Surviving in Skyrim

The very first Thu'um you learn has to be the most fun in my opinion. It pretty much turns your face into the egress of a Hurricane, blowing everyone in front of you off cliffs, into walls or into rivers (if they're lucky). It has  made a lot of boss battles last only a few seconds, most of which is spent watching their ragdolling body bounce down a mountain.
the 1.2 patch is out fixing a couple bugs in Skyrim. I saw threads of people (inevitably) complaining it broke more than it fixed. The foremost being a backwards flying dragon, which really isn't a big deal or something worth crying about. The first dragon I came across after the patch flew away from me and then got stuck in midair flying on the spot just out of range from me. Another fun post 1.2 bug I got was when I smashed some bandit with my mace and he suddenly spazzed out and went flying all around the room. It was as if he got covered in flubber. He's probably still in there ricocheting around. It gave me a good Lol. I've also noticed that sometimes my second strike with my mace doesn't seem to count for anything. I'm not sure if it was always like this or its my imagination. Doesn't really matter at level 48 I'm one shotting most things anyway.

Floating Freestyle

 Photography by me for a change. This one was inspired by Graffiti Technica and their awesome 3D floating graffiti. The video embedded was the first one I came across and I was hooked. The idea is just so cool. If anything was going to compel me to learn After Effects this would be it.

Pretty Blatant

I just want to catch up alright? So I'm looking at Vanilla Fictions comment for what I should do next year. All I imagine is creating a whole bunch of handicapped people. Since they have the most interesting facial quirks. And they are who I come across the most, living in West Auckland and riding the bus.
Maybe I won't do a year long themed project. I'll just do whatever comes to me at the time. Do mini series etc. Keep posting graffiti and the like. Talking about Graffiti, the Blip Crew got a home! There aren't many sticker crews in Auckland, so it's nice to see one set up shop.

Dovahkiin the Thief

Story derived from Matts experience as the Dovahkiin on Skyrim.

When Skyrim was being hyped for release Bethesda made a challenge for anyone who had a baby on the 11th of the 11th of this year to name the child Dovahkiin. The prize would include all of Bethesdas back catalogue as well as all future releases being free (From what I recall). Well someone did it. I'm surprised they didn't make Dovahkiin his middle name. For all of you out of the loop Dovahkiin means "dragonborn".

Unrelated graffiti to follow.

Crystalline Water

Moment Capturer: Matt

Once again trying out something a little different. Quite a bit different really. I've been thinking about what will happen when I finish my Doodle-A-Day-For-A-Year Project. I don't want this place to become neglected. but I feel like I can't NOT post images. Ideas getting tossed around at the moment is practicing my creative writing and illustrating a story (spell checked and everything). Or perhaps practicing my digital artistry more. I don't know. Suggestions would be good. What ever it is it can't be a repeat of this year, and screw you if that was going to be your suggestion. If you love it so much why don't you do it! Go marry it for all I care.

Nude at Window

Photo and Photoshopping: B00mtastik

The alternative title of this was "Stripper at my house." but it didn't sound as artsy. I decided to mix things up a bit by getting another person with a camera to do the work for me.

Aperture Soldier

Currently Playing Skyrim: Matt

This ones a close up of the lens of the camera if you can't tell.
It seems a little strange that National can have an unprecedented victory and still need to scrape around for coalition partners. I guess It keeps them a little grounded. But at the same time its like having a committee of committee's. "First on the agenda, managing the committee. Second is apologizing leaked comments about other committees." I guess that's just politics in general anyway. So whatever. Hopefully this referendum business will sort this kind of thing out.

Models and Some Chick

Model Glamorizer: Matt

In the background is two models I painted up. Unfortunatly Beckys and Matts ones aren't in the shot. I only realized afterwards. They're customized models from a Warhammer set of elves for use during our DnD games.

Fires Comfort

Flame Capturer: Matt

Well I hope you all got out there and voted. I don't want my party analyses going to waste. On the other hand, I did cover a bunch of parties who didn't even get in. So maybe you guys did waste your votes. Aw I'm kidding. Every vote counts. Or at least, was counted. And all the little guys who didn't manage to get in probably got a gauge of the kind of support that is out there for them.

I'm wondering if there is any point in continuing the party profile thing. It's original purpose has come and gone.

Goth Girl on Stairs

Photoman: B00mtastik

The pic was taken ages ago when me and B00m trolled the city looking for good photos and graff.

Todays Party is Libertarianz. Personally I don't like their logo. Libertas, the goddess of freedom reminds me more of New York than it does of liberty. But I guess at least it means something.

What is Libertarianz about? Abolish all taxes apart from income tax. Repeal the Resource Management Act. Give people the right to self defense. Phasing out DPB, unemployement and sickness benefits. Schools and hospitals given to the community in the form of shares removing government intervention.

Who would Libertarianz disassemble a government with? meh.

jist of it nicked from their website.

Water Is a Solid (Conservative Party)

Another Skyrim comic. Yeah so sometimes you might notice your arrows stick into the water and stay where they are. It's because of retention and all that stuff you learnt at school about water. I was going to colour these but I'm kinda rushing through so I can cover all the parties before they become irrelevant to everyone for another three years.

Today we're looking at the Conservative party. They even have a test on their website to find out how conservative you are. If I say my score was very conservative does that mean it rated very high? Cause it feels like I'm saying "I did amazingly extremely middle of the road on that test."

What is the Conservative Party about? Referendums are binding, Marine and Costal act repealed and foreshore and seabed returned to crown ownership, State assets shouldn't be sold, Emissions trading scheme turfed. Tougher sentencing in prison and learning while in there. Economic Policies that encourage farming. Get rid of the smacking bill.

Who would the Conservative party have a pleasing, clean fun day at Rainbows End with: I'm gonna guess National.

Everything nicked from their website.

Famous Penultimate Words (Legalize Cannabis Party)

The final words are usually "Oh wait maybe no-". This is a regular Skyrim occurrence (at least for me it is.)
I recommend going to Bards Leap in the southern mountains for the most interesting jump. I think it's in the region of Falkreath.

Time to talk about more down to earth things. How more down to earth could we go when talking about politics and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party!

What the Legalise Cannabis Party is about: It's in the name. You can do this. You can see their Cannafesto for their reasoning. I'm not kidding. It's called a Cannafesto.

Who would LGCP chill with while smoking a bud: Jimmy Hendrix and Jesus.

Lock Logic in Skyrim

I was wandering around in Skyrim (as I have been since the 11th) and I came across this old shack. I was pretty keen to loot it since I'm so Honorable and all that. Unfortunatly it appears that locks that use keys can't be picked... It's probably good though, means there is some quest involved to get inside that squalid thing. It's a great game. The UI on the PC sucks, but that's balanced by the added safety nets of console commands and patches for when things inevitably go pear shaped. I saw a headless horsemen last night. He was squatting in the air, pretending to ride a horse. He wasn't very talkative. Which I think is very rude. He's got no excuse for not saying anything!

Hunting a Puppig

To be honest I just wanted to show off my Rubics cube. So I just heard there isn't a midnight release for Skyrim here. What the hell, it's the only game worth standing around in an empty mall for. Then again its the only game worth waiting for, so I guess waiting a little more has its merits. Unfortunatly that waiting won't be waiting time spent letting the developers make the game any better than it already (undoubtedly) is.

Component stick on K Road

Standing on Guard (Maori Party)

I really hope that's grease...
I was wondering whether or not I should do two Maori parties in a row. But I was interested to see if the Maori Party was as colourful Mana. To be honest I couldn't find to much about any exact initiatives the Mana party was interested in after weeding out all the fluff text. "Maori stuff" it seemed to come down to. Apparently the Mana Party and the Maori Party don't get along to well. I have to say, initial impressions of the Maori Parties site is good. One of the better ones I've seen so far. They even have a merch section XD. Currently the Maori Party hold 4 seats.

What the Maori party is about: No asset sales. Reduce number of Pokie machines from communities. Removal of cigarettes from everywhere. Reduce long term benefit dependency. Make customary title rights to beaches and stuff easier.

Who would Maori party shoot the shit with: National.

Stuff pulled from the Maori Party Website.

Waving in the Wasteland

I should really give her a name other than the "Peacock Warrior". Playing with colour a little more in this one. I think I might like the "Warrior Walks" pic more though. Ah well. I'm wondering where I can go with this photo drawing amalgamation (woa, I totally spelt that right the first try!) There's only so many of these I can do before I get bored and have to move on. Although it's perfect for character studies where I would normally have no detail in the background at all. And these last few I have done (the ones that don't credit Matt) I took the day of drawing them, so it captures the day quite well. Seriously, it's fantastic outside. The burnt patch she's standing in is what remains of our fireworks from a few days ago.

The Warrior Walks (Mana Party)

I'm going to say here, that these sets of drawings of the Peacock warrior girl are influenced heavily by the Mouse Guard. If you haven't heard of it yet I suggest you go hunt it down. If you like your fantasy and "here be dragons" type stories then it should be right up your alley.

Today we're gonna take a look at the Mana Party. It is lead by Hone Harawira who has managed to get into  the public eye quite a few times in the last year or three. First I recall was the Racist Emails where he talked about "White Motherfuckers". Next were comments about him not being comfortable with his daughters going out with white dudes. His retort for that one was that White dads probably wouldn't be comfortable with that sort of thing either, which is a fair call. While he may be a bit vulgar and tactless, I can't fault his honesty (A rare characteristic amongst politicians). I could talk for ages about this guy, but we're here to discuss the party and not the individual. Check out his wiki page and the references for more racist run ins and interesting facts (Like his Pakeha heritage).

What Mana Party is all about: Representing Maori in parliament. Creating a seperate branch of education to oversee Maori education development and learning. Free training and education for those unemployed or on the benefit. Short term: Taking tax cuts from the richest 10% and giving $1000 to those earning under 30k a year as a christmas bonus.

Who Mana Party would go on a long walk with: They would prefer to walk by themselves, on their beach.

Slayer of Caterpillars

Right time, right place: Matt

The Peacock girl once again shows her prowess over hideous beasts. It kind of sucks spending time on drawing something when all you do in the end is blur the crap out of it so you can hardly tell what it is anymore. Skyrim comes out tomorrow, and unfortunatly I don't have the money for it. But when I do get it, chances are this place will be deluged with Skyrim based comics.
To keep up with election type serious stuff I recommend checking out Jo's blog. He's done an interesting post about election promises that can't be kept, or are downright stupid. Read it so next time you're driving around you can point at the various signs and shout "BS!" And as we all know BS stands for Bulgerian Salami.

Grass Vs. Sand

Ka-chinker: Matt

Honouring the original title of the image.
The other day Robyn Malcolm had a go at John Key. I wouldn't normally take any notice of an actor talking about another actor behind his back, but the repercussions were rather interesting. It just kinda goes to show that if you're a dick in this country, chances are you'l loose your job... And probably find another one and go about your merry way with another interesting story under your belt.
In the last article it was mentioned that "the waste management plan was a statutory requirement of the Government". Doesn't this mean that John Key probably had something to do with this? In which case, it makes Malcolms rant that he doesn't give a shit just that little bit more ironic.

BLIP / IFM

What Doom 3 Taught Me

Man I suck at Photoshop. Hopefully I'll get better over the holidays. Historically the holidays has always presented a spike in learning Photoflop. Doom is a series that's near and dear to my heart. I used to watch my brother play it when I was small. We had names for all the monsters, such as the Flying Strawberry. When Doom 3 came out it freaked me out a lot, and it freaked out my brother enough for him to not want to play it through.
Anyway, the other day I watched Event Horizon and I suddenly realized that it made a better Doom movie than the Doom movie did. And now I have an insatiable thirst for Sci-Fi Horror. And that's why I reinstalled Doom. Thanks for asking.
A couple days after I took the photo of the sticker below the transformer it was stuck to got hit by a car. So think of this as a memorial.

IFM BLIP!

Bunny Girl (Progressive Party)

Imagecapturer: Matt

Todays party is the Progressive party. There isn't a whole lot about them online. They currently hold one seat in parliament, and as of today their leader Jim Anderton is saying laters to politics. Soooo I guess I'll just dig up what I can.

What Progressive wants to progress with: Free dentistry for everyone. tighter control on Alcohol advertising, selling etc. Superannuation stuff.

Who would Progressive have sleep overs with: Labour.

Yanked from their website. It's a little sad seeing Anderton go. He seems pretty straight up.

IFM BLIP!

Sand Walker (Alliance Party)

Brotographer: Matt

Todays party is Alliance "New Zealands Democratic Socialist Party". They will now be known as the red and green wordpress party. Since that is the first thing their website told me about them. Their menus make me want to shoot myself in the head.

Alliance & What they're into:
Public arts programs. Cultural Development of the Maori. Removal of tuition fee's and writing off of student loans so we don't have to start our working life in debt. Get people jobs so they don't have time to commit crimes. No youth employment rates, $17 bucks an hour minimum. No GST on food.

Who Alliance would back up in a fight: Probably Labour.

They don't currently have any seats in parliament. All info has been yanked from their shitty site. Things they're interested in haven't been picked in any real order. Just a sampling.

Cocky Warrior

Bird chaser: Matt

This one was originally titled "showoff". I mention that because Matt has a tendency to not title his stuff. So for him to actually give something a name other than "DSC05590" is a noteworthy event. Names are things you only give to stuff you have some sort of thought or emotion attached to. You can tell people are only trying to go for the lols when they name something "Steve" or "Bob". It only works once. The rest of the time it's like when someone hears police sirens and grabs you going "I have him right here! I got him!" EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

VF BLIP!

Water Feature Octopus (Act Party)

Photo-Realistic Painting: Matt
Cartoon-Realistic Drawing: Izak

The octopus guy is a character I haven't done in a long while. But on to more serious boring topics. I'm gonna try and do a run down of the Act party. They seemed like a good place to start. I'll leave the red and blue party till near the end. Act will now be known as the yellow party. They seem to love themselves some yellow. I will also try not to flame any party more than any other, unlike some people.

Act & what they're interested in: Putting a hold on the emissions trading scheme. Making sure our soldiers have guns to shoot with. Selling state assets. End racism by not having Maori specific seats in parliament. Put market interest rates back on to student loans.

In a fight who would Act back up: National.

All this has been pulled and colloquialized from Acts policies page.

Water Feature Girl (Leaders Debate)

Manphoto: Matt

I watched the leaders debate last night. Well, half of it. I desperatly needed to play games instead. I did get a couple good laughs out of it though. I thought it may have been a little harsh of Key to do the first name calling of Labour being "drunken sailors" with spending whether it was warranted or not. I have the feeling Key was probably gearing up for a repeat of last elections debate, where Helen was pushing him around like the small fish he really was at the time. Phil Goff is a little less of a bitch than his predecessor was.
To say that one party swept the floor with the other would be a cocky overstatement. Or it may not, as I said earlier, I did not witness it. I will never know what happened, but the chances of these two outwitting each other has about the same likelihood of them ending up stroking a simultaneously alive and dead cat that belonged to a philosopher.

IFM BLIP!

Intrepid Hiker

Photoman: Matt.
So while I was at Armaggedon I randomly picked up a game, because it was free. The CD saved me a sweet 3.5 gigs of downloading. Runes Of Magic is your standard MMORPG. I've mashed my way through 14 levels in one sitting without reading any of the quest details. There may be a nice story behind everything. But knowing mmo's, probably not.
It seemed pretty average till I found out you can multiclass. Now that's something I would like to give a go. You can find me in there going around as Izaa. See you there maybe.

Big Guy (& Referendum Stuff)

Portrait of one of the dudes during our final presentations. He's always been fun to draw. It's the rollypolly-ness of him that does it.

Ok, so on to the referendum stuff. If you're in NZ, sometime over the next little while you're gonna get a letter that asks you what sort of voting system you think we should employ (or stick with). You can read about it here, or instead let me give you the abridged version here:

MMP (Mixed Member Proportional):
What we have now. Voters get two votes, one is spent on the party you like, and the next is spent on the dude in your local area that would best represent you. This system generally needs parties to team up before they can rule. This allows smaller parties to throw their weight around.
Down Sides: Randoms can get in that no one voted for (with the mighty power of the party vote.)

FPP (First Past the Post):
I'm pretty sure this is the old system NZ used to run on. We get one vote, and we spend that on the person in our local area who we think is rad. These people get in and that's pretty much it. There doesn't normally need to be any buddying up in these circumstances.
Down Sides: Minor parties may never get any say in anything.

PV (preferential Vote):
This system is used in parts of Australia. Voters rank who they would like to get in to parliament. If their first choice candidate doesn't get in their vote is used on the next one down the list. No votes get wasted. This is also fantastic for people who have favourites.
Down Sides: Parts of Australia use this system. If you have no friggin clue who anyone is then you are presented with a list of "blah" which you'l randomly slam numbers beside just to pretend you know what you're doing.

STV (Single Transferable Vote):
The other part of Australia uses this system. Much like PV, voters rank who they want to get in, or they can just pick the list of people that their preferred party wants in.
Down Sides: Can't really tell the difference between this and PV. You figure it out.

SM (Supplementary Member):
Similiar to MMP, two votes, party vote and a local bro vote. 90 seats are for the local bros, and 30 are for the party vote. That 30 is split proportionally to the amount of votes each party gets. A party can usually rock solo without the help of any other parties.
Down Sides: You will still be voting for politicians to rule over you.

If I got these summaries totally wrong please tell me, I don't want to throw anyone off. If you think you've picked your favourite system I would recommend reading up a little more about it first.

Bear & Beer

It's coming into the season where we need to start thinking about who we're gonna vote for. And if you're anything like my friends, then chances are you have no idea who you're going to vote for. Well, to be honest, I'm not so sure myself, so I'm going to undertake a fact finding mission. This mission will hopefully give a run down on all the parties and what they stand for, giving us all an informed decision come election day.
Also we got a referendum coming up. A referendum on what you may ask? Good question. I'll get onto that one as well.

Baby psychology

I've noticed this sort of attitude attached to babies and their parents. A baby is seen as this symbol of no more fun left to be had in life.  You have been relegated to a place of pre-death, living out your remaining days taking care of a poo machine. You played sex Roulette and lost. Bits of this are true, but not enough to be so somber about the whole thing.

Below is some more graff from that old Lincoln Road Derelict.

G+ Nicknames

Just as G+ announces its backing down on making people use their real names I go and draw a comic about it. Ah well. Nothing like a little bit of post-current affairs humour.
But seriously, if people wanted to not put their real name, they found ways around it anyway. You can make fairly legit looking names that aren't yours get through. It just stopped people from putting "username" type names in there, like CamperAssassin969-_AuZ-ClaN_-.

Cellphone Bear

So it's the first day of holidays and so far today I have managed to catch up with my backlog of September doodles. That's not a bad feat. I can say I have done something with my day. One can only imagine what I'll do with the rest of my day. Perhaps placate some other invisible audience that doesn't expect anything from me. Maybe write some literary gems to some imaginary friends.

BLIP / VF "Because you're on a toilet bro."