You know.  This might just be one of the most difficult decisions I’ve made in terms of my writing thus far.  I think I need to kill the saga of Talasen.  I think I have no steam left for it, because it has been such a long time and created in such chunks that I can see nothing flowing about it.  I know I need to rewrite it, and I simply can’t perceive how to get it away from conventions I have for so long seen as unalterable.

It keeps me from writing, quite frankly.  Because I’ve killed the mystery.  I can’t see the characters anymore, and all I see it as is “filling in blanks.” Boring blanks.  The excitement of the tale has fled.  THat’s not to say it won’t be finished, but…I need something else.  Something new.  Something that is unexplored, because otherwise…I’ll never write.  I’ll always be caught up in this, always returning to the epic.  I don’t want to be caught like that, like I’ve seen other friends of mine who write.

The story is valiant, and the characters do matter to me, but I need time away.  I need to leave it for another time when the story might be right again, when I might be able to revisit the world I made and really make it my own.  Until then…I need something new.  A new project.  I need to finish a story for my own sake, and Thread must wait.  A new tale, and I’ll let the characters come to me.  I’ll be able to enjoy it again.

Farewell, Thread.

Claim Code: PVKZNYK7CJN8

Hi everyone.  Just ignore the above.  Doesn’t really have much to do with anything you’d be concerned about.

However, now I need to find something to say.  Something intelligent. At 3:43 in the morning.  Uhm… hi folk!  Let me collect my thoughts.

Alright… I’m drawing a blank.  And I don’t feel like ranting necessarily. So… have a good night.

Sometimes the trivial seems to be the most important, or the most real. If you can truly reach out and embrace all of those tiny moments in life, then maybe that’s really living. Sitting here at 2:33 am, I’m struck by that sense of lonliness that only ever reveals itself at some ungodly hour of the morning.  And what am I doing?  Reflecting upon the mysteries of life, the universe and everything….

….

…. HA!  Bet you thought I’d somehow reference 42 after…  damnit.

Actually, I was engrossed in a Wheel of Time wiki page, reflecting upon story details I’ve forgotten since I started the books sometime early in high school. And what did this reveal?  What did I learn?  Mainly that the story is pretty damn good if you can remember the endless details provided by a series that has gotten a little bit… obese? (Winter’s Heart recaptured me briefly, but the next book just killed that off nice and quickly…)

Anyway, not much of what I’m thinking actually has to do with WoT, except that I need to finish my own epic tale of adventure and magic and all that jazz (now I feel guilty for not picking up a saxophone in several months). And then I look at everything else. I’m in grad school.  I’ve been in grad school.  Will I ever leave frakking grad school? (At least they pay me to go). Mind you, I’m not complaining greatly about life.  I’m on a good course now… Read the rest of this entry »

Lately I’ve been on the hunt for good music.  I tend to prefer instrumental pieces.  Anyhow, I stumbled across the music of Battlestar Galactica, to which I never paid much attention, despite being a fan of the show.  In any case, I think it’s pretty impressive what Bear McCreary accomplished using *gasp* actual instruments and instrumentalists.  Despite the appeal of working with comprehensive synthesizers and sampling equipment…nothing comes close to the genuine article.  Anyhow, look at me ranting on a soapbox.  Go listen instead.

I find myself glad that I put in the extra work and late-night hours in Photoshop last night, as a pretty persistent headache has kept me from doing all that much sketching today.  Besides, after yesterday I’d probably just want to match the Viper image, and this way tomorrow I might be able to get some fresh inspiration.  I was working on a mountain landscape tutorial earlier for photoshop, but since it was written by an ESL author…I really couldn’t comprehend what the hell he was trying to tell me to do.  There were points where it showed promise, but ultimately I had to just scrap it and move along.

Have been re-reading Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World.  It’s actually better than I remember.  With a lot of fantasy, there tends to be awkward moments or phrasing…or conventions that just seem out of place for the setting.  Aside from a little bit of ye olde pirate speech ahoy, Jordan manages to keep it feeling pretty believable.  I can remember when originally reading the series…I wondered what would happen if he died before completing the series… sadly… well, you know.  Anyhow, I’m hoping his replacement can do a decent job finishing up the thing.  I’ve browsed a bit of Sanderson’s Mistborn, and what I read seemed pretty good.

Now…if only the next volume of A Song of Ice and Fire would come out.  That would be a miracle.  But, I understand writing is no simple task.  I just hope Martin hasn’t lost the Muse after setting up such a promising series.

I think Winter Break is a blessing and a curse for productivity.  Personal productivity that is.  At last, I finally have the time to undertake projects such as Flipperwick, but at the same time I’m so removed from my friends and ordinary life that most of my snarkiness has dried up.  And snarkiness is very valuable to the creation of high art.  Okay…maybe not High Art.  Maybe like something better than comics focusing on the state of driving and green arrows and Green Arrow.

But god help me if Left-Turners aren’t one of the most annoying things on earth.  What, pray tell, is a Left-Turner?  Alright, you know how when you drive, inevitably you have to make left turns.  It’s kind of unavoidable.  But a Left-Turner is a special breed.  This incalculably annoying driver will attempt to make left turns at places where the feat is nearly impossible, and doing so will cause immense backups for traffic.  Left-Turner could also be applied to individuals who are too damn busy to pay attention to a turn signal light when it changes to green.

And damn the people who are too dense to pay attention to the lane situation on Cantrell Ave at the Reservoir St. intersection, who decide at the last minute that they want to go straight and block an entire lane of traffic.

Just a couple of my pet peeves while driving.  Also amusing are drivers who aren’t used to driving in snow who possess 4-wheel drive vehicles and think it means you can go racing along streets in a state that doesn’t know the purpose of rock salt.

There’s some of that snarkiness I missed.  Call me grumpy if you wish.  I prefer to think of it as being…”colourful.”

And after all, it is Festivus.  Time for the Airing of Grievances.

So I’ve been listening to the 4th season Battlestar Galactica soundtrack for the past few hours or so.  It provides a pretty good background atmosphere for drawing.  Not that I’ve been drawing for the past few hours.  Setting up blogs has taken up most of my time; well, maybe revamping blogs is a better way of phrasing it.  My past spaces on the web have always been rather scattered.  Even this doesn’t exactly constitute a specialized blog.  It’s only happenstance that I’ve been mostly drawing over the past few days.

Whatever the case, I’m going to gradually move over some of my old work from my past blog, since it was devoted to writing.  However, I’ll try to do that gradually, so as to not flood this little place with boring Scribd text boxes.

The Mirror of Horrors project is going to be interesting…I just don’t think I have it in me to start into the site content tonight.  I figure I’ll begin with a nice look at Manos, and that requires some ambition and energy on my behalf.

I could kick myself for leaving my Wacom tablet back in Virginia.  Seriously, I knew that I would be pretty bored over this break, and I should have figured that having that tablet would make my life so much easier.  Time to think out loud.  This break I need to tighten up my syllabus and plan a convention.

Also toying around with some other ideas in terms of blogging.  We’ll see how it all turns out.  For the moment, I’m pretty happy with this little slice of web space; I only wish I had that damned tablet so that I could toy around with digital inking.  After looking at different artists, I’m a bit intrigued at the possibility of inking through Photoshop rather than illustrator.  But the digital painting functions in Photoshop are equally impressive.

Keep an eye out for Mirror of Horrors.  What, you ask, is that?  Well, art is a reflection of life, and I suppose vice versa (not aiming to get into THAT philosophical debate).  But what exactly is art that sears the soul with pain?  Creations that literally make you question the creative merit of humanity.  I tend to spend a great time in the presence of such creations; therefore, my main blog site will be undergoing a bit of a stylistic change.  Watch and see, friends.

Let me start by saying that Flipperwick is a personal project.  Lately I’ve been stuck feeling rather stagnant, and as a result I decided to attempt creating something artistic every day for a year.  That being the case, I have a bit of impatience as well, and so that takes away the possibility of waiting til the New Year.  In any case, this blog will be a repository of my creations for the next year.  Expect the medium of each day to differ occasionally between the arts.  Other than that, I can’t say much else, except, let’s see what happens.