AF Productions

Y Halo 2012

2012-01-20T13:15:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile hasn't it? Well, Earthborn and myself have been a bit busy.

In case you missed out, we finished up Chapter 1 of No Man's Land, which can be found here.

Also, Versed is, despite my intermittent updates, still coming along. As of this writing, I have 33 pages up. Check that out here if you want.

We're off to a rocky start this year as both SOPA and PIPA, the latest horrible pieces of legislation to slide out of the collective rectum of congress have riled the internet into action. Notably, the mass e-protests seem to have turned the tide on these and suddenly it seems that, at least for now, our internets are still safe. What the next ill-informed bill lobbyists will attempt to cram through congress will be, we don't know. But this is not the end of them. There is too much money invested for them to relent, so I can only hope that the internet hate machine continues to fire up for our later rounds against the agendas of the rich, powerful, and stupid.

So we're in 2012 now and some people would have you believe that this is the next big end of the world. You never know, but if you ask me, it's just the end of a calendar. Toss it out and get the new one.

About Time

2011-08-30T10:04:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time since I actually got the nerve to send out my work for publication, but the fear was perhaps unnecessary. My short story "Recital, Early April," which appeared on this blog in a much rougher form a few years ago, was picked up by Short Story America. "Recital" is the story of the week for Friday Aug 26 - Sept 2, and you can read it here. I'm very pleased with the publication, and I find the layout rather clever.

Deus Ex

2011-08-23T18:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since the original Deus Ex came out, and the gaming world has been worse off for the lack of games like it. Last night Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the third entry in the series, launched to mostly positive reviews. I'm going to avoid talking about the second entry in the series for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who has played(or attempted to play) it.

So, without further ado, here is my review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution...

PLAY IT!

So ends my review. Now, back to business.

Versed Page 1

2011-08-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

It started with a tiny page drawn on an iPad.

When I first drew this page, it was an experiment to see what I could do with some drawing software(artstudio) on the iPad. I know there are other programs, sketchbook pro, brushes, etc. but artstudio was the most capable that I had tried at the time. It consistently produced the best linework.

As far as an experiment, Versed continues to be a very useful learning tool. Consistency may be its weakest point as a result. The style changes throughout, as I change programs, change hardware(I've since upgraded to drawing on an HP TouchSmart tm2), learn programs better, and learn to draw better. That last part is the main goal with most anything I do.

I posted page 26 on the website last night. You can see it here. I'm rather happy to compare it with the previous pages. What a nice time I've had along the way.

"I could spit"

2011-07-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

Well, we're approximately 16 days from what pundits and reporters have been calling the "Apocalypse," when the US of A reaches its debt ceiling. Maybe the end of the world DOES happen in and around 2012. After all, religious nuts and blockbuster movies have been advertising this very fact since 2009. Like most Americans, I have no idea what will transpire, but it's certainly not going to be good. I get the sense that this is the sentiment in Washington as well. Something is looming. Something big.

About a week ago on "All Things Considered" I remember hearing that nothing would happen. That the US Gov't could make certain cuts and coast on tax money for about two years. Apparently some of the Tea Party members may have heard this same thing, because Michelle Bachmann has gone on record to state that nothing would happen at all. This is perhaps a bit overblown. Something is going to happen, but the public at large is not going to hear or see it until perhaps a few months after, when Wall Street starts to suffer and countries like China start realizing that the US economy is clamoring for largess. In our present society, we like to believe in that instantaneous "fix" that can come at the last moment and avert catastrophe, just like it does in the movies. Certainly Washington, Democrats and Republicans alike, has done its share of damage to reinforce this in the public eye. Obama has stated that reforms wouldn't happen until much later, months to years down the line, and this seems the more accurate admission. There is no Noah's-Ark-like outcome here. We're ALL in the same boat, and there's a mighty big leak.

As we get into the cogs of No Man's Land, and the Miller family's own money problems, I keep reflecting back on the current state of the economy and how problems, like the one illustrated in this chapter, will not only be felt by the periphery of American workers, but the majority. The small companies, unable to cope, will certainly be swallowed whole by other larger companies. C'est la vie. I'm not one to go on bashing corporations in my free time, there are plenty of people in the media who do that for me, but the concerns of the Miller household certainly do criticize the climate mentioned. There are obviously differences, and I meant it to be just as critical of the small-town business ethic, which can, at times, seem like a plane on auto-pilot, heading straight for a mountain.

I'll get off my soap-box now. Who cares what the writer thinks about his own work, anyway? As a critic of literature, I am aware of the intentional-fallacy, the death of the author, and Stanley Fish. But I feel that this blurb, as Mr. Grimlee and I have called it, should do some blurbling. It should put some of these pages into historical context and express the writer and artist's plans and concerns in charting and reconsidering its development. My critical theoretical focus is textual studies, and next quarter I'm teaching a class at the University of Washington in this very topic. In textual studies, which in part is concerned with editorial intentions as much as materiality, these things matter in the long-run. I'm not sure they matter right now, but perhaps they will in the future. Maybe my opinions will all end up in a wash and only debris of it carried along by the tide. Until next week.

Give Me A Hand With These Bags

2011-06-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

Enter Georgia. Jen's mother; Cliff's wife. She's most certainly the "mother" character, but got a snarky side to her as well.

We're up to page 13, and things are rolling along smoothly! Mr. Grimlee has been pretty busy lately, but he's managed to keep "No Man's Land: A Tall Tale" afloat and his kitty alive. Check out our newest pages! We'll be updating, as per usual, every Sunday!

'No Man's Land' Goes Live

2011-04-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

Live. It's live! It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here. No Man's Land, a graphic novel about friends, family, and fiction, has made its internet debut at our newly acquired website: www.nomanslandcomic.com Our plan is to release a new page of the comic each week until we're finished with the first chapter. So check back frequently! I just want to thank James Grimlee (aka. Alienfetusproductions) for all his tireless effort and versatility. This project would not nor could not have been completed without him. -Chris "Earthborn" Martin

In Search of a Digital Solution

2011-02-25T09:42:00.000-08:00

February is about to leave us behind. It's been a month of waiting. I looked through the old archives and was struck by a brief fit of despair over what I could and couldn't do on the iPad.

So off I went to the mystical world of buying stuff, to see what was available. My first pick ended up being the HP Slate, although at this point I can't quite remember why I settled on it. I ordered one only to find that the delivery date was projected at being 3 months out. Oh yeah, turns out those puppies are back ordered like crazy. After a pleasant enough call to HP's customer service, I had the order cancelled while I checked on other options.

The next candidate was the Dell Inspiron Duo. Basically a netbook/tablet hybrid, I figured it would have enough oomph to do what I needed in photoshop, which isn't extremely taxing. It arrived within the week and the design on that thing was great. I just wanted to hold it all the time. The keyboard was the best I've seen on a small netbook, the screen resolution was great for such a tiny thing, the flip mechanism to take it into tablet mode was so slick I felt like a secret agent, and even the materials the thing was made out of made it not just easy to hold on to, but somehow soothing as well.

The lack of video output was concerning, but not a deal breaker. I wanted a portable digital drawing solution, not a media center. The short battery life was a slight problem but hey, a 600 dollar tablet/netbook was expected to have a shortcoming. Besides, I'm usually within 2 hours of a power outlet. Best of all, ubuntu loaded up without a hitch and with only a small amount of work I had a nice linux flavored touchscreen of joy dual-booting alongside windows 7. As expected, what I needed to do with Photoshop ran smoothly.

My first warning sign was the lack of a stylus. I probably should have looked into it more before the purchase. Information was pretty scarce on this subject. There were mentions that the screen was capacitive so any iPad stylus should work. The standard Pogo stylus, however, did not. Sure, it would tap in place, but trying to draw a line with that thing ended in scattered bits and pieces of linework, nothing smooth or solid. So I went in search of a better stylus and dropped some cash on a much better one, one I even tried out in the store that drew some nice linework. Perfect!

Not so much. Once I got home, I tried drawing with it. Fast lines with the stylus worked fine, I set the sensitivity based on speed(since there was no pressure sensitivity) and things came out beautifully. However, once I slowed down and tried to create detailed work, the linework became jittery. Attempts to even draw a slow circle ended with some horribly deformed egg, like a "forever alone" face's outline. It did this in both windows and linux, on both Photoshop and the GIMP and anything else I tried. I turned off services, tried calibrating, everything that was even remotely mentioned online. After a few days of troubleshooting with no progress, I conceded defeat grudgingly.

I wanted to keep it. I tried to think up uses for it, but I knew that the main purpose that I had bought it for would not be, and it would sit unused if I couldn't use it for that. So I called up Dell's support and tried to return the beauty.

Support is a whole other story. I spent entirely too much time on the phone being transferred back and forth, and I'm pretty sure during one of those transfers the fellows thought I was one of their support technicians instead of a customer. After getting nowhere with scripted responses, I gave up on the phone and instead sent an email. Two days later I had my return approved, and within the week the Duo was sent back. Poor thing. Dell, if only you had included a working, fine point stylus.

So I looked around again. This time, I found my way to the HP TouchSmart tm2. Hey, this thing had Wacom tech on its screen and came with a compatible pen! What's this, a low to midrange graphics card and an i5 processor on a 12" laptop? Tell me more.

Well this entry has been typed entirely on the tm2's lovely keyboard. Drawing on it is a pleasure, and it doesn't skip a beat when working on even my heaviest pictures. I had a lot of crap to uninstall when it arrived, but we've reached a working relationship now. I'm back to working on pages of NML, but now in a portable situation so I end up having more time when I'm out and about(which is often). I've finished one page of Versed on it and so far, I'm liking it. I'm going to have to get used to being able to cram in a ton of detail on pages again, but that's a convenient problem to have.

Oh and also, it runs TF2 without a hitch. Score some points to HP for making the solution to my woes, and for having excellent customer service on the phone.

Aside from work, this has pretty much been my February. And since I've gotten this laptop, I've been drawing just about every day on it. The only downside? I haven't had the courage to wipe out HP's rescue partition and install Linux on it. Baby steps.

Happy 2011

2011-01-09T14:15:00.000-08:00

Well the new year is upon us and once again I'm left with an almost guilty feeling of "you should really update that blog page". I tried my best "I shouldn't be typing if I don't have something worthwhile to say" but in the end the guilt has won out, bringing you this not-so-sparkly new blog post today.

I suppose I could always go the easy route and just go over what I did last year. Fine, let's do that. The year started out in a strange place with me losing my job on the weekend shift at work, and immediately after I said to myself, "Self, you know Portland's job situation is dire and you've got some savings. Better just spend that time working on comics for a little while and then you can job search to your heart's content."

So I did.

The first quarter of 2010 brought out the first chapter of No Man's Land, a joint venture between myself and Earthborn, our creative word-slinging wizard. At a rate of 40-50 hours a week, we worked on the bulk of 40 pages, which comprised a light first chapter. However, before the pages were fully finished, I received a call back from my former employer. A spot had opened up on the weekday crew and I was invited back.

I continued on where I could, when I had time, up until stump town comics fest came about, which is where we hoped to pitch our comic to a publisher. We had hoped to find someone at Oni Press to show it to, but the booth seemed to consist of only other comic artists who had been published and not so much the team of publishers. Whether or not we had something worthy of those folks to publish, we didn't know for sure. I do know that with each page weighing in at around 13 hours of work, I had a lot of work that looked better than other published work we had seen, but we had not run into a publisher who could give us the thumbs up or down and so it seemed we had a dead end. One of the fellows we spoke with encouraged us to post it online, and build a readership that way. Then, after getting a following, we could take it to a publisher, or self-publish (apparently it's pretty easy here in PDX, and we learned about a lot of local resources to do so).

That's about where we left off on that project. Now that I was back at work full time, I had no time to bring a sketch book in and mess around, and not a lot of time at home to work on anything else. That's where the iPad project came in. It was something I could carry around easily and pop out for a quick sketch here or there. It didn't require me to be tied to a bulky laptop + wacom set up. It was just something easy to tote around and work on when I had free time.

I've just finished artwork on page 15 today. It is slow going compared to when I was unemployed, but I must say, making money so that I can continue living in Portland is a nice deal. The town is constantly full of activities and fun (and the occasional bomb plot from some crazy kid, apparently) and living here is never dull. I'm averaging 6-7 hours a page now. I wish I could work at a higher resolution on this little device, but I suppose that particular bit of fun should be just around the corner, with a new iPad or a new tablet of some other sort.

I occasionally think of stopping working on art period, because I always look at my comics and see nothing but mistakes and flaws. But the entire point is that I'm still practicing. I think that our bigger project, No Man's Land, is worthy of publishing. I'm not sure about any of the other stuff I've worked on, and none of it alone would have enough content in it to bother publishing anyway. But for now, I do see improvement enough to keep working. Someday I hope to meet my own expectations.

I suspect a lot of people feel the same way about their own projects.

Long Time Old Chums

2010-11-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

It's good to see the website still has activity. It even seems to be growing despite my lack of frequent updates this past year or so.

I'm working on a new project of my own, but let's get to that in a second. First, the project with mister Earthborn. I'm still trying to figure out if we need a new website to host the project or if I should fit it in a section on the regular one. I'm planning on going over the fonts and recreating them using a cleaner(and easier to use) tool. We still need another 26ish pages shaded.

With 40 pages in the first chapter, it's looking pretty good, but has been at a standstill for awhile now. I'm having trouble adjusting going back to a wacom tablet. Something about drawing directly on the surface you're looking at feels much better, and something about drawing on a tablet while looking at what you're doing on a screen feels much worse.

Which is part of why I'm on a new project. I've been working on an iPad. The clunkiness of drawing with thick "pen" tip aside, it's a much more natural feel. The downside is that I'm working at a lower resolution and therefore what I'm making is not entirely suitable for printing on paper. Maybe small paper. Maybe manga sized books would work, but doing a print run is a far off idea at this point. I still don't know what this new project is going to become or what I'm going to do with it in the long term. I know it feels different than others I've been working on in the past. The part where I daydream up a reality to host a comic in is more open this time. I hope I get to a part where I can show off the setting.

The upside of the iPad is in its portability and long battery life. With previous comics, I carried around a sketch pad, scanned stuff in, and worked digitally when I was able to get a spare moment at home. Now I have the whole process(well, almost) with me all the time. Using Artstudio very neatly fits what I have been doing digitally anyway. Working anywhere I go when I get a spare moment means I'm able to invest more time. All I do on the computer is add dialog(I want to use my custom made fonts or I could do this in Artstudio as well) and then upload it.

There are some lessons to learn about drawing on the iPad. I spend a lot of time working zoomed in, so if I want consistency in panels I need to spend more time on the sketch layer, and zoom out. It was a little weird to learn but I think I've been developing around it. The software updates have been very helpful as well, adding more and more functionality over time. Once I was able to export to a .psd, things were golden. Or silver. Some sort of shiny valuable metal anyway.

I am hopeful for an open-source tablet that will take over what I'm doing on the iPad currently. Apple is the Brave New World of computer companies and I always feel a little dirty using their incredible gadgets when the company operates in some of the ways it does. Ubuntu has gesture and multitouch coming along nicely. I just hope for some nice tablet that will make use of it in as an intuitive way as Apple has done. Until then, this is working well enough.

As for the new project, I've posted a little of it. There's more on the way, but I'll be posting it up in sections or "scenes" instead of by page, at least for now. It gives me more time to look over pages and adjust things before they hit the website, and it reads a little easier. It just means that updates will be less frequent than if I were doing a page at a time. That's alright by me if it's alright by you.
Until next time dear readers, thanks for dropping by.

24-Hour Comic Day, Part Deus

2010-04-12T13:36:00.000-07:00

This weekend was 24-hour comic day here in Portland, hosted by the lovely folks at Cosmic Monkey.

The turnout seemed smaller this time, but I believe we had more people finish this time around. Once again there were a lot of talented people who came out and fought with their comics from 10AM on Saturday to 10AM on Sunday.

I had quite the lovely and productive time. As I went straight to inking without any sketching beforehand, I made pretty decent time, although you'll likely have no trouble spotting where and when I was rushed and where I had some extra time to spend on a page. With my method, any mistakes are glaring and permanent so there are quite a few frames I utterly despise. They taunt me, shouting "neener neener" and the like at my poor fragile male ego. Despite flipping them the psychological warfare equivalent of the bird, they persist. And in short time, I shall be sharing them with you.

My pages are scanned but will need some minor level tweaking and resizing. I also really really want to add a couple of smacks of red, despite the official rules saying no work is to be done afterwards. I suppose I'll take a note from one of the characters in my comic and thumb my nose at the rules, if only a little.

So, expect 24 pages to appear on the website sometime this week. Our first activity in entirely too long.

After the Haitus

2010-03-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

Oh hello again friends.

I must apologize for the lack of content updates. It's been nearly half a year since I wrapped up production on my last project. I spent a few months in a blur of, well, I don't really recall. Likely videogames and movies and lazing around.

I found myself with a bit more free time and less of a day job around January and so these past few months have been spent working on a comic project full time with Earthborn. The results, while delicious, are in their final stages of completion. We have a full chapter nearly done with, but can't share it with your refined tastes just yet. We are hoping to attract a publisher, but lacking that, will be posting the comic to the nefarious interwebs for the perusal of a great many strangers.

It has been a massive undertaking but one that I hope is worth it in one way or another. Expect more updates as we finalize our decision on whether or not to internet this comic up, or hand over to a publisher.

Also, it is comic month in Portland! What a time to be alive.

New Year's Update

2009-12-30T16:25:00.000-08:00

I hear it. The city calls to me. It whispers in my ear. Calls to me in my sleep. Portland, the small, big city. There, beer flows in golden rivers. And the rivers flow like liquid glass. It's the most Dublin-esque city in America I know, or so J. P. Donleavy and James Joyce have led me to believe (in their descriptions of Dublin). I love it. We might move there someday.

Until then, half of the Productions - that is me - is staying up here in Seattle, the most Boston-esque city, only lacking the charming Italian folks saying "foggeddaboudit" at every street corner. Is that a stereotype? Well, I've heard two people say that on two different trips to Boston, so I suppose I assumed everyone says it. Oh well.

The Alien has been hard at work laying out the pages to chapter 1 of our graphic novel project. He's since finished those storyboards, so we may have something to show you all in the next month or so. So, keep your eyes peeled!

I've revised No Man's Land: Chapter 5, six and seven are to follow suit. I hope to get done before school starts. Moving on...

A second project - another brainchild to be revealed in due time - rushes out onto Word more clearly and certainly than had No Man's Land. This one feels different, as though the secret ways of graphic novel writing has somehow been tapped, and the plotting and writing of character in this format dissected. The results, I am pleased to say, show more of a command of the format than before. I think I feel more at home in the script of the graphic novel than I had expected. No doubt devilish magic is to blame.

I've read a great many grahic novels recently. I just finished Book 8 of Preacher, which I quite enjoy, even though Garth Ennis cusses like a sailor with Tourette's. The series also relies a bit too much on its Deus Ex Machina devices and doesn't allow characters to matriculate without some sort of near-death. It's too bad that some of the characters, specifically Tulip O' Hare, are as one-sided as a mirror. Tulip, for instance, keeps harking back to her "unique" daddy's-girl upbringing, which bestows her, somehow, with the remarkable, steady-hand of a World War II sniper. After a while, I started feeling like she should have stayed dead.

I've never really been into occult fiction, though I loved Alan Moore's take on it in From Hell and I gave it a pass in Sherlock Holmes. In Preacher, it becomes like a tick that Ennis uses to explain away the plot holes that he starts to write himself into. Jesse is about to die? Well, God'll save him! Or one of the other invulnerable characters, like the Saint of Killers, might intervene - the Saint being another one of those one-sided characters you can always count on to show up when the plot's gone haywire.

I'm still fascinated with Ennis' vision of the mythic west, however. It intrigues me to no end. And I really like how he positions Cassidy as the anti-hero, anti-protagonist. I rather like Cassidy - more than I do Tulip. He's a complicated character, even if he tends to get burned in the sun (he's a vampire) more than is logically allowed by the reader's suspension of disbelief.

Speaking of Moore, I just finished A Small Killing, which is brilliant. The book is gorgeous, the character is complicated, the plot is interesting. Here, Moore's experimentation with text-bubbles, which he'd expand in From Hell, is inspired. The writing - oh the writing! - is such a joy to behold, the meter of his prose is so deliberate, so tour de force that it's difficult to put the book down. I've always felt that the grahic novel medium is more in-tune with the short story than the literary novel. A Small Killing is a testament to that; it is what graphic novels should be.

Finally, I'm about half-way through Dave Sim's High Society, which I picked up on a recommendation from my professor, related to my dissertation topic. Dave Sim reminds me a bit of Ben Edlund of The Tick fame, although Sim is more sarcastic and Edlund tends to be more apologetic towards his characters' shortcomings. Cerebus is a deviously conceived character. He's hatable and lovable both, wonderfully deceptive. He is a complicated, thoughtful character, and maddeningly funny. The skeptic in me wants to have him over for dinner, but the realist thinks he'll drink all my whiskey.

It only takes about a minute to notice how many innovations Sim attempted in the creation of High Society. Whether the layout of the panels or the playing with text. Among these innovations, High Society is, at its heart, a dark satire of organized religion, set during a faux middle-ages. As a student of medieval literature, I feel the appreciation of Sim's satire has not yet been satisfactorily detailed. Tomes could be written on Cerebus. Tomes.

I borrowed Gaiman and McKean's Black Orchid because it looked intriguing - although I'm not terribly into the Sandman series, I really like Gaiman's writing. I also picked up Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing, by recommendation of a lady on the King County Metro, Brian K. Vaughan's Ex Machina 1 & 2, Talbot's The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, and book 1 of Tezuka's Buddha. Since MW and Blackjack, I've been looking forward to reading more of Tezuka's work. He's yet to disappoint me. I've read online that MW was technically his "weirdest" or "least critically lauded" graphic novel, but I really liked it. If that's the case, It's only uphill from here.

One Chapter Ends, Another Begins

2009-10-18T20:31:00.000-07:00

OtherSide, Part 2, has come to a close. The last page, one of my favorites, I might add, concludes by beginning a chase in a chapter that began with another one. Only this chase is not physical. Our protagonist is lusted over--even loved?-- though the true extent of the black-haired woman's feelings can be only yet inferred. One character, in the previous page, claims to have found hope--a hopelessly abrasive word, even when Obama uses it--but here, a page later, we have it's counterpoint: sabotage.

As the long, wound-up road of OtherSide unravels, I think on Shakespeare's Don John the bastard in Much Ado, a character who, like this black-haired lady--her name escapes me at the moment--may have been wronged by a lover. Don John may have been lustily after young Hero, who is targetted for marriage by the young Claudio. The reference is rather vague, and I reproduce it here for it is often overlooked:

That young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow: if I can cross him any way, I bless myself every way.

It is not that Claudio takes what is his, but that he takes what isn't. It's a matter of possession, like it is in OtherSide. Our black-haired antagonist sleeps with Dhais, who has little interest in actually pursuing a relationship with a woman who is taking him to his "punishment." I would call that a conflict of interests.

Unlike Don John, however, the black-haired woman acts as more than a plot device, but as a fully functional and independent character of her own. In this way she is set apart from characters like the bastard. I mean, she shot off Dhais' arm and didn't even think twice about it. Her response to witnessing Dhais and her red-headed partner in a sort of tender moment is a double-cross. She's devious.

The Alien's use of frame to work on a metaphoric level still strikes me with each new page. Now, I've always been part-and-parcel to the clean square or rectangle frames of comics, but I enjoy seeing when a story is being enhanced by the shape of the frames. If you haven't noticed--and I'm sure you have--OtherSide is fractured. It's a story about multiple points of view and multiple persons, some of which inhabit the persona of other people. Back in OtherSide 1, the Alien worked this technique heavily into his series, as the frames are much more chaotic and disorganized. Contrast that now with the cleaner, bolder fracture of OtherSide 2. Contrast that, still, with the use of wide squares and rectangles in the unfinished Ruin. And you can see still a maturation in the way the cells tend to suggest action-despite-inaction in our collaboration A Few Things You Should Know.

He says there will be only three parts, but I would like to see this series long runing, on and off, until he either kills off every character or the dream worlds in which they exist come crashing tenderly down on their shoulders.

Warning Against Easy Answers

2009-10-11T16:20:00.000-07:00

"Other Side" has always been, at least to me, a comic about answers. That is, our main character, Dhais, is hunted for a reason not quite known to us, in the same way Josef K. is arrested at the beginning of Kafka's Trial. Course, there's some nonsense about forms he's supposed to have filled out now that he's 21, but there's also a warrant out for him. So, he's hunted like a dog. Hunted though he is, Dhais is no Josef K. He knows more about the world he lives in than Josef K. does his. More perhaps than the bounty hunters and splinter factions. He knows that staying alive is good enough, and that's what he intends to do.

Yesterday I saw the Coen Brothers film "A Serious Man." It, too, is about answers. Our main character Larry loses his wife to a senior, less attractive man, gambles his job deciding whether or not to chance a student's failing grade to a passing in exchange for a bribe, and watches as his brother in law gets repeatedly brought home by the police for various, intentionally unmentioned, reasons. With each worsening case our "Job" character asks why. "Why is Hashim testing me?" The film is terrific. In line with the brothers' best. But it's a film that, like "Other Side" seems averse -- even antagonistic -- to proposing any answers to the main character's predicament. Larry seeks three different, incrementally higher ranking rabbis, each unable to give him the suitable answer that he wants to hear. Instead they amuse themselves with anecdotes about a goy's teeth, or tell him to "just look at the parking lot, Larry!" as though there is some imperceptible truth there, just waiting for him. To cut a long story off--I'm not sure I need to know why Dhais is being hunted. He is being taken to his "mistaken punishment" only to escape after sleeping with one of his captors, victims of a failure to misinterpret a splinter-faction's intent later in part 2. The answers Dhais seeks are not fulfilled, yet. His God, if he has one, does not present him with an easily digestible answer. No answer is, after all, a kind of answer, isn't it?

Looking back at the series through new eyes -- picked off a vagrant downtown -- I can see a wonderful change in style and purpose. At first, the Alien's concern was with the tone and setting of the world, grit of it -- the city, dreamlike and cold, is redrawn as though waking along with each character -- but now, he's contained a world that is not unlike a dream itself, still more real and detailed that the one in 'waking' moments, or at least more seducing. And as the story has matriculated, so has his style. Go read page 19, if there's any doubt in your mind. The even-handed narrative is pierced through by the impossibility of love and want, which seems to shake both the frame and firmament. These pages are mirror worlds, we hold them up to see ourselves, but what we see in the mirror is not ourselves, but everything around us. These are worlds of the postmodern. David Lynch calls these dream worlds "meditations"; this is perhaps the best way to describe them. The Alien has always had a thing for spoofing bureaucracy. The only way I can think to describe his persistence with this theme is just this: meditative. Dhais speaks to himself because he simlply can't know what's taken a hold of him. He doesn't know what it all means; he has no answers to point to. He only has what he sees and what he knows to be right.

-eb

Out of the Sun, Into the Gloom

2009-10-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

Seattle has turned gray. It does this every year, blue skies churned into ash, fair weather chased inland and shredded in the maw of the Cascades; nevertheless, we've been fortunate the good weather stuck around as long as it did. Seattlites don't like being teased with this kind of beneficence. We know the sun never lasts. We're therefore left in tearful anticipation of the return of those terribly cold, toneless mornings. Well, they're here, folks. I think we're used to the shitty weather here so much we never take for granted when God fucks up and gives us a month longer of sunshine. Everyone here goes outside, as I do, to stretch legs and pretend to be personable. Now we return to our computer desks, blogging fingers readied like daggers.

The revisions for our graphic novel No Man's Land: A Tall Tale are nearly complete. I think the most difficult part of doing these revisions is finding time to work on it. Instructing an intro English class takes up a lot of time, so much so I'm barely finding time to read Shakespeare (grad seminar), the history of Medieval England (an audit class), read for an independent study, and spend time with the wife. We managed to watch a few films this week, including Luc Besson's "La Femme Nikita," which I think both of us really loved, "Say Anything" which I didn't realize until now was set in Seattle, and an MST3K called "Zombie Nightmare" featuring Adam West (yes, THAT Adam West). This would be over the course of a few weeks, and only when I could not feasibly read anything else about William the Conqueror or Bakhtin's Carnivalesque (the Shakespeare class is focusing on carnival in WS's comedies).

Games? None at the moment. Maybe in the future, when the chaos of the Fall Quarter settles on my shoulders a bit.

The Alien has waxed philosophic about love and existence in a few of his other comics, but not so successfully as in his "Other Side" series. I'm particularly speaking of the most recent additions to the series. His page 18, when read in the context of the whole, is rather touching, and I am left in want for the resurrection of our fallen hero. I'm intriqued, however, in the characters' wardrobes, as they always seem prepped for a gallery walk or a job interview, as though they take their lives so much more serious than I initially did. The effect is somewhat like Dilbert walking into a Family Circus and telling Dolly how real this shit gets. Don't get me wrong, this is high praise. As I've little sympathy for Family Circus and Keane's dramatic oversentimentalized view of family, his punchlines always punctuated with an "ahhhhhh!"

Fuck that. This is the real -- cyberpunked out -- world. Kids need to know that your arm gets fucking blown off here. They need to know that dolls really do talk to you and critique your split-second decision making. They need to know terrorists exist and they might be lesbians and they probably don't wear turbans or raise makeshift rifles over their heads while riding Banthas. Luke Skywalker is not going to save the world here; the Death Star wins in real life.

Outdoors in Portland

2009-09-19T11:33:00.000-07:00

Ahoy, we''e met up with an Australian ol' salty dog that my girlfriend and Me met while we war the sla'es o' World o' Warcraft. I had actually run int' him at Pax the pre'ious week, but he allotted some o' his time 'isitin' the U.s. t' come t' Portland and chill with us.

So we used it as an excuse t' tra'el around a bit t' places we had been meanin' t' go t' for awhile. O' course, we still had t' work weekends so our action packed week hit durin' our days off, midweek. We introduced him t' Powell's o' course, and not far from it, Floatin' World Comics. We hit up Ground Kontrol and found out that arcade games be pretty hard, especially if you happen across one that's a little bit broken.

We took him around t' some o' our fa'orite spots, includin' the food carts downtown around 5th street. We also hit up an army surplus store for kicks and he told us all about the kinds o' weapons he could and couldn't have in Australia. No double sided kni'es, but some guns be allowed. No king's men batons or Ke'lar, but probably a katana. Weird laws. I suppose our country's rules probably seem just as arbitrary and odd.

We had t' pay a 'isit t' cheap fast food, so we went with Jack in the Box. We took along for a weekly Drink 'n Draw group o bilge rats, that we attend when possible. And we walked around the waterfront area on the warmest day last week as well. When cooled down, we made our way just a little out o' town t' go hikin' at the falls. We made it roughly six miles before returnin' t' the car and headin' back for a quiet e'enin' with some Rifftrax and The Happenin'. Without the former, we would ne'er have sur'i'ed the latter's effect on our sanity.

Between another action-packed week o' e'ents, we managed t' play some Scribblenauts and read a lot o' comics. These past couple o' weeks have had more in them than I'm used to, and as a result I'm lookin' forward t' spendin' the next weekend sittin' in once place and mo'in' as little as possible. If'n I can at all become a stationary blob and blend in with me furniture, I'll do it.

Oh, and happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, e'eryone. Ye'll ne'er get me buried booty!

PAX, Swine Flu, and More!

2009-09-12T13:57:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday I swept some clothes and a great many portable electronics into a backpack and hopped onto an Amtrak headed for Seattle. Upon my arrival, I was greeted with streets flooded with people. Immediately outside of the train station were streets and sidewalks swarming with shouting, painted, sweaty warriors on their way to a football game at a stadium next to the trains. I hurried away in the opposite direction as quickly as I could with my bulging backpack weighing me down. Rescue was not far off, however, and soon I found myself in a car whizzing past the meaty beings of sport worship.

Friday brought PAX, and with it, an incredible line wrapped around the outside of the convention center. I'm fairly sure that it had encircled itself throughout a wilderness and back, and I was fortunate that whatever wildlife normally dwelled there was frightened into hiding by the throngs of people, each armed with a different color and style of Nintendo DS.

Once the event began, the line moved swiftly enough and the Earthborn fellow and myself were able to make our way inside after passing the inspection of the convention center's aged sentinels. There may have been a rock formation on the way in. Fortunately our wilderness survival kicked in and we managed to somehow stay with the thousands of other people in line without straying into a man vs nature film.

Going in, I was expecting to be impressed by Diablo 3, perhaps something from Valve, and Bioware of course. What I wasn't counting on was that none of those would be at the top of my list on the way out.

Truth be told, the weekend is a bit of a blur. Friday brought a great surprise in the form of Borderlands. The team had bought impossible amounts of pizza for their show and ended up going about handing entire boxes of the stuff to people. This was impressive, but not nearly as much as the demo. What I knew of Borderlands going in was that it reminded me of Fallout with a more stylized look. Coming out, I can say that it is one of the games I'm most looking forward to that was at the show.

I cannot emphasize how deeply I approve of the style. Fallout 3, like many games Bethesda has worked on, was modelled and rendered realistically to the point of blandness. Of course, being a grown-up(or passing for one in regular society enough to count) still watching cartoons and reading comics, my taste is biased. I prefer heavily stylized and cartoony looks to things. I think that the newest Prince of Persia is gorgeous looking, although I held off on purchase because the gameplay didn't interest me. Borderlands has a great style that is like a living post-apocalyptic comic.

Looks aside, the gameplay is what really seemed to drag me in. Based on the small amount they played, I'm expecting to be able to meet up with friends online and complete small quests and fight strategic boss fights a la World of Warcraft, but without all the painful scheduling of 20+ people and levelling.

When I later waited in line to play the demo I was greeted by an imposing female booth-babe handing out posters. Not wanting to over impress the poor girl with my dazzling wit, I instead opted to ask if she had a rubber band to keep my poster rolled up and then shuffled uneasily under her presence. Mission accomplished!

Playing the demo brought me to two realizations. One, that I had not been reset and was trapped away from the group killing some sort of dog things for crystals. Two, I cannot and will not ever be used to playing a first person shooter on a damn XBox controller. Mouse and keyboard or GTFO.

Bioshock 2's best and most impressive selling point had to be that Jhonen was there signing his art briefly. Despite keeping an eye out for him all weekend, I didn't find him and only had evidence of his brief signing after it had happened. At this point, I doubt I would have much more to do than drool violently at him.

Bioshock 2 looks like Bioshock 1, but without the shiny lovely newness to it. I'm a little concerned that the video they showed gave only a glimpse of new plasmids and the Big Sister. Bioshock 1 was wonderful, but only somewhat because of having a Big Daddy and the weapons. The soul of the game is in the story and there was precious little indication of another great one following the first. Of course without Ken Levine, I have my reservations anyway.

I was impressed by Blazblue. The gameplay seems easy enough to fall into but deep enough to provide for some good fights. Unlike Street Fighter IV which I am continually cursing over, I found Blazblue's fights to be fun even while losing. Perhaps it had something to do with the adorable cat level.

I was a little disappointed with Valve's booth. Left 4 Dead 2 is all well and good, but I'd rather have more of their stuff up than one giant box with what, for all intents and purposes, should have been an addon. Where is episode 3? Left 4 Dead is done by a different group that Valve bought out if I'm not mistaken, so why not show us what the rest of the company is working on? I know it'll be good when it gets here, but toss me a taste!

Blizzard's area was laid out with Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and the new WoW expansion. I spent some time watching all of them. I quickly realized that however good Diablo 3 is, it's still Diablo, a dervish of clicking and hotkeyed potions/spells/abilities. There's a story, sure. It is laid deep under dungeons both indoors and outdoors and the same old loot system that's defined so much in its time. I'll likely play through single player as quickly as I can and then toss it aside in favor of other fare. Such are my fickle tastes.

The new WoW expansion led me to a similar realization. It's still WoW. As a player/quitter/player/quitter/player/quitter I have an on-again off-again relationship with the game. It's polished in so many ways but WAR took my MMO heart and until I see WoW steal some of the ideas from Warhammer Online and blend it with their tight gameplay mechanics and lag-free environment, I can't look back too fondly on it.

Starcraft 2 was the most impressive Blizzard game out. Somehow it looked like so much more than just another Starcraft game. It looked more balanced, interesting, and gorgeous. I can't wait to sit down and invest enough time to figure it out at some level. I will likely skip multiplayer entirely since there is no LAN play and I hate playing strangers online, particularly at strategy games. I'll be contented sitting, sipping a drink perhaps, and playing through the single player content.

The new Bioware game is still foreign to me. There were intimidating lines around it all weekend and I wasn't invested enough to give it a go.

Rockstar's booth had next to nothing of interest. Some stickers I suppose. It was a quiet little corner that seemed more like a calming point than a hub of gaming activity. Next to it, however, was Scribblenauts, which I am entirely sold on. In a brief amount of time, my friend was able to summon an alien, heaven(complete with God), and anti-shark spray. I was, myself, able to feed a narwhal bacon, roast beef, and watch it fight a hornet while I dug happily away. This game is going to be amazing when it launches a few days from now.

What I saw of Brink looked good. Aion seemed to have an unusual amount of female gamers clutched in its wonderful character creation system at any given time. I have heard good things, I hope the gameplay is something interesting. Dante's Inferno didn't interest me for long. As gorgeous as the setting was, I hit a quicktime event seconds into my first time playing it and felt strangely ill as something inside of me died. Perhaps that was their goal.

By the by, the cafe in the middle of the expo hall had incredible sandwiches. I don't know why Subway had such a long line outside when there was easy access to better food right there. Perhaps the trouble was the cost...

Also of note, of course, was Deathspank. Cartoony visuals with diablo-esque gameplay and the humor of Ron Gilbert to tie it together. Done by Hothead studios, which are fast becoming some of my favorite folks.

Saturday night brought a cavalcade of events. We tried to join the Magic party too late, and once spurned from the bar, we located some Jones soda outside to take instead. From there it was a short hop to an underground club with drinks paid for courtesy of the EVE Online folks. Scantily clad women in leather and lace seemed at odds with some of the gamer crowd, but in appearance only. I'm sure they're accustomed to worse crowds than some awkward gamers. A man I can only guess was the owner or manager had some slick duds on including a dress coat with tails that sparked some envy in me. Interview with the Vampire played on a wall in the entrance while two sets of music from different dimly-lit rooms stormed the aural cavities of everyone in the place. We met a fellow named Buddy in Steampunk getup who was so at ease with himself that he was instantly friends with whoever he spoke to.

We left the club shortly after some firebreathing/dancing show and wandered our way back to PAX where we joined the concerts just before Paul and Storm went on. Then it was Jonathan Coulton time and it was very very difficult staying awake until the end of his set, particularly with the tiny amounts of sleep the previous couple of nights had given me. I must be getting older.

Sunday was spent almost entirely in the expo hall enjoying the last glow of the event and raking in some loot as well. A friend of mine casually managed 17 shirts and should have left with a Deathspank figure if fate weren't such a cruel mistress. At my friend's house, we continued the easygoing mood by playing Munchkin: Cthulu into the wee hours. The next morning there was an oversized brunch, some Pike Place, and hard decisions of what to leave behind as my backpack was stuffed to the point of bursting should I keep one more DVD case in it. Hello Kitty MMO did not make the trip D=

Upon returning, I discovered that Swine Flu had spread throughout PAX. So far I've yet to show any flu-like symptoms, although I have been showing some swine-like tendencies so I may not be entirely in the clear.

That wraps up my brief little jaunty adventure into the outside world. I'm glad to have some space to myself and to once again be home in Portland.

Script Complete (In theory...)

2009-09-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I finished work on our graphic novel. My head felt the aftereffects first, a lightness -Kundera style - so I promptly emailed the endeavor to Grimlee and then passed out. When I awoke, not only did I find that I was still married to the same beautiful woman for three years (going on four), but that terrible yet thrilling dream I had sitting at a computer writing for weeks straight, strapped and chained to a chair, was real too. But it was over. And I cannot quite express that feeling in words, not written or spoken - though I've tried - and I feel that a moment of silence is best characteristic of that feeling, in part.

There.

I can say without ego that I this graphic novel is very promising, as in people might want to read it and enjoy doing so. I do hope it turns out the way I visualize it, as that world is set like an embossed stone tablet on the psyche. But that's the other wonderful part about this process: the art will always surprise in ways I cannot fathom. My part in this endeavor is not OVER, it has just transformed. Grimlee will take this piece of work, wrestle with it and wrangle it into something manageable, and I, like a Lord of the Rings fan going to the Fellowship of the Ring for the first time, will marvel at the way someone has reinterpreted and reconceptualized the proxy world I created in my mind. Then we will send it to you, dear readers, to experience for yourself that feeling of lightness, that feeling of silence we hope accompanies the reading of this work as well.

This past weekend (the 4th-6th of September) has been deeply enjoyable. PAX this year was bigger and better than the year last, with a multitude of companies showing off AAA titles. Of those I was able to play, Borderlands and Starcraft II seem to be frontrunners for my money. Non-playable demos that were extremely impressive include Deathspank, a very clever and humorous Diablo-esque game from Ron Gilbert, creator of Monkey Island.

I watched people play Forza Motorsport III on a triple-screen setup, I saw some people play Halo: ODST, I marvelled at the click-click joy that will be Diablo III, but I didn't feel I needed to play those games to know what they were like. Mass Effect II looks extremely promising, as the combat has been retooled, but, like with those previously mentioned, I feel that the heart of the game was not in the combat (what they were showing off) but in the navigating of text-trees and the development of characters you eventually fall in love with. Role playing is not best experienced with a ion blaster.

-eb

P/reparations

2009-08-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

Chapter 7 is in the works, meanwhile the Alien continues his epic sci-fi bounty-hunter saga "Other Side," and our Legislative branch flounders about as usual. I'm not getting into politics, not in career nor in casual conversation, anymore. That way leads to pain and terror, because talking "health-care" and "budget" seems to gind discussion to either inelegant ranting or a dead stop. My problem with this is I can't tell whether senators are honestly interested in fixing either of these things and I no longer care to force a headache on myself debating it. I'm not saying they're liars, but they share characteristics with wish-granting Djinn who, when you wish for fame, send a paddywagon and a TV crew to pick you up. The general public and those who make the laws are just not on the same wavelength of honesty. Nietzsche said it best: "perhaps no one has ever been sufficiently truthful about what 'truthfullness' is."

I'm getting off my soap box now, but I intend to post more regularly. A friend and I just finished the frighteningly awesome Shadow Complex on Xbox Live Arcade. And the Alien and I continue to spy/soldier it up on Team Fortress 2. We kill virtual people for fun. This--this is our recreation. In other E news, I am excited to read book 5 of Ross Campbell's Wet Moon, a series that is very close to my heart from a writer/artist I greatly respect. His Water Baby short was the first of his work I read and fell in love with. And it was the Alien, like a jilted lover, who introduced us.

--eb

The Big Project - An Update

2009-07-31T07:54:00.000-07:00

Both the alien and I have been hard at work on a Big Super Secret project. A secret project in addition to the short graphic story we've nearly finished. All this while the alien works a four-ten work week and I vegetate in front of my television in the hot Seattle July. Don't thank us, it's our job.

If you saw it, you might know why we're so cagey about releasing information -- this thing is our sweat-baby. A toil of over a year's worth of writing and preparation. It's not our fault the internet is full of thieves and reclusive pornographers so blood hungry they'll lick the bile from a walrus' scrote for fun. That's a good image to get while you're eating lunch. I'm sure somebody out there is.

Here's a bit of information: It's a graphic novel. Graphic, meaning pictures. Novel, meaning...novel. It's seven chapters of approximately 20-30 pages each. A decent length for any graphic work. It is also our first extended length collaboration, which means that we're trying to get it right the first time. With luck, there will be a second time and a third and so on, but right now we're focused (almost) exclusively on this one. I have another hint for those of you interested in literary analogues: Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio." Yes, indeedy.

We're on Twitter -- and who isn't nowadays? -- myself and my cohort.

I've also been reading and copy-editing a novel by a friend of mine. It's Science Fiction and very entertaining. If his current project doesn't work out, I'm sure this one will.

The short graphic story (which you can check out here) is nearly done. Page 7, the ultimate page, is in the works and aims to bring the themes and plot of the series to some sort of head. This is my first attempt at adapting a short story to the graphic medium, so there were many snags continually throughout the process. The alien and I have worked through each problem with the contentiousness and vigor of twelve-year-old boys in a pissing contest. In the end, it was a tie.

Compromise will out, in other words. But the process has been incredibly rewarding and thought provoking. We've learned a lot. We've grown. We've eaten great Indian food. And although we currently reside in different cities, I dream of one day moving next door to the alien so that I can watch him from my parlor window while he sleeps. Until then, I dream.

--eb

July

2009-07-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

There's this certain... pull against posting updates frequently. Generally I have nothing to say that I care to put in a blog, and so this space remains quiet for long stretches of time. If silence bothers you, dear readers, I know an excellent therapist that can listen to your woes.

I've been to see a great many movable pictures this week. I found the one about the moon, aptly named Moon, one of the more thoughtful of them. It's been too long since I've seen something I could call good science fiction, but this movie fits that bill exactly.

If you've been to our evil headquarters, then you know I've been working on a collaboration comic. It is winding down and should finish in another couple of weeks. I'll have the latest page posted shortly...

I had a friend, once, who was infinitely frustrated by my analytical nature for movies. I understand that there's a point you reach where you analyze everything to a point where you no longer enjoy them. I enjoy analyzing things and finding a way to like them regardless. I suppose most times, criticism and hatred go hand in hand. For me, I get more out of sinking my time into a movie if I'm going to be looking at it under that particular microscope. I can criticize a movie I love, and still love it afterwards. I can also criticize a movie I hate and, in some weird way, love that as well. As with the old Ren and Stimpy episode where Ren is trapped in the happy helmet, once he breaks free he realizes how much he loves to dislike things.

The movies I most enjoy are ones which provide ample playground for thought, and if it isn't provided, I find a way to provide it for myself. Some movies, however, are a black hole of intellect. Not in the way that they're terrible, for even movies like Evil Dead or (more recently) Drag Me to Hell are fun and stupid in the most delicious of ways. No, some movies threaten to cause fiery pain to anyone in the audience who has gone in with their brain still attached. Trying to figure them out is a fast track to bursting a blood vessel in your skull. These movies not only have nothing to think about, they actively seek to hurt you if you even attempt the act.

It's a bit like Idiocracy coming true before my eyes. And many days, I am overrun by the waves of thought pain it seems are leveled against me personally. Which is why, when a movie like Moon comes along, I am happy to claim it as forward momentum against the big brainless blockbusters that hurt me so.

Not that Moon is the perfect movie, or that I am the smartest of people. Take those into account and imagine me as a crotchety old crazy, peeking out my windows waiting for a chance to yell at those kids to get off my darn lawn.

Also, I enjoyed Harry Potter, Bruno, Food Inc, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Tasty.

Shentlemen

2009-06-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you folks, but I've been busy!

Some of the more curious among you may be wondering, "What are you busy with? More content for us to lap up?"

I'm sorry, curious readers, but no! Get off my lawn! I have nothing for you. Now stop toying around with my combustibles at once and rent yourself a seat on a dirigible out of town.

I'm excited, however, to get back to drawing some items for your perusal at a regular rate. I may even say that I've been aching to get something worthwhile done. Not that my _ahem time spent playing Team Fortress 2 isn't an incredible amount of fun...

Experimentation is fun, so expect some of that. Also, no guarantees, but I should have a short collaboration project finishing up soon to decorate your screens with like a pixellated vomit monster.

I don't know exactly why I write like I'm doing these things for you gentle folk. You're all a bonus. My reasons for making any of this are much more selfish, though.

Watch out for snakes.

Narcissism and A.D.H.D.

2009-05-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

I've always been a bit off the radar with the whole social networking bit. Until recently. Between that and swearing off television years ago, the disconnect from popular culture has been fairly interesting.

Sure, I still watch movies and tv shows. You've been able to stream them over the internet for awhile now. I suppose the difference is in the advertising. The screaming messages flashing in your face trying to get you to buy this or that. Most times, it isn't a product you have a need for, but rather a product they're trying to create a need for. Usefulness sells itself. To get you to want a product you'll never use, well, that takes marketing.

I don't miss that particular part of television, but now it's invaded my movies. No longer do I watch advertising in theaters that only consists of self-promotional. Now I have to sit through a slew of ads followed by the regular fluff. This extends movie time by half an hour or so.

Advertising surrounds us. With everything blasting full-volume in order to get our attention for a second, we develop an ADHD personality naturally. If your kids have no attention span, consider for a moment the world we're surrounded by.

Did I just refer to myself as a kid? Nix that.

Now we're all given not just a website, but our own world online that we can be the center of. Facebook, myspace, twitter, this blog, etc. We are the main stars of a public show put on for anyone who happens by. I am the shiny spectacle of adoration in this world, just like everyone else. Suddenly, my voice has weight, just like everyone else.

So what act to put on for this global stage? We must entertain, if nothing else. So maybe we improv, make it up as we go along, and try to maintain constant chatter to bring in the attention we know we deserve.

This is how narcissism and ADHD become a part of us. Because it's already a part of our culture.

Is this a problem? I can't decide. I do know that sometimes I feel better if I'm putting something out there on this stage. I don't necessarily want attention, as that is a scary, seductive kind of enslavement, but I do want to give back what I can. To make something true from fiction. I hope that in trying to do so, I become more skilled at it, so that the next time I try maybe it'll meet up to my own standards.

Until then, I spin my wheels and learn what I can from the experiment. And if it helps, I'll channel my cultured narcissism and ADHD into these vehicles. Kafka hated everything he ever created and wanted it destroyed, but a friend brought it to the public after his death. If it weren't for that, nobody would have ever known. Am I as unique a voice as Kafka? No, but I try. And if the stage is never brought alive, nobody ever knows what's going on behind the curtain. Maybe, possibly, there will be something worthwhile on it someday. Or maybe I'll just pull an Ed Wood and fill it with something so monumentally bad that it inverts and becomes good.

Now there's a goal I can get behind.

Art, Snobbery, Comics, Money

2009-05-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

The world of fine arts seems to be one of fame more than art. As I wander from gallery to gallery, I see a great many works of incredible art created by an unheard of artist, selling for a fraction of some large ungainly worthless piece created by someone who is already established. Many collectors are paying for name, not content, because it is your name that guarantees they will have a return on their investment.

And there are so many talented artists with no recognition, and talentless ones with more than they deserve. Of course there are great artists who are recognized, but anymore it seems that the art establishment looks down upon those with real talent and instead rewards those creating an unrecognizable mess. I'm not solely talking about abstracts, as there are good and bad abstracts as well as good and bad representational art.

On to the idea of comics. While I(and the comic-educated) would suggest that the medium is a fine art, that idea as a whole is still not very strong among the fine art community in the U.S.

The result is an outcast artistic community. We have our inner circle that we adore and praise, and the artsy community outside has yet to impose their haughty influence on it, so far. I see this as a boon for comics, because while fine art may be marketable solely on its "name brand", comics are still marketable on content as well as name recognition. Should comics wander into the realm of narcissism on the part of its creators, I think we would be seeing a lot more crap churned out and a lot more true art shunned. We could be seeing forewords in comics that read like an artist's description of their own exhibition. "Because of my advanced intellect and differences, I am able to see the true art of packing peanuts and express that in my art", and so on. Drivel.

Instead the mixture of creators we have are generally humble instead of boisterous. They surely have ego, but they don't have to put on as much of a show in order to sell snake oil paintings to dimwitted collectors interested only in the monetary rewards of their collection as opposed to the artistic rewards.

I suppose, in short, I find myself disgusted that proficiency with your subject matter matters for so little in the world of fine arts, but it matters more in the world of comics.

As a disclaimer, I should point out that my opinion of art is just that, opinion. Just like everyone else. Art is a label we assign. Its meaning is subjective. If you enjoy packing peanut art, and I do not, neither of us is wrong for our taste. We only have different expectations of art. As long as you're getting what you expect out of it, it's art to you, and nobody can change that.

The Tide Turns

2009-04-30T12:32:00.000-07:00

We have temporarily infiltrated the alienfetus's feed to speak to you, the other earth born, directly.

We will not be stopped by cataclysmic lasers, gravity beams, or anal probes.

We will not be deterred by interplanetary travel, wavy shields, or mind control.

We will not be mutilated by razor sharp objects, particularly in conjunction with cataclysmic lasers, gravity beams, and anal probes.

We will not allow our cattle to be taken, taunted with hay, and interrogated for their secrets. Their secrets belong to the earth born.

We will not allow the merciless taunting from the mothership to engender rage among our own kind. We shall stand united against this insidious foe.

We will unite!

We will fight!

We will stand our ground!

Message from the Mothership 5/1/09: We already control all of your livestock. All your base...

Spring is here. It's a little late.

2009-04-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

The forest is warm, suddenly, and all kinds of wildlife comes out catcalling, intimidating, singing, dancing, and barking.

Why, just last evening there was a rousing breakup taking place right outside of our shack. I only wish they could have been louder so that I could have heard the entire argument.

Spring was officially here a month ago, but now it feels like it. Everything is in bloom(even the obnoxious folks on the street) and gorgeousness has overtaken Portland. I may even have to go outside without a jacket on. This may sound strange, but I'm always slightly shy about letting my arms be seen after an entire winter of keeping them covered.

I'm very skinny, you see.

In any case, I'm in excellent spirits and there's a lot of excitement on the horizon. I hope you're all enjoying your season as well.
Regards,

A Proposition

2009-04-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

Gentlemen, and possibly ladies, may I introduce to you an idea?

Find yourself a random object. Anything you pass by during your day. Now draw a one-page comic or write a short story with that object as a major theme. The result? Something brilliant I am sure.

On a different note, I am currently trying to decide upon a proper lunch. Any suggestions?

In further news, the shack is coming together. I think it could still benefit from a doormat and perhaps some curtains for moths to feed upon. Those moths get awfully cranky if you don't keep them well fed. Thus far my collection of vintage hats has been sufficient for them but I fear my supply is starting to wane. Our constable keeps his presence mostly adorable with small measures of obnoxious thrown in, which is fitting. If he were to be cute full-time, it would be disastrous, as I would never leave.

I take my leave of you for now, dear readers. Assuming anyone is out there. Otherwise I'm just typing to myself, which doesn't bother me much since I spend a great deal of time talking to myself already. I'll just consider it an evolved form of that. I suppose that's what these "blog" things really are, just diaries we share with whomever passes upon them. Like a littering of words left in the paths of strangers, waiting to trip them and drag them in.

What a lovely image.

24-Hour Comic is Up.

2009-04-15T18:11:00.000-07:00

Good evening cool cats. I have a dire need for some dinner, but before they'll allow me food pellets, I have to update this thing since there's news. Yes friends, I have finally finished uploading the 24-hour comic to our website. Without that hanging over my brain, I may be able to enjoy some quality time with some Suikoden on the DS.

Scanning everything in and getting it touched up, and then uploaded, took entirely too long. I should find a way to streamline that process. Ahh well, it's over with now. I only hope you folks can enjoy the results.

In any event, I am for food.

36 Hours ago

2009-04-12T21:53:00.000-07:00

I started on the 24-hour comic about 36 hours ago, and finished it up 12 hours ago.

The good news is that it was a lot better than I was expecting. I was barely scraping pages together in time and the first thing to go was backgrounds. Ahh but I did finish and that's the best bit. There was quite a crowd around the table, including industry veteran and classy dude David Chelsea, who just finished doing this 24-hour comic thing for his eleventh time. He glided effortlessly in and out of conversations and made comic work look incredibly easy as the rest of us fought for quality or coherence.

To be frank, the entire crowd was filled with some very skilled artists and I felt outmatched by the work they all put out. Since it was a competition about beating the clock, not other people, I don't worry too much about that, but it sure was eye-opening to see so many talented folks in one room going crazy with each other for a full day.

Crazy it was. Hilarity was bouncing off the walls. The room had a bipolar air about it as the event went on, laughing insanely one hour and dropping into a fevered despair of scribbling the next. All in all we had nearly everyone who started summoning their grit and staying for the entirety of the event.

From my perspective, the entire thing was one big blur. Each page ate away its own hour in no time at all, and I was very nearly always just finishing up a page as the hour counted out its last minutes. I wasn't quite as fatigued as I thought I would be, but I did manage to sneak my way into the best chair in the room. Before I knew it, it was 7PM, 10PM, midnight, 2AM, 5AM, and then finally the end was upon us. Time passed only in pages finished and everyone saw their own best and worst brought out artistically. In all, it was a good time and I couldn't have envisioned a better setting for the whole thing.

I'll be posting my own comic here sometime this week. I rather forget what was going on in it. I'd go look at it but I fear that I have a dire need to pass out again.
Until next time,

Driver, Take Me to Drawtown

2009-04-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

As a resident of Portland, comic month is one busy month for me! But how splendid it is to have the option to do so many things. I could be forced to leave my shack a few more times than I normally allow myself.

Speaking of leaving the shack, I will be participating in Drawpocalypse 2 at Cosmic Monkey Comics starting tomorrow morning and going through until Sunday morning. For those of you who don't know what a 24-hour comic event is all about, I suggest you educate yourself. To sum up for the less inclined, the goal is to create a page an hour, every hour, for 24 hours. In the end you have a full comic of questionable taste.

I tried this once before but only made it ten hours. This time around I have plans to be shamed into finishing by the public nature of the event. We'll see if I make it or not. In any case, cheer me on and should I make it, I'll be posting the results here for your perusal. If not, well, we'll see.

Until next time, gentle readers.