Latest paintings

Stormslapper is part of a series of acrylics done in a style I’ve audaciously named PopMash - a low-brow mix of icons from popular culture, mashed together to create an unlikey combination. In this case, a stormtropper and a 1950’s pinup queen.

10"x10", Acrylic on canvas

Exclaimor

8"x8", Acrylic on canvas

I was watching one of favourite movies the other day, The day the earth stood still, whilst supping on a cheeky Shiraz and felt compelled to paint Gort. It’s a bit rough, but so was I at the time of painting...

8"x10", Acrylic on canvas

Angsty poetry #2: What can I call my poem?

A friend (Rob) mentioned yesterday that my most recent posts all seem to be work related. The fact that all I'm really doing at the moment is work, probably has an awful lot to do with it.

Yep, all work and no play makes bigfatrobot a dull blog. So, as a remedy, of sorts, it's angsty poetry time ...

What can I call my poem?

My poorly stitched slacks
Now lie on the ground
Torn and legless

My slovenly manufactured shirt
Has fallen off me
Like a cheap male stripper’s faux Navy uniform

I am not cursed with good looks
I am blessed with ugliness
Which provides a good mask for my inner dullness

I am on the dole
That is why I cannot afford a good Chardonnay

I’m hungry
I ate my poem
But I’m still hugry

This poem will not satisfy my stomach’s needs
Because it is cooked on cheap paper and sautéed with cheap ink

They say cigarettes quench hunger
But I have eaten ten of them now
And I’m still hungry

What can I call my poem?

New release at Ballistic: ESSENCE: The Face

Just popped up the web pages for our latest title... ESSENCE: The Face.

Designed for artists with a mid-to-advanced understanding of 3D character creation, the book starts with the photo shoot of model Monika and draws on the methods of six professionals to create a digital model from beginning to end.

Working as a team each artist develops a piece of the 3D character puzzle to show you how lifelike characters are created in a production environment. The Face encompasses reference photography, modeling, UV mapping, texturing and rendering to create a digital double that would be at home in a next-gen game or HD movie.

Massive Black story

Just finished a story about our chums at Massive Black, which is a San Fran based studio doing some tasty art. Check it out...

Technical tome

At the moment I have my head buried deeply into a technical tome entitled Search Engine Marketing by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt. It's a book on effective search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Yep, my life rocks!

After a cursory peruse, here are some of the key points I gleaned…

Keyword prominence
To improve –
- Ensure that Query words are in titles and initial paragraphs.
- Use emphasized text (bold, italic, underline).
- Alt text on images.

Spiders (programs that crawl through the web, going from link to link whilst indexing)
To improve indexing -
- Break up a large page – improve keyword density.
- Very large pages might not get crawled.

Javascript bloat
- Move JavaScript to an external file – spider does not have to crawl through it.

Title
- Lead with generic brand name (in our case Digital Art Books – because we don’t really have a globally recognized brand name (yet)).
- Tailor to what searchers are after (digital art, tutorials, how-to etc).
- Get rid of welcome, home etc. – leaving more untruncated room for keywords.
- Combine keywords – try to use one singular and one plural form to enure the page is found no matter which form the searcher uses.

Snippets (shown below title on the search results page)
- Place important keywords together at the start of description.
- Make sure brand name is there, so customers associate description with brand.
- Around 100-150 characters (Google).
- 150-200 characters (Yahoo).
eg. Ballistic digital art books present d’artiste: Character Modeling 2, featuring tutorials by … (96 characters) Keywords: digital art, character modeling, tutorials. Branding: Ballistic, d'artiste, Character Modeling 2

Slowly fiddling with my 'bot.

Slowly fiddling with my 'bot. (That title is for you folks on RSS)

This time he has a victim.

The carnival is over

The mad month of cultural stuff in Adelaide has sadly come to a close.

It all started in the beginning of March when WOMAD set up shop, bringing lovely and talented folk from all over the world to entertain and enthrall. The highlight for me was Yasmin Levy, an Israeli singer of Ladino, a Judeo-Spanish form that dates from the 15^th cenury. It sounds much like flamenco - very emotive and beautiful. Other tasty aural morsels were provided by: The Gotan Project, Mahotella Queens, Lila Downs, Augie March and the Fado singer, Mariza.

Yasmin Levy

Huun-Huur tu - throat singers from Tuva, Russia, near Mongolia

Lila Downs jamming with legendary jazz drummer Bill Cobham

The only bad thing was the Hades-like heat on the Saturday. It was 40 degrees plus in the shade -and the shade was rapidly claimed and guarded by the quicker hippies. This, combined with a 2 year old drought, northerly winds and the stampeding feet of 80,000 people, whipped up a dusty tempest leaving thousands coughing and reaching for their tissues. Next year I’m going to set up a stall to sell face masks and anti-histamines.

At the same time, the first annual Adelaide Fringe began. Annoying timing really – there aren’t enough Adelaideans to go around to keep two big festivals ticking along at the same time. However, as the dust settled on WOMAD, the Fringe picked up and, according to the organizers, became a big success. The highlight for me were those high-kicking, ceiling-dangling, contorting Burlesque girls from La La Parlour with a reprise of their ever-popular Tarnished show.

However, Adelaide will now revert to a city of tumble-weeds and serial killers until the Cabaret Festival reaches our shores in June.