Archive for the ‘Story’ Category
Feeling really blah today. Saw “How to Train Your Dragon” this weekend. Easter happened, or Eoster, or Ishtar, or Astarte. Did know know rites celebrating resurrection around Easter-season existed thousands of years before Jesus was born? Got lots of leftover food.
Danielle and I were besieged by ants. We keep a clean kitchen, but they were all over the slightest crumbs. So we got some diatomaceous earth to wipe the filthy buggers out.
You know what I was busy with for the past few weeks. Lyndsey, back from Anime Boston, approved the image!
I’ve set my alarm clocks a half hour earlier so we have more time in the morning. The goal is to have more time and become more productive. I’m in the gross twilight zone of sleep deprivation that happens 48 hours after I change my schedule. I’ve always been a person who appreciates my unconscious life as much as (and sometimes more than) my waking life. Messing with the balance really throws me off.
Danielle is starting a brave new project. She blogging the process of working through a craft book – Crafter’s Devotional – as well as workbook assignments from Wreck This Journal and The Artist’s Way. It’s a lot to take on, and I’m proud of her ambition. Daily blogging sure puts my once-a-week routine to shame.
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ME: Oh, it’s Alan-a-dale.
DANIELLE: *blank stare*
ME: The rooster.
DANIELLE: Oh yay!
I sometimes like to whistle the theme from Disney’s Robin Hood and see whose ears perk up. Those people tend to be on our side.
Been working a lot this weekend, as you can see from the blog. Here’s the state of the Zorbius/Riikos illustration:
That’s coming along nicely. Lyndsey and I had some phone conversations ironing more details out. I spent most of Saturday in or preparing to go to a birthday party for a relative. It was a cookout and the weather was nice. Ugh. I’m allergic to sunlight and fresh air, in case I haven’t made that clear.
While I’m very proud of the progress I’ve made, I’m frustrated by how much time the actual drawing is taking. I used to be a lot faster!
Also in-progress: Alucard from Hellsing versus Edward Cullen from Twilight. Guess who’s winning. Go on.
"C'mon Edward! Unleash your powers! Read my mind! Predict my attacks! C'MON! C'MON!! C'MON!!!!"
I think this article sums up how I feel about vampire mania as it exists in pop culture today.
Tags: alucard, BBC, birthday party, disney, drawing, edward, hellsing, robin hood, rooster, twilight, vampires
Posted in Rant, Screenshot Update, Story, Uncategorized, Work in Progress | 2 Comments »
I WISH WISH WISH I ‘d had a camera with me today.
Doing a timed run for the bus company, we found ourselves in Rowley, where the farms and houses are awesome and expensive. The midday sun was gorgeous and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky… and to top it all off we saw a duplex built like a castle, with two towers and everything.
Today is Saint Patrick’s Day. I made my hat festive.
This has been the first St. Pat’s day I actively celebrated in a while, mostly because I didn’t think it was fair the native pagan religions were subverted by Christianity (for the record, I am a Catholic.) Then I realized I can’t really change the past by being bored and unhappy in the present. The best course of action would be to celebrate the heck out of Halloween this year, which I plan to do. Since Halloween is on a weekend this year, I think I might head to Salem. I hear they throw a great spooky shindig.
This week was awesome for many reasons, and crappy for a few. I suppose that evens it out? I choose to focus on the good right now.
Shortly after updating my blog last week I started work on an illustration for my friend Lyndsey:
In the process I ran the events of the book (I co-authored) through my head. We’re in the middle of a rewrite as it is, but it never hurts to think over the story and find holes or new ideas and insights to add. It was Thursday, I was in the kitchen doing the dishes when all of a sudden the THING happened.
You know the THING if you ever were truly inspired. Like lightning struck the top of my head, popping my eyes open wide, sticking my tongue to the roof of my mouth, freezing my arms in place and causing my toes to lift off the ground. The THING is a new idea, and it feels like falling in love with your own brain (or wherever it is ideas come from. I heard there’s a place in Schenectady that delivers them.) I hustled to the computer and tapped out some notes in an email, sent them speeding down the wires to Lyndsey, and let the momentum carry me. I wrote a new poem:
L is for Luck
The Bad and the Good
and all Little People who live in the wood.
Under stones, under hills, in the basements of homes,
Trolls, Leprechauns, Brownies and Gnomes.
… inspired partly by Saint Patrick’s Day, naturally. I sketched and I cleaned and I drew. I clean when I can’t draw and I draw when I don’t have anything left to clean. I sketch whenever I feel like it.
I also watched a lot of documentaries this week, and realized what it was I was missing before. The THING, and the joy of having real ideas that belong to me, and just plain LEARNING something new. We’re bombarded by information every day, all the time, and it’s gotten to be so much that I forgot what it felt like to seek information and learn it. You have an answer as soon as you can type the question these days, and I’m not saying that’s wrong (in fact I think it’s awesome) just that I became numbed to the feeling of learning something new.
Didn’t mean for this to become such a novel! As I said, a lot of stuff happened.
Tags: dragon, drawing, hat, inspiration, poem, saint patrick's day, shamrock, writing
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I’ll start by professing, in case it wasn’t obvious from the art and theme of this site, that I’m a geek. I enjoy myths and legends. I read as often as I can, and on a variety of subjects and not just sparkly vampires. I used to read comics the way some people go to church. I have played Dungeons and Dragons with real dice and pencils and paper, not a computer. I have ranted for more than twenty minutes at a time about the behavior of fictional characters, be they television, superhero, or cinema in origin. I once wrote fanfiction, and graduated to stories of my own making.
I admit this to you because I want you to know where I’m coming from. Heroes are important to me, and not real life ones like firefighters, police officers, doctors et cetera but the super ones. Archetypes and abstractions, modern variations of Arthurian knights and Norse gods.
Superheroes.
I’ll cop to having ranted until red in the face about specific characters arcs, storylines or even whole comics I didn’t agree with. That said, I don’t see what the big deal is with John Krasinski’s possible role as Captain America. Maybe it’s because it’s because Cap represents an American ideal that I feel is getting farther and farther from the truth of things and it bums me out. I just don’t think Krasinski is a deal breaker. I think he’s a reason to watch.
Making Captain America into a steely, square-jawed heartthrob (and I shudder at some of the actors in the running, actual physical spasms) from the START would be a mistake. The things that inspire me about Captain America’s story are the things that make him normal, not incredible. He started as a soldier like any other. That’s what he’s about, essentially. Every American is(was) heroic in a way, and if we aren’t anymore we ought to look carefully at our lives and start acting like heroes.
Casting some spray-on-abs prettyboy as a guy who’s supposed to represent the best of our military and our country’s ideals sends a message. It suggests the American ideal isn’t dignified struggle against our numerous foes and inner demons, but some genetic mistake or science project that cost millions of dollars.
Not that Captain America shouldn’t be good looking. I’m just saying my fellow geeks are getting upset because Krasinski doesn’t fit the “look” of Captain America. Krasinski’s not even a lock for the role yet! Whoever does get the role has a much bigger responsibility than just flexing muscles and gazing seriously into the distance. I was kinda hoping they’d dig up some complete unknown who’d only done a cell phone commercial before for it, but I’m not going to dismiss the studio’s choice with a knee-jerk reaction.
Tags: captain america, casting, john krasinski, marvel, movie
Posted in Rant, Story | 1 Comment »
I know! I know! The last two Wednesdays you sat at your computer sobbing uncontrollably, your gut clenched around a cold pit of fear and confusion. Where IS he? you asked yourself. What could have happened? I thought we had something wonderful, but he’s GONE!
Well I’m back, baby.
I’m posting this now as opposed to next Wednesday because I don’t want my failures to claim 3 updates in a row. As for an explanation, I can only say I was stupid. I fooled around. I thought I could get what I want from someone else, but now that I see what we have, what we share, I know I was an idiot to ever want more.
I’m referring to Mass Effect of course.
This is how the last two weeks went, basically:
Played as renegade, didn’t cry for Kaiden when I let him die, and managed not to kill Wrex. Yay.
Read this in a day and loved it. I wont say more.
Watched Danielle play as a paragon and scoffed at her, then played as a renegade and had sweet, tattooed lovin’.
It’s been a while since I binged on video games. Some folks, in their college years, drank themselves into oblivion, but I would marathon games of various kinds, steamrolling through on the easiest setting so I could find out WHAT HAPPENS. Since I put off purchasing a game until it costs as much as a Happy Meal as McD’s, I got a lot of “You haven’t played Halo yet???” because I knew what would happen. the same thing that’s happening to me right now.
I played through two games in a row and now I need the third. I NEED the third act, man.
This behavior wasn’t restricted to electronic games either. Books series, pencil/paper RPGs, musicians, I have a problem with portion control. I find something I like and then I DON’T STOP LIKING IT until my world is so full of it I can’t remember when it wasn’t around.
Maybe it’s best I don’t drink.
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