[Herr D]

In four minutes eleven seconds I saw Thrash and three other guys headed for me. Upclose had started drifting in and out of arenas on the other side of the hall, the ones with bigger fighting floors. Footage suggested she was just drumming up business. I didn’t think so. By that time, I had attempted to recreate what ESO had been sending, what my bot search had turned up, any dregs of unerased footage from the quake hallways, buffer data-mining losses, etc. The short summary is I hadn’t gotten very much accomplished.
Of course I’d DONE a lot. It just amounted to nothing. ESO had been reporting on Enforcers waving magnetic wands at cameras, starting a maintenance routine that just happened to last twenty-two hours. The cleaning bot was still not found, but I had figured out that it was buried in the quake and out of range of any standard transmitters. Quake footage really had been completely purged from the system during a seventh copy-outward command. Data mining hadn’t gone very well either except that I discovered the Enforcers were goofy enough they’d left power to some of the rooms buried in the quake. The four guys drew near. I prepped GameFace for rapid changes and looked at them like a Pharaoh watching slaves arrive. Each one carried two bottles.
“Q?” said Thrash, “We have water, beer, lemonade, and FayKafay. Which would you like?” Yikes.
“Is the lemonade real?” That would make it more expensive than beer.
“Sorry, no,” said the one holding it.
I nodded and looked at the water. Filtered, ozoned. “Water is fine. Thank you.” The guys looked surprised, but handed me one. I opened it. I drank a long swallow. Then they opened theirs and drank too. And Thrash told me about the wonderful idea that I didn’t know I’d given him.

[Herr D]

My schedule has become more erratic and inconvenient. I keep missing open critique day. If anyone has special requests for critiques from me or advice for me, you may use this thread or PM me. I may not get back quick, but my replies will be thought out. In general, digital art is the last medium I have begun to learn in a long series of media. You are more likely to get generic art advice (and probably context-oriented) from me.

I didn’t bother to make this look so much like a carving as I tried to make woodgrain–eh. I did better with digitally distressing metal.
http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/TheCarving.jpg
I am actually more curious to know what people thought of the woodcarver that is not in the picture at all.
When I renamed this file, I couldn’t get the proportions and the cropping right at the same time. Jeff probably got a smashed copy.

[Herr D]

. . . and this is my one-slot contest entry catch-up page. (Thanks again, Kaylin.)
Lab J really did concern Bill. When an outbuilding caught fire, he almost called 911. But this thing jumped out and ate it. It ate the grill, charcoal and all a little later. –well, it was a very nice — thing. So we told it it was nice and that it earned a nap of it’s VERY OWN. That old asbestos fire blanket makes a good pillow. Stay asleep. Stay DEEPLY asleep. Stay deeply asleep a LOOOOOONG time.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/ItJumpedFromTheFire.jpg

It’s made of Hair-Standard. The next one is made of Fonts. I used about a fourth of them, but only ever typed “hidden meanings.” So this picture is FULL of hidden meanings, to the exclusion of anything else.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/hiddenmeanings3.jpg
Should’ve worked on a bigger scale. Oh, well. Last but not least we have the muscle car mag cover complete with a curvy model draped on her car, wearing a skimpy bathing suit. Of course, I really just wanted to see if I could make a dragon look good in a thong, but the car turned out better. –all made of Insignia. The 3rd edition of Hunan Muscle car didn’t sell well, but Tran’s Sylvania with the extra propulsion system fitted to the driver’s mouth? One of a kind, baby.
http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/TransSylvania.jpg

[Herr D]

As a point of interest, your acrobat wearing the motley is close to what you need for the trapeze. Feet and lower legs almost completely behind the thighs, mostly out of view for the catcher, standard flying pose with hands open for the robin. Much more difficult would be the pose where the legs are wrapped by the trapeze rope during preparation. The knife-thrower you might try the hand which is approximately American Sign Language for ‘a’ slightly open with knife tip ‘hidden’ between thumb and forefinger.

[Herr D]

Miners began to arrive. Slowly at first, only in fighter teams armed to the teeth. Then small groups and then random-sized groups. The arenas filled. I chose the largest arena with an announcer podium and waited. When the arena screens began to go through startup routine, I rebooted my internal modem, wary of some trick. Any stray signal would be disguised by massive carrier waves and Upclose’s self-protective measures. She wasn’t an idiot. No one would be able to completely disguise a continuous transmission in real time to this many ‘leaky’ signal receivers. I guessed right. She hadn’t actuallly stolen the footage. She’d just planted a function to broadcast it straight from it’s source on that particular server with fake signal traces from out in the asteroid field. The opening stuttered and restarted as the server crashed. She wasn’t trying to hack my head anymore. I peeked and realized she was three hallways away at a kiosk–or had been. It was now fried. I checked footage to discover she was headed for Arena Row. Someone else was headed for me. I didn’t recognize him at first. It was the first guy to meet me here. He walked up to me, offering a handshake. “Your protectors must be happy with you.”
I shook his hand. “Yes.”
“What do they want us to do? They’re not planning a riot. Not their style.”
“They want you to enjoy the show.”
He blinked. “Um. Ok? Call me Thrash. Is there anything I can get you?” Ah.
“I could use some water. But more importantly I need to know if anyone was near Doors 22 or 24 within three hours of the quake. We’re not asking for rats. We’re asking for people to admit they were near to eliminate people with clear consciences.”
Thrash nodded. “Five minutes,” he said, and he squeezed into the crowd.
A lot can be accomplished in five minutes . . .

[Herr D]

This album is getting a bit behind! Here is my catch-up aliens page:
Infiltration isn’t always so much planned as it is necessary for survival. That was my thinking in my ‘use the dolly’ contest entry.
http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/HerrD-FittingIn.jpg
Featuring a velcro fail.
Next up, my wife and I had a serious theoretical discussion about xenobiology regarding specifically sentient beings of a species where: it would be advantageous to ‘join’ temporarily or permanently body segments; combining animal and plant features; torso containing all but limbs. Interestingly, she and I both, independently and for different reasons, came up with the ideas that four together would be best and that there would be a temporary lowering of good judgement / intellect during and after eating. My submission for the ‘use wings items’ contest features a social blunder of such a creature during a photo-op with the U.N. greeting party.
http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/HerrD-WingsAsAlienRocketUmbrella.jpg
But it’s the same colors as their cookies, right?

[Herr D]

The Show Must Go Off–part twenty-one
\FORMATMAINT \MARKBEGIN \LOCPREP
MCL-BeltMiner#C485640624

I checked all the arenas on one side of the hallway and went to the nearest kiosk. “A random sample check shows all clear, sir,” I typed without a box. I paused. Then I typed. “May I ask what is happening?”
Then it happened. I was receiving a report about the missing cleaning bot, ESO was sending more reports, and I wasn’t even able to read them. Beatitudes. Psalms. Proverbs. An immense amount of Bible was passing through my head. I was stunned.
I sat there like an idiot. Bible would only pass through my head for one reason. Someone was trying to hack my head! I’d be safe, but crippled electronically until whoever was doing it had their hosting server crash. Since that was probably Upclose, that would be several minutes. That would mean whatever reports were being sent to me were toast. Intact data can be traced, after all. I stood up, frowning with just my own face. I needed to get back on camera! I needed to know whether somebody knew about ME. I needed to know whether a radio modem was suspected. My signal might not be traced, but in theory it could be triangulated or jammed. The whole set of bluffs I’d been running might just come crashing down. I took a chance. I set the BibleCrash to automultiply toward every server around and shut down the modem.

[Herr D]

If I understand correctly, look at the item chosen with a ‘bullet.’ You should see a list of items including a choice that means ‘whole picture.’ Select that and then type what you want in the x and y slots. I have noticed some unevenness in big scale changes. It takes experimentation to get it as good as can be. good luck

[Herr D]

One of the interesting things about beetle carapaces is that they don’t look tough–but you can step on some of them without damaging them. Several exobiologists (tho they weren’t called that back then) went on record as saying human-sized exoskeletons would never work. Two obvious objections are that materials engineering has made progress since then and that unknown chemical and gravitational conditions might MAKE such things possible.

To make it look obvious without a context like a broken axe in the picture, I would have to suggest texturing it. Patterns of fissures and ‘chipped’ areas might make it look tough the way heavy scars make human fighters look like they have stamina. If you’re trying to appeal to an audience who loves contrasts and surprise, make that proboscis look exceptionally weak and thin–they grind their food just getting it to the mouth, right? They would claw a giant tortoise once and slurp up the turtle soup from the resulting puddle. Good luck.

[Herr D]

Hey! So I met a man named Waldo for the first time in my life two shifts ago. I instantly remembered those “Where’s Waldo” things I was never much good at, and I thought of another of these that had to be done. You know all those things that have hidden meanings in them? Well, what if there was something so full of hidden meanings that it was actually MADE of hidden meanings? . . . okay, so this is made of ‘hidden meanings’ in various fonts, colors, rotations, sizes, and proportions. Yep. One two-word phrase in many many many iterations.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/hiddenmeanings3.jpg

The sun turned out better than the airplane — ah well.

[Herr D]

Hunan Muscle car 3rd ed. HM3 [] glad you like the car–My reasoning is a dragon wouldn’t model for a Szechuan Muscle Car Magazine. Szechuan doesn’t char as well.

[Herr D]

I couldn’t leave out the mandatory magazine cover. So Tran likes fishing, smoking, and driving her custom Sylvania. Of course, she’s smokin’ even when she doesn’t MEAN to be . . .

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/TransSylvania.jpg

Tran’s Sylvania is all made of Insignia. Custom job too.

[Herr D]

Kaylin88100—has this contest going now, One-slots. I naturally thought (as EVERYone should–heh, heh) that since everything is made of energy, my first entry should be made of Item Right / Energy.

Also perhaps inspired by Henson’s Coosbanians, Battle Under The Eclipse.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/BattleUnderTheEclipse.jpg

The One-eyed, Blowfish-Leaping Spider-Thingamabob is in trouble. From his shadow, his leap has carried him too low near the Two-headed, Green Crawler. A bite in the center past the toxic spines could pop the subdermal inflation chambers, rendering him helpless.

[Herr D]

Y’know? that bit about a monster from Hair / Standard turned out to be fun–there are horns and fins in there!

So, one of Lab J’s outbuildings had a fire. Something jumped out of it and ate the burning shed before we could call the fire department. Problem solved, right? It looked hungry later, so we lit a charcoal grill and it ate every bite. It was a good–whatever–so we told it to have a nap as it’s reward . . .

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/ItJumpedFromTheFire.jpg

That old asbestos fire blanket is a good pillow! I hope it sleeps a looooooong time.

[Herr D]

My kind of contest!

Everything, even matter, is made up of energy anyway . . . [extreme quantum physics 101] so here is my scene, Battle Under the Eclipse!

made of — Item Right / Energy

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/hm3/BattleUnderTheEclipse.jpg

Look out for those stingers, man; they look toxic!

[Author]

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