You live, you learn, and you learn to live with regret.
What? Not all of my random thoughts are going to be happy and/or funny.
Tales from the Dad Zone
Since my son was born I've learned a few new things, like how much I can really get done on less than six hours of sleep a night (hint, it's not as much as you would like to think). I've also learned that changing a boy's diaper has an entirely set of do's and don'ts, like don't lean to far over your son while changing him and do keep your mouth closed at all times. Most of all I've learned one seemingly strange, random piece of information. It's this: boys stink. Here I'm not talking metaphorically like, "raising a boy is hard tiring work that should be done by...someone else." No, I mean the literal olfactory sense of the word, "stink," as in "smells bad." Let the boy go two or three days between baths and you can smell him coming. My son has this tangy acidic funk. The first time I noticed it was in the kitchen, and I thought I'd accidentally got some balsamic vinegar on him after fixing dinner. Turns out it wasn't vinegar. When my son gets funky he smells like salad dressing.
New Layout
I'm experimenting with a new layout, and I'll probably be tweaking it as I go. I'm not wild about displaying the full text of every post, but this layout does give me some flexibility that Blogger's dynamic themes do not. Most importantly it lets me add custom items to the sidebar. Like the "Donate" button, which I'll explain a little more, below. Until I settle on a look and configuration I like there will probably several changes over the next few days, weeks. Bear with me. It's my hope that it's leading to bigger and better things.
That Money Thing
A notable new addition to the sidebar is a "Donate" button. I'm a thirty-something lefty so I believe in net neutrality, and I believe that content on the Internet should be free, and I will do my best to continue to provide free comics, commentary, doodles, and...don't-les (for lack of a better non-word). What I've found over the lat couple of years of doing this is there are soft-costs associated with providing "free" content (with what Internet Service Providers charge it's more like paying for a monthly pass). Some of those costs include art supplies, getting a better website for Geek Speak, upgrading my digital capabilities, buying and learning new software, getting a better and/or second monitor, and (yes) my time. Further down the road map is merchandise like shirts, mugs, books, and prints, but a donate button is a step I can take right now. If you've enjoyed Geek Speak, sketch dumps, and my commentary, please think about pitching in the price of your favorite coffee drink at Starbucks.
Sketch Dump
I'm not going to leave this post there like some kind of public broadcasting pledge drive (but seriously, I support public broadcasting). Here are more doodles from my notebooks at work.
This handsome fellow is me taking a stab at drawing the character of "Gluttony" from Full Metal Alchemist. I don't watch a lot of anime, but I got hooked into this and Attack on Titan as a way to pass the time while feeding my son. In Full Metal Alchemist I really love the idea of equivalent exchange; the idea that you can't get something without giving something in return. The concept of this balancing force is a huge theme in the story of the Elric brothers.
One of my projects required daily email notifications to go out to a list of users. To spice up the daily email to my co-worker on the communications team I started adding some of my drawings. After a while the text of the email messages started to reflect the theme of the drawing.
Something that will probably become a recurring theme in my sketch dumps is "drawings I can't freely share around the office." This is one. It's not really "NSFW," but she is showing a lot of leg and some side-boob, which is...less than professional. In a way I couldn't help myself. I love the classic femme fatale in her elegant gown, perfect hair, holding a gun, and killing you slowly with a smoldering look.
Nothing much to say about this other than the obvious; I took a stab at drawing Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes.
Started this out going for the titular character of the amazing Battle Angel Alita manga series. I didn't quite get there, but ended up liking the result nonetheless.
Work Doodle: Must be Wednesday
A couple of weeks ago I had a rough day at work. Between being antagonized by our company's CTO and issues with a fairly large development project, my Wednesday was not going well. In the middle of everything I sketched out a quick doodle that pretty much summed up the entire day.
Close Quarters Eskrima
I don't like using this space to brag, but, darn it, sometimes (and I mean sometimes) I can be pretty badass:
WonderCon Anaheim 2013 - Day1 - Part 2
When last we left our heroes, or in this case Benni and me, we were finishing up with lunch and ready to go tackle the convention floor. The exhibit hall was spectacular. It was a maze fitting Greek mythology, and I think there was even someone wandering around dressed as the Minotaur. The pathways of the labyrinth were constructed of booths and vendors selling comic book related merch ranging from t-shirts, to miniatures, to posters, to collectible mugs. Even the Christian Comic Arts society was manning a booth, though they must have felt like missionaries in Gomorrah.
By far my favorite place on the exhibit floor, and where I spent the majority of my time, was artist alley. Each booth presented very different artists with very different styles. Most of it was right up my alley (so to speak) some of it not my cup of tea. The most exciting thing about wandering artist alley for me was the opportunity to meet one or two of the artists I regularly follow on Deviantart. Both of whom were insanely cool, and as the day went on they got to be insanely busy. I think Dark Kenjie might still be icing a hand-cramp.
We wandered for a bit, right up until it was time to go to the first panel even I attended over the weekend, Quick Draw! This was kind of "Who's Line is it Anyway" meets "Pictionary" for cartoonists. The panel included three cartoonists who would take suggestions from the moderator and from the audience and do a quick drawing of whatever was thrown at them; hilarity ensued. The artists on the panel I attended were Jeff Smith, Scott Shaw, and Bobby London. I took a few pictures.
The first challenge was "draw the best possible version of yourself, draw yourself as you wish you could be." Jeff Smith drew himself with a mustache ala Sergio Aragones, Bobby London drew himself with Popeye arms and great hair. Scott Shaw's idealized self-portrait was...different...He promised that if you stopped by his booth later he would show you what was behind the black bars. My morbid curiosity was screaming about how awesome that would be, but my desire to leave without having to tear my eyes out eventually won the day.
The next challenges was something I'm pretty sure I've seen on "Who's Line is it Anyway?" The challenge was "If they Did 'It.'" The idea is what if these two cartoon characters, one male and one female, got together and had offspring, what would they look like.
My favorite was Bobby London's who took "Olive Oil" and "Batman." There's a broody little girl who randomly will start singing "Gotham needs me, it needs me, it needs me..."
The next challenge was for the cartoonists to draw what they think is the biggest misconception about being a cartoonist. My favorite from this group was Jeff Smith, in no small part because he worked his most well known character, Bone, into the joke. The highlight of this challenge for me was turning to Benni and saying, "One of them is going to draw a giant dollar sign," I then pointed out Bobby London, "and it will probably be that guy." Sure enough he drew a giant "money bag" with a little doodle of himself looking all happy at the riches being a cartoonist has blessed him with (which it really hasn't).
The next challenge, and the last one I'll put here, was "what would controversy in Popeye's life look like." The clear audience favorite here, even for all the groans it solicited, was Bobby London's. To be fair, he did draw the regular Popeye comic strip for a number of years. He was apparently fired from that position, which I didn't know until he quipped, "and now you can see why I was fired." Still, this is hilarious, and as my wife says, "they are an older couple."
It bears mentioning that when Quick Draw! was over Benni and I left the panel room and took an escalator down where we immediately ran into this. The only thing I can say about it is this is categorically something you don't see every day. What this had to do with comic books, I don't know, but it was a fun, surprising thing to walk into.
After the Quick Draw panel Benni and I left and hit the floor to go buy stuff, and there was lots of it to be bought. At one point we ended up at a booth selling half price trades and I bought a stack of trade paper backs.
I had a lot of fun taking several more photos of costumes, and for the most part the cosplayers had fun getting their pictures taken. The best cosplayers had obviously invested a lot of time, passion, and money into their outfits, and they were thrilled when people showed an interest.
One of the first cosplayers I photographed once we were inside was this woman in a classic Jean Gray costume. This is old-school Uncanny X-Men from back in the 60's, long before she was called "The Phoenix" and was dying ever other issue.
There were a lot of Whovians present, myself among them. Where I was wearing a shirt bearing an image of the TARDIS and the words "You never forget your first Doctor," this woman actually dressed up as the TARDIS. There were a couple of other TARDIS costumes wandering around, but I was only able to get the one. When the TARDIS is in human form I believe she prefers to go by "Sexy."
Who doesn't love LeeLoo? Seriously? Not only is this one of my all-time favorite science fiction characters, but the woman wearing her outfit from early in the movie freaking nailed it. The best part was when the guy sitting next to her at the booth started complaining about how all she does is talk about how great chicken is and how much she looooves her multi-pass. Always nice to meet someone who's a fan of the same things you are.
Let's get this out of the way now; yes, her boobs are epic. Now I've said what everyone's thinking and I can talk about the photo. There were other women dressed as Power Girl wandering around the Con, and all of them were profoundly...endowed...to one extent or another, but this woman's costume really caught my eye. Power Girl is supposed to be Kryptonian from an alternate earth with all of the powers of Superman, and of all the women dressed up as Power Girl that first day, the one seen here was the only one with the physique to really pull it off. Also her costume was spot. on. I asked her about it and she made everything herself. My favorite part about this photo is something I didn't see right away. The cosplayer is standing behind a drawing of Power Girl in the same pose she's striking, which is propped up over a photo of her in the Power Girl costume. Overall it's a very cool effect.
There were a few guys on the floor dressed as Ghostbusters. The guy pictured here was the first one I ran into. Like all of them the proton pack was something he made himself, and it featured blinking lights and LEDs that made it feel really authentic. He was really funny and when I asked him how long it took him to build the proton pack he said, "not counting the years of my childhood spent wishing I could build one?"
Another pair of classic costumes. This time it's Rogue and Psylocke, two of the all-time-great female heroes in the Marvel Universe.
Not everyone was faithful to the comic books. Some, like the two women pictured here, put their own spin on classic characters. There were other "girl Loki" costumes on the floor, but this one was by far the best, and "girl Thor" was hilarious.
This may have been my favorite costume all day. This photo doesn't really do her outfit justice, and I'll get to the reason why in a bit, but everything she was wearing was handmade, even the goggles. Most of her costume was leather and lace, both of which are tricky things to work with. She was even carrying a modified Nerf gun made to look like a steampunk revolver. The thing that caught me, though, were her eyes. The contacts really made her stand out, so much so that I first noticed here eating lunch when Benni and I went to grab a cup of coffee. I didn't want to bother her at lunch so I just kept an eye open for her the rest of the day and finally managed to catch her just before the convention staff kicked everyone out for the night.
That was the end of my first day at Con. I left feeling tired, sore, and definitely lighter in the pocket book, but better than I've felt in a long time. Being in that environment with people who share my interests, passions, and who want the same things I do was a profoundly emotional experience. I left feeling truly, deeply happy for the first time I can remember in a long time, and with an overwhelming sense of belonging. These are my people, and I wish I could spend every day around others just like them.
Every now and then I try to branch out and try to draw something other than people, cartoon people, naked people, and...well...more people. I really should work more on still life, landscape, and architectural drawing, among other things. That said every now and then I do lay down the graphite to produce something other than yet another humanoid rendering.
I'm pretty sure the photo reference for this drawing came from deviantart.com, but whatever the source I had a lot of fun rendering a more or less realistic cat face that is only slightly cartoony around the eyes.
I like to think this is plaintive face cats give you to lure you into petting them. Once you're touching them, that's when they strike.
Random thoughts
I drew a picture of a woman making an...ecstatic face on my notebook at work. I got away with it by calling it "The Sneeze."
Frozen Gogurt...not as good as advertised.
Have you ever driven at night with your pants off? Just to pass people on the street and think, "they have no idea i'm half naked?" I have to think that would be a liberating feeling. To get pulled over would suck, though.
Homemade food rocks. It's a lot more effort, but when you start being able to cook food without turning it into building materials or poison the results are better, and cheaper, than you can get in most restaurants.
The hardest thing about working a job where you don't feel a lot of satisfaction is watching people get bent out of shape about things you think don't matter.
Business Jargon That Needs to Die: The Asks Edition
The business school habit of turning verbs into nouns for the purpose of giving a catchy name to something that doesn't need it has perpetrated yet another obscene violation on the English language. Have you ever had a business person tell you to increase the number of "asks" in your sales process?
Comic Book Review: Taking the High Road Edition Title: Higher Earth Publisher: Boom Issue: 1 Price: $1.00 (Holy shit! An affordable comic! Worth. the price. alone)
Although this book has a high quality cover with well done, engaging artwork, I must confess that what swayed me to buy this was the price. At one dollar the price tapped into my sense of nostalgia and transported me back to the early days of my blossoming geekdom. All comics were a buck, or a buck-twenty-five, and you could spend twenty bucks and get enough reading material for a whole afternoon (back when I had the luxury of being able to spend a lazy afternoon reading comic books). Beyond the sentimental mist forming in the corner of my eyes and the great price, I wasn't expecting much from this book. I mean, c'mon, it's a dollar-comic. For that you usually get badly drawn knock off Archie-porn.
Once I cracked the pages there was a pleasant surprise waiting inside. Too often these days comics will feature a high-quality, well crafted cover drawn by a recognizable name, only to fill out the interior with artwork drawn by the Editor in Chief's six year old nephew who actually wants to be Spider-Man when he grows up. To a great degree, those were my expectations going in, but the artwork is sound throughout. Solid line work, good layout, and really well done color that evokes different locations throughout the book were a treat for my optic nerves.
With that in mind a cynical person might say, "Ok, so, the price is good and the artwork isn't crap, so the story must be utter shit." No? Maybe that was just me, but this book defied conventional wisdom again and provided a story with a good blend of excitement and carefully placed exposition, plus a solid a hook at the end that I would feel no shame in picking up issue number two.
Overall I feel good recommending this book. It's well worth the "$1.00" cover price. Even if you don't like it, you're only out a buck. So what the hell?
As with all my comic reviews the cover art and interior art are used without permission from the publisher or the creators. This is why I use small, low-resolution images and link those to the comic's listing on HeavyInk.com. If you would like to read one of the comics I've reviewed for yourself I encourage you to order from HeavyInk.com, or (even better) support your local comic book store and buy your comics from them.
Random thought of the day
If you were to eat an "Airborne" table, would it boil your mouth, or just make your breath effervescent?
Old enough to be president
This year marks a milestone in my life; I have joined the ranks of the "mid-thirties" crowd. I am now old enough to run for president, if I were ever to be brainwashed into thinking that taking the job would be a good idea. This was also my first birthday as a new dad. Given that my daughter's birthday is also this month, my birthday was pretty much what I expected, that is it passed mainly unnoticed in the looming event of my daughter's first birthday. Which is ok, I think that's as it should be. I've had thirty-five birthday's now, and this will be her first. It should be a bigger deal.
That said events of this week have been difficult to bear. Work is...not going well, and on top of it the baby was sick, which meant I had to be out of work for a couple of days. Add to that the frustration of having to turn down a call back, not an audition, a fucking call back, because I needed to be home with my sick daughter, there was no alternative, and work piling up on me and this birthday was something I have never experienced. Namely, I just wanted the fucking day to be over with already. No more passive aggressive bullshit at work, no more sick baby, no more of feeling guilty for trying to be a good dad even if it means missing out on paid acting work, just no more. Just be done with the whole goddamn day.
I've never felt that way about my birthday. The one shining light in my day, and arguably my week, was my wife made lemon bars. For anyone who's had the good fortune to sample the ambrosia that flows from our oven when my wife decides to bake you'll understand what I mean when I say that I'd been looking forward to tasting these all day. When I finally did get to bite down through the sticky, crumbly, crunchy, sweet, tart treat it made so much of my week up to that point melt away. Every bite was worth the wait. My week, and possibly my birthday, may have been shit. But my wife made the best lemon bars I've ever had.
The (who am I kidding) daily doodle: for the ladies
When I'm just doodling my tendency is to draw women, more often than not. It's not anything puerile (usually) I just enjoy drawing what I think to be beautiful women.
It occurred to me that I would not be complete as an artist if I just focused on that. The running horse from my last post came from a similar impulse. To round out my understanding of anatomy and the human form I would need to draw men.
Once again I turned to the holy bible of figure drawing resources known as DeviantArt.com. It yielded a lot of photos of guys making self portraits of their junk, but mixed into the forest of dong shots (with varying degrees of shrubbery) I found a few gems.
Truth be told there are a lot of very serious artists on DeviantArt.com, many of whom produce beautiful work, like the photo I used as a reference for this drawing. I'm not sure why I picked it. I think the lighting and the model's expression evoked a kind of bashful melancholy that called out to me.
Random thoughts
I'm having a passionate tech love affair with Down Them All. It's a Firefox plugin that will let you download multiple documents or images from a web page in a multi-threaded (yay tech-speak) process, so that you don't have to do one download at a time. Don't tell Google Wave, it gets jealous.
We're watching Downton Abbey which is an absolutely amazing show full of mumble-y British people. In one episode the heir of the estate is explaining that his job (oh, scandal) won't interfere with the day-to-day running of Downton Abbey because there are always the evenings and weekends (help, I feel a swoon). To this Maggie Smith, in the amazing way she has of delivering her lines says, "What's a weekend?" It made me realize that we take for granted some things that are fairly recent developments in the scheme of things. In fact, the 40 hour work week wasn't a national institution until 1937 with the Fair Labor Standards act. Saturday morning sounds that much sweeter when taken in that context, doesn't it?
Why are there so many birthdays in March? It's really hard to imagine all those young couples humping to the tune of "My Country 'Tis of Thee."
Fables
I know I'm kind of going on about this series but I just finished books ten and eleven of the awesome ongoing story of Fables. When I come across writing of this caliber and stories this well constructed it makes me shed a few tears for the state of literacy in our country that so many are ready to turn up their noses to graphic novels, but they'll religiously follow Jersey Shore.
Fables 10 is a particularly good story that takes a famous fable with whom we are all familiar, but casts him as a strong and heroic figure. For those who've read a little bit of Fables, this character is one who's been a beloved fixture of the supporting cast since book one. The arc he takes in this book is the best example the transformation, or awakening of an unlikely hero that I've ever read.
If I have a complaint about the Fables books it's that you can't just dive right in. If you haven't followed the story from the beginning, the latest issue of the comic book on the shelves of your local comic book store is going to leave you feeling lost. That said, get the trades. The entire series is worth a read.
The (laughably not) daily doodle
For a while I'd been drawing faces, cartoons, weird aliens, and boobies...more boobies than I would be likely to confess to drawing, if I'm being honest. I realized that I'd never really tried to draw an animal, much less an animal in some kind of dynamic pose. So I turned to the magnificent treasure trove of (boobies) art that is DeviantArt.com. In it I found a picture of a horse running, which led to the drawing here. I hadn't finished cleaning up this drawing when I scanned it, and you can still see the guide marks I made for the horse's face and body.
Random thought of the day
Life would be infinitely cooler if we could have a symbiotic relationship with a dragon. Be as one with a flying fire-breathing creature of ancient and powerful magic. That would be bad ass. It would also make my morning commute both faster, and several orders of magnitude more awesome.
Thirty something RAGE!
Just looked at the excellent BuzzFeed.com, and there's an entire page dedicated to tween morons tweeting "Who is Billy Crystal?"
Jesus Christ, kids! There were movies made before you were fucking born, you narcissistic twits! Pull out your iPhone and use it for something other than looking at porn and bashing kids at your school who will probably end up giving you a job someday. It's called "IMDB" for fuck's sake.
Didn't actually post that comment, but really thought about it.
The (not really) daily doodle
So...this is a succubus. She was ultimately supposed to be sitting on a pile of skulls, but I was drawing this at work (risky to begin with) and drawing a pile of skulls is A. difficult B. time consuming, it takes a log time to draw all those tiny details and C. did I mention that it's difficult?
As I look at this again I think I definitely need to stop drawing half-naked demon temptresses at work.
Lies our parents tell us: making good money
I don't know what everyone else's experience was growing up, but I remember being told on numerous occasions that I needed to work hard, get good grades, and go to school (meaning college) so that I could "make good money." Through all of my childhood, and into the early years of adulthood I associated "good money" with "lots of money." My life so far has taught me different.
When I entered the workforce I was in college, which is later than most. I started out as a waiter at Denny's, working the graveyard shift. When I talk about it now I sometimes sound like a soldier returning from war, "I saw things there I'll never forget," or, "when it's the dead of night and you're tired and your feet hurt and sleep seems a thousand years off, all you have is your resolve and your brothers and sisters in aprons." Let's dispel this myth right now, Denny's doesn't pay for shit, and working for tips is kind of like being a street walker with a Moons Over my Hammy.
While working at Denny's I thought if I could get away and start making just six or seven dollars an hour I'd be ok. I could make ends meet, maybe save a little, and I could buy some of the things I want. Well, not long after I left Denny's I started working for a company that paid me around six-fifty an hour to do tech support. While it was pretty cool to get a paycheck every week that had my name on it and around four or five-hundred dollars that belonged to me, I found pretty quickly that I hadn't discovered the elusive "good money." I remember thinking that if I could just get to eight dollars an hour I'd finally start breaking even. Not long after that I hit the high-water-mark I'd set for myself and it may surprise you to learn that I found it still wasn't "good money."
Things went in this vein for years; me thinking, "If only I could make ten dollars an hour," then it was, "if only I could get to twelve dollars an hour, then everything will be ok because I'll be making 'good money.'" As I got older and the jobs I took became more and more what are generally accepted as "real jobs" the standard for good money changed from what I made per hour to what I make per year.
It started at twenty-eight-thousand per year. When I started I honestly remember thinking, "I'm finally making good money." It wasn't long before I learned how wrong that was. Over the years that calculation has changed from "thirty-five-thousand, that's all I really need," to "We'll be ok when I get to forty-thousand."
It wasn't that long ago that it occurred to me the whole concept of "making good money" might be bullshit. Money in and of itself is neither good or bad, it's just a means to an end. Someone making thirty-thousand dollars a year can still do many of the same things as someone making a hundred-thousand dollars. It just takes longer to budget for it, and there are more sacrifices along the way. Most people just don't have the patience for it, me among them.
I think the truth about good money is that money is just money, and it is only as good as the good you do with it. So what am I doing with my money? I'm raising my daughter. I'm trying to make sure that, when the time comes for her to be on her own she gets a better leg up on life than either my wife or I were given. In the end I don't think there's a greater gift you can give your children than a good start when it's time for them to go and be their own people; make their mark on the world.
No matter how much money we make, as long as my wife and I can say that we gave our daughter the best shot possible, then we can finally say, "yeah, we're making good money."
The (not really) daily doodle: Cute Little Baby Monster Who Will Kill Us All
For almost twenty years now I've enjoyed fantasy role playing games as a hobby. One of the most terrifying monsters in all of fantasy role playing lore is the beholder of Dungeons and Dragons. These highly intelligent floating balls of gruesome death have a single central eye, and multiple eyes that extend from their blubbery, spherical bodies on muscular stalks. Each eye is imbued with a different way to kill even the most prepared of adventuring loonies. This doodle came about when I asked myself, "what does a baby beholder look like."
Lovecraft is not a good name for a town
One of my good friends recommended some comic titles I should read.In my lasts post I mentioned one of them, Skullkickers. Another of the titles he recommended was Locke & Key. In my bi-monthly comic book crawl through the local purveyor of books of sequential art I remembered his recommendation and picked up the first trade.
Sweet fancy Moses, this is a good book. The writer of the book, Joe Hill, weaves a tense and engaging story that would have you on the edge of your seat on its own. When coupled with the exceptional artwork of Gabrielle Rodriguez the story takes on a visceral life of its own. As the story unfolds and the tension mounts you can find yourself checking the hallways and blind spots for fear that Sam Lesser, the story's chilling homicidal antagonist.
You would be forgiven for thinking the photo of Joe Hill on his Wikipedia page looks like a young Stephen King. His given name is Joseph Hillstrom King. He writes under the pseudonym for totally understandable reasons. After reading this first story arc of Locke & Key I feel as thought he inherited his father's sensibility when it comes to crafting stories around the plausibly disturbing.
The (almost) daily doodle: talk nerdy
I was sitting in my acting class, waiting for my turn at the stage, when I noticed one of the ladies wearing a shirt that said "Talk Nerdy to Me!" She was not unattractive and, being a married man myself, I found myself thinking that some brave nerd would be a happy man indeed if he accepted the invitation brazenly emblazoned upon her bosom. If his head doesn't explode with the effort of talking (gasp) to a girl. Her shirt tickled another part of me entirely. Then I sneezed and thought a little about how to take the statement on her shirt to the next level. Thus was "Pythagorean stud" born!
You're welcome.
