…so far.

I just need Dreamweaver now.

The crazy part is now that I have Illustrator, I’m completely lost.  I started working on the next page of GF, but really just want to play.  And even that’s impossible because I have no idea what to make.

A Christmas card I think…

But I’ve made it sort of a “Where’s Waldo?” game with coffee mugs, tea cups and tea pots that I happen to pick up here and there.  I only started doing this this past summer after purchasing a practically paper-thin tea set that was incomplete.  It’s kind of fun.  All you need is the name on the bottom of the piece.  I found Austrian pieces, German pieces and even a teeny tiny pot that still confuses me.  The style has been around since the Ming Dynasty, but since I can’t read Chinese, I’m a little lost.

Today, while making coffee, I grabbed my favorite mug: a banged up dark blue mug with a big red cherry/apple design.  This mug was ill-gotten (like most of the things in life that I enjoy).  We lived in a run-down house with a room full of CRAP attached.  The floor had rotted out and nobody really wanted to go in there.  However one day we decided to go treasure hunting.  I found my banged-up mug next to an 8-track player and tapes and it has been mine ever since.  It is my “apple cup”.

I had known about the name on the bottom.  Instead of a relief into the clay, the name stood out boldly; the rest of the bottom carved away.  I had just never bothered to look it up.  Something made me look it up today.  Surprisingly, it was the easiest piece to Google.  I hadn’t even typed out the whole name and the search engine gave me over a million options for the name.

My mug has a website. Since 1832, Waechtersbach has been making snazzy ceramic items.  I couldn’t find my mug’s design so I decided that it is worth fifty million dollars and I’m never going to let it go.  I wouldn’t have anyway.  I was just wondering if there were any other pieces with the design.

Here.  This is the only image I was able to find (another ill-gotten prize, thank you, internet):

Yes…yes it is cute…I don’t think leaded crystal and blue willow are in my future, but I’m probably going to look up the names of pieces I buy on impulse from RecycleNorth.

I told Mike Luoma, writer of “Panthea Obscura” and local radio host, that I would post a review of his comic series here in my forum and on my blog.  In hopes of being mentioned on the radio (hint hint), I’ve decided to follow through while I have the time.

“Panthea Obscura” is the story of ye old gods who decided “y’know what?  I think it’s about time we got some attention like the old days” and thus, do so.  However, knowingly, once they become public again, they also release the restriction on a horrible evil that is bent on destroying mankind (I suppose that’s his way of getting mortal attention, I know it would get mine).  Now, between tv show appearances and miraculous duties, they have to stop him before he destroys everything.

The gods names are rarely mentioned, but you get the idea of who is who.  Abbreviated names and clues lead you down the right path.  Also, the guy with white hair boinking all the women and shooting lightning from various extremities doesn’t hurt with the hinting.

Mike has not yet released his fourth and final book so I can’t speak of exactly what happens.  I typically don’t give away an ending anyway.  I should also mention that this comic is drawn and colored by Juan Carlos Quattordio.  I will be perfectly honest about this, and feel free to plant a “hypocrite” flag on me, but I don’t really care for the art.  It’s probably a lot to do with the coloring.  It feels like way too many Photoshop filters were used and “subtle shading/highlighting” aren’t an option.  I like the lineart (from the sketches in the back of the book), but “lensflare”, as it’s been stated everywhere in the internet-iverse, is not the answer to everything.

I will be picking up the last issue of this series as soon as it is out.  Issue 3 featured some, I should say, “paternity issues” that I need some closure about.  I hope also to get some actual names of these deities, especially D, who appears to be a water god.  Any guesses?  Take your pick.  You’ve only got about a million to choose from (not counting the pantheon of three million Hindu gods).

You can order and learn more about Mike and JC’s series at their website: www.glowinthedarkradio.com

(Yes, I did start buying this series out of jealous curiosity, so sue me…)

Well I check my deviantART page today from work during break and there’s a message about how “shitty my work is” and “how dare I use Aztec gods for my comics”.

First of all, how dare I use ANY deities for my comic.  Really.  I’m stepping on a lot of toes.  I thought I had free range with Aztec because 1) it’s awesome and 2) most of them are dead or passive.  Apparently not.  I’ve had tamer Christians comment about my “blasphemous” work.  Gee, I better never go to Mexico; they’ll kill me for sure!

Secondly, yep, my work is shitty.  I’ve come to terms with it.  It’s shitty and amazing.  Anything that could make me this happy and this miserable at the SAME TIME has got to be shitty and amazing, right?  Have you ever REALLY looked at newspaper syndicates?  They’re shitty.  They’re REAL shitty.  They make me want to shit on my work just to be as good as them.  But at least have the decency to tell me WHY it’s shitty.  “The eyes are googly”, “they look like they have downs syndrome”…c’mon, gimme something to work with.  If you aren’t going to help out, then you’re a cock sucking ass burglar and you need to go die in a fire, plzkthnxbai.

Thirdly,…Seriously…gtfo.  Haven’t you anything better to do with your time?  A job?  Some kids?  A lukewarm vagina?  I’m one person out of a hundred million on that site.  I’m like…in the middle of the experience ladder and just below that on the “talent” scale.  And honestly, your “work” looks like a bunch of stolen images and screencaps.  Please repeat the sentence in the paragraph above.

See?  I was big enough of a man to bring my bitching away from your battleground and simply choose to hide your dumbass comment.

Gah, I’ve got to get my work off that site.  Sure, the free attention is great, but when you don’t get anything back, it’s like giving a five year blow job to someone who’s asleep and only wakes up to slap you on the face and ask you why the fuck you stopped sucking.

Oh right the voting part of the title.

I’m not voting.

I’m gearing up for my ten-day birthday event (read: cleaning my house, the dishes, some drawing…balance my checkbook) and the construction of a mayonnaise cake (you have no idea so don’t even open your mouth, idiot).

Originally I was going to go to Maine, but that bottomed out.  Then I was going to go to Ponderosa with a bunch of friends, but that shit the bed.  Then it was a BBQ idea, but…well you see the trend.

As far as I see it, doing nothing for my 25th birthday is a perfect representation of what I’ve DONE with my life so far.  Nothing.  I regret never doing drugs or smoking or drinking or being a bully.  I wish I had been that drugged out idiot girl that everyone wants to fuck and does and attends the parties of.

With any luck, the LHC will take care of things in October.

Anyway, enjoy it while it’s around.

And YES, for the love of God, I have every intention of finishing the story online.  No worries.  You’ll never need to pay me for anything.  Rend my artistic loins in twain with your insatiable reading.

You could at least buy a sticker…

Also:

Fortunately, I have amazing friends.  One of them lent me a shopping bag full of comics.

The majority of the bag was Akira, the manga.

Now…when I was much younger, the second wave of “OMFG JAPANESE CARTOONS YAY!” phase was just coming to light.  I was too busy playing in dirt and clay to watch TV.  My first anime was “Robot Carnival”.  And it’s funny how much of my childhood I don’t remember…at all.  My memory of “Akira”, the anime, went about these lines:

Somebody in a white cloak gets hit by a flaming car, people explode…That’s it.

My memories of “Robot Carnival” were tamer, but still vague.

“Akira” was HUGE back in the day.  It held a tiny bit of nostalgic gleam for me.  So when I got handed all six books of the manga, my brain set into motions a sense of “this is going to be awesome because people blow up”.

The manga Akira is ASTOUNDING.  Just it’s size is amazing.  Two thousand plus pages.  The art is classic (well, I guess that’s a given for manga…) and the sound effects are hilarious.  In case you’ve never read/seen/heard of Akira, here’s the summary:

A bike gang, fueled by capsulated drugs, meet with fate one day when young Tetsuo, a typical emo kid who only wants to be top dog, crashes his bike in a mysterious circumstance.  He is taken to an unknown location where they treat him with an experiment to “awaken something inside of him”.  The reasons are vague.  Either way, Tetsuo is never the same.  He returns to his bike gang at school and things start to go awry.  Long story short, Tetsuo finds he has unbelievable abilities and mind can kill a yak from two hundred yards…with mind bullets.

That’s telekinesis, Kyle.

His schoolyard and nearly-life-long friend Kaneda goes all out to try and stop Tetsuo from destroying the world.

I got sucked into the manga; I read a book a day.  I took it to work and got heckled and I’d stay up late trying to finish it.  I got obsessed.  But something curious happened.

In my obsession to find an Akira desktop for my computer, I noticed there were barely any images…anywhere.  In fact most information and fan sites were simple and few in number.  Like someone waking up to a Neo-Toyko in Akira, I was stunned and wandered around to learn more.  What happened to Akira?  As far as I knew it, Akira was the most popular, celebrated and swooned over anime EVER.  Where was the magic?

Akira was the most popular and celebrated anime OF IT’S TIME because that’s all there was besides “Robot Carnival” and random Sci Fi Channel specials.  It was the newness that made is amazing.  The excitement of something from a foreign land.  And the movie’s production is impressive.  160,000 cells gives the animation a smooth flow and allow for great movement variations.

But “Akira” was awful.

A horrible realization at 3am for me on youtube in 13 parts.

I haven’t finished the last book of Akira.  My curiosity to refuel my distant memory made me look up the anime.  I hated it.  Most of it.  If there was any shittier translation between book and movie, I don’t know it.  Characters were flawed, their personalities completely different from the book, and some of them were swept under the rug.  Remember that cioffed radical with the beads?  She’s a HUGE character in the manga.  Super important, super powered and super sweet.  She gets turned into a screaming Akira-lover and then hit by a flaming car.  It was like someone raped my brain.  Also, Tetsuo wasn’t out for power originally.  The main idea of Akira, the manga, is that he’s in constant pain, his body can’t contain his energy and all he wants is either for things to go back the way they were or to get rid of the pain and rule the world with the little boy Akira.

That’s right, Akira is a little boy.  Not a collection of jars.  HE WALKS AND EVERYTHING.  I almost threw my computer out the window when I saw he was a collection of jars.

Alone, the anime is still bad.  Disjointed and hurried.  But beautiful.  I’d recommend the manga series except 1) it’s probably expensive and 2) the memory of the movie has put a bad taste in your mouth and you aren’t going to listen to me anyway.

I think the biggest pisser is that the guy who wrote it worked on the movie.  Unless he was at gunpoint to make a shitty movie, there’s no excuse for what he did.

Welp, I’m going to go drink some coffee and whatnot before Tlaloc stomps through my region again (Helluva deadly thunderstorm this morning…I think he’s angry with me because he’s dead).

This way you readers can amuse each other.

Play nice, kids.

Double Edit: I’m back, bitches.  No thanks to my ISP (no names, VERIZON…), but the important bit is that I’m back.  Now because I got up at 8:30am and it 3:34pm and I still haven’t eaten, I’m going to go get some food and try not to pass out.  IM me!

I get an idea, I slap it down faster than the idea can be completed and if I like it, I keep it.  If not, I move on.  It’s like a fucking factory line in my brain right now.  The Illustrator ideas come slower because I DO technically have Illustrator, but it’s on my lappy.  And since my desk/house isn’t big enough for two computers, I have to use the lappy (named “Tinkerbell”) in the living room and either lean from the couch to the coffee table or wear my ass out on my wood floor with the screen somewhat above me.  I do have more ideas, but screaming a mechanical pencil across a piece of recycled computer paper is much…much faster.

I’m thinking of compiling an artbook with these newer images I deem worthy.  I don’t know how to publish or anything (at least without screwing you guys over), but if anyone has any ideas…

I was actually sitting at my desk today and I felt an aneurysm coming on.  My brain was screaming ideas, but three other halves were busy telling me that I wasn’t any good, I should work on my comic or I should try and do something experimental.  Before they could come to a vessel-rupturing crescendo, I put the brakes on.  I want/need to experiment.  I want to have my characters involved in backgrounds or do random characters I’ve never drawn or want to draw again (THAT’s almost impossible which is why you see so many recycled characters…I love my babies…).  I want to be that person people say “hey I WANT to buy something from you!”

So far, I fail.

BUT I guess my goals are founded or something.  I was hoping people could give me ideas, free commissions as it was, but nobody’s really interested in that because there are better artists to draw their fursona humping some tickle-foot fetish raccoon elsewhere.  Go figure.

As for the comic, I actually did do some inking on it a week ago at the laundromat and I probably will again this week at the same place because it’s a good environment.  Nobody really bothers me and can see I’m a talentless hack so I don’t get interrupted with dumbass questions like “if I gave you a picture of my grandson could you draw him so I could get it tattooed on my ASS?”.

Also, I’ve been consuming music like it’s going out of style, which, if you know my music, is.