Naked Pixels

Webcomic Wednesday: A Few of My Favorites

To help put you more in the mind of Wednesdays being webcomic days here, I have a short list of some of my favorite webcomics to share. I actually read a lot more than this, but I have most of them bookmarked and have to go back from time to time and read through the archives. There are a lot of great webcomics on the internet, and I could never keep up with all of them!

Digger by Ursula Vernon: This is an on-going story, rather than stand-alone strips, and a difficult one to describe. The tag line pretty much covers it: "A wombat. A dead god. A very peculiar epic." My favorite character all along has been Shadowchild, and I hope we see more of him soon!

Looking for Group by Ryan Sohmer (writer) and Lar deSouza (artist): A favorite among many World of Warcraft fans, and for obvious reasons if you're familiar with WoW. Still, the story stands on it's own. There's no reason you'd have to be a WoW fan to enjoy the comic, although being a fan of the fantasy genre would certainly help. I dare anyone to say they aren't tempted to hug Richard now and again!

Complex Actions by Talthos (writer) and Silkspinner (artist): This one is definitely for gamers! It really is more about gamers than the games, though, and not in a way that makes gamers look much different from anyone else. The way a gamer starts seeing game elements everywhere after a while isn't all that different from when I was sewing and started thinking, "I wonder what quilt that could go in," every time I looked at a piece of fabric. That includes bedsheets and people's clothes. And the frustration over waiting for a game's release can be very similar to waiting for the release of a book or movie. These are regular people... who play video games. And the comic is both well-written and beautifully drawn.

And finally...

xkcd by Randall Munroe: Stick figures are awesome! Honestly, I can't imagine xkcd being drawn any other way by this point. This is very much a math and science geek comic. The alt-text on each one really completes things. I first read xkcd when my husband sent me this one:

(Just in case you ever wondered how geeks say, "I love you.")

What is the mysterious "Other Project"?

The Other Project... hinted at, danced around, but never explained. I've brought it up so many times it must have started approaching "never gonna happen" status in some minds. (More than once, mine.) I even recently blamed some of my slacking off on Zazzle designs and blog posts on this Other Project.

Do you want to know what it is?

Do you?

I could tell you to come back Monday to find out. But, while I'd giggle about that all weekend, I don't really want to drive away people who like my work and potential customers. And, as the foundation for this has been laid, art is being done, and it won't be too much longer before you can all actually see the Other Project, I'm pretty damned excited about being able to finally say what it is!

The Other Project is a webcomic!

This is something I've been wanting to do for quite some time, but it didn't look like I would have the time for it. Only so many hours in a day, you know. I miss writing the way I used to, but there's a good chance I'll never get that back. The communication skills just don't work the same way in my brain anymore. I started looking at the idea of comics and graphic novels as ways to tell a story without having to communicate every word clearly to the audience. Certainly, it needs to be clear to me, but then I can convey much of it through the art rather than text. I'd rather do this as a webcomic, putting it out there myself, than going through the traditional process.

There was still the concern about time for doing this, and I kept mentally pushing it to the "someday" category of things to do. In the past couple of months, though, since the browsing changes that Zazzle implemented, I've seen quite an increase in orders from my store, and some of those orders have been designs that have been there over a year and were never purchased before. I don't feel like I have to push the store as hard as before to be able to make sales.

Doing a webcomic will also bring more stability to my work schedule. I know when I'll update it, and that means I know when the next one needs to be ready by. Working from an already written script means I won't be sitting up the night before the update mentally kicking myself for not having any ideas yet. Part of what I've been doing to prepare is getting a head start on this so that falling behind means it's the comic two weeks into the future that I'm running a little late on, not the one that's supposed to go up the next day.

I'm starting with a limited series comic to test the waters. If, for some reason, the whole process doesn't work as well for me as I expect it to, I only need to finish that limited series, and then I can quit without it meaning abandoning the project in the middle of it. If it does work as well as I think it will, then I've already got plans for an on-going story done as a webcomic.

Either way, I will still be doing things on Zazzle. New designs will be less frequent, but the store will be there and will be added to. And if the webcomic really is something I can continue doing, I'm sure there will be shirts, posters, and the like at some point. I would sell those through Zazzle, as well.

Rather than looking at this as changing what I do, I see it as growing from what I've been doing. I'm taking what I've learned from doing random pieces as the ideas hit me and giving it some direction, channeling it into something that follows a more clear path. I like to think my work is growing up. :)

Keeps your eyes open for an announcement for the webcomic!

Creatively stuck? Try a change in media!

A few days ago, I started to idly wonder if cross-stitch patterns could effectively be turned into quilting patterns. It was a stray thought, no plans for cross-stitiching or quilting, and I didn't give it enough attention to really come up with an answer. It seems to me that it could easily be done, but just what adjustments might need to happen for a workable end result... I don't know. It did get me thinking further, though, about borrowing from one medium when you work with another.

Back to the cross-stitich patterns... My grandmother used to crochet beautiful pieces that could be framed and hung in someone's house that showed their family name. She did this with filet crochet. As I recall (and I charted a few of these myself for her), the charts that she used as her patterns were cross-stitch patterns for letters that were charted out by hand onto graph paper.

Illustrators for children's books (just one example) borrow from a different medium all the time. That's really their job. Ernest Shepard's drawings are as much a part of the Winnie-the-Pooh books as Milne's writing. I think a large part of that is because Shepard did add little details not present in the story and descriptions, while also staying faithful to what Milne had written. It feels less like, "Here's a picture of what the words say," and more like, "Come see what I see when I read these words."

Two of my favorite movies are Fantasia and Fantasia 2000. The former is how I learned to appreciate purely instrumental pieces. I could let my mind wander and create a whole world with the music as a soundtrack, without having that world influenced by the ideas communicated through someone else's lyrics. (Not that I don't like that, too. Most music I listen to does have lyrics. I usually expect them to be meaningful, not just sound good, though.) Sure, the music itself is someone else's influence on what you imagine that way, but an influence that can leave more wiggle room for the listener's imagination. Music can be a gentle nudge when the imagination isn't sure where to go.

If you get stuck in creative quicksand, try reaching for another medium as a lifeline. Don't feel like music can't help because you aren't a musician, or sewing isn't what you do so there's no reason to look at the patterns. Take it in, and find a way to make it your own. Then get back to creating!

Full Disclosure: New FTC Guidelines and This Blog

The Federal Trade Commission has published new guidelines that we've all been hearing would be on the way for a while now, go into effect (as I understand it) in December, and mostly are concerned with bloggers and other online outlets. I've read the report, and it looks like this blog wouldn't really fall under what they're aiming at. The guidelines are written in some rather vague ways, though, without very clear definitions of "We mean this. We do not mean that." With the possibility of fines up to $11,000, most people seem to be saying, "Better safe than sorry."

Thoughts on the New Guidelines

Quite honestly, the only impact I expect anyone to see from the new guidelines is the uproar and court challenges that will come when someone is judged to not be following them. A lot of this seems to indicate that the FTC has no real clue what's going on online. The guidelines are aimed at bloggers and social media, with traditional journalism being rather exempt from having to follow them, and the one thing that really jumps out as having the possibility of effecting things offline is this:

"Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor."

If this were to result in weight loss product commercials with the skinny person who chants, "If I can do it, so can you!" being followed by someone who is still overweight saying, "Liar! I stuck to the program exactly and I weigh more now!" I might actually start watching commercials again. And I think I'd actually pay money to see a Wal-Mart commercial with the smiling people going on about the friendly greeters, helpful staff, and the happy shopping experience mixing in footage of actual Wal-Mart stores... with the greeters who look at everyone like they must have come to steal something, the staff that doesn't know where anything is and clearly resents you asking, and the customers treating the carts like the world's most angry bumper cars while children constantly scream because someone won't buy them a toy.

I doubt we'll get that from it, though.

Bloggers who run their blogs as if they are freelance journalists should probably be held to some standards of journalistic integrity. That's not what all bloggers do, though. Not only are many bloggers (and, within the context of the new guidelines, that seems to include people posting on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc) networking with people and making posts in a casual conversation type of way, they are fairly transparent about their recommendations... for that very reason.

The average person is going to be jumping up and down with glee as they type, letting the whole world know that a company sent them something for free! The average person is more likely to say, "I go to my aunt's restaurant for Mexican food... she lived in Mexico for ten years and and knows what she's doing in the kitchen!" than simply, "Hey! Eat at Abuela Maria's! It's the best place in town!" and neglect to mention that they know "Abuela Maria" in any way.

And the FTC can only tell Americans what to do on our blogs. When I first got a computer, somewhere over ten years ago, I remember being surprised to find out that a lot of countries didn't have as many people with access to the internet as America did. I'm not going to pretend to know exactly where things stand now in other countries, but I do know that as time has gone by I've come in contact with a lot of people online who have never even set foot on American soil. They have computers in the workplaces, their homes, their schools, and they are people of all different ages and backgrounds who spend a lot of time online. They are on the same internet that Americans are, and the FTC can't tell them what to do.

How Recommendations Work on This Blog

So that everyone will know I'm not refusing to follow the guidelines just because I don't like them, I'll spell out how things work here.

When I link to things on Zazzle - whether I do it here, on Twitter, or somewhere else - whether it's my own store, or someone else's, there is a referral ID in the link. It tells Zazzle that I sent you there, and I get a referral commission if you buy something. It also works for the widgets on the sidebar and Other Zazzlers page, and when I put a picture link in a post. When it's for my own stuff, that means I get two commissions if you buy something - a designer's commission because you bought something from Zazzle that they use my work on, and a referral commission because I sent you there. As far as I know, the referral commission counts even if what you buy isn't the product I linked to, but something else you found while wandering there after following my link.

Note the emphasis on "if you buy something". I could link to stuff all day long, and you could even click every link, but as long as you don't buy anything I won't get any money from it. 

I do not make deals with people for linking to their stores or products. Not even a promise of reciprocal linking. I'd be surprised if I found out anyone that I've featured here as another Zazzler even knows that I've done so. I'm happy to support other Zazzlers, but I do link to things I actually like.

That goes for my links page, as well. I do actually know Gymshoes of Gymshoes Music, and there are a few people on that list (like Llanor Alleyne and the person behind Vincent's Yellow) that I've connected with on Twitter. They didn't ask me to link to them, though, and I've recieved nothing more than thank you's and smiles for doing so. (Full Disclosure: Those thank you's and smiles are worth so much that I could buy several small countries if they could be converted into money.) The only thing I've gotten from the Sons of the Storm was a response from Samwise Didier to a comment I left. And that's because I left the comment on their site. If I had any reason to believe Samwise even knew this blog exists, I'd swell with so much joy that I'd just burst and become a splash of giggles all over my living room walls.

Long story short: I link to people because I want to. It's not even necessary that they know I've done it.

Books, magazines, artist tools... anything along those lines that I review... I've either bought it myself, or it was given to me as a gift from someone who had nothing to do with creating or marketing it. If I am ever sent something at no cost other than taking time to review it, you'll know. I'll either be so happy that I have enough of a regular audience that it's worth sending to me, or so amused that someone thinks I have enough of a regular audience that it's worth sending to me, that the post will probably start with, "OMG! They sent me this FOR FREE! I get to keep it!" But only if I like it. If I don't, it's likely to say, "They wasted money on shipping this to me that could have been better spent on improving the damn thing."

And if anyone thinks that's just the talk of an idealist who hasn't been given the opportunity to sell out yet, I invite you to test me on it. Send me free stuff so I can prove myself. :)

Spotlight On: "I <3 Halloween" & Doug Smith Art

I Love Halloween With Scary Witch Flying her Broom by iheart
Buy t-shirts at Zazzle

I really, really love this design! The whole "I <3 [whatever]" thing should be worn out by now... maybe it is for some people... but the meme became interesting all over again for me when people starting putting other things in place of the heart. (A slightly rude example is here. Rude, but funny if you're a gamer.) Sometimes you just can't get rid of the heart and have the whole thing still make sense, though.

This turned up under "You may also be interested in..." when I was looking at the shirt, and I think it's a great piece of art:

Vampire Witch Mousepad by Artboy0630
Make your own mousepad with zazzle

I'm looking at some of the other things in that artist's Zazzle store now, and I'm impressed!

Enjoy your weekend... and buy candy now so you can enjoy some before you have to buy more to give away in a couple of weeks!

Art on a Budget: Tools of the Trade

There are a lot of really great computer programs for art, cameras, scanners, and other tools out there... and I just can't afford most of them. That's not as hopeless as it used to seem. I used to think the lack of money for top-of-the-line tools was going to prevent me from being able to do much.

I was mistaken. I was missing a few facts when I reached that conclusion. Okay... I was wrong.

It has taken me some time to put together the tools I use, so if you're starting from scratch and don't have at least a few hundred dollars to spend, don't try to buy everything at once. You just may not need to spend as much as you once feared.

Here are the tools I use...

Adobe Photoshop CS : Yes, I use the one from 2003. I've been using it since 2007, and before that I was using Photoshop 5.0... from 1998. This may not work for everyone. There are some things new in each release that may be truly vital to what another artist does. For what I do, though, it can take several releases before changes become significant enough that it's worth upgrading.

If you just can't get Photoshop at all, GIMP is free. I tried it at one time, and the results were so good that I figured if I was getting the same results either way, I may as well just keep using Photoshop since I'm already comfortable with it. If I didn't have Photoshop, GIMP would be my choice.

ArtRage : I picked this program up for about ten bucks in a local store and wasn't expecting much out of it. It just didn't seem complex enough to do much with, and why else would they be selling it for only ten bucks? It turned out to be one of my favorite programs! I've never become super comfortable with the interface, but that's probably because I only use the program for certain types of projects. (I still end up using Photoshop more frequently.) If the Corel Painter programs aren't a financial option for you, ArtRage has great features for digital painting. It's beginner friendly, and they aren't the same features you'd find in Corel's products (I wouldn't call one a substitute for the other... just a different tool), but I've also seen some amazing work done with ArtRage. Most things I do that look like they were done on paper were actually done with this program.

Corel Painter Essentials : This is the hobbyist version of Corel Painter. I use it in cases where neither Photoshop nor ArtRage is the right program for the job, and usually that means as some sort of "finishing up" after using one of those two programs for the bulk of the work. The results are great, and I think my biggest problem with the program may actually be that I'm trying to figure out how to do things that I'd be better off using Corel Painter for. And I certainly love their magazine!

Wacom Bamboo Fun : I will use this tablet until I have enough money to buy a different Wacom! I cannot say enough about how wonderful a Wacom tablet is! They make several models that can go a lot further in functionality (The Cintiq makes me drool!) but also cost a lot more. I'd say the Bamboo Fun is better than trying to draw by holding down your mouse button and dragging, but that's really just an insult to how much better than that it is. It's a very natural drawing experience, and I didn't even have trouble adjusting to looking at my screen while using the stylus on the tablet. I thought I would... the idea of not looking where I'm "drawing" was just so weird to me until I plugged it in.

The medium sized Bamboo Fun can still run over one hundred dollars, depending on where you get it, but I just wouldn't advise going with a cheaper tablet from another company. I've seen tablets that retail for thirty to fifty dollars, but lack many features of the Wacom tablets. Features like whatever it is that makes the Wacom only need to plug into your USB port and then not need any kind of extra power source for the pen and mouse. (Not your regular mouse... it comes with a mouse. Which you could replace your regular mouse with and do everything with the tablet, really.) These other tablets pushed the "wireless pen and mouse" thing, but you had to put batteries in them. Depending on how much you use it, or how fast it sucks the life out of the batteries, you might end up spending more that way in the long run.

If you want to get a tablet and could get your hands on someone's Wacom just to try it out, do so. Then if you can only come up with the money to buy a medium sized Bamboo Fun, that should keep you comfortably going until you can upgrade.

One more tool...

Google : Or whatever search engine you like. Some books and magazines are so helpful I end up buying them, but I wouldn't be able to keep that up for long if I needed to buy something every time I needed a tutorial or reference material. Most things I need can be found for free by simply searching for "how to" do this or that, or using Image Search for reference pictures. If you suddenly can't figure out how high up on the walls you should draw the windows for this castle you've spent the last 16 hours drawing, there are plenty of pictures out there to give you an idea of what would look best. It might be a little more difficult to get artistic nudes without getting... let's call them "entertainment nudes", but you're in the privacy of your own home and you are drawing people with no clothes on, after all!

The best tools available just aren't a reality for everyone. But that doesn't mean you have to use crappy tools, or go without. The really good news is, digital art doesn't consume supplies! You don't have to keep going back for more paper, more canvas, more paints, more pencils. Make your financial investments wisely, and they'll stretch a long way.

Artists: Bernie Wrightson

The "Artists" posts are about artists that have influenced and inspired me. There are so many artists that will never be featured that way, though, and maybe they should be. Maybe they would inspire me, as well, if only I knew about their work or were shown their work from a different point of view. So if there's an artist you think should be featured, please consider submitting a guest post.

I was sixteen years old the first time I knew I was looking at Bernie Wrightson's work. I know that because I was sixteen years old the first time I heard a song by Meat Loaf and immediately felt like I needed to start buying Meat Loaf albums. (I can't explain this. I can only point out that if Meat Loaf, Tenacious D, and Spinal Tap would tour together I'd die of a broken heart if I didn't get to go to a concert.) I like to read the liner notes on albums. There's some interesting commentary sometimes. And there are a lot of people involved in an album that you may never hear of otherwise. That's how I found out Bernie Wrightson had done some of the album covers.

I also spent a big part of my high school years building a collection of Stephen King novels, and I found out Bernie Wrightson had done illustrations for Cycle of the Werewolf. Somehow, this is one I've wanted for a very long time, but still don't have. I've had the chance to look at it, though, and can't imagine it being quite as good with someone else's art. He also did the book adaptation for Stephen King's movie Creepshow, which also goes in the "Why do I still not have that?" category. (I have the movie. Just not the book.)

What I didn't know when I was sixteen was that I'd actually seen Wrightson's work several times in comic books. At this point, his style is recognizable to me. And it's a style that works, though I like to call it the "Too Much is Just Enough" style. It's not a visual assault for me, but something of a mental assault that I start to pull back from and look at a little at a time... and that's when it disturbs me. Which is a good thing. After all, most of what I've seen is his horror work.

There are just too many muscles, and too much bulging! Too many bits of flesh and stretchy mucus-like strings of goo! And how many colors can human flesh really be all at one time?

But instead of being visually "busy", it just seems a bit unreal. Then I take another look... Okay, so there's the werewolf. How many teeth does a werewolf have? Oh God, the teeth are sinking into the... Oh! That's blood. And internal organs. The art flows like that. What was "too many colors" at first becomes a mix of flesh, fluids, and light reflected from terrifying sources. Yes, there are too many muscles. Yes, it's unnatural. And that's how you know the victim isn't just screaming in pain, but also because their mind is at that point where it would be a mercy if their sanity would just go ahead and shatter.

Seeing something will always disturb me more than reading about it. It keeps me from being able to watch gore-filled horror movies, no matter how much of a fan of the genre I am. Wrightson's work has always been something that lures me back because I have to take it in small doses. I want to see his use of color. I want to take another look at how he does detail. I know I could learn from his use of lighting and shapes. But taking another look always means I can only look for a little while. Sure, it's just a cartoon... doesn't look real at all. But it sticks with me, and the themes turn themselves over in my mind for a little while. And isn't that exactly what art should do?

According to the Wikipedia article on him, Wrightson did production design for the Reavers in Serenity. I think of Zoe explaining what a threat Reavers are by saying, "If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into our clothing. And if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order," and I have to say Wrightson is definitely someone I would have wanted involved in creating such a creature.

Horror isn't everyone's "thing", though monsters do serve a purpose. They give us something to look at that can be defeated and destroyed when all of our real life worries and fears seem overwhelming due to their intangible nature. Some of you may find yourself wondering why someone would want to create such things, and why someone else would even want to look at them. Well... he also gave us Swamp Thing. Not exactly winning any "Cute and Cuddly" awards, but dude... he's Swamp Thing!

Geek Note: One could say it was Alan Moore who gave us the Swamp Thing I first became familiar with and I wouldn't try to ignore that, being a fan of his work, as well. But there had to already be a Swamp Thing to be handed over to Moore, and Wrightson was one of the two original creators.

Remember the page where I link to things?

Mm hmm...that page. If you haven't taken a look at it in a while, go see if anything has changed. I do add to it "a little here" and "a little there". Recently, I added a link to a very interesting Vincent van Gogh site that came to my attention when the site author found me on Twitter. It's at the top of the list right now... you can't miss it!

I've also swapped out the featured stores on the Other Zazzlers page. I think the last one is the only one I haven't already featured in a post. Of course, as I remind everyone every time I change that page, it's worth it to go back and look from time to time because those widgets will show new things that have been added to the stores, as well as older items, and you just have to click on it to go to that store.

I have removed the link on the navigation bar for the page that outlines my terms for freelance work. The page still exists, but has a note in bold text explaining that I am not doing this anymore for the foreseeable future, and the page link is no longer sitting up there just begging people to click on it.

It is very important to me that I be able to give someone who hires me for a specific project the attention and work they deserve. It's important enough that it is in my terms that I'll tell you if I can't take any new projects rather than give you something I didn't do my best on just so you'll pay me. I've made it clear recently that, while I enjoy my work, I am somewhat over-worked. (And while I haven't talked about it much yet, the big project I'm working on has been growing in a direction I am extremely happy about but didn't expect.) If I were looking for a freelance artist and came across this blog, I wouldn't contact this person about a job. I wouldn't expect that she could take the work right now, and would just look somewhere else instead of wasting a couple of days on emails just to find that out.

That's why I've taken the link down. Now just isn't the right time, and that means that page would only serve as a source of confusion and disappointment. This also helps streamline things for me, some. It makes the "I know what I'm doing/ I know what I'm not doing" line for my work a little clearer. If you find yourself needing something special designed and you want to see if I could do it, go ahead and contact me. I'm just not actively promoting that as part of my work at this point.

Artists: Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh Starry Night Mouse Pad by jvc1224
Design your own custom mousemats on Zazzle

I'd like to start doing posts from time to time about artists who have inspired me. (This time, obviously, that would be Vincent van Gogh.) There are so many artists that will never be featured that way, though, and maybe they should be. Maybe they would inspire me, as well, if only I knew about their work or were shown their work from a different point of view. So if there's an artist you think should be featured, please consider writing a guest post.

At some point in my sixth grade art class, we were introduced to Vincent van Gogh's work. It started with looking at some of his pieces that make good examples for use of perspective (which we were practicing), and then just went into his work in general. It was also somewhere around this time that I first heard the Don McLean song Vincent. (My parents had the American Pie album, and I think it may have been pulled out for me to hear the title song around the time of an anniversary of the plane crash it's about.) It was really the imagery of the song's lyrics that made me so interested when my art teacher showed us Vincent van Gogh's work. To some degree, I've never really been able to think of Van Gogh without also thinking of Don McLean.

I tend to be drawn to individual pieces or individual artists more than any genre of art, so I can't really say that Post-Impressionism or Expressionism are art movements I'm particularly fond of. It's simply something about Van Gogh's work that stands out for me. Looking at a Van Gogh piece is, for me, like running my hands all over something... except it's done with my eyes. It goes beyond seeing the textures of things that would have visible textures anyway (chairs, posts, floors). It's being able to see the light from a lamp in a way that means you can see the heat from it, as well, and being able to see the wind swirling through the night air.

Painting how something feels, or painting so that it reflects how the artist feels in relation to it, isn't how I do things. I can't even say it's how I'd want my art to look. But it's inspiring to me that Van Gogh made that effort. Using the sense of sight as a tool to experience things that are not visible isn't something I think just anyone could pull off. It's never easy to show people things they don't believe they can see, and that's what so much of Van Gogh's work comes down to... not just in technique, but also subject matter.

I had to the chance to see "The Starry Night" when it was on temporary display at a museum in a nearby city several years ago. It is my favorite painting. Not just my favorite Van Gogh piece, but my favorite painting, period. It's much smaller than I always thought it would be, but it is breathtaking! I will remember for the rest of my life that I stood about three feet from it and saw things that just don't quite come through in prints.

Video Worth Watching: A YouTube video of a slideshow of Van Gogh's paintings set to theDon McLean song Vincent. If you aren't familiar with the song, the person who posted the video has put the lyrics in the "(more info)".