I have been playing Don't Starve the past weekend. It is a horror themed adventure game and has led to me wanting to explore darker "limbo style" sketching. This was my first attempt at something like that.

The idea was to create a foggy effect with a person standing in a forest. I did the drawing very quickly so it is rough and not accurate at all. At some point I thought about making it a rainy scene and leaving out the forest part, but ended up adding the trees anyway. /nobigdeal

The approach of roughly drawing without adding much detail was fun. I think these type of sketches leave much for the imagination of the viewer. Anyway, just thought I'd share this first attempt.  :) 

I have recently discovered an artist on YouTube who calls herself Veela. Aside from her great voice and purple hair, I like that she mostly features in gloomy, somewhat sad songs. Her songs usually contain an aspect of storytelling from what I can tell.

Her music is not really mainstream, but if you are like me and enjoy chillstep/dubstep/electronic, you will most definitely enjoy her music. She has a great vocal range and her voice really cuts through on high notes.

Many of her songs contains aspects of video games, sci-fi characters and the likes. This probably makes her name suit her music style well, as Veela are mythical supernatural beings from Slavic folklore (you should know this if you've watched Harry Potter). /hmm 

I did a little bit of digging and have discovered that her real name is Victoria Burnett and that she is from Canada. She seems like a really nice person and does the occasional vlog on YouTube to interact with people who listen to her music. It also turns out that she is an avid cosplayer! :) 

Lastly, what I find really cool about her is that a lot of her music is released as free downloads! No reason not to check it out! Below is one of her free songs that should remind you of Bioshock: 

You can find her on SoundCloud, YouTube and her website. /bye

We all have limited time before we finally kick the bucket. Is this time too short for any real significance or is it long enough? These are some fundamental things that many philosophical minds have thought about since, well, the beginning of time. Another important question that we have to ask is why do most people never get to live their dreams? 

The study of why humans fail is nothing new. A wise old Roman philosopher known as “Seneca the younger” wrote about this topic 2000 years ago! He discovered 8 reasons why people are generally unsuccessful. I believe these are quite accurate, even today! I’d like to briefly share these reasons. 

Typical reasons why humans do not reach their dreams 

1. Greedy activity 
2. Dedication to useless tasks 
3. Drinking/drugs 
4. Laziness 
5. Worrying what other people (will) think of you 
6. Self-imposed servitude to thankless people (e.g. one-sided relationships) 
7. Pursuing other people’s money (making someone else rich) or worrying about your own money too much 
8. Going after no fixed goal 

Do any of these seem familiar? I believe that the 8th point is the greatest reason why people typically don’t achieve success. People tend to “drift” around, get carried away by politics/news/sport and continue along with what everyone else is doing. 

I have heard people tell all kinds of stories about something that they would like to do (or achieve), but almost all of them don’t actually do something about it. Few start to chase their dreams. Even fewer commit once they've started and soon stop chasing. Many people have told me they just don’t have time to chase their dreams. False. Almost nobody ever has time. You have to make time. 

Many people have told me they just don’t have time to chase their dreams. False. Almost nobody ever has time. You have to make time.

There could be no simpler recipe to get to your dreams:

• Decide what is important to you. 
• Set a fixed goal and commit to chasing it. 
• Do it. And do it. And do it until you have reached your goal. 

Don’t just follow along. Don’t be like most of the people in this world. Decide what is important to you and go for it! You might just succeed. :) 

JSYK: I shot the post image from inside a Toyota Hilux with my Nikon DSLR the other day. /nobigdeal

Recommended book: Seneca on the shortness of life

Last night while the wind was blowing heavily outside and rain was creeping up on the city, I decided to make coffee and draw something. I felt a bit lazy so decided to just use normal A4 printing paper. I had a quick look through some reference photos that I keep on my laptop and then jumped right into drawing. It was a fun drawing! :)

The weekend that was

A number of interesting things happened this weekend. Saturday morning I had the task of impersonating my younger brother at a function. The awkward part was that I had to introduce myself to so many people! I will think twice before I do that again. Hopefully they don't read my blog... /XD

Saturday night I hung out with my brother and his friends. Most of them are actuarial science students, so the conversations were great! And of course the Japanese rugby team won the Springboks! How cool is that?! I don't dislike the Springboks, but I really like unexpected events. Apparently only 0.2% of SuperBru players got that one right! /:)

The week to come

We have a public holiday on Thursday (24 September) in South Africa. It is titled "Heritage Day". Frankly, I don't care what the holiday is actually about. The good part is that it allows me to have a long weekend if I can manage to slip away on Friday. I'm going to do just that... /nobigdeal 

I plan on going home for the weekend and spend some time with my family, I haven't seen them in ages. Now to get back to my code...

Yesterday I decided to quickly draw a magician girl while taking a break. In this post I will share some pictures of how it progressed and tell a little bit of what I was trying to achieve. It is not a realistic or accurate drawing, but it was fun to do.

Step 1: Draw a face with some expression

I started off with a generic face. The idea was to create an expression that looked as if the magician girl was casting a spell or perhaps shouting something. It kinda looks like she is just gasping for air, but whatever... /nobigdeal

Step 2: Draw some magician features

I'd guess that magicians would typically wear hoodies or some kind of strange hat. I decided to go with a hoodie and roughly outlined where I think the hoodie should be. I drew some hair to make her look a little less weird. I also started playing with the idea of the magician girl holding a staff (bottom left corner).

Step 3: Draw a staff and some armor

I drew some armor that is probably a little bit to big, but who cares? I also added an (ugly looking) staff. At this point the drawing looks kinda bad, but I thought that I could just fix it later.

Step 4: Get her face to look less weird and more human

This was the first part of adding detail to the sketch - especially eyebrows. I shaded her face a tiny bit, colored her hair and outlined the overall drawing. :)

Step 5: Improve by shading and adding details

In step 4 her face was already looking better. The same approach from step 4 was followed to add detail to her armor, staff and of course her hoodie, I drew strange symbols on her hoodie to create the impression of mysticism.

So yeah, that was the process. I only used 0.5 mm pencil lead (as always). Hope you had fun looking at the progression of the drawing! /bye

A few days ago, as I was making my way to campus, I passed a new Renault Captur. It totally caught my eye. Usually I don't take much notice of car models, but this in an exception. I immediately liked the design so much that I later just had to look it up online.

The Captur is a compact SUV that features a stylish sporty design. I'm not a "petrol head" at all, so I don't read car magazines or even watch Top Gear (does it still exist?). Futhermore I can think of only one person in my family who drives a Renualt, so there is no bias in me liking the Captur.

I found a really cool feature on Renault's website. You can select a car model and then personalize it to your liking. You get to view to exterior model in 360 degrees as well as the interior. Anyway, here is my design of the Captur: Link.

What I like about the Renault Captur

• Design - I love the look, but almost exclusively the blue/silver color scheme. Looks ain't everything, but it is surely very important! :)
• Interior detail - From the photos that I've seen, it is very neatly laid out on the inside with many practical features for a day-to-day car.
• Modular layout - The interior space can be adjusted with a sliding 3-seater in the rear that can also be folded down.
• Economical - It has an ECO mode to improve fuel comsumption.
• Renault R-Link - Nice mutltimedia integration features.
• Relatively cheap - Pricing starts at around $ 22,000
• It has pretty much all the features you'd expect from good modern cars.

I am actually quite tempted to book a test drive. Maybe I should get one next year! /hmm

Last night I had a quick look through some old downloads that I had on my computer. I discovered a video by Feng Zhu where he did some quick landscape designs for an old PlayStation game called Chrono Cross. His paintings are really good and made me think of getting more into digital art.

I am comfortable enough with traditional sketching (pencil + paper) to think that I shouldn't have issues with drawing digitally. I have played around with a few Wacom Intuos tablets before, but have never done anything serious. So I am considering to buy a new graphics (drawing) tablet! :)

The two most prominent brands for digital drawing that I know of are Wacom and Huion. Wacom is an expensive and higher-end brand that focuses on professionals (or hobbyists willing to spend a small fortune). On the other hand, Huion is a Chinese company that offers good technology for a fraction of the price that Wacom does.

I don't really have a budget. but would like to spend below $300. Basically this means I can purchase any Huion graphics tablet, but only some Wacom tablets. I should be able to get a tablet with at least 5080 LPI (lines per inch), 2048 pressure levels and an active drawing area of at least 8" x 5".

I guess it is time to shop around and see what product has a good value-for-money ratio... 

Check out Feng Zhu's blog here!