Category Archives: 3D

Bottom Feeders

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It's an online relationship? Come on! You know he's probably catfishing you.

It’s an online relationship? Come on! You know he’s probably catfishing you.

The main thing about catfish is that they’re one of the most sustainable sources of seafood, and they’re extra delicious due to their high fat content. They’re not kosher, so I never tried them until well into adulthood, but they’re definitely the favorite dinner fish in my family. The reason I possess 2 Beanie-baby style catfish dolls is that the catfish lobby produces them to spread the word about catfish being a responsible choice for your gustatory delight, and organizers kept giving them to us at a sustainable seafood event. People get grossed out by bottom feeders, but farmed catfish mostly eat vegetarian pellets, not whatever disgusting gunk falls to the bottom of the tank, which, apparently makes them even tastier than wild catfish.

I really wanted to do a 3D comics with these dolls but other than that I have no idea where this came from, except that I was trying to avoid using any of the puns in the old Dr. Demento classic “Wet Dream” by Kip Addotta, even though I probably haven’t even heard that song in well over a decade. Maybe it would have been funnier if the first fish told the second fish she was being shellfish, or she didn’t hook up with the dude because she had a haddock. This is possible more weird-funny than haha-funny, but that’s cool too.

Dragon Affirmations

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I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. People don't understand me, but they like me. Some of them. Some of the time.

I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. People don’t understand me, but they like me. Some of them. Some of the time.

It’s been a roller coaster of a week. I have seriously failed to clear off the top of my desk for five consecutive days. In fact, in trying to put the front room back together following some drywall improvements and in advance of a visit from my father-in-law and his new bride, I ended up dumping a bunch more stuff on the desk. It’s probably too trashed right now for even the cat to get on top and knock things to the floor.

Basically what I’ve accomplished today, aside from have the flaming death metal airbags in my Honda replaced and receiving my 7th or 8th (I’ve lost count) Review of the Day on Yelp, occurred purely on the interpersonal level.

As far as creative achievement, I got nothin’. Thus, mirror affirmations.

A Barrel of Monkeys

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Don't be sad. You're still more fun than a barrel of fish or a barrel or pickles.

Don’t be sad. You’re still more fun than a barrel of fish or a barrel or pickles.

When you think about it, a barrel of monkeys sounds like a real nightmare. Once you open it up, the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak. You’re not going to be stuff them back in. There are going to be raucous, unsanitary primates swinging from your chandeliers and diving into your Cheerios.

I guess when you think about it, sliced bread really isn’t all that great either. It’s not like cutting a slice of bread is some kind of major imposition on your time or energy.

The thing that would really improve my life in a way remarkable enough for me to craft a metaphor concerning its greatness would be a housekeeping robot, one that could tidy up and accomplish deep cleaning tasks. My allergies would especially appreciate a non-breathing apparatus capable of dusting on a regular basis. Yes, I intended to clean my office today, and yes, I chose to do something more interesting and meaningful with my time. So it’s a little bit gross in here, but not as bad as it would have been had someone unleashed an actual barrel full of monkeys.

Found Objects Mandala

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Art supplies are expensive. Found objects are not.

Art supplies are expensive. Found objects are not.

Owning a flatbed scanner and having the ability to make convenient facsimiles of 2-dimensional drawings is great, but admittedly, I find the actual act of scanning pages so annoying that tonight I spent and hour constructing a mandala out of rose petals, almonds, glass stones, the spent casings from a nail gun, and plastic Buddha-shaped toothpicks instead of 2 minutes scanning an old design.

My object choices please me. I considered other object, like pennies, quarters, screws, nails (we are doing some work on the front hall), spent glow bracelets, silverware, and cashews, but this feels right. The little rainbow heart in the bottom right is something I made in my Trickster’s Hat period, out of leftover bits of construction paper from a bulletin board. I thought if I started doing more of these, making them more complex, that could be like a signature.

I also thought that what I really want to do a 3-d mandala out of is M&Ms. Well, the Candy Year* is about to begin, so it could happen.

The first cold of autumns appears to be upon, which is wholly unfair, considering it was 95 degrees today. I am not one of those white girl who pumpkin spices everything and loves autumn (regular readers of this blog know I am, in fact, a blue dragon). I freaking *hate* autumn. The changing of the seasons from summer to not-summer depresses me. Cold weather bothers my body and disturbs my spirit. The only thing that I want pumpkin spiced is pumpkin pie, and I only want maybe 1-2 slices of that in October and then however much pie I can eat Thanksgiving weekend. Anyway, I’m sneezing all over the place and really unfocused. Boo.

Today I wrote a rough draft of an article entitled “Powerful Women of Webcomics,” 9 book reviews, and copy for The Man’s new business website, but it doesn’t feel as if I accomplished much. My only other daily accomplishments were taking a 2-mile walk and cooking a delicious dinner of gluten free macaroni and cheese, shrimp scampi, and mushroom and spinach pakoras, all from scratch, obviously. I am not so far gone as to consider making a box of Kraft dinner a daily accomplishment.

I have some more writing to do, and then I will be taking this Nyquil and, if the heavens smile upon me, passing out.

*The Candy Year refers to the period from mid-October to the end of April when people, regularly, every other month, keep giving you treats: as soon as Halloween decoration are up, it begins, with little miniatures and Hershey’s Kisses everywhere; no sooner have you consumed your Halloween candy then you are called upon to help finish up this Thanksgiving pie; the pie being digested, out come the chocolate Santas, Christmas cookies, bouche Noels, and fruitcakes; all this is cleaned up over New Years, and then everyone makes New Year’s resolutions to stay off the sweet stuff until Valentine’s Day rolls around, when you’re offered fancy chocolates and terribly candy hearts; which you still have when you’re suddenly confronted with all those jelly beans and creme eggs in your Easter basket. The candy year ends when people suddenly start considering their summer plans and thinking that they might want to put on a bathing suit again.

The Altar of Experience

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Steal your own life.

Steal your own life.

This is my little motivational poster from yesterday when experience kicked me in the head. The really sad part is that the knowledge I took away was something I’ve always known and only periodically forget, which is to save your work, you fool. In my defense, that’s what I was trying to do when everything crashed. This version is pretty cool, but the initial D in the original was so much more elegant. That lettering took about 90 minutes, which seems excessive. Why don’t I improve at calligraphy, something I’ve practiced all my life.

Constructing the altar of experience was a lot of fun. That little artist’s model really isn’t good for much; his legs are different lengths and his his joints don’t move very far and he’s actually not capable of assuming many natural poses. However, he does have magnets in the little wedges that serve as his hands and feet, which has possibilities. I considered a few items he could be holding in a 3D comic before I gave him the book and let him hang upside down. He could hold, for example, a tiny metal sword and shield. The idea for the text came after the visual concept, which never happens with comics, but sometimes does for bulletin boards.

Still have a couple comic ideas kicking around, but this stiff-limbed little wooden fellow has some possibilities. Got a few things in the works.

The Stories of Our Lives

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That's so cool! I was actually thinking about getting into smashing the patriarchy myself. Is there, like, some kind of newsletter I could subscribe to?

That’s so cool! I was actually thinking about getting into smashing the patriarchy myself. Is there, like, some kind of newsletter I could subscribe to?

I’m getting excited about writing again. As a few people know, I have written 10 novels. Two of them are bouncing around the Internet, 2 of them have been nudged and prodded by a couple agents and a publisher before whimpering off with their tails between their legs, and most of them just sort of exist. They have plans, but no executions. After completing my last novel, I massive undertaking, I sort of walked away from 25 years of constant novel writing to think about visual art; you can go back to page 1 of this blog and read it in order to get the entire story. It takes a while to tell it.

But I did send the ms for this last novel, an 800 page behemoth, out to the Desert Rats: Rabbit, Fox, and Owl. And I’m just starting to get some feedback on it, and the feedback seems good. The revision actually seems possible. I’m rereading it myself–it’s been about 2 years, I guess–and liking what I have, seeing where it could be tightened, noticing problems that didn’t get fixed in my last pass.

Plus, I’ve been working on a short story in comic form. Short stories are not my forte. I’ve only ever written a couple I was completely happy with. I can do novel, and I can do flash, but short stories elude me. But working in comic form might be liberating. I know the entire story, suddenly. It started out as a 16 panel gag, a short of blunt, deadpan, New Yorker style punchline at the end, but it took 20 panels to get to the end, and by the time I got to the joke it was more poignant than funny I was too invested in the characters to let their troubles be a joke and immediately I started to see the solutions to their problems. Now it’s 56 storyboarded panels, and if I can get out the rest of the dialog and thumbnails and actually find a style and draw the entire thing, I will feel much more confident about my graphic novel project, which is only one chapter from being completely scripted (although I stopped storyboarding before that, when I realize my thumbnails were completely useless and that you can’t put 12 panels on every comic book page if you want the images to actually express something.

As for this photo comic, it’s, as The Man has taught me to think of it, Kaufmanesque, in that I know it’s bizarre and I really couldn’t care less whether or not you think it’s funny. I think it’s funny.

More 3D Dragon Comics

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I'm not sure if this was really worth waiting for.

I’m not sure if this was really worth waiting for.

It’s pretty sticky here after a day of weird and constant monsoons, and I thought I might take a night off from the blog, but around midnight I got kind of itchy about it, like drawing comics is some kind of ingrained habit. Or chemical dependency. I couldn’t relax until I made *something* even though my head hurt and my eyes were swimmy and all I wanted was to relax. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m doing this for me, not for clicks or likes or money. So it’s OK if I produce something that isn’t funny or informative or meaningful to anyone else. It just has to be meaningful to me.

This one went along fairly quickly, once I created a new template, although somehow I messed up the text size so you really have to click on the image to see it clearly, because each panel ended up being as big as my normal single panel comics, and I didn’t adjust the lettering. It’s too late. My head hurts too much. Click on the image if you want to know a few things from inside my head. You can also just admire the pictures, with which I am fairly satisfied.

I was outside the public library at 1:45 a.m. again, due to the fact that I have been, as Mrs. Kitty says, “Cox blocked,” and mysteriously lacked sufficient Internet to upload a single image, despite my paying these people $70 a month, every month, for high speed access. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even get online there, for whatever reason. It looked like they had changed their network completely; I hadn’t used it in a couple weeks. I’ve been trying to post this thing for well over an hour and am too tired to drive to the next place I know I could get online.

***

Now it is the morning and my Internets have magically returned. Hooray. Here’s my blog.

3D Dragon Comics #1!

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You were probably expecting something with a little more depth, but that's just a matter of perception.

You were probably expecting something with a little more depth, but that’s just a matter of perception.

There’s a type of psychological intervention known as Sand Table Play Therapy, which basically involves arranging objects and figurines in a tray of sand. Sand is nice, but it also goes everywhere and I don’t really think it’s all that integral to the actual symbolic actions that comprise this treatment, which is basically about forcing rigid adult minds to become malleable enough to throw off the limitations of maturity engage in meaningful play. I’ve got a million of these little objects–I could easily have created dozens of different tableaux using stuff that’s already in my office–and it really is soothing to rearrange them sometimes. It’s also nice to justify owning all these tchotchkes.

I’d been thinking about doing this type of 3-dimensional photographic comic for a long time, even before I started this blog. Reading Dave McKean’s Pictures That Tick made it seem like time to try. For some reason, I thought this would be faster than actually drawing a comic, which was not in any way the case. It took twice as long as Dragon Comics usually take. But it was more fun, and got me away from my desk.

It would be really nice if there was some easy way to build a model that didn’t fully set: one whose features couldn’t be smushed, but whose arms and legs could be repositioned. And then I wish I had the equipment and knowledge to make stop motion animation films.

Anyway, I wasn’t really ready to do a comic about my demons, even though creating them yesterday also inspired me to do this. Maybe one day. I’m still puzzling over my comic about depression. It’s funny: seems like everyone gets depressed, and yet depression is a really personal and idiosyncratic experience. At least mine is.

Opening Pandora’s Box: Meet My Demons

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From left to right: Chronic Pain and Insomnia, Foggy Delusion, Insatiable Desire, Crippling Self-Doubt, and Winged Hope

From left to right: Chronic Pain and Insomnia, Foggy Delusion, Insatiable Desire, Crippling Self-Doubt and Depression, and Winged Hope

Felt like working with my hands and taking a break from the tablet and webcomics, so I reached for the Sculpey, and, as inspiration tends to steer me, went to the weirdest place.

Sharp spikes, massive fangs, throbbing veins, bloodshot, wide-awake eye

Sharp spikes, massive fangs, throbbing veins, bloodshot, wide-awake eye

Here we have some metaphorical, 3-dimensional representations of my demons: Chronic Pain and Insomnia, Foggy Delusion, Insatiable Desire, and Crippling Self-Doubt and Depression. And then, because I have read the classics, I added Hope, who is either the blessed relief vouchsafed mankind by kindly deities, or else the worst curse in the box. Either interpretation is considered correct. It simply depends on your philosophical outlook.

General cloudiness, tentacles of disordered thought

General cloudiness, tentacles of disordered thought

Now I can also make 3-d comics about the physical embodiments of all the emotional handicaps that have held me back in life. Ha ha. Although first I guess I better make a Monica figurine for these guys to plague.

Greedy gaze, hungry mouth, probing tongues

Greedy gaze, hungry mouth, probing tongues

To tell the truth, working on the computer all the time kind of makes me lazy, both in terms of the way I lean on the myriad available tools rather than my own artistic sense along with the overall degree of creativity I expend on a particular idea. I might try to get some stuff done on paper, with a pencil, in the near future.

Formless hopelessness, one hand covering shame, the other reaching out for help

Formless hopelessness, one hand covering shame, the other reaching out for help

There’s a school of thought that suggests welcoming in weakness interrupts its power over you. If you accept problems, instead of combating them, you can move on with your life.

Gossamer wings, sweet curves wrapped in sunshine and warm breezes

Gossamer wings, sweet curves wrapped in sunshine and warm breezes.

I sort of started storyboarding a comic about depression, but it almost feels exploitation and derivation. Everyone does depression comics, right?

I’ll write a depression comic. Later.

Be Grateful for What You Have

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Happiness is a choice.

Happiness is a choice.

Somehow it can be easier to feel jealousy about what other people have and frustration over what you don’t have than to rejoice in what you do have. Yet, the more you feel gratitude for any benefits to your circumstances, the more you realize how much you have to be grateful for. Allow yourself to see the bright side and there always will be a bright side.

I’m guilty of obsessing over shortcomings and imperfections in life, when really, I have a lot. Like, for instance, I don’t have to sit in a kiddie pool in the summertime. I have many friends and loved ones, a safe place to live, and so much food that I am more in danger making myself sick by overeating than ever suffering from hunger. When you start thinking about what you do have, every advantage is something to give thanks for.