another day down the hole

[egypturnash]

Not the world's most productive day, but I've had far worse. I went out to a cafe with Nick for a while and got a decent chunk of Absinthe p.1 done - most of the first panel, which takes up about 2/3 of the page. The first thing you see in this story is a full-body shot of Absinthe climbing stairs - from behind, which means that mostly you see her ass and her boots. And the big pile of overbuilt city that the story begins in. Once I finish the entrance of the Municipal Archives I may post a teaser.

Especially if I finish it tonight - I came back home and got fuck-all done. Fell into the damn idle web-browsing rut again despite being happy with actually getting something done on the comic for a change. Sitting on the edge of the bed with the laptop always makes it that much harder, but thankfully spring is on its way which will mean I can reclaim the studio from winter's grip. I got a surprising amount of work done on the Tarot cards from the bed's edge last year, but Absinthe just seems to go better when I'm in the studio.

Edit: Here's a tease - the very first panel of Five Glasses of Absinthe, with hints of the rest of the page. I need to see if Nick remembers what's supposed to be written on the building...



I did, at least, make some progress on fiddling with the old Windows box I've installed Openfiler on - I figured out that I couldn't get to the admin interface from my machine due to my ad-blocking proxy not liking something about its https: service. I shall have to throw another of the assorted disused hard drives into it to actually have something to share; once that's up, it'll be time to centralize all our torrents to there, and maybe get ahold of some hard drives identical to the ones in our machines that we can use to start automagically rsyncing backups onto... that'd be nice! Maybe by the end of the process of setting that up I'll have actually put a full point into "Computer Operations: UNIX Administration", which will come in handy when I'm trapped in a park full of diinosaurs run rampant and the GM has everyone roll against their Computer Ops to figure out how to hack the security so they can escape.

Oh, and here's a snide two-sentence review of the album listed in this entry's 'music' field: We've replaced the music in Trent Reznor's head with Selected Ambient Works; Volume II. Let's see if anyone notices!

Comments

[abirritate.livejournal.com]

*shares productivity synapse shoots from this end*
Don't go quiet into the good night!

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I'm tryin', I'm tryin'!

I have come to understand why you refer to your current project as "The Albatross". I mean, I love this thing and I want it to be done, but damnit just keeps hanging around, and sometimes it just stinks of guilt...

[abirritate.livejournal.com]

That's the trick to it. You feel bad when you aren't working on it, but you don't always feel up to working on it. Big dead bird.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

That's a lovely tease! Blue and brown are one of my favorite combos. Great angle, too! It speaks of adventure and intrigue, just with that! As always, looking forward to it.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The color combination came, mostly, from narrative symbolism, which makes me glad to have ended up working the colors out separately from the rest of the art.

It's making some progress again, which makes me happy. Someday I'll actually be ready to put chapter 1 in public view...

kom pyoo turr, to borrow a phrase

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

Good luck with Openfiler! I'm trudging down a similar road with a quiet and dutiful Ubuntu box that is probably still much smarter than I am at this point.

Re: kom pyoo turr, to borrow a phrase

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I hack at it in fits and starts, yknow? Right now it's mostly waiting on digging up some more loose hard drives.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

So far, I think Trent Reznor's Ghosts is far more four-on-the-floor rock than most Aphex Twin. It's good stuff so far! I haven't listened to the whole download, but I'm liking what I'm hearing so far. I far prefer the Skinny Puppy/NIN approach to industrial, with rock beats, as opposed to the dance-oriented blizzard-of-MIDI-signals of most EBM/Aphex Twin.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I made that two-sentence review just before I got to the points where he starts using lots of guitars.

I still haven't decided if Ghosts I-IV is a bunch of tracks he couldn't bother writing any lyrics for, or if it's an ambient album built out of industrial/metal components. I need to listen to it again, I guess, and perhaps should give him some cash.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

I'm skipping all over the place because I'm impatient. :D Ghosts is totally going to be spinning on my MP3 player next time I do a 3 hour drive to Seattle.

I think it's a deliberate attempt to do an ambient industrial rock record, though maybe as an experiment to add new language to his arsenal. Though there is a lot less stress to writing music without lyrics, when my brother and I were in a band together, most of our arguments centered around vocals. There's another band I really like called Course of Empire who did a similar thing called Halls of the Machine: (http://www.myspace.com/hallsofthemachine) very mellow, much more guitar oriented and not electronic per se, but the mood in the outcome is similar, sort of that "I'm-going-to-sleep-in-the-dark-future" texture to it.

[bgm-099.livejournal.com]

Seriously, dear...
You need to work on this! I -want- to see it. It's one of the reasons I brought you folks up the absinthe in the first place.
Work!

*Cracks the whip!*

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I kinda guessed that was why, yeah. *grin*

I want to see it. It's just hard to get any inertia going in winter.

[bgm-099.livejournal.com]

I hear ya, there.

If I could bottle sunshine--you folks up there would be the first to get it.

Yaknow, you guys might want to consider getting one of those lamps, or light-bulbs that replicate natural light. That might help take the edge off, yah?

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

I approve of her ass and boots.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Truth in advertising, really. You open up the collected volume a few years from now (at my current production rate) and the first thing you see is the main character's ass. And her boots. The comic is really all about the boots, and the ass.

[eriscontrol.livejournal.com]

For bit torrent you might have a look at Clutch (http://clutchbt.com/). It is basically Transmission (http://www.transmissionbt.com/) with a web gui. I can't say for sure if Clutch works for any sort of *BSD, but I know Transmission does, so you might have some luck there. At any rate, it should work with anything that has PHP.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was thinking of using the webbified version of Transmission since it has such a nice UI. Openfiler is based on Linux, not BSD, so who knows how well it'll work.

[runnyhoney.livejournal.com]

The boots are excellent boots. I love the way she stands out in that bright blue against the brown. And that's only the first panel? It must feel pretty massive then ;x You can do it! *\o/*

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The sketchbook full of initial notes is dated "February 2007". I've been working on this in fits and starts for more than a year and only now have I finished the first page. Who knows when it'll be out? But page 1 wasn't the first one to be pencilled, nor the first one to go through Illustrator.

At least there's only fifteen pages set in the Massive, Overbuilt City. It'll happen eventually.

[devibunnie.livejournal.com]

yayyyy for progress and ass

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I should draw more ass, really. But it's only progress on this comic every now and then. More than most comics, probably.