My first attempt at touching up a portrait.

A little heavy handed with the effects, but I think its pretty good for my first time.

Before

After

Some more flyers for work...

These are a few more fliers I've made for Rent A Center. I'm starting to run out of ideas since they wont print them full color. You have to have a white background since they will be reproduced in black and white. Kinda frustrating, but oh well. Interesting note, the football player below is taken from a photo of a game where the Greenbay Packers were playing. Messed around with the color hue a bit and "Poof!" no longer the Packers.

Oblivion

So I have been playing this game lately (about 2 months now) call Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Its an RPG (Role Playing Game) which means you follow a non linear story line and your character is customisable down to his (or her) underwear. You start out as a prisoner (the reason never really comes into play) and work your way out by following a fleeing Emperor through a secret passage under the palace that luckily runs through your cell. As you go through the tunnels and sewers, you see the Emperor and his guards get attacked by mysterious figures in hooded red robes. The emperor for some reason talks to you about a "vision" he has had with you as the main character. He bestows on you the Amulet of Kings (a necklace of sorts that has unknown mystical powers) in order for you to carry it to safety in the event of his death.

You strike out on your own and just as you exit the sewers, the game gives you a chance to customize your character. You choose between male/female, then between all the races available. They have a lizard race, a cat race, dark elves, high elves, wood elves, nords (self explanatory), imperials (a dark haired Caucasian race of invaders), redguards (black skinned dudes) etc. Then you pick your hair style and color, and choose your face. You start with their basic template then adjust the individual features to your heart's content. They have literally like 50 different aspects you can change with sliding bars like the width of your nose, the tilt of your forehead, the size and position of your eyes, etc.

Anyway, the game is ridiculously long and time consuming (the reason I like it) and as you go through, you gain weapons, armor, magical rings, spells, and a ton of other stuff. You have an inventory of items, and the list can get pretty dang long. There are leather, fur, dwarvish, elvish, ebony, daedric (demonic, and also the best), iron, madness and amber armor (only with the expansion pack), steel, and glass armors and weapons. Each set has different protection levels on each piece (the boots have 7 points etc.) and they all add up to a total, so finding the next level armor helps a lot since your enemies get harder as you get more experienced. You don't start finding pieces of the better armor until you are at certain experience levels, so its always exciting when you find the gauntlets or boots to a certain type, because that means you will find more pieces of the set on your defeated enemies or for sale soon. Each set has boots, gauntlets, a chest piece (called a cuirass which includes the shoulders and arms), greaves (armored pants), a helmet, a shield, a bow, a long sword, a short sword, and a claymore (a two handed sword, think Braveheart). You can mix and match the different sets (the combinations are nearly endless), but the full set of dwarvish armor with the daedric longsword is my favorite.

To be continued.