You're A Superstar

Finally, at long last: I have a name for my style of work: Tradigital... Woo! Time to go re-tag everything I’ve ever posted. Fun story: I was thinking about how to categorize my work, and I thought, It’s kinda part traditional, part digital... tradigital! And I thought, I wonder if I’m the first one to think of that. So off to Google I go, and it turns out, I wasn’t! And I went, “Cool: now I have a name for it!

Also picked up a new term a little while ago: “Spotting blacks,” which is where you fill in solid black areas of a comic frame... funny that in the myriad of comic how too books I own, it wasn’t mentioned once. Good thing to know, since spotting blacks is the part that I do digitally.

reblogging to my art tumblr, since photography counts for that sorta thing. Sorry for the redundancy.

So, on our daily walk to the McDonalds today, my brother and I took a detour through the waterfowl park, and came across not one, but two geese in the middle of the path, each with a little bundle of baby goslings. I apologize for the picture quality, but all I had on me was my iPod touch, and nothing to brace it on. Also: we didn’t want to get too close, since geese can be very protective, territorial, and irritable. We stood around for at least twenty minutes, and they held up any foot traffic coming through. Every now and then, one of the adults would stand up straight, stretch their neck upward, look around, and hiss at anything they didn’t like the look of. After a time, one bundle of goslings made their way across the path, one at a time, and snuggled in with the other bundle. Occasionally, one of the adults would check out the little ones, and get jumped on, or pick through the grass looking for edibles. Not gonna lie, it was pretty adorable.

We didn’t see any ducklings, but did spot plenty of ducks swimming around in pairs, so you know they’re on the way. X3

Ember-Bell's story is entirely plot driven, and she is an entirely passive character. The story moves forward because things happen to her, not because of things that she does. She endures her problems, but does not attempt to actively solve, resist, or avert them. She doesn't attempt to do anything to improve or alter her situation. She is reactive rather than proactive.

Because she is passive, her character doesn't experience any struggle. As such she is fairly pitiable, but does nothing to earn sympathy. I feel sad for her plight, but I don't have any way to cheer for her because she just isn't trying. I don't feel invested in the story or emotionally attached to the character, because there's nothing to make me wonder "will she make it?" or "how is she going to handle this?" She isn't trying to make anything happen, nor is she trying handle the situation at all. She just sits through it apathetically and suffers.

This powerlessness is Ember-Bell's only defining personality trait. It's the only thing that defines who she is, and everything else about her focuses on what she is. For comparison: Twilight Sparkle is intelligent, logical, methodical, and awkward outside her element. These are personal traits, and independent of whether she's an earth pony, unicorn, or princess. Ember-bell, on the other hand, is... well, she's resigned to her fate. We don't know anything about what she's like other than that. If she were something else, like an ordinary earth pony, she wouldn't even have that trait because she wouldn't have this horrible fate to be resigned to.

This goes far deeper than personality traits like her favourite colour or distinctive catch phrases... we don't know how she thinks, we don't know what her attitudes or morals are, we don't know if she has any principals or ideals. She's just... resigned.

Further exacerbating this is the fact that Ember has no character faults. She didn't do anything wrong to deserve this fate, so there's nothing for her to atone for... or she can't remember  what she did, which has the same end result. She doesn't have any flaws or shortcomings, so there's no potential for her to grow. Typically, in stories like these, a character gains the power to break their curse by overcoming their inner weaknesses. Ember doesn't seem to have any inner weaknesses to overcome, though.

To play devil's advocate, I suppose Ember's helplessness could be due to the format of an ask-tumblr: her actions are dictated by prompts from the reader. Unfortunately, Ember's ignorance of the mechanics surrounding her "condition" is transferred to the readers: she doesn't know how this actually works, and neither do we. All we know is what doesn't work. We know how to loose the game, but not how to win or even how to play. We, like her, are left stumbling around in the dark desperately trying not to make a wrong move. The only option is to guess randomly, grasping at straws, hoping to eventually poke something that works.

Even then, Ember responds to most such guesses with "that doesn't work, you don't understand at all." Which isn't exactly encouraging or motivational.

Conversely...

I love the concept, and how it's presented. The story is about a character who is aware that she is in a story, and that kind of meta-narrative/self-awareness is hard to handle well... and it's handled quite well so far. And I honestly can't get enough of stuff like that. If it weren't for the whole "stumbling around in the dark" thing, I would be submitting asks on a daily basis because this is a universe that I want to play in.

A Long Answer For A quick question

So I’ve been thinking a bit on this, and about my blog here, and I decided that I really need some sorta of feedback from you guys, my followers. It’s very important, and it’s just a little question or two. It’d really help me out in the long run. <3

1. Do you guys enjoy Ember’s story?

2. If so, what would you like to see more of?

Reblog to my mud blug, incase you weren’t following Percep... which you should be, if you like my stuff. Even though it hasn’t really started updating yet. It will, I swear. Some time soon. No really. Any day now.

Sketch dump to end all sketch dumps.

So: I made a deal with one of my good artist friends a while ago, ‘cuz I was whining that I’d be more inclined to post if I got more comments on my work… Now, I spend about eight hours a day with my nose to the sketchbook, but I don’t post 95% of my material because sketches just don’t seem worth bothering with. It is literally more work to scan, edit, and process the drawings than it is to actually draw them. (ten minutes of drawing, an hour to process… ten more minutes of inking on paper brings that down to about fifteen minutes of processing), so I’m much more likely to post a quickly inked drawing than a pencil drawing I spent two hours on). Well, anyway, said artist friend went through all my posts and did a great big commentary, at least mentioning everything I’d posted thus far. I won’t lie: I have some of the best friends anyone could ask for. So, it’s time to put my currency where my vocalization orifice is: I’m only gonna do this once, ‘cuz after this it’s gonna be nigh impossible to keep track of what artwork has and hasn’t already been posted.

Now, I have 8 sketchbooks full of material that hasn’t been posted, coming out to sixteen hundred pages of art in total, at 100 pages per book, x2 since I draw on both sides of a page. Not gonna post all of that, tho: I don’t mind posting bad art, of which there is quite a lot, but I gotta maintain some standards… it’s gotta be visually legible at least. A lot of it is redundant too, since I had to draw dozens of sketches for each character just to relearn how to draw them after my hospital stay. I think I filled 200 pages just figuring out Spooks head. So I’m not gonna do all 1600 pages. Just the highlights. Maybe 1 or 2 percent. Still: tl;dr, there’s a whole lotta messy ink and or pencil art is on the way.

Most of the posts will be accompanied by a writeup of some sort, so if you like the world building in percep. so far, you should enjoy this. I’m deliberating over how much I want to reveal outside of the comic itself, but if you liked the write ups for the worldshaper and Cthonians, you should enjoy some of the stuff I have queued up.

What part of “INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY” do these people not understand? Goddam.

Watch: Latina journalist Maria Hinojosa epically shuts down a condescending Trump adviser on the word “illegals”

Computers Warping My Brain Again

I'm sure everyone has had one of those moments where they did some sort of mistake in real life, and thought "Ctrl-Z!" to no avail.

I was inking something, thought "Where did I put my hawk-quill nib?" and instinctively reached for Google Search.

I'm pretty sure there's just no hope for me anymore.

Balian here (and his twin brother Xanthus) are private security agents for Perihelion Industries. They bump heads with Galen from time to time

Balian is sporting an "Escort" model man-portable railgun. The coolant runs out after about fifteen rounds, but that's okay, because the quick-change barrel lasts for about twelve. In spite of this, however, the Escort is the weapon of choice for the designated marksmen of PHI's private security forces.

Balian usually operates in full-body powered armour. On the top right is his helmet.

Below that is a profile sketch. I usually do one those before I draw someone at an angle, to help me sort out the proportions of the head and placement of the features.

Went to the zoo.

Got to feed alpacas.

Totally worth it.

Sat down and took fifteen minutes to figure out the right and wrong way to use an ellipses template and straightedge to draw cylinders.

I'm pretty sure everyone else in the whole entire world already knows this. I hate having to figure these things out on my own. I could always just stop making art, I suppose.

Pfffft, naw. Who am I kidding. Once more into the breech.

sorry I mean brianedbysaucepan

Oh, you mean Brainedbysaucepans... yeah: he's been kinda reclusive as of late, I see him appear on Skype sporadically, haven't gotten to talk to him as of late. :/