An Abundance of Updates f(x) = x + 1

Hello reader!

University hath cometh, as has university loan. Up til now I was a worthless wench, scrounging off her parents and boyfriend occassionally. Today I have managed to pay them back some of what I owed. And now comes the time when I can start buying all my books and games etc that will be required for university!

One thing I really want to get is a Wacom tablet.. or any decent graphics tablet. I have no idea which is the best tbh, I am guessing Wacom? For hardware I generally visit ebuyer.com as it's a very cheap site for peripherals and hardware in general. After viewing some tablets I came across this! Its an innovative mouse that allows you to apply pressure, tilt, rotate and pan when working in 3d worlds (such as Google Sketchup (will talk more about that program in a later update), 3ds max, etc.)
It's like £40 so I'm considering buying it (providing I get a job) and giving a little review maybe? I think it would be handy considering I work alot in 3d environments.

Back to the tablets.. There's a company called Trust Design who make fairly smallish ones for really cheap (like around £30) who actually have some really good reviews and the particular product I am looking at has 5 stars. One says,

"Compared to the Wacom models this graphics tablet does feel cheap, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it works well with the graphics programs that I use and is easy to adapt to.

Obviously I would prefer where possible to use my Wacom, but this is cute, light and portable, and while it lacks most of the tool tweaking, it is perfectly usable."

So mebbe I will give it a shot. I'm no professional.. I just need something to start out with, as I have never used one before.

I also finished reading An Abundance of Katherine's. It's an easy and interesting read and I learnt alot of mathematics in the process. The basic synopsis is it's about a boy prodigy called Colin who has dated 19 girls in his lifetime so far all called Katherine. And he is dumped by every single one of them. After being dumped by a Katherine he was dating for over a year he escapes on a road trip with his friend where he attempts to work a formula based on age, popularity, attractiveness etc. in order to predict whether the relationship will end and whether the dumping will be done by boy or girl. Its really witty and enlightening and special, I think. Definately worth reading as its quite a quick one, teaches you things you never knew and gives you some giggles.

Now I am reading Mass Effect: Ascension which Alan lent me (as we're both kind of obsessed with Mass Effect) and Stardust by Neil Gaimon, which I am LOVING.

Ulzzang.

Pinc.Stuff's new video opened my eyes (literally?) to something called Ulzzang which seems to be some kind of Korean fad where girls make themselves look as doll-like as possible and take photos in certain poses/positions which are then photoshopped to glory so that they go from this..

To this..

YES that is the same girl. She is wearing contacts which make your iris appear much larger, pale face foundation (possibly some kind of white powder), thick eyeliner on the top of her eye, thick white on the bottom water-line, white pigment on her eyelid and brow-bone. She has darkened her eyebrows and extended them slightly/neatened them up, and put pale/pinky lipstick and gloss on. Fake eyelashes also. Then with a fair amount of photoshop and posing you get this! Apparently it helps to say 'Chuuuuuu' when you pose to get a good pout. It is important to pose correctly to make it appear that your eyes are larger, to conceal the 'wide-set' nose and to get a good overall face shape.

Here is my attempt following Pinc.Stuff's tutorial!

I'm not using fake eyelashes, even though I have some, they're not really the right 'style' for this. I wore black eyeliner on top, silver for my water-line and around my eyes and used a jumbo eye-cream stick for highlight at my brow bone, and I used normal foundation as my skin is damn pale anyway. Photoshop is great.. i basically exaggerated the black on top of my eye, as well as the white, lightened the entire image to make my skin appear fairer and blemish-free and also played with colour balance on the shadows (made them darker) and colour balance on the mid-tones (made those darker also). My hair is naturally red, but you can see here it looks almost dark brown to add to the Ulzzang effect! Strike a pose!

Me before .. ;)

Emma.

A whole new World.

There's something comforting and profound about blogging whilst lay in bed with your laptop. Theres's something rather uncomfortable about your laptop's keyboard having the inability to type the letter 'e' and struggling to work the space bar.. probably the two most used keys on any qwerty keyboard ever. Tip for today: Character Map is your best friend and worst enemy!

Sooo! I began an RSS feed on a particuarly important site for anyone trying to get into any aspect of the Games Industry - GameCareerGuide.com this site being particuarly impressive because its so diverse and theres always an interesting article to read wrote by various people in the ACTUAL INDUSTRY! Each week there is a new game design challenge posted, and I always find them fun to read over and have a think about them, however you only get 2 days to submit your entry.. but I am making excuses for myself, I really should submit something especially as this Summer I've had no job.. so no excuse at all! Last weeks was 'Satire' and you had to come up with a concept for a game whose ultimate goal was satirical in nature. This is the kind of stuff which really gets you thinking - its why I love the site so much! This weeks challenge is to create a game that will keep players interested in it for four years.. and the catch? It must be a mini-game of the 2012 Olympics. Haaaaaaa!

So I found the link to the forum to see what ideas people had and by doing so, discovered how awesome the forums were too! I learnt alot just by browsing for 15 minutes about the direction my portfolio etc. should be taking if I want to get into level design by people who are already established in the industry. They cover Design, Art, Programming, Sound and Writing. So gogo check it out!

Nothing more to update except I've been pointlessly researching Mayan archeology and religion, and some other Pre-Classic cultures. I know I'm weird, I get fascinated by this stuff. Oh and happy September! University starts in 15 days yarr!