Picasso's minotaur as the blocky thing.

Labels: "Dream Life", "finger string", ideas, tools and trade, writing

wonder what chrono variable trans dimensional long distance rates will be like

Labels: "finger string", Horizon

Labels: Art, News, Therefore Repent

Years ago now, back when I lived in Toronto and worked at Nelvana Animation Studios, I first learned how to use a brush as a BG inker on Sam and Max.

I was already seen as a brushy heavy blacks artist by my peers and superiors even know i only used markers and pens, so it was assumed I was already qualified when they asked me to join the crew, and the fact that the senior designer had asked for me made it all the more attractive despite the fact that i had not ever yet used a brush with any regularity.

Who you know is everything in the arts world and I had spent some of my brakes chatting with this interesting character who sat in a cubical a row over from mine hid away in the back. Goran was a former Yugoslavian soldier who had spent some time in jail for refusing to fight in the post perestroika ethnic civil wars in his region.

He liked to play that dark past up a bit but he wasn't creepy about it, entertaining company and an amazing, fast and talented artist & draftsmen. He had down pat a kind of heavy brushwork that I have always admired.

He was the main designer for Sam and Max, and my job as an inker was to ape his style as closely as I could for the BG inking, so I spent some time watching him work and them just had to go do it.

Fortunately I took to it pretty fast and would have had a great time if not for some crazy office politics on the gig.

It did make a big difference in the feel of my art from then on, I can still see where Goran's example is still directing me to this day in some reaspects, amongst others.

I just found a short vid of him doing some quick and dirty inking on YouTube that reminded me of all this, have a look see, and then maybe go see his blog too, some very cool images there as well.

Labels: "finger string", Art, tools and trade

Posted a few more pages - over half the book's worth of art is now up on the Flickr gallery. You have to sign in to see them now though, sorry.

photos care of hinews.cn

Labels: "finger string", Horizon

Moore's Law remains intact.

The new Intel processors, codenamed Penryn, will pack more than four hundred million transistors into a chip half the size of a postage stamp.

Like current processors, they will come in dual-core and quad-core versions, meaning they will have two or four separate processors on each chip. The company has not said how fast the new devices will run.

The production of 45nm technology has been the goal of chip manufacturers ever since they conquered the 65nm barrier. 45nm refers to the smallest feature of the transistor used to make up the chip.

Labels: "finger string", Horizon

A few entries back i posted a link to this interesting invitation from Clive Thompson on collisiondetection.net.

Radical Transparency has been one of those ideas that's wandered about in the back of my head for a long time, and i remain pretty conflicted about the idea.

On one hand I have lived a portion of my life online for going on 14 yrs now.

Computer camp to Bulletin boards to email to the web I was not much more than a dabbler till around 99, but from then on it's been a significant part of my carrier as a artist to use this forum as the primary way of getting my work out into the world.

In part it's also why I've had a not so secret identity - a bit of a joke with myself and a bit of a shield for the ego to make dealing with the ups and downs of self-promoting a bit more manageable.

I've fumbled around the balance of public and privet and tend it seems to favour privacy in my own life.

At first this was a consequence of minimizing my self-conscious embarrassment over the obvious side effects of being dyslexic - even with the red lines, revealed & reviled still look at times the same to me.

But over time
I've also had to discover where my comfort zone
for being any kind of public personality lay.

I've had missteps and resolved a lot of questions for myself about this, and it remains an issue that captures my wandering attentions frequently.

I've also watched as people around me have revealed themselves via the net, to varying degrees, with all kinds of unexpected and not always good consequences.

Objectively - and there fore abstractly - I have come to prefer the ideal of Radical Transparency in our civic lives without question.

But I just read this very interesting article by Emily Nussbaum [thanks again to Clive for the link].

A whole other kettle to me.

But maybe a un self-conscious self-aware upright naked ape is just what the doctor ordered.

Maybe this is the cultural evolution the revolution failed to bring.

I don't know,
I-m not committed to that line of thought,
but it has the taste to me
of a bit of prophecy.

Labels: "finger string", Horizon, Radical Transparency

Hey

So doing an assessment of my progress on Therefore Repent! last night I worked out that I'm passed the half way point and well on the way to conquering this monster of a task I set out for myself!

Was worried for a few weeks there; feeling like the monster might have been getting the better of me a bit, but no longer.

Feels good.

Also, cant talk about it much yet but I'm happy to hint that a great publisher I've worked with not too long ago is looking good for the US and Direct market edition of the Novel. This means there will be two editions of the book, one from NMK for the Canadian book shop market, particularly the Indy lit scene. And another for our aspirations of wide spread obscurity via the Comics direct market and US book store markets ;)

Anyway, I've been uploading some comics including previews of the Graphic Novel over here on my Comic Space space, check 'em out and let us know what you think.


Also a footnote for future note - Dream life is basically ready to go. soon as I wrap up Repent, I'll be starting to draw that. And it seems likely that you'll be able to read that in about a year or less in a newly re-launched RevolveR - also no details yet but it seems we have ourselves an interested publisher for my personal anthology project too now!

Labels: "finger string", Art, News, Therefore Repent

From Nature

Fourth round of IPCC pins down blame for global warming

In what may be the most eagerly awaited weather forecast of all time, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today released its most recent assessment of the state of climate change around the world.

The report, a consensus document put together by 600 scientists and agreed by representatives of 113 countries, predicts continued warming of 0.2 ℃ per decade for the coming few decades.

Over the twenty-first century it predicts a range of 1.1-2.9 ℃ warming in a scenario with low emissions of greenhouse gases, and 2.4-6.4 ℃ in a high-emissions scenario. The warming is expected to be greatest over land and in the north, and the chance of heat-waves increasing in frequency is greater than 90%.

Labels: "finger string", Horizon, politics

Oh, now this is a film i'm going to Have to see...



more here

Labels: "finger string", Horizon, tools and trade

Reads like a Warren Ellis post eh?

It's from an interesting invitation from Clive Thompson at Collision detection - got me thinking, but so far i have not had time to write anything down myself :p

Actually I would not be surprised if Clive will talk to Warren for a piece like this if he gets onto the ways cyber punk fiction has forecasted these trends and clashes between secrecy and freedom of information on the net.

Certainly something I've been thinking about.

Labels: "finger string", Horizon, neutrality, politics, Radical Transparency

Interesting discussion. This cool old comic here was posted there by Eric Knisley

Labels: "finger string", Art, tools and trade

So have you been into Comic Space yet?

In the mould of Myspace it's a community specific site for comic creators, publishers, retail and readers.

It includes a section for publishing your stories online and mini add banners.

I set up a page there and plan on publishing some old material and portions of my current work for your reading pleasure gratis. I'll be having books published this summer and fall, so I’m planning to use the site to promote that work.

It's pretty cool, free, and includes a time release posting system, allowing you to upload large segments of a story, and leak them out say, daily or weekly? Very easy to use and it's proving to be a very positive community too. Along with bulletin posting to 'friends' and optional public notice board pages; & Gallery Posting threads to let readers follow your stories; there is also a biding system for mini banner add space throughout the site provided by projectwonderful.com as well.


I've found Myspace very useful, but as a visual artist you tend to get a bit lost in with all the bands. The site directly caters to the scenes needs online, and I'm also finding a lot of people are finding me on Comic Space & then following links through to do so on the other as well, consolidating some of the disparate networks of artists on Myspace.

Very effective organic networking. Can't say yet how much it will help but I'm sure it will.

No, I wasn't paid, but I think the site is a great idea being made real by Josh Roberts & co.

Labels: Art, News, tools and trade