doodles: why I should avoid Photoshop.

[egypturnash]

Two weird scribbles with story behind them of sorts. Both quickly tarted up in Photoshop instead of the usual Illustrator treatment, though I might do AI on one or both. Contains boobs, you're warned.


Four Moving One Seen and her pet/toy/apprentice Pretty Fifth Gem Whom Wiles Have Conquered.

Four Moving One Seen is a Trickster, a vixen, a seductress, and far too cunning for her own good. Pretty Fifth Gem Whom Wiles Have Conquered is... maybe going to get to be a vixen someday too, if she plays her cards right and obeys the right orders and breaks the right ones.

Some of the tails are imaginary.


Meanwhile, Rikal gets a ride on the back of a friendly rocket-spider. This may be a sign of insanity on xir part, but it's fun. Even if they're going a couple hundred miles an hour just off the ground.

Comments

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Such pretty names...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The names are postvixen's fault, I must admit. She's also somewhat responsible for the shape of their relationship...

[leighqualix.livejournal.com]

Team Internet member #2

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Er?

[jenkatb4u.livejournal.com]

Hm! It's hard to pinpoint your scifi tastes! I've seen all sortsa stuff that pretty much covers the spectrum for the scifi realm. I think you enjoy fantasy sci-fi the most.. a more classical feel, but I'm probably wrong since you may think it's impossible to categorize as it's a collection of ideas with varying sources which could possibly be given titles, but that can be so boring a process to complete.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Well. These two pieces are drawn with the deliberate intent of amusing certain people, so they're twisted into my perception of what they like.

I used to enjoy "hard" SF, but I quit caring so much about the tech theory. Or quit pretending to care. These days I kinda tend towards stuff that has an emotional component to it, or stuff that explores some weird corner. Or carelessly complex modern space opera!

A lot of the "classics" are, frankly, unreadable. Doc Smith or van Vogt are tough to plow through.

The authors I find myself re-reading the most right now are Michael Swanwick and Iain (M.) Banks. On and off I go re-read some of Gene Wolfe's stuff but I don't always have the energy to climb the mountains of his books! Now and then I might read some Bruce Sterling or William Gibson... and every so often I keep pulling out my copy of the complete works of Cordwainer Smith.

Like anyone else around Puzzlebox, I've read a lot of stuff listed on the wiki's suggested reading - and looking at the first book reminds me that I should re-read it!

But I've been reading SF as long as I can remember reading. At one point I had pretty much all of Larry Niven's work - I didn't get rid of it, I just stopped getting more and he kept writing. I've got a decent pile of Heinlein, of Asimov, of Bradbury... I've read a lot of it, and little bits of everything pop up here and there.

And I love drawing fins. My graphic sense tends to create futures somewhere between Buck Rogers and the Jetsons. My narrative sense demands much more ambiguity of motive.

All that said... plastic-hulled spiders who swarm about the asteroid belt, and mind-controlling kitsune from the outer planets, are definitely in the realm of science fantasy.

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Looking at that reading list makes me sigh. I've wanted to try to see what’s up on puzzlebox, but I've been on completely the wrong track. I've got piles of books in my room, and none of them are on the list. I can't even walk between the door and my bed for all the books and ... also laundry, but that’s another story. Why did I spend those month's reading Heinlen when I hated him from the beginning? Did anyone else feel like punching him about a third of the way into "Stranger in a Strange Land"?

Wait a minuet, why the hell do I have a pile of Heinlen and Rand? If I took a picture of it someone might mistake me for a rugged individualist! I think I’ll re-position those behind the Star Wars professional fan fiction novels from Jr. High.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Well. The reading list is just part of it. Those are some of the things that inspired the setting and the characters, that put all the ideas of "post-scarcity" in the various brains involved...

But hell. More than you think of this stuff might be in the library, or a used book store. SGet what you can find; explore. You'll find some interesting new things lingering in your head... and you might look at something in Puzzlebox and say "oh, I know where she swiped that from now!".

[jenkatb4u.livejournal.com]

Then, it is definitely time for me to go and refresh my fragmented memories. I've not picked up too many books. A lot of what I 'know' about sci-fi and such is just inference and flatly guessing.

Seeing what other people have been thinking could only be good for me, or at least worth snerking at. I can see the parallel between you--the You I Know(just a whispy, white shadow dancing around in the night.)-- and your art. It's you.

I remember picking up a book about AI, actual AI, and reading much of it. Then I bored my class half to death with my report on AI.. Hm.

....
*flee*

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah. What you get from movies and TV shows and comics is a lot lighter on the ideas than a book is. And SF is about the ideas. What might cheap and reliable teleportation really do to a society? What happens when the net spreads everywhere? If you can convert all the mass of a solar system into a Ringworld, should you? What's it like to live in a society where matter compilers can make anything you like, for free? What does the availability of memory erasure do to your sense of self?

You get a little of it seeping into the better visual media, including adaptations of books... but you can throw a lot more ideas out a lot more easily in a book. A good book is a high density of New Ideas.

[nukewolf.livejournal.com]

I love the joy in that spider picture. Is that a flame job on the spider's legs? :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yep! See here for a more coherent sketch of just her. With color in the comments.

I should play her on Puzzlebox somehow...