nixsight

• New piece up at Elephant Words, plus, also, I spent a big chunk of the week redesigning that mother! #

I have a new piece up at Elephant Words. It is called Confessional:

I’ve been in here most of the morning. I know his routine by now, although he hasn’t ever noticed me. I’m just another lost voice in this little dark box. With the door closed, I don’t even exist.

It was the end result of looking at this picture that Andrew Cheverton presented:

Palace Screen by Caroline Markham

… and then thinking REALLY hard.

By the way, the site just had a major redesign. So I hope you like it!

• The cold weather has rendered me braindead, and my fingers text-incapable! Guuuh… #
• I don’t think I’ve ever strictly come dancing. Although I may have had one or two accidents while frottaging outside the Sixth Form disco… #
• 30 Days Of Night, incidentally, is an awesome piece of survival horror. Hartnett is ok for once & the sound & editing makes for big horrors. #

This evening I have been mostly trying to get to grips with both a graphics tablet for the first time, and Manga Studio.

It is possible that I bit off more then I could chew. I’m really not sure whether I’m using either thing to their best capability, and it may be that I’d still do better drawing conventionally. Still, both were big fun, and I definitely think the tablet is something that I’ll want to use lots more.

I’ll be honest, my first couple of attempts with drawing freehand went badly… not sure if it was nerves, or just a badly organised workspace, but whichever it is, I ended up tracing from a couple of photos, just to get used to the tools.

I was going to tell you all about it, but the resize job that the site is doing to fit the images on the page is completely knackering them. If you’re interested, head over to my Flickr account (link in the image below), to see the different stages of this Work In Progress:

I have mentioned Scary Go Round before, but I have a secret…

While I’m fairly certain that the main reasons I enjoy the strip are the pretty art, the outlandish stories, the likeable characters and the charming irreverence, I noticed a change recently in the way some of the art, or more correctly some of the women in the art, looked to me.

I mean, they had always been drawn in quite sympathetic and cute ways, but suddenly, I was starting to notice a kind of… sexiness… that I hadn’t noticed before.

Now, I’m really not sure whether the phenomenally talented John Allison has always drawn the girls sexy, and I just hadn’t noticed, or it’s actually a change in my mental wiring, but for a while there, I almost didn’t notice the story, so busy was I, looking at the lovely Shelley Winters, the adorably spunky Amy Chilton, or the (possibly innappropriately young and improbably named) dark princess, Esther De Groot.

Goth Love Can Be Unexpectedly Soothing
Esther and Shelly in a Clinch

(more…)

Chev pointed this out:

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html

Interesting reading for anyone, as many of the items raised occur across lots of genres… fraught reading for writers, though.

Luckily, I think I manage to avoid most of the pitfalls instinctively, but stray dangerously close to some of them on occassion!

Hold, originally uploaded by Nick Papaconstantinou.

This is this week’s image at Elephant Words.
Go over there to see how our writers decode it, one a day, all week.

Image by Nick Papaconstantinou at flickr.
Inspired by the story “pennyappleblack”
by Andrew Cheverton

This is the first bit of Elephant Word inspired art I’ve done, and as such is my first ever piece of fan art, I reckon. I’m quite pleased with it. Click on the image to get a better look at it, because it looks a lot better before being resized for this site.

• Geek City – I have just geotagged, as closely as possible, all but about five of my photos at Flickr. Sigh. The internet is both dumb & ace! #
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/nixsight/map/ #
• I am not a fan of ideas like the "Foamee" … It just reminds me far too much of all the ‘nanigans that goes on at Facebook. YUCK! #

• Why does the song "Easy" by Groove Armada induce my dog to bark uncontrollably, when nothing else gets a yelp out of her. #
• Does it say something sinister about me that I still keep the track, despite having no clue how I got it & only playing it on shuffle? #