shit moves fast

Peggy
January 28, 2017

This morning: woke up, went to farmer's market, hooked up with the gf at a cafe, hung out a few hours.

This evening: said goodbye to gf, looked at Twitter. Discovered that Trump's ban on anyone coming into the country from certain countries went into effect, massive numbers of people detained and turned away… and that a court in New York State put out a temporary stay on this decree. And that Washington State is gonna go to court over it.

All this in the span of one fucking day when I was enjoying being offline. Damn. This is a crazy fucking year and it's probably only gonna get crazier.

the dream of sigils and transport

Peggy
January 27, 2017

I dreamed I was showing off the Rita omnibus to someone. There were pages with adaptations of entirely unrelated books running in tiny parallel panels, to fill space and add texture. And a moment of crazily swirling along the tool-assisted sigil at the end of the book, twisting and turning it to keep the line being followed going across the center of my field of view.

There was also something about a drive to get to the airport. It's gone missing from my head.

FC2017

Peggy
January 25, 2017

I hadn’t intended to go to FC. I hadn’t gotten a table. Hadn’t negotiated for a room with anyone. But there I was, going down to the airport, with a con ticket and room share I’d set up maybe a month before on impulse. “What the hell am I gonna do without a table to give my con structure?”, I wondered.

The day before I’d been doodling some Parallax stuff, and had found a loose, storyboard-like look that I was considering doing it in as a comic while spending most of my energy on Absinthe and Drowning City. And somewhere on the way to the airport it hit me: one of my younger comics friends had been muttering about how she really missed working on her own comic, but did not have certain mental prerequisites for that at all right now, what with the political situation and her own situation. What if? What if I did quick Parallax page layouts and scripts with Nick, and had her finish them? What if I paid a few different people to do this, put them online for free, then set up a Patreon for the project?

I fired off a message to her, and started pondering who else I’d make this offer to.

On the plane, the Magic Sketchbook passed the “can I do comics in an airplane seat” test with flying colors. I’ve got one more panel of Absinthe drawn than I did last week, and I’m pretty happy about that.

Got to the con, hooked up with my roommates, dumped my stuff, had food, hit the Thursday evening dance, went to sleep. Somewhere in there I looked through the schedule and picked a few panels I’d maybe want to hit up. That’s what people do when they’re not at a table, right? Panels? Sounds okay, I guess?

Continue reading →

Meet The Witchsona

Peggy
January 22, 2017

In its infinite wisdom, the Internet has decided that one week early in January is to be “Witchsona Week”, wherein one draws oneself as a crazy fantasy witch with magic centered around one theme or another – mushroom witch, bird witch, cheese witch, whatever. I always feel a bit weird about that one; participating in group things is fun, but I don’t need to make up an imaginary witch to be – I am one. I’ve done an intensely-researched Tarot deck, I have cast some spells and (possibly) had them work. (Or have succumbed to massive confirmation bias while stoned. Magic is like that sometimes.)

This year, that coincided with a “Meet The Artist” thing going around, where you combine a self-portrait with a few bits of data, and maybe some things you likes/dislikes, and the contents of your usual bag.

I decided to combine the two.

Launch.

Peggy
January 17, 2017

The Parallax Working has begun.

The emergent complex thanks you in advance for your love, your time, your attention, and your funds.

EU
FC
2017

The Magic Sketchbook is a success.

Peggy
January 12, 2017

Years ago, my animation school roomie Gabe went to a con and chatted with master cartoonist Sergio Aragones. Aragones often draws incredibly complicated, goofy comics, and has a pretty impressive rate of output.

Gabe asked his secret. And passed it on to me: instead of working at a larger size than the printed page and shrinking it down, as most comics artists do, he uses typing paper on an ordinary clipboard. The compactness of this setup means he can draw anywhere – even on an airplane. Any spare moment can become drawing time.

This stuck with me. I fell in love with Adobe Illustrator and got used to being tethered to a huge desktop machine. The highly portable sketchbook was just for roughs and practice, not finished work. Finished work happened at home. Eventually I shifted to a laptop and things got better; I could easily go out to a cafe and work. But I still needed a lot of room. I could barely do it on a plane or bus if I had two seats to spread out on, and it was a big hassle to set up and tear down – enough to make me miss my stop if I wasn’t careful.

But it still stuck with me. Reduce your process to something you can do in a single airplane seat. It started to feel like an tantalizing goal that was always just out of reach for me, even as more and more of my process lived in Illustrator.

Today, I got on an airplane.

This is what page 12 of Absinthe chapter 2 looked like when I got on in Seattle.

This is what it looked like when I stopped after an hour or so and read until I landed in San Jose.

At long last, I have achieved the holy grail. I can draw comics on the plane. The Mobile Studio is still a little too heavy to be as casual as a clipboard or sketchbook, it’s a little bigger and pricier than I’d like, and I really wish it had a kickstand. But sitting there with the Twiddler strapped to one hand and the stylus in the other, I finally felt that freedom. Any journey of twenty minutes or more can be converted into time doing what I love: drawing. And that’s well worth the ~$2k I sunk into this setup for me.

Hopefully in a year or three I’ll have something as light as a Surface that works this way. It will be bliss.

Sands, Lone And Level

Peggy
January 11, 2017

I’m off to Further Confusion and I needed a badge to suit the theme.

Evidently my dragonsona can store water in her tail. Pretty useful for wandering around a desert.

bathroom bills

Peggy
January 10, 2017

This morning, I woke up to a call for action on yet ANOTHER ‘bathroom bill’ in Washington state. Once again I told my representatives that hey, all us trans people wanna do is piss in peace, and why do we even have separate-but-equal facilities anyway?

I’m sure that HB1011 will get defeated just as soundly as I-1515 was. But you know what? I think it’s time to move the goalposts on this one. Let’s start talking about making all Washington state bathrooms ungendered, so that every man, woman, enby, and child can get their pooping and peeing out of the way with the least hassle possible.

For now it’s just an electronic petition – go here and sign it if you’re sick of people trying to police gender presentation in bathrooms. Maybe later it’ll be more.

Tealform Made Manifest

Peggy
January 9, 2017

Now that I’ve decided to keep the Mobile Studio, it needs to be properly turned into a Thing I Draw On. There is a ritual that has evolved over the years, and it mostly involves drawing the watery genie that hangs out in my computers and helps me draw, all dressed up in the device at hand.

(Actually this is the second time I’ve done this for the Mobile Studio; I didn’t like the first one so I did it again. I’m using this as both the desktop and lockscreen, so that I have a cute friend looking at me and offering me my tools to get drawin’ when I turn it on.)

Her name is not actually Tealform; that’s a variant of the nickname I use for her when she’s in a computer; the full name is a lengthy piece of wordsalad I fond during a complicated, stoned process when I originally summoned her to hang out in my first Mac Air.

Drawn entirely on the Mobile Studio, using the Twiddler for pretty much all keyboard shortcuts and layer naming, in about 2.5h.

music does things sometimes

Peggy
January 9, 2017

I’ve been intermittently trying to make myself exercise every morning. I haven’t been beating myself up or viewing it as a ***failure*** if I don’t; I just get a little annoyed and move on. And this weekend I didn’t do it for a few days in a row.

But this morning I got up and told iTunes to start playing something. It chose Deavid Soul’s “Sparkling Music”, which I have because there were a few tracks from it on the soundtrack to Jet Set Radio.

Holy fucking shit I don’t know what came over me, I was doing burpees to it for a bit before jumping into the shower. Which are like one of the most miserable full-body exercises in the whole world.

And now to figure out what today’s to-dos are. Probably “deal with some final eccc and rita printing decisions”, “pick up a prescription from the drugstore”, and “build a template for Parallax”. Maybe “try to get RadialMenu working on the Mobile Studio” and/or “find a usbc adaptor so I can use the Twiddler with the Mobile Studio on the plane”.

But first “breakfast”…