Happy Holidays everyone!

Al is on vacation until Jan. 8th.

Wow, number 90, and close to a second year. :)

Hot Stuff

Toys, thanks to the Transformers, is now the hot buzz in Hollywood:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125737028160428961.html

Maybe I should pitch a Breyer model horse movie.

Pablo's NaNoWrimo Project

Day behind updating LJ. Sorry folks.

National Novel Writing Month has started. Get cracking!

Still ew.

Sadly, still inspired by true events in the labs...my own Halloween horror happened a few weeks ago.:)

The Studio has been upgraded to Snow Leopard. No issues with the Wacom, and my only software hitch was that the Snow Leopard friendly NeoOffice isn't out until today. Fortunately Google docs has helped get me by in the meantime. CS4 seems happy, and Pixelmator runs. Comic Life Deluxe has been certified for Snow Leopard by Plasq, but I haven't run it yet. City of Heroes runs as well.:)

Ew.

Yes, still based on actual events.

Yup, Shelley is no more. Got to be too much trouble to keep track of. My main Facebook account will still only be business networking/art but I'll still keep tabs on my friends. Just no "conversational" stuff. You LJ'ers are going to have that "exclusive" content.

At least until I find a twitter client I like. *laugh*

Ok, focus.

1. I just need to do nine Al's to cover October/November.
2. Purge the house.
3. Do a practice short story before writing a novel in November.

Not sure why the above looks like cleaning the Augean Stables. Really, it should be like shooting womp rats in Beggar's Canyon.

I've been attending more online art classes from Massive Black. This weekend is a two day course of comic covers and illustration with Marko Djurdevic whose work never fails to drop my jaw.

One of my faves: http://www.comicsreporter.com/images/uploads/blade05_thumb.jpg
Latest work here: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=168095

A side note, he's also the only one at Reverie whose hair was wierder than mine.

I went to a model horse show last weekend and had a blast. For those interested in that sort of thing, I blogged about it here: http://theunstable.blogspot.com. For those not interested, here are the non-horse fun bit about the trip: I got introduced to Hank, the greyhound. He belongs my friend Jamie. I stayed over at her place during a leg of the trip. Anyhow, Hank is the sweetest dog I ever met, and he liked me quite a bit. Fortunately, I do speak dog and dogs naturally like me to a point to whenever I do run into a hostile dog it really hurts my feelings and I think there must be something wrong with it. I've only had two dogs that hated me on sight...one was a *ahem* "blooded" Dalmation *inbred cough cough* and they are not known as a smart breed to begin with. The other I don't know what her problem is, and I find it sort of baffling.

Anyhow, Hank came up to me expectantly but instead of mowing over me just sidled up in a sneaky cat-like fashion and gave me the liquid dog eyes with the eyebrow thing. I went "Oh, aren't you elegant?" and started petting him and he wagged his tail. Jamie: "He WAGGED! He never WAGS! For ANYBODY!" He greeted me first over Jamie on the trip back which amused Jamie's wife.:) So I've officially dubbed greyhounds as "teh awesum." They are sweet, impeccable manners (they don't steal food) and they have the quiet cool thing. They either go 50 miles an hour (or whatever their top speed is) or they are beanie babies. Hank also thinks he's a lapdog. And it's hilarious when you wake up in the morning and you see a greyhound upside down in a recliner with his legs in the air all spider like and his head lolling over the chairseat.

Of course, that means I know three Hanks, one is a black gay man from Missippi and two are dogs. Yeah that won't be awkward in conversations at all!

October: While prepping for the horse show and taking care of myriad errands I got tired of NOT FINDING THINGS. There was paperwork I needed for the Goodwill donations, particular craft and art items not in there place, etc etc. So my war with THE STUFF returns with Khan-like vengance. Of course Sicilian revenge isn't cold, but I have the advantage of having the upper hand when death is involved (reference to The Princess Bride there.) So I've dedicated October to cleaning house. Top down. No prisoners. It's Samhain, the pagan New Year (although if you don't like that month, there is the traditional New Year in January, the Chinese New Year in February, the Persian New Year in March, and the Tibetan New Year in April....) It's also close to my birthday in November so we'll make it a cleansing process. Or something. Picard? Are you with me?

November is going to be working on converting one of nachtwyrm's short stories into a graphic form. I'm looking forward to doing that. I plan to write Venatrix since November is National Novel Writing Month. And I already have that month's Al plotted out.

Speaking of Al I need to work on October and November's installments. I might as well finish out the rest of the year while I'm at it.

Unfortunately based in truth!

Rat Race Blues

Madbadcat gave this one an interesting title: Sensei Shisho Sifu Al

Full concept painting can be seen here.