Chopsticks

I tried to clean my room and found eight pairs of chopsticks instead.

Not the disposable kind, mind you.  These chopsticks were built to last.  Some of them were even still wrapped inside an awkward package of five marked "For Special Guest."  Engrish aside, this is probably the first dining set that has provided dining accessories for five instead of four or six.  It almost made me want to buy a pentagonal table, until I realized exactly how impractical that would probably be to store.

Perhaps the five sets of chopsticks with the flowers on them were intended to be used exclusively for special guests, meaning I'd have to use different chopsticks for myself and for ordinary guests.  It'd suck if the special guests decided they didn't like flower patterns on their chopsticks.  If that's the case then I'd be able to provide the special guests with an alternative of red or green chopsticks with fish on them, or brown chopsticks with paper cranes on them.

I suppose, though, that if I had a number of special guests over, the most common complaint wouldn't be the pattern on the chopsticks as it would be, "Don't you have any forks and spoons around here?!"

For the record, I think I owned one spoon specifically to get through my Chef Boyardee Dinosaur Pasta phase in my second year of college, but it was cheap and tarnished quickly.  The chopsticks, like I said, appear to be built with durability in mind.

In fact, yeah, I totally had a mug filled with even MORE chopsticks at school.  When I raid the storage center after getting my own place I will probably be able to feed a small army with JUST chopsticks.  I'm not sure I ever bought myself chopsticks at any one point, either, but I did put them to good use writing a speech class report on how to use them to eat instant mashed potatoes.  It's actually easier than using them to eat rice.

I guess the best course of action here would involve just eating everything and anything with chopsticks, to see if they can be effectively used up.  Maybe I should try eating jello with chopsticks next.  Or discount Easter candy.

Nailed it.

Awkward Comparisons

In the past year and a half, while I was too busy getting glasses and shortening my hair to blog, I must've glossed over a dozen eerily similar internet articles condemning the practice of comparing yourself to your peers while you're still trying to settle into a career and what have you.  While most of them actually have a point, especially with all this social networking out there, now that I've been twenty-six for a while I've started...thinking.

In particular, I've been thinking about how I'm the same age as Sushi Man, who was a character that I drew a lot in middle school.  In an unprecedentedly cynical move I set the bar so low in describing the harsh and often awkward realities of J.C. Sushi's mid twenties that I figured comparing myself to him would probably just wind up making myself feel way, way, way better about where I stand in life right now.

So I did the only thing that seemed appropriate and pumped out some visuals:

...I swear, I was absolutely definitely in no way thinking about dressing up like Sushi Man and running out to a nerd convention when I bought that shirt.  Maybe if I slept upside down and paid someone to program a video game about him or something so more than three people know who he even is, I'd consider it, but I'd need money for that first and don't really like the convention atmosphere much anyway.

I also really ought to stop thinking too hard about the exact mechanics of that relationship with Mrs. Butterworth.

You know what?  Even though I am unquestionably more prepared to deal with the real world than Sushi Man would have been if he hadn't been conveniently swept up into an alternate dimension so he could actually live out his superhero fantasies, I am approximately 62% creeped out by the amount of similarities there are between the two of us.  With that in mind I can only hope that turning twenty-nine and a half is nowhere near the acid trip I expected that to be when I was thirteen...

Actually, I hear this is a pretty average reaction to realizing you're

about to hit 30.  If anyone's put up with my shenanigans long enough to know who this

crackpot is, you get somewhere in the realm of four million bonus points.

So yeah.  Final verdict, Zelda Vinciguerra officially beat Sushi Man at life, and I probably just slid down a few points on that scale for talking about myself in the third person.  I'm still beating Sushi Man, though, and that feels pretty awesome.

The Great Root Beer Heist

Last summer I spent some quantity time with my brother's friends and ended up with the plot for an actual NEW online Choose Your Own Adventure by the end of the day.  Yes, that's right, it's a Choose Your Own Adventure that I did not write when I was eleven!  You play the part of a blue ninja of unspecified gender on a mission to rob a charity walk-a-thon of its root beer.  I'd originally intended for it to be very straightforward, but then I wound up accidentally throwing in this weapon system.  That clogged the pipeline for quite a bit.

After working on this off again and on again over the summer, I've finally finished writing the story and mapping out the flowchart for The Great Root Beer Heist.  You can expect to see 17 unquestionably bad endings and 6 endings that range from dubious at best to very good for the player.  You can also expect to see the ninjas depicted below.

In light of this accomplishment, I've decided to share the process I've been using to create these things.  It all starts with a red composition book.

It has to be a red marble composition book.  I hoard the things like it's nobody's business and that helps keep them straight.  Of course, back when I started doing this I didn't have much of a choice.  They didn't really sell composition books in anything but marble style, and the red color was actually a huge novelty when I was in the fifth grade.  Now that I have them in polka-dot, taupe, European-style, glitter, unruled, and holographic with built in strobe light effects, the red marble's really just to state that yes, this notebook contains Choose Your Own Adventures and their accompanying logistical flowcharts.

To put it bluntly, I just wrote the story out in a notebook.  This was also the step where I closed the project and called it a day back in the 90s.  I still like writing my first draft in a real notebook on a stoop or bench or someplace weird, because there's less Internet there to distract me.

The second step is the one I just finished now.  I created a flowchart so I know exactly what pages need to be done.  As I finish them I fill in the little bubbles with a colored pencil or something.

I definitely do not actually perform this step on a large white board set up in public.  This is probably the worst way to make a flowchart, actually.  People around here have an overwhelming tendency to see important things written on erasable surfaces and erase them.  I use regular paper instead, because filling in the bubbles with a real colored pencil is a lot more satisfying than filling it in with the paint bucket tool in a separate tab.

 I don't even start doing anything on the computer until this is done.  I make the images first because there is a 100% chance of the image above not actually happening with that.  I set up the page in Dream Weaver and keep it simple.  Image, block of text, links at the bottom.  Boom.  Done.

And this is why there hasn't been a Lu Encounter update in over a month.

Why aren't pineapple Twizzlers a thing?

I found myself awake in the middle of the night again last night, as many creative sorts do.  Probably out of habit. Why is it that all the best ideas wait to show up until the middle of the night?  Why don't they cooperate with their host and pop up at more convenient times, when you're not trying to get some sleep?

I digress.  I found myself lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling for at least thirty minutes wondering if Twizzlers came in pineapple flavor or not, for no real apparent reason, trying in vain to resist the urge to get up and google it (probably costing me an additional hour or so of sleep in the process).  Resistance was futile.  Turns out that Twizzlers do not come in pineapple flavor.  BUT THEY SHOULD, DARN IT.  THEY REALLY, REALLY SHOULD.

I then took it upon myself to draw some sketches of Minor 6th from the Amazing Harmonizing Police Force as a boy about to embark on a noble quest to save his homeland from invading forces.  He's one of those spry roguish sorts.  Because, you know, blog entries are always better with pictures.  It makes people more apt to read the text, after all.

He looks oddly like the demon spawn of Raz from Psychonauts, Norman from ParaNorman, Timmy from the Fairly Oddparents, and Hub from Mega Man Battle Network.  As an adult he looks less like those guys and more like one of my old choir directors.  

I need to get my head back in the game.  And Hershey's needs to get on that pineapple Twizzler idea, stat.  Seriously, pineapple Twizzlers would be nothing short of awesome. 

I Wish I May, I Wish I Might...

Hey guys!  Hey!  HEEEY!  Guess what?  My website has an arcade filled with all the random crap I've done!

I was a really prolific little kid when it came to writing.  Just this past week I finished drawing and coding another Choose Your Own Adventure entitled "Wish Upon a Nintendo 64."  If you didn't get enough death scenes and questionable fifth-grade-me-logic with the Prototype Lu Encounter, it's definitely worth a look.  Despite the wimpy-sounding title, this one boasts almost twice as many deaths as Protolu.  In fact, only two of the ten endings aren't awful, and they both have strings attached as opposed to flat-out getting to game happily ever after.

As far as plot goes, your evil and nerdy Uncle Bill decides to steal your Nintendo 64, and you need to go to absurd odds just to get it back.  Including risking lots and lots of gratuitous death.  It could practically function as a very intense Nintendo 64 ad.  "The Nintendo 64 is so great that most kids are willing to risk their lives to get it back from their evil uncles!  Buy one today!"

Fun fact: I took that opportunity to showcase my two favorite N64 games of all time.

Even more fun and factual: Neither of them were Ocarina of Time.  Even as a kid I still thought OOT was overrated.  Some things never change.

Everything's better with stickers

About a month ago I bought a day planner so I'd be more on top of things, such as finishing my projects and remembering to blog about them.  Whenever the daily quota is reached, I give myself a sticker.  When I exceed it, I get a shiny sticker.  And whenever something out of my control comes up and completely uproots my plans I get to draw a little icon depicting what went horribly, horribly wrong.

Something went horribly, horribly wrong for the last five days in a row, starting with Tonio's AC adapter deciding that it no longer wanted to power the laptop about a nanosecond from me finishing the second of my late 90s Choose Your Own Adventure extravaganzas and an added bonus I'm tacking onto my website for the fun of things.  I actually meant to get this done weeks ago, but that's when my dad decided I was going to stain the entire deck.

So yeah.  Stay tuned and expect imminent awesome in the near future.

A Blast from the Past

          When I was about ten or eleven years old, I hoarded composition books and filled them to the brim with about every type of creative endeavor you can possibly imagine.  Screenplays.  Game design.  Documentaries. Musicals.  Books.  Interpretive Dance  You name it, I probably dabbled in it during my childhood, and chances are the story had something to do with a holiday.
          I specifically had a notebook designed just for Choose Your Own Adventure stories.  Most of them were short and pretty odd, but looking at them they just seemed like something you'd have an easier time following through a website.  My web design skills could definitely use some improvement, so I figured, hey!  Why not practice using some original material I've already written?
          So The Proto Lu Encounter came to fruition.  The Lu Encounter is a plot I've been working with for ages.  This particular version is probably one of its earliest iterations and involves surviving the 4th of July with your evil aunt Lu.  The current Lu Encounter is nothing like this at all and involves robots, a global domination plot, product placement and sandwiches.  Consider this a very early prototype, complete with a very, very old-school graphic style.

Click here to play for yourself

(and good luck getting out alive!)

What the Truck!?!

The Gasellschaft and I have a love-hate relationship.

The Gasellschaft is my truck. Actually, scratch that, it isn't my truck. It is my dad's truck. It is obscenely large, has custom, fixed side view mirrors designed for seeing around a horse trailer, an extra long bed, and an extra wide cab. It is quite possibly the most unwieldy vehicle short of a tractor-trailer and guzzles gas like no tomorrow, hence the name. It also completely dwarfs me to the point where, if you're not me, it's actually really funny.

For now I'm stuck in New Jersey, where people pump your gas for you. These gas station attendants almost all think it's the funniest thing in the universe to see someone like me behind the wheel of something like that. Every. Single. Time. Once in Maryland I tried to park at a Panera with it and took so long to get it right that my friends had enough time to go in, see that the line was too long, and decide to just split up and get food elsewhere before I could get it in the space.

Half the time it doesn't even fit all the way into a parking space. If it were actually my vehicle it would definitely be a lot smaller and more sensible on gas. I am probably going to write a serious children's book about being relatively short and driving an obscenely large truck. Worse comes to worse I can sell it to gas station attendants in all two states that have them.

Anyway, about a week ago my dad actually used his own truck to take some garbage out to the dumpster on his other property. That's when a freak accident occurred! Here's what went down in the art style of Bruno Bozzetto:

It was a classic example of normal human drives truck on empty road, crazy idiot swerves normal human into only parked car on entire shoulder, crazy idiot does not stop at all and just drives off like a jerk. You know how these things go. The truck sustained internal damage that we thought was just a cracked steering column, so he got his friend the mechanic to tow it down to his shop and fix it up.

We thought it would only be like a week tops. They'd put in a new steering column and fix up the dents and badda-bing, here's your absurdly large vehicle back. I mean, I had places to go. Jobs to bag. Chums to see.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. A week turned into a week and a half and My Dad's Friend The Mechanic found he was having trouble aligning the truck to finish the job. He had to call in a specialist, who incidentally, happened to also be a friend of my dad's. This is just one of those towns where everyone's all in everyone else's business. Heck, I'm sure if I ever cared enough to get a boyfriend in this state, my dad would know who it was before I would, so many people know my dad.

So for now I am stranded here--stranded here moreso than I was up until this point--for 2 to 3 weeks. That means the Christmas decorations will be up until about Valentine's Day. Typically, my dad uses whatever truck he has at the time to take them to storage after the holiday season. That's the Gasellschaft for you. Can't live with it, can't live without it.

The good news?

I DON'T HAVE ANY CAVITIES!

CTNX, Part Trois

Okay. I didn't expect to forget to post until the new year. Oops? Thanks for kicking the sense back into me, Matt. Not the Matt who's marrying Lauren. I've started a Matt collection since I last posted here regularly.

But you don't want to hear about any sort of Matt collection, do you? Of course not! You're probably here to hear about how CTNX2011 ended. Nobody likes a cliffhanger ending!

So before I left for Burbank, my mom came to me with one request that she insisted I fulfill during my stay there. No, not "get a full-time job doing that thing you love" or anything. She wanted me to buy myself a coffee mug and gave me money specifically to do that. I suppose using just any mug in her house is aggravating her OCD.

Now, this wasn't like one of those conventions where you can just walk up to the coffee mug table and buy a coffee mug. I'm actually not sure if those sort of conventions exist. I'm not exactly the most knowledgeable on the conventions of conventions. I did, however, spot a gift shop in the hotel. Unfortunately, that gift shop always seemed to be closed whenever I approached it, but there were DEFINITELY coffee mugs in there.

Thankfully, on Sunday morning, I managed to catch it during the hour it was actually open. And I did find a coffee mug that I really liked, too. They put the wrong price tag on it, but it was still in the allocated Coffee Mug Budget, so I snapped one up before the store closed on me.

As with all two of the conventions I've attended in my lifetime, the last day was abbreviated. I did run into Bobby Chiu again. I picked up his book after I caught an inspirational speech he was giving someone else that pretty much validated my decision to opt with Ellen's book instead of the sandwich. It's nice to have a lot of heroes you can mentally interview for inspiration. Maybe one day I'll hold the record for having the most!

I picked up as much free stuff as I could before the floor closed, and reconnected with Twi after finding his business card lying around. It was actually pretty lucky I'd noticed it, because he changed his contact info since the last time he gave me his card.

When I got back to the room, I finally met Jordan, with whom I'd been sharing the space this entire time.

She turned out to be really awesome, and we watched YouTube videos and read Twilight sporks for a few hours before turning in for the night. Unfortunately she doesn't seem to have a portfolio site or blog anywhere yet, though.

I flew back uneventfully the next morning at noon, stopped once in Phoenix again, and did not purchase cactus seeds. I doubt I'll live long enough for cacti grown from seed to make a very effective privacy fence and child-deterrent anyway.

To end this CTNX wrap-up, I will leave you all, or at least those of you who know Paige's mom, with disturbing mental imagery of Paige's mom as Ursula from The Little Mermaid. You're welcome. Brain bleach is on the counter to your right.

CTNX, Part Deux

By the time I made it to my hotel, my roommate Jordan, whom I'd never met before, was already either snoozing or on the verge of it, so I unpacked my bags and found, to my dismay, that my phone was not responding when I plugged it into the wall to charge. I opened it up and discovered this:

Why yes, that is a battery I am holding. A bulging, unresponsive, awful-looking battery. Thankfully after a few minutes it did manage to react to charging, so I took that time to re-update my manual phone archive, which everyone should totally do. You never know when your electronics will fail you.

It wasn't long before I ran into Tyler and his chum Eli, and from there stumbled upon a massive flood of SCAD alumni and students. I must say, everyone from school had shown up dressed very well. Monty was always full of great dressers, but I was impressed anyway. For the duration of the expo I just drifted around and switched friend groups every hour or so, and wound up picking up the following memorable quotes:

"Love is as fleeting as a Listerine breath strip."

"There are no cowboys in Africa."

If anybody who was there wishes to claim those quotes, I've totally forgotten who quoted them and probably should have mentioned it when I wrote them down. Maybe I was just trying to write a ballad.

I also ran into Mario again this year in line for the Andreas Deja panel. This year I think he picked up some extra lives, because it seemed like every other person I met at CTNX was named Mario after that. He picked a few caricature duels, which wasn't a bad idea at all. I think I might steal it for later.

By that point, I was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that, during this presentation, my phone would do something disastrous like leak battery acid or explode in my pocket.

However, it miraculously held throughout the presentation, including a brilliant display of the differences between Kaa and Juju. After THAT, who should appear but Richard Sherman himself for an impromptu segue into the presentation that I would phone my grandmother about the next morning and speak of incessantly until this very day.

Casey managed to recite the word "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" backwards and got major props that evening.

My grandmother is a very avid Lawrence Welk fan, and claims that they just don't make music like they used to. Seeing Sherman perform live was definitely an amazing experience, and it was certainly my kind of concert, if you can call it that. No mosh pits, no overdone guitar solos, and my ears weren't ringing afterward! And, musicians, you know you totally can make music like they used to, right? If I had musical composition aptitude I'd definitely go old-school with it. It's so retro it's cutting edge!

*Zane is not a real pain, he just plays one on television.

For dinner that night a handful of us went off to Denny's. We had most of our meals at that Denny's, since it was right across the street. I'm not sure if this was a Hollywood-area thing, but every time I went to that place out of all the CTNX's I'd been to, they'd been showing professional juggling on the TVs instead of regular sports. If this is true of most restaurants in the area then I really need to start living in California ASAP.

CTNX

Hi there, Zelda here. I just got back from a fabulous weekend at CTNX with several dozens of the most awesome friends I could ever ask for.

Basically, ever since last May, I took a cue from The Wizard and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and wandered around aimlessly since then mumbling "California" in a zombielike trance. If my voice actually resembled Jimmy's it was purely coincidental, as I haven't seen that movie since I was a wee lass, and I doubt that guy still sounds like that.

Eventually, it was then decided that I needed to go to Burbank for the Creative Talent Networking Expo to frolic about with others of my kind. I finally took off last Thursday, and a lot of stuff went down so I'll break it all up into a few entries. I've got a lot to do now that I'm back, the least of which is hosting Thanksgiving tomorrow!

Personally, I love airports. I know it's a little odd, but I've just been on so many planes I feel good about knowing my way around a bunch of them and being prepared for security...but I definitely reached a new high in airport savvy when I convinced the woman running the first class counter that I was lost to the point where she just checked me in without me having to wait in line, despite the fact that I was carrying one non-obtrusive carry-on and my check luggage was within the normal weight specifications.

I switched planes in Pittsburgh first and there was a pretty hefty wait between flights, so I wandered over to the bookstore to indulge in my filthy habit...buying celebrity comedians' novels and autobiographies. Hey, it beats collecting self help books about cleaning your clutter, right? Eventually I wound up in this life-altering mental debate...

Ellen DeGeneres' latest book, or a sandwich from Subway? No contest there.

I regret nothing.

By the time the plane came along I'd finished Seriously...I'm Kidding and felt more good-looking than usual thanks to the incessant compliments Ellen DeGeneres put on the back cover.

Several hours later I arrived in Phoenix and finally got brunchinner. That was at Burger King. Now I'm not sure about you, but I find Burger King fries phenomenal under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, the fries at THIS Burger King were noticeably larger, softer, and less flavorful than usual, and on top of that they did not sell chicken tenders. I sincerely hope that this is unique to that specific Burger King and not something that originated in the west and has plans to migrate eastward anytime soon. If I hadn't been eating airline pretzels and pages of Ellen's book all day I think I'd have imploded from hunger. It made the subpar fries taste somewhat edible.

At the gift shop in Phoenix, instead of magnets and postcards they were selling Grow-Your-Own Saguaro Cactus kits. I personally would have purchased ten if I had real estate on which I could plant them.*

Who needs barbed wire or real gates when you can make a wall of giant cacti around your property?! Take that, you lousy kids!!! So, uh, now my dream house will need to have a Saguaro wall and a lyophilizer. Classy.

*According to the seed packet they'd grow anywhere, but only flower in the desert after about a hundred or so years.

I made it to Burbank in one piece...and that's when the real fun began!

TO BE CONTINUED...

Hi again.

In the last month I've learned that after art and voiceover work, mowing lawns is my third-favorite thing-I-can-do-to-make-money. It's also great exercise. I'm not sure why I never did it when I was in the typical "Hey Mrs. Jones, can I mow your lawn for $10?" age range. It was probably something along the lines of my mom not trusting me with a lawnmower.

I should be drawing now.

This must be one of those things that takes time.

I swear, that voice in my head keeps telling me I'll get back to where I was six months ago if I keep doing this.

A Day in a Line and Choir

My mom decided to leave me at AC Moore for an hour while she had lunch with my sister, and I found a doodle journal that actually had doodle activity suggestions in it instead of just being a bunch of blank pages with a fancy cover that charged you more than a regular sketchbook. One of the pages challenged artists-in-training to draw out the events of an entire day without lifting your writing implement of choice from your paper. Aside from my crappy cars it turned out pretty cool looking, even if it was a crummy day and a nice testament to why lactose-intolerant people shouldn't eat pizza if they're going to be working all day.

Last night was my brother's choir concert. My dad ditched so I went with my grandmother. What I wasn't told was that the concert was to be combined with the elementary school choir concerts this time. Which meant that 1) They'd sound lousier than usual, and 2) Happy Harley would be there.

Happy Harley--unlike the last Harley I crossed paths with, this Harley was...not a small horse, first of all, and probably wouldn't appreciate being painted green. She was an elementary school music teacher in every essence of the word. Short and perpetually smiling, with musical knowledge ranging from "Don't wanna be your Valentine," "Suzy Snowflake," and "Plant a Little Watermelon On My Grave" to "When Witches were Waltzing" and "Swimming, Swimming, Into the Swimming Pool." Her hair was always teased and poofed into a fro about triple the size of Ronald McDonald's.

I managed to spot her again on the stage. As of 2011, the poof had been flattened somewhat and she'd essentially turned into a shrively brunette version of Mother Gothel from Tangled. Like this, with the same buggy eyes and goofy grin put on a real person.

Don't worry. Afterward I didn't do anything that would've put me in detention. Through sheer force of preadolescent apathy I completely bypassed her choir and only had to deal with Happy Harley and her sloppy air instrumentalist act. I didn't wind up in choir at all until 7th grade. What a lucky break!

The concert was long and about what you'd expect from a concert that included 4th-6th graders and a first-year middle school director.

Factory Time

This is from today's 'get up and make some time to draw' session.

This is the kind of stuff across the river from me now. The old river had a posh hotel that you could hitch a ferry to when you felt like it...the new river has lots of factories. None of which spew anything resembling steam or smoke that you can draw. And you can't exactly ferry over to check 'em out closer. I could bust out the telescope, maybe, but drawing through a telescope sounds like more trouble than it's worth.

Alright, here's the real plan...

Draw every single day, as much as possible, and get back up to scratch.

Post an update whenever Dad's not home to hog the scanner.

Yesterday my brother made confirmation, and must have wanted me to be there pretty badly or something. My mom doesn't usually want me around her church (which actually isn't hers anymore, so that may be part of the reason I was actually instructed to show up). I've got a reflexive habit of turning into Simon Cowell whenever there's anything resembling a choir, among other things, that must embarrass her in front of her friends. The choir was pretty terrible, probably in the running for the worst I'd heard in my lifetime, which didn't make it any better for my mom. It's usually a bad sign when your choir's trying to sing in unison and winding up in off-again-on-again five-part harmony instead.

I had been to one other confirmation before about ten years ago--it was for one of my best friends, and one of the priests taught me how to make a paper airplane, but I found a better one later.

Ten points to anyone who can spot Monty.

Afterward we all shipped out to get some Chinese. Luke and I got Peking Duck and everyone else had a free-for-all. Someone ordered a Pu Pu platter, and that came with a fire pot in the middle.

She didn't send me even one. -__- If I weren't allergic to half the stuff in the dish I'd go back and order one for myself just to draw the fire. The one on the top right is not mine. :P

What I love most about rivers is you can't sketch the same river twice. :P

This may very well be the worst hair day I've had this year yet, but my kitchen smells like bacon, John Williams is blasting for the entire neighborhood to hear, and it's finally warm enough to run out and sketch like mad, so I DON'T CARE! >:]

Yesterday my dad hogged the computer with the scanner. Also, I was being lazy, so I made up for it today by zooming through five pages of that sketchbook that fell onto the highway when Lauren and I helped Courtney move (and got run over by at least one car.) After that it just stopped scanning well. And my dad's scanner's no Epson-whatever-SCAD-had, for sure.

The dog's name is Asia. She's the wimpiest dog in the world, thankfully, and because of that she never does anything regrettable like trying to jump on me or bark at me. I don't know what kind of dog she is. I'm not even completely sure she's female and am banking on hearsay alone, but I figured most of the people reading this probably like dogs and might be interested in knowing.

Now I know Why I needed an External Conscience...

This past Tuesday I experienced a sudden epiphany of epic proportions.

I conjured up a conscience. A real one that can yank on my ear, chastise me for being an idiot, and engage in highly productive think-conversations that last well into the night. It's really not pulling any punches, either, and told me that if I want to get out of this rut and out of this ghetto I am going to have to draw at least once a day, every day to get back in the animation world where I belong.

In the meantime, I've gained some cash working for my dad. If any of you have ever read a Berenstain Bears book called "The Bicycle Lesson," you may recall the phrase "Now son, this is what you should not do...now let this be a lesson to you!" If not, it's a really, really easy read. I suggest taking a minute to drop by your local library and read it cover-to-cover in under two minutes.

Anyway, my dad runs his business the way Papa Q. Bear rides a bike. Here are a few tips I picked up so far...

1) Don't hire someone just because you were friends with them in high school, because you thought their nationality was cool, or because they can't get a job elsewhere, especially if someone better qualified applies for a position at your company.

2) Keep your work area neat and tidy, especially in places where outsiders are going to be walking around often.

3) Going along with #1, when you're in charge of a bunch of people, take the time to evaluate the skills they do have and use those skills to your advantage. For instance, if you have an AutoCAD junkie hanging around and your company requires the use of AutoCAD, get them doing some of that, and not secretarial work. Same applies to having most animators do math. It doesn't work.

4) Never underestimate the value of a good morale-boost.

5) If you've been waiting ten years for your big break and you wind up getting it, do as much of the work as you can manage yourself. Especially if you've hired unqualified people and aren't at least maximizing the use of the skills they already have.

Here's today's picture. Excuse me while my new conscience harps on me about needing to get in some real observational drawing if my portfolio's going to be up to scratch at all.

Shrek, eat your heart out!

So this summer my conscience, Lauren and I got a gig working for this guy. He recently gave me the go-ahead to post all of my progress up on this blog, so that's what I'm doing right now.

I doubt anyone who knows me well would believe it, but I'm decent at drawing anthropomorphic animals. Probably not as good as some, but passable. I'm not an animal person by any stretch of the word and don't really know how to respond to people who show me pictures of puppies. I'm far more inclined to publicly wondering what these puppies would taste like with a side of fries, but I digress. Despite this I've drawn five little pigs (bacon sounds lovely right now), three blind mice (a little on the scrawny side for that, except maybe the fat one), and...a newscasting fox.

(Oh, look, it's Elton John after too many Twinkies.)

I'm still working on figuring out which nursery rhyme that last one's supposed to be from. I'll keep you updated if I make a breakthrough on it.

In the meantime, I'm also cranking out fire effects for Fate Saga, shadow effects for Emma and Molly's Pet Yeti, and the 2D character for April, which unless I'm mistaken doesn't have a blog attached to it. There's other stuff I'm working on too. Lots of other stuff, like voice acting for The Story Ship and concept art for a game development project that's seeking a 3D modeler at the moment.

I will be drinking a lot of coffee in the near future.