Holiday Project 1

As always, I planed some hobby activities for my holiday, because during workaday life there is always not enough time.
Project 1 was a drawing exercise in order to get more practice in line drawing and inking. Also, I experiment with colors and usage of Layout Markers. And here is the result (please regard it with a favor - I'm a learner :-)

I call this picture Experiment #1 : "Crossing". As can be seen, I am still fascinated from the idea of steam punk. It is an interesting task to think about which parts a steam man would comprise, and which are the characteristic building blocks of such creatures. I am very sad to have not more time to investigate this question.

One intention of this excerise was to work out to draw lines in different weights, and to get comfortable with the foundations of comic inking. Although I've done some progress, I have still huge respect to the professionals of the Comic Szene, it is really difficult to draw lines accurately ! As an result of this exercise, I am also starting to get used to Layout Markers.

It is always interesting to experience the relation of drawing to courage and resolutness. A line must be drawn without doubt or fear about error, which is also true for shadows or dark areas, or light spots. Here, only practice and strong observation will help ;-)

The next picture is planed to be carried out in oil pastels, but I can not say if my holidy is long enough. Project 2 is to create a game prototype in Processing, and Project 3 is about Erlang programming. So we'll see......

Steam Gestalt

At this time, I am productive in drawing. This is cool, because in the life of Software Engineer or even Software Architect, the creative part of my person has no possibility, or at least not enough, to come out. If my information is true told from many people, then I should compliment Google on let their Software People work for some fix part of the whole time on their own ideas. I am shure that gives much value back to the company, even if this benefit maybe not measurable and described by any numbers.

But back to my work. One of my friends told me about a game embedded in a fictive world where is no electricity, but steam instead. I am very excited about this idea, so that I had to draw a gestalt at once (originally I want to ink it, but unfortunatly there is no time in the moment).

So It seems, that I got an big interest on designing gestalts, their equiment, and gesture. Of course I am far from perfect, I need much more experience. But I have a sketch block now, and where ever I got some idea, I will take the pen.

Back to old hobbies

These days I have returned to work with Erlang. I can not really say what was the reason or impetus for doing so, but anyway, Erland is an interesting language, now and in the next time. In order to support my work a little bit better I have implemented a very simple syntax highlighting, compilation phase and file type for Erlang in Apples Xcode. Of course Xcode has its flaws, but the general approach it provides has some advantages.

What to do in Erlang ? Well, I had never lost my interest in SVG, and so I will try a little render engine for SVG, Not because I think that is what the world is waiting for, just to combine to interesting issues, and to provide a graphical interface for my Artificial Neuronal Network and Cellular Computing engine (dream, dream). Such kind of applications may be well suited for the distributed computing approach of Erlang.

The other thing I returned to is drawing. In fact I never drop this hobby, but in the last months and years it was put in deep background because of time. That should be corrected. Here, my main interest are characters or figures, in the style of Cartoons, Comics or Oil Pastells. The picture in this post is one example, a result from a so-called Manga drawing course. Ok, the word "course" is not appropriate, it was just a kind of gathering, but the people there were really interesting.
So let's go on !