Burning and Dodging are your friend

This really only has to do with people who use photoshop and such.  It has a major bit to do with cleaning.

When first starting most people try to do WAY too much work with the brush tool.  I  found out the hard way that this is pointless.  It takes a large amount of time and is way too delicate.  This makes the brush tool not that important (I use it very rarely now).

It is much more usefull to use burning to darken colors (such as hair and such that you want to stand out) and dodging to lighten colors (such as removing that little excess dirty looking fading pixels on the side of images).

I typically use these at around 20-30% exposure.  First I burn in the hair and such to my liking.  If there's a part that is just being disobediant I will quickly use the brush to pound it.
Then I use the dodge to remove any excess crap and make the image stand out clearer.

This has cut my time back by a large amount (I only just started doing these again for a few days now since I was away from photoshop for so long).  The more correct difference there is between the image elements, the less it looks flat.

Practicing with it can be interesting.

Good Manga series need's help

There is a REALLY good manga series that I like.
Onihime VS

Check it out.  The graphics are awesome (evil grin), and the story is uncommon somewhat.

It is released monthly but the current problem is it's backlogged.  It's been a while since a scanlation has come out on it.  I think one of the scanlators (NCIS) did this project in conjunction with others.
And I think NCIS is gone now (I may be wrong).

If anyone wants to try translating it, then I'm willing to try cleaning it.

Sounds good for an above excellent series with "awesome graphics" (just look at the heroines).

Routines suck

This is something I have believed for a long time.  When people fall into a "routine" for doing anything, they tend to lose focus.  They look at things in step1,2,3... only.  This causes them to lose sight of the goal/objective.

As you can probably guess......this is bad.

One must learn to adapt to changes in situation.  That's a good lesson to learn.  If you go through the steps, what happens if step 2 breaks down.  Or perhaps if something changes in an earlier step.  And what if an entire step becomes impossible to perform in your manner.

It may take longer to do things this way at first.  But it becomes easier as your mindset works this way.  And you get held up less when things go bad.

This even works in any kind of field.  Even in working on manga :) (cleaning workload becomes easier and quicker).

Funny D&D videos

I don't know how many people know of the game Neverwinter Nights (a D&D comp game).  Anyhow this is a website that has a comedy series that has been running for awhile.  They've already done 2 seasons.  It's funny to watch this story of 2 drunken idiots in a D&D style world (along with a claustrophobic dwarf).
Neverending Nights

January please come already

Now is the time to wait.  A new year means new anime in Japan.  I saw some of the series to be started and saw some I'm greedily waiting for.

The "Omamori Himari" and "Dance in the Vampire Bund" are two manga series are being brought into anime (I'm grinning with a devilish aura now).  "Omamori Himari" is one of my favorites because of it's plotline spin on things.  "Dance in the Vampire...." is also a good one with a unique story.

I know the anime will differ from the manga in many aspects (anime always differ from their manga counterparts).  I do hope they will remain true to the basic stories.  If it's exactly the same in both, then what is the need for two?  Seeing how they portray them will be very much on my mind until then.

JANUARY PLEASE COME ALREADY!!!

The joys of manga

Manga just rules.  Always has, enough said.

Too often the same thing is repeated for most sources of entertainment in current society.  This makes things just boring.
Originality is the key to keep from having people degrade into complete morons.  And this is very commonly found in manga series.
They start as a basic story then move forward (and if they are popular, keep moving farther and farther).  Just look at series such as Bleach or One Piece.

Compare that with comic books and you see an overall major difference.  For the most part, comics are either action or comedy.  Manga series tend to expand things.  They mix it up with just about any concept you can think of.

Not too mention the story backgrounds can be extremely unique.  Not to mention they aren't always kiddy oriented.  All sorts of action will be seen in there.

That's all for now.