Aarg!

School is NOT cancelled today! Phooey! Temps didn't get quite low enough overnight to freeze, so the roads arr wet, not icy. But the temp is supposed to get lower over the day, so I claimed that I was worried about the highways icing on my commute home (well, it really is a worry since a lot of my drive is on an elevated highway) and am officially Working from Home.

Mind you, the 4.5 hours sleep caused by a midnight thunderstorm and waking up at 5:45 and being unable to get back to sleep is also a concern - I've got enough adrenalin now to be awake on the drive to work, but the drive home this afternoon would be scary.

I shall hole up in my apartment and brave the almost-freezing weather with only my cat and the internet for company. And I have to convince the cat that she really doesn't want the window open, natural fur coat or no.

ETA: I just looked out onto the back porch and, strangely, the old empty litterbox and the dead small not-quite-hand-vac, not-quite-vacuum-cleaner that I never remember to take to the trash when I'm going there are gone and the glass globe for the porch light is sitting on the ground. Huh. Suppose I ought to check the unlockable storage closet and see if my Neverending Supply of Cardboard Boxes and the two folding chairs are gone. Although it seems more like a mysterious trash collector and not a really desperate thief. I have no idea when they vanished, which should tell you how often I check the back porch.


ETA2: JUST got the campus email! We closed! Woooo!

Lemminglike, I meme

Via yhlee

If my LJ were its own fandom...

a. Who would people ship me with?
b. Who would be my arch-nemesis?
c. What would a Mary Sue in my fandom be like?
d. When or how did I/will I jump the shark?
e. Write a one sentence summary of the story that would win the Best Fanfic Award in my fandom.
f. What would a typical badfic involve?
g. Who would be the BNFs in my fandom?
h. Why would my fandom end up on fandom_wank?

Memeage

Since the combat card thing is going around again, here's mine.

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Room

Since I didn't have to go in to work, I spent the day putting together these wire cube thingys to provide more storage space in my room, and in moving the bed (well, I did that last night)

( The results )

Art and Photoshop people out there...

...here's a wacky idea.

I've had it floating in my head for a couple of years that a good project for PandaBuddha (what I published Project Blue Rose under) is to produce a CD and a printed manual of completely copyright-free background images and clip art that are useful for manga and doujinshi. Both line art and the sort of tone-ized backgrounds that you see in Nana or very contrasty B&W images, but primarily line art, in a number of different sizes. The manual would have a printed inventory of the images, with thumbnails and filenames, and explanations and examples of how they could be used. If I could get some of the line arts in vector format as well, that would be muy excellente. I'm thinking of selection of interiors and exteriors of buildings, houses, schools, as well as some scenes of nature, and some images of trees and animals and cars and other everyday things to round it out.

ETA: People who can do (or are willing to learn) good vector images are highly encouraged to volunteer - because something like this, only with a subject other than a person, is PERFECT.

ETA2: I'm talking something similar to the lineart portions here and here. (Warning: huge files.) He's got a short pen tool tut here.

What I'm looking for, actually, is mostly tracings of photographs, or very well manipped tone-ized or contrasty* photos to keep them looking as nice as possible. And to keep this absolutely legal-hassle-free, it has to be photos that you have taken, or that someone you know has taken who is willing to sign a piece of paper saying they do not want any money for the use of their photos, because I am, after all, reselling them. :D

Remuneration for this? Er, not much. If anything. Contributor's copies, of course, and credits in the manual and on a file on the CD. I'd have to work out what the cost was for the CDs, CD cases, manuals, packaging, and posting before I could price them, and at that, I'm not really sure how much of a market there'd be for them. So I'd say right now: contributor's copies only, with the possibility of a bit of money, probably only enough to buy a hardback book, if that, later, if it takes off or goes into another printing. :D

So, anyone stupid enough willing to help me with a project that might end up involving a lot of work and not much recompense?

I'll start working on some example images to show you what I'm thinking of.

* They have to save well as a bitmapped image that contains only black and white pixels - absolutely no greyscale. I'm willing to teach you about that.

Example

Here's an example of a pure B&W high-contrast image, like I mentioned in the previous post. This isn't pure lineart, since there's way too many black areas, but you get the general idea, and there's plenty of room for backgrounds and objects made of stark B&W like this.

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If you don't have Photoshop, but have PSP or another program, you can do a lot of the steps detailed above, and then send it to another perosn for the final processing. Or they can send it to you after the fitler steps and you can fill in blacks and whites. We don't have to have these done by any one person.

ETA: If you don't ahve Photoshop, you can use Inkscape, a free vector-based program that will allow you to do lineart in vector format by tracing over an image. Did I mention it was free? (And, er, yeah - all tracing is helped if you have a graphics tablet instead of a mouse ... you *can* do it with a mouse, but it takes longer to get right, and you tend to get more hand cramps :D)

Aaand another one...

Another one, similar to the car in my last post. I promise to try to get around to actual lineart examples in the next day or two. :D

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Lineart example!:D

And ... lineart!

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If you ahve no idea what I'm talking about, check my previous few posts, or click on either of the tags and read the previous posts.