Oranges

"That's the thing about oranges. No matter who you are or where you come from, they hold a special, almost symbolic place in your life."

- Desmond, in Other//half.

"Still Life with One Orange."

Greetings (No, Seriously- Greetings)

   Greetings, like, the greetings themselves. You know, like, Hello, Salutations, Felicitations, Heil Hitler, that kind of thing. First of all, they're kind of a pointless part of conversation, other than a bit we're going to get on in a minute (depending on how fast you read, of course.) I mean, do we really need to say, "I acknowledge that you are there. Shall we converse?" And half the time people don't even mean it to mean the shall-we-converse bit, either, anyway. They just acknowledge the other's presence, and then move on. Even waving as a form of greeting has the advantage of attracting the attention of the other in the first place, because our eyes are drawn to movement. People saying hello, except on the telephone and such, are already fully aware of the other's presence. But I suppose we have the ritually meaningful but otherwise pointless customs of congratulating people or wishing them good luck.

   When something of a short conversation is meant to be initiated, however, people generally like to start the conversation off with a question. Like, you know, a "what's up?" kind of thing. I am not the biggest fan of this approach, though it does actually have any literal meaning.

   It really bugs me when people greet me with a "how are you" type deal, like, "how have you been?" or "how's it going?". I am how I am, and I was how I was, and if you really want to know what's been going on in my life you should have been paying more attention to it earlier. Why should I tell you how I am? Unless I'm really super duper fantastic or ultra down in the dumps, of course, but there's no reason to report on what amounts to be an average day for me. Instead of saying, "how are you," I have a new greeting for everyone to use. Starting now.

   "A penny for your thoughts."

   Not nearly enough people say this anymore, if anyone actually said it in the first place. For those of us who think great thoughts, it gives us an excuse to share them, and for those of us who want to know how other people are doing, it has them share what they're doing at the moment if they're thinking about what they're doing at the moment. Everyone's happy.

  There could be some kind of entire mini-economy of pennies based around this, if everyone does use it. Maybe it could be the hallmark of some kind of brand new subculture. Or maybe it could be adapted into an old subculture. Like libertarians or something. Yeah, libertarians would eat that crap up. But, I stress to stress, you don't have to be a libertarian to do it; they'd just be one of the groups who do do it.

  A penny for my thoughts, right now? I should really get a PayPal or something, so people can ask me that over the intertubes.

The Con Digest

   New idea for a book: an almanac, published yearly, that details the panels and workshops that went on at all the major nerdystyle conventions of that year, all the tech and anime and comic conventions, from GenCon to DEFCON to BronyCon and everything in between (BronyCon is major, isn't it?) Maybe this idea could also work as a website, or even a magazine, but I'm trying to get away from newsletters here. I just like the idea of these big thick almanacs, just actual books you can hold in your hands that have heft to them, giving the publishing industry some cred back. There's something satisfying about actual physical almanacs.

   So, the Con Digest. It's all (or some) of the goodness of attending an actual convention without the embarrassment of showing your geek face in public. If you really did get to attend the con, then it allows you to go over the panels you missed. And if you didn't, same deal. I mean, sure, this information probably is available elsewhere, but in one centralized location? I think not.

   Or maybe this is already a real thing. Please tell me it's already a real thing. Probably just as a website. If you are a real website, expand your business into making almanacs. Please and thank you.

Profession

   "Profession" is a funny word. To be pro, to be a professional, you have something as your job- rather, your profession. Obvious, right? But profess also means to tell, or even to admit. If you're a professional, you admit that you're good at this one small area of expertise, and that you might not be at other areas. If that's what professional means, I'd rather be an amateur.

   Jack of all trades, Renaissance Man of none.

Well, I Suppose it Fits the Theme

   I saw this the other day and said to myself, hey, why not. It fits the theme of the blog and there's really nothing better to post today. So here it is.

http://animaltracks.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/30/10940980-hakuna-matata-real-life-timon-and-pumbaa-hang-out

Humans, As Promised...

   ...I really agree with should stop, too. For now. Really, the only reason I brought it up in the first place is because I already had a post scheduled about being inspired by the sandy weather, which happened to be Exuviae's subject of the day. I had to post my own post soon, and I would have posted it the day it happened to me, but the post before that day deserved immediate follow-up. 

   So anyway.

   Apparently Adobe Illustrator CS5 (and maybe some earlier versions, too, who knows) has this thing called Live Trace, which allows you to convert bitmap images to vector images. I had great fun with this today, using them to sharpen up some movie poster ideas I had. I kind of intended them both to be rom coms, but I was new to the technology on the first one, making it look more stylized like some kind of a '50s-style heist flick, and the second one came out looking way too serious (apparently neither Michael Cera nor Emma Watson take funny photos, and the subject matter doesn't really scream "chick flick.")

  Here they are.

   Veni Vidi Vici: Why no one has yet made a romantic comedy by this name is beyond me. Its name is perfectly suited for a chick-flick type logo, what with the three short words just begging to be stacked. I deliberately swapped the names on the poster, with Amy Adam's name above Gerard Butler's figure and vice versa (hey more Latin), as an appeal to trope. The posing of Gerry's figure is far too serious for some kind of romantic comedy poster, however, and I didn't really make his hair in its signature stick-uppy style, so it looks slicked back Sinatra-like. And the way they're looking at each other suggests not romance, but something more mischievous, like they're casing the joint or something. I couldn't make the film's tagline "When in Rome" as that's already the name of a rom com, so I switched it to "Do as the Romans Do," which also makes it sound like a heist film. So, why not. It's a heist film. A romantic comedy heist film. Which is better than my original idea of not having a single clue as to what the actual plot would be.

 

   In Passing: This one was originally going to be posed with them holding each other's hands, only with Emma's character being see-through because she is a ghost (the male of the relationship being the ghost is apparently already like a Patrick Swayze film.) But it was running too late to have the figures for the bodies be separate models from the heads for posing purposes, so I had to use what I had. I tried to make the film's tagline some sort of cross between "go back to the beginning" and "death is only the beginning." And I got slightly more creative with the logo on this one as well, the only reason my having of the first idea of course being because I could make the logo so cliché. This film looks like some kind of serious romantic thing that is almost as intelligent as it seems to think it is.

   But, anyway, I notice how Exuviae doesn't really refute my claim that he has more talent than I do.

You Asked for It

   Point well made, Exuviae. Point well made. I had forgotten to factor in such things as, like, altruism and stuff. Or maybe you hang out with someone less cool than you because you think they're "cute" or funny, or... Well, you know. A friend. So he has a point there.

   Alright, maybe he has all the points. That's why I have these theories. I said that friendship is driven by feelings of inadequacy, and that's really just because I feel that he's got so much more talent than I do. Yet he deigns to be my friend. Which is why I'm willing to let being called only "pretty" cool slide.

   But not all of his post was directly in response to my own. He really just kind of shoehorned that last bit in there. So perhaps this continuation of the crossover will tie it all together:

      I should really do some humans one of these days, shouldn't I? Tomorrow, then. I do it tomorrow.

Friendship is Driven by Feelings of Inadequacy

   My theory on friendship is: you are friends with those whom you perceive to be cooler than you. Why would you want to hang out with losers? Thus the adulation makes you humble, rather than proud. That is, after all, why we bow to applause. The praise of someone cooler than you actually means something.

   It's one of those "legendary" situations: the immovable object's immovability does not subtract from the fact that the unstoppable force is unstoppable. Your friends are not suddenly losers because they elect to hang out with you, a loser. It's just really rather sweet of them. You do all you can to live up to their expectations whenever they're around you, so what they perceive to be the normal "you" is someone actually cooler than the real you. Even if you feel like you can be yourself around your friends, to them your own loser habits are just a sign that you're fearless of what others think, and thus still cool.

   Since it works both ways, with both in a relationship thinking the other better than they, people's estimations of others are generally way higher than reality, even in completely honest relationships. Freaky, huh?

Yes, the Band

   I guess the windy weather is making me just as pensive as Exuviae over there.

   In a long and twisting and somewhat arbitrary but ultimately fitting events, yesterday I found myself at Harmon School, a historical stone brick building built in 1915. There were a team of Boy Scouts there doing a restoration of sorts to (her?). I was wary of going outside the relative safety of the car, as the wind was blowing sand like crazy, which caused some eye irritation last time I worked in similar conditions.

  But I felt I had to get out.

   On the stage in the building there, there is a really old beat-up piano there that produces the most beautifully heartbreaking sound. It's in this old echoing wooden gallery, the acoustics of which magnify the effect. It is this specific sound that is the piano in Wrong of Me, from Comrade Helicopter's latest album Birds Cracking Foxy. Really complements the melancholy minimalism of the song.

   It was on this piano that I played with the weather raging around me outside. I played it...

   And then I got to go home. There's only so many haunting melodies you can play on a half-destroyed pianoforte.

How I Will Improve My Skills as an Artist

     Yesterday I posted about wanting to improve my artistic skills. Alright. Since I know where I am, (pointy point A) and where I want to be (pointy point B), it's fairly easy to figure out how to get there.

   THINGS I'VE GOT TO IMPROVE

   I've never been a big fan of my own line work, but it might be just one of those inescapable things that come with your own style, like the sound of your own voice. As it is, though, I just think that my lines are kind of weak. Tablets work for me, though. Maybe I could digitize my pencil underwork and use the tablet instead of traditional pen work. Couldn't hurt.

   Another thing I need to learn is coloring. I was never much one for coloring books as a child, and they say that coloring is one of those things more for left-brained people, but coloring with light and shadow effects is really important for the illusion that the drawing is depicting a three-dimensional space.

   THINGS THAT ARE GOOD ENOUGH AS TO IMPROVE NATURALLY, HOPEFULLY

   Posing and proportions of figures, as well as perspective, including three-dimensionality of figures. I'm not quite the best at the underlying shapes that comprise figures yet, but I think I'm good enough not to have to worry about it.

   THINGS THAT ARE FINE AS IT IS

  Design and attitude. I guess that's something that can't be taught. I've got my style, and I suppose a keen eye for what works and what doesn't. What really matters, though, is a love for the craft. I'm not going to lie and say there's no end of that, but there's certainly not a shortage of it.

Past, Present (which is actually slightly in the past, but not enough for anything of any real significance to happen within the timeframe) and Future (hopefully.)

   They call the things I did the past, and the things I am doing the present. They call the past the past because it's passed, though they don't call the present the present because it's a present: rather, they call the present the present because it's pre-sent, or before the future (it involves, like, Latin past participles, which is something up into which we shall not get. Or at least not here.) Likewise, they don't call the things I will have done the future perfect tense for nothing. They call it that because you get the future by combining the present (where we are) with the past (where we have been) and, like, extrapolating them. Thus, the future perfect is a combination of the present and the past, or, in other words, the future perfect is the presast. That is why they say the thing which they say, they thing which they say being "presast makes perfect."

   I once was unskilled, but now am slightly better, and I hope to improve even more. It's not enough to be good, is it? You have to be great, or even the best. At whatever. And at whatever, I practice when I can find time and materials. I do not know the future, but I am an optimist, or at least a realist in a world that's going to rock (see post The Good New Days.)

PAST:

   Since 100% of the art I ever did was done here in the past, it was kind of hard to choose an example. I settled on this pic of a serving wench I drew for Cap'n Patches and the Pieces of Eight, a pirate adventure taking place in a world where dogs and cats sail the high seas:

Ahhh! Kill it! Kill it!

   Alright, I wasn't very proud of that one when I first drew it, (and now I'm putting it on the internet- great) but I feel it's pretty typical of that era (that era being Sophomore to Junior year of high school.) You can see my earlier abortive attempt at drawing digitigrade feet on the top there, then my slightly better version on the bottom. The tail is also slightly better on the bottom one, as on the top it's just sort of pants. The skirt is far too tight to allow any degree of movement whatever on the top; slightly better on the bottom, with, if you'll notice, some curvature on the hemming as it goes away behind the leg from the viewer, giving illusion of a three dimensional space, so that's not bad.

   On the top, it's not that the head is too small; I think the problem here is with the neck. Plus, the face looks like a dude's, which I tried to work out to the right. The forehead slopes too much, and neither thick eyebrows nor thick whiskers are very feminine. Also, I wasn't sure where to place the ears at first, making her look more like a bat or something. This is why nowadays I like doing a pencil under-sketch before doing the inking on top. Not only does it allow for underlying anatomy to be worked out, but it also allows for sort of a quick and dirty preview before the final inking is applied. Which brings us to

PRESENT:

   Just, a drawing I just did right now specifically for this post. That's as close to the present as you can get, making it a pretty good example of where I am right now. Revisiting the world of Cap'n Patches feels good.

   Note, like I said above, how I pencil before I ink. I like the posing of the figures here. I'm actually impressed by my own talents on this one (low expectations, I guess), though there's still a lot left to be desired. It's nothing yet like

FUTURE:

   What I hope to be able to do one day.

Behold the majesty.

   Thomas Novotny over at Ohnitsch Cartoons is one of the more incredible toon artists out there. I guess there's hope for me yet, as he has been getting better ever since he first started posting, though even some of his really sloppy early ones aren't as blinding as some of my own worse ones.

Eh, I guess that's better.

The Price of Your Freedom

   To solve the problem of the price of your freedom, we must keep in mind that the truth will set you free. In other words, You and Freedom, or "your freedom," are put in the set of the Truth. From there, it's a simple logic problem:

{Freedom, You}= Truth
Truth= Beauty
Pretty= Picture
Picture= 1000 words
Talk= Cheap
Cheap= 2 bit
2 bits= 25 cents

Your Freedom= $250

   Plus tip, that's $287.50, payable to any soldier (so long as that soldier is on your side, of course.)

The Most Disappointing Thing

   Looking up the word "velamen," I found it to mean the thick, spongy integument or epidermis covering artificial robots. This was the coolest thing ever. Skin for robots. Then I looked again, and it actually said it was the spongy covering on aerial roots, not artificial robots. This was the most disappointing thing ever.

A New Theory for Your Consideration

   New theory: it was not Hobbes who was imaginary, but Calvin. Bear with me on this.

   In Freudian psychology, we have the id, the ego, and the superego. The superego represents restraint and the id represents impulse, yes? Between them is created to ego. Makes sense so far, right?

   So my theory is that Hobbes represented both the id and the superego, which has between them the mediation in the form of Calvin. Hobbes is more mature than Calvin (obviously) thus representing restraint and superego. But for the mediation of the id and the superego to be such a trouble maker, that would require Hobbes's id to be extremely powerful. He'd have to be like some kind of wild animal or someth... Oh.

   We do see Hobbes's libido (id power) to be quite strong at points. Pouncing on Calvin is, after all, one of his defining character traits. He is shown to have the hots for Susie Derkins, even going as far as to suggest her becoming a member of GROSS- and even, at one point in '96, he is shown to have the hots for Rosalyn the babysitter. He seems to be fair obsessed with smooching, although he'd be the first to admit that he doesn't know where babies come from. And who could forget the "hot tigress babes" of the National Geographic magazine (man, have we been there, brother.)

   You know that Bill Watterson knows enough about psychology to know his basic Freudian theory. The natural extension of a sapient tiger, the wild animal balanced with the philosopher, would obviously be a six-year-old boy who never ages, even as the years go by. Obviously.

  ...

  Yeah, I'm still working on it.

Sparks

   For thousands of years people used to wear woolen clothes and when they took them off at night they saw sparks. I wonder what these people thought thousands of years ago of these sparks they saw when they took off their woolen clothes? I am sure that they ignored them and the children asked them, Mother, what are these sparks? And I am sure the mother said, you imagine them! People must have been afraid to talk about the sparks so they would not be suspected of being sorcerers and witches. Anyhow, they were ignored, and we know now that they were not hallucinations, that they were real, and that what was behind these sparks was the same power that today drives our industry. And I say that we too in each generation see such sparks that we ignore just because they don't fit into our picture of science or knowledge... 

   I think the notion of science- what is scientific and what is not- will change in time. There are many facts that cannot be worked out in a laboratory, and still they are facts. You cannot show in a laboratory that there has every been a Napoleon, you can't prove it as clearly as you can an electric current, but we know there was a Napoleon.

-Isaac Bashevis Singer

What This Blog is About

   I use, like I said, a lot of my ideas in my fiction, so the things here have got to stand alone. What that leaves is my art that is unconnected to any projects, as well as some of my more introspective pieces. This is really my art/theory blog. You will see my theories get more advanced, maybe, and my art get better, hopefully. I update this blog daily, and that is not arbitrary: it is for the purpose of doing the awesome and unique. I hope to one day watch the Lion King, the greatest animated film of all time, every day for an entire year, and blog about my experiences with it it each day. Will it be as good by the end of it?

  No, probably not.

  But I will notice some stuff each time, and when I do, you'll be the first to know.

Pro Tips for Poets

A little metaphor goes a long way.

Start out by writing as many sonnets as possible. It doesn't matter if they're good or not; what's important is that you practice with a rigid poetic structure so you get the feel for stressed and unstressed syllables.  Mastering this makes your free-form poetry all the more powerful.

If you want to describe something as being deep or lush, use words such as "deep," or "lush." I'm not kidding on this one; it's amazing how much you can accomplish through imagery alone.

Assonance! Assonance with s is always good when not overused, with p is best used subtly so as not to halt the action with the hard consonant sound, and with f is somewhere in between s and p, so use as your own discretion.

Thesauri are your friends. Poetry is all about the nuance of phrase, and there is no such thing as true synonym, as each individual word in the English language conveys something slightly different. I've found it best to find the feeling you want to convey first, and structure the rest around those words.

Just because it rhymes doesn't make it true.

My Bed Sheet

Awe-inspiring, aren't they?

   The sheet on my bed, the last thing I see of the day, is pretty dawgin'. As you can see, it is covered in Disney characters. I don't know much about the sheet in question, but from the tag I can tell this much: it is a 50% cotton, 50% polyester blend, manufactured by a company by the name of Pacific, which just might refer to Pacific Fabrics & Crafts, though to the extent of my knowledge that company only makes fabrics, and doesn't sew them into bed sheets on their own. This is really all I can tell about it, seeing as how the rest of the tag is all frayed...

This is why they tell everyone but the customer not to cut these things off. Because they've got important information on them. What should happen is, the customer does cut off the tag, then archives it in a safe place so that they never lose care instructions.

   Presumably, it was made after 1973, when Robin Hood came out (a property that the sheet maker seems to love, as fully 20% of the bed sheet, or four out of the twenty individual frames on it, depict the characters therein, second only to Alice in Wonderland characters, which has 30%, or 6 out of 20, of the frames, after that, Bambi has three of twenty of the frames, or 15% of the sheet. The rest of it is covered with non film-specific Disney properties: the Ducks, the Mouses (with dog,) and apparently Chip the 'munk.) What year after 1973 is not clear, as all the copyright says is WALT DISNEY PRODUCTIONS, with no year. But, anyway, that's not the point. The real point of this is, the characters seem to be aware of the characters in neighboring frames:

 

   And yet...

Whoa, Robin. Bow Safety 101. Really, I can expect this kind of crap from Skippy there, but you?

Hell, or High Water

   Clichés rock. I know that as writers, we are told to avoid clichés like the plague. There is a difference between a cliché and an idiom, though, remember- everyone uses idiomatic expressions and figures of speech, and they only become cliché when they are used banally, incorrectly, or even pretentiously. There's a certain familiarity with clichés that allows us to build off of them to achieve new heights, or remix them into complete non-sequiturs while still having people know what's going on. This allows us to layer our humor: the inherent wit of comparing two things cleverly, as well as the angle of sheer bafflement that we feel when we come across something incongruous. Think of it as a complex pun cum pop culture reference.

   The imagery is never separated from its form; at some level, the message and the messenger must be one. Clichés, with their familiarity, allow us to see both, because at once we know what they mean and wonder why they are so idiomatic. We can achieve some rather clever things with this, turning clichés on their head:

Came the flood, we stood together in high water,
Professor's son and farmer's lovely daughter,
Sandbagged and sturdy, doing rather well.
What broke us were the good times: They were hell.

-from Orson Scott Card's view on the subject. 

   Also. We must remember to keep it in mind that at the end of the day, not only is not every idiom a cliché, not every cliché is an idiom. These can't be remixed as well, but still, sometimes, it's fun to use non-idiomatic clichés. At the end of the day, that's just something you can't buy. Also, at the end of the day, "at the end of the day" is just something you can't buy. And "just something you can't buy" is also just something you can't buy.

  Clichés!

Surf's Up

   And not a day after I upload a drawing I did in my spare time in High School French just for the sake of getting a drawing uploaded, I finish coloring the "Surf's Up" picture from my first post. Huh. Well, here it is. Coloring sure makes you realize all the mistakes you made in your original drawing (yeah, I see what's wrong with the surfboard), but I promise I'll get better at this.