Tattoo Girl - ONFORM Sketch 2

Carrying on from last weeks sketch this has become a good way of keeping drawing without committing to anything big. We're preparing to move into the new house this Saturday. Last weekend was a blur of painting walls. I can hardly differentiate the days since they consisted of the exact same place except for an intermission for a 25th/Baby Shower/Engagement party. So half the people were getting absolutely smashed while the other half was ogling the babies room while looking at the engagement ring.

I have to say it sucks growing up. Were you aware that the internet costs money? Like, almost all of your money??

Happy Comments 8Bit Icon

We did an update to the visuals of what Happy Comments looks like when you disable it.

I also changed the little icons and changed them pixel for pixel. However I did still downscale them because I'm a dirty corner cutter. Matt needed 38x38 sized icons for hi res displays, so I did 'em. and then made a 19px version of that. Here's what they look like nice and big:

I did the lighter squares around the smiley one because without it the eyes looked like little freaky pin pricks, and that's just not the look I was going for. I was happier with crisp crosses on the dead purple icon because It was so small I needed the crosses to be as readable as possible.

You can still go and download the extension if you want to give it a whirl yourself. It's kind of nice having a little friend on the toolbar all the time.

Happy Comments Character Logo

So my mate Matt hates shitty comments. He also lacks all self control, so he can't help but read terrible things. Due to this lack of self control he suddenly sprung into action and built a Chrome Extension which blocks unpopular comments from wasting your time.

My contribution and claim to fame was making the logo for it. It's based on the quick one he made for testing purposes.

What your comment feed looked like before Happy Comments:

Anyway, if you're sick of reading shit comments online then prepare for this chrome extension to change all that for you.

Here's how it looks in the sidebar. The slider lets you set how anal you want to be with the comments. The lowest hiding only negative comments and when it's cranked all the way up it will only show the most highly rated.

Matt put a lot of work into the button and slider because he knows how to prioritize style.

And here's the icon in action in the extensions area of chrome.

Also here's a bunch of the assets used within the chrome extension store. The font wasn't my first choice but I couldn't get my hands on Serrano Black Italic which is a locally grown NZ font which is used as the BNZ logo and also on the Air New Zealand adverts.

Eventually I settled on Poetsen One.

I'm pretty proud of the little guy. If you want him around you can download him here. Or if you have any comments and suggestions send them to @happy_comments

Blob Man - ONFORM Sketch

Just submitted this little dude to ONFORM, a Tumblr that takes that old drawing game and turns it into a public thing for all artists to take part in, a bit like Sext Me All Your Nudes.

All My Friends Hate You - Blobby World Comic

I've finally put together the PDF of the third Blobby world book. Although the others aren't anywhere near as polished as this one. It's tempting to call this one the first, but whatever. Should look good on iPad if you have the Issuu app on there. Also you can go ahead and download the pdf for free.

I couldn't have done this without Becky, My girlfriend, Matt my boyfriend bro, and Kristof my Spellchecker. I also couldn't have done it without all the human beings that move around me like a constellation of drama and bullshit, you're the best and my constant muse.

Some of the lines in this stretch all the way back to stuff I wrote at uni. My first big payload of strips for this came from my trip to Melbourne, and others were just great lines people came up with.

Hope you dig it.

Tifa Lockheart - Final Fantasy 7 8Bit

It feels like ages since I've done one of these. Figure I may as well do the most famous Final Fantasy girl there is. Rivaled maybe only by Lightning.

Work on the new house is going well. We've now scrubbed every square inch of the inside of it, getting rid of any grease left over by the people who were there last. The walls have had their holes filled in and I'm currently filling in cracks. We have the undercoats of paint ready to slap on the wall (although we have a complete lack of dropsheets and paintbrushes at the moment that we're hoping my folks will provide.)

We've figured out rates and bills and things pretty much and we're left with a couple of dollars at the end of it to do whatever we like with. We'll still be living comfortably, like we're not skimping on food or anything, but buying a new graphics card or chucking bblenders out the window at people will be out of the question now.

Baby Shower Shenanigans - EP16.5

Filmed entire on the LG G4 I reviewed in my last post.
This was taken at our mates Josh and Rachel's Baby shower party. That's the sort of parties we go to now. Long gone are the 21st shindigs. But hey, that doesn't mean we cant do things you would normally find at a frat party.

Btw, the background image for the vid has Matt chugging beer through a baby bottle. It takes forever. Lou asked if she could "bite the nipple" which Josh said she could. She immediately bit the nipple off and shotgunned the beer. Cheater.

Hands on with the LG G4

For work I got to try out the LG G4 and write about it. I thought it would be cool if I mirrored my opinions here. I write all day at work, but there's very few things that I feel happy enough with to share. This is one of 'em. I also recorded a video on the phone which you can see here.

By the way, all photos on this post were taken on the G4 (apart from the product shots of course).

LG sent us a G4 to play with for a week, and I have to say I'm impressed. It's full grained genuine leather back cover instantly lent it a touch of class, and I could never quite get over the curved screen, which was gorgeous.

Specs

First of all let's get the specs out of the way, as you can find these pretty much anywhere.

Screen Size	5.5"	Rear Camera Megapixels	16	Processor	Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 808 processor with X10 LTE
Resolution	2560 x 1440 (Quad HD)	Aperture	f/1.8	Speed	1.8GHz 64-bit Hexa-Core CPU
PPI	538

The front facing camera is 8 Megapixels and the battery lasts a decent amount of time, managing to get me through the day, even after a hard thrashing of music and web browsing.

That Curve

When I first started up the phone I couldn't tell if it was my imagination or not that it had a curve. It's so slight. Showing it to friends they'd often eyeball the curve, or stick it on a table face down to see the gap. It's hard to spot at first. But as your using the phone you can really see it.



It makes browsing feel expansive and luxurious with a hint of depth. Although that could be the 5.5" screen talking. I was hoping that it would have a wrap around effect while watching movies. But the curve wasn't immediately apparent while watching films. The video quality of a standard movie looks nice and crisp though, and the screen can be 30% brighter than it's predecessor with no loss to battery life.

The Build

It's a decent weight, but feels fragile, less dense than my old Nexus 4. The buttons are another great talking point. As LG has eschewed from putting the volume and power buttons on the side and top, and have thrown them to the middle of the back, just under the camera. Some reviewers found it a bit awkward taking screenshots with it, but gripping the phone and holding the volume down and power button at the same time in one hand is a breeze. Those other guys just need to toughen up.



Double clicking the volume down button brings the camera up, even while locked. Reaching around to unlock the phone can be a bit tiresome, but fortunately you can double tap the screen to wake it up.

I was curious as to whether having buttons on the back would lead to more accidental clicking or pocket dialing, but nothing adverse happened to me during my week with it.

The back of the phone is customizable, and snaps off, allowing you to change the back of your phone. I went straight for the leather back, opting to stay away from the smoothness of the other back.

The Software Letdown

Before you think I'm gushing too much about this phone, the preloaded apps are mostly rubbish or useless to me. Lollipop itself looks great and operates like a dream. I didn't experience any lag while using it. I found myself slipping back into the safety of the Google apps over the course of using it. The LG keyboard felt unresponsive and the gesture writing suggestion were unintuitive, hardly ever getting what I was trying to write right. Fortunately the Google keyboard was loaded on there so it wasn't a great pain to swap over to my preference.

Nothing on the software side is a game breaker, as you can customize to your hearts delight, but it was a wee bit of a disappointment in an otherwise impressive device.

The Camera

back to the gushing. No one cares about megapixels or apertures at the end of the day, it's about whether the photos and video look great. The answer is, they do. I didn't dive into the intensity of manual shooting, which gives you all the options of a standard camera. I stuck to the paddling pool of quick shooting, where most normal people will spend their time.



Using the front facing camera you can see a bit of grain, but the back facing one comes out great, with things looking incredibly vivid and crisp. Perfect for crunching down, compressing and chucking of Facebook.

I took a bunch of videos as well, which came out at 1920x1080. One I shot in the late evening came out better than I expected, as the G4 handles low light extremely well.

The Sound

The phone I was lent came with a pair of QuadBeat 3' ear buds. I wasn't impressed at all with the sound of them and abandoned them quickly. The loudspeaker on the phone works quite well though, and if your an audiophile your headphones of choice will make whatever comes out of the G4 a lot better than the Quadbeats.

At the end of the day this is a great top end phone and you can't go wrong getting it. You certainly won't regret it, as it'll spank the pants off just about all other Android phones on the market currently. I'm disappointed I've got to give it back.

In NZ the RRP is $1199 and you can pick it up from Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi & 2 Degrees.

Pixel Art Trees

Because I know how enthralled you all are with scenery I decided to post my two favourites. Becky said I didn't know what trees looked like but I think I proved her wrong. The y usually look like cracked mosaic things right?

We Own a House