This icon says "Year of the Ox".
Feeling urge to play WoW and RO again lately. And MFO. Must... resist.
Had our ice carving gig last-last week from Thursday to Saturday. Definitely a very fun and challenging experience. Chris and I had never worked with ice before so it was sort of like a crash course in working with it/why-are-we-in-competition-we've-never-done-this-before-aghh. Everyone was extremely nice and helpful to us noobz, even taking the time out of their own carving to give us pointers.
Concept of doom. Chris and I spent forever trying to arrange something that would look decent with the 15 blocks provided, and yet still meet the minimum height requirement of 7ft. The blocks were really oddly shaped, 10x20x40". Chris had the idea to do a Stego, I just helped whip up the concept art.
Team Cardinal, photo nicked off IoW site. Hermie was worried that people would think it referred to the church cardinals. Hooray for my last-minute-cobbled dorkhat, although I don't think anyone got the reference, so maybe people did lol. Chris on the left, Hermie in the center here.
Had a meeting the evening before the competition where we got to meet the other teams as well as the judges and coordinator. Including ours, there were 5 teams (3 from Calgary, one joint Edm/Victoria team). They were all either professional ice carvers or chefs and the like, which was pretty intimidating. I thought the competition was going to be a fairly casual sort of thing but it wasn't the case haha :X. They even flew in a fellow, Glen, from NICA to help oversee the juding.
--
Woke up early on Thursday and got to the park at about 7am. It was a lot warmer than usual (about 1-2C) and was sort of nice being able to feel your digits while working. Got to our site and waited around for about 30mins while they went and found someone to operate the forklift and bring our ice over.
We started setting up our blocks and found out that they weighed a whopping 270lbs each. I think that was one of our biggest challenges. We knew they were going to be heavy but didn't really expect them to be THAT heavy, and we had to stack them 3 blocks high. They were also slightly uneven on the sides so we took quite a few hours trying to even out and level our first two blocks. Glen came by later on in the day and gave us suggestions and explained some techniques about how to smooth the surfaces. We didn't have the equipment to do it properly this round, but will definitely be prepared for next year.
Took a break for lunch, while Hermie went back to work to grab his paycheck and pick up some more tools we found worked pretty well for us (lol, drywall hawk). We started on the third layer of stacking once he got back. Chris and Hermie had some troubles lifting the blocks that high and the first one they got up strained his back a bit. Luckily, Chris' dad came by to see how we were doing and offered to help us lift them. One we got them up we started sliding them and throwing water to freeze them together. One of the judges, Pat, was watching and explained to Chris' dad that it was actually a pretty bad method (due to the ice forming improperly) and that we ought to put them up, and them inject water using a turkey baster. She technically wasn't allowed to tell us anything but made sure we would get the information later, which was really nice of her. By this time it was pretty late, and we only managed to finish arranging all our blocks on the first day. I don't know about the rest of my team but I was feeling a little worried/depressed since all the other teams were pretty deep into the carving stage. One of the Calgary teams (Frozen Memories) was nearly finished !_!
--
Finally got to start carving on Friday. Hermie and Chris started revving up the chainsaws while I started with the chisels. Pat came by again and asked if we had ground off the guard teeth on our chain (used to prevent kickback when cutting wood), which aren't needed for ice carving and would make the cutting go more smoothly. Since we hadn't, she asked Delayne (another competitor) if he would mind letting us try his saw, just so we could see the difference. He came over and showed us, as well as explained how to mod the chain. Another thing to note for next year. Chris and I thanked him for his help, although for some reason Hermie took it as an insult o_o. We didn't have time to worry over it though so we picked up the work again and then realized that we had made a mistake in following the concept. Had a bit of ARRGH trying to figure out how to make it look how we wanted and started losing some momentum until the afternoon, when a kid came up and asked us what we were making. We told him it was a Stegosaurus and he said "Aww, that's going to be so cool when it's done!!" so that lifted our spirits. Frozen Memories had finished but one of their members, Julian, had stayed behind since he had a few private jobs left to do in the city. He came by and generously showed us how to slab a block easily and accurately.
Unfortunately, it got really warm during the day (10C) and there were problem with the ice melting and crystallizing (fractures appear, which makes it impossible to carve since chunks will chip off between fractures). One of the Calgary teams had their entire sculpture crystalize on them so they had to stop work :(. Since ours was fairly chunky, we didn't have as many problems. Julian told us that it was better to carve a piece as quickly as possible, rather than roughly shape them and wait until cooler weather in the evening (as we were doing), since it could crystallize before then.
At one point, Chris and I were hunkered down and speedcarving the stego back plates when some of Hermie's friends came by and started speaking Tagalog with him.
A ton of people came out to see the event in the evening and some of them even thanked us for doing the carvings. It was really nice and encouraging to know that people were enjoying things and watching the competitors working.
--
Saturday morning. Crunch time, since we only had until 12pm that day and still had a lot of work to do. Started adding the last of the plates, as well as the spikes on the tail. It was starting to warm up again
Julian was watching us work and suggested that we could cut out a large portion of the 'grass' we left under the Stego for support, and that it would net us a lot of points if we felt comfortable doing it. Even Glen had hinted before that it was possible to take it out since the legs would have been solid enough, so we went ahead with the idea with about an hour left to go. We ended up being the last team working up until 11:30, and then madly cleaned up and dashed off to find the judges before the plates melted apart.
They made us leave while they were judging, so we went off for lunch and came back around 2pm for the judging. I didn't expect us to score very high since our seams were so visible and we had used a lot of snow to fill in gaps but we received ~73points, which earned us a NICA bronze and third place !_!. Definitely couldn't have done it without all the advice that was given to us. Julian's team took second place with ~76 points, and the first place team scored ~92 points which gave them NICA gold. Congratulated everyone and then went around beaming with Chris and taking pictures with the sculpture before heading home and passing out promptly.
Melty stego. Photo taken by Yo, who does concept art at work.
----------
Went to the ESO Sci-Fi spectacular last Saturday with my friend Beth. Live geek music. Awesome. Opening with Star Wars theme and starting off the next bit with the X-Files theme. Awesome. Jetsons theme played and sang live. Awesome. Using the laser show to 'beam' George Takei onto the stage. Awesome. George Takei messing up Star Trek theme narration and crowd laughing with him. Awesome. The conductor, Jack Everly, was really enthusiastic and it was hilarious watching him jump around. They started playing the Star Wars ceremony/end theme to close the concert and he whipped out a mini lightsaber to replace his conducting baton. Extremely unexpected (and awesome).
Whipped up a last minute costume for the event. I had a Tusken Raider mask I made 8 years ago (EIGHT?!? geez), which is undoubtably the most uncomfortable thing I've ever created haha. Bought some new fabric to do the robes and raided a hardware store to make the gaderffi Thursday evening and managed to finish sewing while we were watching Indy and the Last Crusade on Saturday ;). People enjoyed the costume, which was great! One girl was like "Ooh, a Sand person :D!". More powah to desert thugs, yo <3. There were a lot of Trek costumes (even a whole crew haha!) and all the event staff had Vulcan ears on. Quite a few Jedi as well, and also a Leia and Vader that I bugged to have a picture with.
I scored a bundle of Star Trek and Vulcan swag, as well as a pair of tickets to an upcoming concert in May. I gave most of it to Beth, who is by far a greater Trekkie than I will ever be, but kept the Roddenberry.com holo-emitter replica kit and Vulcan jacket for myself.
Secretly, I'd like to have a small horde of SW costumes since geekfests pop up often enough. Plans for the the far, far future:
-Tusken Raider v2, revamp head+gaffi
-Boushh
-Generic Rebel (likely Hoth gear version, Canada basically = Hoth)
I've always wanted to do a Stormtrooper or (older) Boba Fett, but I'd have to make them some sort of comical version due to my height. Maybe I could do a Dark Helmet...
-------------
Sent out some emails to check with people on the waiting list today; I always let people know that they can just say 'no' if they're not interested anymore since it doesn't matter to me either way (Actually, saying no to me would be good news right now !_!). Some fellow whipped up a sob story for me of how he lost all his money. Dude. Not necessary or needed, don't take me for an idiot. Just be honest and say you don't want it. Urgh, it put me into a foul mood for a good part of the day.
-----
Not much time for doodles, I should scan in the paper napkin stuff from work sometime.
Been wanting to draw Sey a lot lately, which is unusual. I think I really want to get her design solidified but that's going to require some sit down.
Sey, your fukken hair.. somewhat looks decent here. I think I like the uncoloured vers better.
This is as refined as it's gonna get. Yepyep.
akamaru mentioned he was watching Last Exile... I feel like watching it again now haha. Dio doodle. Sacksuit.
Maaaaaaaan, these posts are getting longer and shittier lol.
Had our ice carving gig last-last week from Thursday to Saturday. Definitely a very fun and challenging experience. Chris and I had never worked with ice before so it was sort of like a crash course in working with it/why-are-we-in-competition-we've-never-done-this-before-aghh. Everyone was extremely nice and helpful to us noobz, even taking the time out of their own carving to give us pointers.
Concept of doom. Chris and I spent forever trying to arrange something that would look decent with the 15 blocks provided, and yet still meet the minimum height requirement of 7ft. The blocks were really oddly shaped, 10x20x40". Chris had the idea to do a Stego, I just helped whip up the concept art.
Team Cardinal, photo nicked off IoW site. Hermie was worried that people would think it referred to the church cardinals. Hooray for my last-minute-cobbled dorkhat, although I don't think anyone got the reference, so maybe people did lol. Chris on the left, Hermie in the center here.
Had a meeting the evening before the competition where we got to meet the other teams as well as the judges and coordinator. Including ours, there were 5 teams (3 from Calgary, one joint Edm/Victoria team). They were all either professional ice carvers or chefs and the like, which was pretty intimidating. I thought the competition was going to be a fairly casual sort of thing but it wasn't the case haha :X. They even flew in a fellow, Glen, from NICA to help oversee the juding.
--
Woke up early on Thursday and got to the park at about 7am. It was a lot warmer than usual (about 1-2C) and was sort of nice being able to feel your digits while working. Got to our site and waited around for about 30mins while they went and found someone to operate the forklift and bring our ice over.
We started setting up our blocks and found out that they weighed a whopping 270lbs each. I think that was one of our biggest challenges. We knew they were going to be heavy but didn't really expect them to be THAT heavy, and we had to stack them 3 blocks high. They were also slightly uneven on the sides so we took quite a few hours trying to even out and level our first two blocks. Glen came by later on in the day and gave us suggestions and explained some techniques about how to smooth the surfaces. We didn't have the equipment to do it properly this round, but will definitely be prepared for next year.
Took a break for lunch, while Hermie went back to work to grab his paycheck and pick up some more tools we found worked pretty well for us (lol, drywall hawk). We started on the third layer of stacking once he got back. Chris and Hermie had some troubles lifting the blocks that high and the first one they got up strained his back a bit. Luckily, Chris' dad came by to see how we were doing and offered to help us lift them. One we got them up we started sliding them and throwing water to freeze them together. One of the judges, Pat, was watching and explained to Chris' dad that it was actually a pretty bad method (due to the ice forming improperly) and that we ought to put them up, and them inject water using a turkey baster. She technically wasn't allowed to tell us anything but made sure we would get the information later, which was really nice of her. By this time it was pretty late, and we only managed to finish arranging all our blocks on the first day. I don't know about the rest of my team but I was feeling a little worried/depressed since all the other teams were pretty deep into the carving stage. One of the Calgary teams (Frozen Memories) was nearly finished !_!
--
Finally got to start carving on Friday. Hermie and Chris started revving up the chainsaws while I started with the chisels. Pat came by again and asked if we had ground off the guard teeth on our chain (used to prevent kickback when cutting wood), which aren't needed for ice carving and would make the cutting go more smoothly. Since we hadn't, she asked Delayne (another competitor) if he would mind letting us try his saw, just so we could see the difference. He came over and showed us, as well as explained how to mod the chain. Another thing to note for next year. Chris and I thanked him for his help, although for some reason Hermie took it as an insult o_o. We didn't have time to worry over it though so we picked up the work again and then realized that we had made a mistake in following the concept. Had a bit of ARRGH trying to figure out how to make it look how we wanted and started losing some momentum until the afternoon, when a kid came up and asked us what we were making. We told him it was a Stegosaurus and he said "Aww, that's going to be so cool when it's done!!" so that lifted our spirits. Frozen Memories had finished but one of their members, Julian, had stayed behind since he had a few private jobs left to do in the city. He came by and generously showed us how to slab a block easily and accurately.
Unfortunately, it got really warm during the day (10C) and there were problem with the ice melting and crystallizing (fractures appear, which makes it impossible to carve since chunks will chip off between fractures). One of the Calgary teams had their entire sculpture crystalize on them so they had to stop work :(. Since ours was fairly chunky, we didn't have as many problems. Julian told us that it was better to carve a piece as quickly as possible, rather than roughly shape them and wait until cooler weather in the evening (as we were doing), since it could crystallize before then.
At one point, Chris and I were hunkered down and speedcarving the stego back plates when some of Hermie's friends came by and started speaking Tagalog with him.
A ton of people came out to see the event in the evening and some of them even thanked us for doing the carvings. It was really nice and encouraging to know that people were enjoying things and watching the competitors working.
--
Saturday morning. Crunch time, since we only had until 12pm that day and still had a lot of work to do. Started adding the last of the plates, as well as the spikes on the tail. It was starting to warm up again
Julian was watching us work and suggested that we could cut out a large portion of the 'grass' we left under the Stego for support, and that it would net us a lot of points if we felt comfortable doing it. Even Glen had hinted before that it was possible to take it out since the legs would have been solid enough, so we went ahead with the idea with about an hour left to go. We ended up being the last team working up until 11:30, and then madly cleaned up and dashed off to find the judges before the plates melted apart.
They made us leave while they were judging, so we went off for lunch and came back around 2pm for the judging. I didn't expect us to score very high since our seams were so visible and we had used a lot of snow to fill in gaps but we received ~73points, which earned us a NICA bronze and third place !_!. Definitely couldn't have done it without all the advice that was given to us. Julian's team took second place with ~76 points, and the first place team scored ~92 points which gave them NICA gold. Congratulated everyone and then went around beaming with Chris and taking pictures with the sculpture before heading home and passing out promptly.
Melty stego. Photo taken by Yo, who does concept art at work.
----------
Went to the ESO Sci-Fi spectacular last Saturday with my friend Beth. Live geek music. Awesome. Opening with Star Wars theme and starting off the next bit with the X-Files theme. Awesome. Jetsons theme played and sang live. Awesome. Using the laser show to 'beam' George Takei onto the stage. Awesome. George Takei messing up Star Trek theme narration and crowd laughing with him. Awesome. The conductor, Jack Everly, was really enthusiastic and it was hilarious watching him jump around. They started playing the Star Wars ceremony/end theme to close the concert and he whipped out a mini lightsaber to replace his conducting baton. Extremely unexpected (and awesome).
Whipped up a last minute costume for the event. I had a Tusken Raider mask I made 8 years ago (EIGHT?!? geez), which is undoubtably the most uncomfortable thing I've ever created haha. Bought some new fabric to do the robes and raided a hardware store to make the gaderffi Thursday evening and managed to finish sewing while we were watching Indy and the Last Crusade on Saturday ;). People enjoyed the costume, which was great! One girl was like "Ooh, a Sand person :D!". More powah to desert thugs, yo <3. There were a lot of Trek costumes (even a whole crew haha!) and all the event staff had Vulcan ears on. Quite a few Jedi as well, and also a Leia and Vader that I bugged to have a picture with.
I scored a bundle of Star Trek and Vulcan swag, as well as a pair of tickets to an upcoming concert in May. I gave most of it to Beth, who is by far a greater Trekkie than I will ever be, but kept the Roddenberry.com holo-emitter replica kit and Vulcan jacket for myself.
Secretly, I'd like to have a small horde of SW costumes since geekfests pop up often enough. Plans for the the far, far future:
-Tusken Raider v2, revamp head+gaffi
-Boushh
-Generic Rebel (likely Hoth gear version, Canada basically = Hoth)
I've always wanted to do a Stormtrooper or (older) Boba Fett, but I'd have to make them some sort of comical version due to my height. Maybe I could do a Dark Helmet...
-------------
Sent out some emails to check with people on the waiting list today; I always let people know that they can just say 'no' if they're not interested anymore since it doesn't matter to me either way (Actually, saying no to me would be good news right now !_!). Some fellow whipped up a sob story for me of how he lost all his money. Dude. Not necessary or needed, don't take me for an idiot. Just be honest and say you don't want it. Urgh, it put me into a foul mood for a good part of the day.
-----
Not much time for doodles, I should scan in the paper napkin stuff from work sometime.
Been wanting to draw Sey a lot lately, which is unusual. I think I really want to get her design solidified but that's going to require some sit down.
Sey, your fukken hair.. somewhat looks decent here. I think I like the uncoloured vers better.
This is as refined as it's gonna get. Yepyep.
akamaru mentioned he was watching Last Exile... I feel like watching it again now haha. Dio doodle. Sacksuit.
Maaaaaaaan, these posts are getting longer and shittier lol.