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No problem here really.

16 year old guy is a bit behind in mental development so he might be actually even younger than the girl, in both mental and physical sense.
So probably both don't quite know what they're doing.

Problems occur when guy (or girl) is far more developed, an adult. In which case, (s)he uses it as an advantage over other.
Our "legal" age is 14 (unless it's been changed in last year or so) and of course, things happen ever earlier sometimes.

But legal side and strange men with candy is one thing. Kids with kids is simply sad, IMO. And for 26-year old as I am, it's almost impossible (or atleast, VERY hard) to find a girl in appropriate age without strange burden of some kind. Like 3-10 years of broken (serious!) relationship, jealous ex(es!) calling at nights... Or a kid. If things like this bother, you're pretty much done for. Like me.

Which sucks unbelievably much.
I'd rather live someplace else, pay some camels and get a ninja. Atleast she's pure.

You're right. Any ideas for what could go in the lower half to make it more Arabic?

Build it out of sand and cow/camel dung (kidding... then again, not really)

Also, minarets. Add one or make tower look more like one (no onion roof, long and pointy)
Ain't minaret most important thing about a mosque where calls to prayer are made?

Even small ones have one.



And your roof turned out VERY much like cobblestone covered with loads of clay. It looks good though...
To make it wooden, much more noise, contrast and detail is needed.

Also, typical arabic roof is flat I think, because of the climate alot of life goes on on the roof. Not on mosques probably, but I don't think they'd build one building totally unlike rest of the architecture because practical viewpoint

Also also, the tip of the doors and windows is important. Follow onion tip shape.

Also also also, I'd desaturate this wood heavily. Even growing trees aren't this reddish brown.

This text is cipher for me. I tried, but cannot make heads of tails out of it, even from your retype

There is something horribly wrong with the type of people who would actually exploit children sexually.

Um, cheerleading? Isn't that the culture of stimulating sport with sex? Also, generally drunk public watching game? Games come with tickets, which come with money so it's all business.

Soviet (or japanese or whatever) school uniforms? I always wondered how such short skirts made it into school uniforms - especially at age of when even kissing in movies was taboo: probably at the end of the line was bald, middle-aged, sick and sneaky man/men with power to make laws...

I don't see how named - and billion more similar things would be less "sexual exploit". Pedophiles can think dirty thoughts while looking and whatnot.
It's like this ad: maybe the motivation behind making this WAS unhealthy - why should gymnast care? Or anyone else? We cannot restrict thoughts anyway, so pedos think what they think and others ignore it as people ignore every other ad nowadays.

There's no end of roads we can take here and all lead to something as strict than - say, Islam.

But I think that this particular advert is tasteless and dumb.

From personal standpoint, I wouldn't have sex with underage, or even 18-year old -- they are simply too dumb & underdeveloped for my taste and age -- but I DO believe that when I'm 50 or so, I believe I'll think back and blame myself for playing video games at the time I coulda' get some young ass

But attraction? Some 14-year olds can look seriously hot. I don't see anything invalid in this opinion. I'm a man!

Didn't manage to make another video this weekend. I guess I won't have time until next one

My initial reaction was "ugh" and emotion that I'm looking at something wrong.

Given it a little of thought, why the hell? There's nothing wrong about this little gymnast, neither about the picture. There's really no valid reason why this advertisement couldn't be used, even if girl is 11 years old (as she looks really).

It's not like she's naked or anything. Pedophiles? They're everywhere anyway. So?

The advert itsself is perfectly safe, methinks. It's not like it turns anyone a pedophile or something.

Erm... actually it looks rather like variation of old-style slavic church...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kizhi

I agree. Mosques sound like buildings out of stone and clay, yet this one is what covered ancient Russia for centuries.

As for roof tiles... A building made of wood, why not make roof out of wood chips also?





But personally I think they look fine as they are. Only 3 things I would change is perspective of onion-roof, make uppermost gray roof look like others and remove that light-thing from door.

I ask and answer:

Q: Does video card baking really work?
A: YES IT DOES

Stuffing your VRAM-faulty, artifact-ridden video card into baking oven at 200C for 10 minutes WILL repair it and make it work like new. (I baked my 8800GTX for 7 minutes, thinking it's all some kind of a joke/tech myth) but lo and behold, it really DID work.

Q: Does it work twice?
A: O F**K YEAH

Pretty cool find indeed!

I'll stick to Anime Studio though which has provided my vectors so far...

You do sound quite the busy man, you should keep this thread updated so we can see your progress either your slow demise into mental illness or you become some sort of memory man solving crime

Either way it'd be interesting to read and probably help you see improvements, then you can release it as a best selling book "how InCreator beat stress and memory loss in 21 days!"

Photoshop yourself on to a super heroes body add unreasonable amount of lens flair BAM front cover to your book, you may think I'm getting ahead of myself but maybe I'm not going far enough!

I describe my job in this thread because of two reasons: first, I think that nature of my job (or rather stress it induces) is the reason and two - same thing makes working impossible. Which to me, IS a problem. There's no superhero story here even if you'd want to see it, I'm quite sure average software developer or salesperson deals with same amount of mental stress. Forgot to write such a disclaimer? Silly me! Now, if you'd untie me from stake and put away the matches, maybe you can see...

...that it's the reason of this thread. Maybe it was a mistake? Oh well. I make these often lately...

Still, I'm sure many people here simply have their method of staying organized and sharp in such routine. Or experienced similar unwanted disconnection and loss of focus. For me, it's very sudden, shocking and disorienting, so I honestly don't know what to do.

Maybe yoga? Maybe Ritalin? etc

But I guess basic tips already gave would improve situation atleast some amount.

Doctor? Which one? Or maybe I'll go to a general doctor (dunno how it's called, but we have "family doctor" assigned to every citizen, basically for writing excuses and antibiotics due common cold) and he leads me to correct one? I'm somewhat afraid that I'd be ridiculed and thrown out - I really don't know if "forgetting everything too often" classifies as a legal condition to see one.

So you're getting motherly with me 6 hours before release of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 AND a weekend



But yeah, I'll TRY to rest more next week. Thanks for advice.

Since I don't own a car, am in near-perfect shape (minus smoking) and get nice < 0C estonian climate even more than hour per day, physical-part should be alright.
Computer is something I can hardly reduce - as I said, office worker here and in the insane rush also known as "workday", 30-minute breaks are suicidal idea. I get my eye breaks though, because I go to smoke or just to think about ongoing work quite often. Outside, I mean.

I personally suspect the main problem... overheating. in brains!1
Package design is crazy middle between engineer, architect and rocket scientist - but I don't have a week or even more than few hours per project often, so I must pump out new solutions and ideas all the time and several times a day. All under strict deadlines and zero-tolerance on making mistakes.
Which is a paradox, because person who's afraid of failure isn't creative.

Then again, it's helluva awesome. Quite often, I have no idea what I'm doing while clock ticks to a deadline and adventure ends somehow still getting everything invented and working/produced in time.

When I started a bit less than 2 years ago, I quickly started to lose hair. Also, it's a work that doesn't end at 5 o'clock. I sometimes seek solutions to open problems even when sleeping or playing or whatever. Automatically.
At some point, I adapted to the high-stress and heavy daily "working with head", but maybe it was simply an illusion?

If so, it's really bad. Then I could expect random new mental or medical problems popping up anytime.

No drugs/alcohol/green at all, stress... well, its constant past 7 years or so, I wouldn't say it had gotten much worse lately.
Bad/lack of sleep to me is what engine is to a car... still doesn't explain such sudden change.

Training might work yes, but also doesn't explain quick change. As artistic guy, I had excellent memory on details, appearance. Programming added memory for variables... it's like all gone in a split second

Art aside, variables I DO NEED.
As a packaging designer, my work is all about variables, measurements, quick tasks i have to do etc.
And it's quite hard since variables usually change quickly and very little...

Typical three phone calls from client or sales agent with 30 minutes between each

"This box is 32x32x15mm" < I change design >
"Oh wait, it's 32x33x16.5mm" < I change design >
"No it was still what I said at first, I hope you remember because I don't" < etc >

I was able to multitask, catch those calls while doing something absolutely different AND still remember later to make changes. Even if it was 30 phone calls about totally different stuff to remember. Not counting e-mails, skype, MSN Messenger, and of course, talking directly.
But now....

Lately occurring memory problems turned my otherwise okay job into a nightmare. Every forgotten thing costs loads and loads in terms of time, hard cash, work hours of whole production team, and of course, reputation. If I run out of last one due mistakes, I'm outta job.

And i don't know what to do

I've suffered under memory loss problems lately. (No not computer memory)

I mean, someone calls, I make a promise and about 10 seconds later, it's wiped out.
All the time! Especially at work. Making notes help somewhat but when I'm busy and multitasking, note-taking is not an option.

What to do? I'm also not sure what branch of medicine deals with this and what kind of doctor to attend if I do need one or if it's even treatable. I'm 26, no way I'm getting old yet. But memory fails and fails...

dont run it out of rar  put it in a folder on your desktop

Okay, sorry, but I just have to comment here: just how stupid do you think I am?   First off, I did unload it; can you even run programs from their compressed files? Second, I'm not gonna put it on my desktop: my computer boots up too slow already. Don't need a 2 gig game slowing it down even more.
Okay, I'm good now.  :'( now will some please get me a Vista patch? I like CnC (especailly free).

HAHAHAHAHA

No, srsly,
* you CAN run things things from archive. It automatically extracts them to temporary directory and runs
* Computer speed is not related to what's on your desktop
* Game size is not related to boot speed
* Vista patches you can a) google and find this question asked b) check official website

Part 2 is up! Just uploaded, should be ready in 10 minutes or so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2swIuMP6a9M

Voice narration was a failure: I sound like drunk Finnish with mouth full of stones trying to speak Russian. So I captioned this one too.
Music I used is part of DanClarke's (AGS user) ambient mix he uploaded years ago and which I still love. I hope he won't mind.

I have C&C: First Decade (all C&C/Red Alert games to Generals: Zero Hour) and every single game works on Windows 7...  I guess older releases are incompatible.
Check official website(s) maybe?

Point of my post is -- the must be patches for every game.

Nope, never. Sprites I simply draw. Some more tricky shapes I sometimes model, such as armchair or table etc, but never organic things.

Using more complex 3D for low-res 2D graphics is like building a tank to kill a fly.

!!! Part zero is up now !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzUGgtau1CE

Here I show how to make your own reference using simple 3D box-modelling in under 4 minutes.

I don't think this video alone would be to much use, you're only painting over a pre-existing picture, but I'm sure that the next one will be much more interesting.

Yes. Since detailing the background actually takes about 2 days for me -- and in terms of video, that's alot of editing and gigabytes to record - I thought I make this thread first and see if there's interest into it.

If you are going to make more of these I think you should also include a little info on how you created the 3d scene.

Um, unless you're a dreadful pirate or rich as hell, a video of making basic boxes in super-expensive 3ds max wouldn't be very useful... But I can whip up something simple. It's actually quite same in any 3d modelling software which lets you make boxes. The geometry is the thing, Lights I used were more for ideas and I'm not sure if I even recreate this lighting in final 2D scene.

Interesting & I'd like to see more of that! I'd like to see some more commentary too, it would add a lot.

And your wish shall be granted! But what do you mean about "more commentary"? This was preliminary room setup, with simply tiresome vanishing point calculations replaced with 3D. So there was not much to comment really. Of course I will comment everything more advanced I use.

At first, I thought about narrating whole thing in voice, but decided that my heavy eastern-european accent won't add any quality to this video, plus needs alot of editing.

[tell me if my effort is noble]

Since I'm back in 2D phase right now, and trying to make something game-like, I decided to give it a try and make a
YOUTUBE VIDEO TUTORIAL!

*applause*

It is here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRZgK4kG2VY

Also, it's HD and sound CAN be turned off.

Anyway, even though people avoid YouTube links like plague - it seems, if interested, take a look, C&C if wanted or if I'm doing it wrong and tell me if my effort is noble.

Because if so, I will document whole creation of this background...

I think team competition was awesome.
Velislav was quite a born leader too.

But yes, most of the little time we had, I spent on redrawing backgrounds from an artist that left in the middle of the compo  

I think that any group project takes:

1) Very clear (and realistic!) vision
2) Good leadership
3) Good planning down to tiniest detail and minute, also, sketches

Also, some inside rules for perfectionists like me. For example, how many hours should one background, animation or whatever take. If time is over, it will be saved and used, whatever state it is. Plus little "fix time"at the end of the project to overhaul everything that was save-used way too early.

Let's say, there 1 hour per background and 10 backgrounds.
And then 2 hours of fix time, which will be used ONLY after 10 backgrounds are done.
Then "fixing" is forced to be divided between what needs it most and cannot also go on forever.