Things I Learned While Making Webcomics

Trees are green.

No, really. I mean, that seems obvious right? But when you draw trees, and you go to colour the trunk, what colour do you use?

It's brown isn't it? You're going to use brown aren't you?

Don't. Stop right there.

You see, if you use brown as your base, going lighter is going to take you into the yellows and oranges. Which is fine if your tree is all by itself on a hill in bright sunlight or something. But in a forest? Go with green, trust me. Your leaves are (most likely) going to be green, and since the complementary colour to green is red those orange highlights are going to get an impressive boost and be the most eye-catching things in the picture. So for a nice background use a yellow-greenish brown, and darker green-browns for the shadows, even go into blues a bit. for the lights use a lighter brown-brown-green, and you can finish with some (tiny) yellow-brown for the highlights (only where direct sunlight will hit it).

The second thing I learned from making webcomics is to colour your pages in order, that way you don't discover six random pages out of eleven in that you've been colouring trees wrong.
(I went 2, 3, 4, 7, 1 and that was where I found out how to colour trees.)

Always go in order, then you can excuse earlier goofs as learning from experience.

Virtual

The virtual is the "almost real", like in the phrase "It was virtually..." meaning it was so close to being [that thing] I almost believed that it was. So a virtual reality is a reality so close to being real that it almost fools you into thinking it is real. But see, we're using the world wrong. When most people use "Virtual Reality" what they mean is "Digital Reality", because as soon as the reality comes into being - even in a digital sense, it doesn't have to be tangible to be real - it ceases to be virtual. Because anything virtual cannot by definition exist.

I guess that means that the stereotypical "Virtual Reality" is indeed still virtual, as there is no fully immersive sensory substitute for real life. It might be possible in the future, but then it wont be virtual.

Of course, the problem with digital reality is that people go too far with it, instead of producing under-rendered stylized people, in their quest to create the hyper real. Objects and people too real to be real. Have you seen some of those new fantasy and science fiction covers? People look really creepy when every pore on their face is rendered in loving detail. Cut it out dudes, it's just wrong.

Also, New Media writing is almost as hard to understand as Philosophy writing, except with considerably less bullshit and talking about God. It's really similar otherwise, they're both primarily concerned with debating whether or not something qualifies as a legitimate existance, expression, or state of being as defined by rules with nearly no basis in anything that exists outside of the author's own head.

Distractions - Schedule

Clone (Blue), Lucy (The House), Abbas (Mr. J), Me, Jordan (Pirate), Muir (Fish)

Well, it's that time of year again. While I might not have the same amount of projects to get done the ones I have are pretty big. Just passed in the last big Drawing one today, gotta bring the lifedrawings to the office before Friday.

Friday - Folklore Term Paper
Friday - Bronze Sculptures (4)
Some point in the future - Digital Final
The same point in the future - That Awful Blog Post
December 14th 2:00pm -5:00pm - Folklore Exam

Let me elaborate, I have no idea what this paper is supposed to be about, beyond "something to do with the collection assignment". It also has to be 7 pages long. I haven't written an essay that long in four years, I don't know if I still remember how.

Bronze Sculpting. As much as I love it, it is incredibly time consuming, and dangerous. Seriously. Dangerous. I have to make a post about what I did to my hand last Friday, for now lets say that it's out of commission for anything more strenuous then washing dishes. Even typing up this post is bothering me. Anyway, still have a pile of work to do on these, finish grinding, hammer and welding, then patinas. Ugh, and they're huge.

Digital! it's a castle thing. Not too worried about it at the moment, lets make it through Friday first.

That Awful Blog Post. Did we get sent the thing we're supposed to respond to? Or was that the chapter we read in class? If not, I don't think I have it.

Folklore Exam. It's an exam, what else is there to say about it?

Man, all I want to do is sleep. I'm sick of working.

Here, have a quick sketch I did of Abbas. I changed him a bit since last time. One of his eyes is crooked, but it's late and I don't care enough to change it right now. I think I'm slowly overcoming my urge to make him pretty, he looks a lot more lizard-like now. I'm also vacillating over how to spell his name. Is it better Abbas or Abbass?

His hair is like, a natural mohawk or something. Like those spines on iguanas, only fluffy.