JesusRocks's Blog

BAR Web-Comic

JesusRocks — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:58:20 -0500

Yeah, after looking through my old stash of comic books I used to draw when I was younger, I have decided to step it up a notch and start making a webcomic based on the idiosyncracies of the BAR. This will, like SSY's use Gaia Avatars, mainly because I am terrible at drawing with a mouse, and can't draw Chibi's on paper...

Characters So Far
(Not Including Myself)

I will be adding more characters as I go along. POST HERE (sorry - don't PM) if you want to be in it, and tell me what you wanna look like.
Note to other Webcomic makers: Feel free to use these chibis for your webcomic if you wish
_________________________________________________________________________________________
ISSUE ONE
ISSUE TWO
ISSUE THREE: YGOTAS ANNIVERSARY EDITION
ISSUE FOUR
ISSUE FIVE
ISSUE SIX - PART ONE
ISSUE SIX - PART TWO
ISSUE SEVEN - IODASHI'S BIRTHDAY SPECIAL

The UK Education System

JesusRocks — Thu, 29 May 2008 11:20:27 -0500

For those of you who are not from the UK and who keep asking what the education system is like here... Also for those of you younger ones who are from the UK who want to know what comes next...

These are all in order of progression.

Nursery (Optional)

~Start of Compulsory Education~
Infant School - Start at 4/5 years old
- Reception
- Year 1
- Year 2
Primary School - 7/8 years old
- Year 3
- Year 4
- Year 5
- Year 6 - Key Stage 2 SATs exams
Secondary School - 11/12 years old
- Year 7
- Year 8
- Year 9 - Key Stage 3 SATs exams
- Year 10
- Year 11 - General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams
College - 15/16 Years old (Semi Compulsory)
- 1st Year - AS Level (or equivalent) Exams
- 2nd Year - A2 Level (or equivalent) Exams
~End of Compulsory Education~

University (optional - can attend at any age above 18)
Bachelors Degree:
(Depending on Degree Course)
- 1st Year
- 2nd Year
- 3rd Year
(4th Year)
etc...
Masters Degree:
- 1st Year
- 2nd Year
(3rd Year)
PhD:
- 1st Year
- 2nd Year
- 3rd Year
- 4th Year
- 5th Year
(depending on course)

Thus ends the UK education system

JR\'s Photoshop Techniques EXPLAINED

JesusRocks — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:02:28 -0500

To make my photoshop images, I google the source images that make up various (smaller) parts of the completed image - like a hand in a different position ... and then blend them in.

EG:

Also, I draw my own stuff on photoshop or clone/otherwise manipulate a portion of a source image to fit in with what I want it to do. For example, with my Chibi Anime Self, I cut the figure up into portions, usually splitting the figure up at the joints, and then manipulating then imto roughly the right angle, then painting, cloning or healing the bits, so that they blend together. Then for stuff like the Energy Blasts, I just draw those in using the paint brush, different shades of the same colour going from lighter to darker, and usually (but not always) the "Lens Flare" filter.

EG:

For lettering I use the FX Palette and apply a "drop shadow" - I then go into the FX options and get rid of the drop shadow, and instead use the "Stroke" feature, which puts a coloured border round the words (usually black in my case). I also use this technique increasingly for Cartoon-like Lightning bolts. Just get a white brush at 1px draw your jagged lightning bolt, and put a blue stroke aroung it.

EG:

I also make copious use of the different Blending Modes available in the Layers Palette... if you want to blend something and it doesn't look quite as authentic in "Normal" then change it to something like "Overlay" or "Soft Light". And use "Colour" to change colour sometimes - be careful with obviously light or dark colours because the luminosity of the item you are painting stays the same - so you cannot paint a dark item white, it just won't come out using this method.

EG:

With the above example, I had to use one of the blending modes to make the Logo look like it was authentically attached to the otherwise BLANK hoodie. Gaia Online Avatars only ever have blank hoodies, I photoshopped my University's Christian Union Hoodie Logo onto it.

Above all: USE A DIFFERENT LAYER FOR EVERY CHANGE YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE - that way, anything you do during the course of editing is non-destructive to the image, and you can delete each layer if they are wrong.

Thank you

Site Phail and Google Awesomeness

JesusRocks — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:10:53 -0500

Here's some of the lowdown from the grapevine - When the server phailed epicly, probably due to a mixture of someone getting angry and going ape-sh*t on it and Underling announcing his departure from the site on his (now non-existant) blog entry... (yes... server phail was caused by Underling's sheer awesomeness and not Cueball �_�), the whole site got re-set back to it's latest uncorrupted state, which was ONE MONTH BEFORE I JOINED SRSLY WTF!?

So, my entire existance was deleted... including my 3 blog entries. However, thanks to Google's unadulterated awesomeness, I found my blogs again by clicking on the link to the "Cached" files on the search engine... YAY

�_� but my profile STILL says I only joined yesterday... which is in itself EPIC PHAIL...

SH Feedback (REPOST from 17th April 08)

JesusRocks — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:40:29 -0500

I know this is quite late, seeing as I came back on the 5th of April and it is now the 17th... and this appears to have caused some confusion... *points at Rebbie*

... but Spring Harvest was AWESOME!

Now, I've been to Butlins before on a normal Butlins holiday... not really much to do there... maybe some evening entertainment, a few funfair rides... not really anything to shout about...

However, when you get 7000 Christians rammed into this little holiday camp at the end of the financial year, for a MASSIVE event, with all the Christian bookshops (like Wesley Owen and, of course: the Spring Harvest stand) inside the Skyline (the massive permanent main "tent") ... all the worship leaders, bands and speakers ... all the wide ranging workshops for the week (like dance, drama, art, music etc...) ... all the places for topical conversations in the evenings... and also the evening comedy entertainment (like chatshows and stand-up) happening... you get quite an amazing experience.

Even the food was good *laughs* ... i personally loved it and I would definately go again next year... no doubt about it

loved it!

Week Off (REPOST from 27th March 2008)

JesusRocks — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:38:31 -0500

Hi guys, I know it probably won't make much of a difference to any of you, but I thought I'd just let you know that I am going to be away from Monday 31st until Saturday 5th.

This is just in case anyone wonders why I'm not on here all throughout next week.

I'm going to Butlins Holiday Camp in Skegness for the Christian holiday camp called Spring Harvest (Butlins as a whole love the Spring Harvest event and take it on because it's the start of the financial year, and it's (apparently) the only time of the year where the staff don't suffer from any rudeness - so they're more than happy to host the event ).

I don't know if any other Christians on this site will be going (either to Skeggy like me, or to Minehead), but I hope that you will find it most enjoyable

See you in a week,
God bless,
JR

So... Epic Fail BAR (REPOST)

JesusRocks — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:36:15 -0500

EDIT: REPOST from 16th March 2008

So yeah... the Irony... I was waiting for like 2 hours for the last BAR to end with another window open with the start of my Anti-Fail BAR ready to be submitted... then, when the last BAR got locked, I was a complete n00b and pressed the submit button twice, so we got two BARs... epic fail

YOU WIN AT IRONY

Needless to say the mods then lock'd and stickied the wrong BARs

So far it's great for my first attempt at starting a thread *sarcasm*...

It will be quite a while now until I get up the courage to try for another BAR