Author: Cynical Woman

Cartoonist, Artist, Geek, Evil Crafter, Girl Scout Troop Leader and Writer. Also, a zombie. I haven't slept in I don't know how long.
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WIP – Medusa and Bats for 10 November

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Added shadows and highlights to the characters’ flat colors. Also started a little blending (see around Medusa’s eyes and hair).

I realized I haven’t mentioned the origins of this drawing. It’s something I doodled a while back when I first started using brush pens to do the webcomic. I needed something to practice on, so I doodled this with the pen. No penciling first, just straight up pen. I did Medusa first and liked how she came out, but I thought she needed a conspirator in the picture, so I drew Bats to go along with her. That’s how I think of them now, as conspirators, and I will probably title the final piece “The Conspirators.”

Medusa was inspired by a sketch I saw in Ben Caldwell’s book on Fantasy cartooning. Not exactly sure where Bats came from, unless it was Neil Gaiman’s “The Dangerous Alphabet.” My drawing looks nothing like the illustrations Gris Grimley did for that book, but there are things I see in it that do reach back to that story.

BTW, if you can get ahold of a copy of “The Dangerous Alphabet,” do so. It’s warped, twisted, creepy, a bit gorey, and beautifully drawn. Too wonderful not to have. You’ll find it listed under kids’ books.

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WIP – Medusa and Bats

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I am finally getting to work on the figures in this one. The process now is the same as it was at the beginning – lay down flat colors, add in some shading colors, and then blend the hell out of it by laying down transparent layers of more colors and constantly picking up the resulting new colors to add on top of that.

The colors look rather muddy to me right now. Too dark, not enough contrast between the figures and the background. Fortunately, everything is done in layers, so I can fix that later on. For now, I’m just going to keep painting.

Let me know what you think!

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ACW Episode 91 – Did you vote?

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I cannot tell you how incredibly hard I laughed after hearing my dad’s story. My dad is the original practical joker in the family, and for something like that to happen to him is not unexpected. He lives a strange life. And now you know where I get it from.

My dad is also sort of a cartoonist. I drew today’s cartoon in his “style,” in honor of him. He always draws these little stick figures doing goofy things. He was sort of like a pre-internet xkcd. If xkcd drew cartoons about evil little children tearing their father’s hair out while he snored.

Anyway, this week’d cartoon is for my dad. My poor, bald dad, whom I love even if he does shoot and eat Bambi. Keep deer alive!!!

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What’s the coolest thing I could do today?

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I went out on a date yesterday afternoon with the Hubster. Our idea of a date of course was to spend the morning at the TEDxNASA conference. If you’ve never heard of TEDxNASA, go to YouTube and do a search. You will find videos of all their speakers and guests from previous years. It’s pretty amazing stuff. A lot of smart, creative people come talk about the work they do, how they solve problems, how they use creativity to make things happen. I was only able to spend half the day at TEDx, since I had to go back to my “mommy” job at 3PM and fetch the kids from school, but what I did get to hear was fantastic. And I think the two most important thing I took away from that conference were:

A pair of auditorium seats.

No, just kidding. I didn’t steal any auditorium seats (though that would have been pretty funny/gotten me arrested). The actual most important things I took away from that conference were these:

“What’s the coolest thing I could do today?”

“Whatever you think your problem is, skip it.”

A brief explaination about these. The first comes from last year’s TEDxNASA. A musician named Mike Rayburn was one of the presenters and this was sort of the theme of his presentation. You can see it here on YouTube. The idea was, think of what’s cool first, then maybe worry about what’s possible. If you could do anything, absolutely anything — no restrictions, no limitations, no one saying “That’s not even possible” — what would you do? Whatever it is, it’s bound to be something you think is incredibly fun and cool. And I like that idea. I hate doing things that are dull and boring, and I’ve tried as much as possible to avoid doing stuff like that, especially when it comes to my writing and art.

The second part of this, skip the problem, came from a speaker I heard yesterday, Daniel Burrus. Burrus talked about how to deal with problems by basically skipping them. People think they know what their problem is, but in actuallity they don’t. We’re always looking at the wrong problem, trying to solve it, when really we could focus all our efforts elsewhere. Burrus’ solution to this was to “skip the problem.” He had a lot of fantastic examples, including a recent one where Harley Davidson wanted to sell motorcycles in India, but the import tarrif on the bikes would double the price, making it impossible to sell a bike to anyone. Everyone thought the problem was paying the tarrifs. Burrus’ advice was to skip the tarrifs. How do you do that? By not importing bikes to India. Instead, Harley Davidson made the decision to import parts which aren’t subject to the tarrif, and then use those parts to build the bikes in India. They skipped the problem they thought they had and got the result they wanted.

I really liked that idea, especially when it comes to problems I think I have with my work. Problem number one for me is promoting and selling books. I hate the standard/preferred methods of promotion – Yahoo lists, FaceBook, MySpace, contests and giveaways, sending in books for reviews at websites that deal primarily with erotic romance as opposed to spec fic erotica (totally NOT the same genres). Those things are so frikkin’ tedious and boring! And such a huge waste of time for me! I have yet to see any book sales come from doing stuff like that (unlike talking at conventions, which does result in at least a few sales). And I hate wasting time I could be using to do cool things, like write stories I really love or draw pictures or podcast…

So what to do? Skip my problem – i.e. don’t market and sell my books — and focus on the cool stuff I’d rather do instead.

I did that once before, three years ago. I started the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast and I wrote and produced a short story every week and I gave it away for FREE! Did that help me sell books? No, but in the end it did solve a couple of other problems I was having. A) I went from having written only a handful of stories to having written over 170 stories in three years. And 2) I was no longer a great unknown to a lot of small press and epublishers. In other words, I had stories I could submit to anthologies and I was no longer going to end up in the slush pile because nobody knew who the fuck I was. I’ve actually published and been paid for more short stories in the last year, and they all came from Heat Flash. Plus, I’ve even been invited by a couple publishers and editors to submit stuff to anthologies. That’s them contacting me for a story, not me going to them. How cool is that?

So I’m thinking it’s time to do something similar again, maybe on a more informal basis since I really want to get away from the weekly deadline for a while. Much as I loved doing it, the podcast was starting to get exhausting. So now, the idea is to find other cool things to do, and completely skip doing the marketing and selling of my work. I think I want to see if that might just take care of itself while I go do the stuff I’m better at anyway. In fact, I want to see what will happen if I spend a few months waking up every morning and saying, “What’s the coolest thing I could do today?” and then go do that thing. Like I did this morning…

It ain’t nearly finished yet, but it’s slowly progressing. And when it’s done, maybe I’ll find a way to sell it as a print people can order. That might be cool. I’ll keep posting the updated WIP while I work on it, so you can see how things go.

But for right now, I’m going to go do something cool.

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Rats! Episode 41 – What to wear on a date (with cockroaches)

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I pulled out this cartoon this morning and laughed. Not because of the punch line, which I do think was pretty funny, but because of the background I drew. The “Oni-Kitty” and cockroach posters are shout-outs to some civilian friends of mine. Denise and Telf (whom I would later share an apartment with for a year, post-college) had this really evil cat named Truffles. Truffles only seemed to like Denise and absolutely loathed everyone else, as I recall. Except for my boyfriend/future husband Michael. For some reason, Truffles really, really liked Michael, especially when she was in heat. That only made her more evil in my eyes of course. So we called her Oni-Kitty, which meant devil cat. Oni is a Japanese term for demon or devil, and Denise and Telf and I spent a lot of time with the Virginia Tech Anime Society, so it was only natural we pick label Truffles with an anime nomiker. Evil, evil cat, I swear.

The cockroach poster was a salute to one of my best friends, Joelle, who was working on her master’s degree in entomology at Virginia Tech. She was writing her thesis on something to do with blattella germanica, or the German cockroach. For fun, Joelle would sometimes take a Madagascar cockroach from the entomology department out for a walk. Madagascar cockroaches are HUGE, and all Joelle had to do was glue a bit of string to the back of one for a leash. Oh, these cockroaches also make a weird hissing noise if you poke them. We always called the cockroach Pookie, just to be cute.

So I drew cartoons about Truffles the evil Oni-Kitty and Pookie the cockroach, and I had forgotten all about that until I saw this week’s cartoon. I’m still chuckling over it. Joelle, Telf and Denise, wherever you are, I hope you guys are doing well 😉

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Work-In-Progress Wednesday part 2 – PerNoFiMo 2010

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I did this last year and I’m doing it again this year. While everyone else is busy doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I’m doing PerNoFiMo (Personal Novel Finishing Month). And unlike last year, this year I plan to finish what I restart.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I made decent progress on last year’s novel. I wrote about 40K words, which was good. But honestly, I needed to write another 40K to finish it. And before I do that, I really need to do some research. I could do that this month, but honestly, I’m not in that big a hurry to write that particular novel. It just doesn’t grab me like another project does.

This year, I’m picking back up on a project I called “The Little Death.” This was a sci-fi noir piece I started for ERWA’s noir theme month back in 2008. Yes, it’s been that long since I’ve messed around with this piece. I got about 14000 words written, blowing way past the original story length I had planned. But I really enjoyed working on this particular tale. It was sort of “Blade Runner” meets “Wuthering Heights,” with psychics and robots and an oppressive, totalitarian government doing its damnedest to regulate the human soul. I’ve always wanted to get back to this piece, so I’m working on it now and next month, with the intention of podcasting it for the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast starting in January 2011.

Right now, I’m working on turning out about 5000 words a week. That’s not nearly the frantic pace of NaNoWriMo, but it would give me about 40000 words by the time January hits, certainly enough for me to be ready to podcast. Here’s a quick excerpt from what I wrote this evening:

*****

“Wait up!” I shout at him. “Asshole…”

Vallard looks back at me and winks, then hits the landing between floors and turns the corner. A moment later, he’s gone, and I’m left standing alone. I contemplate turning back. I don’t need this. If I want to play head games, I’m pretty damn sure all I need to do is go back to my room and wait. OverWatch will send someone over to deal with me eventually. Someone who’s not a doctor interested in my health, but an inquisitor looking for answers I don’t have.

Suddenly, I’ve got the urge to race down the stairs after Vallard.

*****

Just a quick clip. I don’t want to give away too much, but if you intend to listen to the podcast come January, pay attention to the names Vallard and OverWatch. They figure pretty heavily in the story.

That’s it for tonight’s work. I’ll post another snippet next week.

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Work-In-Progress Wednesday – Medusa and Bats continued

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I have this odd idea that people might be interested in seeing what I’m working on these days, so I’m thinking that on Wednesdays I’ll either post some artwork in progress or an excerpt of my current writing in progress. Maybe both if I have the time

This is an image I posted earlier, just a little further along. I’m slowly working my way through a Photoshop tutorial in Creative Photoshop by Derek Lea. At this point, I’m still working on the background, trying to give it a handpainted look. You can see I’ve gotten about halfway across the canvas, blending colors. I like the color scheme, but I’m wondering if it will be too busy for the final image. I guess that’s something I can fix later on.

In writing news, I’ve started up on PerNoFiMo again this November, working on a novel called “The Little Death.” Think Blade Runner meets Wuthering Heights, or something like that. I spent the first two nights rereading what I had written in this novel two years ago, and going over my old notes. Then last night I started outlining, playing games of “what-if” to get the ideas going, and finally was able to knock out about 500 words. I’m hoping to write 1000 words a night, but we’ll have to see how that goes.

Anyway, let me know if you think Work-In-Progress Wednesday is a go or no-go for the blog. I’ll take silence as an assumed yes, but feedback is always nice 😉

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ACW Episode 90 – Sanity and/or Fear!

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Yes, we came, we saw, we volunteered and we had a really great time! I don’t know what the newspapers are saying about it, but personally I think the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was a great success.

We left Friday afternoon to head up to DC. Mich went with us. Unfortunately for her, our Saturn VUE was in the shop, so we all had to pile into the sedan. That meant she spent the entire trip sandwiched between Princess and Pixie. She was a good sport about it though…

We got to my inlaws in DC around 8PM, had a very nice dinner with the family (courtesy of my brother-in-law Chris and his wife Heather), and then crashed for the night. Next morning we got up early, got dressed and headed out the door. On our way to the Metro, we saw the Burning Man Dragon, Abraxis!

There’s a video about this online at the Washington Post.

We got to the Metro, which was packed, and made it to the National Mall by about 10AM. There were people in costume everywhere, including this guy…

And this guy…

(If you have never found Waldo before, you couldn’t miss him at the rally. In fact, there were so many Waldos there, we were pretty much tripping over them!)

And then there was this very talented individual…

Yes, the man is juggling a tennis racket, a basketball, and a bowling ball, and doing it very well. I was impressed!

It wasn’t too terribly crowded when we got to the Mall, but it was crowded enough that we got separated from Mich. She managed to get a lot further forward in the crowd than we did, but then we were carrying two small children with us. Still, we had a decent view of the Jumbotron, and there was a very nice lady next to us who not only offered to let the girls sit in her lawn chair but also gave them a brownie. The girls were pretty good for the rally, though Pixie wanted to be held the entire time (and not by me, because she thinks I’m evil, but I held her anyway because I can’t hold up the Princess!).

Here are a few of the other characters we saw at the rally.

Tea bag, anyone?

I don’t care if he shot first, Han Solo has a nice butt.

Zombies!!!!

Patriotic zombies!!!!

The zombies were very cool. They ended up in front of us in the crowd. A lot of people kept passing back and forth in front of them, on their way to the porta-johns, and every time that happened, the entire group of zombies looked behind them before stepping back to make sure they didn’t step on Pixie and Princess. I thought that was very thoughtful of them. Yay for polite zombies!

We also brought rally signs, by the way. Mine was my “Fear Me” t-shirt, of course, but I also had signs made for the Hubster and kids.

Hubster is an engineer, so obviously he prefers balance in everything.

Thanks to Just Dance, Pixie is a huge fan of Katy Perry, and she thinks it’s unfair that her idol didn’t get to sing on Sesame Street.

Of course, the big winner of our signs was this one…

That’s right, Keep Deer Alive! Because we got separated from Mich, we spent two hours after the rally walking around the National Mall looking for her. The reason it took two hours to find her was because everyone few minutes, someone would stop us and ask to take a picture of Princess with her sign. By the end of the afternoon, she was really hamming it up, holding the sign over her head and chanting, “Keep deer alive! Keep deer alive! Where were you when Bambi’s mother was shot?!”

Her sign turned out to be popular enough that it even ended up on the Huffington Post (along with 500 or so others).

We finally found Mich around 6PM. She had volunteered to help with post-rally clean up and was sorting garbage and recyclables. I volunteered to stay and sort with her while Hubster took the kids home. The garbage sorting was interesting. We found a baby kegger, some lawn chairs, and enough uneaten food to provide a full course meal for a family of four (if there was a family of four willing to eat of the garbage can). We also found plenty of recyclables, so that made the garbage sorting effort worth it.

Mich and I finished up around 8PM or so, then made our way back to my in-laws. After another very nice dinner courtesy of Chris and Heather, we all crashed again, then headed out the next morning for home. Once again, poor Mich got stuffed in the back seat with the girls…

We made it home in plenty of time to unpack, clean up and get ready for trick or treating!

Although it really didn’t feel like we’d left the rally at DC, thanks to my neighbors’ fearful front yard.

If Stephen Colbert had jumped out of that Halloween display, I would not have been surprised!

Hope you all had a good weekend.