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Late last night, I completed today's Abúi's Travels update, the 31st in 31 days, completing the challenge I set myself to update daily across my many different comics hosted on ComicFury. I added
14 updates for Abúi's Travels, 5 of which were new (9 were drawn back in April and early May);
9 updates for Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan, all of them already drawn but in some cases cleaned up significantly;
6 updates for The Lives of X!Gloop, newly completed in collaboration with myself 25 years ago;
1 update for Spun Off (warning: Goblin phallus);
1 update for White House in Orbit.
In total, I have uploaded or caused the upload of 234 new items to ComicFury this year, without double-counting comics that were published in two different places like the first 9 updates of Abúi's Grand Tour.
I promised myself a reward at the end of the process if I won. Halfway through, I found out that the item I wanted as a reward was discontinued in all but name by the manufacturer, so I ordered it and got it delivered before the challenge was completed. I can now say I've earned it though! The reward is an OP-1 synthesizer from Teenage Engineering. I hope to eventually post music here and elsewhere, but it could be a while, because (state of affairs as of July 23, 2017) I don't play keyboards and know next to nothing about synthesis in general or using this tool in particular. It'll be a learning curve, but I was ready for something new. I also got a small MIDI controller as an early birthday gift, so I have plenty of new toys to explore.
As if learning a whole new instrument/approach to music-making won't keep me busy enough, I also know what my art challenge for the next two months is going to be. Here it is:
Draw 9 pages of Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan before September 19, and another 10 in the five weeks after that.
Yikes! Here's why that's a thing I need to do:
Back in 2007/8, when skycladstrega and I had just met, we took over each other's comics for a few months because we were a bit stuck and unmotivated for our respective projects. We both had a lot of fun playing in each other's world, but in the long run, there were some drawbacks: both comics got a lot of criticism for the change in style, there were long sections where the comics looked vastly inconsistent with what came before and after, and skycladstrega didn't keep any master files so if I ever wanted to print the comic, there's a whole chapter that I won't be able to. Time to fix all that. It's gonna be difficult. Skyclad has her surgery later this week, and the updates themselves will be comparable in complexity with the 6 X!Gloop updates I cranked out during two week's vacation. I've got more vacation time coming up in August, but only a week. So I'll have to draw nine of those without having as much extra time, while looking after my wife as she recovers. Plus there was probably a reason why I got stuck on those in the first place. If I win this challenge, all that means is I won't have missed any regular updates; I may need to come up with some additional motivator.
Back to the challenge I just completed. What have I learned?
Well, that I can plan strategically to maximize updates. I will use that ability in the next challenge.
Also, that I miss black and white. The way my style loosened up as the Abúi updates went along wouldn't have been possible if I'd colored them. There will be more black and white projects in the future, particularly the Jungle Girl story I have planned. That story will be very unlike any others in the genre as I'm making a point of turning overused tropes on their head. But that's a topic for later.
That I can really crank them out if I put my mind to it, but that I'm still much slower than I used to be. Something to do with working in digital, for the most part. Some people get faster, but I mostly get cleaner and slower.
That I do have more than one style in me. X!Gloop, WHIO and Abúi all look very different. Good, because the Jungle Girl comic will have a different look and feel, or at least it does in my head.
14 updates for Abúi's Travels, 5 of which were new (9 were drawn back in April and early May);
9 updates for Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan, all of them already drawn but in some cases cleaned up significantly;
6 updates for The Lives of X!Gloop, newly completed in collaboration with myself 25 years ago;
1 update for Spun Off (warning: Goblin phallus);
1 update for White House in Orbit.
In total, I have uploaded or caused the upload of 234 new items to ComicFury this year, without double-counting comics that were published in two different places like the first 9 updates of Abúi's Grand Tour.
I promised myself a reward at the end of the process if I won. Halfway through, I found out that the item I wanted as a reward was discontinued in all but name by the manufacturer, so I ordered it and got it delivered before the challenge was completed. I can now say I've earned it though! The reward is an OP-1 synthesizer from Teenage Engineering. I hope to eventually post music here and elsewhere, but it could be a while, because (state of affairs as of July 23, 2017) I don't play keyboards and know next to nothing about synthesis in general or using this tool in particular. It'll be a learning curve, but I was ready for something new. I also got a small MIDI controller as an early birthday gift, so I have plenty of new toys to explore.
As if learning a whole new instrument/approach to music-making won't keep me busy enough, I also know what my art challenge for the next two months is going to be. Here it is:
Draw 9 pages of Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan before September 19, and another 10 in the five weeks after that.
Yikes! Here's why that's a thing I need to do:
Back in 2007/8, when skycladstrega and I had just met, we took over each other's comics for a few months because we were a bit stuck and unmotivated for our respective projects. We both had a lot of fun playing in each other's world, but in the long run, there were some drawbacks: both comics got a lot of criticism for the change in style, there were long sections where the comics looked vastly inconsistent with what came before and after, and skycladstrega didn't keep any master files so if I ever wanted to print the comic, there's a whole chapter that I won't be able to. Time to fix all that. It's gonna be difficult. Skyclad has her surgery later this week, and the updates themselves will be comparable in complexity with the 6 X!Gloop updates I cranked out during two week's vacation. I've got more vacation time coming up in August, but only a week. So I'll have to draw nine of those without having as much extra time, while looking after my wife as she recovers. Plus there was probably a reason why I got stuck on those in the first place. If I win this challenge, all that means is I won't have missed any regular updates; I may need to come up with some additional motivator.
Back to the challenge I just completed. What have I learned?
Well, that I can plan strategically to maximize updates. I will use that ability in the next challenge.
Also, that I miss black and white. The way my style loosened up as the Abúi updates went along wouldn't have been possible if I'd colored them. There will be more black and white projects in the future, particularly the Jungle Girl story I have planned. That story will be very unlike any others in the genre as I'm making a point of turning overused tropes on their head. But that's a topic for later.
That I can really crank them out if I put my mind to it, but that I'm still much slower than I used to be. Something to do with working in digital, for the most part. Some people get faster, but I mostly get cleaner and slower.
That I do have more than one style in me. X!Gloop, WHIO and Abúi all look very different. Good, because the Jungle Girl comic will have a different look and feel, or at least it does in my head.
Commissions, continued
I have now delivered all but one of the latest batch of commissions. Well done, me! I will have room to do more commissioned work in April. Please check the Commissions Price Sheet for more information and terms:
FAWM over, back to drawing
I've successfully completed February Album Writing Month and will now focus on drawing again. I'll be traveling to Portugal without my laptop and without any musical instruments but with my iPad and Apple Pencil. First priorities will be a new Greyfriar's Isle story and unblocking myself from what is holding me back with the ongoing Tess Durban story. I wrote two punk-ish songs during FAWM and by coincidence, my brother posted the only punk song from my The Hooded Crow days, written by me and recorded for our first demo in 1994. As with many of these songs, there was a long time when I didn't want to listen to it. But it turns out that writing new songs is not just a way to express myself, create new things and be part of a community, it's also an ongoing dialog with myself. So writing "Enshittified" last summer, and "In the face of the Eschaton" and "The Planet Spins" this February, has made me listen to my older writing with different ears. The Reinder Dijkhuis Punk Album would
Glaze, and things that AI can't do
The other day, I ran a number of old drawings through Glaze and found that my pencil art from several years ago takes it amazingly well. The header image conveniently focuses on a section of the image where you can see the Glaze artefacts, but only just. Compared to black-and-white and flat-colored images, where the artefacts are painfully obvious, these scanned traditional works with random greyscale tones and paper textures are good at hiding the tell-tale signs that the image has been processed through anti-AI technology. So I'm going to experiment a little more, with watercolors as well as more pencil artworks, and if the results are consistent, I will just go back to traditional art full-time. I know that DeviantArt has an opt-out for AI training on images posted here, and I expect them to respect that opt-out, at least for the time being. But it's easier for me to have one canonical version of every image that I post everywhere, so that's why I've only been posting Glazed
The Hooded Crow - Ravine, and FAWM
It's that time of the year again. I'm doing February Album Writing Month! You can follow my progress via https://write.fawm.org/@reinderd until the FAWM website goes into hibernation again. So far, I'm at three songs written, which means I'm on track but can't afford to slack off (yesterday, I slacked off, a bit). Meanwhile, my brother continues his regular releases of demo tracks, studio recordings and outtakes of our former band The Hooded Crow with one of my favorites and one of the tracks I'd selected as a model for the songwriting project I'd chosen for this year's FAWM: Michel Bouma's composition "Ravine" from 1994, featured on our second demo. Here it is: The Hooded Crow - Ravine It was about time we got to rock out again! Sometimes, a guy just wants a big dumb riffy rocker, and "Ravine" delivers that, but it also has enough movement in it to keep things interesting beyond that. And it's a joy to play! I should know because I still play it frequently.
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w00t! That's quite a lot you got done!