Today is the last day of an exceedingly long work week for me. 6 days straight of 8-9 hours at retail chipper levels. It's nauseating, really. My tolerance for customer-brand-stupid is low enough that I've got a headache thinking about going into work today.
I haven't gotten the chance to do much arting lately, however I am in-process of writing the script for my thesis's art component. (I really want to hit the ground running when I get to studio class in the fall.) It's going to be a josei-style story, probably printed in some relation to manga ratio, and I'm thinking of going for a toned / black and white look rather than a colored one. I'm a bit out of practice on coloring things, and my coloring style has veered so far away from what is normally seen in comics I need to nail it down more before I do a book that's colored with it. PLUS, black and white printing is much, MUCH cheaper.
If I do the art component how I want to, I may have to color the pages, but that is going to take some figuring on the part of the script to design pacing. And printing, and cost, and blah... blah... blah...
We'll see, I guess.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Frivilous Purchases
So I was at work today, boxing, stuffing, weighing, and shipping our returns, when I came across a book I'd been meaning to read. Being a bibliophile means that this isn't an altogether uncommon occurance. I find these sorts of books all the time. They hide in corners and under video tapes, on shelves, and sometimes, on the far side of homework. More often than not, they are tucked at the bottom of the budget and simply forgotten about until I have access to a library that will give me them for free.
But today at work, I was reminded that I not only wanted to read the pearl of a book that I was inevitably going to ship away and forget about (there have been dozens of these poor, lost reads that I regret not perusing more deeply before parting with them) but ALSO that I had a credit from our book club waiting for me. So I used part of that credit to pay for the book Horseradish by Lemony Snicket.
I don't normally go for giftbooks, quotebooks, or novelty items... but this book just makes me feel a little bit better about my sense of humor, and the state of the world. The back of the dust jacket reads:
Life is a turbulent journey,
fraught with
confusion,
heartbreak,
and inconvenience.
This book will not help.
(Which isn't true, because it does.)
But today at work, I was reminded that I not only wanted to read the pearl of a book that I was inevitably going to ship away and forget about (there have been dozens of these poor, lost reads that I regret not perusing more deeply before parting with them) but ALSO that I had a credit from our book club waiting for me. So I used part of that credit to pay for the book Horseradish by Lemony Snicket.
I don't normally go for giftbooks, quotebooks, or novelty items... but this book just makes me feel a little bit better about my sense of humor, and the state of the world. The back of the dust jacket reads:
Life is a turbulent journey,
fraught with
confusion,
heartbreak,
and inconvenience.
This book will not help.
(Which isn't true, because it does.)
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Ask not...
what your computer can do for you, but what your peripherals can do for your computer.
Yesterday I acquired a radioSHARK. I opened it this morning after I tripped out of bed and nearly brained the cat. I'm sure this thing went the way of the dinosaur with XFM and streaming radio-casting, but let me tell you, I'm liking it.
You can set up pre-sets, and turn your computer into a radio. (I'm such a little kid about this thing, it's like staring at something shiny when you're little. I guess my Mac peripherals are much like shiny things to children.)
Just one more way I'm extending my techno-arsenal. ^_^
Yesterday I acquired a radioSHARK. I opened it this morning after I tripped out of bed and nearly brained the cat. I'm sure this thing went the way of the dinosaur with XFM and streaming radio-casting, but let me tell you, I'm liking it.
You can set up pre-sets, and turn your computer into a radio. (I'm such a little kid about this thing, it's like staring at something shiny when you're little. I guess my Mac peripherals are much like shiny things to children.)
Just one more way I'm extending my techno-arsenal. ^_^
Ask not...
what your computer can do for you, but what your peripherals can do for your computer.
Yesterday I acquired a radioSHARK. I opened it this morning after I tripped out of bed and nearly brained the cat. I'm sure this thing went the way of the dinosaur with XFM and streaming radio-casting, but let me tell you, I'm liking it.
You can set up pre-sets, and turn your computer into a radio. (I'm such a little kid about this thing, it's like staring at something shiny when you're little. I guess my Mac peripherals are much like shiny things to children.)
Just one more way I'm extending my techno-arsenal. ^_^
Yesterday I acquired a radioSHARK. I opened it this morning after I tripped out of bed and nearly brained the cat. I'm sure this thing went the way of the dinosaur with XFM and streaming radio-casting, but let me tell you, I'm liking it.
You can set up pre-sets, and turn your computer into a radio. (I'm such a little kid about this thing, it's like staring at something shiny when you're little. I guess my Mac peripherals are much like shiny things to children.)
Just one more way I'm extending my techno-arsenal. ^_^
Saturday, July 14, 2007
A bit too much to overlook.
I was going to write this blog post about the book, about the number of pencilled pages I got finished today, about the temperature and bug infestation problem at work... but I can't. I really just can't.
I was reading through the journal of a friend of mine, and came across the story of what's going on in Jena, LA right now.
For anyone who reads this and hasn't heard about the goings-on in Jena, Louisiana, I ask that you do a little reading. Generally, I'm pretty low-key when it comes to politics and government and justice system stuff. About as close as I get to that sort of thing is cop-dramas on tv. But this story is just a bit too much for me to ignore.
I'd like to say we've made progress, in this country and/or in the world. I'd like to say that we've moved on towards being a single race - the human one. But there are pockets of history still alive and well and living in the world. Apparently, Jena, LA is one of those pockets.
I've read over several of the internet documentation, and the jist that I have gotten from them is this. There was a trespass - some African American students went to sit underneath a generally Caucasian shade tree (the idea of that is a little far-fetched to me, but hey, who knows. I never thought you could segregate SHADE.). Afterwards, three caucasian students hung 3 nooses in the colors of the school from said shade tree. Some time passed, more things festered, there was more trading of hurt and anger between the two sides. The final "straw" in this case came when the retaliation turned physical - in some manner, a Caucasian student was assaulted by several African American students.
What is NOT clear in this is how many African American students actually assaulted the student, who it was that started the fight with the Caucasian student, and why nothing was done before this to stem the anger that caused it.
What IS clear is that one of the six students charged has been found guilty with "aggravated second degree assault and conspiracy to commit secondary degree aggravated assault".
What seems to be the consensus is that the defense attorney didn't do enough for his client.
It's hard to know exactly what's true and what isn't, being this far removed from the situation. There's a lot of chatter on the net, there's a lot of news articles. So on the one hand, I'm really in an uproar about the idea of the way this trial is being handled, but on the other, a group of students (of whatever size, and of whatever skin color) beat up another student. I'm equally as uneasy at the apparent "miscarriage of justice" as I am the group beating.
Getting jumped like that, to use the colloquialism, is terrifying. No one should go through it. Being convicted in a trial that's sitting on a slant rather than an even keel is likewise something terrifying that NO ONE should go through.
Come to your own conclusions. Here's the links I found:
Friends of Justice: Ineffectual Assistance of Council: What Blane Williams Should Have Known
Schools Matter: Nooses in the School's White-Only Shade Tree
Bill Quigley|Injustice in Jena as Nooses Hang from the "White Tree"
Racially motivated attacks in Jena, LA. | Council of Conservative Citizens
Topix - Jena News
And, if you feel the urge, here's the petition that's circulating:
Jena Six Petition
I was reading through the journal of a friend of mine, and came across the story of what's going on in Jena, LA right now.
For anyone who reads this and hasn't heard about the goings-on in Jena, Louisiana, I ask that you do a little reading. Generally, I'm pretty low-key when it comes to politics and government and justice system stuff. About as close as I get to that sort of thing is cop-dramas on tv. But this story is just a bit too much for me to ignore.
I'd like to say we've made progress, in this country and/or in the world. I'd like to say that we've moved on towards being a single race - the human one. But there are pockets of history still alive and well and living in the world. Apparently, Jena, LA is one of those pockets.
I've read over several of the internet documentation, and the jist that I have gotten from them is this. There was a trespass - some African American students went to sit underneath a generally Caucasian shade tree (the idea of that is a little far-fetched to me, but hey, who knows. I never thought you could segregate SHADE.). Afterwards, three caucasian students hung 3 nooses in the colors of the school from said shade tree. Some time passed, more things festered, there was more trading of hurt and anger between the two sides. The final "straw" in this case came when the retaliation turned physical - in some manner, a Caucasian student was assaulted by several African American students.
What is NOT clear in this is how many African American students actually assaulted the student, who it was that started the fight with the Caucasian student, and why nothing was done before this to stem the anger that caused it.
What IS clear is that one of the six students charged has been found guilty with "aggravated second degree assault and conspiracy to commit secondary degree aggravated assault".
What seems to be the consensus is that the defense attorney didn't do enough for his client.
It's hard to know exactly what's true and what isn't, being this far removed from the situation. There's a lot of chatter on the net, there's a lot of news articles. So on the one hand, I'm really in an uproar about the idea of the way this trial is being handled, but on the other, a group of students (of whatever size, and of whatever skin color) beat up another student. I'm equally as uneasy at the apparent "miscarriage of justice" as I am the group beating.
Getting jumped like that, to use the colloquialism, is terrifying. No one should go through it. Being convicted in a trial that's sitting on a slant rather than an even keel is likewise something terrifying that NO ONE should go through.
Come to your own conclusions. Here's the links I found:
Friends of Justice: Ineffectual Assistance of Council: What Blane Williams Should Have Known
Schools Matter: Nooses in the School's White-Only Shade Tree
Bill Quigley|Injustice in Jena as Nooses Hang from the "White Tree"
Racially motivated attacks in Jena, LA. | Council of Conservative Citizens
Topix - Jena News
And, if you feel the urge, here's the petition that's circulating:
Jena Six Petition
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Manuscript Editing Part 1
I've wavered back and forth in how I feel about having the book published (even in small press format), and I'm guessing, at this point, that it's like having a child grow up and move away from home. Given the emotional flipflops I've felt in the last two weeks, I empathize much more heartily with my mother on allowing me to go away to boarding school. The trial that must have been I don't think I'll know for quite a while, myself. Thanks, mom, for finding the grace to put up with it.
There's the part of me that's really excited to be getting the project moving, and with such a wonderful team working on it, I'll flat out admit that that part of me is the largest, loudest bit. There's also a sense of... hmm... I've been coming up with decent vocabulary words for my feelings all day, this shouldn't be too hard... there's a feeling of unrest about it. (Which probably mirrors my pre-graduation anxieties about what to do when I'm done for the second time with post-secondary education.) But from what I can tell, it is simply part of working in the field of art - be it performing or otherwise. Eventually, it's not about you anymore, the work is its own thing, and other people get to peruse and respond or ignore it.
Blah blah blah.
That being said, this post (and I toast with the lime sherbet I'm eating) is in celebration of my first run of edits to the manuscript. There's some formatting questions that need answering - positioning of page numbers and what goes in the header (if we even use a header), etc. - but I've re-read the hardcopy 1.5 times since the first edits, and I'm satisfied with just about everything that's there. I've got a few faerie-logistical word choices to cement in place, but otherwise I've made up the end of my mind on it. Tomorrow I go through and check on what edits Seth saw needed happening (I'll be cross-referencing via two digital copies, so wish me luck), and then tomorrow evening I send it off to him. Und zhen... (say it aloud, it makes more sense, I promise, me and my bad fake accents) it should be done on this end. We'll be into the artwork-intensive portion of the post-production process of the book.
*does little happy-dance and rocks out to Feist while eating Lime sherbet*
And thus, does the world continue.
I got really hyper about putting the edits from hardcopy to digital today because I got the urge to draw again, and I need to finish this before I'm letting myself move forwards with either the comic pages or the sketches I'm working on. Some call it single-minded determination, I call it the need to actually finish something from time to time.
Anywho, I'm off to write my health insurance check and have a cup of tea before I pass out. 4 hours of computer editing will suck your soul into your G4 anyday.
Peace and sandwhiches, folks.
There's the part of me that's really excited to be getting the project moving, and with such a wonderful team working on it, I'll flat out admit that that part of me is the largest, loudest bit. There's also a sense of... hmm... I've been coming up with decent vocabulary words for my feelings all day, this shouldn't be too hard... there's a feeling of unrest about it. (Which probably mirrors my pre-graduation anxieties about what to do when I'm done for the second time with post-secondary education.) But from what I can tell, it is simply part of working in the field of art - be it performing or otherwise. Eventually, it's not about you anymore, the work is its own thing, and other people get to peruse and respond or ignore it.
Blah blah blah.
That being said, this post (and I toast with the lime sherbet I'm eating) is in celebration of my first run of edits to the manuscript. There's some formatting questions that need answering - positioning of page numbers and what goes in the header (if we even use a header), etc. - but I've re-read the hardcopy 1.5 times since the first edits, and I'm satisfied with just about everything that's there. I've got a few faerie-logistical word choices to cement in place, but otherwise I've made up the end of my mind on it. Tomorrow I go through and check on what edits Seth saw needed happening (I'll be cross-referencing via two digital copies, so wish me luck), and then tomorrow evening I send it off to him. Und zhen... (say it aloud, it makes more sense, I promise, me and my bad fake accents) it should be done on this end. We'll be into the artwork-intensive portion of the post-production process of the book.
*does little happy-dance and rocks out to Feist while eating Lime sherbet*
And thus, does the world continue.
I got really hyper about putting the edits from hardcopy to digital today because I got the urge to draw again, and I need to finish this before I'm letting myself move forwards with either the comic pages or the sketches I'm working on. Some call it single-minded determination, I call it the need to actually finish something from time to time.
Anywho, I'm off to write my health insurance check and have a cup of tea before I pass out. 4 hours of computer editing will suck your soul into your G4 anyday.
Peace and sandwhiches, folks.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Happy 4th of July
So whether you celebrate it or not, today's been a holiday in the US. Down here there's fireworks and guns going off and horribly bad radio station soundtracks to the fireworks. (I skipped the ones downtown so I could avoid hearing "Sweet Home Alabama" in combination with some warped patriotic sense that the rest of the music is supposed to imply. Although I do have an ex-boyfriend who said it was his 'constitutional right' to drive like a jerk-off. So I suppose overplayed music is just as good, huh?)
I finished doing the paper edits to the novel today. I lay down after my yoga this morning on the living room floor and went through the last 80 pages of the print out that I have of it. I broke for dinner with Lindsay, and then I finished up an hour or two ago. Now I have to translate the paper edits into digital edits, and do one more run of editing based on Seth's notes, and then the manuscript will be done! It's a crazy feeling, having worked on something for this long, to finally get to the end of it.
Well, I hope it won't be the end of it, but at least it's a milestone or a landmark or something in the creation process of it. Other than that, I watched Marie Antoinette this morning... I needed period costume references, and there were pieces of the soundtrack that were quite palatable. Then there were the remixes of otherwise acceptable 80s pop-rock... and those occasionally made me want to mute it and put on some french chamber music and guess at the dialog in the rest of it. I'll say this about that movie... it's dry. It's a biography, but even in that regard, it's dry. The direction they were trying to take the movie was that of Marie being something of a rock star before rock stars existed, well DUH. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that is the epitome of an irresponsible monarch, or at the very least the stereotype of it... isn't it? Frankly, though, the music choices made it seem more like yet another movie in which Kirsten Dunst was playing Kirsten Dunst. At least this time she wasn't a redhead. And I'll say this for her, her Marie is much better than her MJ. When I mentioned the bit about wanting to mute out the music, it would've been ok, because I could read emotions on her face.
Still pales in comparison to Live Free or Die Hard. Ah, a special place in my heart goes out for that movie. Fire sale, anyone?
Anywho... I'm going to comfort the cat against the popguns and firebombs. Hope everyone had a good Fourth.
I finished doing the paper edits to the novel today. I lay down after my yoga this morning on the living room floor and went through the last 80 pages of the print out that I have of it. I broke for dinner with Lindsay, and then I finished up an hour or two ago. Now I have to translate the paper edits into digital edits, and do one more run of editing based on Seth's notes, and then the manuscript will be done! It's a crazy feeling, having worked on something for this long, to finally get to the end of it.
Well, I hope it won't be the end of it, but at least it's a milestone or a landmark or something in the creation process of it. Other than that, I watched Marie Antoinette this morning... I needed period costume references, and there were pieces of the soundtrack that were quite palatable. Then there were the remixes of otherwise acceptable 80s pop-rock... and those occasionally made me want to mute it and put on some french chamber music and guess at the dialog in the rest of it. I'll say this about that movie... it's dry. It's a biography, but even in that regard, it's dry. The direction they were trying to take the movie was that of Marie being something of a rock star before rock stars existed, well DUH. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that is the epitome of an irresponsible monarch, or at the very least the stereotype of it... isn't it? Frankly, though, the music choices made it seem more like yet another movie in which Kirsten Dunst was playing Kirsten Dunst. At least this time she wasn't a redhead. And I'll say this for her, her Marie is much better than her MJ. When I mentioned the bit about wanting to mute out the music, it would've been ok, because I could read emotions on her face.
Still pales in comparison to Live Free or Die Hard. Ah, a special place in my heart goes out for that movie. Fire sale, anyone?
Anywho... I'm going to comfort the cat against the popguns and firebombs. Hope everyone had a good Fourth.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Lazy sundays...
Not working five days a week means my body should really make no distinction between a Sunday and any other day of the week. Right. Well, tell that to my body. I woke up (late) this morning, at 9:30, after sleeping past BOTH of my set alarms. Today I allotted to go do laundry, but it's already 10:30 and I have no desire whatsoever to shower, dress, or do anything even remotely related to laundry. (Edit: I did do my laundry, and was very proud of myself for it.)
What I want to do instead I'm going to force myself to wait until after I get BACK from laundry. Otherwise it won't ever get done. Well, part of it could be problematic. But drawing just doesn't work as well in the laundromat. I've done it before, of course, but it never turns out as well as I want it to. It's a homework emergency only sort of thing. Normally I read or try to write out something that's been haunting me. What I want to do is to draw more of the webcomic I'm working on.
Why, you ask? Well, I finally saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End last evening, and I was inspired by all the period clothing and the jaunty adventure music. (I am terribly fond of jaunty adventure music.) It makes writing go so much better when I've got something that inspires me to put fingers to keyboard, and jaunty music will do it 9 times out of 10.
In the music I had only one qualm, really. I'm still not sure how I felt about the guitar in the 'parlay' sequence between the two entourages. Other than that, I was happy with 90% of it, and that's really all I think anyone can ask about anything that's churned out by joint ventures in Hollywood.
Speaking of writing, however! I'm most pleased to announce that the Kavidog Press website is up. (No, it's not one of mine, buuut...) Kavidog Press is the small press that will be publishing my book The Wendy That Stayed!! I'm very excited about working on it, as I get to work with some amazing people. Seth A. Jones, owner / publisher from Kavidog Press - an amazingly talented artist who tends to work in the realm of pencil and puts my pencil work to shame; and Julie Collins-Rousseau -another amazingly talented artist, wonderful teacher, and a good soul to know.
It's time to go do more productive things, like manuscript editing. Type at y'all laters.
What I want to do instead I'm going to force myself to wait until after I get BACK from laundry. Otherwise it won't ever get done. Well, part of it could be problematic. But drawing just doesn't work as well in the laundromat. I've done it before, of course, but it never turns out as well as I want it to. It's a homework emergency only sort of thing. Normally I read or try to write out something that's been haunting me. What I want to do is to draw more of the webcomic I'm working on.
Why, you ask? Well, I finally saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End last evening, and I was inspired by all the period clothing and the jaunty adventure music. (I am terribly fond of jaunty adventure music.) It makes writing go so much better when I've got something that inspires me to put fingers to keyboard, and jaunty music will do it 9 times out of 10.
In the music I had only one qualm, really. I'm still not sure how I felt about the guitar in the 'parlay' sequence between the two entourages. Other than that, I was happy with 90% of it, and that's really all I think anyone can ask about anything that's churned out by joint ventures in Hollywood.
Speaking of writing, however! I'm most pleased to announce that the Kavidog Press website is up. (No, it's not one of mine, buuut...) Kavidog Press is the small press that will be publishing my book The Wendy That Stayed!! I'm very excited about working on it, as I get to work with some amazing people. Seth A. Jones, owner / publisher from Kavidog Press - an amazingly talented artist who tends to work in the realm of pencil and puts my pencil work to shame; and Julie Collins-Rousseau -another amazingly talented artist, wonderful teacher, and a good soul to know.
It's time to go do more productive things, like manuscript editing. Type at y'all laters.
Friday, June 8, 2007
EoQ stuff
So another quarter is over. I'm that much closer to graduating from the graduate program. Shoujo Phonebook Artist's Alley went very well. I managed to sell quite a bit of the merchandise that I took with me. A few of Rashad Doucet's comic My Dog is a Superhero, which he's made as a prep for the SanDiego Comicon. Also sold some of Rick Winward's work, Bucketboy. I will pester Rick until he gets a website up somewhere, I promise. The man, like many others I know at SCAD Seqa, has talent you can't shake a horse at. (It's hard to shake a horse at anything, I know.)
As a side note, conventions are still out of budget for me for this year. Withstanding a potential jaunt up to Atlanta in September and perhaps the drive to Charlotte next weekend for Heroes', I'm still Savannah-laden for the meantime. I'll get up to convention speed at some point, one hopes. I've got thesis, and inking, and a lot of other eevil stuff to get done between now and then.
One not so evil thing that's on the horizon is the first run of a book I've worked on. (More info on that as I finalize it.) I'm also plugging through the pencils on the webcomic. After getting some input from professors and the like, one of the important things is apparently consistency. It keeps your readers coming back. It's true, too. I can't even express the number of webcomics that I read once or twice and then dropped because I wasn't that interested in something I couldn't get a regular dose of.
Speaking of webcomics!
There's two compatriots of mine whose webcomics you should definitely check out. The first one is Jarrett B. Williams' Lunarboy Land. (This is also a book that will be going into volume 2 in August of this year. Jarrett rockz. No joke.)
The second is Miss M!a's Wonderland. Written by M!a, drawn by Chrissy Delk, Wonderland is quite a magical trip through the looking glass. (Chrissy and Mia also have a book out by Iris Print, called Paintings of You. It's a really sweet love story. ^_^)
And now back to the dulldrums. I've got work to finish, meetings to organize, and (believe it or not) a man to contact about a contract. (Though that won't happen until next week sometime, he's moving across the country. @_@)
Shanti, shanti, shanti.
~A
As a side note, conventions are still out of budget for me for this year. Withstanding a potential jaunt up to Atlanta in September and perhaps the drive to Charlotte next weekend for Heroes', I'm still Savannah-laden for the meantime. I'll get up to convention speed at some point, one hopes. I've got thesis, and inking, and a lot of other eevil stuff to get done between now and then.
One not so evil thing that's on the horizon is the first run of a book I've worked on. (More info on that as I finalize it.) I'm also plugging through the pencils on the webcomic. After getting some input from professors and the like, one of the important things is apparently consistency. It keeps your readers coming back. It's true, too. I can't even express the number of webcomics that I read once or twice and then dropped because I wasn't that interested in something I couldn't get a regular dose of.
Speaking of webcomics!
There's two compatriots of mine whose webcomics you should definitely check out. The first one is Jarrett B. Williams' Lunarboy Land. (This is also a book that will be going into volume 2 in August of this year. Jarrett rockz. No joke.)
The second is Miss M!a's Wonderland. Written by M!a, drawn by Chrissy Delk, Wonderland is quite a magical trip through the looking glass. (Chrissy and Mia also have a book out by Iris Print, called Paintings of You. It's a really sweet love story. ^_^)
And now back to the dulldrums. I've got work to finish, meetings to organize, and (believe it or not) a man to contact about a contract. (Though that won't happen until next week sometime, he's moving across the country. @_@)
Shanti, shanti, shanti.
~A
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Preparring for the Artist's Alley
Today is the day. It's Saturday, May 19, and this afternoon is the Shoujo Phonebook Artists' Alley at SCAD's student center. I've put together a bunch of stuff from various compatriots. I'll be selling the mini-comic, again, and I'm going to have buttons this time to deal with the collaborative nature of me and the classmates that I'm helping to sell things today. On top of my mini-comic, I'll also have some digital coloring prints for people to poke through. For example:
I don't consider the digital work I do to be "digital painting" per se. I think the people who do that sort of stuff are massively talented and way more focused on it than I am. Plus, Photoshop, while amazingly wonderful, is not always what I'd consider to be a painting tool. Fear not, for soon I will make the venture into Corel Painter (I've been meaning to for quite a while, actually,) and then I will bump up the rating of "coloring" to painting.
It still kind of feels like being a very sophisticated kindergarten student. Tablet pens, while functional, are also pretty buff in comparison to other stuff. My pencil is waaaay smaller than that. Even my mechanical ones.
Both of these images are from my sketchbook.
The first image is an emotive illustration that may, at some point, end up on a tarot card or something. I'm still debating finishing up an entire deck of those. I still haven't decided if it needs texture on it or not, if it were a tarot card from that deck, it would have to have some, as that's part of the theme. But either way, I really like this image.
The second image is one that I finished on the tail end of a long period of UN-productivity. My only wish about that one is that I had done the linework more cleanly. I'm still experimenting with penciling as a finished product, and I'm wondering if that image needs some ink on it to make it... um... creme brulee? (My Best Friend's Wedding reference. It's green, and it's jello... ^_~)
For anyone in town, I hope to see you in a couple of hours. For those that aren't, wish me luck!
I don't consider the digital work I do to be "digital painting" per se. I think the people who do that sort of stuff are massively talented and way more focused on it than I am. Plus, Photoshop, while amazingly wonderful, is not always what I'd consider to be a painting tool. Fear not, for soon I will make the venture into Corel Painter (I've been meaning to for quite a while, actually,) and then I will bump up the rating of "coloring" to painting.
It still kind of feels like being a very sophisticated kindergarten student. Tablet pens, while functional, are also pretty buff in comparison to other stuff. My pencil is waaaay smaller than that. Even my mechanical ones.
Both of these images are from my sketchbook.
The first image is an emotive illustration that may, at some point, end up on a tarot card or something. I'm still debating finishing up an entire deck of those. I still haven't decided if it needs texture on it or not, if it were a tarot card from that deck, it would have to have some, as that's part of the theme. But either way, I really like this image.
The second image is one that I finished on the tail end of a long period of UN-productivity. My only wish about that one is that I had done the linework more cleanly. I'm still experimenting with penciling as a finished product, and I'm wondering if that image needs some ink on it to make it... um... creme brulee? (My Best Friend's Wedding reference. It's green, and it's jello... ^_~)
For anyone in town, I hope to see you in a couple of hours. For those that aren't, wish me luck!
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Editor's Day 2007
So the past two days has been the Spring Sequential Art Event, as I like to call it, I think SSAE is really close to SASE, and we all know how much that goes with the publishing / book world. Every spring, SCAD's SEQA department hosts "Editor's Day" in which we get a group of editors from the industry to come in, have a panel discussion, and review portfolios.
I was fortunate enough to get in to see three different editors: Tim Beedle (Tokyopop), Chris Duffy (Nickelodeon Magazine), and James Lucas Jones (Oni).
First off, I'd like to point out how cruel it is to ship people across the country and give them an am meeting session. I will say that both Tim and JLJ were wonderful to converse with. (Tim had a harder morning of it than JLJ, apparently, but everyone is different.) I got good feedback and made some new contacts.
Also, I'd like to applaud the overall feeling of this year's ED (ah how my boarding school acronym-izing returns to me). There seemed to be a real sense of community throughout the building. Everyone seemed to come together in a way I felt was absent during last year's ED. There seemed to be much less confusion and much more talking. There was a lot of waiting around (but then there always is, it's the way of things), but overall I found the day to be much like any formalized portfolio review.
As a final Postscript on my review of ED-07, I want to note something that perhaps not even everyone present at the event will be aware of. James Lucas Jones stayed through lunch and saw people. I think that was a very grand gesture, and so I applaud him for it.
I was fortunate enough to get in to see three different editors: Tim Beedle (Tokyopop), Chris Duffy (Nickelodeon Magazine), and James Lucas Jones (Oni).
First off, I'd like to point out how cruel it is to ship people across the country and give them an am meeting session. I will say that both Tim and JLJ were wonderful to converse with. (Tim had a harder morning of it than JLJ, apparently, but everyone is different.) I got good feedback and made some new contacts.
Also, I'd like to applaud the overall feeling of this year's ED (ah how my boarding school acronym-izing returns to me). There seemed to be a real sense of community throughout the building. Everyone seemed to come together in a way I felt was absent during last year's ED. There seemed to be much less confusion and much more talking. There was a lot of waiting around (but then there always is, it's the way of things), but overall I found the day to be much like any formalized portfolio review.
As a final Postscript on my review of ED-07, I want to note something that perhaps not even everyone present at the event will be aware of. James Lucas Jones stayed through lunch and saw people. I think that was a very grand gesture, and so I applaud him for it.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Zine Time at SCAD
So yesterday was the Zine fair at SCAD. It was held in the Student Center, and was filled with the usual trip-tastic light show on the ceiling in the main room on the second floor. Thankfully the table I was at was under an overhang and so we managed to avoid the vertigo affects and general annoyance of the light shifting. (In truth I think it's a neat idea, but I don't know why they don't make it less... night club or opium den like.)
This is what my table set-up was like. Tucked in a nice little nook, but with wall prominence behind me. I managed to make some sales, though I didn't have all the product I wanted to have out. Oh well, that just means more for the Shoujo Phonebook Artists' Alley. That's on May 19. I intend to have a full sketchbook, as well as some bookmarks, and print outs of everyone's favorite of my tarot card images.
I'll say this about the zine fair. I learned a lot about laying out a book and how incredibly difficult it is to do double sided pages on a computer without doing straight photocopying. And, I think I missed putting page one into the booklet. O_o Talk about strange and unusual. That sucks for the people who got it. Oh well. The new booklets will be the whole 11 pages. For the sake of the booklet I killed the splash page on page 8 and made it a promotional stand / cover image instead. I also didn't have covers on the booklets, and they were horribly stapled.
I've got a list of things to do better for next time. Including coloring the display that was behind me.
But that's all on that for now. I'm off to do some yoga before a long day of inking.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Regina Spektor @ Trustees - My First "Concert"
So somehow, even with a degree in sound design, I managed to skip out on the concert-goer experience as an audience member. I did plenty of work for concerts, backstage and the like. Once I was a human wall at one where some kids were dancing like retarded pre-schoolers, but other than that I spend most of my time behind the speakers rather than in front of them.
Well last night I got to go and see the Regina Spektor concert at the Trustee's Theater. (Yeah, more Silent Cloak And Dagger stuff.) The opening "band" was Only Sun. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get too much of his info. Some of that was like watching the future of music. It was just the lead guitarist (frontman?) of the band who came down from New York. The "band" that accompanied him was on his iPod. While I think maybe it needed a better mix to it, the idea of having your band being that portable is, well, very modern. Plus, 'Only Son' was a very good showman. (Notwithstanding the stupid fangirls screaming from the right of us that were offering sex to the performers.) He ended with this musically interluded, almost slam-poetry ode to the way that our posters rocked on the way in.
I liked him. I can't wait to find more of his music.
Now, having never been to a concert before, I was nonetheless comforted by the set-up on stage. A piano, a guitar, two chairs, and several microphones and monitor speakers. Well, notwithstanding the musician's need to be drowned out by their own voice coming back at them, I seriously think the monitor speakers were LARGER than Regina Spektor. If not, they at least had to weigh more. From the balcony, she looked kinda tiny. Very "cute" according to my companion.
Savannah as an environment had to be a horrible environment. She mentioned John Cage's comment on "what's more musical? The conservatory, or the truck passing by the conservatory". (She's really referencing his quote: "What's more musical, a truck driving by a music school or a truck driving by a factory?" Snitched from here.) She not only had to combat some truck backing up through an entire song, but also a fireworks bass drum accompaniment.
On the other hand, Silent (Screaming?) Calamity And Destruction had to be very welcoming. She said, after her opening acappella singing, that it was nice to be somewhere "artsy fartsy", and she called us all SCADalicious. It was very cute.
If you haven't heard Regina Spektor's music, I can say this for it. The entire package is appealing to me. The words are interesting, perhaps a bit kitschy, but the music backing it up is an all-around pleasing experience. (But I may just have a thing for Russian musicians. Anyone ever heard Zemfira? She sings in Russian. My favorite song is "Sums".) There's something very honest and occasionally raw and highly emotive about the way she vocalizes the words to her songs. Ever since hearing Rachael Yamagata (and, I'll admit, Ani DiFranco before her), I've been highly appreciative of the sensation of a singer (who usually happens to be female) having a quality of emotion to her singing that isn't necessarily pop standard. Don't get me wrong, some pop music still turns me on, but for long stretches of focusing I need someone to be experiencing something and not just bouncing out of my computer speakers in the background.
So, in conclusion, there are definitely worse concerts you can go to than one featuring Regina Spektor. As a first concert experience (for me, the sound snob), it was entertaining and musically pleasing in a way that I find many concerts lack. It was neither overpoweringly loud, nor too quiet to hear from the balcony where I was sitting. The only thing I didn't like was the screaming idiots who need to find boyfriends instead of idol worshipping visiting performers, and the stupid girl in F11 to our left who kept taking flash photos. Both of which were ignorable.
Well last night I got to go and see the Regina Spektor concert at the Trustee's Theater. (Yeah, more Silent Cloak And Dagger stuff.) The opening "band" was Only Sun. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get too much of his info. Some of that was like watching the future of music. It was just the lead guitarist (frontman?) of the band who came down from New York. The "band" that accompanied him was on his iPod. While I think maybe it needed a better mix to it, the idea of having your band being that portable is, well, very modern. Plus, 'Only Son' was a very good showman. (Notwithstanding the stupid fangirls screaming from the right of us that were offering sex to the performers.) He ended with this musically interluded, almost slam-poetry ode to the way that our posters rocked on the way in.
I liked him. I can't wait to find more of his music.
Now, having never been to a concert before, I was nonetheless comforted by the set-up on stage. A piano, a guitar, two chairs, and several microphones and monitor speakers. Well, notwithstanding the musician's need to be drowned out by their own voice coming back at them, I seriously think the monitor speakers were LARGER than Regina Spektor. If not, they at least had to weigh more. From the balcony, she looked kinda tiny. Very "cute" according to my companion.
Savannah as an environment had to be a horrible environment. She mentioned John Cage's comment on "what's more musical? The conservatory, or the truck passing by the conservatory". (She's really referencing his quote: "What's more musical, a truck driving by a music school or a truck driving by a factory?" Snitched from here.) She not only had to combat some truck backing up through an entire song, but also a fireworks bass drum accompaniment.
On the other hand, Silent (Screaming?) Calamity And Destruction had to be very welcoming. She said, after her opening acappella singing, that it was nice to be somewhere "artsy fartsy", and she called us all SCADalicious. It was very cute.
If you haven't heard Regina Spektor's music, I can say this for it. The entire package is appealing to me. The words are interesting, perhaps a bit kitschy, but the music backing it up is an all-around pleasing experience. (But I may just have a thing for Russian musicians. Anyone ever heard Zemfira? She sings in Russian. My favorite song is "Sums".) There's something very honest and occasionally raw and highly emotive about the way she vocalizes the words to her songs. Ever since hearing Rachael Yamagata (and, I'll admit, Ani DiFranco before her), I've been highly appreciative of the sensation of a singer (who usually happens to be female) having a quality of emotion to her singing that isn't necessarily pop standard. Don't get me wrong, some pop music still turns me on, but for long stretches of focusing I need someone to be experiencing something and not just bouncing out of my computer speakers in the background.
So, in conclusion, there are definitely worse concerts you can go to than one featuring Regina Spektor. As a first concert experience (for me, the sound snob), it was entertaining and musically pleasing in a way that I find many concerts lack. It was neither overpoweringly loud, nor too quiet to hear from the balcony where I was sitting. The only thing I didn't like was the screaming idiots who need to find boyfriends instead of idol worshipping visiting performers, and the stupid girl in F11 to our left who kept taking flash photos. Both of which were ignorable.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
And onnn with the show.
So I was doing some non-page work last night after I got in from seeing 300. (I recommend it. I thought I was going to hate it, but I ended up really enjoying it. That could have been the company, but there was something really great about the movie.) I found something noble about the whole band of brothers fighting together thing. I liked it.
But anyway, I was coloring this old sketch of mine that I did a while ago, and I thought I should post it here as well. It's also up on my deviantart page: here
Some people get curious about how I do the textures on the images like this one and the set of tarot cards I did before it. (This character is from the Queen of Swords image that I did. It was everyone in the class's favorite, and I did that one first and spent the most time figuring out the technique I was using for it.) I'm thinking of explaining it as a tutorial for Julie Collins-Rousseau's Scribbleclick which is shaping up to be quite a wonderful little website filled with tutorials, reviews, and the like.
I'm also slated to do a "how-to" on word ballooning for comics for Advanced Manga this quarter (at some point), so I may turn that into a tutorial as well.
Lots to do, it seems. I'll probably start the ballooning demo(n -add the 'n', word balloons can be demons, yes they can) this weekend when I re-thumb and re-create my pages in a more manga layout. That starts tonight, actually.
Anywho, peace and pie for everyone.
I'm going back to doing my Lunar Boy fanart. (For anyone who doesn't know Jarrett Williams, you should. You really, really should.)
And, if no one's yet discovered Wonderland, I also suggest you check it out. Not only is the webpage superbly graphic in its b&w design, but also the tones are really well done, the inks hold up, and the story has me fairly hooked and we're only on page 2.
Shiny new blog...
Is it just me or is there something terribly strange about the word 'blog'. Just think about it for a minute. Say it out loud.
Well, even if you don't, I find it a bit creepy.
So this is my new blog. I'll probably be posting artwork and maybe some writing chunks as well. It may (or may not) be where I leak information about the webcomic I may (or may not) be working on. *gasp* I bet if I tried I could even make this vaguer.
Well, even if you don't, I find it a bit creepy.
So this is my new blog. I'll probably be posting artwork and maybe some writing chunks as well. It may (or may not) be where I leak information about the webcomic I may (or may not) be working on. *gasp* I bet if I tried I could even make this vaguer.
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