Delphina

Do you remember forums? I do.

del_chan — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 18:58:09 GMT

Around the year 2000, I joined a forum for a webcomic about God and the universe, where God was a cute little girl and the universe was a goblin-lookin' thing named Irving who accidentally ate her. There weren't many webcomics back then, but more importantly, there weren't many ways of meeting internet strangers back then (not ones I felt were safe to pursue as an 18-year-old girl, anyway). AOL chat rooms and instant messaging random people was my world before the AR forum, and the tight-knit nature of writing and responding to a small group of people increased my love of the internet a hundred fold.

Since then, so many things gained popularity. I made a LiveJournal in 2002, a deviantArt account in 2004. And while I met a few new friends-of-friends on those, it was mostly keeping up with the core people I met in the AR forum or from high school. I was never the cracker-jack blogger or artist that made compelling pieces and built a big audience. I just went about my life, doodled a bit, and talked about it sometimes, and people responded.

So I can't say Facebook didn't support what I was already doing when I eventually made my account there in 2008, but the more I participated, the more I didn't like a few things about the new face of social media:

How it discourages lengthy posts. Some places did it quite deliberately by limiting your characters, but others just encouraged you to add hundreds and hundreds of acquaintances, such that if you wanted to catch up on everyone's activities, you really had to tl;dr the ones that took too much time.

How it encourages resharing of someone else's content instead of writing your own. Why write your own post when you can reblog to someone else and say "what she said!" And even when that tells me what you like, I don't know why you like it.

How it limits back-and-forth discussion. Some of this is tied to the length of post or stupid controls (I'm looking at you, Tumblr), but it's mostly caused by things floating off your radar within a day, if not sooner.

How much it draws people's time and attention away from the really amazing communities.

This last one is key. The greatest communities I've seen formed not by a mass gathering of people who already know each other, but by a small gathering of strangers with a common enthusiasm for a writer, blogger, webcomic, storyteller, artist or creative project. Comment sections can be nice, but again, when an update is made, it curtails the discussion in a way that feels inorganic.

Which returns me to the forum experience I stumbled upon in 2002, and when I joined Sarah Ellerton's Seraph-Inn forum in 2009 (which had its roots in her first webcomic in 2004). But in a world of people who've been trained to accept that social media is something you do from your smartphone, and who are (understandably) loathe to make yet another account somewhere? I just wonder if it's still possible to build one today.

A letter to a fellow Girl Scout

del_chan — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:19:58 GMT

Teen Calls for Girl Scout Cookies Boycott Over Transgender Inclusion Policy

I don't tend to respond to these sorts of things. Blanket disagreement is overdone on the internet, and only promotes a feeling of divisiveness and hatred toward people you will never meet or talk to beyond the context of the argument. But it hits close to home because this girl happens to be from Ventura County, which was where I was a Girl Scout for several years. Girl Scouts swear to be a sister to every Girl Scout, so I write this not as a random internet grumbler with the intent to divide, but as an older sister with the intent to unite.

Girl Scouts has served you well, Taylor. You are able to make this video expressing your opinions and providing constructive courses of action for your perceived problem. I like your solutions of donating money to your personal troop and developing your own fundraisers like garage sales. If all troops were as proactive as yours, I think the world would be a better place!

However, it has also done you a disservice in engendering a few attitudes:

You believe that Girl Scouts are safer/better because its members are the same gender as you. Now, if you have never felt threatened by another girl, you are very fortunate! But girls are people. If you are weird, rich, poor, a different religion or otherwise awkward in your social dynamic, other girls can be mean! You can be shunned, mocked, excluded and threatened at school or in your troop. I'm not proud of it, but I've been on both sides of that relationship. And I've been in bad troops before. It was just like a second dose of the people I already had to deal with in school. Even though they were all girls, they were not people I could relate to or felt safe with!

So why sign up? What makes Girl Scouts different? It is the history of Girl Scouts, the core values of acceptance and love for one another and personal growth, and a promise that you will do your part to make it a safe place for one another. That's what you're signing up for as a Girl Scout. It is duty of both the troop leaders and the girls within to actively promote these values, and if there are differences between us, to look past their differences in race, religion, sexual orientation, (and in this case, gender).

You believe that boys can decide on their wishes and desires to join troops without restriction. Now, as per the principles in your video, I would not feel comfortable with a random 18-year-old boy who decided on a whim that he wanted to be surrounded by a gaggle of girls and share a tent with them at Kaleidoscope! This would totally violate my sense of safety! But like I said before, girls aren't necessarily safe, either. Which is why we have a council organizations and leaders to set up some rules and observe all potential problems in our social dynamic and keep us all safe so we can focus on improving ourselves in a constructive environment.

The Girl Scout Organization absolutely gives Trujillo the option of excluding this 7-year-old (or any 7-year-old) if they are not safe to be around. Her research and judgment indicate this 7-year-old is no more dangerous than any other 7-year-old girl. This kid is living like a girl and relates to girls better than boys. The parents accept that they have a girl, not a boy. It's the combination of all of these things that lead Trujillo to the decision to include this kid, not because the kid decided to wear pink one day.

And trust me, this kid is not pretending to be a girl for fun. It's not fun at all to feel like you don't belong in either bathroom, or worry that people will be confused or scared by you. Which is why it means the world to transgendered folks, especially those in their formulative years, to find people and groups who accept them and try to understand where they're coming from. And again, our history of acceptance is what makes Girl Scouts thrive. When we start denying that to well-intentioned people who need a place to grow, we may succeed in keeping our gender, but we lose the spirit of scouting.

But that, of course, is my opinion. You seem like a bright girl with a keen focus on research and facts. That's fantastic! So in the spirit of research, I think you should meet this 7-year-old in Colorado. Observe the troop like a leader would. And think about what you see. How does this kid behave differently than the other members of the troop? How are they the same? Do the girls feel unsafe? Talk to the parents of the kid and the other parents involved in the troop. Then tell me, would you make the same decision as Trujillo or not?

I would be very curious to hear what you find out!

Final page of Sombulus, Vol 1

del_chan — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:40:29 GMT

With today's page posted, that finishes Volume 1 of Sombulus! Thank you massively to everyone who has enjoyed and read the comic so far. I feel like I've learned so much in the last 179 pages!

Sombulus is taking a short break right now between chapters. The new chapter of the story will be in full color (YAY!) and starts on Valentine’s Day (Tuesday, February 14) because I <3 you all for reading my comic (and because I need time to get the next chapter's art together)! In the meantime, I’ll be featuring some of the fantastic Sombulus art I got from 2011.

If you would like to make art for Sombulus, reply here! I would love to showcase it!

(Archives, RSS and links still down, unfortunately.)

PAX 2011 Debrief

del_chan — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 02:00:43 GMT

So PAX. Very awesome con, despite my nasty case of PAX Pox. Stayed with the very gracious psychominako and hubby and rode the ferry across Puget Sound to the show.

Most of our time was spent talking to people and playing games. The few times we did stand in lines for things, it was a surprisingly pleasant experience. Instead of making people stand in the cold, the queue areas were all well marked and planned on the maps, and beach ball throwing and dance or costume contests happened while you waited, sometimes sponsored by actual companies. So much nicer than my Anime Expo memories of angry con volunteers making you hold a string or wait for a wristband to get a ticket.

We played a Boggle-esque fighting game that has thoroughly convinced me that I need a smartphone, and a Boggle-esque board game made by a woman and her husband and their 7-year-old (who drew their logo). They were so excited when I bought a copy, because I guess they hadn't sold a game to anyone in Los Angeles before.

We finally found a copy of Red November, which was supposedly re-released only weeks ago but that we remember fondly from a party of layah's. Also found Munchkin Axe Cop, which is a crossover between a card game about rules-mongering your opponents to death and a webcomic written by a 5-year old and drawn by his brother Ethan (age 29). Glorious.

I talked to the creator of Modest Medusa, who added my webcomic to his reading list, and I talked to the Digital Game Museum folks about volunteering my web design services cause it sounded like fun.

We also obtained mountains of swag. As in, I may never need another sleep T-shirt. bookmark, lanyard, or Renaissance Faire costume again.

Spin spin spin

del_chan — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 01:54:48 GMT

New vote incentive went up this morning. Male costumes are difficult for me, especially ones that have to allow for wings to come out the back. I have not made a back view yet, and I'm a little afraid to. Anyway, your votes are much appreciated! I don't think I've ever had so many in one month! It's fantastic! You can vote once per day, and doing so helps push my comic to the top of the list. Vote here!

I'm trying to figure out the dA phenomenon of Stressed Jenny. She has over 1000 followers, and gets pages and pages of comments and lots of fanart for her webcomic. You figure it must be a pretty whizbang story until you find out... she hasn't started it yet. I don't know who referred her to me or when I started following her, but figuring out how things like this happens is almost fun for me. Is she some celebrity I don't know about? Did she finish some other webcomic that was popular and that's where she has all these fans from? Is she a hypnotist? I'd kill for that kind of traffic! And my comic even exists!

On the subject of webcomic traffic, I ran a banner ad on the Evil Diva site, and got a lot of hits, but it doesn't seemed to have affected my after-ad traffic. And I feel a little guilty about switching back to black and white right after running it, so I'm thinking I'll try again after it wheels back around to color in a few pages. And after PAX, which looms ever closer.

Also, we got an Aarrow spinner on our corner. I don't know if these guys have a formal presence in places other than Southern California, but they're awfully fun to watch:

The Magyk of Audiobooks

del_chan — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 01:06:48 GMT

Another new vote incentive, this time with Rana in floofy sleeves and bellbottoms. Please vote if you have a moment, because your votes support me and my comic! That's a good thing!

I spent this week:

Trying to find a way to read Septimus Heap 2 on audiobook. The first book, Magyk worked out really well for me on audiobook for many reasons. One, I've got so many freelance jobs and art work to do for Sombulus that I don't have time to sit and read. Two, I spend about 1.5 hours a day in a car. Three, my local library had it, and it was free!

But the most important? The fact that I didn't have to read that god-awful-bastard spelling of "Magyk" every time it was mentioned.

Of course, the library doesn't have volume 2 on audiobook. So I'm either going to have to swallow my inner grammarian or find another library. Or read some of Rick Riordan's new Olympian/Egyptian books and bide my time. Maybe I'll do that.

Thinking about making my Sombulus discussion forums live. Again. I'm really super-curious about what the Getting Past Forums: The Future of Community panel is going to say about forums. While I don't mind going to where the people are (hence, having a bajillion accounts spanning Tumblr/Twitter/Google + and all that garbage), I really miss a good threaded conversation place that doesn't force me to block out a really interesting person because they also talk about boring stuff. And the community aspect always engages me, much more than a stale thread of the same old people posting about what's happening to them instead of contributing new thoughts based on a discussion topic.

I met my husband on a forum, despite him living 2000 miles away in Alabama. I still post around the Seraph-Inn forums even though the comic ended several months ago. I love the community, I love meeting new people, and I really want that for Sombulus, too. I hope there are people that still feel that way in this crazy distracting Facebook feed-frenzy world.

Thinking about moving. Again. I want a yard so I can get a dog to destroy it, dammit!

Reminiscing about 1000 Blank White Cards. We used to play this game all the time in the back room in my college anime club. It was hilarious. I highly recommend it for anyone with a mostly-creative and ridiculous group of friends.

Listening to "Join Us", They Might Be Giants' new CD. I'm a little more hardcore than casual TMBG fans, but I have to confess, I didn't pick this up until I saw it at Borders for 20% off. Not as catchy as The Else, in my opinion, but TMBG songs have a way of growing on me when I least expect them to. Of course, the thing I've found most endearing about the band isn't their indelibly solid music, but how much fun they sound like they're having making it. Even their songs about hating someone and wanting them to die are suitable for My Little Pony videos:

Aaaand.... I think I'll leave you with that. Have a good weekend, everybody!

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

del_chan — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:58:14 GMT

I've got some cool art to show off from the next chapter of Sombulus, so that means... new vote incentive! The NaNoMangO folks will probably recognize it. The Topwebcomics rankings have reset for August, so now is an especially courteous time to vote for me. Thanks for helping me out in advance!

Other random life stuff I've been up to:

Writing a lot of stuff on Tumblr. LiveJournal was down a lot last week and I had a crazy writing itch and a lot of opinions. Particularly about Harry Potter and Evil Diva. I feel like I cheated on LJ with Tumblr, but... a woman has needs, you know? And there's enough of me to go around.
Celebrating my wedding anniversary. shmitz and I have been officially married for 9 years this Tuesday. We had a nice dinner with assassingalaxia , layah , ks0girl and husband, and a bunch of gamer friends that I don't think are on LJ, and another mini celebration at my aunt's house over the weekend. Good to see everyone again IRL instead of just over the internet.
Gearing up for Penny Arcade Expo. Put in my vacation request yesterday! Gonna book a flight this week! Gonna hang out with psychominako and ninja_dude ! And it's gonna be an awesome con full of awesome things that do not take forever in line to see! (I hope.)
"Reading" Septimus Heap. What do you call audiobooks? Are they "reading"? This is the first audiobook I've ever tried. Picked it up from the library on a forum friend's recommendation from my Harry Potter ramblings. I like it a lot, but I wonder if the narrator's tone is tainting my mental image of Marcia Overstrand from "prissy grumpy lady" to "prissy grumpy old lady".
Playing Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light. I have a terrible time mustering energy and time to play most video games nowadays, but Four Heroes of Light is very "put down and pick up again"-able because it's got very distinct quests and not a lot of complicated plot stuff. Maybe I'll actually finish it! (Unlike FF12, which got stuck in the "must forage for junk to alchemize it later" doldrums.)
Bowling. In a pink wig and hip-hop attire. I regret nothing.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Sombulus redesign launched!

del_chan — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:18:25 GMT

Finally made it to page 132 of Sombulus, where...

COLOR happens!

I spruced up the website in celebration, too! Check it out check it out! And if you've got a website/comic for my Friend corner, let me know. =D

I'm so, so happy about this. You don't even know.

Google Plus and Topic versus Privacy

del_chan — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 02:50:39 GMT

So I'm exploring Google+. It's not revolutionary enough to vastly prefer it to any other short-form social media, but I know some people that think it's pretty awesome. If anyone wants to circle up, lemme know.

The part I like about Google+ is that it's only attracting people who recognize the value of quality internet communication (and this is true for the introduction of any cutting edge social media, really). The "normal people" who don't know better* are bound to find out if people begin to forsake Facebook for Google+, of course. And both sites have mechanisms to hide the posts you find tedious. But I think Google+ is doing a good job of teaching its audience that who you add and what you say to them on the internet is important to qualify. So maybe people will start making fewer tedious post in the first place if they convert? We can hope.

reddog_san mentioned another aspect of following someone that had one interest you liked (maybe roller derby) but another you had no interest in (cars). It would be awfully nice if it could figure out how to hide the car posts from you, but not the roller derby posts. He mentioned tags, which are nice when people are cognizant enough to use them. But what if it was something Google cultivated over time for you? If it came to recognize you used the words "babies" or "diaper" a lot, could it eventually suggest a "baby" category automatically when your friend started to write about her one-year old again? Then perhaps when you get sick of someone talking about a subject and you want to hide their posts, it can pull up the topic tags and say, "What about the content of this message do you not want to see, exactly? We'll try to hide it from you next time."

It's not foolproof, but combined with a manual tagging system, it might be a step in the right direction. Cause in a real-life face-to-face situation, my friend is pleasant and would know not to talk to me about cloth diapers, but I sift through topics that don't interest me all the time on Facebook.

What it boils down to, I think, is I don't care who I'm talking to as much as what we're talking about. On online forums, the topic of conversation is emphasized over the audience, and segmenting conversations makes much more sense to me. Even LiveJournal and dA have that to an extent with communities by topic. Which is probably why I still cling to them. Sharing my content with strangers (especially in short snippets) doesn't really bother me. I'm pretty mild-mannered, and my self-incriminating thoughts don't get put in writing at all. What bothers me is sifting through irrelevant stuff, and there seems to be more and more of it every day.

*By this, I mean pretty much every stereotype in this video:

A much-needed addition to the expanding body of Whedon fanfi- I mean, scholarship.

del_chan — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:40:17 GMT

(Cross-posted from my Tumblr.)

My vacation in June found me in a comic/CD shop in Little 5 Points, where this gem of a book resides:

I thought from the cover image that the book had to be at least 12 years old. I had it all pegged in my head. Erin B. Waggoner, bless her heart, watched Angel and Buffy religiously during her formulative years, in a time where both series seemed like they'd go on forever, with no idea that they'd fade into obscurity. It was a quaint product of its time, floating around the store and retaining a late-90s charm, much like the Save Ferris CDs or vintage comic books in the shelves surrounding it. But no. It's recent, and it's serious:

I really wanted to buy it for one of my Browncoat friends, but I mulled over whether it would break my oath that I would never give Joss Whedon any of my money ever again. Eventually, I decided it was too close for comfort and settled for taking a few pictures.

But I do wonder what kinds of Whedon gender scholars exist out there, such that this book of essays was a "much-needed addition". Is there an honest-to-god curriculum for this? Can you get a Doctorate in Horribleness, or take a class in Emotive Vampiric Studies? What would you major in if you went to the University of Whedon?

In memory of TokyoPop

del_chan — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 03:14:38 GMT

So Tokyopop closed its doors today.

Jason Thompson has some great commentary about it on his LiveJournal, with more professional insight than I'd be able to give it. But as an early adopter with a Mixxine subscription, Tokyopop definitely hearkens back to a simpler time for me. I remember the days when finding anything anime or manga-related (in a store or on the internet) was like finding buried treasure. When the business exploded, we got higher quality stories, but there was no "thrill of the hunt", and so Tokyopop took the backburner for me.

Sorcerer Hunters, published by Mixxine in left-to-right format. You're lookin' at history, folks.

While I can't say I've been as diligent with my anime watching, manga was always something I supported with money, even when I didn't have much. I never clicked with much of anything Tokyopop published since Mixxine, preferring instead the shounen titles of Viz and later Del Rey's killer lineup. And I have to confess that the small sampling of TokyoPop's OEL manga I tried poisoned me against the rest. Jason's post also makes me wonder if I didn't tacitly contribute to comic nationalism:

I don't care whether they were considered 'manga' or 'comics', and it's unfortunate that so many manga-influenced Western artists have ended up being caught in some stupid culture war between American comics and Japanese comics, not appreciated by either side....I've had the misfortune recently of hearing people advising artists "Well, if you want to succeed in the comics business, you'd better get that *shudder* manga out of your art style." Well, maybe, if you want to draw other people's comics. In that case, it's always better to be a chameleon. But if you want to create your OWN comics, then use whatever style you want to. Just be a little original (better yet, a lot original), and be good. The comic publishing industry isn't so healthy anyway right now that there are tons of jobs just waiting for you if you learn to draw like such-and-such. There's probably more successful webcomics artists out there now than there are successful artists published by print publishers. Like the old quote goes, "Just because you sell out, doesn't mean anyone's buying."

I'm not one to dwell on "the good ol' days" of any form of entertainment. I believe we'll encounter many great works of fiction in many different formats as technology evolves. But if it's simply a matter of my country being artistically xenophobic (again), I can't help but feel pained. Del Rey's gone, of course, but I'm quietly hoping that Viz is healthy. I'm also wondering if it's time to box up some of these titles like Yozakura Quartet or Dragon Eye, which will likely never see English-language dead-tree format again.

So many unfinished stories...

The anime store in my neighborhood that had been there since 1995 closed a few months ago, and I'm super curious about what Anime Expo's going to look like this year, or the year after. Maybe the American world of manga will shrink again, and become more browseable. Maybe it'll be exclusively internet based now, and us Japanophiles will get our goods directly from the source. Or maybe we'll all find something else to do. But if there's any company that started it all for me, it was Tokyopop. And I'll miss it for nostalgia's sake, if nothing else.

(Cross-posted in my Tumblr blog, for all three of you that follow that bad boy.)

I'm on a Tumblr.

del_chan — Tue, 24 May 2011 14:44:01 GMT

Does anyone else do Tumblr? I just signed up, and I'm not sure how frequently one posts on such things. Seems more promising that I'll keep up with a bloggy-style doodad than something like Twitter, though. (I'm on that too, BTW)

I'm kind of getting tired of "the next big communication method" changing so quickly, dispersing my content and dividing my attention. RSS feeds help a lot, and I do like how when something like Facebook or Twitter or Formspring or Tumblr comes about, it explores different methods of content, response, vote-up systems, picture and link posting, personalization. But none of them seem particularly focused on meeting people you've never met before. I'll take a good webcomic forum or IRC chat any day over some 130 character anomaly where my response to someone gets truncated or can only be conveyed in the form of a thumbs-up.

Anyway. Tumblr. Follow me if you like!

Airing of Grievances: My Apartment Complex

del_chan — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:54:50 GMT

My apartment complex provides assigned parking spots for its tenants. Two weeks ago, they decided to kick everyone out of their spots to repaint them over the course of two days. The tenuous street parking situation around our neighborhood had always been tricky, but making everyone move their car (upon threat of having it towed) made it even worse. shmitz and I parked next to a private school and got ticketed (a ticket for both cars), which was annoying. But upon seeing the final paint job, they didn't even bother to wash the pavement before painting. In places, they literally painted over mud.

Today, they are replacing our quarter-operated washing machines and dryers with pre-paid card ones. We received our cards (which have $1 on them; the old machines were $1.25 per cycle, so I hope this means they're cheaper than the old machines) and were told that there would be a kiosk where you could load your card with more money and pay via credit/debit whatever.

It sounds okay? They charge $5 for a new card if you lose your card and need a replacement, which sort of sucks if you want two people to have cards or something. With quarters, you can keep as many as you like whereever you like. Takes a little more coordination to keep track of a single card. Also, I hate preloaded stuff, because you can't tell how much is on there and it's money that's locked up from using somewhere else. This is doubly confounded if you lose a card with like $20 of credits on it, cause you've lost all that money plus $5 for your replacement.

But no biggie, I can figure out a way to manage the card. No, the problem is that the kiosk is located in the manager's office, and will only be available Monday-Friday from 9AM - 5:30PM. There is no daytime-working non-stay-at-home person that will be able to make those hours in the city of Los Angeles. It is a completely impractical situation to only have the kiosk available when I am 20 miles away from it.

Then there's the other perpetual inconveniences that have been here since day one. I can never own a dog here, the pool is never warm enough to swim in, we don't have enough room to have overnight guests, and people always seem to want to block our driveways with their stupid cars.

In short, I think it's time to move. }=(

MoD debrief and thoughts about societal isolation

del_chan — Sun, 01 May 2011 16:29:18 GMT

The Machine of Death show was amazing and inspiring. shmitz and I had to take separate cars to fit my big cardboard machine, so it was two nightmare-parking-in-Hollywood encounters when it could have been one, but the performance went smoothly aside from that. I met and chatted with random people about the book and music and Dinosaur Comic Squishables. It was just a very open, friendly gathering of people gathered together in a tiny place on a Tuesday night. I decided to try and keep up with some of the indy artists that sang at the show, so maybe I'll go to more performances or make some new friends. Everything just made me feel so happy to be a geek, writing silly songs for encouraging people. Looking forward to seeing the video of my performance, too!

Had a nice quiet birthday on Thursday and a pleasant sushi/ice cream night with shmitz, and met with my family this weekend for lunch and cake. 29 years old, and I think I feel it. High school, getting married, and going to college seem like distant memories. It makes me want to journal more so I won't forget what I was doing five years from now, things are moving so fast.

Chatted with assassingalaxia last night about growing apart from our group of friends, and I found I had some opinions about that. Unlike life 20 years ago, the internet makes it easy to keep in touch with old friends that moved to different places. If you want to have a conversation, you could Skype or email or IM them. If you want to passively take in their day-to-day life, you can read their blog/microblog/whatever the kids are doing nowadays. You have countless possibilities to chat with them and stay informed about them. Does that make these opportunities less valuable? Are we as a society deceived that "following" someone is as good as communicating with them personally? Are we isolating ourselves from people that would genuinely care about our deeper problems, the ones we're learning are a BAD idea to put in writing on the internet for someone to find? Are we taking our deeper problems to trusted friends, or are we blaring them to the world, hoping someone will pick up the other end of the conversation? Are we practiced enough in conducting deeper conversations that we know how to do it on a regular basis?

I know that once upon a time, going to the same high school as someone and finding them ten years later was a miracle. Now it's commonplace. You contact them less than you would when you only had fewer opportunities like class reunions, because you figure you can do it any time. Maybe you don't contact them at all, because you're already in contact with other people you have more in common with at this point in your life. What's the rush in reconnecting?

It's not a rush, but I've decided it's important to me. Slowly, my friends are growing apart from me. Maybe they'll make new groups of friends wherever they've moved, but circumstances will dissolve a number of those, too. And sure, I personally don't want to maintain (or have the ability to maintain) every single relationship I've ever had. But if enough of us don't try to keep communication open, will my friends have anyone to reach out to 20 or 30 years from now? Will I? Or will we have 700 Facebook followers, but no one to talk to?

Watch me perform tomorrow in Hollywood!

del_chan — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 05:58:24 GMT

So, I was accepted into a talent show based on the Machine of Death book (which is really good and you should read it). This was my weekend:

Making a giant cardboard Machine of Death

Putting together my costume in the mirror

Attaching chess pawns and glass beads to cardboard with hot glue.

If you're in the Los Angeles area, come show your support and eat cake with me! It's in Hollywood (details here)! If you're not, you can watch the live stream online.

Should be exciting! If I can stay up that late on a school night..

Audition Successful!

del_chan — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 15:05:09 GMT

My Machine of Death talent show audition was accepted...? Crap! I mean yay! I mean dang! Guess I've got some work to do this weekend!

Seattle Trip debrief

del_chan — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:36:34 GMT

Aaaand we're back from an epic week in the Pacific Northwest! We left last Tuesday and stayed with psychominako most of the time, who has an awesome three story house, a dog that only exists as a brown blur of horror, and a truly enviable Nerd Cave that everyone should see. After lunch, she took us to Daiso, a store that sold hand scythes for your garden and Japanese candy (in the same place!) and we came home, ate Japanese food, made a fire in the backyard and roasted marshmallows, and played Band Hero together with ninja_dude.

The next day we drove up the peninsula and up waaaay into the mountains to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. It was gorgeous weather, a great place to hike, and we had breathtaking views of Mount Olympus and Victoria Island in British Columbia. The photos we took don't do it justice at all. It was an amazing place. And I finally saw Canada! I don't think Canada saw me, though.

I also picked up a brochure listing all the ridiculous stretches of the imagination where you can go to see Twilight memorabilia in the area, including the "official" houses-that-kind-of-looks-like-houses-Bella-and-Edward-live-in (one actually has a white board outside of it saying what Edward is doing that day. I would be seriously tempted to erase it and write my own notes), the sporting goods store where Bella could have worked if she worked in a real sporting goods store, and a truck with a Twilight license place that you can stand and take your picture in front of. Poor Forks. They're really trying to be relevant, but failing.

When we got home, we met psychominako's friends and ate some tasty tasty spaghetti and played Mario Brothers Yahtzee and Jenga. Also got caught up on my Harry Potter movies so I'm ready for Deathly Hallows. =D

The next day, we took a ferry from Bainbridge Island to Seattle. I loved the ferry. If I were a freelance designer in Seattle, I think I'd just ride the ferry back and forth all day instead of renting an office. We went to Pikes Place Market, where we looked at all the random artisan crafts, bought some spice at a neat tea/spice shop, had piroshkies for lunch, and saw a giant cutout of a dalek at the comic store that we totally would have taken home if we could have figured out a way of getting it into our suitcase. psychominako also showed us the gum wall, which was the most incredible yet disgusting thing I've ever seen. Then we found a hat store and went crazy.

We took off the next day for the family reunion portion of the trip. Five other members of my family, shmitz and I met at Mount Rainier National Park and stayed in a four-bedroom cabin deep in the woods together. It had a cute little creek along the back, hot tub, game room (with broken DDR pad... -_-) and fully stocked kitchen (with a belgian waffle maker! ^_^). Then, we had a big picnic with a large branch of my dad's side of the family that I didn't really know existed. We went on a hike across a rocky creek bed, log bridge, and up a steep 1 mile trail to Carter Falls, after which shmitz was ready to die. Gotta come back sometime to check out Paradise/the rest of the park.

After the reunion, we all went our separate ways, which for us was down to meet my doppleganger internet friend near the Oregon border. She drove us to Astoria to see the view from the Astoria Column (we might have climbed up, but shmitz's legs were rebelling), and down to Seaside to buy more hats, play in bumper cars, get oodles of salt-water taffy, and go look at a shipwreck that's mostly gone. That's around when my camera started running low on batteries, so we tried to snap conservatively. We drove back to psychominako's place that evening, successfully avoiding attracting the attention of the way-too-much-time-on-their-hands Washingtonian cops despite the fact that my rental car was candy apple red.

Yesterday was kind of our lay low day. We went to Poulsbo, which is not only awesome because it has an annual Viking festival, but because it was home to the Ikea of grocery stores. This place had the most amazing Asian food section I've ever seen in a grocery store not exclusively devoted to Asian food (with real Japanese people making sushi!), scoop your own shrimp bins, pour your own spice bins, and an in-store tortilla machine making fresh hot tortillas that put the California Adventure tortilla tour to shame. It was huge and it was glorious. Then we returned my rental car, watched Toy Story 2 cause I had never seen it, and had a huge dinner at the Silver City Brewery. And then we got up super early, flew back to California, and I almost lost my drivers license and bus ticket back home (found them, though!).

It's good to be back in the warm California weather, but we had an awesome time visiting psychominako and seeing the sights and meeting new people. We'll definitely have to come back to Washington; there's way too much stuff we didn't have time for.

Sketchbook Project

del_chan — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:23:10 GMT

So I joined the Sketchbook Project a little while before Comic-Con. It's an amazing program by the Brooklyn Art Library where they send you a tiny sketchbook that you fill with drawing of an appropriate theme. You send it back to them in January and it becomes part of their permanent collection, travelling through 6 states on tour.

The theme I chose was The View From Up Here. I need to sit down and sketch out some ideas. I think the traditional switch will be good for me. I've become so reliant on fixing positioning and size in Photoshop that my anatomy and composition skills have suffered, so I can really plan with this project. Of course, that also makes me terrified that I'll screw up the pages, but I guess you're allowed to rebind stuff with your own paper, so I suppose I should figure out how I'm going to do that first so I stop freaking out about it.

shmitz was also excited that it might push me out of my "organic things only" comfort zone. But so far, the traditional medium aspect's already paralyzing me; I don't know how I'm going to leap tall buildings in a single bound at this rate.

And all of this hinges on having some great idea. My inclination is to make it a narrative and not just a collection of random high-angle drawings. The promoter in me always wants to tie things back to my webcomic, which might not actually be too much of a twist considering lots of characters are going to have wings, and could be a good exercise in flushing some future environments out.

So... any ideas?

Artsy stuff!

del_chan — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:50:52 GMT

Been trying to do more stuff on my DeviantArt account, including fanart things for The Meek and The Phoenix Requiem (I met the creators of both at Comic-Con last week, too!) I figure if I draw characters from pretty comics enough, maybe my comic will become pretty, too. Definitely seeing an improvement in my color work, at any rate. And any excuse to draw Dagre as a catbus is a good excuse.

Action! Magic stuff! A guy with a wing and some kind of nebulous magic powers! The third chapter of Sombulus begins on Tuesday. I've also updated my font to a more "comic-ish" face, and made some minor dialog changes for clarity. You can start from the beginning to see all the changes.

Chapter 2 begins on Tuesday at sombulus.com

del_chan — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 07:10:05 GMT

The next chapter of Sombulus begins on Tuesday, where we meet the cursed king and see some crazy assassin action. I can't believe I've been doing this whole webcomic thing for a month! It feels like forever! Catch up now while the backlog's still short! And to everyone who's kept up in this first chapter, thank you so much for your continued support!

Also, if you're the Facebook type, help show your support for my tiny comic by liking Sombulus on Facebook and spreading the news to your webcomic-appreciative acquaintances!

IT HAS BEGUN

del_chan — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:16:04 GMT

After much laborious labor and the tireless efforts of kemayo, who has my profound and undying gratitude for creating a comic CMS from the ground up, I present to you my SHINY NEW WEBCOMIC.

URL:
www.sombulus.com
Updates:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Genre:
Adventure/action/fantasy
Rating:
PG-13 (sword-fighty violence and adult concepts)

I would be honored if you would add it to your TueThursday webcomic bookmark list and spread the word. And I expect to see all your shiny faces trolling my forums soon, you hear me!

Cashcow Runner

del_chan — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:19:54 GMT

I like Homestar Runner, I really do. But they haven't actually updated with a cartoon since Halloween. In that span of time, they've added a few links to their most popular (old) cartoons to their "what's new" rotator, and added seven (Seriously.) updates highlighting sales and items in their store.

I understand times are tight, and apparently they announced to their RSS feed that they had another child in December (along with a 10% off any order of $20 or more coupon! Save $2! BUYBUYBUY!). But I'm finding the store push without actual new content to be pretty disgusting, and I'd rather they just drop off the radar with updates entirely until they're ready to focus on their site again.

Six years of Sombulus

del_chan — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:28:57 GMT

The Art
I had my first idea for my webcomic back in 2004. I lasted about 7 pages before I conceded that it was sloppy art, sloppier writing, and even sloppier work ethic, and gave up to concentrate on graduation from college and my career. I only really did character concepts for it until 2007, when I picked it up again.

The first pages I tried to do happened in the public library on my lunch breaks, and they involved bristol paper, physical screentone, and Micron pens; this, I deluded myself, was what the professionals used, so it would make my work more professional. When this didn't work for my pitiful architecture drawing skills, I decided scanning and tracing in Illustrator and adding digital tone was cheaper and better if I ever wanted to get things printed. But it was clunky, and itlandm's generous gift of a 8x12 Wacom tablet in September 2007 made my Illustrator art even clunkier.

The materials, I finally realized, were crippling my speed, inefficient for the pockets of time I had to work with, and just plain discouraging emotionally, since I would start over every six months to fix the art and never make any progress. Over the course of 2008 and 2009, I let go of using vectors. I refined a method of sketching on breaks at work and inking/toning with my tablet in Photoshop at home. And I did it over and over and over again until it became part of my daily life. Today, I can produce two pages a week without disturbing my normal routine, and more if I set other things aside.

The Story
My writing methods were worse. My style of comicing had been "draw the story as you go" since high school, which has often led me into dead ends. I've tried several mediums to train myself out of that, but between abandoned Tiddlywikis, spiral notebooks, or big ol' outlines, I cannot thread an overarching story together over several sessions without pictures. I can work for a while, but trying to reread it the next day makes me cross-eyed.

So my method's still "draw the story" on a page-to-page basis, but I do very loose page sketches on quarter-sheets of scratch paper now. This is working better for several reasons. It's like a tiny comic, which makes rereading it easier. I can paperclip scenes together with a little coversheet for easy organization. Redrawing something entirely takes me minutes, not hours. They're not permanently bound together, so I can reorder things very easily. I can improve the pacing and condense things on the fly if a scene is taking too many pages to get through. The time investment per page is very small, so I don't feel like I've wasted my time (or my expensive materials) if I scrap several pages entirely. It gives me a first draft to work from for the page layout. And most important, they're so small, I can stick them in my purse and work on them practically anywhere. I've successfully sketched out an entire 150+ page arc this way over the past 8 months or so, which is a personal best for any comic I've ever done.

It's not perfect, and it's probably not the be-all end-all solution. It still takes a while, and shmitz is concerned that if I don't have a written outline of events to work from, I'll still run the risk of taking the story someplace I can't get out of eventually. But I have yet to come up with a macro-level solution that's nearly as versatile.

The Website
Hosting the dang thing, perhaps, is the longest, most confusing and most discouraging piece of the whole project to me. My webhosting has changed hands several times, my forum gets overrun with spambots in a matter of days, and my attempts to find or get someone to build a comic CMS that can integrate flawlessly with a forum's posts and a donation system have been a pipe dream. Like most problems that can't be solved by me, I've ignored it more than I should. But the webhosting is resolved, I have a direction for the spambot problem, and now that I'm confident I won't be changing anything else in this story arc, I'll resume my efforts to bother kemayo about the custom CMS this year.

The Future
It's been six years since I started working on my webcomic. I don't have a finished website or pages that I can show the public yet. But I don't find this discouraging. I have made lots of progress as both an artist and writer, and I am confident that I can make this happen, even the parts that I have to get other people to do for me. Here's to 2010, to self-improvement, and to Sombulus.

Death

del_chan — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:25:50 GMT

I acknowledge that talking about death is awkward. We try so much of our life to avoid it, spend our lives fearing it, so how could a conversation ever feel natural? We speak in platitudes, say the sensitive "sorry for your loss, he was a good man" drivel, send our sentiments and hugs, and run away as fast as possible so we don't have to think about it any more.

My father died ten years ago this week. I've got mixed feelings about it, some good, some bad. But mostly, I just want to talk about it. I want people to ask me who he was and what he did and how he lived and what he died of instead of assume that he was a good man dealt a bad hand and I wish he were alive. I want to develop some kind of language for it outside of a Hallmark vocabulary. Because in my tangential experience, you can't really assume anything about a bereaved person's feelings without asking them. Nothing of value, anyway. And you should take the opportunity to do so, not only because it helps them sort out what they're feeling, but because you're going to have to deal with it sooner or later, too.

San Antonio and St. Louis Trip Swag

del_chan — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:05:00 GMT

Not pictured: Sky Mall magazine, influenza virii.