BLOG AAALLLLL THE THINGS!
Jan. 26th, 2013 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_gneechSo, yeah, I had a vacation last week and went to a convention and finished watching R.O.D.: The TV and made big progress on my new comic, and I wanted to write about all these things! But when I got back to work I spent the week being busy and frantic, and when I was at home I was either exhausted from being busy and frantic, or I was being busy and frantic at home. So all of these things that I would normally blog about, went unblogged, and my poor bereft readers (that's you) didn't get to hear my self-important BS brilliant insights about them!
So let's fix that. ;)
For the first time since 2005? 2006? I took the three days leading up to Further Confusion off, as well as the time off for the convention itself. I managed to pull off this feat by being very stingy about time off around the holidays, and then blowing all of my leave (including sick leave) for the one week and gambling that I wouldn't get sick. At the end of the week I had 0.3 hours of leave-- but it was so worth it.
I spent the time off more or less unplugged from the internet, drawing my brains out. I drew sketches, I drew finished reference materials for myself, I drew the whole first page of the new comic teaching myself to use Manga Studio.
Let me just say here, on the topic of Manga Studio, that I am loving it in a big way, once I figure it out! It has a super-steep learning curve and nothing works the way I expect or would have implemented it, so every time I want to do something, I have to go searching the internet for help on it. I have the manual, which doesn't actually tell you how to do anything, it just reminds you what keys to use to do what you already know how to do; and I have Manga Studio for Dummies, which I discovered to my annoyance after purchasing applies to the previous version and there are huge, gaping differences.
So actually learning Manga Studio has been something of a fight. But like I say, once I've got a technique down, it's a sheer joy to work with and has really helped fire up my inspiration.
So that was the first half of the vacation. The second half was Further Confusion, which I had not originally been planning to attend this year, but decided more-or-less at the last minute to go to as an attendee, mainly to see![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mammallamadevil and kylet. This trip was also unusual in that lythandra joined me, which she usually doesn't do for furry cons.
We had a good time and got to see everyone we wanted to see, so by any measure it was a success, but there was also a bonus: Flinters was selling his used Cintiq for $300-- a steal as far as I could make out-- so I stole it! ;) It just got back to Virginia c/o FedEx this morning (there was no room for it in the luggage), so I'll have to try to set it up later. I'm pretty excited about that, as you can probably imagine. ^.^
I loved R.O.D. (Read or Die)-- anime spyfi fantasy with femslash undertones? They might as well have made it just for me. So I'd been wanting to see R.O.D.: The TV for some time, andsirfox loaned it to us a few weeks ago. Alas it was... weak. :(
The first episode was really good and looked like it was going to set up a whole series chock full of all the same stuff I loved about the OVA... but then starting with the second episode they went off and made some other series entirely. It was pretty darn schizophrenic, bouncing from "schoolgirl slice of life" to "weepy drama" to "surreal mystery," meandering around with the distinct feeling that the writers were mostly making it up as they went along. By the end, each half-hour episode was devoted to a single five-minute plot point, with the remaining time spent watching characters stand around staring at each other or, more often, out into space, while soulful and/or ominous music played.
So... yeah. A great 8-episode series, packed into 26 episodes. Quite the bummer.
On the other hand, I've also been watching random and out-of-sequence episodes of Original Dirty Pair in between as Netflix finds the disks and sends them along. It's dumbfun action that's occasionally painful in the fanservice department, but it does at least make a nice palette cleanser.
I have almost the entire first issue of the new comic scripted and laid out, and I'm working on drawing pages now.wyatt1048 is back as colorist, and I'm going to try to push for a launch at AnthroCon, depending on how fast I can draw. (If not AC, probably MFF.) Although there's no signed contract yet, right now it looks very likely that the book will be published through FurPlanet, and my plan is to start running each issue as a weekly webcomic after it hits the stands.
I'm excited! And I'll be posting more teaser art as the project goes along.
...and I think that's all I wanted to blog about this week! So... phew. Long post is long. :)
-The Gneech
So let's fix that. ;)
Vacation, All I Ever Wanted
For the first time since 2005? 2006? I took the three days leading up to Further Confusion off, as well as the time off for the convention itself. I managed to pull off this feat by being very stingy about time off around the holidays, and then blowing all of my leave (including sick leave) for the one week and gambling that I wouldn't get sick. At the end of the week I had 0.3 hours of leave-- but it was so worth it.
I spent the time off more or less unplugged from the internet, drawing my brains out. I drew sketches, I drew finished reference materials for myself, I drew the whole first page of the new comic teaching myself to use Manga Studio.
Let me just say here, on the topic of Manga Studio, that I am loving it in a big way, once I figure it out! It has a super-steep learning curve and nothing works the way I expect or would have implemented it, so every time I want to do something, I have to go searching the internet for help on it. I have the manual, which doesn't actually tell you how to do anything, it just reminds you what keys to use to do what you already know how to do; and I have Manga Studio for Dummies, which I discovered to my annoyance after purchasing applies to the previous version and there are huge, gaping differences.
So actually learning Manga Studio has been something of a fight. But like I say, once I've got a technique down, it's a sheer joy to work with and has really helped fire up my inspiration.
So that was the first half of the vacation. The second half was Further Confusion, which I had not originally been planning to attend this year, but decided more-or-less at the last minute to go to as an attendee, mainly to see
mammallamadevil and kylet. This trip was also unusual in that lythandra joined me, which she usually doesn't do for furry cons.We had a good time and got to see everyone we wanted to see, so by any measure it was a success, but there was also a bonus: Flinters was selling his used Cintiq for $300-- a steal as far as I could make out-- so I stole it! ;) It just got back to Virginia c/o FedEx this morning (there was no room for it in the luggage), so I'll have to try to set it up later. I'm pretty excited about that, as you can probably imagine. ^.^
R.O.D.: The TV-- Paper Thin
I loved R.O.D. (Read or Die)-- anime spyfi fantasy with femslash undertones? They might as well have made it just for me. So I'd been wanting to see R.O.D.: The TV for some time, and
sirfox loaned it to us a few weeks ago. Alas it was... weak. :(The first episode was really good and looked like it was going to set up a whole series chock full of all the same stuff I loved about the OVA... but then starting with the second episode they went off and made some other series entirely. It was pretty darn schizophrenic, bouncing from "schoolgirl slice of life" to "weepy drama" to "surreal mystery," meandering around with the distinct feeling that the writers were mostly making it up as they went along. By the end, each half-hour episode was devoted to a single five-minute plot point, with the remaining time spent watching characters stand around staring at each other or, more often, out into space, while soulful and/or ominous music played.
So... yeah. A great 8-episode series, packed into 26 episodes. Quite the bummer.
On the other hand, I've also been watching random and out-of-sequence episodes of Original Dirty Pair in between as Netflix finds the disks and sends them along. It's dumbfun action that's occasionally painful in the fanservice department, but it does at least make a nice palette cleanser.
And... The New Comic
I have almost the entire first issue of the new comic scripted and laid out, and I'm working on drawing pages now.
wyatt1048 is back as colorist, and I'm going to try to push for a launch at AnthroCon, depending on how fast I can draw. (If not AC, probably MFF.) Although there's no signed contract yet, right now it looks very likely that the book will be published through FurPlanet, and my plan is to start running each issue as a weekly webcomic after it hits the stands.I'm excited! And I'll be posting more teaser art as the project goes along.
...and I think that's all I wanted to blog about this week! So... phew. Long post is long. :)
-The Gneech
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-01-26 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-26 05:51 pm (UTC)-TG
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Date: 2013-01-26 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-28 01:14 pm (UTC)-TG
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Date: 2013-01-27 05:53 am (UTC)But VERY nice to see you and Laurie. :hugs: Hope it happens more often!
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Date: 2013-01-28 01:15 pm (UTC)-TG
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Date: 2013-01-28 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-28 01:02 pm (UTC)-TG
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Date: 2013-01-28 05:29 pm (UTC)The signature was fuzzy, so wasn't too sure.