Zelda

Zelda Wind Waker grabbed my imagination the very first time I saw it many, many years ago now on a Gamecube in somebody else’s lounge room. Now, by the power of modern computing, I have been sharing the joy and frustration of this adorable game with my sons. Intermittent play has gotten us almost to the end after a few months now.  I also now have two of three Zelda inspired projects complete and ready to share. The first is the newest one, Link’s boomerang (the protagonist is Link, Zelda is the eponymous princess). This was given to F for Christmas and was designed specifically to be light enough for indoor play as outdoors it is very likely to end up in a tree or on the roof.

The second is this papercraft model of the Link’s boat the ‘King of Red Lions’ This took way longer than anticipated and is far from the perfection I envisioned. But it is at least done. I have shared a gallery of images here on imgur and in r/papercraft here.

 

 

A Long Time Coming

Finally sat down and got some solid editing done. The final parts are compiling now and hopefully I’ll have enough space to start recording some new content in coming days.
This September holiday started with whole family head colds so a bit slow off the mark on my pile of projects. still many days to go fortunately.

 

Bohdi

 

I have a new completed project to share.

‘Bohdi the Yeti’ was one of a number of holiday projects I set myself over the last break. Videos of some of the other holiday projects will follow in time.

 

I am currently working my way through the enormous backlog of footage captured during the build, editing and uploading the build vids to my new Youtube channel.

The first two build process videos are up and the third will be up by the weekend.

 

I am also doing another editing pass on the build videos for L’s Sir Vader costume and bringing them across to the new channel as well. Obviously work has taken a big toll on my energy and ability to maintain this blog with the regularity I would like, but more posts can be expected as the next few video’s go live.

 

 

 

 

 

Sir Vader Complete

 

So it has been a while. Reporting season is always a hectic time and doubly so when dealing with unfamiliar systems. Anyway the bulk of that is past and we’ve had a productive and relaxing long weekend. Among the jobs completed which included much pruning of grape vines and ongoing tidying of papers, we have finally got out and done a photo shoot of the completed Sir Vader costume. Which although officially finished for at least two months hasn’t felt done in the absence of good photos and so progress on the build videos had lapsed as well. That has changed as two videos have gone up today, a third will upload overnight and the final will be completed during the week.

First the cape:

Then the sword, belt codpiece and scabbard”

The painting video is uploading but has hours yet to go and the last video showing detail, donning and shooting of the images is not yet complete.

We were lucky enough to catch golden hour ( more acurately 5 minutes) at Cobar water tower.

N included watermarking in her fantastic images only at my insistence. More pics to come with the final videos.

Boxes, Birdhouses and Editing

A lot of long days have left me with not much to say of an evening save a string of Z’s. Nevertheless lots of projects have come together over the weekend and the beginning of this week.

A set of three nested photography sitting boxes. To be used for portraiture in the studio N has just signed a three month lease on.

 

A bird house.

Assembled from scraps and painted with a stinky old enamel helpfully labeled ‘Stromboli’ found in the shed. 

 

Puppets are taking over in my classroom. Yesterday I had a mixed group from various grades thanks to a sports day so we made free choice pin and paper puppets like this example which I whipped up in lunch. Today my class began making their own interpretations of the characters in the book we have been reading with the intention that they will then animate scenes from the story.

As noted on insta, we have denuded the entire town’s supply of split pins and I am now desperately hunting more. 

I finished another segment of the costume build video. We didn’t make it out for a costume shoot over the weekend as I had hoped to do. Looking forward to this weekend though.

I desperately need to do away with the huge and unwieldy collection of clips that are clogging up my hard drives. Editing a gogo.

Fell in love with the art and concept of this game:

I am absolutely devastated that I missed the kickstarter (and associated loot) last year. Can’t hardly wait for release.

 

 

2 Daily

Daily post separated from my rant.

Yesterday I crashed hard. When the boys finally went down at nine thirty I climbed into bed as well. I have had a productive two days. Yesterday I painted for much of the day. Watched ‘Maru‘ on my second monitor. Made progress on the castle card and some scribblings for evolution cards. A little thought on the logo progression and a bit of tweaking on the first of a set of text and infographic political posters.

castle-progress-9

Progress is so slow on this card

 

Today I dealt with my bank to expunge fraudulent credit card purchases from my statement (new card issued no dramas). Tinkered in the back yard. De-nailed a bunch of reclaimed timber. Attached a saw guide to my circular saw and affixed the other saw to a piece of wood with the intention for it to act as the hinge in my saw table. Decided my saw table is too terrifying and as seemingly not a single piece of timber I have is square it will likely not cut straight anyway, I have decided against continuing that build for now. I’m going to go straight to the job I was making a saw table to help with instead. Making a better handle for lifting and moving the chook tractor before we have to pack it and the hens within off to the farm for the duration of our trip to Scotland.

I experimented with filming today, Ill try again when the larger new SD card I’ve now purchased for that camera arrives.

Tonight I’m focusing on finishing an evolution card and watching some tutorial videos from Feng Zhu.

Link

The more I read the more keen I am to see a real longitudinal experiment with a universal Basic Income. A good long form on the topic here.

 

 

 

Everything looks like a screw

#blue #paint reflection selfie

A photo posted by @liatach on

Daily

After many errands and $900 down the family car is finally registered in NSW. Going to have a hectic couple of days ahead of us. Our nephews are in town until Monday so we have decided to have an early birthday party for L while his cousins can participate. He wants a ‘Super Hero Party’ in keeping with his ongoing obsession of course. Pinata, costume and honey joy production will consume much free time prior to the event on Sunday morning. We also have social obligation to fulfill in attending the local town show tomorrow as well as a relatives shed clearance sale at which I must restrain the desire to buy all the things on Saturday.

Massive gear upgrade arrived for me today. Early present from my father who has looked with disdain on my drill for too long. My recent projects have been build entirely with a single 18v Milwaukee drill. No longer will I ever have to swap bits every time I want to drill a pilot prior to sinking a screw.

 

drills

Creative

Put the second coat of enamel paint on the bird bath dish today. It has come up lovely but needs another to be called done. Progress on the logo design

Basic font with kerning adjusted

vale monstrum logo progress

Cleaned up and solidified

vale monstrum logo progress4

A little bit more tweaking still to do before the next phases. I’ll be making two semi final drafts based on combinations of yesterdays ideas and the cleaned up vector work I’ve done today.

 

My google alert for Magic Leap finally yielded something more interesting than investment news.

Vale Monstrum

 Creative

I am pleased to announce that the Half-Monster Games project I have been illustrating for has transitioned from its working title ‘Though I Walk Through The Valley’ to its new name ‘Vale Monstrum’. Rough mockups of possible logo layouts completed last night and today below. The text at top left is a slightly cleaned up (kerning and fill) version of the same font chosen for titles throughout the game. Let me know which you like.vale-monstrum-logo-mockups1-

‘Great Apes’ my new movement activity game for L has undergone first round mini prototyping. Much more to follow.

 

Daily

After wading through yet more layers of bureaucracy today with two children in tow our car is still not registered in NSW. Green slip and blue slip and tare weight are all sorted but as the car was in N’s maiden name transferring to NSW as well as changing name is apparently to much for the system to deal with in one go. We will try again tomorrow.

Tonight I’m going to attempt to clean up my Chrome bookmarks which are frankly a complete mess of nestled folders and dead links.

 

Politic

As widely anticipated Clinton and Trump won New York. I am disappointed, another climate shrugging*, neoliberal, war monger is not the worst thing that can happen in the US but it is a long way from the radical progressive option that Sanders is pushing. I hope the movement can maintain steam and continue to pull the Clinton camp to the left. But I fear the wave of disillusionment washing through millions of young Americans this evening is going to seriously stymie the chance of meaningful climate action during Clinton or Trumps first term in this, Decade Zero. I say ‘or Trump’s’ for a reason. I don’t think Hillary has this in the bag, in fact when it comes to debates and this elections critical ‘establishment vs outsider’ status she is at a serious disadvantage. It is going to be long months before either nightmare plays out.

Widespread allegations of voter suppression and fraud in parts of New York state are particularly disappointing because it makes this an unclean win and therefore bound to be revisited in the courts.

I finished ‘This Changes Everything‘ today. A must read. I’ll review it at a later date. I am waiting on N to listen to it as well in order to formulate a response that suits us both. For now I am beginning to put my text and graphical skills to work on infographics in preparation for the Double dissolution Australian Federal election now confirmed for July 2nd. Register!

 

“Stop calling me resilient. I’m not resilient.
Because every time you say, ‘Oh, they’re resilient,’
you can do something else to me.”

-Tracie Washington, New Orleans-based civil rights attorney

This Changes everything. Naomi Klein 2014 p361.

 

Colossal

Daily

My firstborn’s eighteenth birthday today!

Spent a bit of time investigating possible group adventures to take on in Amsterdam later this year. After wading through more bicycle tour pages than I care to remember I was rather excited to discover that an exhibition of the deeply creepy Gunther Von Hagensplastinated corpses are on display there.  I’m excited, I missed the travelling exhibition that came to Australia years ago.

I would also like to go and see this mural while I’m there as well as plenty of other attractions.

Links

I have today come to realise that ‘Colossal‘  host of the link above has become the absolute favourite in my feed lately.

By way of example of why take four links, favourites from their most recent posts as evidence of their superb collating abilities.

Enchanting Storybook GIFs Animated by ‘Sparrows’

tumblr_nk1ii98lVI1qgdvlco2_r1_540

A 360-Degree Black and White Drawing of a Japanese Landscape Inside an Inflatable Dome by Oscar Oiwa

New Rainbow-Hued Origami Street Art by Mademoiselle Maurice

Maurice_02

Theatrically Composed Scenes Highlight Human’s Impact on Earth

"Precipice" (2015)

Creative

Plodding away at the castle card. Plenty more to do. Progress:

castle-progress-7