Went to an endocrinologist today. I didn't want to go, but my mom's been trying to get me to see one for years. As medical things usually go, one visit now means three more appointments. (And I have no insurance. Hurray.) Two blood tests, a sleep study (I don't even know what that entails), and a follow-up visit after I spend two months on a medication (something to do with potassium).
Sigh. I was at the hospital just two weeks ago for something else. And I should probably see the dentist sometime. It's been five years, and I've had a cavity for a least two. I wish I could put this off until I have insurance, but there's no telling when that will be.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion
The 2009 Rant, Vent, and Share thread
huh, i think i'm gonna MAKE some crutons….remember that muffin ya didnt buy by back in Top Drawr Gamma, Hippie? revenge is a bitch huh? heh heh heh.
You…you scoundrel!
Well, you know what? I have…um…frozen yogourt. :(
My science project looks so crappy done with my wonky tablet. And it's due tomorrow. :(
I hate how it messed up on the day when I was all inspired and working on something I really liked so far.
Short stories don't take that much amazing skill, above that of long ones anyway :)
Authors just have to have the practise and be in the habit of doing them.
Doing a long story well isn't that easy either, we just forgive them more because they go on so long.
…I have to get out of bed and get ready for work… Stupid morning –_–
Short stories don't take that much amazing skill, above that of long ones anyway :)Heh. I always forget that your morning is my night.
Authors just have to have the practise and be in the habit of doing them.
Doing a long story well isn't that easy either, we just forgive them more because they go on so long.
…I have to get out of bed and get ready for work… Stupid morning –_–
I got awakened this morning with "I need you to take me to school nooooooooow!" I couldn't, of course, until I'd had my coffee. No one f**ks with me before I've had my coffee.
Well, I think we can all agree: Good writing = Hard. ;)
Which kinda reminds me of a poster I used to have: "Good design goes to heaven. Bad design goes everywhere".
I find it kind of funny i just made an entire comic page by copy/pasting 1 image and then adding a 2nd. But now i am seriously behind on #3, god and i can't stop browsing the net either or posting these useless posts, and then i just spent some time making a website to display my new short stories(actually looks pretty cool/functional)
I have schoolwork i need to be doing right now too :P (actually…i better do that now…shit…)
EDIT: fuck i have 5 pages of essay writing due tomorrow :gem:
i've been charging at this training thing at full tilt the past couple weeks, and now my body finally just said, what the fuck? yesterday, over the course of the full day, was the most i've worked out since wrestling in high school. began the day with chest exercises, ran my 3 mile at record (for me) pace, swam at lunch. at tae kwon do, we had to do kicks. the entire time. at one point, we'd lunge come up and do a front kick. that was 10 minutes by it's self.
this morning, i went to the gym, and alls we did was ab work. then came mandatory pt, and we ran 2 laps (.8 miles) did 100 of each: push-ups, sit-ups, and squats. i have tae kwon do in half an hour, and my body is saying, "if we do any exercise tonight. i swear to god i will f*cking kill you" seriously, it left a note while i was napping.
but the good news is, is that all my times are dropping rapidly. which means that i should be ready to try out by the end of the year. (then start training the next summer, in the beautiful texas heat.)
Well, I think we can all agree: Good writing = Hard. ;)So true. So very true :(
Which kinda reminds me of a poster I used to have: "Good design goes to heaven. Bad design goes everywhere".
It's a Wednesday, but it feels like a Thursday. Thank heavens it's a holiday on Friday! :)
I leave my morning coffee until I get to work. My brain's alright until then. When I start work it falls asleep. Coffee doesn't wake it up, but it wakes the body a bit more which in turn wakes the mind a little. :)
Woohoo! I'm-a do some comic braggin'!
Finished 2 (pencil) pages today. My brain is totally fried, though. Four or five full figures, in 4x5" panels, over and over again… killin' me. And my hand. Drawing small-ass detail = why I have arthritis.
But I'm really enjoying drawin' this one- I think it's because stuff actually, ya know- happens. "Oh crap, Hyena- you mean your characters do more than talk?" Dude, I know. It's crazy. I love how they're turning out, too- it's amazing to me how much better I've gotten since I started this mess last June.
So now I'm less than 10 (pencil) pages away from the end of Ch. 3! I'm still a couple pages behind my deadline, but… eh, it happens. So long as I can get it all done by the middle of June, I'll be fine. :D
I'm so frustrated. I love comics and I've wanted to make one for so long but I never have any ideas and on the rare occasion that I do(or someone else gives me one), I'm unable to make an actual story or I start on it and realize a day or two later how stupid or cliched it is. And I'm not a good enough artist to ask someone else to write for me, I would just f*** up their nice story. I just…I don't even know. This makes me so, so upset.
I feel like I'm floating on a cloud. I'm thousands of miles in the air, and the only thing preventing my horrific demise is a lump of condensed rain that could simply vanish at any moment.
Just in case you didn't get it, this a metaphor for 'I have a shit ton of work to do, not enough time to do it even if I didn't have to sleep, eat, and shit, and I'm going to screw up my entire life if I fuck this up, which at this point is inevitable'.
It's not a very good metaphor, granted, but fuck you.
Edit: bah what's the use. *thinks of kittens*
After i make that three week comic i'm going to make a quick yaoi one, i think it's pretty interesting since it doesn't follow the regurgitated crap of every other yaoi manga.
I really regret starting plastic back up again tho since i'm having so much fun writing these little one-shots, i'm really behind on my buffer for it it may die yet again ._.
Writing short stories in a way can take as much skill as writing a long one. I think the key is to make them is to build it on a setting/item/situation rather than a character. It's so easy to drag them out and tell your story in a high page count but harder to know how to compress/tell a story in such a short page count.
Short stories and novellas are easy to write for me. Usually they concentrate on one or two characters with no subplots. Add additonal details and subplots and you get a novel. Then write an epic story and you have a long story. Could you compress it? Not really. You'd end up tossing so much, certain scenes would no longer make any sense. Then the story no longer makes sense.
That said i absolutely hate uncompressed writing in comics :gem: there are times when it's done well but it's mostly just awful taking 100 pages to do what they could have done in 20 easily. It's bad writing to me plain and clear. The longest story i've ever written is my favorite #2 one and even then it progresses the plot with every page and has lots of twists/original themes.
All that being said: the writer should always keep asking him/herself "Is this scene truly necessary?" And avoid being self-indulgent "But it has this cool dialogue…" That's my problem. I'm too self-indulgent. But my prose is not long-winded. These days I'm usually accused of being too terse.
Now I have to ask myself "Why do I take everything you say personally?" I have this habit of applying anything to myself. Over-criticism. Except I'm only that sensitive about certain aspects of my life! Of course how does one know what is wrong when specific, honest criticism is so rare?
My prose? "Nah, you just don't get what I'm trying to do". Model-building? Do I really want to kill myself anymore achieving perfection and winning all those awards? Were all those awards worth all the heartbreak and torture? No. I want to enjoy what I do, the end result does not satisfy the pain of that creative process.
When is something good enough? It's that steep learning curve.
I'm ranting. FIDO. At the end of day I remind myself that I'm a dumb-ass, over educated tanker. And there is so much left to learn and I don't know half of what I think I do. ;)
I wanted to finish a comic page today… But I had to waste a couple of hours waiting around in a hospital room for my mum to finish with these tests they were doing on her. SO boring, so cold. Ugh. Nothing to do except read the author notes in the back of my book and watch Days of Our Lives on the hospital TV.
Interestingly the same characters are STILL on there since I last saw that show back in the 90's sometime! Or was it the 80's? Probably both…
"Victor Kiriakis", "Bo Brady" etc. I was shocked. This is a show I'd always get depressing momentary glances at when I was sick and bored out of my brain through the years.
-Just 10 or 20 minutes of an episode every years… But every single thing about it is so effing generic that it doesn't matter! You can still form a perfectly coherent story out of that! It's amazing!
Anyway, ugh, hospital has cost me. On TOP of extra charges from my fricken credit card company. Thieves!!!! -_-
And I bet the doctors won't even be able to tell what's wrong, no mater all the tests… It's looking that way.
At least I'm pretty sure she's not going to kick the bucket any time soon ^_^
That said i absolutely hate uncompressed writing in comics :gem: there are times when it's done well but it's mostly just awful taking 100 pages to do what they could have done in 20 easily. It's bad writing to me plain and clear. The longest story i've ever written is my favorite #2 one and even then it progresses the plot with every page and has lots of twists/original themes.
All that being said: the writer should always keep asking him/herself "Is this scene truly necessary?" And avoid being self-indulgent "But it has this cool dialogue…" That's my problem. I'm too self-indulgent. But my prose is not long-winded. These days I'm usually accused of being too terse.
I'm pretty "barebones" when writing my stories. I never could write long, flowery speeches for my characters and I totally suck at writing narrative, thus keep it to minimum that allows me to add a little to the art but usually it's rarely anything beyond "location, time, summary of what happened before so that I don't have to draw another 25 page sequence" bits.
I'm either writing loose script/plot as I go on (basically pouring my imagination straight onto the page as the ideas come) or just fill gaps between scenes in the "what situation/person/place could get the character from state A to state B" fashion.
I have a 300 page "epic" spanning couple of generations in six 50 page chapters. As it is, some characters pop up for a 2 page appearance only to return for another four pages in the next book, twenty or so years later. Don't think I could compress it anymore (I still have to do some rewrites as the dialogues are pretty bad at this point).
On the other hand I took a longer look at all my scripts/plots at the beginning of the year and decided to trim half of them to max. 52 pages.
It's a wonderful feeling to end the day with 3-5 freshly pencilled pages sitting next to you. :DWow, I'm lucky to get one, two pages tops finished in a day! :(
Well, for all my "I can draw fast!" bragging, I have yet to find time to draw ANY pages this year. And, besides, this is the best I can do if I draw five pages a day… http://www.drunkduck.com/Din_Krakatau/index.php?p=484505 or http://www.drunkduck.com/Din_Krakatau/index.php?p=484509
Not really major publisher print comic material :P
I fill in between plot points sometimes. That's sort of what I'm doing now :)
Slowly…
But I also write episodes as short stories too when I feel like it. It's just whatever I feel like doing.
Actually, I sort of told a lie: currently I'm doing a not very well written short story episode in my comic. But that's nestled inside a wider, longer from episode.
Short form stories are nice and neat and tight, but you get tried of knowing it all too well. A proper short story is a little container you know, or should know, every square millimetre. Longer form stories are allowed to be looser, which gives you more room to grow, change, stretch… mess up.
@ Aurora: Hell, those pages look perfectly fine to me! I really like #117. Uh, maybe 'cause it's in a bar. ;) You know me…
Also, think of books like "100 Years of Solitude"- I mean, sure, it's like 500 pages, but it spans 4 generations and there's never a point where there's any kind of filler- something's always going on. (edit to say I read this book in like, 2 sittings. That's how compelling it was! For two straight days, that's pretty much all I did. Same way with "Moby Dick", but I think I'm rather alone in that one.)
But I tend to like more tangential writing- all my favorite authors (Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson ) have a lot of moments where they'll diverge completely from the plot to explain some backstory, or talk about a certain character.
Short form stories are nice and neat and tight, but you get tried of knowing it all too well. A proper short story is a little container you know, or should know, every square millimetre. Longer form stories are allowed to be looser, which gives you more room to grow, change, stretch… mess up.I think that's is exactly what I'm tryin' to say. :)
RE: "episodes"- that's kind of how I write; for the most part, each story arc (which rarely last more than an issue or two- but then again, in webcomic world, that's like, 60-some pages and 30-some weeks!) is kind of a short story- it's very self contained, and could probably be read out of context with the rest of the story, and still make sense. I mean, I'd like to think there's a continuing narrative beneath those episodes, but I tend to think of/ construct "The Hub" kinda like a TV series; hence "episode". ;)
but the good news is, is that all my times are dropping rapidly. which means that i should be ready to try out by the end of the year. (then start training the next summer, in the beautiful texas heat.)Actually Texas hasn't been as hot as it has in the past. We had a couple of mild summers that past couple of years. Granted it is still hot, but it is taking longer to warm up and it is getting cooler quicker.
We had a "blizzard" in the middle of March last year. (4 inches is a lot around here)
@ Aurora: Hell, those pages look perfectly fine to me! I really like #117. Uh, maybe 'cause it's in a bar. ;) You know me…Well, thanks. But I did say this is the "best" I can do when I draw five pages a day. The rest are a little worse. Consequently, they're not the best pages in the entire comic. :D
Also, think of books like "100 Years of Solitude"- I mean, sure, it's like 500 pages, but it spans 4 generations and there's never a point where there's any kind of filler- something's always going on. (edit to say I read this book in like, 2 sittings. That's how compelling it was! For two straight days, that's pretty much all I did. Same way with "Moby Dick", but I think I'm rather alone in that one.)Yeah, I think that's what I'm aiming at. Telling long stories with lots of things happening.
On the other hand I'm insane and some of my projects are well… also insane :D
Like, one of them is supposed to hold a 300 page battle sequence or another one that I want to draw ten pages a day :D
But I tend to like more tangential writing- all my favorite authors (Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson ) have a lot of moments where they'll diverge completely from the plot to explain some backstory, or talk about a certain character.only read Vonnegut from these. Good stuff :)
I should be dead tired right now.
My friend is over, and we stayed up until about 6:30 AM. It's only 12:17 PM. I woke up a little over an hour ago.
My friend? Still passed out (Not literally, of course).
And well, apparently Dreamweaver refuses to work on my laptop. I've tried CS3, and 8, but they just don't want to work. So for the whole re-making my HTML and whatnot, I'm doing all of it with Notepad. And actually, it's not turning out so bad. I'm just hoping I can put everything where it needs to be, and have it look nice.
All you really need is Notepad and Photoshop. Dreamweaver just makes it a lot easier, so do you don't have to type out the code. I'm almost 100% you can do all of it in Notepad, too.
But all in all, the website design isn't turning out too bad. I thought of a pretty cool idea for it, but I'm not sure how it's going to work out. I'll have to make a test comic thing here on DD so I can see what it looks like.
I'm really hoping my 'project' (that's what the website kinda is) doesn't turn out to be total crap, but I'm almost positive it won't, because the other one I made turned out really well. But that one had a ton of images, and I didn't feel like bringing it here because everything is so outdated. I basically used photoshop and cropped things out a ton. I'd like to draw NEW things out for this layout. Such as for the Characters section, blah blah blah.
Although, I may want to draw a general layout of what I want for it.
I believe when my friend leaves, I shall get started on it. And see how far I can get tonight. Maybe, I'll get it done? Who knows.
As for the comic, I still have to shade a few pages. Ugh. I'd much rather be penciling or inking. I hate coloring.
—————-
Different subject. I remade one of the old major antagonists of one of the remakes of Ryu's Krew. The Grim Teddy. Who was just a teddy bear with the grim reaper's heart. Well, before, he was all cute and stuff, but when I sketched him with my new style last night…well…he wasn't very cute at all :P
I got a test back today and noticed that there were a lot of things marked wrong. Given that I had studied for 3 hours on the test, I knew that there was no possible way for me to miss 20 out of 30 questions. Then I found my answer. I had gotten off track on the scantron. The right answers were on my test, but not on my scantron.
I brought this to the attention of my teacher. I hope he will be nice about it.
Actually Texas hasn't been as hot as it has in the past. We had a couple of mild summers that past couple of years. Granted it is still hot, but it is taking longer to warm up and it is getting cooler quicker.
We had a "blizzard" in the middle of March last year. (4 inches is a lot around here)
very few people get short notice orders (30 days or less)(except deployments) so i expect that if i pass in november/december time frame, that i'll begin the Indoc course around june.
i did a liesurely swim today. my body really needed the break. i like it alot.
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