Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.

After seeing the flag of an exiled Tibet on news reports, several workers reportedly contacted the police of this affair. The factory manager was said to be oblivious to the meaning behind the flag.

Thousands of flags have already been packed for shipping, and an unknown amount have already been sent.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Link

The change was pretty self-explanatory and really needs no introduction. Personal preference, really – the new skin, dubbed Ambiru, gives a vibe I felt the old Kubrick couldn’t replicate.

Also an excuse to exercise a little photoshop action in designing a new banner.

My current go-to time killer Team Fortress 2 isn’t helping either.

Distractions aside, hopefully I’ll begin to re-establish daily bloggings and my other daily rounds within the week.

As of now, I owe this site: 3 Moxious Mondays, 3 Daily Micspams, and a buttload of EMUs.

[link] Halo Kid

Source video:

According to a local news source, Florida teens believe Mountain Dew prevents unwanted pregancies, and drinking a capful of bleach or smoking marijuana can prevent the spread of HIV.

State lawmakers are blaming these myths on the state’s abstinence-only sexual education classes, and are seeking to append over the curriculum with more information about condoms, birth control, and disease prevention.

Personally, I think the whole issue is sensationalist and overblown. C’mon, no demographics? No interviews? For all I care, some run-of-the-mill middle schooler started this as a joke, the prank that remains hush-hush amongst the cliques in any normal teenage social ladder. But hey, now you know.

Slightly resemblant of the internet’s darling, Portal, You Have To Burn The Rope’s mechanics is simple to understand and uncluttered, and it is perhaps the simplicity (or my interest in minimalism) that really makes you appreciate the raw basics of gaming. The game makes a bold statement in a very aesthetic and easy to understand way, and in all rights, the flash plays out more like an interactive movie, complete with humorous credit music. In my opinion, Burn The Rope is really a testament against the rising complexity of graphics and narrative in gaming today, and is a great little quip to really make you appreciate the simplicities and bare essentials.

Oh, and here’s a fun little fact – Several sites have posted walkthroughs, in case you get stuck.

Link

In an update to the Fake Craigslist advertisement scam I posted about a week ago, the criminals behind the hoax that left a man stripped out of his possessions have been arrested by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. Amber and Brandon Herbert (pictured), 28 and 29 respectively, are facing charges of burglary and computer crime for their part in creating the Craigslist ad that led people to ransack the victim’s house. The crooks were traced by the police department through their IP address.

As for the motives:

The Herberts, investigators charge, did this to cover up their prior theft of several saddles and other items from the garage of the rural southern Oregon house.

In other words, the whole Craigslist scam was a cover-up for a past crime. It’s pretty perverse how low some people would go to cover their tracks as best they can. In the Herberts’ case, by trying to completely rub out the victim’s lifestyle and possessions. You’d figure stealing a few saddles was enough.

Link (via Boing Boing)

Link to original article

[link] What’s Your Problem?

Source video:

The request was of her sexy red-headed, double sword wielding warrior, and seeing as how it has been close to a year since I’ve done anything too intensive, I was happy to oblige. Done in Photoshop.

Some discussion at the forums resulted in me writing a short summary of the techniques and workflow I used to finish this piece. One of the first, and probably the worst, mistake I made was the fact that I haphazardly merged all my black & white layers before starting on the color portion of the artwork. As a result, the piece took longer than I would have liked, due to the fact that I had to repaint many of the detailed areas and edges of the figure.

Hit the jump for the short tutorial guide I made in response to the painting, as well as some bonus links to the original black and white template I based the finished piece on, as well as a detailed look at the hair.

Basic technique: I use the brush tool religiously. While it took longer than I hoped, not too much testing of patience was required once I got my brush settings just right. I’m using an old Graphire 2 from WAAAAY back in the day, with a taped-up pen. (half of it slipped off).

The black and white template was drawn with a 100% opacity hard edge brush around 13px. I trimmed the lines with a hard edge eraser until the lineart looked neat.

For the shading aspects, my brush settings were: 100% Opacity 75% Flow, Airbrush, Pen Pressure assigned to Size AND Opacity, and a large size (~80). Assigning pressure to opacity is probably the secret to shading – it allows you to really blend the colors by slowly working it into the picture, as opposed to putting it on with a soft edged brush. I slowly dropped the size to smaller measurements for more detailed blending areas.

For the background “texture” and fine tuning the skin, I used a Spatter typed brush- it gives more life to a drawing by working in it’s unique texture. At 100%, it allows that spongy background look. Setting your opacity lower (to around 30%) with pen pressure assigned to opacity allows you to fine tune your blending, as well as providing a brushstroke “texture” for the skin. Spatter-style brushes really add life to a piece. Just don’t overdo it!

As for the workflow: I start with the black and white template, and on the same layer, I start to paint in the skin portions by gobbing on a medium base color between the lines. I blended in darker shades for shadows, and a little bit of highlight. I then erased and/or reblended the hard black lines into the shading. (For this particular picture I used shades of gray for the skin at first, and then hue/saturated in the color).

In short – I painted over my lineart. This allows you to incorporate the definition the B&W template has into the shaded patches of skin, giving you that pseudo-realistic look.

Hair was done by painting the darkest tone first, the layering on lighter tones, smudging, dark tone, light tone, smudging, rinse & repeat, all the while switching to a smaller brush size and keeping with the flow of the hair. The several final passes was with a hard-edged spatter-style brush at high opacity, and then detailing with several passes of little 1px individual hair strands. The fringes of the hair were done with a high opacity soft-edged brush to make it more realistic.

As for color: I’m color-blind, no joke . I used outside reference for skin/hair tones, and the rest I color-balanced constantly. It was pretty frustrating to get some of the colors right, and I bugged my roommate several times about the hue of the skin. The background colors are just me playing with the preset palette and spatter brush on low opacity :]