Redesigning post office signs, Volcaloid, A Game of Thrones blabbering

In between bouts of brainrotting reading junk on internet forums I've been working on redesigning the Sylvanian post office sign while listening to various Volcaloid songs. I actually quite like some of them. I guess the whole 'robot voice' thing doesn't get to me as much because the songs are in Japanese. The English Volcaloids are quite hard for me to listen to. My current favourite is the retelling of The Little Mermaid story sung by Luka. It's so soft and sweet, and evokes the air of tragedy that the original tale has. I like her voice so much more than Miku's, it's not as 'cutesy' and high pitched. Although I do like 'World is Mine' by Miku. Also, the ASK covers! Love em! His voice is so sexy XD~

Ahem. About that post office sign. This is the original:



I scanned it and traced the outline to use as a template. All I've really been doing after that is looking up various tutorials and downloading brushes. Here are my attempts--the ones I saved anyway.



The first one was what I came up with before thinking to look for tuts. It didn't look very much better than the original. The others are the products of various tutorials and as you can see, some of the tutorials didn't work out so well for me. The fourth one is currently the closest to what I'm after, but there's still more work to be done before I print out a final version. I'm thinking of a golden border or at least something to fill in the empty spaces on the sides but I don't want it to look too ornate and overdone. I used this tutorial here.

I recently watched the first ep of A Game of Thrones.



I've been a fan of the books for a few years (Especially A Storm of Swords!). So far I absolutely love the casting! The actors and actresses have done an awesome job at portraying their respective characters so far. I'm looking forward to the rest of the season! And love the pups. So big, fat and cute. Sean Bean didn't actually match up to my mental image of Ned Stark when I first saw the teaser pics--his face looked too chubby. But he manages to pull off the character really well so no complaints there!



And I totally had an internal *SQUEEE* fangirl moment when I saw the Wall. Castle Black, YAAAAAAAAY!



I had an unfortunate moment where I forgot all about the existence of the Godswood and all I could think off when I saw this shot of Winterfell that the big red thing on the side looked like a giant toadstool.

I really hope GRRM finishes his book and releases it by the promised date. Too many fans already believe that the fifth book is never going to happen.