[Irony detectors inactive]
So, my internet's being a pain in the backside, it's cutting out ll over the place. Barely staying online for 5 mintues before a 15 minute black-out. Bastard. So, I went back to drawing (Yes, drawing, not writing, I'm getting to that). I'm scribbling around at an actual comic series called Paladin. It's your bog-standard sci-fi adventure, starships and what-not. Now, the past couple of weeks I've actually been mulling over the science behind it and making sci-fi obey as many real laws of physics as possible. That's been great fun. I don't even say that sarcastically, working out scientific problems is like doing a suduko or crossword for me, a great mental challenge.
Grr, I swear that's the hundredth time I've added the word 'suduko' to chrome's dictionary.
Anyways, I've been drawing one of the characters, called Kimberly (Kim) Carrigan. Naturally, she's got boobs. Now, don't think I'm being perverted here, bare with me. Faces I can draw, even hands to a degree, but overall body, sizes, anatomy, that kind of stuff. Gah, it's hard. So, as a result, she either ended up with lop-sided cubes or bizarre carrot-shaped (don't ask) boobs. Not good. I didn't want to focus on them to much, 'cos I'm not designing her as a sexual character, it's just a natural part of the female anatomy, so I went to google about drawing boobs. Dear god, whatever you do, make sure safe-search is on when you do that. I've seen a side of Lois Griffin and Marge Simpson that, well, actually......
*Ahem* Moving swiftly on.
I stumbled across a blog moaning about the confused.com adverts. Rightly so. They are horrendous. Easily distracted, I was curiosu to see what this blogger said, and by the end of it, just kept reading the next post. And the next. One of her posts was about writer's block, and while I don't write much, I do love to. I found an interesting link to a website called 750 Words.
Right, backstory sorted. Now, 750 Words is a website that's free to use and basically challenges you to write 750 words a day. It's completely private, just a scrap-pad for you to mash your keyboard at about any random idea. I've signed up, and my plan is to non-stop write 750 words a day from now on. Even if just to help filter through my own thoughts and make sense of them, or to give me some inspiration, either way. Starting with the first thing that comes into your head, just start writing. Write thoughts down. Just transcribe your train of thought, and don't filter any of it.
For any of you who're writers, interested in writing, or creating storylines for comics, anything that requires a creative input really, it sounds like a great idea. Give it a go.
Sunday, 30 December 2012
Saturday, 29 December 2012
Jimothy Sold his Soul
Well, figuratively. Allow me to explain.
I'm not a huge fan of celebrity status. The whole concept's rather unsettling to me, the fact that people want to know things about people just because other people know things about them. In times gone by, people were famous for a reason, and it was only that reason the were known for. For example, if someone were a singer, their songs and voice were famous, but no-one gave a donkey's about their personal lives. These are the people who's names will go down in history. Modern celebrity status is a joke, and as soon as people lose interest in the celebrity, they become an average Joe again. We return to giving less of a shit than a paraplegic dung beetle.
Now, I personally believe that the majority of people strive for this popularity, or 'mock fame' as I think of it. We are bombarded by the media portraying the celebrities as something to aspire to, instead of focusing on their achievements (be it singing/writing/whatever), and so people are moulded to seek that same popularity. This is the sole reason social networking sites such as the dreaded Facebook are so popular.
Don't get me wrong, I love the concept behind Facebook, it's a great easy way to keep in touch with everyone, and find out when my friends are doing things I want in on. The basic principal of keeping in touch is great, but the fact it gets used as a platform to advertise one's personal life is not. Just to illustrate this, I wrote a short paragraph about a particular Gandhi quote I'd just read, "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind", and how forgiveness is better than beating people up for glancing in the wrong direction. Now, not many people pay attention to me, I don't mind, the point was that if anyone did read that, they'd hopefully think for a moment, and possibly even realise and make an effort to change for the better. But no. No-one noticed, no-one cared. Instead, and I kid you not, the following post from a popular social butterfly got something stupid like 30+ 'likes': "just woke up lol".
This is why I say Jimothy's selling out. I've created a Facebook page for the comics. I try to keep myself separate from the comics as much as possible, and while they are all influenced by my life, they are not there to advertise me as a person. They are there because I think *they* are worth looking at, and Facebook's just a simple way for non-deviantART users (which is where I upload the comics) to follow the series. Basically speaking, it's a page for the comics and comic-related stuff. Not a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about the artist, who, at the end of the day, should only be know as 'That guy who drew that awesome comic'. Much as Martin Luther King is 'That guy who did so much for equality', not 'that bloke who said x to a tabloid journalist'. You get my drift.
OK.
Rant over.
Anyways, if you do like Jimothy, and/or think other people will also like the comics, then please go ahead and 'like' and share the page on Facebook, but please, for the love of everything holy, do not expect me to share every little detail of my life just so people 'know' me.
NB: Actually, thinking about it, I am a very open person. I don't have anything to hide, but my point is that what I do share is relevant to the topic it's in. Ie. a bit of background for some inspiration for a comic.
I'm not a huge fan of celebrity status. The whole concept's rather unsettling to me, the fact that people want to know things about people just because other people know things about them. In times gone by, people were famous for a reason, and it was only that reason the were known for. For example, if someone were a singer, their songs and voice were famous, but no-one gave a donkey's about their personal lives. These are the people who's names will go down in history. Modern celebrity status is a joke, and as soon as people lose interest in the celebrity, they become an average Joe again. We return to giving less of a shit than a paraplegic dung beetle.
Now, I personally believe that the majority of people strive for this popularity, or 'mock fame' as I think of it. We are bombarded by the media portraying the celebrities as something to aspire to, instead of focusing on their achievements (be it singing/writing/whatever), and so people are moulded to seek that same popularity. This is the sole reason social networking sites such as the dreaded Facebook are so popular.
Don't get me wrong, I love the concept behind Facebook, it's a great easy way to keep in touch with everyone, and find out when my friends are doing things I want in on. The basic principal of keeping in touch is great, but the fact it gets used as a platform to advertise one's personal life is not. Just to illustrate this, I wrote a short paragraph about a particular Gandhi quote I'd just read, "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind", and how forgiveness is better than beating people up for glancing in the wrong direction. Now, not many people pay attention to me, I don't mind, the point was that if anyone did read that, they'd hopefully think for a moment, and possibly even realise and make an effort to change for the better. But no. No-one noticed, no-one cared. Instead, and I kid you not, the following post from a popular social butterfly got something stupid like 30+ 'likes': "just woke up lol".
This is why I say Jimothy's selling out. I've created a Facebook page for the comics. I try to keep myself separate from the comics as much as possible, and while they are all influenced by my life, they are not there to advertise me as a person. They are there because I think *they* are worth looking at, and Facebook's just a simple way for non-deviantART users (which is where I upload the comics) to follow the series. Basically speaking, it's a page for the comics and comic-related stuff. Not a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about the artist, who, at the end of the day, should only be know as 'That guy who drew that awesome comic'. Much as Martin Luther King is 'That guy who did so much for equality', not 'that bloke who said x to a tabloid journalist'. You get my drift.
OK.
Rant over.
Anyways, if you do like Jimothy, and/or think other people will also like the comics, then please go ahead and 'like' and share the page on Facebook, but please, for the love of everything holy, do not expect me to share every little detail of my life just so people 'know' me.
NB: Actually, thinking about it, I am a very open person. I don't have anything to hide, but my point is that what I do share is relevant to the topic it's in. Ie. a bit of background for some inspiration for a comic.
Thursday, 27 December 2012
Grand Unifying Theory?
Well, I've certainly had an interesting night. There's a small chance I've stumbled across the grand unifying theory of relativity... or something like it. I'm no expert in anything physics-ey, but I am very logically thinking, and much of what I've been thinking is built on little more fact than a bit of logical extrapolation.
Every great discovery needs a back story. I mean, if you don't know about Isaac Newton's apple, you'll probably want to stop reading, long words may be inbound. My back-story's pretty much the story of my life right now, I was sitting around drawing. To be precise, drawing concept art for a sci-fi comic called Paladin, or Destiny... not sure yet.
Quite happily drawing away, I started dreaming up the science behind the fictional universe, how things would work. I started browsing around for info on the real theories behind faster than light (FTL) travel, FTL communication, 'sub-space' and assorted other sci-fi 'facts' that are so overused they're clichéd. As far as science fictions go, there's two main types. The ones that tell you what things do, but don't care how, after all, it's fiction, and there's the types that have wild ideas and give them explanations. These usually feature some form of pure fiction, such as Star Trek's Dilithium, not to be confused with real dilithium, that the rest of the science is built upon.
I wanted to have my 'science' built on logic, so that even though it is pure fiction, with only our current knowledge of the way the universe works, it could be possible.
This naturally brought me to the limitation we have with light-speed, and how things tend to get rather heavy (sorry, tend to increase in mass) as they approach the speed of light. My first plan to get around this way to investigate a way to communicate FTL, and I looked into Tachyon. They're theoretical particles that travel faster than light, and seeing as they travel faster than light, it's logical to assume they have no mass. The next step, is wave-particle duality, which is a widely accepted fact within physics that states particles (such as our Tachyon) share properties with waves (such as electromagnetic radiation that we use to communicate with today). So, assuming Tachyon's exist (and there is a logical reason as do why I believe they do, but I'm trying to keep this relatively short) we will in the future find some way of creating and/or influencing them, which will allow for waves to be sent faster than light, and therefore, FTL communication.
Now, with this technological achievement a logical step for the human race, how would they turn that into a way to move mass faster than light? This is where mass in special relativity becomes a problem, as it's theorised through special relativity that as an object's speed approaches the speed of light, it's mass increases exponentially toward infinity. A conflicting, but less well-known, theory is what I consider more likely. Matter itself cannot change one physical property (mass) as a result of a change in a completely unrelated property (speed). Instead, as speed increases, the fabric universe that matter currently inhabits stretches around it, giving the appearance of it's mass increasing.
That's the basic building-blocks, I'll end it here in an attempt to keep this post slightly shorter than War and Peace.
Every great discovery needs a back story. I mean, if you don't know about Isaac Newton's apple, you'll probably want to stop reading, long words may be inbound. My back-story's pretty much the story of my life right now, I was sitting around drawing. To be precise, drawing concept art for a sci-fi comic called Paladin, or Destiny... not sure yet.
Quite happily drawing away, I started dreaming up the science behind the fictional universe, how things would work. I started browsing around for info on the real theories behind faster than light (FTL) travel, FTL communication, 'sub-space' and assorted other sci-fi 'facts' that are so overused they're clichéd. As far as science fictions go, there's two main types. The ones that tell you what things do, but don't care how, after all, it's fiction, and there's the types that have wild ideas and give them explanations. These usually feature some form of pure fiction, such as Star Trek's Dilithium, not to be confused with real dilithium, that the rest of the science is built upon.
I wanted to have my 'science' built on logic, so that even though it is pure fiction, with only our current knowledge of the way the universe works, it could be possible.
This naturally brought me to the limitation we have with light-speed, and how things tend to get rather heavy (sorry, tend to increase in mass) as they approach the speed of light. My first plan to get around this way to investigate a way to communicate FTL, and I looked into Tachyon. They're theoretical particles that travel faster than light, and seeing as they travel faster than light, it's logical to assume they have no mass. The next step, is wave-particle duality, which is a widely accepted fact within physics that states particles (such as our Tachyon) share properties with waves (such as electromagnetic radiation that we use to communicate with today). So, assuming Tachyon's exist (and there is a logical reason as do why I believe they do, but I'm trying to keep this relatively short) we will in the future find some way of creating and/or influencing them, which will allow for waves to be sent faster than light, and therefore, FTL communication.
Now, with this technological achievement a logical step for the human race, how would they turn that into a way to move mass faster than light? This is where mass in special relativity becomes a problem, as it's theorised through special relativity that as an object's speed approaches the speed of light, it's mass increases exponentially toward infinity. A conflicting, but less well-known, theory is what I consider more likely. Matter itself cannot change one physical property (mass) as a result of a change in a completely unrelated property (speed). Instead, as speed increases, the fabric universe that matter currently inhabits stretches around it, giving the appearance of it's mass increasing.
That's the basic building-blocks, I'll end it here in an attempt to keep this post slightly shorter than War and Peace.
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