Just Pretend it's Spooky

It's day 7 of Horrordailies. I was rushing around this afternoon (see below) so I'm tired and I decided to do something simple.

This is a picture of a tree that I took. I added the background and then threw in some lightning. Is it artistic? Meh. It's 8:45 pm and I have other things to do.

Foster Kitten Updates

Orla, Shane, Ronan, and Finn all went back to the shelter for their regular 2-week appointment and they stayed for surgery and adoption. Yay! That is the goal.

Finn

Ronan

Shane

Orla

Then I came home with three new snotty kittens. They're all older and seem pretty stable, so they aren't a ton of work on their own, but...

I had to break down Finn's playpen, clean that area, set up a new playpen and move Bailey into my office, clean up the spare room where Orla, Shane, and Ronan were, set up the shelter's dog crate for two of the new kittens, clean my own dog crate (which was still in the garage from the feral mom using it last week), set that crate up in the spare room for the other new kitten, and then weigh/examine/medicate/feed the new kittens.

(There are two crates in the room because two of the kittens came from one place and one came from another, and they need to be quarantined from each other and also all the other kittens. Ideally, they might be in completely different rooms, but this minimizes germ transfer and they're all on the same upper respiratory meds, so it will be fine.)

It was a few hours of cleaning and moving stuff around that had to get done while the new kittens were waiting in their carriers. Luckily, all three of the new kittens seem very sweet.

Other Updates

Decided on my run this morning that I need to cut back to two runs per week and lengthen the training schedule. My body just can't handle three times per week. I had come to this conclusion five years ago and forgot.

I still need to write up that critique. Also, I need to come up with a Patreon digital bonus in the next week. No problem.

October Butterfly

Maria pointed out yesterday that butterflies are creepier than bats. And she's right. Maybe this stems back to a story I read where the butterflies are actually small fae and attack people? I've read a lot of stories during my lifetime, and I think they're all back there percolating and exchanging DNA.

Anyhow, I was having a hard time finding a tutorial, so I just started playing around, with this butterfly (the Glanville fritillary) as my starting point.

Is it spooky? No. But we knew my dedication to the task wouldn't last long. It has some orange in it and that's going to have to be good enough for today.

Foster Kitten Updates

Bagheeri is doing well and gaining weight. Three of the kittens (Spanner, Sabot, and Bailey) have decided they'd like to remain around 500 grams forever, which is not okay. In Bailey's case, it's because she's meat nursing — I have to believe she'll figure it out at some point. I think Spanner and Sabot have plateaued because they're holding out for more Churu.

Other Stuff

I have finished the 381 page novel I need to critique by Thursday. Now I just need to write up something helpful. 

Spooky Tree

It's day 5 of Horrordailies. Spooky and interesting GIMP tutorials are getting thin on the ground, but I found this one and followed some of it. I added bats instead of a child on a swing because bats are just better.

I need to look up how the dynamics on a brush work — sometimes I would like it to change the size but not the angle, and it's not obvious to me how one would do that. I suspect there is a way, though.

(I looked and indeed there is a dockable dialogue that lets you edit what things are affected.)

Thing I learned: Creating a cliff edge adds tension to the image. That might be useful in book covers.

Anyhow, this art speedrun used these components:

Sky image: https://www.deviantart.com/andahliasaur/art/Sky-41-194225713

Tree image: https://clipart-library.com/clipart/yikrL966T.htm

Bats brush: https://www.deviantart.com/kencho/art/Bats-brushes-27854473

Foster Kitten Updates

Everyone seems to be doing pretty well. I've set up a 2-week recheck/vaccine appoint on Tuesday for Finn, Orla, Shane, and Ronan. They might keep the latter three there for surgery and adoption (depending on the surgery schedule), so I should take graduation photos tomorrow. Spanner and Sabot now sit in the doorway crying for me to give them Churu, so I would say socialization has been a success.

Other Stuff

This was the end of week 3 of the 10k training schedule, so I ran an "easy" 3 mile run this morning. My knees have been bothering me since Thursday's 30-minute run/walk so I was literally jogging an 18-minute mile this morning. That's walking pace. But I still ran the whole distance and my knees seem no worse this evening. (I pushed the pace a little hard on Thursday's run/walk and the asphalt was slippery because it had just rained. Live and learn.)

191 pages (of 381) in this manuscript I'm critiquing. Sarah J Maas has a lot to answer for.

Bats!

Day 4 of Horrordailies and I'm still mostly sticking to the scary theme. Amazing. This may be the longest I've ever followed any directions.

Today I went with this tutorial to make a Halloween background. Most of what was covered I already knew how to do, but I did have to take a detour to figure out how to make an animated brush. (There are four bat brushes; the animated brush cycles through them so you don't have to selected each one manually.)

In fact, the majority of this is done with custom brushes (the bats, the grunge marks on the paper), which is great, but the brushes aren't licensed for commercial use, so... I definitely appreciate artists making stuff like this available, but I also need to be careful not to use these on a book cover.

Anyhow, here we are:

Bats brushes by =Kencho on deviantART

grunge.28 by ~ShadyMedusa-stock on deviantART

Font is (once again) Rubik Glitch because I'm too lazy to find something more legible. It doesn't look as bad on this one.

Foster Kitten Updates

Bagheeri is brighter today, so let's hear it for azithromycin, fluids, famciclovir, and time! Fingers crossed she continues to improve.

The two garage kittens, Spanner and Sabot, are getting friendlier by the day. Spanner enjoys "helping" me clean her litter box. She is what Jennifer calls a "scoopervisor".

Bailey Potato keeps meat nursing instead of actually eating the food, so we are working on that.

Finn eats well but believes he must bathe in the food for maximal effect. He needs a bath.

The other three foster kittens (Ronan, Orla, and Shane) are doing great. They're big enough to have surgery and find their permanent homes. Which reminds me — I need to set up recheck appointments for them next week.

Other Stuff

I am currently on page 77 of a 381 page manuscript that I need to read and critique by Thursday. Clearly I need to get my butt in gear.

Ominous Sky

It's day 3 of Horrordailies and I'm still here!

Today's tutorial, recorded 15 years ago, changes an image from a bright day to more ominous skies.

I started with this picture, which is ominous enough even with a blue sky:

(Some houses burned down near my neighborhood.)

And I ended up with this:

I practiced using the fuzzy select tool, which I haven't really used before, so that was good.

As usual, I changed a few things...

• Getting the blue background out of leafy trees is nearly impossible, so I just wiped most of them out. The tree I left in probably should have come out as well since I tried to reconstruct it and failed.
• I didn't have an orange sky image, so I used a gradient. That was mostly successful.
• I didn't have a cloud image, so I used solid noise. It was a little less successful.

The whole thing turned out a little too dark, but that might partially be a problem with the original image. It definitely does make the whole thing kind of spooky, though, so I'll count it as a win.

Other things I did today

Foster kitten Bagheeri went from snotty-but-active yesterday to more-snotty-and-sleeping today, so she had a quick recheck at the shelter. She's on slightly different antibiotics. Fingers crossed she bounces back quickly.

I formatted and loaded the Dragon Fortune ebook to all the retailers. It would be nice if that stemmed the tide of "You only have X days to load your manuscript!" emails, but they send them whether you have a file loaded or not. Anyhow, October 14th! https://books.tmbaumgartner.com/DragonFortune

What's Spookier Than a Kitten?

It's day 2 of Horrordailies, and I'm already having a difficult time finding spooky tutorials that aren't of the "Load the picture and select this special script."

Am I just jealous because there are a bazillion Photoshop scripts and I am using GIMP? Possibly. But also, where's the fun in that?

Anyhow, after some random searches, I found this tutorial which boils down to "create a ghost by setting the layer mode to grain extract." Sometimes simplicity is called for.

I didn't have a picture of a person I wanted to turn into a ghost, but I do have a lot of kitten pictures! And what's spookier than a ghost kitten?

This is the picture I started with:

The Aristocats, former fosters. Look how cute they are!

My original plan was to use all four kittens, but after two failed attempts to use the Scissors Select Tool, I finally looked up the instructions (after you click a million times to create an outline, click inside the form to make the selection). By that point, I was too lazy to do it all again, so just the kitten on the left (Marie) got selected. It probably turned out better that way anyhow.

I added the kitten to yesterday's image with the mode set to Grain Extract, masked some of the harder edges so the kitten looked less pasted in, and voila!

It might be worth trying this with a kitten that doesn't have black on her face, but I thought this was kind of fun.

Welcome to Horrordailies!

It's October, and Zenzalei reminded me that means it's time for Horrordailies, in which I post something sort of spooky every day. Last month, I made it 11 days before giving up. (I thought I'd made it through the entire month, but Blogger tells me otherwise.)

Confession: I'm not really into horror or spooky things. I'm not even a pumpkin spice girlie.

(Tangent: Okay, I can't even say girlie with a straight face. I'm 56. It just sounds like Steve Buscemi saying "How do you do, fellow kids?")

(Tangent to the tangent: I'm going to be sad when the internet goes away because I was able to search for "Joe Pesci Hello fellow kids" and it gave me the actual reference.)

ANYHOW... Maybe if I use this as an excuse to do tutorials to learn new things, I will get beyond 11 days this year. No promises.

After much screwing around, I followed parts of this tutorial.

Welcome to Horrordailies.

Details:

The font is Rubik Glitch. If I did it again, I might use something else because some of the letters are hard to read.

GIMP modifications: I used Filter->Render->Noise->Solid Noise instead of Cloud Noise and the mode was "Dodge" instead of "Color Dodge".