Dra Studio.com

Mother Trailers

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:42:00 GMT

Nathan, Jimison, Courtney and I sat down for a much needed movie trailer session and even though we only had time to enjoy about 20 or so, I think it was still a good thing we had going. Enjoys ‘em up!

Goal 2
Oscar – “Was there ever a Goal 1?”

Forever Strong
Oscar – “Yawn. Forever lame.”
All – “Rudy. Rudy. Rudy.”

Knowing
Oscar – “As long has his recessed hairline isn’t staring in it.”
Nathan – “Maybe he will wear some hats or something.”
Courtney – “Or a beanie?”

The Brothers Bloom
Oscar – “If it had come out before Ocean’s anything, I would have actually cared.”

A Secret
Oscar – “Wait, what? ‘A Secret follows the saga of a Jewish family in post-World War II Paris’ … really? Was that even in this trailer?

The Boy In the Striped Pajamas
[We can’t make any jokes here, since it is about the Holocaust. This does look interesting though.]

Stealing America Vote by Vote
Oscar – “If this movie had come out during the year 2000 with Y2K, there would be no stopping those voting machines.”
Jimison – “And their striped pajamas.”

Flow
Oscar – “Hmm, I’m thirsty.”
Courtney – “Reminds me of Jim Gaffigan.”

Year of the Fish
Nathan – “It’s like Cinderella!”
Jimison – “This would be good if it wasn’t filmed entirely with web cameras!”
Oscar – “Someone needs to tell the director that the ‘Paint Daub’ effect in Photoshop does not make movies better.”

The Linguists
Nathan – “Fascinating! Oh wait … is fascinating the right word??”
Jimison – “Oh man. Our water is running out and our words are going extinct!”

Walking On Dead Fish
Nathan – “Who is naming these movies?!!”

Fly Me To the Moon
Jimison – “This belongs on the shelf in a Walgreens, not in the theaters.”
Oscar – “Sequel is ‘Mosquitoes to Mars’!”
Courtney – “But it is in 3D!!!”

Rock N Rolla
Oscar – “How many times do you think they are gonna have to say ‘rock and rolla’ in this movie?”

Body of Lies
Oscar – “I’d spend $2.50 on it!”

Yes Man
Oscar – “Oh! Liar liar 2!”

Appaloosa
Oscar – “Oo … how many bands are playing at this thing?”

What Just Happened?
Courtney – “No, but really. What did just happen?”

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Oscar – “Why are the titles in this movie in all caps? Why are you YELLING at me!!?”

Max Payne
Nathan – “Heck yeah!”

Battle in Seattle
Oscar – “Was all of Outkast there or just Andre?”

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Courtney – “I want to watch more ‘Arrested Development.”

Fireproof
Oscar – “Oh gosh. No wonder …”
Nathan – “Followed by ‘Tribulation Force’!”

IF : Routine

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:24:00 GMT

IF : Routine (uploaded by DRA Studio)

The last few days have been completely filled with guns, zombies and the procreation/ fascination of the intimate relationship of the two. Blame it on Dead Rising or Shaun of the Dead, if you need a scape goat. Me, I choose to not explain the reasoning.

In light … err dark of this walking dead fun, here is my entry for this week’s Illustration Friday theme of “routine”. Hehe.

links for 2008-08-21

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:00:50 GMT

Listen to a Movie
For the Cubicle Workers of the World
(tags: Tools Movies Entertainment audio streaming)

IF : Detach

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:04:00 GMT

IF : Detach (uploaded by DRA Studio)

Here is my new entry for the Illustration Friday theme of “detach”. The line work and details are a bit more stringy and rigid from my usual rounded and smooth work, but this time around, I gave even more control to the pen I was using and let it do what it would. Since it was a muddled ballpoint ink pen, it kinda lost and regained its flow pretty inconsistently. I think it made for a pretty fun piece.

There is a tad little pencil shading in there too, just for hay’s sake. ;)

Mystery

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:24:00 GMT

Mystery (uploaded by DRA Studio)

In case you missed it on the Flickr feed, be sure to check out this “mystery” sketch I did last Sunday. Everyone seems to have a wonderfully different interpretation of what it is, so I definitely want you to chime in. What do you see? Hmm?

Oh, and here are the sermon notes from last week. This week’s are on the Flickr. Enjoy!

The Amazing Race
- “Fine Tuning your Training” Part 1
#1 Training is Necessary – 1 Timothy 4:7
- going back to the basics
1 Corinthians 9:24
#2 Physical Training has it’s limits
- there is a parrallel between physical training and spiritual training.
Acts 20:24
2 Timothy 3:16
#3 Spiritual Training is Eternal
1 Corinthians 8:11
4 Principles of Training
1 Varying intensity
2 Duration
3 Frequency – How often?
4 Mode – What type of training?
7 minute Training in the morning
Psalms 143:8 Ask God for guidance
??
ACTS – Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication

IF: Canned

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:33:00 GMT

IF: Canned (uploaded by DRA Studio)

Here is my entry into last week’s theme of “canned” on Illustration Friday.

I know, I know. I took forever and almost 7 days to post this! Literally, I barely made the cut-off before the new week’s theme! But you can trust that I did do this last Friday (I wouldn’t think of lying to you … honest). I have just been completely swapped by client work and finishing up the semester strong for my student(s).

I had planned to at least darken some of the lines and even add color, but again, time has gotten away from me. I hope you still enjoy.

Scrapped Plans

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:47:00 GMT

Secret Friend Society by DraStudio on Zooomr

In light of the recent Dra Studio re-design, I thought it might be fun to share some of my ruminations and recent thoughts about back-end content management systems and such that I saw as possible solutions for both the this site and the Illustrative. site, but for some reason or another, abandoned. I also wanted to share some of the more influential sites that I found inspiring me into making the latest revisions to the Studio. So if code is your thing and acronyms like XSLT don’t scare you, read on!

For everyone else, I humbly offer you a site that always bring a big smile to my heart; The Secret Friend Society. There isn’t a bad day I have had that a few minutes with Jellaby hasn’t cured. ;) Enjoy!

Ruby on Rails
For the longest time, because I was so enthralled by the varying capabilities of the Ruby language and the easy of use it provided, I planned to simply extend the already powerful blogging system that is Simplelog. With pressing deadlines and schedules for my freelance work, as well as my FS teaching, I never got as far as I needed to with researching additional aspects of the Ruby on Rails framework.

CodeIgniter
In an attempt to speed up the update process (since months passed before any updates were made to either site), I decided on relegating at least the portfolio section of the site to a framework I was more familiar with, i.e. CodeIgniter’s PHP framework. I had already implemented it on several projects before and I have a decent handle on the PHP language, so usage would be more straightforward.

CI is currently being used for the entire Illustrative. site, though I have yet to add on some additional features I wanted to, namely these plugins:

SPAW – Visual editor for text elements
Jeditable – For in-place page editing … very excited!

sIFR
I also wanted to eventually integrate font-replacement for some of the heading level tags on the site, using the sIFR technique, applied through jQuery. Here are two examples of it in real-world usage that I really liked:

Symphony
At one point in my content management/framework search, I had this one day epiphany of using a different structure/technology for each section of both sites … as a way of keeping myself well-rounded and to be able to offer it as a teaching aid to others. As I said, the insanity of that thought thankfully only lasted one day.

While the thought was present though, I contemplated using the intriguing XML and XSLT-based system called Symphony to maintain the pages for Jodie and myself … using the Microformats concept to maintain our contact information. The thought was quickly stifled when I realized that my XML knowledge is not up to snuff and it would require even more research to prepare content for this system. I still plan on using it for something in the future, undoubtedly because of its open-source-ness and simplistically appealing administrative control panels.

Inspirations
Overall, I have tons of sites that I have visited that inspired some of the current revisions to both sites, and in some cases, additions to be made in the near-future. Here are a few of them:

Beanstalk – I don’t use Subversion at all, but I love the subtle wild uniqueness that is this site. Specifically, the light background pattern is an element that continually draws me into the site.
Southcreative – It is definitely the strong visual navigation that first caught my eye, but the strong separation of areas using simple borders and coloring is great.
MacBook Pro – Wireless – Apple continually inspires me to stop thinking in such a “web” mindset and at times, look at projects from a completely print-level layout perspective. Excellent.
Elitist Snob – Simple, yet wonderfully elegant illustrated elements and a consistent sense of color make this site just adorable. The faux wood-paneling doesn’t hurt either.
Web Design Beach – The unique visual style is great, but their nice use of the varying technology logos (i.e. WASP, Apache, etc.) at the bottom of the pages is what really caught my eye.
Alexandru Cohaniuc – Stand-out colors and a layout that feel loose yet well structured.

I will leave you with an old snippet of copy I found on an older version of the Illustrative. site, that I think has been amalgamated beyond recognition. Laters!

“Dedicated to creating quality designs and delivering excellence. Motivated by an enthusiastic attitude and a calling to distinction and merit by God. Focused on combining stellar graphics, friendly user interfaces, and optimized coding in order to provide the best user experience possible.”

Movie Trailer Guild logo

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:07:00 GMT

Movie Trailer Guild logo (uploaded by DRA Studio)

After a crazy time dealing with an odd waitress at Denny’s, Courtney and I enjoyed some yummy movie trailers. Peep the links and comments and have some fun.

Sixty Six
Oscar – “66? How long did they wait to have this bar mitzvah?
Courtney – “They must have changed the rules on this!”

Watchmen
Oscar – “AAAHH! So amazing.”

Flash of Genius
Courtney – “So it is about windshield wipers? A swipe of genius!”

Disaster Movie
Oscar – “Does anyone even watch these anymore?!?”
Courtney – “Why do they keep making them?!?”

Man On Wire
Courtney – “Is it bad that the only reason I would watch this movie would be hoping the guy would fall?”

Felon
Oscar – “A made-for-tv movie!”

Red
Courtney – “I don’t know what to say …”

Morning Light
Courtney – “So basically, Roy Disney realized that he was tired of the youth of today and need to find a ‘legal’ way to send inexperienced sailors to their doom. Problem solved.”

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Oscar – “That looks stupid. Straight up foreign stupid.”

In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Oscar – “Um … that’s cool that it is shot all in black and white … eh? (shrugs shoulders)

Elegy
Oscar – “Penelope Cruz gets around, huh?”

Mad Detective
Oscar – “Oh, so he is mad because he has to be in this movie! Gotcha.”

Rain of Madness
Oscar – “Over and out … do it, don’t say it.”

Traitor
Oscar – “Traitor 2. Now he can’t even trust himself!”

Frozen River
Oscar – “So much deception and risk for a trailer?”
Courtney – “But it is a double-wide.”

College
Oscar – “That’s not what I remember FCC being like at all!”
Courtney – “Sadly, I do. Times have changed my friend.”

Diminished Capacity
Courtney – “Ferris Bueller has gotten old!”

Kabluey
Oscar – “It’s like the perfect movie for the emo kid in all of us.”

Garden Party
Courtney – “I don’t get it. I didn’t see any parties or gardens … and there was definitely no garden party.”

Mirrors
Courtney – “Kids. The new creepy.”

Encounters At the End of the World
Courtney – “We went to Antarctica for one reason, and one reason only … to blow the crap out this!”

Savage Grace
Courtney – “Julianne Moore has a creepy laugh.”

Up the Yangtze
Oscar – “You know where this movie can go?”
Courtney – “It can go STRAIGHT to DVD!”

The Spirit
Oscar – “Intriguing indeed!”

Make Sunday Special

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:40:00 GMT

Make Sunday Special (uploaded by DRA Studio)

Hopefully, I will be able to push out the new Southside site updates by tomorrow, but for now, please enjoy this little sketch and the notes from Ron’s sermon this weekend.

Making Sunday Special
1. Renew Our Pattern
Isaiah 58:13-14
Ezekiel 31
- They were called to remember/observe
Exodus 20:8
- God continues to bless and provide success to Chick-fil-a because they honor him.
Isaiah 46:8
Jeremiah 29:13
Changing our perspective.

2. Refashion Our Preparation
- We need to get organized.
- Motivation
- Get rid of Sunday anxieties
- Get our hearts and minds ready.
Psalms 19
- I can be distracted by any small thing, if I have not prepared my heart.

3. Rehearse Our Procession
Ephesians 5:22
- A wedding ring is a reminder that you belong to your spouse.
- Sunday morning is the ring of Sabbath, reminding us that we belong to God.
- Mental fidelity
Matthew 25:1
- Make ready for the Day
- A. W. Tozer – 100 pianos tuned to the same fork are all automatically tuned to each other. It is the same for 100 worshipers tuned to the same God.

Breaks

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:56:00 GMT

I’ve had the words of a song I heard at Status last week stuck in my head for awhile, and after shaking around in my head a bit, this wallpaper is what they turned into. I hope you enjoy, and for those interested, here are my notes from the speaker that night.

The song is called Hosanna. Here is one of the lines: “break my heart from what breaks yours.”

Luke 12
“How ironic is it that the crowds where trampling each other in order to hear Jesus’ message of love?”
“Is the inside of you lining up with the outside that people actually see?”

Questions to ask yourself before buying things you probably don’t need:
Can I afford this?
Will this make me happy?
Should I buy this?

In the parable of the rich man, Jesus does not condemn the man for being rich … Jesus calls this man a fool when his attitude becomes focused on self-serving. “Your life is not your own!” Our lives are on loan from Him. We have made money such a private issue … This rich man wasn’t talking to anyone about this … he hadn’t really discussed this plan of laziness he wanted to persue with anyone.

2 Corintihans 8: 13-15 – Rich towards God … Do I fit the description?
Our possible responses to God about money:
1. Let me do what I want.
2. Legalistic … 10% … No more, no less
3. Ask the Holy Spirit … What can I change?

Invite the Holy Spirit to inventory what you own … Is my heart attached to this?
Are you greedy in some way that is closing your hand to giving?