Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Who can blame her?

From today's Metro (London, UK) newspaper:

A nurse put a patient's glass eye in a cup of Coca-Cola to give to a colleague as a joke, a disciplinary panel heard yesterday.

As for webcomic news, I'll have a lot to colour in #169 (there's a panel with something like 10 people) and I'm not too sure where to fit it in with the other stuff I have to do - karate tonight and aikido tomorrow. Since both classes are lateish, 8:30 pm or so, I'll skip the gym beforehand and run home at 5 to get 1-2 hours of colouring done. Ideally I should finish it sometime tomorrow night, but there's really a lot to do on it. I've received the fridge magnets for the convention (from Alaska, where they probably stick them on icebergs) and they look awesome. If I get round to taking photos of my fridge I'll post them.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Creepy

Yesterday I stopped at the vet to pick up food for my cat (who's old, has a bad liver and leads a very extravagant lifestyle of expensive special food) and there was an old lady who creeped me out. For the whole time that I was there in the waiting room she kept talking incessantly to the dog, who never moved an inch and looked quite bored throughout: "Now you have to sit here because you're such a good girl, yes good girl, you know there have been other babies here today? Lots of other babies! Like you baby, because you are such a good girl, sit, yes, sit, now the doctor's going to have a look at your paw because you're such a good good baby, sit darling, sit..." She was at it for five fucking minutes non-stop while I was waiting to get my stuff. I almost wanted to walk up to her and tell her, lady, for the sake of this dog who can't talk and tell you, SHUT THE FUCK UP. Anyway this morning I woke up because the old cat was clamouring for food ("what's up with the service in this house? Breakfast should be served at 8!"), I told him "ok, ok, good cat, quiet now" and froze in horror. Fuck! I'm going to become batshit crazy like that old woman and talk to cats! Well, if I ever become a crazy old woman I'm going to be hardcore about it, I'll go to the park and talk at length to other people's dogs while the owners squirm and smile all embarassed and wish that I'd go away.

Yesterday I had my first aikido grading, since it was newbie grading it was very undemanding and I think that in order to fail you'd have to faint, or maybe run up to the instructor and be sick on his shoes, but I still managed to build up a nice panic beforehand. Bolstered by the fact that I had passed (along with everyone else), I stayed for the following intermediate/advanced class and we had to do some drill with forward rolls. Now, these fucking aikido forward rolls are nothing like the stuff I did as a kid, you're actually supposed to roll on your arm and shoulder like a wheel, and when you look at people who can do it properly they look like circus freaks. I've googled aikido images and this site has a photo of a guy doing a roll. I find it quite scary, because you start them from standing up, looking at the other guys it seems that once you've mastered it, it's completely natural and painless and easy, but I find it hard to let go and just do it. They tell beginners that we can go down on one knee to start the roll and make it easy if we want, but I get in this adrenaline-induced delirium where I want "to do like everyone else" so I start from standing up too. The result is that I manage some approximation of a proper roll on the right side, but the ones on the left SUCK. I don't know what's wrong with my brain's wiring, I'm left handed and footed, and still I can't roll for shit on the left. My shoulder is hurting because I somehow fucked it up last night, even if I didn't have the impression of doing anything different from what I do on the other side. Blah!

On the comics front, I registered for the Biggest Webcomic Loser and I really hope that people are going to pledge for me. If I find the time I'll draw a PC wallpaper as a thank you gift for pledgers. #168 is coming along nicely, I'm very fond of it even if it's a bit vulgar, but what can I do, I like lowbrow humour. It features (in a memory from the past) Drakoola before he lost his body, following a friend's advice I drew him in UO bone armor to give him that retro look - I wonder if anyone will recognise the armor set (especially with my limited artistic skills). It would have been much more recognisable if I had drawn him with the skull helmet, but I wanted to show his face. I drew him as a dashing pirate-looking type. Yesterday I came home too late to finish it, but I count on finishing and posting it tonight.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Dieting for charity

I'm thinking of joining the Biggest Webcomic Loser charity initiative:

BIGGEST WEBCOMIC LOSER

In their words:
"Biggest Webcomic Loser is about webcomic creators getting together to raise money for UNICEF, the United Nations Children Fund.

Pledge donations for the extra pounds of your favorite cartoonists. You can pledge any amount per pound you choose. Those pledges add up so that every extra pound lost by a creator can be worth a lot of money to the Children of the World.
"


With this in mind, yesterday I found the scales from their hiding place under the bed, stuck them on lbs mode and stepped on. After a moment of dizziness (I hadn't stepped on scales since BEFORE xmas, and I underestimate my lardiness by sucking in cheeks and stomach and making thin faces everytime there's a mirror nearby), I found myself facing a problem. My weight in lbs last night was 178. Most of the other comic authors participating to the charity thing have starting weights ending with a 0 or 5. Should I lose 3 pounds before I even sign up to have a figure ending in 5, or have some extra cake for a figure ending in 0? Or even go berserk and stuff my face to put on 8 pounds before I start dieting?

OK, I know that the only reasonable option is to lose 3 pounds first, or just round up my weight WITHOUT having to actually put it on, but I abhor the thought of dieting. I tried to as a new year resolution and it lasted until Jan 2 afternoon. However, if I do it for charity, I should be motivated enough to stick to it, because I'm not doing it just for myself (a self that keeps suggesting that extra servings of pudding would be much more welcome as a sign of caring). It'd be really cool if people pledged and I managed to lose the 20-25 lbs that I'm going to set as target, and get all that money to Unicef. Now I just have to get off my ass and sign up.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

It's too early in the morning to think of a title!

I've started making more and more long episodes, #166 is a 6-panel update. It's all well and good when I script them, but then it takes for f'n ever to colour them!


I'm very slowly crawling out of the creative block phase I've had recently and I've started writing again some episodes that I haven't deleted right after. #165 went so well with the readers, with many saying how they liked the return to the roots of making fun of the game mechanisms, that I'm going to bug the co-author again for help as soon as I get round to translating my script notes from Italian to English.

This is an example of how my scripts look like (from an old strip with El D34dlito and Your Name Here in a restaurant):

YNH, D34DLY, DARKBLADE

Idea: Darkie cerca di prendere la mano di YNH nel corso delle vignette, che per reazione cerca di infilzargli la mano con una forchetta.

Tutte le vignette sono lunghe.

Scena 1: Da sinistra a destra, YNH, Darkie e D34dly seduti a tavola in un ristorante. Un cameriere vicino a D34dly (sulla destra)..

Darkie: You’ll see, mylady, the food is fab-u-lous here! *smiles charmingly*
Cameriere: As entrĂ©e’, monsieur, may I suggest our miniature crab cakes with sauce remoulade, prepared with ze freshest …
D34dly: Wha?


It's impossible to follow, unless one can read Italian. I'd never thought that I'd be discussing my script in advance with anyone, but now that I stand corrected I've started writing notes in English.