Football fever

Football craze is upon us, for the next month (or earlier, depending on results), England flags will be the hottest item for sale at pound shops all over the country. I went to the supermarket two days ago and it felt like I was the only person not flying the colours - I vaguely worried that I may be confronted and beaten up in the car park, because my old car has a Roma sticker with the Italian flag colours in the background.
Anyway, the next episode, #191, has a World Cup theme.

Virtual fashion

I've been browsing for screenshots from old UO days (Found them! Please don't send any) because I want to draw a large group scene in #189 - a fight night - with a retro look and the 3rd person view angle from above that UO had.
I've found a bunch of screenshots of assorted pwnage on a guild website of some pk guys who probably had their site designed by Dakilla (minus rotating skull gifs, I'm sorry to say), and a bunch of screenshots from some online wedding found googling with the usual orderly crowd of people in cloaks and feathered caps spamming *cheers* and *claps*.
I realised while I was looking at these two very different groups of people that in UO - since it didn't matter really what you were wearing and you were just as likely to see guys in full plate or guys in loincloth and skull helmet running around - people could come up with all kinds of different combinations of clothing, crossdressing and weirdness - and ended up making fashion statements about themselves just in the same way people do in real life.
I don't mean by having "unique characters" like you can do in many games now, where you can spend 4 hours choosing the nose shape and the angle of the eyebrows and all kinds of minute details of your character's face, when anyway you'll never see much more than its butt while it runs around the game and no one else will ever give a second look (or a first) at its facial features.
I mean instead in the same way that a goth, say, or a smartly dressed businessman, make a fashion statement about themselves, so as soon as you see one you label them in your mind. I could have cut off and mixed all the guys on those screenshots and guessed who was one of the pks and who was a roleplayer just by looking at their clothes.
I think that it's cooler than games where everyone looks like cookiecutter character #1843475. WoW has great graphics, but people of approximately the same level and gear quality are going to look very much like variations of each other, whoever they are and whatever their game style.
Now, I'm not being nostalgic - after all there are games like City of Heroes where it doesn't matter what you're wearing so you have great freedom to customise your looks, but I think that it'd be nice if gear-based games like WoW allowed players to display any kind of clothing, hats etc. on their characters, if they wanted. Right now, everyone looks like a clone.

I'll never reach nirvana this way

I think that the consensus, among levitating gurus & co., is that you need to trascend all earthly desires in order to achieve cosmic peace and nirvana. So far I've coped with earthly desires by trying to buy stuff that I coveted as soon as possible - since it's generally nerdy stuff like books and new computer games that's not a big deal - but now I'm in trouble. I've seen a Wacom Cintiq UX21 graphic tablet, I've TOUCHED IT, and SKETCHED ON IT, and I'm in love. It's also very, very expensive.

I went to the Adobe Live expo yesterday to get information about software that I may use for work (my day work, rather than the comic) - and since I was going to wear a badge and didn't want to disgrace my company with shabby looks I made a huge effort and wore a girly shirt and extremely fake pearls. When I got there I discovered that it was a show aimed at creative industry workers, though, who were all hippy-looking people eyeing with some suspicion my pseudo-semi-corporate look. After playing City Life with the social classes that set each other on fire I was vaguely uneasy. Maybe I should have shouted, WAIT! I'M NOT A SUIT! I'M LIKE YOU! I'M LIKE YOUUUUUUU... AAAARGH!

Anyway there was a Wacom stand, and I got to try the Cintiq. Imagine a 21'' monitor at 1600x1200 resolution that you can lie flat and draw on. At the moment I have to zoom in even 6x to get my lines not to look too shaky, so that often when I zoom out again I discovered that I drew, say, the legs of the character twice as large as they should have been, because I couldn't see the whole figure. On this tablet, I wouldn't have this problem at all. I can get a firm line even at 1:1 resolution. It's really like drawing on paper. BOHOOOOO. I DESIRE IT SO MUCH. I've been telling myself that since I spend at least 20 hours a week drawing in Photoshop, it would make perfect sense to spend my savings and then some on this thing, but then I do a reality check and realise that I'm just being crazy.

Nerd points - Current tally 125

Last night, my karate instructor was telling us of a guy who could make people faint just by applying light pressure, or even just brushing, specific points on their necks.
FOR THINKING "OH, LIKE THE VULCAN GRIP!" - 100 POINTS.

This morning, looking at some flowers while I was walking on a path in a nature reserve area on the way to work.
FOR THINKING "WHOA, THOSE ARE THE FLOWERS FROM OBLIVION" - 25 POINTS.

If I had to count all the nerd points that I scored in my life I'd be totalling millions, but I reset the count to last night.

Yesterday afternoon I slept for a couple of hours and woke up in such a daze that I coloured the comic for two hours without saving. THEN PHOTOSHOP ATE IT! This morning I'll have to do all that colouring again, booohooo...

Last night I went to Cargo and I particularly appreciated the video that the band (Pet) played during a song - a video of a race game with a car going the wrong way.



Two or three weeks ago I went to a club where they were looping a long video on a wall with all kinds of shots, from people crossing the street to fashion shows for bishops (AWESOME) - and I wondered how much fun it must be to do that shit.

Busy May

Life is very busy at the moment. Things at work are hectic (with weekend work looming) - on top of that my two dojos (karate & aikido) have scheduled gradings one after the other, in two weeks from now. I'll have to test for karate 2nd kyu on Tuesday 16th and aikido 5th kyu on Wednesday 17th. I'm glad it's not the contrary, because karate gradings are exausting - when it's all over you feel like you cycled up a hill. Anyway I feel absolutely NOT ready for either grading, but since nobody shoots me or scratches my car if I fail, I don't see why I shouldn't try.

The effect on the comic is that I'll have to find a way to fit drawing around 4x a week evening training (I should always train 4x, but I usually slack one or two days a week). This weekend looks good for drawing though, aside from going out on saturday afternoon-evening, I should draw all day on sunday - they forecast rain.

I wasn't lazy yesterday! Honest!

I know that the progress bar didn't move from 75% tracing, but I've actually been drawing all evening. What's happened is that once again I wasn't happy with the upcoming episode. Heck, with the next two episodes. I can't do without though, because it's central to the story, so I've concentrated both episodes in one long strip. It doesn't really have a punchline but it's full of drama! My creative consultant was unavailable for last minute fixes to the script so you'll have to live with this unfunny #182, then we go back to Fred the Dread and his romantic adventures.

Proud to be a dickhead

I really am.

From the Guardian:

Silvio Berlusconi was accused yesterday of dragging Italy's already raucous general election campaign into the gutter when he declared that those who voted against him would be "dickheads".
Speaking to journalists about the expected outcome of the election next Sunday and Monday, the Prime Minister said: "I have too much respect for the Italians to think there are that many dickheads around who'd vote against their own interests."

Unbelievable. If this clown gets re-elected I'll seriously consider changing citizenship.

13 years to the day

I've moved to England from Italy exactly thirteen years ago, on the 3rd of April 1993. I did it because I had fallen in love with a Brit, and when we split up years later I already had a job, a car, two cats, etc. etc. So I stayed mostly because I'm too lazy for massive changes unless there's an overwhelming reason, but also because London is an amazing place. The best thing is cycling along the river in summer from Greenwich to Tower Bridge and back on the other bank, where the smugglers and pirates used to hang out.

Poltergeist

I found the script! The USB key was simply hiding behind the monitor. I'm working hard on episode #175 which is 1.5x length and will be a bitch to colour, right now I'm trying to finish some stuff at work by tonight so that I don't have to come in during the weekend again and be late with the update.

Yesterday I had this surreal conversation with my best friend, who is GENERALLY an intelligent woman but has some really weird theories.
Me: "Did you install yet that DVD recorder that you bought last week?"
Her: "No, I'm waiting to do it after this Saturday, because at the moment Mercury is retrograde and that's really bad for all things related to technology"
Me: "Hold on a second, you don't believe this crap, do you?"
Her: "Of course I do! Mercury is the god of communication, and what are DVDs if not..."
Me (interrupting): "You can't be serious, do you really believe that a chunk of rock in the sky determines how easy it is to install a DVD player?"
Her: "Well, don't believe it if you don't want to, but I've had plenty of problems with tech stuff in the past when Mercury was negative!"

Now I'm a bit concerned. I had planned to buy a new TV this weekend at Comet in Greenwich, but maybe I should check first if the store was built on an ancient burial ground.

Dude where's my script

My beautiful script! I keep it in a USB key that I keep in the front pocket of my jeans along with change, and now it's not there! Either it fell off at the gym in the locker, or it fell off at home... I HOPE! Otherwise it's going to be a pain in the ass to retrace in my memory the latest stuff I've written. I have saved a copy on the work PC a few days ago, but yesterday I'd written a couple of episodes that I was very happy with, for a change - so I'd be really pissed off if the key's gone. That'll teach me drinking three big glasses of wine when I go to the pub.

Oh God oh God... just checked the backup file I have... there's so much missing! At least three solid episodes that I really liked. BOHOOO! That USB key better turn up.

Tales from the crypt

Or rather, from my office desk. I'm sorry for being AWOL if anyone was searching the site for a write-up of the UK webcomic con. I haven't had time to do it because work is omfgpwning me at the moment. I'll do my best to write about it asap!

#174 is another double length episode, with a couple of very crowded large panels. I'm going to be working overtime all day Sunday. When am I going to find the time to colour it? Fuck knows. I'm going out tonight, so I'll try to finish it tomorrow. I may even do a 1 or 2-colour update rather than a full colour one, because free time is horribly scarce these days and I'm already having trouble updating once a week as it is. I don't think that people give much of a shit about pretty colours all the time, anyway.

Bohoo

This is so annoying... I spent 250$ to have volume 2 books sent by Lulu, back on the 23rd of January, and they're not here yet. If I don't get them by the end of the week in time for the con, I'm so screwed. I've got one sampler copy, maybe I should just write down the email of anyone who wants the book and let them know when I finally get it. Fuck you US Mail and Royal Mail! Fuck you both! Anyway, I guess that it's no big deal, I can always keep the copies if and when I get them for another convention.

Speaking of which, sooner or later I should be bold and brave and go to a convention in the US or Canada, since about half of my readers are from North America. There are lots of conventions over there, maybe the best would be Otakon in Baltimore (ComicCon is way too huge for small fry like me, and DragonCon - on the 'too big' side as well - is more of a generic nerd extravaganza than a comic convention). Otakon is anime comics and my comic isn't anime by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is Little Gamers and they do go to that con. I'll see if I can ask about it to the authors if they are at the UK Thing.

I doubt it that it will happen this year, because I don't think that I can afford it. Besides I have an old fashioned passport, while the new US post-terror regulations require passports with biometric data, such as fingerprints, iris data etc. ("Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil? Involuntary dilation of the iris..."). Getting a new passport done means taking half day off to sit and wait for hours in a room packed with other expats at the Italian Consulat. I don't know why, but it always makes me feel a bit sad, especially when some old person talks in broken English AND broken Italian. I keep worrying that I'll end up the same, incompetent in two languages.

The #172 solution

After agonising about it for a bit, I decided to put together #172, which I didn't like, with #173 in one big strip. It's taken a while to do, but at least I avoided posting an episode that I didn't like.

I hate #172! - Gamer diet - UK con

#172
I really enjoyed drawing #171. It's such a simple idea, but it's a good one. I know in advance when a strip is going to be good, so I was looking forward to #171.

I also know when a strip is NOT going to be good, so I'm loathing the idea of drawing #172. It's bad in so many ways... it's not funny, I HAVE to do it because of the fucking story, it's complicated to draw. I enjoy having an ongoing story in the comic, but not when it forces me to draw strips that I don't want to draw. Normally (but not always, unfortunately) shitty strips get deleted from the script when I revise it, but I can't find a way to get rid of this one.

Gamer diet
After signing for the diet-for-charity event Biggest Webcomic Loser at the beginning of the month, I started to feel terrible because after two weeks my weight hadn't moved, if anything, I had put on two pounds. Then I decided to try the free trial of EQ2 on the new pvp server. I'm completely hooked. I spent four days eating much less than normal just because I was so engrossed in the game that I didn't want to stop playing it unless I was about to pass out for lack of food. I don't think it's particularly healthy, but as a result the weight is finally dropping. Now, if only I could maintain the same level of interest in either EQ2 or some other game until I lost the remaining 17 lbs, it would be awesome...

Anyway this made me understand something about myself: I eat when I'm bored. I had never realised it because I never want to admit with myself that I'm bored, but right now that I'm honeymooning with this new game the number of trips to the kitchen has gone down dramatically.

UK con
Oh my God, less than two weeks for the UK con. I'm worried because I spent 250 dollars to have Lulu.com send me copies of book 2 to sell, and they aren't here yet. I shouldn't have been cheap and should have chosen the faster mail option, but it was mid-January, for crying out loud. I'm a bit nervous and very excited about the convention, in the next couple of days I should update the page with a big banner or something, to let the British readers know that I'll be there. I hope that someone shows up! I can't wait to get myself some Scary Go Round and Beaver and Steve stuff, maybe a book or two.
An organiser wrote me to ask if I was available for a panel, if they select me for it I hope that my Italian accent will be understandable. I also hope not to ramble, babble and trail off as I usually do when I talk. Then again, maybe I won't have to sit in the panel, I don't know yet.

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.

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.

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.

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 entrée’, 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.

#165: Script rescue - giving credit where it's due

The original script of #165 was giving me trouble because I didn't find it funny at all and it had no jokes or punchlines, but I needed the queen to enter in Ohforf's room to link up with the upcoming episodes so I didn't want to get rid of the episode altogether. I was so depressed about not having any idea on how to turn it funny, that was thinking of adding a complimentary Yo Mama joke at the end of it. For real. (Well, there's a particular yo mama joke that I'd like to draw, but that's unrelated.) So I went to an irc channel of people I game with and whined about it. Whining pays off!

Readers seem to really like #165, but the people they should praise are two friends of mine:

-AF, who helped me rewrite it from scratch. He's had the idea of the queen using a house break-in bug to get in Ohforf's room, as well as Drakoola's reaction (I had written at first "Aaah, 'sploiter!", which is more what a Baconian of Hope would shout, while "Hax!" isn't so judgemental - and you believed that there was no thought involved in writing forgettable gag strips about games!).

-Lan, who suggested that she could use a bug like the one in UO circa-1998, when people broke into houses from the roof by doing some weird shit with piles of crates.

Incidentally, AF had already suggested in the past that I make a strip about house break-in bugs, his original idea was that it would be used by Jehova witnesses to break into people houses and preach. It was an awesome idea, but it's fairly hard to work it into the story. Darkblade is going to experience a religious epiphany sometime soon, though, so it's not necessarily discarded, yet.

At the moment I'm going through a creative block, by the way, so I'm glad that I have script to last me 30 episodes because almost every time I start adding a new episode I decide that it's rubbish and discard it. The problem is that instead of thinking of the script in every waking moment, as I do when I'm inspired by a storyline (like the pks kidnapping Ohforf, or his meeting with Cyborella), I only think about it when I sit down in front of the blank page and it doesn't work. I spend every single waking minute doing something that doesn't give me time to think about it (such as gaming, working, reading etc.) and even if I am on a train for 5 minutes I'll read two pages of a book. Today I thought about the script for a solid hour during lunch and a few ideas started to pop up, so I should make a habit of doing that until I get past this draught. It's weird how it always happens when I've just published some episode that I'm inordinately proud of. Last time it happened when I posted the updates about Ohforf ninjaing the orb, which were good stuff, and this time I've just posted his meeting with Cyborella which was an idea that I had been holding on to for a whole year. I think it's because if I post something that I find particularly good, anything else that I write feels like shit in comparison and I keep throwing it away.