Goldfish Shoals and Q&A of Awesome

So here, after a ridiculous delay is the scratch piece I did for that Humane Society Auction back in April. It was a little hard to let this go actually since I spent hours and hours on it. I took white scratchboard, laid down several layers of color with oil pastels, and then scratched out these fish and all their ridiculous scaly details. Then I went back in with water color pens (ok, crayola washable markers, but real water color pens are like $3 each!) to get the washed effects on the fish.

This image came from a song lyric from the Red Dwarf theme song (which is an awesome show, btw), "I long to lie far away from here, drinking fresh mango juice, goldfish shoals nibbling on my toes, fun fun fun in the sun sun sun." Ok, it definately loses something in the translation to text but I love the line about goldfish shoals.

I have two more pieces of scratchboard (actually 3 if I want to dig that one out of the garage) and I want to come up with some equally great projects for them. Maybe a portrait of my chickens...

Actually that's not bad. One of the other pieces I submitted to the auction was an ink drawing of a pair of my roosters. One of them is my mother's favorite but I'm getting rid of him because he's a little jerk, and she is endlessly complaining that I gave that drawing away. And her birthday is next month. So that's one project down.

Oh right, I was going to mention the Q&A for Animation Mentor (which is frankly not a very good name for a school, but I get what they were going for). Anyway the Q&A was really great. It was a web conference session where we were all chatting and the people who were asking questions got pulled up on webcam so we could meet them. Only a few people in our group asked questions (including me!) but everyone was really cool. I made numerous snarky asides in the chat part, and I hope I didn't come off as an attention whore. But it was all the sort of obnoxious (hopefully) witty shit I would have said to whoever I was sitting next to if the whole thing were happening in an auditorium.

If you hate people talking during movies/presentations, never sit next to me. But I was paying attention the whole time!

Toy Story 3 was Awesome, also chickens and other miscellany

So I am opening up my student profile on the Animation Mentor website. This blog is listed as my website. So I need to post something that makes me sound cool. Oh no! Too late!

But Toy Story 3 was pretty awesome. I especially liked the part towards the end. If you've seen it, you know the part. If you haven't I won't spoil it. Except to say that to children of the right (wrong?) age it is potentially as traumatizing as Bambi. It was quite upsetting.

Was not actually super crazy about the very end, because I know a little something about being a college student who is over attached to childhood toys, but even I thought Andy was acting a little weird. But it's ok, because I was super crazy about pretty much the entire rest of the film. Sadly, I missed the first half of Night and Day (we thought the show was a 4:45 but it was at 4:35, we were actually trying to get there early, damnation) which makes me a little sad, but it's not like I can't see it again.

In other chicken related news, Captain Falcon is (well was) sitting again this time on a nest of her own beautiful blue eggs! I am letting her hatch them (but seriously, no more chicks this year!) because I love her blue eggs and want more hens laying them. With my luck all the chicks will be roos. But since she was only sitting for a couple days when another hen decided to go broody and instead of sharing the clutch (like the last pair of hens I had who went broody, which was super cute) she just kicked Captain Falcon off the nest. I am actually fine with this because this hen (nameless I'm afraid) is ind of more of a badass that the good Captain and I think she'll be a better momma.

But the babies! Captain Falcon's babies ended up being named Captain Planet, Spock, and Yum Yum (Yum Yum is my gorgeous favorite and I'm 98% she's a girl. If she's not I will be devastated). There are three new babies (the ones with two mommies) and they don't have names. Probably won't until their gender becomes more apparent. But I know Captain Kirk is their dad, so something to keep in mind. But anyway, Captain Falcon's babies! I need more Falcon names. Obviously the first one that leaped to mind was Millennium because I am a nerd. The second was Peregrine. That's probably enough names for now. Once again, mustn't count them before they hatch and all that.

In other news, I really want to get a new job and think "I could waitress or whatever," then I remember that the reason I got this job was because it comes with health insurance. Curse you American health care system! But I had an eye appointment last week and ordered some new glasses which I am very excited about. My current glasses are several years old and the frames are scratched to hell and back. These new ones will be made of delicate filaments of TITANIUM, which obviously is awesome. And even though I am paying kind of a lot for them I would be paying twice as much without in-sewer-ants.

And really, seriously, truly, Intrepid Space Heroes installment 1 is nearly here.

Captain Falcon!

So the adorable chicks I got last August? Captain Falcon is their Queen. As a baby she was the drabbest, but had a gutsy personality. She actually looked like a tiny bird of prey actually. And she was always the first one to jump onto the box, onto the stick, onto the edge of the box, out onto the floor. I estimated that she was at least a day or so older than the others because they were always just trying out the thing she'd mastered yesterday.

My little brother, assuming that she was a rooster because she was so tough and awesome, named her after this guy. He is a vaguely obscure video game character from the good people at Nintendo.

However, as the chicks developed and 7 out of 10 began to crow (to my lasting dismay), Captain Falcon failed to develop any masculine tendencies. She is a bantam Easter Egger, and she was the first of my flock to begin laying. Her eggs are tiny and blue. They look like robin eggs except slightly too large. I was delighted. Now she has gone broody. Just over two weeks ago I realized that she was trying to hatch one egg that did not belong to her (still not positive who laid it actually) and two golf balls that I put in the nesting box to show the hens where to lay.

I gave her some other assorted eggs (including one of her own, though I don't have high hopes for it as it spent a day in the fridge). They should, with any luck, hatch next week sometime.

Now to hopefully prevent the same karmic disaster that gave me 7 roosters last time, I need some macho names for the babies.

Two of them will be Captain Hammer and Dr. Horrible. If the one from the fridge, "Fridgey" as I currently call it, hatches I will name it Oracle.

I went to my brother for additional suggestions and he came up with Duke Nukem and Rooster Cogburn. I'll skip the last one because fully half the roosters in this country (the half not already called "Foghorn Leghorn" are already named Rooster Cogburn).

I may name one Spock, because I have been on a Star Trek kick lately. More than that I'm afraid to speculate on. She's sitting on nine eggs. It would have been ten, but I broke one while I was checking to make sure she wasn't sitting on extras stolen from other hens. She wasn't. Oops. But 9 eggs of various origins, and at least a few of them should hatch just in time for the Japanese exchange students we're having for two weeks. It is cool. My chickens are awesome.