And this isn’t a bad thing, no, really! As you know, I work Friday through Monday, but the office is suffering some emergency maintenance issues. The space is flooded and inoperable, so no one can really do anything until the mess is cleaned up. The best part is I’m getting paid for the time.

Of course, there’s always bad news, and it’s really my own fault. I’ve been playing Mother 3 during my downtime at work; it really helps kill the time, and it’s a great game to boot. Every night before I left  work for home, I’d make a backup of my EEPROM (save-game file) just so I could have the option of continuing the game at home. This past Friday came and went, I worked, I played Mother 3, but it was the only night that I didn’t make a backup. I was at the final final final boss of the game when I it was time  to leave, and guess what I didn’t do? That’s right. No backup of the save-game.

Now I’m all freaking out (not really, it’s just a game) that my progress since my last backup (a significant amount!) could be lost. What if the hard drive on my desktop computer at work was affected? There are any number of scenarios that could warrant either a hard drive replacement or wiping it out and restoring it fresh! I’m sure I’m just being paranoid, and the file is fine, but the chance is there.

So, take the good with the bad though. Ame and I have really enjoyed these days off.

More than a year has passed and I still can’t let it go. I have dreams about going back to my old job and being with my old co-workers having fun and making games. Sometimes the bosses are glad to have me back, sometimes the office has been remodeled to varing degrees, but the theme is still the same: I wish I still worked there.

Ame and I think I miss the socialization most of all. I used to go to lunch almost everyday with Rich and Joel (funny enough they don’t work there anymore either) and others. After losing that job, I occasionally spent time out with Rich and others, and that was a lot of fun. Ame and I like Chad a lot, he’s a good guy. Steve’s a good one too, it’s just hard to schedule an outing with him sometimes - especially now with the schedule that Ame and I keep.

At the job I have now, I get along with most of my coworkers quite well. Alouna, a semi-boss of mine, is awesome, along with several others, but it’s hard to have any interactions with people because the workday is tightly scheduled. When I used to go to lunch with Rich & Co., we were gone “for about an hour,” we came back, and then finished up the tasks for the day. Here, lunch time is exactly 60 minutes, and a friend may be scheduled differently. The upshot is you end up eating alone with no real way to socialize. Or I could just not be trying hard enough.

But who cares? This is a temporary job anyway. I don’t want to stay.

Rarely do I get the bug to work on a piece to its completion. It’s hard to say completion though because I pick every last nit to the end and it’s never good enough. “I should have done it this way,” or “I should have left that out,” or “this spot doesn’t look quite right.” I could work on one piece halfway to doomsday and not be done with it.

It’s funny though, I’m laughing at myself a bit for what I can’t get right. When you’re first starting out, anatomy is just a word. Caution to the wind! Arms look like this, I’m sure of it! The sure sign of an amateur is when they say, “But I just can’t seem to get the boobs right.” Then, you realize that hands aren’t something to be put behind objects just so you don’t have to draw them. Sometimes I still say, “Fuck it! The still living corpse of Liefieldbe damned, I’m obscuring these hands (Which almost rhymes - I’m surprisingly proud of that).” Somewhere in all this there’s an anime/manga phase (all of us did it), and I’ll admit it, no matter the shame: I had an offshoot of Furry in my history.

Anymore, I get caught up in small rendering problems. I’m not a trained artist, but I think I know what “rendering” means. Other balance problems bug me, or bad anatomy “uglies.” I need to look at the piece I’m working on again and fix the problems with it as best I can with as much elegance as possible and mark it as done. It’s on par with the other work I have on my wall and I may decide to print it as well.

Ultimately, I’d like to set up shop here and sell prints or do commissions and be like Brandon Bird. I’ve mentioned him at least once before - I wouldn’t say I idolize him though. More like… statuettize.

Indiana: Give me the whip.
Satipo: Throw me the idol. No time to argue. Throw me idol, I’ll throw you the whip.
Indiana: [throws the idol] Give me the whip.
Satipo: Adiós, señor.

Let’s get this out of the way as fast as possible. I like boobies.

When I draw, I don’t draw for you. I draw for me. I’m selfish that way, but I think of art as a sort of therapy. The world closes off and I get absorbed in my work. Sometimes I make great art decisions and I’m ecstatic, other times, it’s… not so good and I have to start over or try another technique. A lot of my art has boobies in in though, and let me tell you, if you’re the least bit prudish, boobies are the least of your worries.

The problem is, I want to share what I do with others. Do I risk embarrassing them or embarrassing myself? The best result is that if they’re not offended at all and enjoy the work - the worst is they condemn me to who-only-knows where and banish me (though I’m not sure that’s entirely the worst, that at least comes with entertainment packaged right in).

I think the problem I struggle with is legitimacy. There’s a raunchy quality to some of the pieces I do, pornographic is the word. Can an artist be taken seriously, even if it’s porn? I’d say it’s possible, but the quality of the art should be flawless in execution and style - anything less would be perceived as amateurish. That would put me in the dreaded realm of furry art. I am forced to admit some of it is very good as far as execution and style, but guess what? It’s still furry art.

Something I have discovered about myself though, I have no eye for fashion, or rather, no eye for coming up with something fashionable. Costume design is way beyond me, but I feel I have a grasp on anatomy well enough to distort it to my own style. When I have a director, an outside influence, or even a reference to copy, things turn out quite well. I still put my own slant on it, and it invariably turns out dirty, but if the subject is wearing clothes, the piece gets a nice bump from porn to erotic. That’s an excellent neighborhood to be in.  With erotic, you can still flash a nipple or any other naughty bit and still be not unacceptable. Erotic carries with it the connotation of class. The best example I can think of is the pinup girl. Well-executed forms, clean style, and

Pinup style isn’t my primary influence, but I will say it’s my latest direction to strive for. Now, I still make a porntastic piece more often than is probably healthy (or is it exactly as often?), but I try and that’s important. To be clear, my first influence is Bruce Timm of DC Comics and Batman: The Animated Series. You know the one. Whenever I feel I’ve gone astray or don’t like where I’m going, I look at his stuff old and new and study it.

But does this shift in focus lead down something more insidious like self-censorship? It all depends on perspective I guess. Like I said before, “I make art for me,” but I really like it when you like the art that I make. The acceptance and praise I receive for a good piece is much better for me than the relaxation I get from the craft. In order to make the art that you find appealing, I need to make my it more accessible.

I can happily say though, regardless of content, my technique is always undergoing refinement and evolution. My drawing tablet is a great investment, but I still use the mouse for more mechanical actions like clicking on menu items or choosing options. It’s hard for me to join the abstraction of the absolute screen-space to tablet-space, when I have a mouse cursor that’s relative.

It’s funny. Some of these posts are from a few days in the past and simply scheduled to show up in their due time. Something could happen to my ability to access this site and make updates and it would still plug along on its schedule.

What I’m really doing at 10:00 most mornings is stepping out of the shower so I can go to work. With everything up and running, I can take advantage of the atypical long down-times at my job and make posts for the whole week! The beauty is, if I want to, I can simply bump a post off to another day or make as many at once if I choose - it really is cool.

There are drawbacks though, my own main page poster program is not equipped to deal with scheduled updates (yet?), so I have to make them manually. That’s to be expected though, sometimes it needs a little hand-holding to work. Even the base functionality is a little incomplete.

Also, what if something really does happen, and I’m unable to get to a computer. Do I want to give the impression that I’m still making posts? Why could that be a bad thing? Immediately, I can think of a mundane example that can be applied to real situations. What if I make a post that says “My Pen is Blue” and scheduled for a week or so in the future. In the mean-time, it turns out my pen is really red, but I don’t change my post? It makes me fuckin’ liar is what!

“With great power, comes great responsibility.”
- Uncle Ben, Spider-man

Also, I’ve taken to adding quotes to the end of some of my posts. I think I like it, but I can’t guarantee one every time, and if there is one, it might not even make sense! It kind of reminds me of Jon Stewart’s “And now, your moment of Zen” segment at the end of The Daily Show.