http://www.jamesart.com/kits.html

File this under “Artistic reference.” These are some amazingly beautiful stylized resin model kits of the most breath-stealingly beautiful cartoon women in the world.

Definitely NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

But I use these as form reference for whenever I make a female model at work. They’re stylized to the brink of being absurd, but there’s an underlying understanding of anatomy and beauty that’s communicated extremely well through these. Most of the female models I tend to make are about 50% the style of these.

I really wish Mike James updated the site with new models, and I also wish he delivered them painted. :(

I heard that he’s a talented programmer that made a KILLING off a deal with Hewlett-Packard and retired on the ridiculous amount of money he made and developed this site as a side hobby of his. Good for him. I hope that someday I can make an obscene enough amount of money to be able to do the same.

In any case, hey, enjoy!

I read this blurb this morning in Business 2.0 and thought it was cool. It’s like what I talk about… how persistence through failure and rejection increases the odds for success. The article was about making cold calls for sales (calling someone unsolicited to try to sell them something) but it applies 100% to trying to get a job, or really any type of goal-reaching.

In baseball, even the best hitters make outs 70 percent of the time. Likewise, cold calls usually end in a “no,” no matter how skilled you are at making them. The key, therefore, is to remember that with each rejection, you’re one call closer to a “yes.”

“People have a fear of cold-calling only because they don’t anticipate those kinds of numbers,” Schiffman says. “My motivation increases with each ‘no’ I get.”

That last part is powerful. Look PAST the failure, the ‘no,’ and look forward to the success, the ‘yes,’ you will ultimately reach if you keep trying. Most people won’t even do this.

Ever wake up missing almost all of your hair but a thin strip down the middle of your head, and no recollection of why?

This is going to be a long day.

I was checking out the blog of someone I know and he made a post talking about the pain of having your art beaten all to hell by criticism.

It got me to thinking. Something that’s helped me over the last few months is realizing there’s sort of a duality of self involved in this, two opposing natures, in creating game art.

There’s the touchy-feely artistic side, where you get in your groove and intuitively build something up with care and coax the beauty out of it. The nice side.

And then there’s the other side, the critical, gritty, unrelenting pound-it-with-a-hammer-until-it’s-right perfectionist side. The mean side.

You can’t have too much of one or the other. Too much art, not enough criticism, can produce soft, weak, mushy output, and you’ll never improve. Too much criticism, and you can simply strangle the art right out of anything you touch, and you’ll hate making art altogether.

Therein lies the interest, and the challenge. How much is too much of one or the other?

For fear of sounding like a hippie, it’s like the yin-yang concept. Opposing natures, but interwoven. Finding the balance between the two can be tricky, but understanding the two different halves is the first step to figuring out what that balance is.

Thinking about creating game art in those two distinct phases has helped me weather criticism pretty well. “Okay, I made this. Time to beat the hell out of it until it’s the best it can be.”

It helps mentally brace me, and the more I understand that that’s how it works and that I’m NOT crazy for bouncing between those two extremes, the less dread I have going into it.

Short update, practically stream-of-consciousness, but something I felt worthy of sharing.

I was just heading home from work, wrapping up a nearly 15-hour day. I was exhausted, in a terrible mood, frustrated with something I was working on, and felt like I was half dead from the sleep deprivation, extremely high stress and horrible eating habits that are a normal part of my daily routine.

Note the use of the past tense.

I was thinking back to one time when I was particularly happy and telling one of my friends how happy I was, and that everyone had the capacity to be happy inside them, and that it was simply a choice they had to make.

I started thinking about that and I realized, dammit, I was really onto something. Happiness IS a choice. It’s a decision. One that’s too important to be left to other people or the events that shape our lives. Happiness is the most important thing you’ve got, so why in the world would you cede control of something so important to anything outside yourself?

I closed my eyes, sighed, flexed all the muscles in my body, took in a deep breath, sat up a little straighter and smiled. That was all it took to shake the horrors of the day away. I decided that I’d rather be happy than brood over what a shitty day I had.

Brooding isn’t productive. Brooding is consciously rubbing your nose in what you don’t like feeling. I’ve *never* come out better after brooding over something negative. In fact, it only prolongs what I wanted to forget. In light of that… good god, why am I doing that to myself? So I stopped, and I’m happy now.

Happiness is a choice. Make it.

I usually don’t post quick things like this, but I just found something too beautiful not to post.

I was doing some random browsing while waiting on something extremely CPU-intensive and ran across a website selling extraordinarily beautiful dolls.

www.dreamofdoll.com – hit the English link in the lower right.

I’ve never seen anything like this before. The craftsmanship is amazing. I’ve never seen hair and eyes that good on anything that wasn’t actually a person. Here are some of my favorite images:

Take a look around the rest of the site… BIG images, and everything they have is absolutely amazing. I can’t believe something this good exists. Beautiful, just beautiful.

NanoLegends art released!

I know a lot of you have asked to see my art and that I haven’t had anything recent to show off. Well, that’s no longer the case!

Here’s a sampling of the art I created for a government-funded kids’ cancer awareness 3rd-person action platformer called NanoLegends, right before I came to work at Ready At Dawn.

This stuff’s been done for almost two years, I think, and only now am I able to show it off! It feels great. :) It’s one of the things I’m proudest of having worked on, and I wanted to share it with you guys. I’m swelling with pride right now.

Once the game is released, I’ll post more info here.