Since the start of the new year, I haven’t really done much. Just about every weekend has been spent at home, where I ultimately have done nothing but play a lot of League of Legends. Now it’s not that I don’t enjoy the game immensely, but the bottom line was that I was not being very productive with my weekend spare time, and I think it began to creep into my head that I was really wasting a lot of time.
Wasting time is one of my biggest pet peeves, and you really haven’t seen me get bent out of shape until you see me when I start feeling like my time is being wasted; especially when it’s by circumstances caused by someone/something other than myself.
Long story short, I challenged myself to get off my ass and actually do something this weekend. At any given time, I’ve always got a project or three that I want to do, but have always sat on my hands and done nothing, until I felt they were warm enough to start spamming QWER keys and right clicking on LoL. So basically I said to myself to simply fucking do something this weekend.
Furthermore, I laid down the gauntlet to my Facebook peers, and said to them that if I fail to post something along the lines of showing some sort of start or progress or execution of a creative project, then I wanted them to tell me that I was worthless and to berate me as mercilessly, relentlessly and as hurtful as they possibly could, because frankly, if I couldn’t get off my ass within the span of 56 hours and do something other than LoL, then I pretty much deserve it.
Needless to say, I won’t be able to stop them if they decide to unload on me regardless, but they’re not going to justifiably do it. As soon as I got home from work on Friday, I pretty much got started on attempting to make the best of my time throughout the weekend, and instead of just a paltry status update, I figure I’d boast all my activities throughout the weekend.
Basically, I started this post on Saturday afternoon, and have been updating it periodically upon reaching stopping points from all my varying activities.
It’s kind of a good feeling when you feel so productive and eager to work that an enjoyable activity like indulging in a meal seems tedious.
Aside from wanting to get some projects off the ground, the bottom line was that I simply did not want to blow the entire weekend playing LoL, and wanted to feel productive. One of the first things I embarked on, was taking a laptop, and doing some maintenance with it; I think I cleared three pieces of malware, installed almost a gig’s worth of Windows Updates, caught it up with security scans and updated several drivers. The best part about doing computer shit though, is that while scans and installations are running, it leaves ample time to work on other things, and it was during this time I multitasked my way into starting actual projects.
The Blackjack Table
It’s no secret that I like to gamble, and that blackjack is my preferred choice of game. I’ve probably lost thousands of dollars throughout my life at blackjack tables, but it doesn’t deter me from enjoying small victories, free drinks, and the company of friends while I play.
Anyway, it’s always been one of my aspirations to construct my own blackjack table, so I could have an interesting piece of furniture in which I can entertain friends with the game of 21, have an adequate setting to practice counting cards, or simply have a cool prop to sit in the background of a photoshoot or something.
I’m serious enough about the project to have already purchased a variety of things necessary for a nice, legit looking blackjack table, like a six-deck shoe, a chip tray, discard rack, and a bill port. My favorite thing however, is the table layout (seen above), which is a retired Hard Rock Las Vegas blackjack table layout that I poached off of eBay. It’s got cigarette burns, and some obvious drink stains on it, but I love the tattoo-style artwork and the Take A Chance At Love message too much to care about such imperfections and chalk it up to having character already. Subsequently, all the cards I’ve purchased are also retired Hard Rock Casino cards, as to match with the layout.
I’ve always hesitated in starting this project, because simply put there’s nowhere in my house to currently put a fully setup blackjack table. However, if I were to make just the table top, it doesn’t meant that I can’t attach some interim folding legs, or simply be capable of storing it underneath my bed or propped in my closet until the day comes when there’s adequate space for it.
So, there’s no telling what the timeline for this will be, but for the sake of simply showing some progress, I got started with some non-space consuming actions to at least push the ball off the starting line.
Based on the size of the layout, and the existing marks of where there were clearly staples, I was able to make a fairly accurate estimate to what the size of the table would need to be, and drew out an outline of what my cuts would have to be to accommodate the layout in Illustrator. Looking at materials while at Home Depot, I’ll likely make the table top out of a combination of particle board and wooden spacers to give it some depth, as there are hundreds of people out there who have made their own blackjack tables in a similar manner.
Ultimately, I want to go as all out as I can with this table, without demolishing my Hard Rock layout. I’m doing my best to adhere to the existing marks to try and replicate what this layout once adorned, so there won’t be any drink slots in my table, but I want to have as many similar accessories as possible otherwise, like a big cushy cushion along the entire curved edge of the table.
One piece of bad news that I discovered was that the hole for the chip tray was substantially larger than the tray that I purchased. When I purchased my tray, I bought the biggest tray that was available at the Gambler’s General Store out in Las Vegas, but it turns out that that wasn’t large enough, either. My tray is a 12-row tray that measures about 18″ wide, but it turns out that Hard Rock used 15-row trays. And the bad news is that 15-row trays appear to be either near impossible, or very expensive to find, so as far as chip trays go, I may have to fabricate something to occupy the extra width, or bide my time in finding a 15-row tray that won’t cost way more than the trouble is worth for a recreational project.
Still have to get those Wins of the Days, though
You didn’t think I was going to go the whole weekend without playing LoL though, did you? Pffh, haha yeah right no.
However, something strange is going on though. I’m on an eight-game winning streak, with seven of those being with my core group of regular playing partners. As we’ve been saying for a while now, the absolute curb-stomping of a defeat is waiting and waiting and waiting, and when it hits, we’re going to be losing for a whole fucking month straight.
They’re Still Good
They’re not necessarily productive, but I still feel good about trying and successfully executing a new recipe. When I saw this recipe for Oreo-stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies, my jaw dropped, and I realized that there was nothing more in my life I wanted than one of these cookies.
I’m not much of a baker, but when it comes to cooking, I can follow directions and use appropriate materials pretty well. And in the end, they came out pretty much perfectly, and these turned out to be basically slices of heaven, and even as I type, I’ve still got several of these mammoth sugar bombs left, as I simply cannot eat more than one at time over the span of two hours.
“Only” Seven Months until Dragon*Con
Another year, another LoL group is on deck. I’ve done a different Graves costume over the last two years, and as much as I like playing Graves, frankly I don’t like all of his skins. I’ve done the two that I actually do like, and since I don’t want to repeat, I figured it was time to move on. Unfortunately, LoL has a pretty scarce number of human male champions, much less human male champions that aren’t in 90 pounds of armor and with costumes that would be substantially out of my skill level to execute.
On top of that, sure it’s funny at the right times of the day, but I don’t really want to be not taken seriously because I’m an Asian guy portraying characters that aren’t Asian. I have no problem with the black guy dressed up as Ryu from Street Fighter, or the Indian girl dressed up as Sailor Venus, but me personally, I don’t really feel like hearing the same rehashed jokes like from when I was dressed up as Mafia Graves. Riot Graves was easy to conceal my ethnicity, since I was in a helmet, visor and glasses, but unless I want to go way out of my comfort level of craftsmanship, I need to step back and choose more carefully.
That being said, my LoL costume for this year’s Dragon*Con is going to be Xin Zhao. Sure he’s kind of outdated in-game, but with the right teammates he’s still vicious, and as far as dressing up as him goes, I won’t have to worry the least bit about having to try and change my face. So all I have to do is simply making the best Xin Zhao costume as I can.
So for all intents and purposes, I decided to start with the spear. When making LoL props, there’s always the convenience of the model viewer on lolking to get comprehensive looks of all the champions in the game. Fronts, backs, tops and bottoms, and it’s also a great place to learn how the character moves and poses too. But what I like to do is take the character and their weapons, and scale them up to human-sized proportions, so that I can get a very accurate idea of what the props need to be in human-sized scale.
Xin’s spear is a good example of things not necessarily being realistic for the human world. In the graphic above, the yellow box is 70″ tall, which is about my height, and the screen grab of Xin and his spear was scaled to match my height to give a representation of what the spear would need to be. The red spear overlaying the sprite body would be the true scale of the spear in relation to my actual height.
If I made Xin’s spear true to scale, then the spear would be roughly 122″ which is the equivalent of about 10 feet. And as well all very well know, props at Dragon*Con are sometimes cumbersome, and a 10 foot spear might be in the way of just about a little bit of EVERYTHING. Furthermore, the tip of the spear alone measures out to be three feet tall. To put that in perspective, that’s the approximate length of a yard stick. Imagine a seven foot spear, with the tip of it being two more yard sticks. Yeah, no.
Needless to say, as much as I like true accuracy, Xin’s spear is one of those things I’m going to exercise the “creative liberties” with. The spear on the left, on the white space is a vastly scaled down size, that I’m going to strive closer to. And “vastly scaled down” is still a roughly eight foot spear, with the tip of it at a little over two-feet tall.
How should I be doing this?
My intention when trying to make any sort of prop, is often times concerned on weight. Just about every time I’ve tried to be conscious about weight, I’ve failed miserably, and my two Graves guns weighed 11 and 19 lbs respectively. It’s not that I’m incapable of carrying them since I’m such a swolebro lifter, but lugging them around is simply just a pain in the ass.
Now anyone who’s ever seen my level of work, knows that I work a lot with noob Pink Panther insulation foam as a means of carving out shapes and making things before coating them in Shell Shock urethane plastic, which makes them fairly durable, but for the Xin Zhao spear, I think I want to branch out and try to avoid using such a method this time.
I still like using my nooby pink foam because it’s a material that I’m familiar with and know how to fairly decently shape things out of, but if there’s one major drawback with the foam is that it cannot be spray painted. The picture on the left is what essentially happens to the foam when spray painted, where something about the aerosol and or whatever causes a negative reaction with the foam, and in some cases creates dissolving and/or gassing. Either way, when dried, it’s bubbly and looks like a really bad sunburn almost.
Alternatively, I thought about using Rub ‘n Buff (wax-based) on the foam directly (see right). Turns out that it actually does a decent job of painting the foam, without causing any adverse reactions with it. If I were to go with this method for the entire tip of the spear, it would undoubtedly have remained extremely light, and with the right weathering, have potential to turn out completely fine.
However, this is when the analytical side in me began over-thinking things, and in spite of how pleasantly light the spear tip would have remained, the thinned out areas of it would be extremely fragile, and in an atmosphere like D*C where collisions with other people and objects are often times unavoidable, I concluded that I should probably find an alternate solution.
Just the tip
See, this is where I feel good about taking this initiative this weekend, because if I didn’t kick myself in the ass, this is probably something that I wouldn’t have started until July, when it would essentially really be crunch time.
Anyway, this is the the tip of the spear, at its initial sizing and cut. Obviously there is only half of a spear tip here, but that’s because I’m lazy, or smart, depending on how you look at things. Whenever I recognize something as symmetrical, I’ll only put forth the effort in creating one half of said thing, duplicating it, and then mirroring it. I did that with the blackjack table outline seen waaaay above, and I did that with the spear tip here.
Besides, with the instance of the spear tip, why would I want to create something twice, and create room for error of inconsistency? If everything goes right with this, I can shape it once, and then dipping into a realm where I’m far less experienced, ideally I’ll cast it, and once finalized, I can simply mold two of these shapes, and then re-cast them as a single unit.
Anyway, I’m using a wooden pole instead of PVC, because I interpret the look of the shaft as wooden, and I guess I’ve been thinking about old kung-fu flicks, where spears are often times bamboo, but I’d rather go with something like wood instead. It measures six feet long, and the tip of the spear here is 28 inches tall. Combined with the eventual bottom tip, I’m looking at roughly an eight foot spear in the end.
Here’s the half tip shaped out. All shaving down was done by hand using a combination of a file and 40 grade sandpaper. Afterward, I smoothed things down with 100 and 220 grade sandpaper, resulting in the pictures above. That’s what I really like about this foam is that it is very good at being manipulated solely by nothing but sanding tools.
Upon looking at these pictures with their shadows, I can see they’re not perfect, but with a little more detailing, it’ll be in a place where it can be molded and fabricated with something more durable.
Just the . . . other tip
Since it didn’t seem like it was going to be at all that difficult, I figured I should try and get started with the bottom tip of the Xin spear. In some regard, I feel like I should be making a separate post of these Xin spear things, since I like to try and chronicle my builds as unique posts, but whatever, I’ll deal with that some other time if I’m feeling ambitious enough.
Anyway, my thought process going into the bottom tip is that it’s something that’s visually low-priority, since it’s the bottom of the spear, but at the same time it’s something that needs to be built in an intelligent manner because of the fact that if there’s going to be one part of the entire spear that’s going to get beat to hell, it’s the bottom tip. I know I’m taking every consideration I can to keep weight down, but I also don’t want something that’s going to look completely poor.
That being said, I decided to go with EVA foam for the bottom tip. It’s a durable material that would be able to withstand some weight and pressure on top of it, and when I’m feeling lazy and just wanting to prop the spear on the ground, it should be able to handle that either, without the risks of anything cast out of plastic or Shell Shock cracking or breaking outright.
I started by taking a sheet of foam, and cutting them out into 8.5″ x 5″ rectangles. Five stacks, hot glued together, and I have this block here, in which I drew some basic guidelines of where there needed to be cuts or shaved down. The cross-hatched sections are indications of where I need to sand down.
When it comes to EVA foam sanding, I use a palm sander with 40 grade sandpaper to do the bulk of my sanding down. It’s nowhere nearly as easy as dealing with the insulation foam, and requires a good bit of torque and elbow grease to really make any progress, but the durability and weight in the end are worth it.
This is pretty much the end result here. Some lines where the foam was stacked are somewhat visible, but in the cases where there’s an ample amount of hot glue adhering them, it isn’t a case. There’s a part of me that’s willing to let live with it as is, because it’s the bottom of the spear that isn’t going to see much light of day, but if I feel ambitious enough, I could make a pass over the side edges with some sort of filling agent to try and smooth things out.
This is also where I’ve taken another creative liberty with the design, for the sake of functionality. Xin’s spear’s bottom tip is completely pointed and appears to be needle sharp; since I want to be able to rest the spear on the ground from time to time, I decided to square off the pointiness of the tip, to what is seen above.
Eventually (hopefully not in July), after painting and weathering, it will have a hole drilled into the top, for where the wooden spear rod will go in, and I’ll probably try put a screw or two in discreetly, or blatantly, then filled with like Bondo or something.
Figuring out how to make not crappy hash browns
What the hell, why not add this to the list of accomplishments throughout the weekend. Basically, I like hash browns, but have never really been able to figure out why I couldn’t make them like they did at like Waffle House. After a failed attempt on Saturday night to make decent hash browns, I decided to simply look up an actual recipe to see what I might have been doing wrong.
Long story short, moisture. Duh. Apparently, going straight from the grater into the pan was all wrong, because potatoes have a ton of moisture in them, that need to be wicked away as much as possible so that when they’re ready to fry up, they’re somewhat dry, and not all full of moisture.
So, at my first and second attempts, things went vastly better, and I think I’ll be a pro when the times for me to make hash browns again in the future.
Digital work too; why not?
An acquaintance of mine that I used to write with back in my old baseball writing days got in touch with me, requesting some artwork for a site he’s eventually going to launch. Long story short, I genuinely like the person, so I figured why not agree to take on the project, as well as incorporate it into the most productive weekend ever?
Since his site hasn’t officially launched yet, I’m not going to straight up post the finalized artwork, but I will show this little bit of a preview; I’m pretty out of practice as a general illustrator, but I think I can take direction well if it’s provided fairly adequately and thoroughly. Needless to say, anyone who can decipher these symbols will have a pretty good idea of what the kind of site it’s going to be.
Geeg
So with the weekend winding down now, I do feel that I have accomplished a great deal of things, and that I did not waste much time. I started two projects of varying degrees, and did a little bit of a third project to completion. I really don’t feel like I missed out anything, because compared to how I’ve spent some of my prior weekends, anything was pretty much nothing that was the least bit productive at all.
The blackjack table will obviously still take a great deal of time to ultimately do, but at least I’m in a position of if I ever wanted to dive in, I’m already a few steps ahead of the start, by knowing sizes and what kind of raw materials I’d need to purchase. As for Xin, I feel as if once the spear is finished, then everything else won’t seem as big of a deal to undertake, because from the many minutes I’ve spent looking at the artwork, most of the stuff looks like things I’m pretty capable of doing on my own without much outside assistance.
I don’t know that I should really challenge myself every single weekend I’m home like this, but for what it’s worth, I do feel really good knowing that I didn’t waste any time and actually got some shit done this weekend.
