dark circles (eyes for the random)

I don't have a main topic to write about today, but I feel like there are a lot of little things that I should probably tie up or cover. SO! I will spend this post talking about anything and everything that I deem worthy enough to make an appearance here. EDIT: Going back through this post, I noticed that I totally did things WAY out of order. My bad and deal with it.

Big Skullies

The first topic would definitely be our good friend James's Skull Knight 1:1 helmet. This amazing sculptor was found by Derek (the same guy that runs BerserkStatues.com), and after the relatively popular success of his first helmet, the Armored Berserker, they decided to move forward with a Skull Knight one. At first I wasn't thinking about purchasing it, but the more I see the details, the more interested I'm becoming. Let the work speak for itself!

Absolutely stunning. Visit www.skullknight.net/forum and browse the merchandise section if you are interested in picking one up. There will only be a very small, limited number produced, so put your name on the list or forever hold your peace!

FMA S2 and Akira Senju

Anyone who has been watching the hagaren this season knows that the score for the series is without a doubt some of the best stuff ever produced in the history of anime. In fact, I scout weekly on Nipponsei to see if I can try and find out when exactly that damned OST was going to be released. To my pleasant surprise, we have a release date!

October 14th

• Fullmetal Alchemist 2009 OP3
• Fullmetal Alchemist 2009 OST1
• Fullmetal Alchemist "Theme of Alphonse Elric"
• Fullmetal Alchemist "Theme of Edward Elric"

(source: nipponsei.minglong.org/upcoming/)

If you can't recall what the hell I'm talking about, refresh your memory and check out the little snippit below. Akira Senju is an acclaimed Japanese composer who has done scores for over two dozen TV shows and counting. He's won several awards, including best musical arrangement for Strawberry Shortcake and composing the theme of Furikazan.

Home Decor

I've already spent a lot of money on not only my Berserk collection, but setting up for it as well. After some searching, finding a larger display case for a decent price is nigh impossible. I then decided to go back to the IKEA store and see what else they possibly had. I managed to find this two foot high glass cabinet that looks like it might be the perfect centerpiece for my collection. This would also allow me to store the manga and miscellaneous collectibles inside of the smaller shelves, add a glass shelf to the wall above it, and still have plenty of room to complete my mural. Seems like a pretty win-win-win situation. I'll do a mock up of the room in sketchup sometime, but here's a picture of the case. What do you think?

Klingsbo Glass-Door Cabinet

Constructing Daily Banners

Many of you who do frequent my site are like: why the fuck do you always change your banner? Well for you fucking idiotic morons, I change my banner every_single_time I make a new post. It's a mandatory thing. Why do I do it? I just have a lot of cool pictures in my stash that I'd like to make colorful and post up. I'm a person of too many interests to just keep one lame ol' banner. ANYWAYS, I figured I'd just show anyone who was curious the steps I take when trying to make one of these things. Who knows, maybe I might inspire one of you!

Let's go with the banner yesterday as an example:

The main things I think about when designing a banner is: the content of my post and how rad the source picture is. More often than not, by some divine kismet, these two notions coincide. In the case above, I chose an image of Arthas because I've been playing my Death Knight again.

Here is the original picture, as found from the Blizzard fan art program. It helps a lot that the original picture is quite fucking awesome.

Next step is to crop this bitch. I have a saved template that has a bunch of sizes and "vanillasalt" written in different languages that I turn to.

This is where I can start doing fun things. I took a large picture of an inferno and placed it above the image of Arthas. I altered the hue to a more violet tone, then changed the layer style to Overlay, allowing the fire to create a cool texture and shift the existing color theme towards some more pinkish hues.

The next amazingly fun step is choosing type treatment. I love using Asian symbols because they serve both the function of saying "vanilla salt" and great looking shapes or patterns. In this case, I saw that Arthas and Icecrown where equally spaced, so three large characters between the gaps would make sense. I decided to go with an enlarged-cropped style, but felt that the "tsao" in "shiang tsao" was too detracting from Arthas.

The only thing Photoshop can't do is cure cancer. I went ahead and rasterized the type layer and changed it to overlay as well, giving this sort of halogen white and blue look. I then set my eraser opacity and flow to about 40% each, and started to brush away the "tsao" where it was blocking Arthas's cape. Now it looks like Arthas is standing in front of the letter!

Finally, I added in "vanillasalt" to align with the right-hand crossbar from "tsao" to give more a-symmetrical balance to the piece. Where Arthas is a bit heavy, Icecrown combined with "vanillasalt" helps to even out the visual weight of both sides.

You might say: hey all you did was change the colors of a picture and put your name on it. Well, that's what I did, and I'm not denying it lol.

The Status of My Berserk Stuff

I know I have a few readers here that are interested in my quest to obtain epic Berserk merchandise. I plan to do a major update around late November, when I've finally set up my room to be a museum. These are the statues I currently own:

- Knight of Skeleton, Green-silver Armor (#1634 of 2000)

- Guts the Black Swordsman, Episode of Birth Feast (pvc ver.)

- Guts Hawk Soldiers, Limited Edition w/ Blue Cape (#733 of 1500)

- Griffith Millenium Falcon I (Toycom release)

- Griffith the Shooting Star Night, Silver Edition (#077 of 300)

- Griffith Hawk Soldiers on Horse 1/10 (painted recast)

- Femto, Custom Black Repaint (#522 of 2000)

- Zoddo Senma (#137 of 350)

- Zoddo III (#378 of 500)

I am currently commissioning / receiving this before the end of the year:

- HEADLONG 1/8 Armored Berserk (sitting) - by Joa

- Atelie Real Spirits 1/12 Casca - by Joa

- Guts Kingdom of Falconia (#269)

- 20th Anniversary Armored Berserk (bloody ver. w/ Daiba)

Working on the following:

- Knight of Skeleton on Horse II, Limited Edition (to be repainted by Joa)

- James's Skull Knight 1:1 Helmet

And of course, a tease from Joa.

A lot on the plate right now. CNBC is visiting my workplace this Thursday, so we're totally excited for that. I have finals next week, followed by leaving to China the first week of October. Busy times.