Braddy Reads Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

Surprisingly, I haven't been reading too many comics recently. I spend most of the time I've set aside for picture entertainment watching cartoons, I guess. Recently, though, I came across the name Faith Erin Hicks as a cartoonist to watch out for. She's got this book called Friends With Boys that's supposed to be excellent... but I didn't start with that one (I'll read it later). Instead, I went to the book she created with Prudence Shen called Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong.

I should spend more time with this kind of book - you know, a comic book that's about something other than superheroes. NCPGW is a pretty straightforward story about a group of teenagers trying to come up with money for different goals. Amitious and arrogant Nate is trying to raise the funds to help his robotics club enter the National Robotics Fair, while the cheerleading squad is trying to capture those same funds in order to supply the team with new uniforms before their big competition. Poor Charlie, the captain of the basketball team, is caught in the middle, and he's not sure he can handle all the stress while still trying to deal with his parents' divorce (and his mother's new boyfriend).

Those are the stakes in NCPGW, and they're great stakes to have in a story with these characters. Faith Erin Hicks imbues each character with a great deal of charm - they all look good. Even their "acting" is a thing of beauty.

I don't know that you could call this a world-changing book - it's the sort of thing teenagers will read to convince themselves that the world doesn't end just because you're in high school. It's got a lot of the usual cliche's - the jocks vs. the nerds, the prissy squad of cheerleaders, dirty student election politics - but with enough clever twists to keep any of them from wearing on the reader. Plus - and I don't know if I've mentioned this yet - it's really, really funny.

You can knock out NCPGW in about an hour or two, and it's the type of book most public libraries will probably keep a copy of, so I'd strongly recommend it. You could probably even borrow my copy, if you wanted - after I finish reading it the second time, of course.

Feels Like Tartakovsky

I've been a bit of a cartoon freak ever since my college days, when what little time I had between classes and homework was usually spent with my eyes firmly fixed on the Cartoon Network's line of entertainment. I watched a ton of Dexter's Lab and Samurai Jack, but my favorite was always The Powerpuff Girls. I was recently turned on to a "lost episode" of the show, called "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey,", which pit the super girls against a villainous gnome with the power to give peace on earth. The gnome was SUPPOSED to be voiced by Jack Black, but he wound up getting voiced by Wakko Warner from Animaniacs.

Sai Lai Lufti de Santra Mekidu

Did I mention the episode was a rock opera?

I'm quite fascinated by the animation style of Genndy Tartakovsky, the show's creator. All of his character designs are based on very simple, prominent geometric figures (big bold circles, rectangles, &c.), but he is able to command a great deal of emotion with only a few lines. With a little time to spare this weekend, I decided to try my hand at some Tartakovsky-esque characters of my own.

I had fun with it, even if I'm not terribly satisfied with the background characters. I think I like how these simple designs allow for a lot of variety in body shapes, hair styles, and facial features. You may see me dabbling in these types of designs a bit more.

Braddy Reads A Girl Named Zippy

Considering how little I care for memoir, I sure do read a lot of it. Guess that's what being in a book club is all about. So, yeah, someone ELSE decided that I'd be reading Haven Kimmel's A Girl Named Zippy. Wasn't my choice.

Memoir often strikes me as self-indulgent. "Look at my life!" shouts the author. "Isn't it just literary?" And I definitely think that there's a healthy dose of that here. But, really, does that make the book bad? I think you'd be hard pressed to find one novel whose author wasn't something of an exhibitionist while writing.

An additional problem I have with memoir is that I often find it difficult to react to. Admittedly, since my initial impulse is to pretty much hate everything, I'm choosing my own fate here. I mean, it's certainly upsetting to an author to find out that someone hates their characters, but as long as those characters are fictional, it's hard to take that personal. But with memoir, if I hate a character, I'm basically just telling the author, "Hey. I hate your dad."

Kimmel deals with a lot of themes here - faith, family, social mores - yet she never seems to draw a firm conclusion on any of them. She doesn't believe in Chrisitianity, yet she admires and emulates her Christian friends. She seems to both love and hate her sister. She recognizes that she causes her own problems by refusing to follow societal rules, yet she never changes her behavior to avoid suffering. Is it fair for the author to bring all these points up without leading the reader to a firm conclusion? Maybe not, but it's probably not fair for the reader to demand didactic morality from the author's life, either.

Maybe that's what I hate about memoir - it's too often as messy and un-satisfyingly open-ended as real life. Seriously, I have enough messes outside the pages of the book. I don't need my reading material to jack up my mindspaces.

All that aside, A Girl Named Zippy is a good read. Taken separately, the vignettes from the author's life are charming and amusing, and she's got just the right sardonic voice to pull them off in writing. As a whole, the book leaves you with a lot to think about. It's definitely successful as what it is, and if you like memoir you'll like this too.

Project 30: Save the Princess!

Prince Velor wiped the soot away from his eyes. His nostrils filled with the smell of sulfur mixed with his own sweat. At his feet, Avarice, the Dark Master, lay vanquished, his staff of power cloven in two by the prince's enchanted blade.

"I will ask you only one more time," the weary prince said, raising the sword to Avarice's throat. "Where is Princess Artemis?"

The Dark Master laughed - a throaty, pitiful sound, like the last exhalations of a deer. "You're a fool, Velor," he coughed. "You can search my castle all you like, from the highest parapet to the deepest dungeon, and you will never find her. You may as well strike me down now."

For a moment, Velor's jaw clenched with the firm resolution to do what was needed. He let his breath out, slowly, through his nose. "No," he said. "I will not sully my blade with blood as foul as yours." Velor sheathed his sword and turned away.

"Then you will die!" Avarice revealed a blade he kept concealed in the folds of his robe. He lunged at Velor, the blade held high, and then...

And then a giant bird came and took him away.

What? No, that's not what the book says.

And then a giant bird came and took him away, Daddy, and put him in a big nest, and raised him like a little baby bird, and he never hurt anyone again.

Listen, Jenny, I'm not going to read you anymore stories if you're just going to interrupt me. Now, let me finish.

But you ALWAYS read this part, and it's always the same. I want a different story.

There's no bird, Jenny. Why would a bird fly into the Castle of Eternal Sorrows?

Maybe... maybe it got lost.

Then why would it pick up Avarice?

Maybe he looks like a bird, and maybe the bird was lonely.

Fine, then. A bird came in and took Avarice away. Victorious at last, Prince Velor stood alone. He wiped his blade clean and searched the castle for three days, but the Dark Master's prediction...

What did he eat for three days?

(ahem) ...but the Dark Master's prediction seemed to be true - the princess was not to be found anyway. Weary, the prince leaned against the cold, ungiving stone, when he felt a slight breeze move past his hair. Of course! A secret tunnel! Surely the Dark Master would keep Princess Artemis somewhere only he would be able to find her. Thus, summoning the last of the legendary strength granted to him by the genie's bottle, Prince Velor broke down the wall to find...

A big hole!

Well, yes, of course there was a big hole, but on the other side of it was Princess...

No! There was... there was another big hole.

Why would there be two big holes?

Because the princess got away!

She got away?

Yeah! She was like... BOOSH... and then she went home.

Through the wall? How did she break the wall?

Well, Daddy, she was really a really strong princess.

But it's a thick stone wall. Even the prince needed a genie's spell to break the wall.

Maybe, maybe she found one.

A genie's spell?

Yeah.

There was just a genie's spell lying around in her prison cell?

Yeah.

But that... Jenny, dear, that isn't realistic!

It's just a story, Daddy. There's no such thing as genies.

It's not a very good ending to the story, though. Why would Prince Velor need to come all this way to rescue the princess if she didn't need to be rescued?

Well, maybe... maybe he should have asked her first. If she didn't need to be rescued, he could have stayed home.

Okay, so if the princess isn't in the Dark Master's castle, how did she get home?

Ooh, Daddy! Tell me that story tomorrow!

Anybody read The Princess Bride? Well, this isn't at all like that book. The movie, maybe.

The little girl's voice came almost literally out of nowhere. I planned on writing a story where the hero breaks in to the cell where the evil wizard kept the beautiful princess imprisoned, only to find the princess already escaped. Adding the extra voice of the girl listening to the story helped this little story feel more like something I'd actually want to read.

Whenever I do a digital drawing, I find I lose patience VERY quickly. I imagine I could achieve a lot more detail with these pictures if I took more time with them. Eventually, I think I'll get to that place where I find digital drawing as palate-cleansing as using pen and ink. But that'll be a while, still.

This Is The Book I Wrote

I spent the evening drawing pictures on the iPad with my niece, Clarice. That's us, up there (and, when asked to draw a heart, I may or may not have included an Adventure Time cameo). We drew a lot more this morning. In fact, we co-authored a book. Here it is:

It's called Me, Me, I'm Daddy.

"This is Daddy. Draw him walking on the sidewalk. He's reading our book."

"Daddy saw a little girl. Her name is Clarice."

"Then they saw a bee."

"Draw Daddy and the little girl holding hands. And there are flowers and butterflies. Then Daddy stepped on a flower."

"Okay, this is the last page. Then Daddy found a little boy. That's Daddy's son. Daddy's name is Babadida."

The End.

Project 29: Come Away, Child

Come away, child. Oh child, come away.
The moon, she shines silver. The clouds are all gray.
The birds are all flying,
The wind is a-sighing,
And mother's a-crying.
Oh come, come away.

Come with me, child. Lay your head down.
The lights are all fading, all over the town.
The sheep are now sleeping,
The night crickets creeping,
And father's a-weeping.
Lay your head down.

Close your eyes, child. Oh child, come away.
The preachers are praying, with nothing to say.
The church bells are ringing,
The angels a-singing,
To heaven we're winging.
Oh child, come away.

I almost don't want to tell you where the idea for this poem came from...

In my head, this is a song lyric. The tune is some kind of blend between the melody in the link above and "Once Upon a December" from Anastasia.

More experimentation with linework here. I don't know how I ever thought I could draw wood without the rough hatching, like what I do on the crib.

Skyline in the Last Fallen City

Seems like a nice enough place to raise a family...

Experimenting with hatching. I'm finding a few preferred methods. The woven pattern I used on the sky is a great one, although it doesn't quite match what's being shaded. Long lines just feel too cumbersome. I find I like the results of hatching better when I use shorter, less exact lines. Sacrificing control helps the effect feel more organic. At least, to me it does.