Where have all the Bastards Gone?

Drawing pin-ups, apparently.  And working on the comic: An Arrow in the Moon, you need to read it; it's quite good and more fun than a punch from Gregor Clegane.

But yeah, I've been trying to get into pin-up girl style lately, with varying success.  Here's two of what I feel like are my better ones.

Hanna the Barbarian

Get it?  Like Hanna Barbara, what made all them moving
picture shows.

Across the Sky

Yes, I did in fact take a screenshot of Gadget from
Rescue Rangers and use it to color parts of this drawing.

Making Drawrings

I write this blog post as Samsung is on the cusp of releasing what the media (other bloggers) are calling "the most powerful tablet ever".  The Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition.  You'd think they'd have come up with some cool name, like the X-99 Velocirapter Diesel Face Punch, but I digress.  To do my part in maintaining the perpetual tech-hype machine, I've gone and bought... a good condition unit of last years model.  Dude, I'm not made of money, what do you expect?  I ain't one of those chumps what camps outside the Apple store because they're releasing a new thing that's the same as the old thing, but with color options.

But I didn't start this to talk about planned obsolescence and Apple and all that noise.  I just wanted to do a quick rundown of a pretty cool app called Layer Paint that in my opinion, was the best solution for drawing on the go with a fairly slow android tablet.  Layer Paint doesn't have quite the feature set that Sketchbook Pro does, but I was on a Le Pan II and the lag in combination with the crayon-sized stylus was just too much to overcome for most purposes.  Not so with Layer Paint, which at a mere three bucks from Google Play gives you layers, canvas sizes up to whatever your device can handle, and a decent selection of brushes, along with the basics like fill and gradient.  Here's two of the better drawings I squeezed out of the Le Pan II / Layer Paint combo:

 

Both of those are from requests at a sub-reddit I frequent: /r/redditgetsdrawn  It's great for drawing practice by the way.

After upgrading to the more powerful processor of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, I still used Layer Paint and to scrawl this image:

5 Layers, 1800 x 1800, the Galaxy Didn't stutter at all.

Truth be told, I intend to start using Sketchbook a little more now because the horrible lag is gone, but I'll still fire up Layer Paint for quick sketches.  It's just simplistic and doesn't get in its own way, like those weird word processors that have minimal features and just edit text, looking like an old DOS screen.  It remains to be seen if the current setup is good enough to maybe try a page of An Arrow in the Moon.

A Three-Year Engagement

November's just over a month away.  For normies, that means football, leaves changing colors (if you live in a place where they actually do that), and something about Native Americans hosting a dinner for a bunch of people who got kicked out of England for wearing buckles on their hats.  (Seriously, it's not like the buckles were holding anything up.  Stupid pretentious fashionista Pilgrims...)  For myself and thousands of other writers, it means the self-imposed stress of National Novel Writing Month.  If you're not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it's this writing challenge that takes place every November where you write a fifty-thousand page novel in thirty days and behave like some neurotic, OCD novelist while your friends and family shake their heads and call you names behind your back, provided they don't already do that, in which case, you probably won't notice.

There are no real stakes and no real enforcement of the rules, except maybe some decent discounts on writing software and similarly related products, so it's kind of hilarious how stressed out people can get over their NaNoWriMo project.  I imagine people new to the idea raising an eyebrow and asking "What's the point?  What do I get out of this thing?"

After a brisk backhand to the cheek, I imagine Yoda narrowing his eyes whilst stating "Only what you take with you," because I'm a gigantic nerd and should probably get out of my Mom's basement.  I'm joking again; I live in Southern California and nobody has a basement here.  But I digress...

This year will mark three years since my first successful Nano and holy shit, I promised to release the damn thing independently on Kindle, Nook, etc, then become rich and famous like that pervert who wrote 50 Shades of Gray.  I even used GIMP to paint a nifty cover before promptly going all lame and putting it on the back burner.

Yeah, so it's an adventure novel involving radioactive mushrooms and international espionage in an alternate diesel-punk timeline.  I've decided I'm finally going to put this thing out before November because three years is a long ass time to sit on a project that in purely technical terms is only long enough to be a "novella".  I decided that just now as I was writing.  As soon as I finish this blog entry.  Hah, I'm already procrastinating on the editing by not ending this blog because once I end this blog, it means I have to get started...  And I will.  Right.  Now.

That's impossible, even for a computer!

Back in the early days of the internet, when X-Files fan pages and the *blink* tag roamed the web, I would frequent a number of amateur film sites run by teenagers like myself who were trying to create movies with whatever we had available at the time.   By today's standards, this included technology just a step above the phenakistoscope but not as steampunkishly awesome.  Remember VHS-C?  You're better off if you don't, unless you produce training videos for the Dharma Initiative.  And by "film sites" I mean personal pages on GeoCities, Tripod, Angelfire, and the like that read more like wish lists of the movies we wanted to make someday.  I'm talking old school, basic HTML, on dial-up connections that would be taxed to their limits by a simple blog with a few pictures.  That didn't really matter though because it was 1996, what the hell is a blog, and did you hear about this movie coming out called Independence Day?  Looks awesome.  Bonus points and a meteoric rise in the pecking order would occur if anyone managed to actually go through the somewhat hellish process of capturing their film-videos and (gasp) putting them up for people in the larger world to see.

After around eight years of slogging through with Pentiums, Pentium II's, III's, AMD Athlons, Semprons and Decepticons and the like, I started to realize that when it came to both hardware and software, my old "If it didn't cost so much, I'd be making indie films every month" excuse was growing less and less credible.  I had a miniDV camcorder and my dual core Athlon desktop could edit standard definition video fast by MySpace era standards.  I was at the tail end of film school, soon to have a Bachelor of Fucking Sciences degree in Film and Media Production (BFS Degree.  Look it up fool.).  I was doing a webcomic called Section 3! (Now resurrected maybe, we'll see) using mainly Photoshop 7.  Youtube was about to become a thing.

Then I got a job.  Like an actual job that didn't involve shoveling popcorn or stripping the coating from copper telephone cables (not even joking, the temp-world is a strange place sometimes).  The ultimate excuse for a procrastinating creative type is "growing up".  It was perfect because with HD available to all, tablet computers and a billion ways to get your work in front of people, I felt like one of those college sport stars that turns into a draft bust but whatever, I was getting paid.

But I still want to make movies.  I still want to tell stories, be it through comics, animation, film, or monosyllabic grunts while explaining my latest cave painting.  I decided to get back into it with NaNoWriMo and more recently, a new webcomic called An Arrow in the Moon.  As I did, I suddenly realized that all the stuff I hoped for back in the old days had arrived.  The things that were always "on the horizon" in the early 2000's actually showed up, RIAA and MPAA attempts to disrupt the tech be damned.  Video editing is not expensive anymore and the need to "capture" from sources is essentially gone or a one-step process.  A basic laptop in the sub $700 dollar range can edit HD video without a problem.  You can put your work up on YouTube, Vimeo, or just throw it up as a torrent.

So what's the point of this, the longest blog post I've put up to date here?  It's for me to complain like an old man about how easy you whippersnappers have it these days.  We would have killed for the stuff that exists now back in the day, I'll tell you what.  And even if we did have it back then, we had to walk fifteen miles in the snow to access it. And before that, we had to walk fifteen miles just to get to the snow.  Actually, this post is more of a letter to myself, reminding me that things are possible now.

So I need to get off my ass, you need to get off my lawn, and we need to start creating, because the technology is here, it's relatively cheap, and despite all this, I estimate 80% of the stuff coming out of mainstream media/entertainment is kind of garbage.

Below:  Amazon links to things I use, because they say I get money if I convince people to buy them.  Lacking items like Photoshop, higher-end Wacom stuff, and Some other Adobe products because they're all high-quality, but linking them here goes against my thesis of creativity on the cheap.

• Manga Studio 5: This program is the stuff if you're making comics.  I was kind of skeptical because the non-EX version is under a hundred dollars.  Amazon's got the best price I could find if you're not a current student.  If you are, I think you can go directly to Smith-Micro and get it for $50 bucks.
• Sony Movie Studio Platinum Suite 12: That's quite a mouthful.  Disclaimer:  I actually use an earlier version of this, but unless they completely dropped the ball, this program's got everything you need to edit HD video unless you're trying to get your stuff ready for 35mm theatrical release.  Sound tools are above average.
• SketchBook Pro 6 : Simple and cheap.  Missing some advanced features you'd find in Manga Studio or Photoshop, but great if you just want to draw without a bunch of nonsense everywhere or consider a lot of photo manipulation stuff to be "cheating".
• Monoprice 10X6.25 Inches Graphic Drawing Tablet: The only thing that is a little sketchy (ha! see what i did there?) about this thing is the pen.  It feels a little like it could break on you, but after a year of heavy use, it hasn't.  Also, the drivers are a little strange.  You can find updated ones at UC-Logic, but be warned.  The site is a little ESL.

The Forest is Watching

More symbol design for my upcoming webcomic.

Within the ancient forest of the Aermyn, you are never alone.

Con Man

Things I learned at Comic-Con International 2013...

Jennifer Carpenter steals things.  Specifically, she took "a lot of stuff" from the Dexter set after they wrapped shooting for the final episode.  It was insinuated that she even yoinked the blood spatter paintings Michael C. Hall intended to take as souvenirs.  In case you missed it the first time, she reiterated that she took "a lot of stuff".  Also, she wants Deb to die because she does't want her in her head anymore.

"No I'm serious.  I think I might be going to jail..."

Kevin Smith is one of the world's greatest motivational speakers.  Nearly every person who came up to the mic on his Saturday night panel talked about how Lunchbox changed their lives in some profound way.  Not bad for a man whose most famous on screen character is known for being silent.  Snooch to the nooch.

Jim Lee is Stan Lee's son.  The Marvel Comics Legend legally adopted the talented artist after his entire village was mercilessly fire-bombed during the Asian Pacific War of 1973, leaving young Jim as the only survivor.  Thankfully the successful UN program known as "We are One World" connected the two of them and the rest is history.

The previous thing I said regarding the two Lee's is completely untrue.  Every.  Single.  Word.

Something true.  Jim Lee is a smart ass and his panels are highly entertaining, especially when you consider it's just some Korean dude drawing on an overhead projector.  In high school we called that Physics class.

Oh crap, he's lost it...

...Never mind.

Neil Gaiman looks like Snape.  I already knew this, but every time I see him in person, my brain treats it as new information.

American Superheroes are creepy as fuckall when done by a Japanese animation house.  Although I definitely liked the flick, "Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox" took some getting used to in terms of visuals.  Also, it apparently takes the Dread Pirate Roberts (Cary Elwes) voicing the character to make Aquaman bad-ass.

By Saturday night, the tents outside of Hall H smell like the camp of a mongolian raiding party, complete with horses, after riding day and night, unbathed for a week.

Any attempts by security to actively control a crowd of nerds is less effective than stepping back and letting said crowd of nerds regulate itself.

Steampunk is still gaining popularity.  It's only a matter of time before suburban rich kids co-opt the movement into the more mainstream friendly, watered down, Steam Pop-Punk.  I hope not.  Here's some "Chap Hop".  It's fucking weird.  That makes it pretty cool.

Finally, I took like a billion pictures.  Combined with the billions I've taken at comic-cons in the past, that makes for like, several hundred pictures.  Look for full on photographic goodness next time as I continue the SDCCI 2013 post-game..

Molorhan Swordbill

This is the emblem of the Molorhan Army.  Never heard of the Molorhan Army?  That's because the webcomic which features them, (written and drawn by myself) hasn't started it's run yet.