all aboard the fart train

DISCLAIMER: I AM DRUNK.

Oh my god, why do I keep looking at JACK. It is the worst thing the internet has produced. Probably not the ABSOLUTE worst but oh my CHRIST, people that aren't blind furries act like the thing is TOTES AMAZING. In spite of the art not only NOT IMPROVING, but having gotten more and more unreadable over the course of however many years it's been running. How does someone make comics for SO LONG and completely avoid improving or even learning how to create compositions that don't seem DELIBERATELY BAD?

It's offensive to me because I feel like everyone should be held up to the same standard - you make art for a living, you should fucking LEARN: you learn from your peers, you learn from your mistakes. every waking moment of your life is a potential font of inspiration if you open your goddamned eyes.



SO THERE :C

http://www.the-spearhead.com/2009/10/09/the-war-on-science-fiction-and-marvin-minsky/

Okay, at first I read this and laughed a lot - lines like With women killing science fiction on television, the current generation of boys won’t have this opportunity to be inspired to work in these fields. are just... wow - but then it kind of depressed me. It's always awful to be reminded of the fact that people like Dave Sim are not an isolated incident of super weirdo misogyny - it's all over the fucking place.

Blech.

EDIT: and get a load of some of those comments! I kind of want to punch everyone in the fucking face right now.

Time to go to the dentist for the first time in... way too long. I've lost count!

phrases I hope I do not hear:

"what is that?"
"all of your teeth have to go, ma'am"
"oh dear god no"

WOOOOOO ANXIETY! I think a lot of my DENTIST FEAR comes from the fact that my dentist as a kid was kind of a douchenozzle. He'd be asking you questions with all this metal shit in your mouth, and get impatient when you couldn't answer immediately. The operating area was this long office space, with partitions between the seats that had these... fucking creepy gnome head decorations on them.

...That and I had to have four of my teeth pulled before I could get fitted for braces! GOOD TIMES.

God, I hope the place I'm going to doesn't have PINK WALLS or those horrible airbrushed abstract paintings that are in basically every dentist's lobby ever. What the fuck is going on with that stuff? All it does is remind me of OPEN WOUNDS IN THE MOUTH or veins in teeth. Gimme some blank white sterile walls, please.

Work is ending either tomorrow or monday, which means I can get back to my strenuous schedule of failing to work on ideas for a website layout and reading webcomics! So, comics I am INTERESTED IN:

Platinum Grit: THIS TAKES A BILLION YEARS TO UPDATE OH MY GOD because it's in like, an actual comic book format. It's about mysterious going-ons revolving around a Scottish castle, an asexual and intensely nerdy guy and a buxom sexpot lady that everyone seems to disapprove of. And there's a talking wardrobe with a Jamaican accent! HOW ELSE CAN I SELL THIS TO YOU.

The Next Thing That JDR is Making: holy shit, for some reason I am more than mildly curious about something JDR is making. I know her previous stuff has a knack for getting lost in DENSE FORESTS of stupid fantasy-science jargon and rampant Japanophilia, but that said, it looks like it could at least be visually neat, judging from the little fake sumi-e brush doodles on the site. MAYBE???

Also, you should look at my friends' Jaq and Kris's webcomics, they are just starting out but they are both promising!

String Theory It's about mad science! GO LOOK AT IT NOW.

Dalton It's about... well, I'm not sure. But there's some crazy-nice brushwork.

Okay, so. After what seems like a million years, Jessi and I are in the endgame of Persona 4. ( BEEP BEEP MAKE WAY FOR MAJOR SPOILERS )

Hey, I'm actually at the point where I feel competent with this stuff!



( one more under the cut, has BOOBS without nipples so kinda SFW? I dunno. )

Good LORD this is a dumb one. I'm not even going to get into the inclusion of Stephanie Meyer's anything, on account of that lady being wicked bad at writing.

BUT ANYWAY: The answer to this question is clearly ALUCARD, because:

* TWO castles in one! I mean, after we kill the final boss. Then we have a whole UPSIDE DOWN CASTLE!

* Steamy trysts, rudely interrupted by flying Medusa heads! HOT

* I assume he would teach me how to double jump. If he refused I would break it off immediately!

* Probably significantly less angsty about vampiric outlook on life than other possible choices. Maybe? He has that I COME FROM TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS thing which would get real old real fast. And parental abandonment issues, on account of his father being an evil vampire with a castle that has a portion of hell in the basement. Um.

* Dresses like complete and utter lunatic. In theory has whole wardrobe of absurd cloaks and capes and ruffly shit.

EDIT: were I a teenager still, my answer would be Angel and Spike from BTVS. Both of them. At the same time.

1. Saw the newest Harry Potter movie earlier in the week. It's a really pleasing mix of DRAMATIC TENSION and LIGHT HEARTED TEENAGE ANGST, but... not too light hearted. They obviously cut out a load of stuff but it wasn't anything terribly important. I'm assuming they cut out SNAPE'S MAUDLIN BACKSTORY because Alan Rickman can act and also they're going to get to that in the last movie, anyway.

2. Persona 4 is probably my favorite rpg ever. Playing it sporadically at Jessi's house is like reading a serialized book and waiting for the next chapter to be published, I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS. I mean, they already killed off my favorite NPC and it was a total shock to me. WHO WILL BE THE NEXT TO FALL???

3. why is it that whenever I start to like a tv show it's one whose reruns are aired in chunks, but completely out of order? WHERE IS MY CONTINUITY

My parents are out of town for the week, so I'm actually going to make an effort to cook for myself while they're gone. There's already a ton of mostly prepared leftovers in the fridge, but I decided I'd like to try ratatouille because:

1. it's easy to make and
2. I have a serious hankering for zucchini and eggplant all of a sudden.
3. we have oregano and parsley growing in the back yard, so I might as well take advantage.

I've also been tasked with keeping the vegetables we're growing hydrated. I hope we can get more than one pepper out of the jalepeno plants, but at the very least we'll have a ton of tomatoes by the end of the summer.

http://nerdarmada.blogspot.com/2009/07/welcome-to-new-cn.html


Bluhhhh. This is so sad. I AM WAVING A CANDLE FOR THE OLD (CARTOON PRODUCING) CARTOON NETWORK

I was going to complain about this being YET ANOTHER ASININE PROMPT but, hey, what the hell, I'll bite:

It was Star Trek, and a second viewing of it. Everyone is hot, and I am absolutely certain there is someone writing fanfiction where all of them* have sex on the bridge, with a plausible reason included for their behavior (they probably run into q, or something. or they're ALL JUST REALLY HOT). PLAUSIBILITY!

*even that little runty guy that tags along with Simon Pegg. No, ESPECIALLY HIM! He's not hot by any means, but I'm sure people in the 23th century have moved past their prejudices against the tragically unsexy.

EDIT: If this doesn't already exist I'm demanding that someone write it. >:C

but this needs to be said: brent spiner's twitter is a glorious read.

Guys, your suggestions for horrible drawings are wonderful. But I am taking a break from that because I felt like checkin' out paintchat - and lo and behold, they restarted registration and it actually seems to work this time.

What I'm getting at is YOU SHOULD REGISTER FOR IT

http://pchat.mine.nu/

SUGGEST YOUR FAVORITE RIDICULOUS FANDOM PAIRING

ie: Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes out with Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager

or perhaps Dr. Who holding a bedside vigil for a comatose Clarissa Explains it All! That's her full name, right? Right?

and I will draw them making out! Or groping butts, whatever. I AM BORED GOSH DARN IT but not bored enough to slog through fanfiction.net for something to do an illustrated writeup of.

I MISS BEING BORED ENOUGH TO DO FANFICTION FRIDAY :C

This week I finished reading through Susanna Clarke's collection of short stories that are all more or less in the same universe as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. They're pretty wonderful and a nice introduction to her writing style (in case you're hesitant about reading her novel, which is kind of a behemoth). A++++++ forever.

So now I'm moving onto QUICKER THAN THE EYE, which is a collection of Ray Bradbury's short stories. Some of them are pretty interesting but god. God, Ray Bradbury. I am a little bothered by how he seems to give all of his characters the same voice - they're all very literate and wordy. I think maybe ONE character in one of the stories was glib for like a page, and then it was a paragraph of poetic stuff and that is wearing a little thin, honestly. But nothing can really live up to the stories in The Illustrated Man, so maybe I'm judging a bit harshly.

NEXT: Popul Vuh! I kind of picked it up on a whim, and because it was cheap. Maybe next time I go to that bookstore I'll buy one of the reviewer manuscripts they sell for 2 bucks.

about a year back I did a bunch of doodles of cartoony versions of the characters from THE FINAL SACRIFICE, I think now I am going to work on that some more. I never got around to drawing PIPPER, after all!

I'm trying to do a lot more drawing of more human-ly proportioned body types

but whenever I do this, I start unconsciously giving them starfleet uniforms

NO STOP STOP STOP

The weather in Indiana was conducive to KITE FLYIN' (for about an hour) this week so Ian and I finally got to break out our TOTALLY AWESOME SMIRKING WINNIE THE POOH SUPERHERO KITES.

Okay, just kidding, they were not totally awesome. I had no problem getting mine up in the air but for some reason Ian's string IMMEDIATELY got all tangled up in one of the hundreds of places where it could get tangled in those stupid things.

And then it started raining on us. But hey! YAY KITES, right?

turbinerocks posted some fantastic questions FOR ARTISTS so I thought I'd answer them!


When was the last time you drew something under the influence? (drunk, stoned, etc) Was it a beneficial experience? Did it help or hurt the art?

Either last night or the night before that, after I interpreted Ian becoming drunk while watching wrestling as a CHALLENGE for me to also become drunk. It actually HELPED because for the last few days I've felt kind of caged in by the way I usually approach drawing, so I loosened up and was able to bang out a bunch of doodles I thought weren't too bad.



What was the last "breakthrough" or important event you had in the growth/realization of your artistic abilities? Or if that doesn't make much sense, what was the last thing you made that you felt was significant?

I think becoming patient enough to use watercolors was pretty important, though it hasn't affected the way I approach art across the board or anything - I'm still pretty fussy and impatient and actually FINISHING something is a tremendous feat. Before that, the animation/character building workshop BJ had was great in terms of getting me to revisit ideas and become comfortable with just scrapping stuff that isn't working, and start over.


What is the artistic peer (someone you know personally or who is accessible to you) who is currently the largest influence on your work?

Man, that's tough! I am currently WAY DIGGING on monstro_draw and harveyjames's linework, and Patrick Alexander (of eegra) does some lovely watercolors! I basically have this gigantic list of art/animation blogs that I look at while howling "OH GOD THAT IS BEAUTIFUL!"


What frustrates you most about the art-making process? What do you have the most resistance to doing, craftwise?

I have a lot of trouble with backgrounds, for a number of reasons. I like to view the background as a character, and that helps a lot BUT it doesn't make up for the fact that I'm kind of spotty as far as perspective and composition go - I avoid taking the time to make a picture WORK before I start trying to finish it up... which is OBNOXIOUS because what the hell, I have no excuse for not knowing how to do this stuff.

WHAT? Are these questions intentionally stupid or uh, what am I missing exactly? Because this is phrased so badly it is making me a little angry. DO YOU BELIEVE IN MONOGAMY? WHAT ABOUT SANTA CLAUS OR THE DEVIL???????????????

or like is this one of those questions where jilted lovers are supposed to give a 3 paragraph long spiel about how they don't believe in monogamy because WHY DO I KEEP GETTING CHEATEDEDED ON?????????


GODDAMN YOU, TERRIBLE QUESTION

edit: I like question marks.