October: Poll of the Pumpkin

While I kind of like all of them, I figured I'd share some of my pumpkin ideas for this year and see if anyone had an opinion they wanted to share. Considering last year's Hellraiser pumpkin, it's going to be hard to one-up myself I think. Then again, maybe not. Check it out:

Yes this does mean I'm getting ready on this end for Halloween. The best news is that my long, drawn-out ground war with my web host has come to an end, thus bringing a time of eternal peace and lots of horror movies to the site. I'm also trying to get the redesign ready, as it's been over a year since I made thing look pretty.

(Oh, and the "My Special Friend" is a large pumpkin with a smaller pumpkin w/ candle inside it, just incase my crap doodle wasn't clear enough.)

-jared

Change and Stagnation, a slight update.

Illustration Friday's challenge is not to be denied. As such:

Speaking of things that don't change, you might notice the site hasn't updated at the usual time this week. My server has decided to wage a subtle war of confusion and misinformation...expect a regular update with a review of a killer tree movie sometime tomorrow. The flick's really about how much better the White Man is than the natives of Hawaii...at least according to the director. I'll defend that more tomorrow, when you can read about a movie filmed in Hawaii before it became a member of the United States family. Good times.

-jared

Edit: And for those wondering where the heck all those paintings from Art Crash Noir are, know that I"m holding back on putting them up, as it buys me time to get the Halloween updates ready for you. October is my favorite time of year and it's going to show.

Edit EDIT: Dear Lord. The tech support crew has utilized ground troops against me. Sorry for the site not updating. I swear it's a technical issue that's severely pissing me off.

Gah.

Art Crash Noir...

I swear, I should have just called this thing Alphabet Noir. You'll understand soon. The Art Crash ended a day or so ago...and I forgot to post about it. That mostly has to do with a lack of sleep, but my apologies. Until I get around to scanning in everything, please enjoy My Cliched Emotion:

Drama makes the Art grow fonder.

-jared

Art Crash: Cheater

You know always happens during these things? The first few days are the toughest. I'm not up to speed yet...and by the time that I AM I'm at least a day behind. So every Art Crash features some sneakery of mine where I do a bunch of simple stuff in desperate attempt to catch up. It works and the normal work resumes, but man. Even weirder, the desperate catch-up stuff tends to be the next popular "thing" as you crazies seem to love the stuff that I didn't bleed to create. The ink pieces started as an experiment in speed...same with the rotoscoping. Still...fun to do.
My latest bit of cheatery involves making children's ABC books based off weird themes. I've got a geeky one and a religious one. The religious one is sort of crazy as it's got Elvis, King of Kings in it...and other such notable pseudo-religous celebrities. Enjoy a peak while I run off and get back to work.

(By the way, my scanner is acting up to I had to scan it in a stupid format. I'll post a better image of this when I scan in everything (potentially with a new scanner) sometime next week.)

You don't know how hard it was to not spell closer as "Kloser". Be grateful I resisted.

-jared

Tuesday Edit:

Man, real life is telling me I can't just stay at home and ink all day. That's what I get for not planning ahead. I'm not officially calling an end to the marathon, but I am hinting that this might not be the longest of my marathons. We'll see though.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/OhGodtheRats/gisforgruejaredhindman.jpg

Yes, I made a "Geek/Roleplaying" themed alphabet. Such a dork, I am.

-jared

Art Crash Noir: Illustration Friday

Well, I'm 4 days into the Marathon. I'm behind schedule which is ALWAYS the case with these things, but life is generally good. Here's a quick rotoscope I did for Illustration Friday's theme this week, which was "Farm." American Gothic obviously came to mind.

More later. I've got more inking to do.

-jared

Day 3: Who Wants Orange Juice?

Did I ever tell you that I grew up in Florida?

-jared

"who hopes you enjoyed your Art Crash Noir Preview today"

Day 1: Not even 8 hours in....

If you followed how things went with the last Art Crash, you'll remember that it took FOREVER to see the Art from it. The problem was that paint dries so slowly and by the time something was dry, I was already working on something else. In the end I'd sit in front of my scanner and painfully scan hundred of paintings until I didn't want to live any more. Monotony is my enemy to the extreme. Art Crash Noir, however, doesn't seem to be having that problem. Since Ink dries super-fast (and sort of means that this Art Crash will be easier in one regard), I can actually share more before the Crash is finally over. The more difficult part of this crash is that since I'm working with ink, stupid mistakes and failed experiments means I've just spent time working on something that no human being will ever be allowed to see. Still, I'm having fun with it and painting like a manic madman over here in my little studio (and by "studio" I mean living room).

Anyway, enjoy one of the many windows into what's being made during Art Crash Noir:

Based off the request "Paint something Scary to put on my wall."

-jared

Art Crash: Noir

It is time.

When I wake up tomorrow I'm going to start painting. Well, I'll start inking, to be more precise. For what could be a week or could be 300 hours or more....I'm going to do something in black & white each and every hour. I've done it before and I'll do it again. And now I'm doing it with ink.

This is the place where you can suggest random sick (or normal) things for me to include in the Art Crash. Feel free to suggest more than one thing...after all, the more ideas the better.

Oh and you can also email me at jared@headinjurytheater.com if you want to keep your request secret. You know, because everything is better when it's cloak and dagger.

-jared

(and again, if you don't know what an Art Crash is, here's some good required reading: http://www.headinjurytheater.com/artcrash.htm http://www.headinjurytheater.com/artcrashmay2006.htm )

Vampire: The Masquerade 2: The Choosening

While later today I should be talking more about the Art Crash that's happening this week, I wanted to share on tiny thing out there for the handful of geeky gothic dice-rollers out there.

Someone from New York emailed me about a contest that White Wolf is having. If you haven't played Vampire the Masquerade (or Requiem, or Whatever), then by all means ignore this blog post. For the rest of you, let me sadly admit that I played the game quite a bit...typically in a live-action format in a few nightclubs and later in the student wing of the East Campus at SUNY Bing. Fine, I played and ran the game a LOT. While I'm sure I'll get into how geeky I am/used to be eventually on the site, for now just let me say that I used to run a live-action game that was severely messed up and ended up having a player base of 150 (with about some 30-50 actually showing up every week). Hell, we even had a budget as the school considered us a theatrical troupe...horrifically fun and very, very wrong. When Hilary Clinton came to campus, her security team was terrified to find out that two floors above her was a gaggle of people dressed in black hanging chains and black lights all over the place. Good times. Point is someone out there still remembers me being a twisted man when it comes to vampiric geekiness and wanted to tell me about a contest White Wolf is having right now. While I know I might actually throw something in its general direction, I KNOW there are people reading this site that would give their eye teeth just to have "the vampire people" read their self-created madness. So, if you want to design a secret race of vampires and trick White Wolf into putting them into a book, check out this contest.

http://www.white-wolf.com/chosen/

Enjoy, my fellow gravers, romantics, and kindergoths.

-jared