J. Evan

Another B-day sketch. I was pretty happy with how it turned out (which is why I'm posting it, duh) despite some questionable anatomy (I re-drew those legs countless times in innumerable positions) and a couple of places where the cross-hatching didn't work out the way I wanted it to. Curse you, cross-hatching, I'll get you one day!

I'm not a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Or Joss Whedon for that matter. I liked Serenity alright. But most of the time his writing (his dialog, specifically) really bugs me and I couldn't explain why until I read a comic reviewer explain why he liked Warren Ellis's run on Astonishing X-Men more than Whedon's.  What his argument came down to was Ellis took care to write dialog that reflected the different personalities in the book whereas Whedon mostly just had everybody constantly zinging and out-clevering one another, which never happens in real life.  Someone in the group has to be the slow one (it's usually me when I'm part of a group). That was it.  That's what bugged the hell out of me everytime I tried to watch Buffy. So it's no surprise that the one episode ("Hush," which features these four handsome fellows above) I actually enjoyed was almost completely devoid of any "clever" banter. It also helps that those guys are four of the creepiest, most disturbing things I've ever seen on network television. I did this for someone's birthday sketch on the Comic Forums.

Seriously, why can't Robert Kirkman chose a GOOD charity cause like starving children or some sort of disease research instead of resuscitating the comics careers of Liefeld and McFarland? Way to go, all you Walking Dead zombies.  Enjoy your crap!

I was gonna make a mixtape of music that came out this year and/or had some kind of relevance to the past year's events, but I just found out Rocket From The Crypt put out a new All Systems Go volume this year and The Bronx came out with a new one (which by no means is guaranteed to be good, II being half-shitty) and I was oblivious to both, so clearly I paid absolutely no attention to music this year. My new resolution in 2009 is to try to keep up a bit better. I guess I could...  read blogs...  or something.  Isn't that how kids know what's going on these days?   I'm so out of the loop, I'm out of the loop on statying in the loop.

Oh yeah, in other news, yesterday I was two (2) years smoke-free. Yay me!

I got this from joeyweiser . He got it from someone else. If you care, you can play detective.

1. Put your iTunes (or any other media player you may have) on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

( Read more... )

About this time four years ago, I stumbled upon this and it made me break down in anger and despair. I'm pretty sure the meaning I assigned to it is not exactly the meaning that was intended. Today is the first time I've listened to it since the day Kerry conceded. At any rate, I think it's a beautiful song and I'd like to associate it with something more positive, so there you go.

Check out this sweet-ass birthday sketch I got from Mr. Rob Jackson:



It's the Green Lantern of the Tron-verse, duh.

I think I'll be getting rad with the Swedish Teens tonight while they pretend to be the Ramones in order to forget what a huge, 34-year-old dork I am.

It may not be the universe, per se, but something, some force beyond my ken is violating me. In the last two weeks my computer quit working, I lost my job, my wife developed a medical condition which demands attention, we had a cat put to sleep, and now this morning my car wouldn't start. How do you deal with a dry-humping? Try not to think about it? Laugh? Kick the humper in the testicles and yell, "NO!" (which is what I'd like to do, but that's far too metaphysical.) I mean, these things are mostly just inconvenient and stressful. I doubt any of them will leave scars (well, one might). I have to believe that all of these things are blessings in disguise at best, necessary/meant to be at worst. The computer situation has already been taken care of, free of charge, thanks to the good people at Apple. I'm mostly glad I won't be working here anymore after this week other than some freelance work, which is also softening the blow. Whatever I do, I have to remember not to think about what else can go wrong, because most likely it will. I already jinxed myself by musing about how car trouble would make the perfect storm of fuckery that is my life right now complete. Okay, enough middle-class whining. There'll be no more of that from now on. I just hope I (and all of you, for that matter) aren't given reason.

This is Becky. We had to put her to sleep a few hours ago.



Becky became a member of our household after a massive trapping effort undertaken by my wife at our apartment complex. The adults were fixed and released, but Becky and her two brothers, Tom and Huck, we kept inside due to their youth.  All three were feral, but Tom and Huck became perfectly socialized by two weeks.  Becky, however, never came around.  When we let her out of the crate for the first time, she hid in the closet for two days and crapped all over whatever clothes had fallen on the floor in the corner.  Getting her to leave the closet and stay out in the open was a huge breakthrough, but that was as far as she'd ever get.  She wasn't technically ours, as we never signed the adoption papers, but she lived with us as a foster for over two years. She was deeply distrustful of humans and never became fully socialized. Any contact we had with her was usually the product of epic hunts involving towels and the rearranging of furniture.

I didn't really like her, much less love her, and she was terrified of us, but she liked living with our cats and I think she liked living in our home despite the two lumbering humans she avoided at all costs. She earned her keep, too. She was the greatest bug-hunter I've ever seen, and she'll be missed as I'm sure these other shiftless layabouts won't pick up her slack. She recently got sick with some sort of infection, the diagnosis of which also revealed a heart murmur. She was recovering, we thought, but this afternoon she started acting funny, foaming at the mouth and breathing heavily. The vet said she had fluid in her lungs and was most likely suffering from congenital heart failure. Any treatment taken would be both expensive and nearly impossible to administer due to her nature. So we said goodbye and she passed quickly and quietly. I don't know why, but I'm pretty upset about it. Plain old everyday empathy for another living thing, I suppose. I don't know what I'm going to do when I have to say goodbye to one of the guys I actually love (and loves us back.)

IRFB!  THEY'RE WORTHLESS NOW! YAY!

Brushes and dip pens rock!  As does smooth bristol.  Howcome nobody told me?

STAPLE! was a blast.  Bought way too many books.  Met some cool people. Contracted some sort of exotic chest cold. The usual.
Now to gear up for CAPE!  Whee!

iPod meme ahoy!

How many songs total: 498
How many hours or days of music: 1.1 days
Most recently played: "Consolation Prize" by Fate Heroic
Most played: "Apollo Amateur" by Jawbox
Most recently added: "Goin' Back to Cali" by LL Cool J

Sort by song title:

First Song: "A-Plus" by Hieroglyphics.
Last Song: "68", by Pilot to Gunner

Sort by time:

Shortest Song: "Message from the CD" by Man or Astro-Man?
Longest Song: "BTTLS" by Battles

Sort by album:

First album: "All Systems Go 2" by Rocket From The Crypt
Last album: "1000 Hurts" by Shellac

First song that comes up on Shuffle: "I Will Refuse" by Pailhead

Search the following and state how many songs come up:

Death: 0
Life: 6
Love: 9
Hate: 1
You: 35
Sex: 1

In other news, I'm watching a cat inspect his reflection in a TV screen.

It occurred to me the other day that using Gaussian blur on a comic background in photoshop to give the illusion of distance thereby separating the foreground from the background is not a good thing. I only mention it because I see so many web cartoonists (albeit none of the good ones, I suppose) use it.  I know a lot of people have already come to this conclusion, but I'm never sure why people think what they think.  Lots of people think it's cheating to use photoshop in certain ways while others are like, "pff, whatever, photoshop's a tool just like a brush or pen."  I tend to agree with the latter.  But not on the gaussian blur thing. And not just because I may think it's a cheap shortcut or whatever.  As a photoshop tool, Gaussian blur is meant to mimic effects of a camera lens, which can only focus on one object at a time. That's what photography does, capturing single moments in time.  And that is it's limitation.  The difference between a photo and a comic panel is, with the photo, I can't necessarily look to the background (or foreground depending on where the lens is focused) and see any detail. I'm focused on one part of the picture whether I want to or not.  With a comic panel I can focus on any part of the composition I want (within reason, of course. The loss of detail is not the same as lack of focus).  In this regard, comic art more closely resembles real life than photo-realism.  The freedom comics give the viewer to focus on anything in their environment (or at least within the panel or page) is one of the advantages of the artform and to GIS an image and blur it is to deny the potential comics hold.  If you use gaussian blur, you might as well just make a photo-comic, and we all know how much those suck.  I mean, if its supposed to be a photo, then by all means, knock yourself out, but don't limit yourself because backgrounds (and I'm speaking from experience here, believe me) are intimidating. And that's why I shall never again use Gaussian blur.  If I ever get off my ass and make another strip, that is.  Har har. *sigh*

Again, this may not be a new, world shattering revelation, but it blew my mind when It occured to me, so I thought I would share.

Friday was my one year anniversary of non-smoking.  Other than two cigarettes I bummed off Chris the night before the wedding (if you can't be "bad" the night before yr wedding you're probably a monk, or priest or something, in which case you wouldn't be getting married) I've been smoke-free for a year now.  Go me.

Here's some crappy sketches I did for people on the comicforums.com:

taken from lorisz

1 - Go to wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article title that you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations:
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on "explore the last seven days"
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to mix it all up. Post it.

Wouldn't mind drawing a strip.  Any ideas?  Anyone? *sigh*

Seriously, someone just give me a title.

In order to A.) archive stuff that was lost in the great PC crap-out of '05 and B.) remind myself that yes, I do know how to make a goddamn comic strip, I have begun to, with all deliberate speed, scan some of mah shit.  I'm starting with this one since Halloween is still fresh on some brains.

Remember Krull? Holy shit. There are a few movies that came out in the early '80s that I, despite having for whatever reason fostered a brief, intense obsession for when they originally came out, never actually saw until years later. Krull's one of those movies. Tron was the same way, but I can still watch that one despite the flaws in metaphor or the fact that it's basically a kid's movie, and I don't even have to rely on nostalgia to derive any pleasure, although it helps. Krull is so bad that even nostalgia can't save it. It's weirdly pretty, but... man it's just awful. It's like a mix-tape of the greatest hits of early 80's genre cinema, but the different parts are jammed together so haphazardly that stuff either doesn't make sense or just doesn't matter. I don't really want to do a movie review here, just go rent it if you're in the mood for something MST-worthy.

And just so that this isn't completely off-topic, I'll mention that one of the special features on the disc was a video of shots of the interior of the Krull comic adaptation with audio from the movie. Apparently this and a thirty minute "Making of" documentary originally made for TV and hosted by Tom Bosley constitutes a special edition.