Indistinguishable From Magic

‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the...

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:48:00 -0400

‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative

An incredible article about the myths of women’s role in history, our biases from patriarchal education and media, and how not addressing those biases creates a feedback loop in fiction that perpetuates sexism.

A must read!

We forget what the story’s about. We erase women in our stories who, in our own lives, are powerful, forthright, intelligent, terrifying people. Women stab and maim and kill and lead and manage and own and run. We know that. We experience it every day. We see it.

…

[T]he trouble is, it’s often hard to sort out what we actually experienced from what we’re told we experienced, or what we should have experienced. We’re social creatures, and fallible.

http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/

"The strategy is to have a practice, and what it means to have a practice is to regularly and..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:28:42 -0400

“

The strategy is to have a practice, and what it means to have a practice is to regularly and reliably do the work in a habitual way.

[…]

The notion that I do my work here, now, like this, even when I do not feel like it, and especially when I do not feel like it, is very important. Because lots and lots of people are creative when they feel like it, but you are only going to become a professional if you do it when you don’t feel like it. And that emotional waiver is why this is your work and not your hobby.

”

- Seth Godin on the daily habits of creative practice. (via explore-blog)

The main cast of my Dark Science series! I thought I’d put...

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:44:00 -0400

The main cast of my Dark Science series! I thought I’d put a little thing together for new readers.

Kimiko Serena Ross - Autodidactic inventor. Holding a dishonorary degree in science, Kim Ross has, by age 22, created many wonderful abominations, but the most notable are her elaborate prostheses she now requires to live (having been blown up by time-colonists in a previous tale). She’s currently looking for a new career in the magnificent (and horrendously bureaucratic) city of Nephilopolis.
Vonnie Awning - Analytical clerk for the Department of Taste, Vonnie knows every facet of Nephilopolis’s bureaucracy. Terribly fashionable. Terribly obsessed with social networking.
Kaito Kusanagi - Kimiko’s estranged father and legendary architect of Nephilopolis. World renowned as the greatest roboticist in history, his designs were so sophisticated that no one else knows how to effectively reproduce them. Since his death, he’s been elevated to a near-saintly status in Nephilopolis, much to the displeasure of Kim.
Balthazar Bogan - Lecturer and last remnant of the Anthropology Department in Nephilopolis. His loyalties are convoluted at best.
Alisa Caspar - Award-winning author and certified celebrity. Caspar has some connection to Kim’s father, Kaito, but much remains unclear.
Mathias Melchior - Agent of the Department of Opposition, which regulates all menace within the city. Has his hands in many plots. Also unreasonably tall.
Amon Harthrow - Head of the Department of Congruity, which regulates all order and civility in Nephilopolis. He is not fond of mezzodes (cyborgs) in the city.
Thomas Caspar - Alisa Caspar’s son and head of the Department of Secrets. Knows more about Kim than he rightfully should.
Asmodea Harthrow - Amon’s daughter and head of the Department of Distraction, offering new and exciting ways to never address one’s own existential dread.
The Dark Scientists - Shadowy figures in the underbelly of the city, the Dark Scientists oppose to the bureaucratic scientific establishment above. Recently they’ve taken an interest in Kim, who has been exhibiting peculiar traits. Their exact number is uncertain.

Some warmup sketches from the last couple days!

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:37:42 -0400

Some warmup sketches from the last couple days!

onthegreatsea: This was a fun one to do. It’s Zelda! Though her...

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:51:43 -0400

onthegreatsea:

This was a fun one to do.

It’s Zelda! Though her design is half based on Tetra and half based on Aaron Diaz’s Zelda design from his Clockwork Empire concept.

Which for those who don’t know is a reimagining of LoZ with Zelda as the protagonist. It’s a pretty cool idea but more importantly her tunic is purple!

Purple.

I really, really love purple.

Plus I’ve always wanted to play as Zelda so bam! Now I can.

Her alt outfit (at the bottom) is, of course, based entirely on Tetra’s outfit =]

Anyway, only one more alternate design to go and then I’ll put up a download link for them all.

This is SO GREAT, you guys. I’m glad my Clockwork Empire thing has inspired so many skilled folks to make amazing things!

The new Star Trek actually has me more excited about what J.J....

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:52:00 -0400

The new Star Trek actually has me more excited about what J.J. Abrams could do to make some good Star Wars movies again. More importantly, Disney now technically has the power to remake those terrible, terrible prequels!

With that in mind, I thought I’d share again my old project, Star Wars 1999, which re-imagines a prequel trilogy only using canon material before Lucas’s actual (awful) prequels were made. Also, the visuals are based almost entirely on Ralph McQuarrie’s early and/or discarded designs from the original trilogy.

Check out the link for more details, I wrote quite a lot!

http://dresdencodak.tumblr.com/tagged/star-wars

doggedlyjo: dresdencodak: Fair enough. I assume you mean when...

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:20:00 -0400

doggedlyjo:

dresdencodak:

Fair enough. I assume you mean when I started Dresden Codak? I’ll break down the honest-to-goodness process of the early comics:

Draw comics in mechanical pencil on the back of my statistics homework (never turned in) and then ink on top of that with a micron pen.

Sneak into the Honors College study room (from which I was expelled for poor grades) and use their scanner.

Use a mouse and a bootleg copy of Photoshop 7 to color the pages.

Upload it to my site, which at the time was flat HTML that I’d written from scratch.

And that’s it!

reblogging this for the reminder that grades and a college degree are by no means the be-all end-all of life.

There’s some truth to this. I’d like to share some further biographical information:

I’m a college dropout. In 2006 I left school after a little over four years because I kept changing majors (physics, anthropology, computer science, then art) and it had reached a point where it was difficult for me to afford to keep going to school (I was paying my own way with various jobs).

The reason I had kept changing majors was because I was terrified that I’d picked the “wrong” career, with most of those academic decisions based around what careers seemed prestigious. I wanted to be an engineer because I liked the idea of being an engineer, then a programmer because I liked the idea of being a programmer, but I was never happy doing any of these things, and it showed. I’d always been groomed to be a good student, and for most of my career I was good at doing what I was told.

I’d always been creative, doing little projects on the side. I wrote a sci-fi novel when I was 19 (never shared it), some poems in physics class, and even some fake news stories about Popeye before I was kicked off the university paper. I also made films with friends for many years. I was told these were “good hobbies,” that once I became a respected and financially stable engineer/programmer/scientist, that I could then do what made me happy on the side. A nervous breakdown during my college career, however, made it clear that “waiting to be happy” was a psychologically unstable strategy. I couldn’t wait for someone else to grant me permission to do what I wanted with my life.

So, in 2005, during a statistics class that I would eventually fail, I started drawing Dresden Codak. I hadn’t seriously drawn in many years, but it’s something you don’t totally lose. They were pretty bad drawings, but I didn’t care. I enjoyed it and decided that doing what I really liked to do now was better than hoping I could do it later. I wasn’t looking for a career at the time, I just realized how much I loved making comics and knew that I should do whatever I could to keep making them. It took about a year for me to decided that being a cartoonist was what I really wanted. I changed my major to art briefly, but eventually accepted that paying for a degree wasn’t something that was going to help me at that point.

After that, in 2006, I took a chance and dropped out. I worked an office job full time during the day while drawing Dresden Codak full time at night. I slept about 3 hours a night, but it didn’t matter. I was doing what I wanted, and it kept me going. Then, toward the end of 2007 I found out, through Topatoco, that I had enough readers to justify selling some merchandise. To my genuine surprise, as soon as we put the store up, I was making more money than my office job (which I promptly quit). From there I packed up, moved out of Alabama and never looked back.

Dresden Codak has been my full-time job ever since. It’s let me travel the country and meet amazing people while making a pretty comfortable living, but most importantly I get to do what I enjoy more than anything else. Ever since, I make all of my life decisions based on maximizing what I really want to do, and so far it’s served me well.

Don’t interpret this as an anti-education/college story or anything like that. I just think often we expect success if we do X, Y and Z, when in reality such a thing can’t be reliably handed to you by an authority. Start doing what you want to do now, because life’s far too short to wait around to be happy.

Fair enough. I assume you mean when I started Dresden Codak?...

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:02:19 -0400

Fair enough. I assume you mean when I started Dresden Codak? I’ll break down the honest-to-goodness process of the early comics:

Draw comics in mechanical pencil on the back of my statistics homework (never turned in) and then ink on top of that with a micron pen.
Sneak into the Honors College study room (from which I was expelled for poor grades) and use their scanner.
Use a mouse and a bootleg copy of Photoshop 7 to color the pages.
Upload it to my site, which at the time was flat HTML that I’d written from scratch.

And that’s it!

What do you use to make your comics? Cintiq 24HD table/monitor -...

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:04:35 -0400

What do you use to make your comics?

Cintiq 24HD table/monitor - the greatest invention devised by humans.
Adobe Photoshop CS4 - I don’t need to upgrade it for what I do.
Razer Nostromo Keypad - Ergonomic replacement for a regular keyboard. The programmable keys and small size make it indispensable for me.

And that’s it!

Escher Girls: Clothes I'm forced to wear in the majority of MMORPGS

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:48:21 -0400

Escher Girls: Clothes I'm forced to wear in the majority of MMORPGS:

repair-her-armor:

[Please take note that the commentary is just for fun. Bunch of sarcasm. Don’t take it too seriously. I am getting tired of these outfits, though.]

1. The classic Bikini Armor. If you’re lucky you might get an actual shoulder-pad! If the designers even bother…

This is such a great post, and true for about 90% of video games, not just MMOs (and don’t get me started again on superhero comics). So many designers don’t seem to understand that there’s a fundamental difference between pinup art and costume design that’s appropriate for what the characters are supposed to be doing. There’s a massive double-standard when it comes to women in adventure settings that’s so rarely addressed. Everything doesn’t have to be 100% practical, but it would be nice if all genders got the same level of treatment.

Thinking of doing a followup post to my Costume Design Guide to address some of these things. We’ll see.

dresdencodak: Hey Toronto! I’ll be at TCAF this weekend, ready...

Fri, 10 May 2013 09:52:50 -0400

dresdencodak:

Hey Toronto! I’ll be at TCAF this weekend, ready to meet you fine folks once again. I’ve got lots of Dresden Codak goodies this year, and I’ll also be doing plenty of dinosaur and Zelda sketches for your troubles.

Hope to see you there!

Just a reminder that I’ll be at TCAF this weekend! If you’re in Toronto, you should come, it’s free and a really great comic show. You can find me upstairs with the cool kids and pigeons.

Hey Toronto! I’ll be at TCAF this weekend, ready to meet...

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:27:00 -0400

Hey Toronto! I’ll be at TCAF this weekend, ready to meet you fine folks once again. I’ve got lots of Dresden Codak goodies this year, and I’ll also be doing plenty of dinosaur and Zelda sketches for your troubles.

Hope to see you there!

femfreq: Allan G. Johnson is the author of the excellent book...

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:27:14 -0400

femfreq:

Allan G. Johnson is the author of the excellent book The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy. I highly recommend it.

Kim’s prostheses are definitely more advanced since Hob,...

Fri, 03 May 2013 01:22:46 -0400

Kim’s prostheses are definitely more advanced since Hob, but she hasn’t outright replaced anything since then (as is suggested by this page of Dark Science).

The interface between her limbs and nervous system has definitely become more extensive though. As you point out, Kim has many more subcutaneous wires than she had earlier.

Why exactly? This will soon be explored in Dark Science!

Cyborg study warmup sketches!

Thu, 02 May 2013 16:22:00 -0400

Cyborg study warmup sketches!

sketchamagowza: Some proof-of-concept sprites for A Prince...

Wed, 01 May 2013 12:52:03 -0400

sketchamagowza:

Some proof-of-concept sprites for A Prince Rescue Game (working title, I’ll pick something better later.) Maybe one day a game will be made where a girl protagonist saves the boy… here’s hoping! Even if someone makes a game like this before me I still want to go through with this because the world needs more of it. Boys have plenty of game characters to choose from but there aren’t many girl protagonists. I decided to make the character funny as well as powerful, like all my favorite platform heros. I based the design off of some “fake game maps” I made a couple months ago.

UPDATE: I PLAN TO MAKE EVEN MORE SPRITES FOR THIS GAME, EVEN IF IT NEVER GETS MADE.

Let’s make this happen, people.

TLoZ: Clockwork Empire

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:37:00 -0400

TLoZ: Clockwork Empire:

rbrn-music:

Not a story post as usual, but something I’d like to share here anyway.

I freelanced some conceptual music inspired by the designs for the hypothetical game The Legend of Zelda: Clockwork Empire by Aaron Diaz, the author of Dresden Codak.

Please enjoy responsibly. If I someday manage to get my head back together, maybe I’ll make some more. Too early to promise, though.

Incredible music inspired by my Legend of Zelda: Clockwork Empire project! This is the second time someone’s put together some music, the other being an awesome reworking of Zelda’s theme from Ocarina of Time.

The fan creations based on this just keep coming, I’m so pumped!

Today’s warmup sketches!

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:36:37 -0400

Today’s warmup sketches!

Today’s warmup sketches starring Kim, Vonnie and a...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:28:14 -0400

Today’s warmup sketches starring Kim, Vonnie and a Utahraptor.

Today’s warmup sketches

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 20:03:46 -0400

Today’s warmup sketches