OneBoot

I would absolutely love to, except I'm teaching every night except Sunday. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

I was literally planning on making my next post on exactly these things! (nicely done, I'll have your pay ready after the show) First, the squidy itself. This took me the loooooongest time to decide on. I looked at dozens of space pictures, but nothing was really sticking. One day I was talking about it with @Guindyloo, and she asked if I'd considered bioluminescent sea creatures (or something to that effect, this happened quite awhile ago (it's also possible the idea just happened to randomly come while I was chatting with her, but I'll still give her the credit )). So after a bunch more Google image searches, I came up with the following as my main inspirations: This one will be my primary reference, especially with how the body looks sort of translucent; it's an effect I'd love to try and capture! I plan to make a black backdrop for the final piece that will hopefully help to sell it better. I will also add hints of stars to the Kraken to help with that. I also really like the bright orange bits on it and how the contrast the blue body; I plan to paint the barnacles like this. This is more of a color reference, and will likely lean heavily on this while doing the inside of the mouth (since I'd like that to be the most colorful part). Also, the neon green dots are cool! I loved the look of the luminescent sensory spots, and it gave me an idea of what to do with the softer areas of the body. So while the Kraken itself won't be particularly space-like, I hope to evoke that sense of alien-ness with careful use of a few neon colors against a more muted "translucent" body, and a vividly colorful mouth. ...I did mention this was a fairly ambitious project. As for the eyes, they will either be galaxies or normal-ish squid eyes. OR WHY NOT BOTH?! + = I'M NOT CRAZY YOU'RE CRAZY *cough* As for the planet, yes, I will totally be doing the day/night divide, with lights coming on in the night areas. Like so! I plan to follow this pretty much exactly (since freehand is NOT my strength, but I can do okay following a picture). I also have this next picture to help with the areas the first picture doesn't show: So...yeah. That's my master plan. It's gonna be a ton of work, but no matter what it ends up winning at ReaperCon, I'm gonna be so happy to finally have this crazy idea out of my head and into real life at last. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

I (along with many other people I'm sure) am utterly baffled about how this could have happened. I mean, every flight I've been on, the attendants always make multiple passes through the cabin after, picking up trash and checking for left items, etc. The poor lady, I'm glad she was okay. A) Why thank you, Doug, you flatter me B) Mmm yeah, that's my favorite version too. It's just so gooooood I'm a fan of both versions though. C) I'd heard of it, and the bit at the end was familiar, but I've never actually watched it. True story. It's still utterly bizarre to me that the most recent high school graduates were only just being born when I was still in high school. Related: I'd been idly curious lately about which generation I "officially" belong to, and finally decided to look it up. The results were actually quite interesting, and not as straightforward as I'd expected. By pretty much every year reckoning, I'm a very early Millennial, but I don't feel like I fit with that group. I'm certainly too young to be a Gen X, but I have a lot in common with them. After a fascinating roam through several articles and a couple of videos, it would appear I'm part of a "micro generation" (known variably as Xennials, Generation Catalano, or my personal favorite, the Oregon Trail Generation). It's a sort of in-between transition period, characterized by, as one article put it, "an analog childhood and digital adulthood." Rather than being introduced to computers as an adult like Gen X, or being used to them always being around like Millennials, myself and others born between about 1977-1985 grew up alongside computers and the internet and social media and cell phones, etc. I have very distinct memories of DOS and dial-up, didn't start really using computers for schoolwork until high school, and got my first cell phone when I started college. To be honest, I'm still in awe at the fact that I can have real-time video chats with people all over the planet (and paint with them!), find information about pretty darn near anything on the internet (some of which is actually true), go shopping without having to change out of my pj's (though I do that in real life sometimes too), and carry around a small computer in my pocket with over 1,000 times more processing power than the computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon (which I mostly use to play mobile games and watch cat videos ). Yeah there's a lot out in the world that's awful, but man, it's a pretty great time to be alive too. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-G0SVEQW8A Huh. I thought the link was going to be this, and was surprised when it wasn't: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GDpmVUEjagg Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

I'm really debating whether I want to get into it, leaning toward not, since I predict I'll probably run into the same problem of "few/no easily accessible restock locations nearby" especially if they are using the same locations data as Ingress/Pokemon go. I really do like the concept of having to explore the real world to play a video game, but i don't want to have to a) pay money for items required to play the game, or b) drive to the nearest area containing [things similar to a pokestop] on a daily basis. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Did you hit the Ins button on your keyboard by accident? This has happened to me several times in the past. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

I was all ready to pull out my linguistics hat, but @WhiteWulfe and @Doug Sundseth beat me to it. I still find that particular term amusing, especially since when the things aren't on mics, they really do just look like a limp pile of fur. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Oh, I forgot to mention, before I started I did something I haven't done in (mumble) years, and that's clean ALL OF THE PAINTBRUSHES. YES EVEN THAT ONE. I have also acquired three SHINY new detail brushes! Here's where I am in my testing. First, I knew I'd need to put primer on the globe so the paint would stick, but I got this globe specifically because it had such nice terrain features (so I could just basically trace over them rather than trying to freehand half the Earth ). So I tried a well-thinned coat of white primer (I wish I'd written down how thin I'd made it, but I did this over a year ago and can't remember), and it went on nicely while also leaving all of the features visible. You can also see where I was playing around with tracing the outline of Antarctica with both Solid Black and a thinned coat of...one of my tan-ish browns, not sure which one. The paint stuck quite nicely, and while I did try a bit over a non-primed area, the coverage was better with the primer. Which is good because I'm going to need decent coverage to block out all of the text on this thing. Next I poked through my blues and pulled out two very different ones, since I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go for a more stylized look (the brighter blue bits in the picture) or more realistic. Realistic won out, and I had so much fun I just sort of...kept going long after I was done with my test. Here's a more representative picture of what the color looks like in person. It's suuuuper pretty, a nice deep blue with a fair hint of teal in it: And here's the color I used: Wow that's a big picture, sorry about that. It's just so much faster to snap a picture of whatever paint bottle(s) I'm using, and it makes it easier to find it again when I'm skimming back through my thread trying to remember what color I used. Next I did a test over a desert area with, appropriately enough, Desert Tan. Oh yeah, I like how that looks! Now, granted, what I'm doing on the southern hemisphere is just a really rough figuring out of colors kind of thing. The final result will have a lot more color variation and blending, such as lighter blue near the coastlines, etc. So, that's where I am right now. I hope this turns out the way I'm visualizing it will, because it looks so cool in my head! Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

This is going to be one of the most ambitious projects I've ever attempted, so I thought making a WIP thread would be a good idea. If everything goes well, I plan to enter this beastie at ReaperCon this year, so fingers crossed! This is an idea I've had bouncing around in my head for awhile, and started gathering materials for it last year. My plan is to take this lovely critter: and rather than using the shipwreck as a base, use half of one of these: and paint the Kraken to look all spacey and such. So! To that end, I now have one of these! I'll just be using the top half for the base, though: Which means that the bottom hemisphere is available for...testing. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Good grief, that sounds like an incredibly stressful trip! I hope her luggage arrives soon and in good condition, and it's good she made it there safely at least. We had something kind of similar happen the first time MrBoot and I flew home for the holidays (only a few months after getting married, too). We flew from Salt Lake into Boise, with a final destination of Portland, OR. There was some unpleasant weather developing in Portland when we left, but by the time we got to Boise it had gotten much worse (lots of snow (for Portland), freezing rain, high winds, etc.). We boarded and waited awhile, were told they were monitoring weather conditions, waited some more, then were deboarded while we continued to wait. Eventually we were informed that PDX had shut down due to both the weather (later called the Snowpocalypse of 2008 by local media) and running out of de-icer for the planes. After discussing our options with a gate agent, we were able to fly into Seattle, and my awesome parents drove up to get us (it was chains most of the way too). We didn't get our luggage for 3 days, and when it finally got to PDX, we had to hunt around for it in literal heaps of other luggage, and MrBoot's suitcase sustained permanent damage due to ending up on the bottom of one of the stacks (it was old, though, and with all the chaos we didn't bother filing a report). So, yeah. That experience taught me to always pack a couple changes of clothes and any important medications into my carry-on/personal item, just in case. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Oh man, I had no idea that multi-player pinball tables were a thing. Guess I'll just have to leave my quarter on whatever tables are there and hope my free time lines up with one being available. I'll check if I have the Ghostbusters table, and if not I'll look into the others you mentioned. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Oh I didn't know he'd bought those, I thought they were rented. ...I don't suppose you recall which ones they were, do you? Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

@buglips*the*goblin Pinball machines for ReaperCon this year: CONFIRMED. Source: Ed on Reaper Live today. Next week I'll ask which ones (totally not for the purpose of knowing which ones to practice with on Pinball Arcade or anything.... ) Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

I'd be happy to post it up once it's finished! I'm currently working on hammering out the finer details of his various Limit Breaks (he's got 2, one for single enemy and one for multiple, with a 3rd sort-of one for when he's on his bike). I finally had to type up the whole mess as a separate sheet so I could see which feats/abilities were swift actions, movement actions, or attack actions to make sure everything is legal. It's a good thing I did too, since I didn't realize I initially had him doing (in 1 round) a full-round action, two attack actions, 3 swift actions, a movement, and a free action (for those unfamiliar with Pathfinder, you get either a single full-round action, OR an attack and movement action, with a single swift action as a bonus). I mean, I knew I had overcalulated, but didn't realize it was by...quite so much. I mean, yeah he's a pretty epic superhuman character, but in this universe he's going to find his constant physics-breaking shenanigans severely curtailed. EDIT: Forgot to add that the number of books is now up to 9. To be fair, 4 of those were only used for a single piece of equipment, but still. And before anyone asks, not only is the GM totally cool with this, he's the one that keeps bringing me more! I finally had to put my foot down and ask him nicely to stop making my life more complicated, lol. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Reason #317 why I love RPGs: MrBoot and I got into a theoretical discussion about how one could recreate Cloud from FF7 in Pathfinder. Well, it was theoretical...until he started to pull out books and look up feats and equipment. So, long story short, I've now put together a decent facsimile of Cloud (it only took me 7 different books and far too many hours, but it was a fun challenge). The best part is that this happened at just the right time in our campaign, with increasing planar stability leading to portals opening up to the Abyss. In the next session, Cloud is going to come roaring out of a portal on his motorcycle and start laying waste to heaps of demons with his ridiculous sword. I'm ridiculously excited for this moment. The story we came up with is that the same planar instability thing is happening in other worlds, and on his planet, Cloud used a special materia to close the rifts. Unfortunately he got caught up in the energy rebound of the instability collapsing and was flung into the Abyss. I decided that using the special materia drained a bunch of his life force and destroyed most of his regular materia to get enough energy to work, which is why he's only level 7 (like the rest of the party) and only has a small handful of "materia" left. Those are really just regular spells (from a book called, ironically enough, Spheres of Power), renamed and visually reskinned as "materia magic abilities" and "summons." I'm rather pleased with how they turned out. Figuring out how to do his Limit Break abilities took the most time, and it basically came down to a handful of feats/abilities that increase melee attack/damage/speed/awesomeness for 1 or 2 rounds, which I will only trigger once he's taken a decent amount of damage. His ridiculously big sword was fun to figure out; he needs 2 feats just to wield the silly thing. I don't generally like complicated character creation (too much crunchy maths and fiddly double-checking of rules), but I actually enjoyed this. I can't wait to see just how big his pile of damage will get when his Limit Break gets used. Pretty sure I'm gonna need a calculator. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D