am seeing his character the way that he presents to the world. When I look at photographs of him, I can adjust color, contrast, levels and burn/dodge so that I can see his moods, feelings, thoughts and parts of his character’s mental state that he keeps hidden. Apparently his mood have lots of eyeliner….

Supernatural season 2 DVDs are coming my way with expedited shipping! I ordered them this morning. I figure that, if I no longer want them when done, I can sell them on Ebay. Since I watched much of season 1 and some of season 2 on DailyMotion, I know the plot lines, but my viewing enjoyment was marred by a) dark, grainy, small pictures, b) interruptions in video streaming and c) removal of Supernatural eps for copyright violation [dammit!]. I’d like to indulge in the eps without swearing at the computer when it stops loading at a crucial moment in the action. Hopefully the DVDs will come soon.

The feedback collections on Ebay are a great record of a seller or buyer’s overall trustworthiness, but Ebay does not allow users to analyze the feedback to best effect. For example, there is no easy way to find negatives or neutrals through the Ebay site proper. But this Web site, Toolhaus, has a tool that allows you to pick out bad feedback. You type in the Ebay ID and check the results. You can find bad feedback given and bad feedback received.

StoryCorps is a neat project aimed at tapping the oral history of the nation. At mobile booths around the country, almost anyone can schedule time and record an interview with a friend or a family member about…almost anything. I have listened to two stories so far, and I will be checking out more. Here a man talks about saving his friend’s little brother from the train tracks. Very dramatic! Here a Vermont lesbian couple are talking about their 30-year partnership and getting civilly united. Their happiness, after all these years, is still infectious.

Bonus: Here are two women talking about being identical twins, dispelling some stupid assumptions about their relationship and being very practical about the whole thing. “Being a twin was the best thing that ever happened to me! I recommend it to everyone!”

More angst-ridden crime-solving goody-two-shoes vampires. Welcome to CBS’ Moonlight, starting at the end of this month, treading in a well-worn path first hewn out by Forever Knight, followed by Angel. While curious, I have much better things to do with my puny mortal life than sit around and watch a new show when it first airs. I’ll wait a while to see if it’s anything of any substance that I can sink my teeth into.

This is Will a la mode francaise.

As I was unpacking my dolls, I put together a showcase for my favorite outfit.

At the Internet Public Library, you can do everything that you would do at your usual public library: read fiction, join a book group, find tax forms, do research. Only here, it’s all virtual. IPL organizes the many online atlases, books, reference Web sites, etc., into an easily browsable, subject-based format so that you can more easily find what you are looking for. Your local public library or university library or corporate library may have a similar site, but IPL is open to all users.

I enjoy Paleofuture, an intelligently organized blog highlighting outmoded views of what people in the past thought the future would be like.

Dull comparison for no one except me. Here’s a photo of Will next to a picture of a story character that I drew about 7 years ago. The character was originally invented about 12 years ago, and I’ve been pursuing his likeness for over a decade.

Now that I’ve moved to an apartment with more than two rooms, I have an improved set-up for photographing my dolls. My desk now sits in the living room with a filled-in fireplace to the left and two windows to the right. The wealth of natural light + white walls provides soft tones and bright colors, in contrast to my previous apartment, where yellow walls + way too much daylight produced overly warm tones and yellowy colors. These pictures were taken at about 5:15 PM.

While I do patronize my local, independent booksellers, if I want a used book, I am much more likely to go to half.com. Why? Because I can often find ridiculous deals where the shipping price is much greater than the book’s price. Witness my recent haul.

Just to provide some context, the first three are scholarly treatments of sexuality and courtship in historical America, soundly written, well-respected titles, you know, the sort that cost half a hundred dollars when they first come out. They owe their disgusting cheapness, I assume, to their promulgation [hence quick use and discard] as college course books. The last is the aforementioned book My Husband Betty, which, as a popular, recent trade paperback, is significantly more expensive. Note, however, that shipping still makes up more than 50% of the costs.

Searching the Heart : Karen Lystra (Paperback, 1992)	Price: $1.88 Media Mail: $3.49 Subtotal: $5.37
Hands and Hearts : Ellen K. Rothman (Hardcover, 1984)	Price: $1.94 Media Mail: $3.99 Subtotal: $5.93
Intimate Matters : Estelle B. Freedman, John D’Emilio (Paperback, 1989)	Price: $1.00 Media Mail: $3.49 Subtotal: $4.49
My Husband Betty : Helen Boyd (Paperback, 2004)	Price: $7.16 Media Mail: $3.49 Subtotal: $10.65
	Merchandise: Shipping: TOTAL: $11.98 $14.46 $26.44

All in one set, the entire run of the original Twilight Zone for your viewing delectation!

Witness the paltry fruits of last night’s labor here. It’s Part I of my stoopid Labyrinth parody, slightly rewritten by me, animated by Meez [I’ve made 105 at last count, but they aren’t all in this short], set to the tune of clips from the Labyrinth soundtrack. Parts II and III are done, waiting for upload, and I have plans to do the rest of the movie. I don’t promise that it will be more than mildly amusing, but it will be a good killer of half an hour.

P.S. If you do watch it, leave a comment and a rating [on the Google Video site, not HERE!], will ya?

I wonder if iClone software really works as it claims to… It says that its features include 3D character construction, clothing, prop building and placement, set generation, character movement and animation and sound import, all so a person can make little CGI movies.

Sarah realizing it’s 7 PM and she stayed out too late and she has to babysit, so of course she says her favorite phrase, “IT’S NOT FAIR!!” Shut up, you whiny bastard.

Holy fork, I’m clearly a) brain-dead and b) obsessed with Labyrinth. I just made about 50 [?] Meez animations of Jareth and Sarah so I can create a little version of Labyrinth. Preview below of Jareth doing what he does best: playing with his balls. This should tell you what kind of movie I’m making.

I enjoy psychology, cultural analysis and subjects of mental health, so I was excited to find out about  Psychjourney. I just sampled one of the site’s podcasts, an interview with Courtney Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, an Interesting subject, but the audio was echoic and blurry, and the interviewer’s voice was too measured and soporific. Another randomly sampled podcast on body dysmorphic disorder, suffered from the same problems. 

The jury’s out on whether I recommend these because they provide substantive overviews of interesting topics (auditory hallucinations, compulsive hoarding, rumor and gossip), but the audio quality is mediocre. It’s like listening to a low-tech tape of someone’s phone conversation. Why don’t you try one out and see if you can stand it? I know that I will be dipping into a few subjects of interest before blowing the site off entirely.

Does this sound like you: Female, age 18-28, told you can have it all, convinced you need to save the world AND take care of your friends AND your family AND your body, andover-achieving person who’s constantly striving to look better, smiling to the outer world, hitting the gym every other day, reading the latest self-help book [outwardly mocking but secretly listening to it], going vegetarian for health reasons…only to throw up your hands in exhaustion, eat an 8-ounce rare dead animal, despair at the hope of ever getting promoted, wish you could just have some hugs, nix the family reunion because you really can’t stand your great-aunt, feel sick and tired of your personal responsibility to be eternally successful and put together… Blogger [for Feministing] Courtney Martin’s new book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, talks about the widespread struggle between perfection and exhaustion experienced by many contemporary bourgeois women.

Ignore the categorization and ads for this book that say that it’s all about eating disorders. From what I can tell, the book appears to address the larger issue of young women’s anxious relationships with their bodies. Super-achieving feminist go-getting vies within us against secret tiredness and desires for affection and peace. I saw a clip of her reading about the perfection vs. exhaustion struggle, and I thought that it had greater applicability than to just those women who have eating disorders. The internal strife she was writing about can be found in many current bourgeois women’s lives. 

Perhaps I’m particularly interested in it because I’m trying to pack and simplify my belongings and write a book and do seven hundred and eleventy-five book reviews and do all my occupational work and ensure a raise and eat right and sleep tight and keep the bedbugs from biting all at the same time…anyway, I think I’ll check it out…after my nap [hahah!].

…and all the book reviews I’ve been writing and all my other obligations, I’m starting to feel like a reanimated corpse:

This is about as animated as I get these days:

Unfortunately, even though I feel like death warmed over, I do not even have the consolation of cool hair, cool make-up or cool clothes as demonstrated on the avatar. This is probably why I like the Meez program. It has a large array of facial features, costumes, backgrounds and animation, which offer extensive online customizing possibilities. Furthermore, Meez are larger than, say, pixel dolls, and, unlike, say, Zwinkies, they do not contain any downloadable spyware. They’re also 85% free, although some cool shit, such as thigh-high boots, costs money. Thigh-highs aside, though, Meez provide an amusing outlet for the brain-dead.

In her spare time, Jennifer also keeps compact, detailed notes of everything in her memorandum book.

When she’s not cooking, cleaning, maintaining the limo or otherwise running the mundane details of Frank’s life, Jennifer likes to ride her mountain bike around Burlington, Vermont. Unfortunately there was no option to add a bike helmet, which she would not be caught dead without!

Here’s my closest approximation of movie Jareth… Amusingly enough, the chair and cane come from a set called “Pimp Throne” and his pants are wet suit pants. Not that you can tell… Non-animated picture here.

In a more casual setting, Frank designs clothes. That really is what his bedroom looks like inside my head. Animation below. This shit cracks me up for some reason.

I did these a while ago, but couldn’t upload them until now. Witness Frank in his element, makin’ faces.

I did some dolly wrasslin’ after work today, using 18 gauge plastic coated steel wire to thread through Will’s arms. Since I had trouble getting one piece of wire all the way through both arms and the torso cavity [daunted by the curving holes in his upper arms — who thought that was a good idea?!], I ended up using two pieces of wire. One piece goes all the way through his left arm and out his right shoulder hole, down his right upper arm, while the other runs from his right forearm to his right upper arm. Now he can achieve the following poses without aid from me.

The much-enhanced Sabrina Sabrok looks like a CG 2.0 with a Bloody Rose body, especially in this photo. [Also here — I really like this photo, actually, mostly because of the combo of flagrantly orange hair + black vinyl.] Part of me is pleased that this freakish body shape appears on a real, live human being, while part of me is repulsed by the unnatural sphericality of those…growths…on her chest.

ashbet

 recommends Endicott Studio, a site containing said Journal of Mythic Arts, an online periodical devoted to luxuriating in fairy tales and analyzing them. I love scholarly online sites. They make me feel smart.

Frank's in pieces all over my desk and bed right now because finally, after a wait of over a year, I finally have a bulkier, larger set of double-jointed arms, more in proportion with his body, than the defaults than came with the Doll More Model Doll girl body. Yes, the TwigLimbs arms have arrived, and I'm pleased with them.

twigling

 has balanced an intimate knowledge of musculature and solidity with a pleasingly realistic style. Pictures below.

I’ve died and gone to Heaven. Over at Sur La Lune, Heidi Heiner has annotated a translation of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid with hypertext footnotes and explications in a fine exploitation of the online form. I’m drawn to Andersen over and over again, for his creepy sadism, self-abnegating protagonists and thoroughly gloomy view of life, so it’s always a treat to find illuminations of his stories.

P.S. For lovers of fairy tales, Sur La Lune provides interviews with fantasists, discussion boards, analyses of stories and other fascinating avenues to explore.

Moping looks extra picturesque at night. Thank you, Will. Most of these photos were created by tinkering with greyscale, levels and burn/dodge around his eyes. They’re gloooowwwwwing…. First is my favorite.

Carnival of Souls does not have much going for it. There’s the cheesy title, a definite strike against it, followed closely by its director Herk Harvey, better known for making simplistic mental hygiene films designed to drum good manners into 1960s schoolchildren. Then there’s the low special effects budget, which means that the creepiest things our protagonist experiences is attack of the pancake make-up and occasional periods where the soundtrack just fades to silence.

I’m happy to report, though, that Carnival of Souls rises above these limitations to be a surprisingly effective, almost existential, horror film.

Everyone go see Nosferatu at archive.org! This is a vampire film before it became a silly cliche, a vampire film before the vampires became romantic tortured souls, back when they were barely formed things out of the ooze of of our symbolic nightmares. You will not find much character depth or subtlety in this 1922 work, but you will find a steadily creeping sense of dread and a memorable exploration of what it’s like to be stalked by death. Answer: It’s freakin’ scary!

Nosferatu closely hews to the plot of Dracula, with a stupid real estate agent visiting the gloomy castle of a creepy count, who then follows him back to his homeland, killing along the way, and only the real estate agent’s wife, with which the vampire is obsessed, can stop the Black Death. Though Bram Stoker’s widow won two suits to stop distribution of F.W. Murnau’s film because it ripped off her husband’s novel, copies of the film had disseminated too widely for them all to be pulled.

Fortunately for us, the best, moodiest, most unforgettable vampire film remains in circulation today. The form — silent except for music, black and white except for blue-tinted nights and red-tinted sunsets — strips the story to its schematic, structuralist basic: a story of light and shadow. While Ellen, the real estate agent’s wife, glows in her white nightgown, Nosferatu is literally a shadow sliding across the walls, menacing innocents with his mere disembodied presence. The one-color tints for different times of day also add eerie feelings. The pale blue tint of night gives a cool, icy, drowning sensation to all scenes, while the red tints of sunset communicate alarm, sensuality and, of course, blood.

None of this color and light symbolism would work if it weren’t for the actors…or one actor in particular, Max Schrek, who plays Nosferatu. As stiff as a coffin plank, he doesn’t seem to walk or float so much as he just manifests, further away and then closer. He does very little except for looming, but he incites the mad realtor Knock to fidgeting and murder and Ellen to dangerous sleepwalking. Nosferatu’s minons, the bubbling, squeaking rats, link him explicitly with plague and, in their seething motion, demonstrate the confused panic he incites in humans. But, in a genius twist of interpretation, Nosferatu doesn’t really seethe himself. He merely exists, inexorable, quiet, pitiless, dire. While he does roam from place to place, in the end, he lets his victims come to him, for he is death, and no one can resist him.

See The Media and Communication Studies Site. Okay, well, they’re not really old, mostly 5 to 10 years old, but that seems like eons where such papers are concerned. All sorts of juicy stuff is linked here, including queer theory, social psychology, online communication et hoc genus omne ad infinitum. Despite the age of the material, a random sampling of links proves that most work and actually go to the content promised! Have fun.

twigling

 reports that a set of Twiglimbs arms and hands is in the mail for Frank to replace his scrawny, disproportionate defaults. How exciting!

I took pictures of Will in the areas outside around my work. He drapes so nicely on stonework and he exerts an irresistible gravitational pull on my camera. He is just as much a pleasure to photograph as Submit [Elfdoll Hana Devil], only more so because he’s bigger!

Feministing is a feminist perspective on the news.

PopPolitics is serious analysis of pop culture.

Poor light and a wobbly grip on my camera means few good shots, but I thought I’d post them anyhow. Will does the languid, melancholy and introverted mood very well, I think. Incidentally, he is wearing a black see-through sleeveless that came with the I.B. Hunter outfit, the Dollheart Kala skirt, default black fishnets from Dollmore’s Bella Auden and Cheerydoll mixed black shit-kickers. As always, his sense of style is debatable.

According to the post office, he is attempting to redeliver himself to my work address, at which I am waiting excitedly. Hopefully he comes soon!

As I was tracking my EMS package this morning, I found out that Will is in the States, apparently just waiting until my work building is open so he can come in! Tracking says that there was a delivery attempt yesterday and a notice left. Since the attempt was to an office building, my work address, I am baffled as to where they left the attempt notice. The receptionist hasn’t seen it. Hopefully Will will arrive successfully today, much sooner than I expected! I was anticipating at least 3 weeks between last payment and arrival.

Ultimate Flash Face can help you create realistic mugshots of your characters, assuming that they have boring, short hairstyles. Below, an example.

Here are my most frequented Web destinations, ordered alphabetically. Can anyone recommend some good sites of news analysis, kind of like weekly news magazines, only less rarefied than The New Yorker and less hebetated than Time and Newsweek? Particularly intelligent pop culture blogs and tech blogs.

I made the final installment payment on Will. $1332.80/$1332.80 is paid! 100%! No more doll debt…. Now I’m just awaiting his arrival. I wonder how long Soom takes to ship items that are all ready to go.

I pared down my Will order again to just the I.B. Hunter doll with outfit and a pair of underwear. New total = $1332.80, with $1097.61 paid, $235.19 outstanding.

Look into the exhaustive archives for Escape Pod and take your pleasure of the many clear, humorous, perkily read sci-fi and fantasy stories on podcast. I just listened to the amusing, low-key “Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush.” I’ve also finished “The Burning Bush.”  It’s very dryly delivered, to humorous effect. And I know that “My Friend Is A Lesbian Zombie” will be good because its author, Eugie Foster, is an acquaintance who turns out consistently well-crafted, mythically solid and romantically tinged stories.

In fourth grade, I watched some painfully earnest and educational sci-fi mysteries for nerdy budding journalists, Read All About It. Each 15-minute episode revolved around Chris, Sam and Lynne, 3 Canadian 11-year-olds investigating the alien invasion, captained by Duneedon the freaky floating head, in their small town. With the help of a pedantic typewriter, Otto, and a talking TV screen, Theta, they published a newspaper, The Herbertville Chronicle, as the perfect alibi for their search for Chris’ missing uncle. Inevitably, vocabulary lessons and word puzzles advanced the plot and helped them save the world. Anyway, I forgot all identifying details of the show until now…
 
I remember liking this show [aside from the cadaverous floating head!] because the vocab lessons played to my strengths and made me feel that my verbal intelligence was applicable and important, although I can’t say that I’ve ever used my mental thesaurus to rescue myself and a friend from a Problem Pit. In any case, if this plot summary brings back nostalgic happiness [or nostalgic queasiness, if you’re thinking of Duneedon], you can find all eps of the first season on Youtube. Here’s the first. As the theme song exhorts, "There’s a mystery to be solved / So why not get involved?"