Writing About Writing

[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.

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.

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.

So, we survived

Lo and behold, the 21st of December went by and the only Armageddon I was concerned with was the old worms game I decided to dust off for ironic value. I can't say I'm particularly surprised. That's all I've got to say really.

A Pessimist's Guide to Optimism

I have been a life-long pessimist until relatively recently, and I could never understand why you'd look forward to something that might not happen and risk disappointment, when you could just shrug and expect the worst. The theory there is that you'd only be pleasantly surprised by positive results and already expected the bad, however, without hoping, dreaming, or just outright looking forward to stuff, you'll miss out on the joy that comes from getting not just a good thing, but a good thing you wanted. Optimism's new ground for me, and I feel my 'faith' was tested earlier. Almost everyone will have heard of the Connecticut school shooting, with 26 victims, 20 of which were just kids. Now, that in itself is not what tested me. What got me, was a blog post criticising the view that 'the world is a beautiful place' and using the tragedy in Connecticut solitary proof. This got me thinking, and after some ruminations  my thoughts have spelled out what I can only describe as an explanation of optimism for pessimists.

Firstly, a quick disclaimer, I'm not going to belittle the victim's loss in any way shape or form, I'm just sharing a view about views on the world that the shooting brought up.

Seeing the world as a beautiful place isn't suggesting that tragedies such as the aforementioned shooting  are good in any way, but it's about looking at life in a positive view. Everyone loses loved ones, and while no parent should ever have to suffer their child's death, it can and does happen. For those who are lost, they're either with their respective deity or completely free from all the hassles of life. And for the people left, well, people grieve, people mourn, but eventually, people recover.

Let's use some imagination for a rather abstract representation here. Think of each action in life as either good or bad, and let's call them heads and tails, as if a coin. Now, with a minuscule number of exceptions, everyone gets at least some things to be happy about. I saw a homeless man, sitting on the bank of a river with a dog by his side sharing a soggy... something. He had the biggest smile on his face. Maybe it was because he had some food today, maybe it was companionship, but whatever it was, something was good. Now, he may have only had one good thing that day, one head in a number of flips of the coin, but all there is to it is to work through the bad, and then look back and think, remember that good thing? Don't count your life in terms of 12:46 heads:tails, just sort out the tails and when you get bummed out, just think, you had 12 heads. That's 12 more than you could have had.

Now it's not easy to change your whole outlook on life, but if you're fed up being bummed out with life, then force yourself. Every time you feel crappy about life, remember the last good thing that happened. It doesn't even have to be anything that you consider good, but maybe something you take for granted that you may not have in a worse situation. A roof over your head, enough to eat, a computer, that kind of thing. If you really stick at it, eventually it'll become automatic and you'll be all round happier. Trust me.

Play XCOM with Jimothy

So, it's been a little while since I started my Runescape-based series starring Jimothy, and aside from the first few images, I've not found much inspiration for comic strips. This, coupled with the idea of doing comics for other games, I've decided that instead of creating a series for each game, I'll just have the one. 'Play with Jimothy' will now feature all of my game-based comics for any and all games I get some inspiration for. I'm neither a console gamer, nor do I have many new titles due to my archaic laptop's pathetic speed. In fact, most of the games I play are lesser-known titles, or older games that have fallen out of popular use. So, as a result, the references in the Play with Jimothy may seem peculiar, but I'll try to include the game's logo or name in the comic itself. Consider it free advertising I guess.
Recently I've been hooked on XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Having played UFO: Enemy Unknown when I was young (I didn't much like strategy games back then though) I've fallen in love with the new addition to the XCOM series and I'm glad they've returned to their roots of turn-based warfare. There was one particular mission that gave me an idea for a comic strip, and here's a quick preview of what I'm working on:

I've also noticed that in order to make the comics feel like the game they're referencing I'm finding myself putting in more detail than I usually would in the Life and Times. I've decided that the Play with Jimothy series will all feature more detailed work, complete with backgrounds and the likes on all images, which may take me longer to make each one, but won't cause the main series to lose it's simplistic identity.
On the subject of the main series, the Life and Times of Jim, I've now introduced a new character. Like Jimothy, he's based upon parts of my own personality, and named after a nickname that I've managed to somehow acquire. And trust me on this one, I've absolutely no idea how I got this nickname.

Way of Life

A lot of things float through my mind from day to day, and most importantly is my own way of life. I spend a great deal of time considering how I am, how I live, and how I want to be. In times like this, a large number of people turn to religion, and while I don't subscribe to any particular religion, the way I live tends to follow the majority of moral and ethical codes they provide. This is where I feel the guidance comes from, and that you can find direction from them even without following the beliefs they support. For example, I may not believe in the Jewish or Christian God, yet I follow their ten commandments by my own moral compass. (I think I do, I haven't actually read up on them recently) Now, I'm not very religiously educated, what I do know I was taught in school and consisted of learning the in's and out's of Christianity and Judaism, instead of getting a basic overview of the majority of religions. As a result, I had heard little about Buddhism and was under the impression it's primarily based on understanding your own life through meditation, which isn't a million miles from the truth.

Either way, I took a quick look around the internet and did some good old-fashioned self-education on the subject. As I investigated, I discovered the 'Noble Eightfold Path', which may not speak to me in terms of escaping a Re-birthing cycle, they are hugely sound in terms of looking for the best in life:

'Right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.'

All my thinking and pondering about my life is bringing me towards having the 'right view' on my life, as I work out what I actually want from life. The intention is there to make those wants happen, and my version of 'right speech' would be social interactions. As far as they go, I am pushing myself to do what's not only morally right, but also to come out of my shell, to talk to people and have a social life like I actually want to. Similarly, my actions follow suite, and while I'm having to make conscious decisions to do what's best for me, it's slowly becoming a reaction. Now, livelihood's a tricky one, but I'm wasting less and less time on worthless entertainment, and focusing on things that don't just take my mind off of boredom, but actually fully engage me. Putting in the right effort is my hardest battle so far, and seems steeply uphill due to my lazy nature, but I'm pushing myself to overcome that, and making ground slowly. Now, mindfulness is what to pay attention to, what to think about and what not to dwell on. Here's my strong point, I know my goal is to become happy in myself, and I focus on that, reflect on it and evolve and don't fill my mind with mediocre entertainment that doesn't actually captivate me. Finally, there's concentration, which to Buddhism refers to Meditation. Now, I'd not thought meditation was for me, but the more I think on it and read into the concept of it, it becomes more and more inviting. I already, to some degree, meditate on my thoughts, in as much as it's not unknown for me to lose myself in thought for hours on end. Giving meditation a try is now on my to-do list, and I leave with another Gandhi quote that just about sums up my current life goal.

A Couple of Quotes

I like quotes. Or more specifically, I like simple sentences that convey a great meanings. There's a great number of thought-provoking things that have been said through the ages, and my thoughts are susceptible to provocation. Depending on my mood, depends on just how much meaning I draw from any given quote, but nine times out of ten, when they get me thinking, I'll dwell on the meanings behind the phase for a good while. They're the type of thing I post-it to my noticeboard and glance at, or make a quick wallpaper for my computer so that I see them and drift into more ruminations. These wallpapers are my focus with this post, as I felt like incorporating them with my artistic style, and tend to think deeper about subjects I use. Plus, hey, they look kinda cool.
If I'm ever left sitting bored, I'll occasionally turn to my ever-growing collection on inspiring quotes, and I'll read through them, and there's always one that fits my mood and sparks my mind that day.

The 'eye for an eye' phrase is one of those phrases that actually tend's to wind me up. I'm not a large bearer of grudges, and I find the whole concept of revenge rather unsettling. To highlight this, the poem 'Lauren's Lament' illustrates that I have cause to dislike this girl, yet, I have to force myself to believe when I'm told she was the problem, not me, in my endeavour to actually move on. And the more I think, the more I do believe, and yet, I will never harbour bad feelings for her.
People who understand certain quotes and phrases such as 'an eye for an eye' usually seem more mentally intuitive, and the types of people I tend to get along with, but this particular one is the exception. The above Gandhi quote reflects my view far more accurately, and I have a great deal of respect for forgiving people. In fact, another of Gandhi's famous words were:

"I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won't presume to probe into the faults of others."

That can mean much more than just personal qualities or faults, but also actions, be they good, bad, or mistakes, no one will always make the right choice and do the right thing. Everyone does something that they should not have done, and no good can come from holding a someone accountable for his very humanity. Genuine regret of an action, a word, or a thought should be forgiven.
And with that I believe I've managed to arrive at the ever-popular concept of asking for forgiveness, and the religious 'confession', which is a mental can of worms for thought, so I'll end this post here with another quote.