Google Reader's death has affected my blog readings.

I know Google gave everyone like a month in advance to prepare for the inevitable folding of the program, but I still feel like I'm reading way less than I used to. Feedly was offered as an "incomparibly awesome" substitute, but having gotten into the site AFTER google reader shut down instead of doing it BEFORE it shut down, now I'm left with an .xml file of tasty tasty blogs that just don't quite jive well in the 2~3 other downloadable RSS feed programs I've gotten. I think imma' have to break down and purchase one eventually, but i'm still waiting to get feedback from the interwebs about which one people actually like as opposed to quietly live with *sigh*.

As is completely unusual for me, I've just been saving art to throw up here when I had a chance to scrap dump. I've still been updating my website with my new stuff as I get time, so the gallery there is pretty indicative of the stuff I've been doing for the last little while. I have a sketchcard set I just finished, but I don't think I'll get the hear-back from that until August right now, but I'll be sure to post as much as they let me when it's time.

In the meantime, sketchdump.

 

Body Love Wellness - a TEDtalk post

I keep starting non-art posts with apologies about being political or standing on a soapbox when it comes to one issue or another. I had to retype this little intro about 3 times, but I think the third time is a charm, and I'm not sorry or apologetic about posting body positive posts.

So, one of the many HAES blogs that I follow had a really amazing TEDtalk by Golda, a non-practicing laywer and a body health advocate who owns BLW. I wanted to share her video not out of obligation to her website or HAES or anything else, but because it debunks succinctly in 14 minutes what I feel like I've been trying to tell my family for years. It doesnt say it from the roll of the victim or from an unhealthy fetish standpoint, it says it from a socio-scientific standpoint: being fat is no more or less unhealthy than being really thin, and the hurt associated with fatness is from continued social stigma on the situation*.
*Don't believe me? Watch the video. Now go to the youtube page and read any 5 comments you want. It's unbelievable.

I can pinpoint the moment my heart crushed into a cube.

I worked for days on this. Days.

And when I came to get back to it around February 22nd, the file is corrupted. Like, *bad* corrupted. and me being me, I didn't backup my computer since I started working on it.So I have been sulking since. I finally decided to give it another try starting tonight. We'll see if foot v2.0 can be improved on.

Screaming Goats!

Because my day went better than expected and I got to watch 3 funny youtube videos at work. SALUTé!

Every time I make a post, I think about all of the GIFs I want to use.

So, these past few months have been in a slow but steady upswing. I finally escaped the bookstore, which broke my heart in so many ways, but I couldn't deal with how management was using it's position to manipulate employees and employee relations, especially among those they didn't particularly care for. I work part time now for a computer company, and I'm trying really really hard to get full time, but I'm not under the impression that it will be any time before the end of march. This means taking lots of extra shifts to try and get as close to 35 hours a week as I can. Sadly, even at 35 hours a week, I'll still end up making more than I was at my old job.


That aside, it's been good times, albeit busy. I've been working on and off on a bunch of different projects, both art related and crafty related. So I'll just sort of go down my muddled list as best I can.


I'm still sewing and knitting some things, though I have been really bad about getting them pictured. Rest assured, I am slowly getting over my fear of using a sewing machine, and it has saved my poor craftin' ass more than once in the last month or so. I was knitting infinity scarves for a while, and now I have such a backlog of fucking awesome fabric that I've started sewing and dying some stuff as well. Yay!
(If you guys are into free crafting stuff at all, I have been wading around in the backposts of Aunt Peaches blog for quite some time now. I'm half convinced this is some kind of code name for Amy Sedaris. Also, some free online patterns for Infinity Scarves if you want to sew them instead of knit them.)




The other major news is that for the first time in my life, I have an iPhone. And I am utterly goddamn addicted to it. This is why I put off on getting one for so long -- well, the addictive qualities and the fact that my monthly data bill was always going to be like 3x's more than I could actually afford. So far, I have gotten addicted to battle cats (image above), bread kittens, and instagram.  My problem now is finding the time to cycle through my games that I like, and then get back home and actually do some solid work instead of dicking around on my phone all the time. Suffice the distractions, I have actually managed to squeeze out a few arties, however silly they are for the time frame I'm working on.

I only have a WIP screenshot, but I started on the linework for what was going to be a little sketch in CSPaint, and sort of turned into a "I'm going to make this a polished picture, instead" thing. I should mention this was a picture that started back in September, and I have basically left it on my desktop in various states of being ignored since then. At this point, I may use it as a valentines day picture of some kind, I dunno.

I've also been working on a little bit of stuff in CSPaint just to get used to how the program handles. I made a picture for the EGD website, but I don't have enough stuff to update with quite yet so I may wait a little bit. But since I've made the decision to leave all Hewia art off of DA, it means y'all can come here to get little snippets of stuff I do. I also made a version 2 of this image, but you're going to have to click on it to find out!

The last little bit of trouble I've been getting myself into has been in Poser & Blender. I've finked around in poser 9 enough now that I have a basic concept of editing figures and lights and stuff, but what I'd really like to start doing is being able to rig my own models, specifically of Mahadevi and Himegami. My first attempt at 3D Modeling was back in the last 90s with a Himegami head I made from a modified mesh of Nefretiti's face. It was in a now-dead program called stratavision that was not all that great. But it was what I had so I made due. Now, I've been watching a lot of 3D artists and the videos and tutorials they put out for beginners of designing their own base, putting in the textures, getting all of the SSS blenders and color refractions to work so that it doesn't look like shiny plastic with a misaligned human texture under it. So far, I've put about 10~12 hours into my Mahadevi figure, and I'm not even done with the base figure yet. After this comes figuring out how to design clothing and jewelry and stuff, or even imitate armor that's already in the game. Here's what I have so far:

I actually have a Soranik Natu model I started working on as well, but I'm going to get the heavy lifting out of the way first with Mahadevi and then work my way down the line. I'm hoping to perhaps submit my 3D art to blizzard in the future. I'd still love to be in their character design and costume design department(s).

Welp, that'sabout all for me right now. Just wanted to get out a little journal plop so that people didn't think I was sheltered up somewhere making a nest out of my own hair. Hopefully there will be more arts & crafts soon!

Buseh Buseh Bumblebehs

So, finally got the EGD site up. One of the perks to only being on part-time duty at my new job for a month or two is getting a little bit of extra buffer time to chip away at projects. Like I was saying in a previous post, in an attempt to save some time, I've been knitting a lot of scarves. The picture shows three of seven that I've done, and I'm working on the eigth right now, and waiting on payment for a ninth. They go relatively fast, but it's still a solid 2~3 hours to make one, which can be sort of frustrating when I'm always making a mental inventory of stuff i have yet to accomplish before the end of the month(s). Heh, better get it done before the 21st. Wouldn't want to get to the end of the world and not have all my ducks in a row.


I finally got my guru.com page set up, too. It had been sort of incomplete for a while, but I think people have a way better chance of getting jobs on there if all of the little section dingles are filled out. It also gave me a reason to take a picture of my computer setup. It's really nice because in the spring, I'm right next to the back porch door, and I can open it up and get blasted with the fresh air. The only thing that sucks is that the door is a west facing one, so as the sun goes down I usually have a 60 minute window where I get blinded by the sun. But overall I'm really happy about it, and happy with my new apartment situation. (Well, new since May 2012 at least. It still seems new to me).
 Speaking of getting set up with companies, I am giving Rittenhouse Archives another go. I sent another probe email and actually got a response back this time, so I'm feeling optamistic. They want a sampling of my work, so I'll hopefully have those sent off to them by the end of the month.


Also on the topic of comic dorkery, I've still been trying to work on my little resin jewelry side project. I always wanted to have a blue lantern ring, but you either have to get them in sterling silver (which makes them expensive as fuck) or you can buy the original rings released with the Blackest Night storyline, which were cheaply made and in mens sizes. I wear a woman's size 6, which is like child-size fingers. The only way I was going to get one was to basically make my own, which I have been. For as much as I've worked with resin in other jewelry projects, working with hard-cast resin means that it has to use a chemical-heat reaction to set the resin. This also means that because of the heat it puts off, you have to deal with bubbles that you can't really get completely rid of because they are a naturally occurring part of the the resin setting. I actually have a ring i've worn a few times that isn't photographed above, and it turned out pretty well. I was hoping to have some rings as gifts to people who initially contributed to the first issue of the BLC fanzine, but I'm thinking at this point I'm just going to return the donations people gave me for it and fold it down. I think the problem is that a lot of the initial fans of the Blue Lanterns were in it only seasonally, so they've moved onto bigger and better things by now. And that's okay, there isn't any judgement in that statement. I just don't feel like chasing and bugging and begging people to submit stuff for the next 6 months in an attempt to get the issue printed. From here on out, RMS + EGD are going to be where I devote most of my time. I'm still sitting on the decision in case for some reason I get an influx of submissions by March or something, but I've sort of decided if it's still DOA by the end of January, I'm just going to put up an apology statement and let it go away. At least people can still go to the BLC Fanpage @ DevArt. (Even that one is basically gone to the wayside. I guess Hope is a passing emotion after all.)

Other than that, not a whole ton of news. I work a Apple now, which has been a lot of fun. It's crazy when you get a job at a company who wants you there as opposed to acting like it's only putting up with you. The whole staff is so full of talent and energy, I've been super excited so far! I've always been a Apple gal, so it's really neat to work with something I've had a life-long love affair with. For all the shit people give the company and the products, if it wasn't for the innovation of Steve Jobs and The Woz, computers and handheld devices would still look like garbage and be slow as can be. Frogman actually made a really good post about it, yesterday.

Here, have a picture set of my ancient old cat. And yes, she's missing a bunch of her teeth. She's 16.

After 2-ish years,...

It Begins!

My Brother. Seriously. my Fucking Brother.

Listen to this shit.

So, today is/was thanksgiving. I'm still sick as a motherfucker, and I didn't get to be with my family. I got to stay in bed and feel nauseous instead. Still don't have a voice, and what voice I do have sounds like Sylvia Browne on a Virginia Slims kick. My Fucking Brother, this guy,... He brings me a full thanksgiving day care package of food, with pie and whipped cream.

If someone gets a Person of the Year award, it is him. To you, I give my rare (but heartfelt) 3 deer salute!

SALUTE´!

The Annual Thankfulness Post

I do sort of look like a Matryoshka, IRL.

This post did not start out as a list of things I'm glad for. Far from it. It started out as a fear-fueled excursion into the fact that I am sick at least 4 days of every month now, and it seems to be around those times that I decide it would be a great time to make a blog post about how much I desire everything in my near vicinity to be on fire.

So, the original post -- in all of it's self fellating, white people problems glory -- actually began on sort of a good note. After six and a half years, and an economy that makes Oscar the Grouch's pad look like a step up, I finally found a new job. I don't want to get into too much detail about it yet, in part because I'm superstitious enough and of constantly enough bad luck that i don't want to jinx it, but it's a step up as far as a job and pay. A big part of the reason i'm quitting where i work now is because of the fact that, taking account of the increased cost of living, I only made ¢16 extra in 6.5 years. And my manager made it pretty clear that was how it was going to stay.
The second reason I'm leaving is also sort of off limits for the immediate moment because I had to make a complaint to the state, and that means I won't know the outcome of this all for a few months yet. It also means that the likelihood I was going to be treated like crap for the remainder of my stay was pretty high.

I'm both happy and unhappy about the whole situation, because my work environment is/was both a physical and emotionally unhealthy place to function, but I also really enjoy the company of a lot of people who work there. Yeah, everyone has their fudgy little personality quirks, but they are good people with a good heart. Well, most of them. Well, excluding a few. Well, excluding like 10 people who may or may not be elder demons. The new place I'm working for has a lot more opportunities for me to prove my worth, and has both an older and more world weary staff of people who share a lot of the same interests.

So, literally two days after I give my 2 weeks, I'm sick again. Head cold, no voice most of the time. I guess it was the bookstore's parting gift to me. I've also been sort of weepy because I'm starting to work through that I'm going to lose contact with a lot of my friends from the bookstore. Yeah, we all share email addresses and say we'll make the fight to see each other more, and that things will stay the same.

But I think deep down we know it's a comforting lie we tell ourselves whenever someone leaves.

The scheduling at the bookstore will still be antithetical to having a social life.
My new job will come with new schedules and new responsibilities.
I will keep in contact with 2~3 people from the bookstore and the rest will turn into a haze that I half remember only when I happen to make a party or come in to buy books (which wont be often since without my discount, I can get most of the stuff I want on Amazon.com for about the same price).

It's sad. I'm preparing myself early so that on my last day I don't spend it being a big weepy mess.  I work basically 13 days straight because I start my new job immediately and it has its own schedule already in motion, so I'm trying hard to get better and take stock of things I need to finish before I actually get a move-on. My guess is that a lot of my end-of-tenure work list is going to get finished after i actually leave - I've started making holiday presents for people already and, dammit, I'm not going to scrap them!!

This is the part where The Annual Thankfulness Post actually starts, I guess. Instead of doing my usual writing a really awful post and deleting it 5 days later, I'm using the fact that tomorrow is Thanksgiving* as a diving board to eschew that I'm working on half a braincell and my anxiety/depression is still functioning under 'self destruction mode'. For all the pooping and crying and bitching I do about why such-and-so is a jerk or boo-hoo my vagina, I really am extraordinarily blessed to have the amount of good things that I do in my life, both big and small. So, in the spirit of the whole thing, here is a very incomplete list of reasons why i am going to be happy about my new beginnings and eat some turkey and then pass the fuck out;

THINGS I'M THANKFUL FOR

Who loves unordered lists? YOU DO! 8D

•  My little brother. Seriously, Geg, you are the world to me. I would kill a person for you. I want everything good in world for you, and i know you've been having a rough time of it lately but I am 150% behind you. Always. You are probably one of the most sane people I know, and yes, every time I say that I know you're rolling your eyes at me and thinking about the irony of the situation, but I mean it. If I can only ever be super cereal about one thing, it is that. You are so awesome and inspiring and funny, I could keep going on. I don't know what I'd do without you. You are my go-to wing-man for everything. I will tell you everything first, and i know you have my back on it, even if I'm being a stupid selfish fuckwad. Which with me, happens often. Seriously, don't change. I love you. Now let's make out and ruin thanksgiving for everyone who just read this.
• My Bookstore friends. They have gotten me through the last 6 years, especially Mz. Austin and Hotka Hotcakes. They let me hang out with them, bitch with them, complain, kvetch... Well, mostly just kvetch. Honestly, I've done about 30 solid years of complaining in my short stay here, and not always for a good reason. But they've got my back, and I know even after I'm gone they'll still have mine. Because if for no one else, I will damn sure make time for them at least whenever I can.
• My family, for all of its backwoods carney bullcrap. My parents are both functionally insane, but good people, and I hope that one day when I finally get around to writing the David Sedaris type memoir I have in my head, they won't be too mad at me. They have helped me emotionally and financially when they can, and it's been what's helped me get through my short & eventuful life as a nobody.
• My online art friends, both old and new. There's so many names, and I'm not even going to attempt to list them all because I know I'll forget someone and get them upset which is so not what I want. Yeah, we don't always agree on stuff. Yeah, we go through periods of non communication. Yeah, we forget about each other for long periods of time. But in the end we know who we were and how how far we've come as artists. I've been given this amazing gift to watch people blossom into artists over the course of years - some rare cases, 10+ years!. I'm making new friends and getting to be part of their journey as well, and it's so loving and amazing.
• My WOW-RP friends, from when I was still active. The fact that any of you try to pay attention to me and the boring stuff I do IRL is very sweet of you. I'm glad we had the time we did together, and hopefully we'll have more opportunities in the future to make more stories together.
• The people who currently penpal/ATC xchange with me, as well as the people who have done it in the past. I love writing letters, it's such a lost art, and being able to get the gift of someone's handwritting and time spent is really heart warming. I hope that until my hands cripple up and fall off, i'm still writing letters to people.
• My noisy, 16 year old, shitbag cat. You're a pain in the ass, but you're my pain in the ass. And you're very adorable, even for an old lady. Let's be spinsters together forever.
• मा
• Anyone who has commissioned me, ever, or has even thought about it. You give hope to someone who has been told her whole life by bizheads and family members that she'll never make it professionally. 
• The combination of Banana-Orange-Pineapple juice and zinc tablets. FUCK YOU, RHINOVIRUS!
• My old, beat up wacom tablet. Without it, I'd never have gotten as far as I have.
• My brand new Keurig Mini Brewer in Flash Green. It's made my tea and coffee habits a billion times worst.
• Imgur.com. Even with all of the reposted content.
• Frogman.me. Even with all the downtime.
• My innate hoarding and organizing OCD. I've made my markers last for 10+ years, and I can keep the shelf life of my art supplies extended over 9000 as long as I keep being a weirdo!
• celsys, for bringing joy back into my digital painting life. (Even though I waited years to buy manga studio EX 4 off ebay and now you're selling the digital version for $30. I won't hold it against you forever, even though the application layout for MSEX4 is a hot mess.)
• The Namekuseijin & Blue Lantern Corps fandoms, for staying true to your dork roots and keeping in-fighting to a relative low.
• My bed. If I could marry an inanimate object, it would be my bed.
• Minecraft. For being one hell of an entertaining time waster.
• Netflix, for exactly the same.
• The 1812 Overture, which makes everything epic and hilarious at the same time.
• This .gif .
• This one, too.
• My ever increasing collection of action figures.
• Deco tape. I could supply an entire craftshow with the amount of fucking decotape I have.
• Succulents. You are the one kind of plant that I can keep alive, for some reason.
• Reading in the bathtub.
• Alternatively, my cleanliness OCD.
• My subsidized apartments. I'm glad my taxes can finally go to work for me when I'm down on my luck.
• My disgustingly huge collection of books and comics. 
• Crafting. God fucking help me, I can't stop crafting!!!
• iTunes genius. I save a ton of time on making playlists when I let the application do the heavy lifting and delete out the stuff I don't want.
• Google Translate.
• Free internet stuff. I love me some good free internet junk.
• The fact that I have really small feet, because I can save a crap load on name brand shoes by buying them from the kids section.  ($45 Green Gazelles, mother fucker!)
• Red hair dye, adding to my Scottishness since 2002.
• Q-tips & Toothpicks. They make cleaning my electronics super quick. 
• Online Coupons. I'm such a spendthrift I live for the new weekly coupons I can use for ULTA, target, hobby lobby, and Michaels.
• My health, or what little of it remains.
• My sanity, in the same boat as the above mentioned.  
• My webhost, who makes it easy for me to give links to really awesome-slash-awful images! 

Here, have a completely out of context minecraft conversation.

*(for everyone except NDN members, unfortunately, in which case it's America giving itself an award for attempted genocide.)

OWW.

This is a pretty accurate representation of how I'm feeling right now. My back went out at work, and the doctors don't want to touch anything because they all think it's something different. I'm showing enough signs of possible spinal nerve distress that I have to get to take some MRIs this upcoming week to make sure that I don't have a ruptured disc or a pinched nerve or anything. In the meantime, my body goes through moments of peace and then intense pain, and my clinic has decided they think I'm a drug addict so they won't really give me anything for the pain. I had to see them 3 times (and spend 2 co-pays, which is a goddamn lot when you make nothing) for them to finally give me enough of anything to get through till the MRIs are done. Ugh. No wonder our health system is a wasteful piece of shit. This has all been enough to make me very sincerely want to move to Canada. Which I want to do at any given time anyway. So.

I've been on a Blue Lantern kick lately, in part because the fandom is still developing & scattered, and in part because I'm getting to do one of my most favorite things in the whole world which is character design! I have little BLC fan character I made called Pësh. Gender & Sexually neutral, I've been enjoying the whole design process since I have a lot more wiggle room for outfits for a culture that has no real social morës about dress. I'm trying to get some more stuff designed because I'm working on the script for a 'How Pësh Became a Blue Lantern' comic. Here's some WIPs:

  

Getting the back story has been a combination of bending DCU canon (which is bendy anyway because of the multiverse thing) and trying to keep a close eye on developments for the Blue Lantern Corps canon, which is still technically developing since they're only a couple years into publication. The biggest issue is not having a complete list of the blue lanterns, even though DC has been adding more in for the recent New Guardians storyline. This is a problem because in BLC canon, the previous inductee is the one to find the next lantern from an adjacent sector. Officially, only the first 4~10 sectors have inductees. Pësh is from sector 1008. In this case, the ring is going to have to seek hir out instead of me grinding up another NPC to find Pësh.

I've been working on some crafty type things, too, but I'll wait to put those online until a different day. I'm working on 4 main projects right now (BLC fanzine, EGD website, x2 big commissions) that are taking up most of my free time. I'm happy to have the work to keep my hands busy, though.

Since I didn't have much art this time around, I bring you this gift I found on tumblr. Gegginton, I'm lookin' at you!

Addendum, 12AM: so, I've been using the trial version of the Japanese software Clip Studio Paint, which is the OSX solution to SAI. I've gotta say, I really like the brush engine for just doing doodly mockup stuff. I've been using it almost exclusively so that I can get a full run of the 30 days. You have to buy the full version, but the non-PRO version is like 63$ to buy a license, and you can download a crapload of freebies off of the website. It's in Japanese which is a little fudgy, but there is enough support for english localization that if you download the english menu files, it's enough to work your way through without needing to know much Japanese. (and I don't know much Japanese. I can hold a conversation for about 90 seconds before I'm out of my league.)