Five months since my last post? Inconceivable!

(Maybe that's why - I don't want to be another hack blogger with non-stop pop culture references.)

Moving on ... I thought I would highlight my love of the ballpoint pen for anything from doodles to halfway-decent sketches. The ballpoint pen is a very forgiving instrument when used carefully. Of course, I don't doodle much. Why jot off a simple doodle when you can waste hours trying to bend the laws of perspective (see right) and work on your hatching? Ah, yes, hatching. The blessing and curse of all hack artists. Today's drawing is actually Tuesday's drawing and yes, I did it at work. Okay, mostly on my lunch hour but whatever. I'm going to go ahead and blame my scanner for any faults in the textures. Technical note: this scanned much better in grayscale than in color, which saves a lot of memory. The paper also turns pale yellow/ochre in a color scan. That's probably a consequence of owning a $99 scanner (also a printer/copier but it gave up the printing ghost years ago - thanks for the cheap, expendable crap, Lexmark!).

Feel free to point out the deficiencies of today's drawing - I'm not that proud of it and I can name several myself. Oh, wait - I forgot that no one reads this.

Note to non-existent readers: in an effort to nurture this blog and maybe up the readership into the realm of non-imaginary numbers, I think the current direction will be to start posting things I like. There may not be anything more cohesive to this theme, just things that appeal to me. Like pomegranates. Pomegranates freakin' rock.

New PostSecret video! I love this site for many reasons, although mostly it's for the glimpse inside other people's inner lives. More understanding is definitely what this world needs.

Alternate Universes

It's no surprise to the two or three of you that read my blog that I do not update often. Fortunately (?), there has been a rift in the space-time continuum since my last post and an otherworld entity has emerged, The Planetary Chance Machine. I know that this site has entertained me in the interim, being faaar more Legion-oriented than my own and, of course, posting like mad through Oct-Nov. I've mostly gotten out of the comic market since real-world expenses have made $3+ per issue an unreasonable expense. Besides, there are always the giant cross-over juggernauts like Infinite Crisis, which you can't really follow without spending a few hundred dollars and wind up being crap at the end (well, I heard it was crap from the beginning but I honestly didn't read it at all). Buy the small-press stuff, kids! Chris Ware will blow your mind! And read "The" PCM - he was kind enough to link to me!

Late Notice: TOAST MACHINE's album is out! Buy a million copies in the name of True Rockage!!!

Behold! the ...

Oh, never mind.

I'm proud to say that I finally have a finished one of these drawings. I'm quite happy with it, but perhaps more happy that I would consider it a final product, not something half-assed to come back to. It is full-assed.

Not depicted is my Bugbear, which I skipped over since I was not quite happy with it. Instead of a fierce feline scowl, I am rethinking the face to give it wide, frightening bug-eyes (you know - bugbear) as a new twist.

The offer still stands - link to this blog and you get a free drawing. Maybe now you'll listen.

By the way, thanks to Roger Raupp of Dragon Magazine legend who inspired me to regard monster (and adventure) artwork from a more naturalistic viewpoint. The stuff from the modern books is so flashy and glossy, which undoubtedly takes talent to make, but it doesn't really transport me into the scene. Roger transported me.

This minor D&D-related complaint reminds me of an e-mail conversation I had with Gio (of Toast Machine) a while back. He encouraged me to post it, so here it is at last:

"Wandering around the Web (as I am want to do), I stumbled across certain pages of the WotC site. For reasons which I am sure that you can intuit from your knowledge of my opinions, I have not previously visited said site. But strange things happen at 2:30 in the morning and, well, I found myself here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20051018a.

I will not hide the fact that the original books [AD&D 1st ed.] had their share of soulless random tables (% chance to be struck insane, type of mental affliction, etc.) and needless attempts at quantification (affect of age category on character attributes, etc.), but WTF? Am I imagining those endless tables of carrying capacities? Does Skip Williams have nothing better to do with his life? Worse yet, back up a page and note the 87 (EIGHTY-SEVEN) articles devoted to similar subjects. My favorite, however, is "Going Metric (Part Three)." Now, I have no doubt that there is some good to be found in these articles and as soon as I stop laughing I will try to find it. Until then, thank you Skip - you have given me grist for my D&D-based comic which I am that much closer to drawing.

(Seriously, are the only screwballs playing this game anymore all mechanical engineers? Is their idea of fun optimizing the weight distribution on their pack horse? You know I like realism, but CAN YOU PEOPLE USE YOUR &*^@#%ing IMAGINATION?)"

Gio's response:
" It is a great article (a series of great articles, really) though, I feel they could flesh out some of the details. I suppose the only question I am left with, is this:
If I have a Tri-ped Magical Creature, with a strength of 32, (or 45.78 if you want to convert that to the metric...) and I need it to simultaneously haul my portable (though less than 10 ft (3 and some odd meters...)) ballista, wear the custom barding that I had to pay 7 bajillion golds for (as according to table 175B9-alpha: "Barding Costs for
Magical Creatures With Rediculous Fucking Strength Scores") and that weighs 348 krudonitons (a dwarvish metric unit of weight measurement, as was covered in Doug Turdwaddler's article: "Dwarvish metric units of weight measurements (part 3)) AND bear the weight of my 24th level Dwarvish wizard (because, you know, now any race can be any class at any level... because, you know, with this new frenzy for accuracy in the
numbers, you know, they totally observed all of those race/class restrictions. You know. For the sake of realistic Role Playing. To make it real.) who is wearing mystical Plate Armor (that only has a 1% chance for arcane spell failure, which makes it, pretty good. Now that wizards can wear armor and all. Why the hell not?)... so, can he carry all of this? Would it be considered a light load? Medium?

Oh man. This is infinite fun with inifinite options. Realism as it it facilitates game play vs. Realism as it hamstrings game play, watches it bleed to death, and then pees on it. I think that's the kind of realism debate we need to stay focused on here."

My inevitable facetious reply:
" Are you mocking the fine writing of Doug Turdwaddler? Plus, you've obviously overlooked volume 5 of the painstakingly compiled series on conversions between the metric scales of the demihuman races. Of course, one could make the conversion oneself if the entry on page 42 of Module Y3, "Land of the Quantity Surveyors," is coupled with Box 7-2 on page 95 of "The Dwarven Oresmelter Prestige Class Handbook," connecting the modern kilogram with the archaic (human) gold standard weight, the "aurit," which in turn matches the dwarven krudoniton on a 25:1 scale. But I would much rather pay the $99.95 to have a convenient set of tables tell me how to multiply by 2.2."

Does that count as an official first blog rant?

Lately...

So, before I forget, Toast Machine is gearing up for it's slow, inexorable march first across the small venue terrain of Northern (and occasionally Southern) California, then eventually across the landscapes of your mind and heart. If you think that is an exaggeration, you should read some of Gio's posts. Anyway, the dynamic duo (I'm not going to get sued for using that, am I?) has started performing again after a long absence from the stage. If you are in the Bay Area and enjoy having your soul rocked from it's fragile physical casing, their next show is in San Rafael at the Verge TONIGHT. If that is too short notice, come to the more centrally located Gilman in Berkeley on 9/23, the first full day of autumn, to rock the equinox the way Mother Nature intended.

Now then - on to Scott McCloud (as if I need to link). While MIT can often be a grueling, terrible place for us grad students, there are occasional perks like having your favorite comics writer/artist/thinker come to give a talk. Even if you haven't read Zot! (my favorite comic series, stored lovingly right next to my prized Flash #123), you must know about Understanding Comics and the new Making Comics. Scott gives a great talk, with one caveat: he often describes things the way he wants them to be (which he admitted in at least one case). I also agree with what Gary Tyrrell wrote in saying that "...McCloud places himself firmly in the Formalist camp, but I’ve been struck for 20 years more by his ability to tell a story and build characters that come alive, making him (in my eyes) more of an Animist." Scott has played around with online format a fair amount (e.g. My Obsession with Chess and The Right Number) but the storytelling still seems paramount in his work.

Petty points aside, Scott puts a lot of intelligent ideas out there for people to kick around and, really, how do we ever fully understand something without discussing it and arguing about it? Besides, he wrote ZOT!!

It's happening!

Now that I'm adjusting my schedule around, small pockets of time are opening up and I'm building up to drawing more frequently. Can it be? Here is a first attempt at the dreaded ankheg! For scale, I drew a poor cow as its prey. Unfortunately, it is a poorly drawn cow as well, which you probably would have had a hard time IDing had I not told you. Alas.

By the way, did you know that there is an imaginary stock market out there based on trading blogs? The guy who runs the superfreaky D&D blog (linked below - you know where) plays this thing and is the sole stockholder for this very site. I'm an old gamer and I can appreciate all sorts of games (if one has time for such things), so the only thing that bugs me is that this guy knows of my blog and my link to him and bought those little fake shares, so can't he link to me?! Dude, throw me a bone! Look upon my counter with pity!

How about this offer - for anyone who links to this site, I will draw you a picture (at least as good, maybe better as the monster pics here). Of course, I need people to actually see this offer first, so there's a little break in the supply/demand cycle. Hm...

Lemon Curry?

That's a little joke for you Python fans out there. Well, not really a joke. Just a silly reference. If you know it, you'll know why it's funny. So if it makes you laugh, can it be a joke? No, of course not. Don't be stupid.

Anyway... here is the ferocious axebeak! Just a rough sketch of one, really. Like the manticore previously, only less worked out. Notice that only the legs are shaded. If I can convince myself to finish it, I'll repost. But really, who's got the time?

I guess I am one small step closer to completing my Monster Manual goal. One very minute step. It's very small. Almost invisible. (That's a Dangermouse quote, which is even more obscure than the Python quote. Boy, do I need to get out.)