The famous second post!

Yep it's here! I made a blog and posted in it more than once. Will the miracles never end? Lets see, what have I been up too? Well I’ve been watching Dharma and Greg, it’s sloppy as hell, but good fun. Been working on the novel a bit more. Done some more character renderings, and got a new digital camera. Well actually it’s second hand, my late fathers to be specific. Apparently one of his last acts of freedom, before the pain started to take over his life, was to go into the garden, and spend half an hour just photographing simple things such as flowers, leaves, dandelions, etc. He was a man with many interests ranging from religious studies, to electronics and metal work. He collected and polished stones for a while, even took up knitting and sowing. But the one hobby he consistently returned to was photography. Below is two of the last images he took.

Hopefully I can start picking up where he left off. He certainly taught me enough as a teenager, so hopfully I can adopt his interest with mix it with some of my own. CGI comes to mind, I’m always hunting for good textures online, perhaps it’s time I made them myself!

The healthy eating kick continues. I’m now steaming by bacon instead of frying it. Doesn’t come out badly either, with a little multi-grain wholemeal bread, and a dollop of brown sauce, it makes a very acceptable bacon sandwich.

I tried ordering from my first online butchers yesterday. It’s proven to be an excellent service. I ordered yesterday, and the meal order arrived today, very cold to the touch, and packed in insulated foam, with three ice gel packs that still had a core of ice in them. If you are interested, please visit http://www.fresh-meat-online.co.uk/acatalog/index.html they are well worth a look. Orders over £49.99 are free, I paid £5.99 postage for a £20 order to test their service and I’m very happy with the quality of the lamb and bacon that arrived. I’d heartily recommend them to anyone. I’m planning to purchase a large chest freezer next month and start bringing in the shopping on a monthly basis. £50 of meat will likely last me two months, and it’s far better then commercial products packed with fats, salts and sugars. I'm also investigating online fish mongers.

The next few renderings are some more characters from my book, they are not designed for commercial purposes but for my own reference, because it's easier to look at picture when remembering what a character looks like, then accessing a database and reading about it. The redhead is Susan, the blond is mary and the brunette is Kate. I won't give anything away about the characters because they are all intericle parts of the plot. The hair on Mary and Susan is messed up because I'm teaching myself to produce my own hair growths within poser. As they are they make decent reference images but i've got a long way to go before they are up to commercial standards.

This last rendering was done for my grandmother, she likes dragons so I purchased millennium dragon 2 from Daz3D and morphed it a bit, then rendered it. It's a pretty nice looking model I think, but I need to do some more work to it.

My first post

Well, I was shown a blogg today. And in true copy cat fasion, I decided to start my own. Google's blogger is dead easy, so I'm actually likely to update this one!

Today was pretty normal. My father died a couple of weeks ago, and I'm finally starting to feel normal again. It's odd phoning my mother because his voice is still on the answering machine. But I hope it's never removed!

I'm on the final part of Eldest, the sequal to Eragon, which was recently made into a film. But as usual the film doesn't do the book justice, so I doubt I'll watch the movie version. I downloaded the audiobook version from http://www.audible.co.uk/, which is a service I love.


















I've been practicing with Poser 7, using it to generate a few simple comics, and visualisation for characters in the book I'm writing. It's useful for remembering who looks like what. This isn't actually one of them, it's a retexture job on some armour I purchased on content paradise. I hope to be making my own clothing prop's before long.

I invented wholemeal dumplings today for dinner. Which is quite hard to do because wholemeal is difficult to raise. But with 80 grams of Allisons self raising wholemeal, 80 grams of home prides white self raising, and 100 grams of Aoura's suet, then steamed in my new steamer (ebay, £20 including delivery). I generated four large, nice and light dumplings. I didn't rub the suet in, I find it's better if you leave it in it's small cylinderical fakes. Along with 350 grams of steamed stewing stake, and half a plate full of steamed vegetables, it was a harty meal that made up for skipping lunch. I've still got two dumplings left! Tomorrow I'm going to try reducing the fat by 33%, and see how the result is. I'd like to find a balance between fat, texture and health!

I also plan to try a goat's cheese and chives dumpling receipe in a couple of weeks, once my finances have settled down, I've spent way too much this month!

I've pre-ordered Harry Potter and the deathly hallows for £30 (audio book) on ebay, I couldn't resist it at that price. Chances are I'll end up with a brick in a carboard box, but at least I can claim it back from paypal if all goes horribly wrong!

I'll leave you guys with a rendering for the villan in my book. His name is Ishmael, and no he's not a terrorist. The book is a fantasy work set in modern times. Yeah, yeah, it's been done before! I know, but I can't really say what makes it so different from lord of th rings, and other attempts at fantasy works, beyond being set in a modern day enviroment. Hopefully I'll get it published one day, and you can all find out for yourselfs. In the mean time, it's a good, innocent hobby that I enjoy if nothing else! (The Hair is a bit thin, but I'm still learning the hair styling controls so live with it! :-)