Here's An After-work Selfie That Absolutely No One Asked For! Also, Yes, I Do Have A Day Job. Sometimes

This is only a 4-6 hour rough draft, and I wanna give this guy a lot more polish later... but I decided to start grinding through drawing this character design for a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure fan character that I’ve been playing as in a Jojo tabletop RPG @plaguenurse set up. (Also, @arzeron also has a character.)

I figured that I should get to it because 1) I’m kinda sad about Chester Bennington’s passing, especially when I went out of my way to name this guy’s stand “New Divide”, and 2) on the roll20 site, I’m kinda disappointed with my laziness when I look at a pair of scissors and a picture of Richard Hendricks from Silicon Valley for the stand and the user, respectively. (Btw, I named the user Jonah Joplin, for additional Scott Joplin/Janis Joplin references. Also, he is an ambiguous Jojo. Maybe he’s a Joestar, maybe he’s not. We just don’t know.)

I used up some spare chalk and charcoal for the sidewalk in front of my apartment's staircase. . . . . . #halloween #happyhalloween #skull #chalk #charcoal #chalkart #sidewalkart #halloweendecor #halloweendecoration (at Orlando, Florida) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4S-g0ODKKC/?igshid=ahmomsuyaw3g

I thought about this for a bit while driving a few days ago (anxious rumination will do that), realized that I haven’t bothered to ever use the type-on-path tool in Adobe Illustrator for years, and figured that I might as well give it another stab instead of doing grid design once again.

I’m normally not a big fan of printing things (because it’s expensive), although I’m a bit of an oddball in the sense that I almost always work in CMYK in the event that I might print something for some reason or another. (Hey, you never know when you need to print a logo, even if it’s predominantly supposed to be in digital environments). So, I finally have that stereotypically design-for-designers CMYK piece that most designers have at some point or another. (I’ve noticed it in a lot of people’s design portfolios, anyway. I don’t know why this happens, but I always see it happen.)

I’ve been telling myself that I eventually want to teach myself Adobe AfterEffects. Maybe I should do it with this. (I mean, rotating your head to read arguments is annoying. I might as well do that for to make it an easier viewing experience at some point...even though the bright and obnoxious print colors under Circular Arguments might make it a little annoying.)

I was in a bit of a nihilistic mood for the past few days, and decided to spit this out.

The edge, I know.

Ok, so I was 7000 shy of winning NaNoWriMo until my left hand decided to cramp up and hate me. It really hurts. My knees are also aching.

I'm letting a few friends read the alpha draft of a story I have wanted to write for a long time. (Because hooray, Google Docs!). I also think I want to slam out the whole book's rough draft before 2018, and then edit next year.

And I have a job interview for a design production job tomorrow, and that's super cool.

I'm also gonna go back to doing comic live streams on Saturdays. I miss doing comic stuff.

I’m more or less satisfied with this, but this ultimately demonstrated a huge problem in graphic design. Specifically, when you find a really good font, but you have to either pay money or contact someone to use it for commercial use.

I say this because the left one is completely freeware fonts (Milkshake + Ostrich Sans), but the right one uses Blacksword, which is only free for personal use. I COULD do my own handlettering, but that’s time consuming on my end, and I want to turn this into a card ASAP...so in terms of my time, that’s not an option.

I’m kinda sad that I can’t commercially use the right one at this time. At least I have a cute corgi in a bowtie staring at me to reassure me that it’s all gonna be ok.

(And for the record, I am aware that you cannot actually give alcohol to doggos. Truffles had no wine, and the wine is only there as a photoshoot prop. My roommate drank the wine later. Truffles got to have a couple of crackers, though.)

I know I worked on these a long time ago, but the righthand warlock actually is my gaming icon. (I go by WistfulWarlock in some gaming contexts.)

Anyway, I still like these, even now, and I figured that I should upload them. Seems appropriate during Halloween season.

BTW, they’re transparent. :D

So, I decided to buy Hirohiko Araki's "Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga" book with an Amazon gift card I got for completing a survey...because my accidental splurges tend to to entail buying art books that I buy in the hopes that artists better than I am might rub off on me, and I really like Hirohiko Araki and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure a lot.

Anyway, lemme just say that I found myself saying "Bless your heart, Araki...", because of one particular paragraph in the book (on page 69, in Chapter 3).

I don't know if Araki realizes that "Stein" and "Berg" are stereotypically Jewish last name endings or not, or if this is the translator's own commentary, but just...

... I can't help but laugh with pity, because it's just...why? Perhaps he doesn't know that specific thing about Western culture or something, idk, but it's something that warrants a very stern "oy vey" and laughing because of just how naive it comes across as. If anything, I'd imagine people with -stein and -berg last names as being minor characters in Seinfeld.

Most of the advice seems pretty similar to what's offered in Scott McCloud's "Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels", with some clear cut differences on things like execution of the book itself, opinions on digital versus traditional art, differing takes on the important components of what makes good sequential art good, etc.

Otherwise, the books is relatively similar to any other book on sequential art, and it's still interesting to take a glimpse at his opinions, especially when I'm leaning towards the assumption this is more of a minor faux pas with Araki being kind of a Westaboo than anything. He still ultimately strikes me as a man who's really dedicated to his craft more than anything else.

...I think the lesson of today is “Anger spurs me to make a lot of angry typography...and regular typography in general.”

I’ve kind of been on a roll today. I’m extremely upset today because of personal reasons, but I’ve been on a roll in terms of making things.

I’m normally not one to use YELLOW for anything ever, but I felt like it today. Eh.

I found myself revisiting an old drawing that touches upon a lot of the same fears and feelings I have right now—and I have to say that I’m pretty happy with what I can do these days with my speedpainting skills... even if I don’t have a lot of time and I’m kinda weirded out by the sense of deja vu.