Lost

This is a personal post. Though it does affect my works in a way. I don't know who or what I am some days. It seems my interests change every two days. A thing or topic enraptures me and I try to then base everything around it, but then the next thing comes along and I must pursue it as one pursues their soul mate. This may contradict all the effort I just put into the last passion or all the previous work will be abandoned.

Secondly, I can't even find a base to build my character around. One day I'm cute and childish, the next mischievous and outgoing, and after that I'm timid and reclusive. There is no one good word to describe me and the many facets of what could be considered my personality. I suppose it is easier to figure out what I'm not. I am not classy, strong, messy, or other adjectives. Sadly, the things I cannot be sometimes find themselves to be my interest. For example, I am into fancy parties one day, but I have no sense of what is refined or not.

I suppose what frustrates me the most is those conflicting interests. I blame this on the fact that my astrological sign is Gemini... Anyways, an easy way to say this is that I want my cake whole because it is pretty, but I also want to eat it too because it is delicious. I know the logical thing to do in this situation is take a picture of the cake and then eat it for the cake will not at its prime for either condition much longer than a week before it rots and whathaveyou. I will agonize over it, feel guilty about it, then completely move on as the next thing catches my fancy.

Perhaps one day I should go take some personality assessment tests. Perhaps someone telling me who I am will help. Unless that day I think myself a rebel.

My attempt at writing pt. III

“Emily-eeeeeeeee!”

“Just come in. Door's unlocked.”

Deadsun opened the door and walked into my apartment.

“You ready?”

“I just have to put my shoes on and I'm good.”

“Your car or mine?”

“Doesn't matter.”

“Fine then, yours.”

That's one thing I like about Deadsun. I am sort of very indecisive. She has an opinion and will keep everything going. Thanks to her we do not waste much time trying to make a decision.

“Where to then, Eve? And is your sister coming?”

“I said burgers earlier, so the closest burger place. Dawn is in the middle of a 'super, really awesome book' and won't be coming.”

“'Aight.”

So Deadsun and I walked out of my apartment. I made sure the door was locked before we got on the elevator down to the garage. All the way from my apartment to the fast food joint was silent. Deadsun was staring out at some distant point with a small smile on her face. She was probably watching cats. I shook Deadsun out of her browsing reverie when we pulled into the parking lot. We went inside as quickly as possible. It was well below zero degrees and neither of us were dressed for the cold.

The place was dead. There were two employes there. I always feel bad for those graveyard shift people. I gave an apologetic look as Deadsun moved to the counter to place her order. I placed mine and then we sat down at a table.

“Ok Eve, you were quiet the entire ride.”

“I was talking with one of my friends.”

“So your fire sorceress was kicking ass tonight.”

“You're mean. You know you and E-three did way better. You play way more than us.”

“Not as much as some of the other people in the company.”

“Eh.”

“Then have you heard Technomancer's new song?”

“Oh yes! Heroics. The tune is super catchy. I'll look it up, but some sources say he has a hidden message in the song.”

“What? Really?”

“Just a minute.”

Deadsun's eyes suddenly glazed over as she accessed her internet. I decided to steal a pickle out of her burger while she was not entirely focused.

“Ok, it says here that he revealed a part of his name by sampling a bit from an old movie's soundtrack.”

“Huh? Is there any official word? That's some wild guessing otherwise.”

“No official word. Technomancer is extremely secretive about his identity. He might be an alien.”

“Pfft. Dude's just way better than old electronic dance masters at not showing face.”

Deadsun came back to reality and started on her burger. I bit my lip and snickered.

“Oh hell, what did you do to my food?”

“Nothing,” I said in my most innocent voice.

“Seriously. I'm going to get mad.”

I busted out laughing and then scarfed down the rest of my food before she could act out on revenge. The rest of the time at the burger place was spent with idle gossip and making faces at each other.

My attempt at writing pt. II

[Company]AtomicApoc: Pi guys.

[Company]BionicBro: Pi.

[Company]ElectricEpoch: You've come back around

[Company]Faeriez: Hey girly. I sent you the potions you asked for. They should be in your mail.

[Company]AtomicApoc: Thanks. I wish it would stop snowing. It's been snowing for, like, 5 days now.

[Company]BionicBro: we live in MinneSNOWta. you should expect crazy weather.

[Company]AtomicApoc: Still... *whines*

[Company]AtomicApoc: The run tonight is at 7, right?

[Company]Faeriez: Yep.

[Company]AtomicApoc: Kk. I'm going to farm mats. If anyone needs anything let me know.

[Private]ElectricEpoch to you: Hey

[Private]to ElectricEpoch: Yes?

[Private]ElectricEpoch to you: Two things

[Private]ElectricEpoch to you: The hands you've been wanting dropped for me >;p

[Private]ElectricEpoch to you: And I saw you at the club again Saturday

[Private]to ElectricEpoch: Curses on both! You keep seeing me at the dances, but I've never seen you. Why don't you come over and say hi?

[Private]ElectricEpoch to you: No one in the company has seen me

[Private]ElectricEpoch to you: Even though we coincidentally mostly live in the same area

[Private]ElectricEpoch to you: Still, I have reasons

[Private]to ElectricEpoch: Aww, you shy?

[Private]ElectricEpoch to you: No

[Private]to ElectricEpoch: Then where are you hiding? In the crowd or up on the balc?

ElectricEpoch stopped responding to me. Wonder what his deal is. He is like my stalker, but we have quite a bit in common so it is all cool with me. I would like to know who he is. I know BionicBro. He is also known as “Steaksauce” in our little group partly due to his darker skin but mostly because he puts steak sauce on everything. He is “not” dating Causticlysm, my neighbor. They just spend a lot of time together and are “just friends.” Causticlysm's twin sister Deadsun shakes her head every time he emphasizes that. Faeriez, our company leader, is some 50 years plus old lady who sits at her home and plays Eden Lost all day. She says she wrote a book and made a killing so she never has to work. She also says she's been playing MMOs since before most of us were even born. I am only 25, so I would not doubt it. The five of us, BionicBro, Causticlysm, Deadsun, and ElectricEpoch, are all Psybs. We talk to each other with chat programs in our internal computers, chat in game, and see each other frequently. Except ElectricEpoch as I mentioned.

In my peripheral vision I could see that Deadsun was messaging me. I willed the chat program into my front vision so I could see what Deadsun wanted.

[Dd]: Emily, is there a run tonight? All the recent holiday stuff has me and my sister messed up.

[AA]: Faeriez says it's at 7.

[Dd]: O ty

[Dd]: Are you down for burgers after the run? Or is your fridge full or Giftmas leftovers?

[AA]: Oh, it's full, but I'm so sick of reheated ham and stuffing.

[Dd]: I'll kick down your door when we're done. :P

[AA]: See you then. :3

After that exchange I thought about exiting the program. I do not care for people messaging me when I'm doing runs. It is embarrassing when my parents try to talk with me and I accidentally blow them off. I can still only focus on one thing at a time. Psybs are still human. We just have a computer to help us 24/7. Perhaps we are less than human?

01001100 01100001 01110100 01100101 01110010

The run went smoothly. I did amazing as my ranger; however, ElectricEpoch did better with his assassin. As always, he lightly gloats about it when we're done. Everyone else did pretty good too. I wished everyone a good night before exiting the game. Not even 30 seconds later I heard someone actually kicking my door. I did not expect her to really do it this time.

My attempt at writing pt. I

BBlog: March 21, 2039.

This is my first post from my new brain. I got the operation several weeks ago. The one where they insert a computer in the "dead" section of a person's brain. I have just came out of the coma and now learning how to use the system. Not having a keyboard, monitor, and all that is kinda weird. Accessing the internet from my head is the greatest thing ever though! I can hit Go Plex or EncycloNet from just about anywhere. The developers were right. This will improve information exchange and gathering infinitely. This brain-computer thing is still in development and I'm just a test, so the doctors suggest I only spend a limited amount of time on it each day. That, and I'll be detained in the hospital for a time. Keep reading this blog for more updates from me!

XOXO,

-Phoebe

It has been a few years now since Phoebe became the first person to be Psyborg, one who has a computer implanted into their brain. Still, most people have not undergone the operation. It is not cheap. One could buy a new house or go on vacation with the money it takes. Then it is also frightening that surgeons crack one's skull open, mess around with key nerves that connect the brain to the rest of the body, and then staple everything closed. Sources online say that less than or about nine percent of the world's population are Psyborgs now. Mostly younger folk that are “crazy.”

My parents are rich, so that is how I was able to afford the operation. Otherwise, I work at Blue Box in Roseville as a Nerd Herd technician fixing peoples' old computers, tablets, and things. I work in the back room since I prefer to work by plugging myself in directly. I find it easier to locate the problem when all the data is in my head. Most people still find it highly disturbing that humans can directly plug themselves into machines via usb cords. It looks like the old sci-fi movies where they have aliens or whatever all wired up in a giant test-tube. Ports typically are located at the base of the skull, right about where the hairline is so it is easy to cover it up if one so desires. That is where mine is. Though I show it off. Even though I'm a girl, I keep my blonde hair super short in a pixie cut.

This job takes care of living expenses and the rent of the mediocre apartment in Saint Paul. For all its “charms” I do love my apartment. It is no where near as nice as my parents' mini-mansion over in Eden Prarie. It's got the basics; one bed, one bath, kitchen and a room. It is not a living room or a den. More like, a large space where I have put my telly, a couch, and clothes that should someday migrate to the hamper. Or so I keep hoping.

My pride and joy is my custom built computer. Sure I'm a Psyb, but you can not play video games in your mind yet. Some developers have made some crude games. The best one right now is a reboot of a building game that was super popular back in 2010 or so. I am huge into the massively mutliplayer online game, Eden Lost. It's the biggest MMO right now and has won many awards. My closest friends play it with me. My gamename is AtomicApoc. It was supposed to be AtomicApocalypse, but that many characters is not allowed and then some nub took Apocalypse. Enough talking about the game though. I'm going to log in and play.

Welcome to Eden Lost. Latest notes on patch information can be found online at http://us.edenlost.net/en/

Hair!

This piece I actually did today. Just a few minutes ago. My friend posted a picture of herself over Facebook and several other of my friends made it into a meme of fake ads for hair products. All of the pictures were made with the basic Paint program and taking images off Google. All images belong to their respective owners.

This one was made by my friend Chloe. She does writing.

This one was made by my friend Chris. He does fine art. This image is the original meme.





[As of Thursday the 15th, more versions have sprung up around Facebook. Too many to repost here.]

Dead Battery

 I drew this because the lock on our front door is battery powered and no one has the key. The battery died in it and I couldn't get inside the house.

Limelight

 I do apologize for the horrid resolution on this example of my work. It is an enlarged screenshot from the original source.
 What we had to do for another project in our class was to make in InDesign three book front and back covers. Overall, I did not feel like I did well in that assignment; however, there was this one tiny bit in which I felt like I did. We had to make up a publisher for our books and I decided on "Limelight." You can see to the right how I visually turned it humorous, yet I believe, clever. The "limelight" was easily assembled in Photoshop.

RSDC

 I designed and produced this logo for a competition the college I was attending planned on hosting. I don't know if the competition is actually being held or whatnot.
 The Graphic Design club members were told to make a logo and out of everyone's' mine was chosen. The inspiration for the logo was some old floppy disks that I had cached in my dorm room. This logo was made in Illustrator. My professor took great interest in this logo and made sure it was high quality.

Redesign website

Another project we had in my Graphic Design class was to redesign a company's image. I picked HyVee food stores as I was working in one at the time. I choose to change the target audience to be a grocery store for Kandi Ravers. I had made for this site several Flash .gifs unfortunately, they don't show up in my screenshots of the site.

Personal Banner

For my graphic design class we had to make a personal website in Dreamweaver. My theme throughout my site was rainbows. This banner here was also converted into a navigation bar that when moused over one of the color boxes would flip to have text telling which section of my site to visit. The pictures are chronologically in order going down. Before I saturated each photo, one could see the changes in my hair color and styles.

Flowers

I took this photo many, many years ago at the Border Waters between Minnesota and Canada. I was on a trip with my mother. I can't explain why, but I really do enjoy this photo I took. There is no real story behind it either. I was walking along and found these wild, pink flowers. I have done absolutely zero alteration on this image.

Simple Website

Click on the image to see a larger version. Same goes for all images on this blog.

In our Graphic Design class we spent a semester working on HTML codes and the Dreamweaver program. For one of projects we had to get into a team and make a commercial website for an outdoors activities store. I cannot recall the original name of the store, but we had to use their products in our websites. We were allowed to rename our website. My partner and I both liked indie music and agreed that we'd go with an indie skateboarder design for the site. We picked the name "National" after the band "The National." On the homepage we have our favorite song done by the band embedded.

The navigation bar on the left are skateboard decks that flip over when one hovers their mouse of them. The background design is done by Bobsmade and was used with permission. We only had several hours to put this site together honestly. In the end we had a total of eight pages. Thankfully, all the links worked, everything was aligned correctly, and we had a vision and stuck with it.

The images here are screenshots from my computer using Firefox.

Mists

Simply put, World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria released today. I'm going to be playing that almost solid. Temporary hiatus.

Pokemon

 This is an illustration that was requested by a friend of mine. He wanted me to draw his Pokemon trainer along with his favorite Pokemon.
 He was rather vague with the details he wanted. It was along the lines of sharing some links of clothes and that he wanted a computer thingy on his arm. 

Logo

 This is my personal logo. I have developed my own brand rather early in my design career. It took quite a bit of cajoling from my professor and peers for me to adopt this one over my older version. The old logo can be found on the bottom of yesterday's image. There was an assignment for us to create a logo for ourselves. The professor knew I had an established logo I like already but pushed me to think of something new. So I went to my sketchbook at this logo actually was one of the later designs I came up with.

The reason behind the paperclips makes a whole heck of a lot of sense if one were to meet me in person. I have attached paperclips to most of my clothes and often wear a rainbow paperclip necklace that I made. The "JoFo" in this logo continues with the paperclip or one line feel.

Invite

So I made this joke invitation in Photoshop when I had extra time in class. I believe the card has a sort of Hot Topic feel to it. More than likely I took the invite into InDesign to work the text alignments out. This is also the second version. The first version only had two stars, but it felt sparse so I added more stars. My sense of humor is unique to me and it takes close friends to figure out why this is more funny than face value.

Ad series

 Another project I had in my Graphic Design class was to create an ad series. We had to make three ads that had a similar theme but could not use the exact same image for all three. I originally went with a cutesy animal zoo for kids and made completely original drawings in Illustrator for it. Perhaps someday I will upload those three here to this blog.

 Last minute I scrapped those for these three which I quickly did in Photoshop. I felt it was more clever and witty to reuse common sayings and turn them into puns. I challenged myself to not use dollars and stick only to metal currency for the puns. The images were used from Google image searches.

Motion City Soundtrack

 This is a poster from a project I had in my intro to graphic design class. It was also about the third project our class had in Illustrator and Photoshop, so we were all still learning the tools. The assignment was to make a poster for a concert (real or fictitious) for a real band. I picked a real concert that I had attended. This was also my first concert ever. This poster was made entirely in Illustrator. I got inspiration for the design of the poster from the band's album My Dinosaur Life (picture below).

 I sincerely enjoyed this project a lot. I even put time into outside of class. I Tweeted it to the band and they re-Tweeted it back out. Justien Pierre, the lead guitarist and vocalist, said, "Nice!" As a fan girl, even this one syllable recognition is fantastic. 

Motion City Soundtrack - My Dinosaur Life

Shaman

This image shows what I can make synthesizing old costumes. I took parts of the druid and steampunk costume to make this shaman one.

From the druid piece I took the legging/skirt and I used the vest, pants and belt from the steampunk outfit. The fur collar came off a winter coat that I own. All the jewelry came from garage sales or gifts.

Dress

 This is a picture of me wearing a dress that I made from a pattern that I bought at Wal*Mart. The dress is my first attempt at ever sewing something. Unfortunately, the dress is incomplete. The back still needs grommets attached and then embellishing lace around the collar and ends of the sleeves.

 My intention while completing the dress is to make it more like one of my designs (pictured below). I am reading many books and watching videos on how to become more of a proficient seamstress.

Sketched design