Dear [ fan of my work ],

I'm sorry if I have offended you, person who I hardly know, even though you may be a huge fan of my work. It was not my intention to crush your desire to obtain a drawing by me or to acquire my services for your project in exchange for your heartfelt praise and adoration of my skills. I'm flattered really, but apologetic that the world around us has not yet caught on to your ingenious "praise for services rendered" economic model.

The sad reality of my situation is that I must pay for goods and services that I require to maintain a certain standard of living for myself and my family. Therefore, by logical reasoning and deduction, you should expect that I would ask for payment in return for the services that I can provide. I am not, as you so eloquently put, a "greedy f*ck!" I'm a consumer, a redundant monthly cycle of expenses and purchaser of life sustaining goods. Honestly, is it that much of a shock that I would ask for money in return for a sketch, design or cartoon when you and everyone else on the planet already subscribe to the belief that if you want to have Cheetos and Twinkies for lunch you're going to have to pay for it?

Please ... don't ask me. Don't email me. Don't even wonder aloud in a social setting if I would be intrigued by the proposal to do artwork for you for the sheer joy of it or for your never-ending adoration of my talents. Flattering as this may be to my ego (and at the risk of further enraging another fan); I would have to respectfully decline your proposal.

Thank you,

Kirt

If you've followed my website link www.kirtstanke.com and found yourself here, you've probably already figured out that I'm having problems with my website. Nothing new ... I've had problems with the thing since early last year. Previous issues were with the constant updates of Wordpress, Gallery2 and their evil go-between WPG2. Specifically their inability to communicate together (or something that I overlooked ... hehehe).

I am being told that the server which was hosting my site is being replaced with something else. That's all fine and dandy. New is good. If ... it works. Currently (and for the past month or so) it has not. So, I finally just decided to move my URL over to here for the time being. I guess it's better to look at something old and infrequently updated (not unlike my website) than an error page.

What else is new ... ??

Last August I was moving into my new home. I'm still working on that. It's odd how you can box up things from a smaller house, move and then not have enough room to unload the stuff into the new bigger house. How does that work? We even sold our living room and kitchen furniture before the move. Now there's a new set of hand-me-downs (which I don't like) taking the place of the sold items (which I liked only slightly better than the current crap). Yet we couldn't be happier that we now have our own home.

My whole life is a humorous series of backwards steps while I simultaneously gain new ground. I don't understand any of it.

On the same subject, I started building this computer for myself 4 years ago. I picked up a monster of a case with the intention of making something that I could create all of my ideas with. Something to handle Photoshop without lagging. Something to experiment in 3D applications with, build up my knowledge (maybe make an animation or two) and generally do the things I learned in school ... which I have been slowly becoming unknowledgable in since graduation. The new PC came together slowly (kids will tend to hamper your budget for things of this sort). But I finally got it all assembled. It's a beauty!

Warning! Geek Speak!
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe Mobo
4GB DDR2 SDRAM
TWO! Radeon HD 3870 512MB (Crossfire config)
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX Power Supply
Acer 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor
Saitek PZ30AU Keyboard
Logitech MX518 Mouse
Logitech X-530 Speaker System
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit Edition

(I'll have to post pictures later ... it's ... aaaaaahoooaaaaa ... nerd orgasmic!)

Anyhoo ... things went together very well. Which is surprising because I've had some parts sitting around the house for several years (HDs need to be upgraded, two 80 gigs seemed like a lot back in the day). But as it turns out, my Artz II Wacom (for those who don't know ... it's probably the oldest version of the Wacom tablet out there. A nice museum piece.) is not supported under Vista. Which kinda sucks as I haven't drawn anything with my new PC yet and it pretty much makes a perfectly good tablet obsolete. I've had this tablet since my old 486DX days. I'm sad that I can't use it anymore. I'm depressed that I don't have the cash to replace it with a newer model.

I've been playing Team Fortress 2 on my new system.
And you've been wondering why I don't update my portfolio.

Now you know.

Well, things are moving along for me. I know I haven't been updating my portfolio as frequently as I said I would back in April. Things seldom go as I plan ... I've begun to accept that as my destiny of distractions. Modus operandi de procrastinator? I don't know ... but you get the idea.

Hmmm, so what have I been doing since May? I did a little bit more work on my Team Fortress 2 female character concepts. I'm pretty happy with the way the Heavy turned out even though she is a little more modern than the games original designs of the male characters.

I also touched briefly on my 65 Mustang GT350 3D model. There are just too many things conspiring against me to continue working on this at the moment. I was using my PC at work to build this model, I think I hit a memory or CPU limit on the polygons. Things started slowing down and getting occassional crashes in XSI. On top of that, my employer blocked photobucket.com so transferring of images to home, uploading and then posting became too much of a hassle. I'll get back to this in about a month or two when my home PC is done (oh so close!!).

Somewhere in there I also finished a portrait of Christina Ricci. What?!? What's that you say? I finished an illustration!?! Blasphemy!

Yeah, I was pretty proud of that one. It's been awhile since I sat down and forced myself to go from doodle to completion. I'm happy with it. The pose is rather dull and uninteresting but as an excercise of capturing a likeness of someone famous ... I think it succeeds. I had a few problems with lighting and such, which I humbly asked Steven Stahlberg for help on. He got me going in the right direction again and ... well what else is there to say? DONE!!

I wish it would have received a little more attention and comments in the CGTalk Gallery, but alas the forum just isn't what it used to be back in the day. Needs more Orc or ass to get any attention I suppose. But I digress ...

Just bought a house. So, I'll be moving over the next month or so. I can't imagine I'll get much done during this time, but I am about 30-40% into a new image and have another 6 or more started. Some of these I'll throw up when I'm done. Others I'm keeping for a book that I'm putting together (a little supplemental income never hurts eh?) which I hope to have near complete by ... oops ... HA HA! I almost did it again. No dates! I'm only setting myself up for further distractions and diversions from that goal.

I'll keep you posted.

I'm pretty sure I said here somewhere that I was going to continue the fairy that I had drawn a few weeks back (in my portfolio). So, just to clarify for all those who are wondering, "WTH?!?" ... I can't concentrate on one thing for very long. I was never diagnosed with ADHD but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if I were.

Anyway ... I'm now getting into 3D modeling. I was able to recently acquire a copy of Softimage|XSI 6.5 and I'm currently going through some tutorials and applying what I learn to this little thing. It's been nearly 8 years since I last used a 3D application. I can say that I loved and hated it at the same time. We'll see how it goes this time around.

What else is new? Just waiting on the govt. to send that rebate check so I can get my new PC monster up and running. I got a new contract for some illustrations with my employer today as well. It's always fun to get some of this work to break up the monotony of coding web pages and being PC support.

Well by now, if you are subscribed to my portfolio, you have probably noticed some activity. It has been ages since I have updated my CGPortfolio. And it has been even longer since I actually scheduled some of my time to draw anything. I'm not going to lie ... I've been somewhat lazy and uninspired (disturbing, I know). However, that wasn't the only reason that I had been neglecting my talents.

In 2007 things started to change for me. I quit smoking in July, I stopped changing diapers in September and (I can't go into details) my job got somewhat better in December. Now ... for the untrained eye ... you might not have noticed the significance of those three items. Well, fear not! I shall make it easy for you ... I - have - more - free - time!

Holy Enchilada Señor Nacho! I had almost forgotten what it was like to have a moment for myself. What to do? What can I do? What did I used to do? Oh yeah! I used to draw things! Duh ...

So, it took me a little while to come to the realization that I used to have a life. That I used to enjoy drawing pictures. That CGTalk (or CGSociety if you prefer) wasn't here just for me to validate some other person's post, to nominate some other person's image for CGChoice or to "yuck it up" with the other Forum Leaders and Administrators (yeah we have too much fun in the back offices of CGTalk).

Here I am (again) ... hopefully only for good and productive things in the future. It's been awhile since I finished a CGChallenge (Hapless Heroes - remember that one?). I will work myself up to doing one of those again. It's been nearly 10 years since I did anything with a 3D application. I now have Softimage|XSI Essentials and I am slowly going through a few tutorials. My CGPortfolio has sat dormat for almost 2 years. I plan on adding something at least once every two weeks (to start - we'll see how it goes).

Thanks for reading! Now go draw something ...