by Gary Swaby on April 14, 2012
I’ve always loved Hip Hop, it was just the culture I latched myself onto when I was growing up and it’s never left me. Hip Hop is a part of who I am, and even though I’m not too fond of some of the newer trends in the Hip Hop genre of music I continue embrace everything the culture stands for. Everybody has their one passion that motivates them, and Hip Hop is mine.
As I said though, I’m not too fond of a lot of the newer trends in the music industry. The genre of music has become too controlled by the record industry and this has resulted in a bunch of gimmicky artists and songs. My tendency to listen to newer artists is at an all time low, and I now find myself clinging to the past, listening to older artists in their prime such as Notorious B.I.G, Tupac, Ice Cube, DMX, Cam’Ron, Nas, 50 Cent and more.
Years ago I would listen to every new up and coming artist I heard of, I would literally buy or download their latest album/mixtape without listening to any samples. I would then listen to the body of work from start to finish, assured that it would provide quality music. I can no longer do this. The more I listen to new artists in Hip Hop the more it pushes me to relive the old classics.
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by Gary Swaby on April 8, 2012
1st Draft Finished
I finally finished the first draft of my book April 5th at 2:57am.
It’s been a struggle to try and finish it but now I finally have the whole book typed up and now I need to begin the editing phase which may last a little while longer.
At this point I would like to thank everybody who has shown me support throughout the whole process.
Look out for the book soon.
by Gary Swaby on January 23, 2012
d’artiste Fashion Design is the latest Ballistic Publishing offering, and offers many techniques from a few critically acclaimed artists. The main focus of this book is of course fashion design, but more specifically it demonstrates how to add outstanding fashions to your character designs.
As always, flicking through this book made me realize just how much we overlook the amount of detail that is pumped into crafting any type of character design; whether for a video game, painting or animation. Fashion Design is a collection of tutorials and galleries from three prolific artists. The artists featured are Alessia Zambonin, Annie Stegg, and Lois van Baarle. It’s also worth mentioning that these artists have done work for video games, which further shows how much artists are under appreciated when it comes to mainstream media works.
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by Gary Swaby on January 13, 2012
Wow! It’s been a while since I made an entry on this blog. Which is unacceptable because I’ve been blogging galore on my other sites The Koalition and The Epic Network. I suppose the honest reason for my lack of blogging here has been the fact I have been slacking with my 1st draft.
I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve been slacking lazily though, it’s just that sometimes real life gets in the way of your personal goals. For the past two months I’ve been so stressed looking for work, dealing with some family issues and then of course the holiday hit and sent everything else all the way to the left.
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by Gary Swaby on October 31, 2011
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) officially begins tomorrow (November 1st) and lasts a full month, ending November 30th. Every year participants aim to knock out their 50,000 word manuscript within the course of that month, whilst the NaNoWriMo staff courteously offer their support.
Last year I told myself I was going to participate but it just never happened. This year however I have been at work on my manuscript for the past few months and I am so close to being finished. I am over 45,000 words in now, and though my aim was for 50,000 I’m so going to go over that. Still it’s just a first draft, and after multiple revisions my manuscript may end up either lower or way higher than the word count at the time of completion for my first draft. Read more..
