tttia

well this isn't a bear, but he is furry! I am working on doing some quick sketches just to work on my restatement, lines, etc. This was made to look like a quick pencil sketch though it was done in painter. bout 10 minutes. pencil, quick sketch, 7 mins during our drawing class. Kind of a fun angle :)

hehe, folks need to re-read the description.... I just put elf because folks think they are cool and will check it. It is not really an elf. THat is why the title says sort of . Thanks for the other crits. The program was corel photopaint. Similar to ps.

1280x1024 here..and still tiny. Can't imagine smaller yet. You could try one of those zoom plug ins...or maybe opera, seem to recall it having it integrated...not sure, but you could ask wyrm. Actually nad I am liking this one better. More variety than the usual terragen. some advice....keep it this size :) I am not sure this would work larger as the cg mountains would get more cgish.

distance is one part of the equation. If it is super slow then it is likely a problem with old copper wiring or a massively wrong local setting check this site and compare with those in your zip code using the same service. Then you will know if it is the service or just you :) general great info on optimizing your connection, and all you never wanted to know about connections: http://www.dslreports.com/ line speed tests AND local comparison. Remember to check a couple servers to account for regional slowdowns. The fastest is the CLOSEST one :) http://www.dslreports.com/stest tweak tests (for finding out what local settings could be at fault...especially for those running win 98 etc. which has a huge built in bottle neck,..but others too). http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks My current results: 729 down, 490 up! since my rated up is 500 that is a great throughput. And it also shows that the problem is not theirs, but mine. My lines only handle around 700. Incidentally with that fast cable before I only got 150 up :(

Actually, the term mb is from the old kilobit model, which built up from the baud model etc. Kb is indeed different and MB is indeed different, but I don't think the 100 times part is true. It is a different ratio. However, you should get about 85-95 % of line speed, the other being lost at times due to regional slowdowns etc. On my cable connection I got right about 95%. Dsl and fixed wireless etc., wifi, introduce new variables. The DISTANCE figures in, as well as your lines. Therefore throughput could vary widely. If my cable company had not been lying idots I would have stuck with them. They offer a bit cheaper prices and the same rated speed, which is actually higher in real world throughput. But since they throttled down on all but html traffic, intentionally cut our bandwidth, lied to us about it, blocked certain sites and never mentioned it (including this one for months) just to save themselves from upgrading their infrastructure, I was less than thrilled. Hours of outages EACH WEEK didn't sit well. They even let me replace all my networking setups, reinstall windows, switch out my modem several times, have people come for service calls, etc. rather than just admit (which an IT guy eventually did) that it was all their fault--oops. Of course now a competitor came in and cleaned em up nice. The competitor put in fibre from start to finish, all the way to the home, integrating tv, telephone, internet. Your caller id pops up on the tv, etc. Very slick. So they had to slash prices, install their own fibre backbone (keeping regular cable connections) and try to catch up. Now if only municipalities and big players were not blocking utilites style universal public cheap wireless....that would be nice. cable, hot and cold running water, natural gas and up and down running wireless....it has tried to happen a couple of places :) (and has in some foreign countries)

You have three basic tones, with everything but purple being somewhat faded or receded. I think if you want to go with that much purple perhaps a monochromatic aproach would be better. I am unfamiliar with the inspiration of the piece, so I won't comment on fidelity to that. The border, as Nad said, is a bit overdone. It tends to detract from the work. It is not bad, but right now it is hard to focus on the piece as a whole. the individual elements leap out. Since you cited the planet tutorial it sounds as though you made it, and it actually looked pretty good on its own.

haha nice find...till they lock it down :) Perhaps your best bet is to find who's it is and ask permission so they don't freak over unexpected activity. I am thankful that my current dsl also runs at 700kb,....even though it is supposed to be 1.5 Mb, but I think our lines are lousy.And since we only have two or three computers running, and usually not more than two at a time, works fine. It has strong upload speeds too, which to me is more important since fast download with slow upload is not always ideal. Oh and check out quest. They just sent us an offer to upgrade our speed at basically the same cost to around 5mb. That would be nice ...if only our lines would handle it. Glad you are back with us :)

Thanks for the comments folks. And Keiphus, glad to hear you will back around. They ever work out the ip ban issue with your home isp? Updated: refined the hair, bank, neck, darkened face shadows, adjusted levels a bit, put new highlits on the body, shortened the arm as it was too long, put a shadow for the snake....etc. .

This piece is for a contest over on rsc, and I was going to wait to post it, but just taking a while and I hate sitting on work without showing it. So figured why not. And yeah, it is not an elf, but how are you going to explain that in a title? lol. It is a no reference work. Updated: refined the hair, bank, neck, darkened face shadows, blended the hole in the tree in more, adjusted levels a bit, put new highlits on the body, shortened the arm as it was too long, put a shadow for the snake....etc. .

nice work so far venomai. My advice...cheat and just use levels to darken it a bit. Then you can paint using the new tones for the rest. Well, no bears have yet been produced by me but here is a new sig piece:

nice work, though I am sure we could have done without the underwear shot. Perhaps we should have a seperate arena for battles such as rsc. It has led to an explosion in different styles as everyone wants to compete in different ways. And it seems like you get to know people more quickly. It is hard to know everyone here anymore.

I think I did vote for it, but I like it better now that you used the verticle scan lines in the background. Those were just distracting.

I got a laugh out of that. Though I think it would be closer to... try again you must. Mega _______ it is. There is no try. Do, or do not. As to the paiting. All is not lost yet. You have good placement of shadows. Deepen those and give more light tones on top. This actually looks like stage one or two of some of mine. In the future, before you shade, make sure you get the shape first just in one tone. Then go in and really bring out the shading. Keep working at it ! it is great fun.

New sig, not for this forum most likely, but for one of em or another. quickpainted in painter, touched up in photopaint. Bout an hour and a half for the whole process. (a whole lot faster than those pixels I did! ...I think they just take too long). I used mostly opaque brushes to give it a somewhat more substantial feel.

Very nice work! I finished my large piece and hope to be back in the swing of things tomorrow.

fire freek does some tenshi trunkswrath.

Sorry folks, I am doing some new work, but can't show it yet. It is a larger digital piece that is coming together pretty well. I am doing it for a contest with trunkswrath over on rsc. when the contest is started I will post it here. Besides...rsc battles are just too fun...got distracted.

by accident at first. And for a diversion after. I am back to digital painting at the moment though.

fine with me :) this is the first in what I hope will be a series of religious pixels for people to use.

thanks :) it looks odd because the wind is blowing it from the storm :) Also Jesus was semetic, walked in the outdoors a lot, probably had a tan. On the other hand if we look at Paul's comments about men having long hair, we could probably assume that Jesus did not have long hair either. But hey, it is a pixel, and folks need to recognize the character!

A little more cartoony this time, still grainy...I just like it that way :) that and I am not going to manually anti alias all day. Anyone is free to use this as their sig.

This is an interesting piece of work. The sand, as you mentioned could use a little help, but overall it i very good, and the colors seem to pop out at you. Good job!

I too would warn you against eating very little and working out a lot. I did it myself at one point, and it was not healthy. I was doing aerobic exercise about 9 times a week, 1000...yup...1k crunches a day, and eating only about 2000 calories (yes, that is a lot, but not if you are 7 feet tall). I did lose weight, but as was mentioned by others you just have to get all your muscle back again. Knowing how many calories to eat can be difficult. They make some online calculators based on Body mass index and level of activity. THen they suggest the amount you would need to sustain your weight, and for gradual weight loss. That way you don't have to worry about too many calories, or too few, where your body begins to go into preservation mode. I would also advise you to try the lentils and beans approach that Sunli mentioned. Animal protein is tough on your kidneys, bones (saps calcium in the way it is processed) and we really get too much of it anyway. There is also protein in green leafy vegetables. So get plenty of those. In fact I also found that the diet changes not only helped with weight, but I also lost all problems with asthma and allergies after going to a vegetarian diet. I don't know as you would have to totally eliminate meat or dairy to get that effect, but reducing helps. If you do decide to make drastic dietary changes obviously your family will have to consult not just a physician but a dietician who is familiar with vegetarian meals (not all are all that strong on the idea). You can get more than adequate nutrition if you plan it right. And honestly I used to eat meat 5 times a day and now don't miss it at all. As to biking....you all will think I am joking, but i am not, watch out that you do not over do it if you are a male. It can ...injure the plumbing. No, I don't have personal experience on this one! haha And I don't plan to. But if you use an exercise bike for instance instead of a regular bike, try the recumbent one that you lie down on. They are less rough on the anatomy. For any who doubt this, just check the next time you do that 5 mile bike ride for any numbness....you will figure it out. I would also suggest some weight lifting in moderation. I have a bow flex and they are not bad. If you get one, and are not a huge person I suggest the Motivator 2 model sold by QVC. They liscensed it out to QVC to sell exclusively and it was $599 with free shipping...tons cheaper than most of the others, and I have found it to be a good unit. But it does have the draw back that all Bow Flexes have, only 210 pounds of initial weight, and unlike some of the others you CANNOT upgrade to 310. But for most people that is sufficient. Bow flex is more for toning and developing long lean muscle rather than bulking up anyway. That new muscle in turn keeps the fires burning in your metabolism all day. For that matter, if you get a simple weight bench and some of the metal dumb bells you can find exercises to work most areas, and save some money. Good luck to you! And I hope you get those results!

Aw come one, the chiefs have Gonzales and...er..the 21st rated defense. Who can beat that?

The version I tried was interesting, but I must say, that user interface was ...just odd. Maybe it is incredibly flexible and useful and such. I don't know, but I do know it was odd.