Research themed tats FTW!

This is a draft of a sleeve design commissioned by one of the faculty from my M.S. program, Dr. Matt Gifford. He had seen a tattoo design I drew for my roommate Jonathan and asked for a drawing that he could comment on, direct, and then bring to a tattoo artist. The (obviously not-to-scale) salamander is one of his study organisms, Plethodon jordani, and the tree is a hemlock with his daughter's name carved into it.

He really liked the design, but I have yet to hear if he's followed through and gotten it. My favorite part was seeing how excited his wife was with the idea of him getting a bicep half-sleeve: actually 100% super-stoked.

Siege weapons

A functional Lego trebuchet from Highschool:

It's outfitted with an adjustable pin that allows for fine tuning of the trajectory. What's really cool is that it will actually fire farther on wheels than if it's laid flush on the ground. It's got something to do with energy being lost in the backlash. Due to scaled proportions, and the low density of Legos, I supplemented the counterweight with downward pulling rubberbands. Cheating? Maybe, but I can still hit your turd of a castle from across the entire living room.

Music Monday - Take VIII

Piano Fragments: TPS-006

The dynamics in this particular recording aren't how I usually want them to be, but I'm finding that I often tense up while recording and I'm pleased to get takes without too many mistakes. I know I should try to be more patient, and I can record as many takes as necessary to get the perfect one, but as soon as I hit the record button I make ten times more errors than when I'm playing normally. I wish someone would come and record me in secret; despite how creepy that would actually be, it might yield great takes.

On the subject of recording, I'm using a really quick setup using nothing but keyboard --> 1/4in cable --> 1/8in adapter --> computer, and though the scope of what I can tweak is more limited this way, it means I'm much more likely to record on a daily basis so my output will be higher. Unfortunately, it does produce a lot of pops at random times, but they go away temporarily when I restart the software, so I don't think it's a cable problem.

For those of you who don't care a lick about the recording process, just listen to the piece. It's got a nice sweeping intensity to it. I hope that makes sense.

Cop-out

I'm slowly running out of material again, and school is picking up so I may be a little less fastidious about posting in the weeks to come. I'll try to keep spans between posts under two years. In the mean time, here's a thing:

Music Monday - Take VII

Piano excerpt: TPS-003

Another piano composition, this one written over the course of 2008-2009. A lot of what I write comes in scraps which later get refined and sometimes fused. What's recorded here is actually an excerpt of a long string of melodies that I've been stitched together with odd transitions--hence why it clips in and sounds like it's been cut short. The omitted portions have been scrapped and may be used for other works.

The mood starts off forlorn but shifts into something a bit more soothing. I always imagine rain when I play it: it's often associated with melancholy but can be very comforting at times.

The title comes from having worked on ant taxonomy all day. That's usually how temporary morphospecies are labeled.

Skulls: 3/4 angle

Not 100% anatomically proportioned, but a fun shape to reproduce none the less.
-A pencil drawing                                   -A paper puzzle

Ork Boyz

To those of you who are not familiar with Warhammer or Warhammer 40k, they are a series of tabletop strategy games where participants collect, assemble, and paint massive amounts of figurines which they then pit against each other at the whim of fist-fulls of six-sided dice. I got into it in high school, but it can be a severely expensive hobby and finding the right people to play with can sometimes be a challenge. One of my favorite aspects was that even though any model you put on the table had distinct rules for the unit it represented, you could have the model look like anything you wanted by putting together stock pieces in creative ways and adding bits of card, metal and clay. The process of deviating from what the standard packaged model is supposed to look like is called conversion, and some people take it to an extreme.

All that being said, I took some extra space-orks that I had and made this display of an ork metal band. "Waaaaagh" is what orks say. . . always. . . and constantly. Senior year of high-school I brought it to my local gaming store where it still resides in a glass case alongside some far worthier local artist conversions.

Their music probably sounds like this:

Each ork is about an inch tall. All of their equipment is made of bits of weapons and tank pieces, and the drummer has a line of enemy helmets like that ewok in ROTJ.