GJ, you're a good man. Sorry about the health challenges.
MegaRdaniels, welcome!
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
2016 Rant/Share/General Discussion Thread
Anyone used a surface pro for making comics? I'm tempted to pick one up. I have a galaxy note but found it lacking for doing much art on but the surface pro runs full windows applications. That and with a high end one I should be able to use 3d software to some degree. It means paying out a lot but I'm tempted.
I definitely feel like I have a lot on my plate at times, but it is much better than the opposite of not having anything on my plate. There is no reason to complain. Right now, I am the busiest I have ever been in years, yet it does not feel that way because I enjoy all the jobs I get to do and I have learned how to manage the stress by being more equipt to handle the pressure over the years.
When I am feeling like I am stretched too thin, I find a counter balance to even out the inconsistencies and that is why I do yoga. It has become a solid part of my daily routine and life and my body thanks me for it every day.
kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
I definitely feel like I have a lot on my plate at times, but it is much better than the opposite of not having anything on my plate.
I generally feel that way too, although I know that for me I can't always predict the point at which I get too stressed and serious anxiety sets in. I am so busy right now. No excessive anxiety yet, which is good, but I do really want a day off. It seems that every day is spoken for right now, plus I have to fit in research, readings, writing, etc.
The final exhibition for my curatorial practicum is going up in a week, and then two days after that we're hosting a panel discussion about it. I feel like there is still so much that needs to be done. Tomorrow I'm going to interview an artist who's going to be on our panel, which is both exciting and nerve-wracking. And then I need to get out two didactic panels before the end of the week so that they can be translated before the installation.
Edit: Just had a thought that I could do a series of newsposts on my exhibition/practicum. I'm not sure how many people here are interested in gallery-related stuff, but it would be something to write about, anyways.
I was also supposed to present a draft of my final Russian history paper next Monday, but since there are only three of us in that class I convinced everyone to move it to Tuesday.
—
I'm preparing a conference presentation for May on punitive psychiatry in the Soviet Union, and I mentioned to one of my former profs that I was thinking about contacting a former Soviet dissident who's still an active journalist. He offered to translate the message into Russian for me, because he's the best human being. Now I just have to figure out what I actually want to ask him! I have no idea if this guy will respond, but it would be so, so cool if he did.
Pressure is fine, what gets me is being pulled in too many directions or having to do things that are too far out of your realm of expertise. You can only do so much of that.
@Genejoke- I'm surprised you couldn't do much art with the Galaxy Note tablet! I find it brilliant for that and use it for 100% of my sketches and all the art I draw for the Quackcasts, like those ducks I've been doing. -Using Sketchbook pro.
@Bravo- Have you seen the vids by this guy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPFHr18pt3Q
He's an Irishman that drove Chieftain tanks for the British Army and Abrams for the for the US Army.
I love his talks on Tanks because he focusses on the simple mechanical reality of the vehicles, not all that fake "bad ass" shit that most people blather on about. He just talks about nuts and bolts, where the horn is, how to tension tracks, where to fill up the fuel etc.
Exactly! He has a lot of vids coving lessor known tanks in the same way and some lecture talks he gives. It's very instructive.
And no matter the vehicle he's talking about he's not full of pejorative crap and bias like for example Lee Emery or a car reviewer like Jeremy Clarkson- rather than rely on "common knowledge (urban myth) like those idiots he cuts through that stuff to find out directly for himself.
Actually he does in bit about some of the tanks he mentions in passing like the Australian use of captured M13 Italian mediums or the Australians balking at buying US M2 mediums in 1940. Though he might be speaking from personal experience of both tanks. There are running M13s in Italy and a well preserved M2 in the Patton museum.
Then there's his mentioning lots of types in passing and if you are not familiar you'll miss the reference. (British A13 Cruiser or Russian A20 fast tank. The A20 became the T34 that in fact entered production in late 1940 with several thousand in service in June 1941. Due to poor deployment and transmission problems they didn't cause the invading Germans too many problems. I built a model of one of the model 1940 tanks and have two others of different production variants of the model 1941 .)
It is interesting now with all the new information coming out, and plenty of myth busting revisionist research. Like the actual make and factory with documented variations of a tanks production run finally all documented after 75 years as opposed to the popular mythology spread in wartime accounts often based on incomplete captured intelligence. And it goes on and on making it kind of exciting to build the models.
I just built a 1939 panzer in the dual tone brown and grey scheme recently rediscovered with new research. I also did a Tunisian Tiger in the proper afrika braun which turns out to have been nearly as dark as US olive drab as shown in rediscovered Life Magazine color pictures. Pretty exciting all this time they were thought to be green based on erroneous accounts of Germans using captured RAF paint.
He's covered all those minor light and medium US tanks in previous vids pretty extensively. I don't know if he ever covers the big popular tanks actually, apart from a few exceptions like the Maus and the T-34.
I loved the lecture talk he did a while ago where he went into a lot of WW2 tank myths. It turns out that US tanks almost never faced Tigers and the "5 Shermans to one Tiger" is an old myth too.
From memory there were only 3 encounters, one where Shermans faced a Tiger (or tigers, can't remember), and won. The next was with Chaffee tanks and in that case the tigers won. The last was when the tigers were loaded on a train and just captured.
All other instances were just Panzer IVs confused for tigers because of the blocky shape, as you'd expect.
I just saw a vid on the Panther the other day- the colour scheme was based on the lack of paint apparently. The brown lines were the oxide undercoat :D
According to the combat logs of the German heavy tank battalions there were a few more times Tigers faced off against US Shermans. Especially Kasserine Pass, Sicily and Italy. British had the great majority of Tiger encounters in NW Europe. Then you read the US after action reports and unit histories and they also say something like that though called a Tiger it was really a Panther/Panzer IV/ even Stug or Hetzer!
It wasn't really a lack of paint. Late in the war the Germans realized the red brown primer was a good camouflage color in its own right. It was pretty close in color to the red brown they had been using since 1943. So for the period there was factory applied camouflage schemes red brown figured prominently. Again I have a few late war pieces I'm looking at schemes for.
Re- the paint.
Apparently the rationale was that they would make the paint go further by leaving the undercoat brown lines much wider than normal later in the war.
That's sort of what this fellow said anyway, using a 3rd of the paint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rUocSj2dHc
And this is Nick Moran talking about "American Armour Myths" that you may or may not agree with. It's a very long vid at 46 minutes, but worth it, if you're doing something else like drawing at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNjp_4jY8pY
The "third scheme" I met the guy who first verified it as a factory applied scheme. Though there is some controversy whether the outline color is white and whether the dark yellow had gotten more green in tone or if it was a green over spray and just how dark that was. There's also evidence that the road wheels from some factories were green. This is the kind of stuff the "drooling panzer freaks" discuss forever on their formums. Though I will be using variations of this scheme on my late Panzer IV and maybe a few others.
Hahaha, the Ozone and Bravo tank show! The Panzer IV is may fave WW2 tank- with the long gun that is and without the ugly extra plates hanging of the sides.
It's so nicely compact, so well proportioned. It's exactly what a tank SHOULD be. All nice shapes and so functional looking, with the typical Teutonic angles and hard edges that characterise much of their tech from fighter planes to battleships.
————–
Non-tankish now.
I love sleep. I love, love, love it oh so much… I just wish I could do more of it. But these days I have the buzzing busy bees of busyness bothering my bonce constantly. If I lie in I feel only that I'm letting stuff slide somewhere and I really should be getting up and working on something.
And even when I make time for relaxation I have a virtual clock ticking down in my head with diary pages open reminding me that I only have a small allotted time and then I have to start working again.
I miss that time when I could mentally shut off, when I could so easily pretend that obligations didn't exist and I existed outside of the working world.
The thing is I used to routinely hang out with the "experts" at model shows. Many of them build scale models of armor and we'd meet at the convention and talk tanks for hours. If I went back to that I would never have time for comics ever again. It's a very all encompassing obsession. … um I mean hobby.
Since I started my comic hiatus I've been toying with the idea. I've been having so much fun building kits. Over a dozen since October and the figure painting has just piled up.
Just go to reading, no more writing or photography and just figure out what to do with the boxes and boxes of figures, accessories furniture I collected for my comics
Boy, I never notice how many mildly distressing things I'm subjected to until I'm feeling a bit panicky. My brain tends to assign more importance to unpleasant information and images(even stupid things like a skull on a t-shirt that is normally completely benign) when I'm starting to feel panicky thereby further raising my anxiety level, so if I'm not feeling well mentally I try to treat myself very gently. Last night I was experiencing some hints of panic feelings, so I thought I'd listen to one of my favourite radio shows - CBC's Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. As soon as I pressed play there was a promo for another CBC programme focusing on the mysterious unsolved murder of a child. -_-
I know exactly what you mean Hippie!
Well, sort of…
When I have a really, really bad migraine things like that set me off on something like a bad trip. I have to keep away from anything like skulls even in just my own mental imagery - anything horrific or even mildly nasty because it multiplies 10 fold in my brain creating a feedback loop of horror. It's awful to get stuck in and makes the sickness and pain so much less bearable.
So I have to consciously claw my way back to fairyfloss clouds in rainblowland (so to speak) to get out of it.
ozoneocean wrote:
I know exactly what you mean Hippie!
Well, sort of…
When I have a really, really bad migraine things like that set me off on something like a bad trip. I have to keep away from anything like skulls even in just my own mental imagery - anything horrific or even mildly nasty because it multiplies 10 fold in my brain creating a feedback loop of horror. It's awful to get stuck in and makes the sickness and pain so much less bearable.
So I have to consciously claw my way back to fairyfloss clouds in rainblowland (so to speak) to get out of it.
Yes, that's exactly what it's like! That's really interesting that it's so similar, actually.
I also find that it's way worse when I'm going to bed, which is why that's when my worst panic attacks used to (hooray for CBT!) happen. First of all because being less alert means that it's harder to logically think my way out of weird anxiety thought-loops. But also because I tend to have 'waking dreams,' i.e. mild hallucinations as I'm falling asleep. Usually they're just benign things like geometric shapes and patterns, drawn faces/figures, etc., rarely interesting enough to note. But those thing go crazy sometimes when I'm anxious. "Feedback loop of horror" describes it perfectly.
Interesting. Probably exactly the same thing with bad drug trips too.
I can see how that would be- it's probably a simple function of the brain that does the same thing for everyone given the right or WRONG conditions to set it off.
The wrong switch gets flips and it's a short, sharp trip to waking nightmarville.
Man, some of he things that come out of my mind in that state… Like if you think about a broken bone, suddenly your mind is conjuring up images of the meaty, bleeding, shattered bone splintering and sticking out of the flesh…
And skulls aren't just skulls but faces being peeled away with hunks of rotten, slimy dark red bloody tissue, viscous snot dripping from the open nasal cavity, staring bloodshot eyeballs without lids… and it just gets worse and worse and worse.
From what I gleaned by talking to sufferers and neurologists; the best medication have to be taken at the onset of symptoms and alleviate them so the sufferer can function. That means the sufferer has to be aware enough of their condition to recognize the early onset to take the med. Or there are meds to take for some symptoms after it's happened like caffeine and analgesics. But that usually only dulls the actual pain and does nothing for the sensitivity and dizziness.
It would be nice if there was like an app for a smart phone where it would scan you body and tell you that the symptoms indicate. A hypochondriac's dream. Oh yeah, this symptom could be the first signs of a stroke, or just indigestion from that extra-hot chili dog you had last night.
So I had a dream where I was trying to shower and get to bed but constantly got interrupted. I finally got a call saying some friends had been in a major car accident. I was going to shower and get dressed when the doorbell rang. I went being careful of the screen door when a US World War 2 soldier shouldered it in, shoved his M1 rifle in my gut and fired. I woke up in mid recoil from being shot in the gut. I have felt pain and the impact of getting shot before, but this time there was just the recoil. So I figure the guy was using blanks. Still what a WW 2 us infantryman was doing busting in my door I have no idea unless my subconscious was doing its usual thing of suddenly shifting settings like from 1980s NJ to 1940s Europe.
Or may I should have payed more attention to the Sherman tanks going through my front yard.
Concerning Migraines… while they don't hit me often, when they do they are incapacitating…!! Dark Room, Windows Drawn, In Bed, No Sound… and wait it out…!! Comparing them to a regular headache is like the Flu vs the Common Cold…! And it's true what Bravo said, you learn to recognize those sort premonition-type symptoms, the way your eyes feel, etc… I have successfully staved off the worse of them by taking migraine pills prior to it coming on full-force…! Thank the Force that I don't have them too often…
Migraines suck. -_-
I had a funny dream last night.
I was on a very hot island with a large school camp on…
It started with me intervening in an altercation at a school camp where a small boy was being bullied.
Then I picked him up and took him under my wing, making it my mission to get him integrated enough so that he wouldn't be picked on again- which was a lot of hard work but he did really well in the end and I even found him a girlfriend.
Later as I was going back to sleep at the open dorm where my bunk was I found a whole lot of dead rats under it, which really annoyed me… then I looked around as saw there were heaps of other small animals lying about the place amongst the reclining people. They weren't dead, they were sleeping.
All sorts of animals, rabbits, armadillos, platypuses, cats, small dogs, birds, whatever.
So I tried to move some of these interlopers our of the way so I could navigate my way through the place, and they started attacking me!
The bunnies in particular bit really hard and left bloody marks.
But all I could think was that I had to be SOOOOO careful in fighting them off because I could maim or kill them so easily if I wasn't careful and I didn't want to hurt them.
So the theme of this dream was all about being in a hot, awkward difficult situation but trying my best to help out, or at least not hurt or damage anything no matter what.
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