dupdate 070630

[070628]

I did draw a comic, but I’ve just not felt like scanning and texting 429 (the next comic). Subsequently, more sketches and a long rant.

[100613: Four dead links]

This a rare update being written early!

So recently, I felt that I was in an artistic rut. First, I felt that I’m really just doing the same thing over and over. Second,I felt that my art is no longer improving.

Well, first is pretty much true; though, when you’re drawing a comic (even at the snail’s rate at which I’m drawing my comic) this is not necessarily a bad thing, as it keeps the comic consistent. And consistency in a comic is by all means a good. But in a holistic sense (Why is this not spelt “wholistic”? Or is it actually “wholistic” and everyone else spelling it wrong?) this is not such a good thing. More or that later or next week.

The second, after some thought, isn’t true. Or it may be, but to a lesser extent.

When I last reflected about artistic evolution (d105), I had moved from what I called the “Sloppy Line II Period ” (Or something like that) into the now coined “single-line-with-too-many-gaps-and-minimal-shading period”. In retrospect, as of d131, I was already moving into the next “period”, though I didn’t know it at that time.

As of now, the current “period” (relative to single-line-with-blah-blah-blah) consists of: 1) [attempted, pseudo-successful] variation in line widths, more comprehensive shading, more detail and drawing larger (which goes hand in hand with the previous two for the most part). A good example is in last week’s sketches [1] and [2] [100613: Two dead links]. Compare that to Philia in d131 and the sketches from Episode 123 [1] and [2] [100613: Two dead links]. There’s other stuff I’m sure, but subconsciously done, or that I’ve just forgotten.

The “periods” tend to come about when I screw with something and it turns out pretty good. I usually don’t spend too much time trying anything drastically new on my day-to-day drawing (hence, my first point at the top of this reflection), but once in a while I’ll come across something – by chance or on purpose – that works better than what I was doing before and after a while it’ll work itself into my art.

Sometimes it’s a “style change”. Other times it’s say, a “tune up”.

So today’s sketches are the tip of the iceberg of what should be my artistic endeavors for the foreseeable future. It’s a long to-do list. We’ll see what it brings in a couple of months…

J150 – Stuck

[06/25/2007] Hooray for my fellow intern who brought his scanner!

So today’s comic grew out of me carrying my cell phone in my pocket and always worrying that I’ll pick up the phone or cally someone by accident while carrying it around. I also sometimes have trouble pulling the phone out of my pocket – not because my pants are tight or anything, but because the pockets have small entrances that are inconveniently placed. I’m not sure how clearly this comes across in the comic…

Also, for your viewing pleasure (?), here is a the full version of the first panel, without the blurring effect that focuses on J-san.

Oh, and the “results” of that really old poll of Sam vs 518 are finally out:

The results at the time of the poll closing showed “Someone Else” as favored to win the fight, but just barely. Somehow, though, even after I took down the poll, people still voted (*cough* *bots* *cough*), resulting in a ridiculous vote count. Anyhow, the current results are:

Results of Nonsense Wars poll #2:

Who should win the fight between Sam and Unit 518?

Can’t we just get the fight scene over with?</td	82 votes
Sam	58 votes
Unit 518	48 votes
Someone else…	43 votes

Total votes: 231

Looks like both results were eventually taken into account.

Until next week, uh777 !

dcomic 428

[070618]

Well. I’m going to be getting a new laptop. And one of my choosing. That’s a first, really.

I last commented on my computing experiences in episode19 when I switched over to my current Inspiron 500m from the now ancient Latitude CpT C. In a few weeks I’ll be receiving a Latitude D830 with all the bells and whistles you can put on it. Really, I’m hyped.

I’ve owned five computers since 1998. Ok, that’s really an overstatement. In terms of age these are an IBM 5150, Dell Dimension v333c, the two aforementioned laptops and a custom (Read: Hillbilly) box based on an Abit AN7 motherboard. These are all second hand. I’ve only bought a stick of RAM and a fan for the AN7.

Post graduation, my dad said he’d buy me a laptop for college to replace the 500m. I was originally going to hold off for a while as I thought my trusty 500m would be sufficient for another year or two. And then I downloaded the first few episodes of Hayate no Gotoku which happened to come in 300MB+ mkv files. The lag was as bad as my CpT C trying to play 200MB avi’s. I was actually rather surprised.

So I hesitated no longer in ordering a new machine.

Oh yeah, another picture to make up for last week. I totally thought I’d updated but apparently I didn’t.

EDIT: Having come across a repair manual for the CpT by chance, I decided to replace the broken hinge. I mention the repair manual as I would not dare to dismantle the thing without one, in fear of breaking something. Specially things you can’t fix like damned plastic tabs.

J149 – Sandstorm 03

[6/16/2007]

Hi Everyone! Today’s comic is kind of unusual: wordless plot advancement. See, if the probability of a wordless comic is !P(W) (because a comic either has or does not have words, and so the opposite of P(W), the probability of a comic with words, is the probability of a wordless comic), and the probability for plot advancement is P(Adv), then the probability of a comic such as today’s existing is !P(W) * P(Adv). If you punch in the actual numbers (I think that, P(Adv) is actually larger than !P(W), despite everything I say about lack of plot), then the odds of a comic such as today’s comic existing is actually very, very low.

Therefore, it is highly unlikely that today’s comic could have come about purely by chance. Thus, we can infer the existance of a higher being guiding the comic-generation process. This “intelligent artist”, if you will, obviously carefully selected the elements for today’s comic in such a way that its true odds of existing out of all updates to date, 1/159, is much higher than the theoretical probability that such a comic would occur out of all updates to date in the absense of an “intelligent artist”, !P(W) * P(Adv).

If the above text does not make sense, please bear in mind that I am writing it late at night very early in the morning.

Wow, that worked out better than I expected it to.

J148 – J @ NASA, Part 1 and 2

[6/11/2007] I wasn’t able to access the scanner today, so I rigged up a “hillbilly scanner” with two knives, three books, and my digital camera. This is the result, with brightness/contrast adjust to make it legible.

So, this is a format I call “4Koma Manga Blogging” (4Koma meaning 4-panel comics). I’ll be using this to describe my experience at NASA. The experience depcted within these 4Koma Manga Blogs are presented as they were, with only slight modifications for presentation/humor’s sake.

There will probably be more of these 4KMBs, but I’ll try to still get some work done on Sandstorm and other things. Until next week…

“Let’s go … TO SPACE!!”

EDIT 06/12/2007: A new version done with a real scanner (sort of) has been posted. The original “hillbilly” version is viewable here. Although the general effect of the current version is a bit nicer in my opinion, each version contains some details not visible in the other version. So, please look at them both!