Distant Worlds

In a non-picture post today, I attended the Distant Worlds concert last night, which is music from the Final Fantasy series. Overall I quite enjoyed it. Only real disappointment was that there was no chorus present which meant some things that would have been nice to hear weren't performed. Ah well! Still enjoyable.

Here's the playlist (more-or-less in order):

• FF7 Intro
• Victory Theme
• FF8 Battle Theme
• Medley from 1-3 (including the prelude and fanfare)
• Suteki da ne (FF10 - sung in english by Susan Calloway)
• Dear Friends (FF5)
• Vamo Alla Flamenco (FF9)
• Rosa's Theme (FF4)
• Chocobo Theme (FF14 version) leading into Swing de Chocobo

(intermission)

• Man with the Machine Gun (FF8)
• To Zanarkand (FF10)
• Kiss Me Goodbye (FF12 - Susan Calloway again)
• Aerith's Theme (FF7)
• You're not Alone (FF9)
• Battle on the Big Bridge (FF5)
• Blinded by Light (FF13)
• Eyes on Me (FF8 - Susan Calloway again)
  
• Ronfaure (FF11 - I was hoping for Distant Worlds, being the song that gives the concert series its name, but I guess the concert version has a choral backup which would have made it difficult to do without a chorus)
• Terra's Theme (FF6)

You may be asking yourself - where's "One Winged Angel"? They wouldn't do a Final Fantasy concert without One Winged Angel, would they? Well, no. It was the encore (of course), though without a chorus, it was done karaoke style (not kidding!) which was kind of fun - even showed the lyrics on the video screen.

Anyway, that's all for the moment.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

This Reality is Final

Looking through my sketchbook, I noticed its been a while since I've drawn any of my FR characters - the last one appearing in the sketchbook is dated Dec 31, 2009, a little over two years ago! Now, I've doodled some of the characters in various notebooks since then, but I simply haven't done any proper sketches in all that time. So, I figure it's time to correct that and did a couple of sketches to that effect. These are probably the two of my FR characters that I've sketched most often over the years, still, going back to some of my old sketchbooks for reference proved useful (at least for the second one).

First up is Gillin Eledhwen, an "almost half-elf" - specifically, she's 7/16 elf, or something to that effect (I've never really sat down to figure out if that's actually possible). Did one full body pose with a few sketches of the face with various expressions from various angles. Of note, I need to work on my foreshortening, but then, that's what this is all about, after all - practice.

This is Kyoujo (the one on the left) pictured with her friend Megan, both wearing their tour guide uniforms. Kyoujo's hair is a bit shorter than I normally draw it and I don't know what Megan's done to embarass her like that - some sort of practical joke, no doubt. (Mostly I wanted to draw Kyoujo with a different expression that the typical dour one she normally wears.)

Anyway, that's all for today. Until next time.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Gallery of Freaks

I said this would be a more picturey entry and so it is (click to enlarge!):

The previous comic-blog was Friday, September 4, 2009. Still not planning on doing these often since they do take longer than a normal post. Anywho, here's the attempted self-portrait mentioned in the comic:

Not much to say beyond what was said in the comic. For the most part, my drawing probably won't be attempting to be "realistic" in style very often, but I may attempt something meant to be more realistic every now and then. Practice and all that.

We'll see how long this keeps up.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Comic Workshop Post-Mortem

Another post-mortem, yay! This'll probably be the last one for the foreseeable future (awww...)

As should be apparent from my blog, this past fall (and January) I've been running a comic workshop in the graphics lab at school. We were working through the book "Drawing Words & Writing Pictures", a sort-of text book on comics. The book covers things like "what are comics", issues relating to panel layout, content design, storytelling, thumbnailing, penciling and inking (with both pens and brushes) and a few other topics. Each chapter has excercises and homework assignments, the last series of which walks you through creating a six page mini-comic (my results having been previously posted on the blog, though I still have to finish the inking).

Overall, it was an interesting book and the experience of running the workshop was also interesting. I did follow the book fairly closely in its presentation, though I drew in material from other sources (such as Scott McCloud's books about comics) where appropriate. I also added some extra workshop sessions on figure drawing and perspective, which is one of the reasons that we went into January.

We only had a small group - just four of us (including me). I think I would have liked to have had two or three more people, but with just the four of us I suppose it was easier to work around scheduling issues that came up and there wasn't any need to worry about finding a special space to hold our meetings.

Of course, for me, the workshop essentially involved giving a twenty to thirty minute talk each week (I wouldn't call them lectures) along with the weekly homework assignments. It kept me busy, but it was interesting and I liked having the extra motivation to do some regular drawing. I was also the only one to do all the assigned homework, but as I was running things I figured I should do my best to set a good example :)

One nice thing about the workshop is that it gave me the chance to try out some things that I wouldn't have otherwise, like using nib pens. One of the big reasons to run the workshop in the first place was that it was much more likely that I'd actually do the exercises and homework in the book. Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn't have done most of them, which would have missed out on part of the point of the book.

As to my presentation style - well, that's a bit harder for me to judge. My fellow participants seemed to find things interesting and we had some good discussion at times, but it was all fairly informal, overall. I was treating it more like a "tech talk" sort of thing than anything else. I mean, I think I'm generally a competent speaker, at least nobody showed up with rotten fruit or sleep masks or anything.

Would I do something like this again? Maybe. It would certainly be less work if I were to do it again since I'd have all my slides already and I've already done all the homework so I probably wouldn't feel the need to do most of it again. It would still be a bit of a committment, of course. Interestingly, the authors of the book have a follow-up one that's being published sometime this spring so there's always the possibility that I might end up going through all this again anwyay. We'll see - though I probably wouldn't mind doing a follow-up session, if i can drum up enough interest.

Well, that's all for now. My next post should be less talky and more picturey.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Babble, Babble, Babble

I'm working on my "comp II" (not right now, I mean in general) which I've mentioned before - it's one of those requirements for my PhD. Every now and then, I get stuck with a bit of writer's block. When that happens, I sometimes just start typing random babble, stream-of-conscious type of stuff, in an effort to try to get things started again, with varying degrees of success. If nothing else, it usually leaves me with something somewhat strange to look at for a bit.

Since there hasn't really been much blog-worthy stuff happening of late (though I should probably do a final write-up for the comic workshop), I figured I'd inflict a couple of the more recent stream-of-conscious eruptions on my one or two actual readers so that they can boggle at it. BOGGLE I SAY!

Here's one from a couple of weeks ago (or thereabouts - I don't timestamp them):

...while also being a contestant on Jeopardy!, but not Wheel of Fortune (which is for dumb people). There are two rules for every yard stick, most notably the inevitability of walls to be solid, at least when yellow. Foreasmuch as nine bricks forms a collection, there is a sparrow that drinks tea and sings ballads about walruses in tutus. There is nothing in so much as there is something, but when those notions become palatable, it is really for the best that they be shelved with the mustard. This I know for I have worn socks, but not because I have hands on my feet. That would just be silly. It is my esteemed thought that the whole of the part is nothing that cannot overcome the adversity which you now face, which is nautical.

And the most recent one, being the one from just before I made this post:

Content. Like a table. Flat and made of wood. Ergo: bording, dull, insipid -- you get the idea. Or do you? Idea's are, after all, rather ephemeral, you can't get them like you can get, say, a cold, or the bubonic plague. Not that you can actually get the bubonic plague these days either, but, well, that's really neither here nor there. It's over there. Maybe under. Like underground. Which is where you might be if you had the bubonic plague. Or after, I suppose. But I digress. Or perhaps regress. Or even depress. Although what I press, that's harder to say. I certainly don't work for a newspaper and there are no big red buttons around either. Not to imply the buttons are necessarily round. Or red. Or big. Big and red even, like a dog, except that I don't like dogs so I won't go there. But maybe over there. And there we are, again, back over there. What's so fascinating? Is it like a train wreck, or one of those trashy talk shows? Though how those work I couldn't say. I mean, you can't show talk to someone, after all, it's just sound -- it's ephemeral, like ideas. Unless your ideas are announced by a big glowing lightbulb appearing over your head out of nowhere. Maybe you've got word balloons floating over your head -- then you could show those to somebody. They might still think you're crazy, but it would be a start. It would be like you're at a race, or something, but what would you race? Stuff? Or things? And who would win? Well, I suppose that would depend on who had the fastest stuff -- zero to stuff in sixty seconds. That's a minute. Not minute which is to say, small. Well, I suppose your stuff could be small, but that's none of my business so I won't pry. I won't even try to pry, though it might be wry. Why? I won't lie... because I'm not really sure where I was going with that so I'll just let it fly. Like a house.

And that is that. I'll have to see about writing up a finale for the comic workshop in the next few days or so.

Freak Out,
-TFitC