Fuck it

Fuck it. I'm going to fucking do them both. Let's see what happens.

Audentes fortuna iuvat, or something like that.

2013 is going to be both productive AND painful.

Never ending stories

So I'm sitting here working on the third draft of my novel and my mind keeps tacking back to a tale I've growing in my mind for several months now. In a nutshell it's about metamorphosis and maturation. It's a about a young girl who hungers for adventure and who yearns to explore her world who starts out very much like Link from Nintendo's Zelda series or Sansa Stark from George RR Martin's Song of ice fire novels (Know to everyone in TV land as Game of Thrones) : nieve, brave, trusting and fiercely self righteous.

Over the course of her tale she grows and matures into a noble and fierce warrior. But also scarred by what she's seen and done. She essential transforms into a cross between Logen Ninefingers,  Conan, Brienne of tarth, Guts and Mokoto Kusanagi. I want to write it in the old pulp style. A la Robert E Howard. Short, dense, fast moving and full. Each punt would be a maximum of eight thousand words. Figure I could write one a week if pushed. And I want to write it for a teenage audience. Something that teenagers could pick up when the become tried of their videogames. I want to write the kind of book that I would have picked up when I was fifteen.

But, and here comes the kicker, I would want to illustrate the hell out of the fucker. I remember being enthralled by the beauty of capcom illustrations by Shinkiro, Bengus and Akiman. Their work for such games as Final Fight, Magic Sword and, most famously Street Fighter 2 had me locked in my bedroom with an endless stream of paper and pencils trying to capture the brilliance and energy of those two Japanese masters of illustration.

I want to inspire the same awe in others that I felt when I was in my formative years. Or try at the very least. But i have a hell of a lot to learn and a hell of a lot of drawing to do, and a hell of a lot of bad drawing to get out of my system to do before I even begin to reach that level of proficiency  Gotta start somewhere though, right? One illustration a week would force me to commit pencil, ink and brush to paper without fail. I'm so tempted to do it along side the writing of Frostfeld but I wonder if I might not be filling my plate with too much work.  My reach has always been shorter then my grasp.

Well surely the only way to know for sure is to attempt it, right?

Hello again Part 1

Evenin' all.

I'm alive.  This is proof of life. If you're  wondering where I've been, well, i'm about to spend some time filling you in.  You might want to put the kettle on and make yourself a cuppa, caus' we're going to be here for a while.

Don't worry.  I'll wait.

Grab some biscuits too.  But only if they're custard creams.

You done?  Sure?

Cool.

Sitting comfortably?  Well, I'll begin.

If you've been in a mine for the past few weeks you might not have noticed that the Olympic and Paralympic games descended on London like a hurricane this summer. I cannot tell you how much it effected the city.  There was an almost euphoric buzz which permeated the city and left almost noone untouched.  Never before have I either seen nor felt such a sense of profound sense of nation pride.  It was almost as if the entire country forgot that we were in the middle of a recession and had less the two pence to rub together and collectively decided to celebrated the brilliance and diversity which makes this united kingdom unique.  Its exactly England's ability to take that which is alien and make it England that is our strength.  We are a mongrel nation.  A melting pot of cultures and beliefs and people who have be brewing for almost four thousands years.

Maybe longer.

Definitely longer.

Both our behavior as a nation and our performance at games was astounding and exemplary.  Everyone who participated, from the athletes, to the volunteers who worked entirely for free, to the organizers, to the workers who served both the staff and the public has every reason to feel proud of themselves.

I had the opportunity to see the beast up close.  I worked at a McDonalds in the athletes village.  I served athletes from every country on the planet.  I worked with people from all corners of the globe.  The professionalism and hard work I both saw and was a part of was inspirational.

Especially the disabled staff and the paralympians.

I saw and served men and woman who had lost limbs, their eyesight.  Who were wheelchair bound.  And each and everyone of the refused to feel sorry for themselves.  They demanded your respect.  They refused to see themselves as disabled.

In the face of their fierce determination and refusal of pity I made a solemn vow to again complain about my life choices or hardships.  I have neither the excuse nor the right.  Am where I am because of conscious choices I made. Not through flights of fancy.

More later.  Enjoy your sunday.

Writing is supposed to be fun..

In 2001, the celebrated writer Ray Bradbury delivered a keynote address at The Sixth Annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea entitled "Telling the Truth,"

Ray Bradbury offers young writers a wealth of advice, included how to the avoid the various pitfalls they invariable fall into.

Its surprising how familiar all of what he say is to me.  I need to process and digest this before I can react to it.

Observations on flaws in work ethics

The underlying flaws of my approach to my work are easy to spot once the best of my work is collected in one place.

These flaws are numerous but fixable.  They are as follows:

1: A constant repetition of mistakes and no effort made to address them. 

Hence the repetition.

2: Not enough time spent studying the techniques of practitioners. Not enough time spent trying to reproduce the said techniques. Enough so that I am able to reproduce those techniques AT WILL.

3: Not enough time spent focusing on one illustrator.  Too much time spent jumping from one influence to another without learning what is needed. 

4: A lack of critical analysis of the illustrators being studied.  Learning and understanding both how and why their work works.

5: No time spent on learning the basics of drawing.  The fundamentals.  The building blocks.  Too much of a desire to jump forward.

6: A reluctance to spend time on either life drawing or observational drawing.  Both essential to learn how to draw the figure in space.

7: A refusal to collect, study, acquire or use reference for illustrations.  No realisation that I lack the skills to draw directly from my head.

8: Not enough time spent mastering one tool before moving to another.  (Dip pen(s), brush(es) pencils….)

9: A fear of working due to not being able accomplish a perfect image first time.

10: A reluctant to work large.

11: A reluctant to experiment with materials or tools.

12: Work environments are frequently cluttered and distracting, leading to an inability to focus on the task of being creative.