Nomnomnom

Some inspiration.

BBC WAT IS IT WIT U AND UR MINISERIES THEY DRIVE ME NUTS WITH GLEE

List of story ideas.

Oh hello there.

Fall break was pretty perfect, even if I did end up with an oozy knee wound. I wasn't running or performing any kind of physically complex maneuver, just walking, and I fell over. On my knee. Good news! I didn't cry. And now I have a pair of tights with some legitimate battle damage. I wonder if I get marked down for talking about things like this on my blog. But in all seriousness- oozy.

So a little while ago Erica brought up a good point- what's so wrong with autobiographical stories? I guess I don't want to talk about myself and get credit for it, yo know? I do it enough already. And so many people do it. So many boring boring people. But oh well. It's easy, and I have loads I could say.

So here are my ideas as far as fictional stories go:

1. The Renter- Which I did last year, and I plan on re-doing. It's about a girl who has to move out of her house due to her landlord's wishes, and while she's packing and stuff she encounters this little creature. And she tries to kill it but then doesn't. Yeah it works better as a comic than it does as a summary.

2. Untitled snow castle project- This is also a story I did earlier but never finished and I want to re-do. It's about a woman who lives across an alleyway from an empty lot. In the wintertime, two awful children build an impenetrable snow castle and constantly attack the woman with snowballs anytime she passes. In the end she melts the snow castle with her hair dryer. And then something else happens- I don't want to ruin it.

3. Backwards story- I really want to do a story that runs backwards. And while I was thinking about this, I decided it would be fun it it happened on a train. I keep randomly developing this one, bit by bit. I think it's going to be the most fantastical- Like, the train is the only way to get to this small village in the mountains where a masquerade is held annually, and people are allowed to come by special invitation only. Fun, right? It would be set in the fall. Honestly every time I think of a crazy fun fantastic story like this it is always always set in the fall. I love fall.

Nonfiction. Well, semi-non-fiction.

1. Googling Your Name- a story about the dangers of girlish obsession. This won't be exactly true-to-life, but it will be derived from real elements...

2. Another untitled project. This one is going to be about artistic frustration. Much along the lines of Adaptation, except for comics. How art just isn't a fun time for some people, but we have to do it anyway.

3. I'm not so sure about this last one. I thought I would tell this story about a really bad night I had after eating too many mushrooms. Uh....but that's kind of annoying, isn't it? The thing is, I think my reaction to them really says something about me. I don't know, I might change this.

Pshhh.

I just watched The Ring for the zillionth time. I really want to write horror comics someday.

EDIT: I just remembered Jenny asked me why I don't like manga. Well, I do. I mean, some of it I do. I've had a rough relationship with manga and anime, we'll say. I think there's a lot of good stuff out there. Everyone knows that. (That's right, everyone.) But for a period of my creative life I got really sucked into not only drawing in a manga/anime style, but writing in that style. Really melodramatic stuff. Emo kids that could turn into giant animals. Oh my God, I shouldn't say things like that in a public space.

I think I maybe gave anime and manga up because I was sick of being so weird, and I never wanted to look back. I just have bad associations with it, it's nothing personal. (It's not you, anime/manga, it's me) And now if I try to watch it or get into it I can't. anime tends to be really poorly produced. Oh, what about Miyazaki movies, they say. The only thing that makes a Miyazaki movie "anime" is its being made in Japan. Did that sentence make sense? Plus when I spent all that time drawing girls who were also part...dragon and had huge eyes and tiny noses and big old boobies, I was ignoring what people actually look like. Which a mistake a lot of kids who want to go around drawing anime make. Actual anime makers don't start out their art careers drawing cartoons. They start by drawing real people.

Illustrators build success on having a distinct style. Is anime-style distinct to me? Uh, no. I don't care how popular drawing anime fart porn would make me among the plebs of deviantart. I want an actual sort of career. Can you name a lot of American cartoonists who are making bank on drawing in a manga style? Fred Gallagher doesn't count. (What a fucker.)

Speaking of American anime, I do love love love Avatar. I don't know what to say about that.

Best song ever?

We used to listen to this in Polish class. I haven't heard it in foreeeeevvverrr. Try not to get overwhelmed by its greatness. LOLZ

The last three pages.

Last page is my favorite of the whole buncherooooo. I colored these alllll today and then printed and turned it in.

Lessons learned:

1. more care must be given to word bubbles.

2. lightboxes are amazing, draw everything 2 or 3 times.

3. my handwriting is awful but not as awful as doing text in illustrator. barf!

4. Be loose.

5. Black is your friend.

6. So are gloves, even if you look tooootttallly stupid.

7. Pelikan drawing ink ftw.

Page three

Yeah whatever

Friday post

So I recolored it and I like it much better. But there is pretty much nothing that will make me like the second page! Arrrgghh! I got too excited to do the inks so i got lazy with the pencils. I wont make that mistake again.

First page of the Madagascar comic.

Well here it is. Tell me what you think. It's the first of 6 pages I'm submitting to the international show.

Dove Blood

Okay

So things have changed. Instead of doing one long story, I'm doing an anthology of short ones. I have two ideas so far, the first being re-doing the renter because i just hate hate hate how that turned out, but I like the idea. The second idea I'm riding on is a story that goes backwards... Do you remember the episode of Seinfeld that went backwards? Always been my favorite. Anyway, it's going to be about a family reunion that takes place on a fancy train. Fun, huh? Story goes backwards, train goes forwards. It's like a physical timeline. Except I just realized that family reunion+fancy train= darjeeling limited. So maybe I'll make it about a wedding. Or something else. I literally came up with family reunion this morning.

In other news, I finished the ink for the first page of my international show submission. Here's the raw scan....(except tiny) with absolutely no editing, text, or color. I was really stressing out about scanning using denril since it hasn't been working well on my personal machine, but I think this worked out nicely. I need to add some more shadows. I chickened out a little with those.

Want to know something really embarrassing? Despite the fact that I work at the hospital, I had to ask someone how to spell "medicine".