Do I really want to pitch a show to Nickelodeon at SPX.

Peggy
August 12, 2015

So there is this thing going on at this year’s SPX where Nickelodeon is actively soliciting show pitches. And on a whim, I started thinking about what the heck I could throw together for a laugh that would be appropriate for somewhere in the age range of 6-11. I ended up remembering this silly thing I drew for the event of my friend Gabe’s comic “Big Pants Mouse” ending:

And the idea of “cute cartoon animals stuck in a self-important Japanese cartoon about mech combat” stuck. Obviously I couldn’t just take Gabe’s characters as is; I’d have to make up my own.

Or would I? After all, I have this old funny-animal pulp sci-fi cartoon idea called “Ensign K” floating around. I could just pluck the existing characters out of that and recast them a little.

Obviously “Buttstania” is a placeholder here. Also that shoulder patch needs work. Looks way too much like the logo from “Dresden Codak” right now.

I decided to keep the “mechs that look like giant pants” because that makes me laugh. Ideally, the whole thing will be cartoony and funny-looking, but the script will never acknowledge how absurd the world is; the characters take their lives perfectly seriously. At least one named character will probably die every season. Not a gory on-camera death, mind you. Spaceships exploding kinds of deaths. Clearly I am aiming for the upper end of their 6-11 age range, here, but why not? Working on this would make me laugh a lot, and would give me an excuse to get really stoned and have that Star Blazers marathon my nine-year-old self dreamed of. I also kind of want to use this an excuse to finish watching Revolutionary Girl Utena while I’m at it.

Outline a season’s worth of episodes, draw a silly spaceship and a few more of the characters that need to exist in this (captain, bridge crew, a few members of the Tryskari Empire, etc), and it’ll be done. Then the question becomes whether or not this is actually a thing I’d want to spend any serious chunk of my life working on…

scribble test

Peggy
August 3, 2015

Oh hey if you make a few graphic styles to make it easy to switch between a few sets of settings on the ‘scribble’ effect you can really quickly do something pretty close to cross-hatching. I tried this on a super quick doodle then wanted to do something a little less quick, so I roughed out dragon-self pole dancing because that’s kind of a default thought now I guess.

You can do a pretty similar effect with pattern fills but that tends to either look kinda fakey or wholly mechanical; this one is both really precise and just a little bit organic, which is generally where I want all my Illustrator work to reside. I like it.

About a half hour, Illustrator. As usual. I am pretty sure doing this in real media would have taken a lot longer and made my wrist less happy. I’d have had more control over suggesting the contours of the surface but honestly I’m not sure that’s a tradeoff worth making.

(CYBOrG ARTIST IS PLEASED WiTH Her CAREFULLY MODULATEd INHUMAN PRECISION)

your own personal popeye

Peggy
August 3, 2015

OH YEAH. I just hit the pull-up bar on my bathroom door and lifted my eyes up past it like it was nothing at all. Pole inverts, here I come.

Now I guess I get to start working on doing more pull-ups at once. And doing them slower. And lifting my legs up elegantly while doing them. There’s always something to make it more of a challenge. Maybe someday I’ll even go so far as to buy ankle weights.

(I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it here, but I’ve started doing pole dance class again at the new studio my former instructor set up. I went through a refresher on the entire syllabus for Pole 1 in one hectic day, and have been slowly working my way through Pole 2 at a more normal pace. Not being able to lift myself up cleanly with my arms has been really frustrating. Now I can, which should let me start inverting again soon. Now if I can just make myself attempt enough pole sits so that I can build up a tolerance for supporting my entire body weight on my inner thighs, I’ll be back in business.)

Yosemite Sam

Peggy
July 28, 2015

“I wanna draw something”, I said to myself. “But I don’t want to work on anything that actually matters to anyone.”

So I looked at @SketchDailies for a subject. The latest one was Yosemite Sam. I googled up a model sheet and this happened. Probably somewhat influenced by the Duck Dodgers stuff at the Chuck Jones exhibit I went to last week. 1h, Illustrator.

Some dreams of my mother

Peggy
July 28, 2015

In this dream, I was with my mother. We had a trip planned to Qatar. I have no idea why we were going all the way around the world, but we were. The flight was going to leave around noon, and we weren't properly packed; instead she had me moving stuff around the house (the one I grew up in, which she moved out of not long after I left for animation school), then we were driving around the city while I stressed out about our schedule. Which I couldn't pull up on my phone because my phone just never works right in dreams. She wanted to see how high the river was before we left for the airport, apparently.

I guess this was better than last night, when I found myself dreaming about weeping because she's dead. I woke up and was sad for a while because of that one.

Dr. Ivana Robotnik

Peggy
July 27, 2015

Yesterday morning I decided to ask Google if there was any Rule 63 of Dr. Robotnik. There is some but not very much of it, and most of it looks more like a skinny sexy anime babe cosplaying Robotnik. This one is still probably too damn skinny but there’s actually SOME weight to her, damnit.

more thinking about speakers

Peggy
July 26, 2015

Last night I gave some serious thought to getting a surround setup. I got as far as deciding on a 5.1 speaker set and a reciever. They’re still sitting in my Amazon cart.

This morning, while having my breakfast, I measured the size of the living room so I could make sure to order enough speaker wire. My rough calculations suggest that I’d have to run about 74 feet of wire through the place. Or maybe like 114 feet if I decided to hang the speakers on the ceiling. And I’m imagining the awkwardness of a center channel speaker sitting on the floor right in front of the closet door I project my video onto. And of finding places for the l/r rear speakers. And it just doesn’t feel like enough of an upgrade to be worth all that hassle.

So I guess I now get to go digging for 2.1 sub/satellite reviews. Which is turning out to be a bitch as most hits I’m finding so far are for super tiny things you plug your iPod into. I really like the form factor of “sub under the table with consoles on top of it, tiny satellites in the corners of the room”; I don’t want the speakers to be a dominant note in my decor like the giant speakers I grew up with that supported all the reast of the A/V gear.

Aaand as I dig I realize there are a few important details: how the satellites connect, and where the volume controls are. A lot of these connect the satellites with weird proprietary cables rather than plain old speaker wire that I can run however far I need; many of them choose to put the volume controls on one of the satellites, with the assumption that you’ll be sticking the sub under your computer desk and the satellites atop it, rather than slouching in a beanbag chair with the satellites across the room.

…I wonder if keeping my existing satellites and getting a reciever and separate sub would make sense. Hmm. I am also idly fantasizing about some of Bang & Olufsen’s sexy, sexy speakers. I think their prices are just a little more than I’m willing to pay though…

Audio system time.

Peggy
July 25, 2015

The little Cambridge Soundworks sub/satellite combo I have in my living room is starting to go out. Lots of constant hiss and crackle. I think it may be time to get something new.

I’m not sure if I want to find something similar to replace it with, or upgrade to more serious audio. Either way I’ll have to go searching, as Cambridge Soundworks got bought by Creative and now only makes little portable Bluetooth things. (And it’s worth noting that the one I’m replacing is the second one I’ve owned, made after Creative bought them; the other one has been pumping out music in my studio pretty much all my working hours since 2010. Ah well.)

On the one hand, a self-amplified subwoofer/satellite combo is relatively cheap and unobtrusive – I have the current subwoofer hidden under a coffee table, with my game machines piled on top of it. And it was only somewhere in the $200 neighborhood.

On the other hand, I will admit that surround sound would be pretty nice to have when I’m playing a game that really relies on using my ears to have an idea of what’s nearby. And it would be really nice to be able to send my computer’s audio output from the studio to the living room, then mix that in with the video game sound for those times when I want to provide my own soundtrack to my aimless wanderings around virtual worlds in search of experience points and cool loot. I just don’t know if I’m willing to drop about $700-1000 for a set of 5.1 speakers and a reciever to control them all.

I find myself wondering if any of my gearhead friends happen to have an old receiver and/or set of speakers lying around…

In the meantime I’m looking at the Wirecutter’s 5.1 speaker and receiver reviews, and thinking about their alternative picks – their #2 and #3 speakers are currently $275 and $160 respectively, and their #2 receiver is $250. $525 or $410 for a new audio system doesn’t sound too terrible with my current funds…

Truly, I am a grownup. I am contemplating the purchase of a surround sound system.

(More notes, thinking about my particular setup. Is there enough vertical room beneath my table to add a reciever to the subwoofer/360/ps4 stack there? The Yamaha has an 18×13” footprint, and is 7” tall (rounding up), both subs are a 12.6” cube. My table has 21” below it; the consoles total about 5”. 7+13+5=25 which is problematic. Though I could stand the consoles or the reciever on the side next to the sub? Or maybe I could find a reciever with a 12” square footprint? Looks like that’s a rare thing, though.)

this is my life now

Peggy
July 24, 2015

slowly crawls out of bed, body aching from two days of pole dance class in a row after a hiatus due to critical nw*

stands in front of the bathroom mirror

notices a bruise on her left forearm and says “hello, pole bruise!”

goes looking on other arm and legs for more bruises, saying “hello, pole bruise!” to each of them in an increasingly maniacal voice accompanied by tired, unhinged-sounding laughter

* critical northwest: the washington state burn. would have been a lot better if we hadn’t ended up next to some people constantly blaring really aggro music at nearly-painful volumes.

upgradin’ the brand

Peggy
July 22, 2015

I am sick of writing my return addresses on the packages I send out. And I am also sick of printing return labels with my own printer. So I am making some spiffy stickers to use instead. I’m getting them printed at Moo, who’s having a sale on stickers right now; the circular images on the left are going into their circular stickers, and will be mixed and matched with the rectangular stickers with the actual address text on the right.

One of these days I should really make some image stickers to sell at cons/slip into late packages/hand to fans who bring a friend to my table/etc. But not today. Today I’m gonna shower, then putter out to a cafe in Cap Hill, work on Rita, then go to pole dance class.