Dead Trilobite Illustration's blog

New slots have opened up, if you're interested in commissioning artwork from me! http://ping.fm/Dn75f

Got a new logo designed and put up. Finally, my site's no longer sad and neglected. Go see! http://ping.fm/2ABUg

Sprites make excellent slave labor

Seriously, they do. All you do to keep them happy is chat with them and they find materials and make items for you. Crazy.

This game isn't really anything revolutionary, nor does it bring anything substantially new to its genre... but it's free, it's fun and it's cute. It's pretty well-made overall, compared to some free MMORPGs, with lots of quests to minimize grinding... or, at least, to justify it.

Originally published at stale coffee. You can comment here or there.

Death and Taxes - or not

Got my taxes done today. I am legally poor, lol.

My state likes to force people to get health insurance, even if they're po'... and since I was po', I didn't get it because I couldn't afford it. Then my tax preparer person was like, "Oh shit, you're gonna get penalties!" (note: This is paraphrased; doesn't actually talk like that) and so I dreaded getting my taxes done.

Then today I ended up getting no return, but also owing nothing because I'm too poor. I was mildly bummed because I was hoping for some money from the gub'ment, but I'll settle for not having to pay them anything.

Moral of the story? Sometimes you can be poor enough to break even and avoid stupid fines.

I wanna move to Canada so my tax money goes to something useful (single-payer health care).

Originally published at stale coffee. You can comment here or there.

New Year

This is how 2010 starts off for me.

And three more days of it in the forecast.

So, I'll spend it working on these.

Originally published at stale coffee. You can comment here or there.

What a Load of Shirt

As some may know, I design t-shirts on occasion, and sell them through the print-on-demand service MySoti (formerly known as Bountee). I don't churn out designs by the dozen and I only have five up for sale at the moment, but the ones I do have up seem to be gaining popularity recently.

I've posted about Squid Rocket before (which, to date, has the most sales), but over the last month I've thrown two new designs up, although they somehow managed to keep in the theme of unlikely beasties. Weird, huh?

"Yeti" features... well, a yeti (sasquatch, abominable snowman, bigfoot, wendigo, etc), who is ice fishing. The concept for this design I can't take all the credit for. I was in the mood to doodle but at a loss for what, so I asked a friend and she replied, "Draw a yeti ice fishing." So, I did, and ended up liking the sketch enough to finish it and slap it on a shirt.

"Innsmouth" is a tribute to the work of H.P. Lovecraft. It features my personal interpretation of a Deep One, as described in The Shadow over Innsmouth, but with an anime-esque twist. The text is a spoof on those touristy shirts you can find in almost any iconic town or city, this time promoting the seaside port town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts (entirely fictional and also featured in the aforementioned Lovecraft story). It's kind of a nice little joke for any Lovecraft fan, but you can still wear it out in public without people thinking it's especially bizarre or in bad taste.

When I first opened up a shop at MySoti, I didn't really think I should expect much out of it. I figured I might get a sale or two a year and when I finally decided to buy a shirt of my own design for myself or friends and family, the option would be there. Sure, there are fancier sites with cheaper shirts, like Threadless, but that's a situation where your design being printed for sale is determined by popular vote, so there's always a chance it won't ever happen. I know this from experience when I submitted Squid Rocket to Threadless and barely got 2.0/5 as a final score. Not enough to get printed. So, in a way, this is more convenient and a better option simply because I don't have to rely on popular opinion to ever get my designs on a shirt.

Originally published at stale coffee. You can comment here or there.

No Excuses

Yes, I know. I know. I'm a terrible blogger. Absolutely the worst, and I don't really have much of an excuse for the complete radio silence, other than I was kinda burnt out and busy and couldn't arse myself to blog about anything, really.

This is the newest teaser video for Guild Wars 2, sequel to the popular MMORPG by ArenaNet. For a good while, there was no new information coming out about this game, and many of us who were looking forward to a continuation of the story of Tyria were fearing the worst -- that it had gone the way of such anticipated games as Duke Nukem Forever and Starcraft Ghosts... vaporware, never to be made. While these videos alone don't definitively prove that GW2 will ever actually be released, it's still a sign that SOMETHING is going on at the offices of ArenaNet, so I'm hoping the momentum will keep up, despite all the delays and lulls in updates about content and features.

From what I'm seeing, this game is going to be fantastic. I've always loved the aesthetics of Guild Wars, which were much higher quality than competing games, such as WoW, without having to resort to an absurdly cartoony style, and GW2 seems to be going down the same design road as Dragon Age: Origins, getting darker and grittier as new material comes out. Dark fantasy is the best fantasy, in my opinion.

Another thing I really liked in this video is how they're taking the Sylvari race. In Eye of the North, they debuted, but you saw very little of them and knew even less about them. From the original designs you first got a glimpse of, they were very childlike, spritely creatures... and I wasn't terribly enthused about that. However, it seems ANet has decided to mature them a bit and make them less like scantily clad little girls wearing foliage for clothing and made them less overtly human.

I'd be lying if I said this video didn't get me all hyped up over GW2 all over again.

Originally published at stale coffee. You can comment here or there.

Squaresoft save the Queen!

So I'm replaying Final Fantasy IX...

Originally published at stale coffee. You can comment here or there.

Pointy Ears (Geekend)

Runes of Magic got its latest big update (really, sort of a quasi-expansion, if you think about it), which introduced two new classes exclusive to the new race: Elves. So, when I have the time, as my weeks are kind of busy and weekends are spent unwinding and doing laundry, I've been piddling around on a new elven druid I made.

Druids seem to be more self-sufficient than their human priest counterparts, but this may just be racial modifiers coming into play, such as higher dexterity/agility for better dodging and more potent magic ability. I'm really not sure, but it's refreshing to be able to do a moderately difficult quest on my own when it would take me hours to get a decent party together otherwise.

Outside of Elven Isle (the newbie area if you start off as an elf character instead of a human), I don't see a lot of changes to the world in-game, which is why I really only consider "Chapter II", as they call it, to be a quasi-expansion, rather than a full expansion which normally would add more than just a race, two classes and a new tutorial location.

I also got Scribblenauts last week. I have to say, it's probably one of the most innovative and original games I've seen on the DS in a good, long time. It's really refreshing and I love how open-ended it is.

Originally published at stale coffee. You can comment here or there.

Devonian Love Affair

Prints available from my DeviantART store or RedBubble

My newest illustration and also the design for my next tattoo (probably getting it within the next 6 months or so). Can you tell I'm a little bit of a paleo-geek?

Apologies for the last two Geekends not happening. Nothing much to post about; not playing any new games at the moment and there's not a whole lot of interest happening in the games I am playing right now. HOWEVER, there's a huge update for Runes of Magic scheduled for Tuesday and I'm going to be picking up Scribblenauts tomorrow. So, there should be some stuff worth posting Geekends about in the near future.

Also, my wonderous friend Nanner was quite the peach and bought me a couple of skeins of handpainted superwash sock yarn from Poppy Flower Fibers and they were waiting for me when I came home today. They're absolutely GORGEOUS and so smooshy.

The photo really doesn't do them justice, but it will have to suffice.

Originally published at stale coffee. You can comment here or there.