In sights? In sounds?
In writ? In song?

In want and wanting?
In deep desire?

When you sleep, where do your secrets run to hide?

Out of sight?
Out of mind?

In storerooms and attics?
In lies and shadows?

Where does your darkness grow?

... said the bomb.

I've been using Adobe Photoshop for years now but it's only recently that I've started to understand exactly how powerful it is when you need to color your graphics.

 

I made two drawings last night (above); A "Warhammer-ish" Soldier and a "Mechwarrior-ish" Mech. Anytime you're dealing with mecha, you expect a lot of little details. And the debris-strewn backgrounds did not exactly make my job any easier. Imagine if I had colored them by hand, I would've taken at least a day for each.

• First I'd make photocopies of the original.
• Then, using a copy, I'd paint on the drawing with the color scheme I had in mind.
• If I didn't like the colors, I'd have to start all over again with a fresh copy.
• Once I'd finalized a color scheme, I'd start on the final working slower to avoid mistakes.
• By then I'd have wasted a lot of time, paper and paint.

With Photoshop however, I can just put each color, shading or detail in its own layer and modify them separately. I just set my drawing's layer to "Blending:Multiply", adjust my brush size, pick out my color and start painting. Later on, if i want to change a color, I just fiddle with the hue/saturation.

But the biggest advantage to using Photoshop is the "Undo" option. Working manually, every error you have to erase or paint over mucks up your paper. You can only make so many corrections before your paper is worn thin or soaked through. With Photoshop, it's just a quick Ctrl+Z and your mistake never happened.

Of course, Photoshop will not magically enhance your work. In fact, it probably requires a lot more skill and practice to than to color manually. And even if it cuts down your work time, you should still expect to spend long hours at your desk. (My two drawings took about 6 hours to color)

The drawbacks? Well, while you DO get a more polished look with Photoshop, you also lose the style and charm of a hand-made drawing. Digital coloring MIGHT be more expensive sometimes due to electricity consumption. However, considering the price of paint plus the power consumed by your drawing lamp, I think it costs you about the same.

If you'd like to view some solid tutorials on coloring with Photoshop check out these links.

Lynda.com: Photorealism with Bert Monroy* [lynda.com] - A good starter guide for working with layers, blending options and the various color-adjust and shading options that Photoshop has to offer. According to the site, this tutorial has 5.5 hours worth of video, so you'd better be ready to sit at your desk for a long while. Luckily, the tut is divided into parts, so you can have breaks in between. Cred to Mon showing me this years ago.

*(note: Photorealism with Bert Monroy now requires a Lynda.com subscription to view.) 

Bolt-City: Guide to Copper [boltcity.com] - Shows the whole drawing-to-coloring process of Copper, a comic by Kazu Kibuishi. It has tips on scanning and clening a line drawing; something which the Lynda.com tutorial lacks. Cred to Martin for pointing me to this, and many other fine comic resources.

How to Make Blastwave [blastwavecomic.com] - A tutorial on how Kimmo Lemetti (aka: Morr) creates a page of "Gone with the Blastwave". It describes several techniques about painting with Photoshop and also a few tips on planning your Page-layout. There's even a video of him doing the actual work (camtasia screen-capture) which shows you just how fast a pro can go.

Aside from the snippets I hear while my parents are tuned into the news, I am blissfully unaware of what goes on in my own country. Yet for the past two days, I've found myself watching the Senate Hearing on the controversial National Broadband Network deal (NBN) with Chinese IT company, ZTE.

It's like watching a local version of Law & Order. I'm hooked.

The Philippine people need Jack McCoy. He is a HERO.

So here's what's happening as far as I can understand.

There is a project to create a National Broadband Network. This network would improve communication between government offices across the country and serve as a national information repository. That's good stuff right? With the NBN, you are less likely to spend 3 hours in waiting in a room full of other irate citizens. It also means that your records won't fall victim to the fire that burns down your barangay hall.

The NBN was supposed to be PRIVATIZED but instead, the contract has been awarded to Chinese IT firm, ZTE. Now this is where it STARTS getting sticky. If the NBN is set up by companies of the private sector, the tax-payers money will NOT have to be spent on the project. And if Globe, Smart and/or Sun participate in the project, the NBN could be built faster by piggy-backing on existing systems rather than creating a new one. So from what I can see, the NBN-ZTE deal saves neither money nor time.

In addition, the ZTE deal requires $330 million (take note of the dollar sign). That's roughly P12 billion pesos. (as stated by Sen. Enrile) Okay, okay. Those are pretty big numbers. But then, laying down a nation-wide network of cables and stations is expected to cost you a pretty hefty sum. A bit of an eye-brow raise here, but nothing too alarming. Let's move on to the next item.

The government budget for this project is only about P4 billion pesos. Yikes! Where do we get the cash? Fortunately...

... China has agreed to loan our government the money to pay ZTE. So China gives us money to pay a Chinese company to do work in our country... I'm not a business man. I have no business education. I do not know what goes on between the closed doors of the big business firms. I am unfamiliar with the rules of business ethics... What I DO know is that both ZTE and the China's Export-Import Bank are going to turn a profit for creating a system that could be done cheaper and faster by our own people. This isn't discrimination. This is common sense. We are a third-world country! Let's try to bring money IN than send it OUT!

Oh, here's a few more things to wrap your mind around.

• There was no bid on the project. Oh wait, there was... Or was there? Some people say there was none. Others say Amsterdam Holdings Inc., co-founded by Jose "Joey" de Venecia III, competed (and lost) in the bid. And still others say that the bid was rigged because...
  
• First Gentleman Mike Arroyo bribed JdV III with P10 million pesos to "Back Off" from the deal. At least, that's what THEY say. What's FG got to say for himself? Nothing yet. He's busy getting medical treatments. Abroad of course. It seems that some bodily functions of politicians automatically shut-down when they catch word of a scandal. And the cure for their ailments are never available here... Never.
• And about the bid of AHI; It would cost a fraction of ZTE's... at least, it seems that way. Jdv III and the Senate (I think it was Mar Roxas speaking at the time) spent a good couple of hours chucking figures at each other with the debate ending in a "we're running out of time, let's put this matter aside for now so the other Senators can take a crack at it". Yeeesh. Crime never sleeps. Justice, however, has to be summoned to court, given ten-minute breaks and quits when bed-time rolls around.
  
• Oh, here's another fabulous coincidence. The contract has been STOLEN! Yep, according to NBI probes, the original contract between ZTE and the Philippine Government was stolen soon after its signing on April 21. I'd think this would have ended the matter. No contract, no deal, no problem... but apparently, I am mistaken. Contracts are legally binding even if they have disappeared off the face of the earth... But wait! It seems that...
• Leandro Mendoza has reconstructed the contract. Forgive me for holding my applause. I don't know if the lawyers believe it, but I, as an observer, have about as much faith in a "reconstructed contract" as I do in "actual photos of the Loch Ness monster"

It's a big, fat mess that stinks to the high heavens and is piled right in our own back-yard. And knowing our people's love for drama, many Filipinos will be glue to their TV-sets for days to come. I know I will.

Just a while ago I was downloading some BIR forms whilst simultaneously reading Lullaby (by Abacus Comics). Trouble was that the damn "Download Completed" kept popping up; causing a four-second stall every-time. That may not seem like much, but if you consider that each of the 10 PDF's I downloaded are only about a 100 KB, that's a four-second lag for every five-second download.

I popped open the Firefox Options and puttered around for a few minutes. Guess what? No "disable Download Complete alert" anywhere on the freakin' menu. Insufferable.

This calls for some Google-fu! 

quoted from Chris Ilias' Blog

" Some folks don’t like the pop-up notification Mozilla Firefox gives, when downloads are completed.

You can turn that off using a hidden setting. Enter about:config in the location bar.
Search for the preference
browser.download.manager.showAlertOnComplete.
Modify the value to false."

source article - http://ilias.ca/blog/category/mozilla/firefox/page/4/

If you're running a high-end rig, you probably don't give a shit. As for me; no pop-ups = satisfaction!

 

(from top to bottom, left to right) Piper looking gay in green, Jim with Sharky the shark-sword, Alice makin' like lady Cap'n America, Crew the chubby peg-leg parrot, Pinocchio in the santa outfit and Red with the riding hood (duh!) and fluffy pointed ears

If you're looking for a new read, check out Lullaby. Over the past week I'd been seeing this little number's ProjectWonderful ads all over my usual web-comic haunts, but each time I ignored it. Although I was drawn to the art style, I felt that I had enough to read already. Last night, though, curiosity finally got the better of me and I decided to click through. I've been browsing the archives for the past two hours. I'm hooked. Alice is the fiercest general of Wonderland, second only to the Queen of Hearts. With her pink flamingo whip (it's a lot cooler than it sounds) flaying all that stand before her, she has conquered the six kingdoms in the name of her sovereign. Jim Hawkins has left his ship, captain and crew to begin his own adventure. With him is a peg-legged parrot, a living marionette (guess who!) and a sword with a ravenous appetite. Grandmother is missing and Red is out to find her. A child she may be, but Red also possess the powers of the fabled Wolf. Innocent one moment, a wild beast in the next, the only thing that keeps her primal rage from taking hold is the calming music of her companion; the enigmatic Piper. Each sets off with their own personal agenda, but soon they will find their fates caught up in a sinister plot that could spell doom for all the land.