Blu-Tack versus Cintiq 21UX

And, Blu- Tack wins!

As there is another use discovered for an amazing substance made out of sticky fairy dust.

Well, the story starts many months ago.

I have purchased 21 UX Cintiq sometime in May 2009 as I grew quite fond of the one I had at work, before the company I was working for folded up.

From the moment of purchase, bloody thing did not feel right.

It was impossible to calibrate as the on-screen tip had a tendency to wander away from the tip of the pen (just far enough to piss you off, or make you delete layer instead of duplicating it and save your fucked up shrunk and collapsed file instead of "saving it as" etc)

It was happening anywhere except on the dead center of the screen.

So that prompted me to use the tablet only at the dead center of the screen which eventually started getting scratched and worn out to the point where it was screeching, grinding and bumping and the screen was getting murky.

I started to hate fucking Wacom and if it was a person, I would have punched him in the face.

(On another side if it was a female person, I would definitely not dare to punch her as I have fear of women and their potential for retaliation )

Add to the mix a fact that fucking screen runs on it's own contrast settings which I to this day could not figure out how to adjust.

So you work hard on your piece of crap art, making it look good and sweet (within your mediocre skill set), only to have your art look like washed out piece of crap on any other monitor but your own Cintiq.

That said, Cintiq was still pretty good and I was too busy to part with it so I put up with all the crap, because it was saving me a lot of time and I was really, really busy.

However I reached the point where i could not stand it any more.

My warranty is out, and fucking thing was close to useless.

So, one night, a few days ago, I started pecking on my Cintiq screen and found out that I can get a reasonably thin layer of film made out of stinky acrylic crap loose on one corner.

I started peeling the fucker off and after some 20 minutes of struggle and wrestling with flaky substance, and a lot of horrible stench coming out I managed to get it off the neat sheet of glass sitting underneath.

Glass was scratch free, neat and clear, a bit more reflective, but I live in the dark anyhow, so there is nothing to reflect off the screen.

Pen slides over it more loosely than it did on that acrylic film, but I do not care, actually I prefer that feel, because that is how my good old Cintiq felt.

However, after removal of the Film, there were huge patches of glue that remained stuck to the screen.

I tried everything to take them off (also trying to be gentle not to damage the glass) but nothing worked.

I did not want to use any nasty chemicals nor did I have any, so the only tool that I found working were tips of my fingers.

That seemed to take the shitty glue off, but firstly, it was taking forever and secondly, the weak, D-vitamin depraved, skin on my digits was wearing off at the same rate as did the glue, and since there was more glue on the screen than skin on my fingers, I was at risk of running out of the skin faster than getting rid of the glue.

That is when my wife, and also my hero came to the rescue.

She was tidying up the room while I was all manly and ripping my equipment apart, calling me an idiot for ruining a 3000 dollar tool and laughing at my impotent rage but when she realized I am not giving up, and am willing to sacrifice myself to get the job done, she decided to help.

Out of one of old boxes, she pulled a packet of Blu- Tac, made a big blob and started rubbing the screen with it while I was resting my fingers.

To my amazement glue started coming off neatly and in no time the screen was clean and free.

And ready to be used.

So, there is nothing you can not do with Blu- Tac.

And it picked and digested all the crap inside itself, so by the time glue was gone, it was nowhere to be found.

Anyhow, my screen now is shiny and scratch free and I have fun working on it, just like in the good old days. Even the calibration issues are less noticeable now.

However I can not recommend this solution to others, as I am not sure if different models have different components and also there is a serious risk of breaking the glass underneath while pulling the acrylic crap off.

So, do not try that at home, and if you do and something goes wrong, do not blame me for it, I warned you and I did do mine at my own risk, in a fit of rage.

Also, I have no idea how long will the bloody thing last, now that I raped it.

(also I have no idea if I was the only one in the world having this problem due to my heavy hand and disrespect for nice technology- to me it is just a fucking tool helping to get the job done faster and once rendered useless is to be discarded and replaced, or if I can not afford another one, I would just get a cheap bamboo and go the old school)

Aand this is the story for today.

Also, here is some art.

I decided to give up on my Afrika piece, as I lost all interest and stopped coming back to it.

So I am posting bits and pieces I got done so far, but I do have another neat sketch that I am hot for now, hopefully I get to finish that one.

In this post, there are also a couple of 5 minute chicky warm up sketches and some old vessel Art style pitching pieces.

And,

Untill the next time, cheers to all,

Regards,

Milenko

Hangin' on the wagon :)

Not much this time around,  just this evening's Frazetta practice.

This man keeps to amaze me, with every piece of his I look at.

He was an amazing human being and i wish him all the best wherever he is now :)

I have not done anything like this in over six months and even though it was fun exercise, it was a bit of struggle as well.

Do not judge it too harshly it is stiff and rough around the edges as I found it really hard to maintain attention as I was going through.

Hopefully, I will pick it up again and do some better stuff soon.

That's it for this time,

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Picking Up the pieces

Eh.

it has been so long, I do not even know what to say.

Before I start blabbing about this and that, I would like to pass my thanks to everyone stopping by.

You  are better people than me, as I did not even click on my own blog link for months.

Also thank you very much to everyone who sent e-mails and left comments, I apologize for not replying, I just felt so bad about disappearing, I did not know what to say, nor did I want to promise anything because I was not sure when will I be able to come back and start posting again.

And now, here I am ,and promise to try and keep the blog alive from now on.

What a ride I had over the past months :)

Being an indie developer is both blessing and a curse, you are putting your money where your mouth is, but at the same time all the responsibility lies with you to get the job done.

I learned so much about myself and about the process itself in the course of this project.

Being a 4 man game dev band is cool (Plus Kieran and Leonnard) but at the same time, we bit so much that there was a lot of chewing to be done to get it all decent.

Game is finally looking as it should and plays nicely, even though I lost every possible perspective of whether it is looking or playing any good or not. I often had those moments when everything looked like shit, and where I was asking myself if I was digging my own professional grave by putting my name on it and letting other people see my shame.

It is a mixture of art and tech, (first serving the other) so it is a little rough around the edges visually, and it is weird because it is first game I know of that uses physics and simulation  to this extent to construct the gameplay, so sometimes unexpected results ensue. Sometimes they are funny, other times awkward. But still they are amazingly rare, considering the amount of chance it relies on.

It will be out on steam March the first for PC, so if you want to see what I am babbling about, check it out.

During the course of development, I often remembered words of my friend-

"I am so busy, I Can't even spare time to fart!"

However, I have to point here that I was just making the video-game while he, at the time, was making his riches by working as a man-whore in a German gay Bordello.

But Now I understand how he felt :)

Another thing that happened about 4 months ago was that I had a massive health scare, which got me pretty depressed, scared and unmotivated.

Let's not go into details, but 3 months, 3 x-rays one CAT scan and 2 visits to the specialist later I finally found out I will get better and live :)

I also turned 42 a couple of weeks ago, and since I did I have been thinking about all these weird things.

Like so far:

-  I have spent about 15 years of my life sleeping.

-  I ate about 15 tonnes of food (at least)

- I smoked about 200 000 cigarettes (which adds up to continuously inhaling and exhaling smoke for about 2 years)

- I have earned and then spent over a million dollars and yet spent those years at the bottom of the middle class pile...

Etc,

There is no statistic to this so it could be off by a bit, but pretty close to being accurate.

Anyhow, this is plenty for the first post in ages, so here are a few images and I seriously promise that more are coming real soon :)

Thank you all very very much for hanging around,

Kind regards,

Milenko

PS, just a little add on:

I do not want to come across as some kind of pervo trolling the facebook and looking for images of girls taking pictures of themselves, ( I barely visit my own profile once in a couple of months)- I did notice the trend though, and that page  of sketches (and a few others) are actually research for a line of T-shirt designs which I intend to call "facelook".

I still did not come up with a style or simplicity of design I am after though, and am too busy with other stuff to see it through, but one day...

Lame, hey?

What a bunch of pigs!

And it has nothing to do with politics or the recession, or any other current happening.
It is just that, another day I saw someone's silly doodle on a whiteboard that made me giggle.
Whoever drew it is awesome, and I have seen silly sketches there before and enjoyed them.
So, inspired by what I saw I did some sketches of my own and that is how this post have come to be.
On other fronts, I am still working big time and apparently will be busy for another couple of months to come.
In regards to the world, I have been isolated for so long now, I have nothing to rage about.
So here are the sketches, and until the next time,
Regards,

Milenko

AaandThe trailer is up:

Well, this is the first time the world has been shown the game in motion.

I hope someone likes it.

15 months of work, and still counting, but not much longer to wrap it up now :)

And then, noodie chicks and crazy creatures will flow like never before.

Cheers,

Milenko

And the vessel has been announced :)

Off to a great start:

EA veterans launch StrangeLoopGames

Except that title is mainly wrong because, back in the day, we only got under EA flag briefly, when they purchased "Pandemic Studios" and then culled it, and Australian studio never published a single title under the EA label.

So veterans we may be, but not the veterans of the EA army.

Anyhow, there is a couple of screen shots here:

Vessel

And a random piece of the early, obsolete character dev art.

Well, that is it for now.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

How long has it been...

Well, ages apparently.

Unfortunately, I got myself so busy with other work that I had no time to draw anything for myself.

But soon, September will be here, and I will have enough time to give some care to this here place and even more important, to start doing stupid and silly personal work I miss so much.

On professional side, "Vessel" should be announced soon, I believe it will make it's first

appearance at some expo called PAX or something which is happening some time in August somewhere in good old US of A.

Then I will share some work from that as well as talk about the whole "dressing up the game" experience.

In my personal world, nothing much happened, and I was so busy, I did not even have the time to rant and rage about anything and I seem to have entered this mellow stage where I do not care about the world any more.

here are 2 street fighter sketches I managed to put together about a week ago.

Not the greatest stuff, I know.

Cheers to all,

Milenko