• Category Archives Gimpystick
  • Entries regarding the daily sketch gallery Gimpystick.

  • Main » Art » Gimpystick
  • Recent Events

    Last Friday and Saturday I went to the 2D or not 2D animation festival. It was awesome. I got to meet amazing people like Barry Cook and Dean Yeagle and Michel Gange. Of course, my DigiPen professor Tony White was there, seeing as he was hosting the festival in the first place.

    After getting an exclusive first look on Gange’s upcoming game and getting a bunch of stuff signed by him, and watching some fantastic shorts like Chicken Cowboy, and listening to an orchestra at close range (they took up half the big room the final mingle was in) I went back to my car and found a car window and my backpack missing. Whoops.

    Let that be a lesson to everyone: Don’t leave tempting unknowns sitting around where someone may see it. Save yourself some trouble. Now I gotta buy a new backpack, a new sketchbook, and some new charcoal. I feel kinda sorry for the guy who stole it… he risked the law for… well, nothing.

    So I got home, and my good friend tek_hed who’d lent me a Wacom tablet for the past many years, finally needed it back. So I was now tabletless.

    Feeling sorry for myself, and a bit stupid for getting my backpack stolen, I went and ordered a new toy. A 12″ Cintiq. Seeing as it was only $400 more than the $600 for a new tablet, I figured I might as well splurge. Man, this stuff is expensive. It should get here in a week or two.

    But wait, that’s not all!

    I got an email from Rick Simmons, CEO of Virtrium LLC about a press release he was making about my Seawolf dragons..

    I think I’m getting ahead of myself, as I haven’t mentioned the dragons here yet. The dragons link above should explain a bit about them. They’re an avatar available for Second Life that use a bug (that hadn’t been exploited previously) to increase the size of your avatar. I don’t have any size references images or even videos handy, so I’m just going to give a link to an image of the vendor location. The top of the smallest dragon’s head is about as tall as a normal person. If you have Second Life, you can visit the location inworld by clicking this SLurl.

    Oh, and Left 4 Dead came out. Valve’s latest masterpiece, and more proof that finding awesome people and buying them into the company is a very smart idea.


  • Miniforum History Fixed

    As many of you know, I don’t use the commonly available shoutboxes or whatever they’re calling them these days. I prefer to control the code and information myself, even if it means things get done slowly or tend to not work… perfectly. So I created my own little version and I called it the “miniforum.”

    It worked fine, for a bit. Then we hit 900 posts and it got a little confused about what it was supposed to do. I knew what it was supposed to do, but apparently I didn’t explain it quite clear enough.

    Of course, the 900 posts confusion didn’t really cause an actual problem. It wasn’t until about 2MBs of posts were made that PHP decided it wasn’t funny anymore and stopped laughing.

    I’ve returned PHP’s good humor and the chatboxes/miniforums/whatever should now be in good working order. Please notify me if there are any problems. Thanks.


  • Gimpystick New Members and Updates

    We’ve had three people join Gimpystick since I last made an announcement, bringing the total active members up to 11. To be honest, I never expected Gimpystick to get, in a year, as big as it is now. I guess there’s more demand for this than I thought.

    The new members of Gimpystick are Smight, sunshine_ley, and Kagrenak! Welcome to our little community!

    I have also just given Gimpystick an update. By popular demand (well, one friend threatened to do it himself if I didn’t), I have released the ability to leave comments earlier than anticipated. I’ve also redone the way the date displays work to hopefully be more readable and useful. Feedback is appreciated.

    Up and coming features include:
    -“non-artist” accounts so everyone can leave comments
    -more features for comments, such as notification when new comments or a reply to one of your comments are received.

    Further-out features include:
    -private messages (PMs)
    -upload preview
    -Gimpystick showcase


  • New Gimpystick Engine

    Gimpystick has been updated! Hooray!

    Current artists should be able to use their old names and passwords to log in. If I screwed up and it’s not working, please drop me a line with the password you’d like me to set your account to and I’ll get it fixed.

    You will notice a difference in the way the addresses are formed — they’re much easier on the eye now. Also, uploading is now done through logging in to the actual site and is integrated with everything else.

    Next on my list of things to do is actually get the upload preview working, create a new date scheme for the main page (so the times say “today at 5pm” or “one week ago”), and get comments/non-artist accounts working.


  • New Gimpystick Members

    I’d like to welcome Lady Rose and Zingara to Gimpystick!

    The new Gimpystick engine is nearing completion, and will be done as soon as I find enough time to finish working on it. Initially, the only change you’ll notice is the way the addresses look and how you upload pictures. Next will be the comments system. After that will be PMs, or “private” comments as they be. The last thing I want to get done before I start school in September is Gimpystick Showcase.

    And now I have a question for Gimpystick members. Should I rename Gimpystick now that it’s not Gimpyboy/Stickman centric? If so, what name would you like to see?


  • Gimpystick Updates and New Member: Kicker

    Everyone please welcome Kicker to the Gimpystick practice gallery!

    I took the time to make a few updates on Gimpystick tonight. Thumbnails are slightly smaller (200x250px max, largest side only) and the main page lists images three per line instead of two. Everything else is internal code chages to make things easier on me.

    A friend and I did some brainstorming, though, and I really like the ideas we came up with. It would be appreciated if Gimpystick members shared their ideas on this subject (in the forum if the miniforum is too small) so I can know if the ideas are liked or not, but the general idea of what we came up with is thus:

    Gimpystick Showcase
    The current idea is that Gimpystick will have two parts: a practice gallery, which is the main purpose, and “Gimpystick Showcase,” which is where non-practice, finished pieces can be uploaded by the artist.

    Stats Page
    The stats page will contain things like how “daily” they’ve managed to update, how many practices and showcases have been uploaded by the user, what contests they’ve beaten, and etc.

    Scavenger Hunts
    Each user will receive a checklist of things to practice over a given time period. Participation is entirely optional. If they do a practice drawing of everything on the list, they will receive an award on the stats page.

    Theme Months
    Certain months will be set aside for drawing certain things. Participation in theme months is entirely optional. The plan is to allow the users to vote on the theme of the next month. Weeks of the month may be divided into sub categories (ie, if the theme is “wilderness backdrops”, one week might be “forests” and another might be “mountains”), and there may be special days where a certain specific topic is listed. Full participation in a theme month is recorded as an award on the stats page.

    The idea behind Gimpystick is not to pit users against each other, but for everyone to practice and (hopefully) have fun. As such, none of the contests will be user versus user, but will instead simply be awards for competing the required practices.

    These features may take some time for me to get implimented, and other features I plan to work on first include comments and private messages. I would really appreciate feedback from Gimpystick members as to how they feel about these ideas so I know I’m going to impliment something they’d like.


  • My Moment of Strength

    A couple days ago I posted about some goals I had. Specifically, I was going to update my comics every day, and when I felt I couldn’t for whatever reason I would spend the time coloring the Morrowind Comic.

    Well, I was very rash. I made that goal in about a two hour window when I was feeling well. I haven’t felt that well in a month or so, and I probably won’t feel that well again for quite some time. I do, however, want to keep the goal. And it’s gonna be hard as nothing else to do so.

    Here goes my extreme force of will. Let’s see how long I can go before breaking!


  • Gimpystick Lives!

    Gimpystick, for those that are unfamiliar with it, was originally a site where Gimpy and I could sketch a five minute picture a day, upload it, and over time see how we improve. The purpose of Gimpystick is to get us drawing at least five minutes every day, practicing something we’d like to improve on.

    It had a few problems though. 1) It started filling up rather quickly and I was too lazy to put in pagination. 2) It only supported two artists. 3) It was a pain to actually switch a new artist in if the old one found himself unable to continue. And sadly, people only tend to stick with something like this for a month or two.

    So I took some time and fixed it up! Gimpystick now supports however many artists want to participate — but only those that have updated within the last two months appear on the main page. (Or, if no one has updated in the last month, the two most recent updates are shown) It’s not entirely done, as I still haven’t gotten pagination for the authors page in yet nor a list of participating authors, but I really like how it’s turned out so far!

    Go ahead and take a look and tell me what you think!