Playing with the Art Style

My last post I talked about working on my overall style as a first step toward getting back to the webcomic world.  I took page 1 and colored it in several different ways.  Each has their strengths and weaknesses.  I wanted to put them all side-by-side and see what they look like.  The house is supposed to be old with the last paint job coming in the 1980s.  The colors are supposed to be a bit odd and will be part of the plot.

Coloring is one of the skills I'm weakest at.  Tell me what you think.  What elements of each do you like and not like?  I'm good with constructive critique.  If I did a webcomic, which should I use?

This is the original black and white line work drawn with a pencil and black ink pens.

This version uses colored pencils and watercolor pencils.  

I did one with crayon on a whim.  

This one was made with Prismacolor markers

This last one I colored in Paint.net

All art created and copyright by Michael Dyer 2014.  Permission to share is not granted.

New Art Project

Many of you may not know but there was a time I was a webcartoonist.  I published about 90 strips of "Heroes of Audio Land," a silly superhero comic, 56 pages of  "Action Figure Cinema," and a couple dozen of "Blackberry House" and "Magic and Miracles."

Action Figure Cinema #18 - 2006

I've had a few stories floating around in my head for years and I've decided to explore making a new comic.

To do this I will need to figure out the art style.  I'm usually a pretty lazy artist and I would like to use this as a way to expand my artistic skill.

This is the drawing I have been working on for the first page.  The ink layer is basically done.  It was originally drawn to be shown in black and white but have been playing around with the color.  I digitally colored it last night.  Today I'm going to color it twice more.  Once with Prismacolor markers and once with high quality watercolor pencils.  Once they are all done I will scan all of them side by side and see what you all think.

Opposite Worlds Review

I'm a fan of reality competition TV.  I love Survivor and other shows similar to it.  So I thought Opposite Worlds would be cool.  Two teams, one in a house with all the modern luxuries and the other in a cave with almost nothing struggle to win challenges for $100K.  The show's premise was good but they did so much wrong.

1.  The host talks constantly.  There are so many buzzwords and show specific jargon that he spends a lot of time trying to tell what is going on.  When there is a challenge and he is doing the play-by-play there is almost no excitement.  The live TV aspect also leaves him forgetting lines, stuttering, and losing his place quite often.  I have no doubt that Jeff Probst has his moments on Survivor but at least they are edited out.

I was not a fan of his when he hosted Capture for the same reasons.

2.  Frank.  They guy is fun and I'm sure I would want to hang out with him.  Putting one person in the game that is so physically dominating that no one else can even compete with him is poor casting.  The audience needs to believe that anyone has a chance but Frank dragged his teams to victory over and over again largely because the show relied so heavily on physical challenges.

3.  The challenges were overwhelmingly physical.  There were a few puzzles and communications parts but by and large it was all about the brawn.  When it got time for the semi-finals to reduce the players to two they brought in a trivia challenge.  I don't mind that at all, but instead of players racing to get a certain number correct there were only 6 questions.  Whoever had the highest score would win.  The last question didn't even matter.  Better would be to give a target number and then someone who is behind could fight their way back into it.  

4.  The rules changed a lot. As a viewer I like to know what is going on.  A challenge, a decider, a protected (oh the jargon) and two people competing to stay in it.  Great.  But then one team has too many members so we balance the teams by switching one.  Then we have a team just vote someone out of the game like it was Survivor.  Then the quarter-finalists pick who they want to go into the semi-finalists with.  Have one system and stick with it.

5.  So Frank wins.  Hurrah and all that.  He stands up on top to give his victory cheer (roar?) and the fireworks go off.  They are so bright the camera literally can't see him any more.  On top of that they panned way out so we saw the tower he was on but not him.  The host droned on unemotionally about the victor.  Bad.

I can't imagine this show being renewed.  If it is, I hope that they figure out some formula to make it fair and interesting.  A new host, consistent rules, and more balance in players and challenges would help.

Thoughts on Scout Volunteering

I am very active in my Cub Scout Pack.  I am the Bear Den Leader (Grade 3).  I am Membership Chairman and Pack Trainer and Scout Parent Liaison.  I've also been chipping in on the Treasurer duties.  I have enjoyed doing all of these jobs.  A healthy Pack Committee spreads the duties around so one person doesn't become overwhelmed.  Right now I'm overwhelmed.

This is changing.

I'm going to stay a Den Leader.  That's the fun part!

My term as Membership Chairman ends after tomorrow night.  I'm not a big fan of paperwork and there is a bunch of it.  Filing our charter has been a challenge this year with lots of technical issues and things popping up only after I had irreversibly closed the Charter paperwork.  Tomorrow night I turn everything in at the Tillikum District meeting.  I currently don't have a volunteer to take my place.  The job is not hard for most of the year and only challenging in November if you aren't already overwhelmed with other jobs.

My term as Pack Trainer also ends tomorrow night.  This is a very easy job all year with a ton of nagging, pleading and begging for leaders to get their training complete in time for Charter paperwork to be turned in.  I am less than 24 hours away from having to finalize them and I'm still waiting for people to take their online classes.  I have someone to take this job from me.

The Scout Parent Liaison is mostly because I make myself the most visible (some might say obnoxious) member of the Pack. Everyone knows me.  Not hard.  I keep this one by default.

Treasurer duties are technically over.  My wife has been the Treasurer for the last year but work overwhelmed her and I took over balancing the checkbook.  Good news!  It balances!  The new Treasurer is in the process of taking it over.

In January I will be teaching two classes at the University of Scouting.  Both are about using songs and music.  One is for Cub Scouts and the other is for Boy Scouts/Varsity/Venturing.

I have also taken the helm of the Silver Lake Day Camp next summer.  There will be hundreds of hours of work involved in THAT one.  It should be a ton of fun though!

New Drawings, Getting Organized, and Catching Up

It has been a long, tiring summer so packed with activity that I've let the house fall apart a bit.  I'm putting the pieces back together now that the busy levels have gone down somewhat.  The house is getting cleaned room by room.  Paperwork is being organized.  Even my stamp collection is finally getting into its album.

I have a few weeks with little Cub Scout responsibility beyond the norm so I'm taking this time to make sure the pack records are all up to date and setting in place systems so that I can give the Membership Chairman job to someone else.

I've also been invited to teach at the University of Scouting/Program and Training Conference in January.  My Wood Badge patrol did an awesome presentation about recruitment and I would love to work with them to expand it and teach it to a different audience.  It has also been heavily suggested that I teach a class about using music in Cub Scouts since I'm most often known outside my own pack as the music guy.  Not bad for someone who can't play an instrument and can barely carry a tune.

My art is progressing rather well.  I've been doing a lot of work with ballpoint pens and am thrilled that things are coming out so well.  I started out with that media oh so many years ago and am returning to it.

I've also been participating in a weekly figure drawing workshop at Arts Umbrella in Bothell with live nude models.  I think this, more than anything, has propelled my art forward.  I've done a lot of artistic nude and a few erotic artist trading cards but drawing from life while surrounded by amazing artists to draw inspiration from has been invaluable.  In order to keep them off my blog where kids and the morally outraged can see them I have put all of my NSFW drawings on their own tumblr.  Please take a gander if you like.    Comments are welcome.  http://brassduckstudio.tumblr.com/

Here are some of the other drawings I've been working on.

I love the Cowardly Lion

The following cards were made to represent the 7 Wood Badge Patrols at my recent course.

Bear

Beaver

Bobwhite Quail

Buffalo

Eagle.  The drawing is older but is one of my favorites and I shrank it to ATC size as a print.

Fox!  My awesome patrol!

Owl

Political Memes, A Better Way

I have Internet friends who are chain posting images this morning either slamming Obama or the Republicans or Congress in general.  You are angry and it seems to you that sending out a dozen photos of quotes, half truths, and general "rabble rabble rabble" will somehow bring attention to your point-of-view.  My feed is so full of all of these that it is getting tricky to find things people actually write.

I know that people are passionate about politics.  I am too.  I would like to offer you a couple of suggestions before you send out that next meme.

1.  Do a quick search to make sure the sentiment you are reposting is actually true.  I've seen 3 this morning already that a simple search of any of a half dozen de-bunking sites would show you are just Internet lies.  Just because it is on the Internet and you agree with it doesn't make it true.  No matter HOW much you want it to be true/have faith that it is true/"my faith in God is stronger than fact so shut up!"  Yeah, I've heard all of those.

2.  Instead of posting a half dozen meme like blurbs from other people take a few minutes and actually write your thoughts down and print that.  Make it personal.  Don't just spout anger aimlessly into the ether.  Direct it and start a conversation.  You will come across as far more intelligent, and people may actually learn something.  Until we actually engage our brains (which batch cross posting meme pictures does not do) we will never move past the anger stage and start working on a solution to our problems.

3.  If you are discussing Obamacare, do be aware that it is a nickname for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and not a different law.  You look like an idiot when you say how evil Obamacare is and wish we could just pass the ACA instead.  Even polls show people don't realize they are the same thing.  The ACA is way more popular, showing that a good name is worth a lot.

4.  Politeness will get you more people paying attention to your views than cursing and vitriol.  You don't have to reply to every comment someone makes telling you that your opinion is garbage.  Don't feed the trolls.  It only encourages them to breed.

Wood Badge

I spent the last 3 days at Fire Mountain Scout Camp near Mt. Vernon, Washington doing advanced Boy Scouts leadership training in a program called Wood Badge.  35 adult Scout leaders from Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Varsity Scouts and Venturing Scouts were all divided into patrols (Woo Fox Patrol!) and given many challenges and lectures to increase our leadership skills and give us ideas on how to make Scouting even better.

We started off day one joining the Cub Scouts.  We played Cub Scout games and our Den Leaders directed everything we did.  Eventually we graduated to Boy Scouts and our den became a patrol.  Our Den Leader became our Troop Guide.  He acted as our advisor and taught several sections of the course.  As a patrol we elected a patrol leader, scribe, chaplain's aide, and assistant patrol leader and we rotated through the roles.  As the weekend went on our Troop Guide pulled back in increments until the patrol was pretty much doing its own thing while he sat back and nudged us when we needed it.  Just like a real Boy Scout Patrol.

We had team building exercises and had to write reports and make plans for a group project and listened to many speakers.  Through it all were songs, games, skits, stunts, contests, and the occasional flag thievery by mischievous Foxes.

We began at 7 am and went until 9 pm with only very short breaks.  To say it was intense is an understatement.  By the time we left late Saturday afternoon we were all exhausted but enthusiasm was high.  I somehow managed to injure my shoulder and it has been bugging me all day today.  Hopefully that will go away soon.

We go back in October for another 3 day weekend.  The difference with this one is that we will be hiking to a campground at the Scout Reservation and will be doing everything as a patrol including our own cooking.  We will be running a campfire service and an interfaith worship service.

One of the big aspects of Wood Badge is that each person must complete a major problem, called a ticket sometime in the next 18 months.  These projects are supposed to impact the Scouts around us and many consider them on par with some Eagle Scout projects as far as time invested and work completed.  It is one of the most challenging parts of the program.

I decided to make Cub Scout Day Camp my ticket.  Our outgoing Day Camp Director, Rosina, put over 600 hours into planning and implementing this year's program and since I'm already signed up to do it I figured there was no point putting in a couple hundred hours on a separate project when I could use my ticket to make this year's even better.  Thankfully Rosina was able to sit down and help me has out the multiple goals that the Ticket requires.  There is still some work to do on these but they are:

1.  To complete additional advanced training at BSA National Camp School in March.
2.  To implement an overview the "Leave No Trace/Outdoor Ethics" program into the nature study station including training the station leader.
3.  To implement the Boy Scout Slogan, "Do a Good Turn Daily" as part of the Citizenship station, including training the station leader.
4.  To implement the theme of "Community Service" throughout the Camp, culminating in a "Scouting For Food" food drive for local food banks.
5.  To successfully complete the 2014 Silver Lake Day Camp.

This will be a lot of work but I think it will impact a lot of kids (150-200) as well as the community.

So while I am so tired I can barely move, I am excited for the coming months as the second weekend of Wood Badge comes and goes and I move into the Day Camp process.

Before that though, Tuesday is the first Bear Den Meeting of the new year!!!

This is a photo of the Fox patrol's rocket.  Ours outflew the other 6 patrols and won most creative use of materials award.  It was modeled to look like our totem but most of the decorations were inside the bottle to minimize air resistance in flight.