It hurts sometimes.  When an eight year old boy’s down to weeks to live.  When there’s death all around, and there’s no happy ending to be found.  The seminary students can preach, “there is a time, there is a place”, can speak of their god’s love and grace, But where does that put me?  What can I give?  There’s no heaven above, no redeeming dove.  ”They’ll be in a better place”?  Well, there’s no pain in dead space.  There’s just nothing, a void, an all-consuming terror that no one wants to face.  Your kid is dying, mother’s dying; I won’t hurt you more.  Say there’s nothing out there, your belief is a lie, so when you’re dying—that’s it, the end is to die?  No reunion in the hereafter, just a few moments to cling to that are never enough and can never heal your soul.  I can’t make you feel better; all I have is me.  I’ve got a hug and the words “I’m sorry”.  And I am, I just wish there was more I could do, but—damn.

There’s nothing.

Death is the end, and it’s hard, and it’s lonely, and I would change that if I could.

Which is not to say anything other than to express the sadness and helplessness I feel when I have friends and family who are facing a tremendous loss.  It’s unpolished.  I know that.

boggletheowl:

I’ve been getting a lot of these lately, and I guess I just want you all to know what I think when I read them.

littlemissmutant:

This is my best guess at reasoning with the version of me that’s gonna wake up 5 hours from now

alicexz:

This is like the artist’s version of when people tell girls “if you don’t want to get raped don’t walk down the street in a short skirt” basically

There’s a reason why I don’t like to get cards for people—why I wait and say something to them in person.  

A Card is one more thing to open, is one more little thing that you have to go through.  

Now, around Christmas, you may not mind, you know, people like their Christmas cards.  And if you’re in the hospital, it’s been a long time, and you’re sick, or you’ve got a broken leg or something, something that doesn’t prohibit you from thinking normally but does mean that you can’t really do anything physically—you have to be there—sure, I can see another card being welcome.  

But in general—with sympathy cards, congratulations cards and everything?  

The store-bought ones always look too pithy; they try too hard, either to be too serious or to be too funny.  Either they go out of their way to make a joke about it, whether or not it should be joked about, or they go out of their way to be flowery, insincere in their regrets.  

None of their words are mine; I’d rather use mine, my own words.  

Well, you could write your own card.  I don’t want to write my own card, because on the card, my words also sound insincere.  How many times can you say “I’m sorry”?  How many times can you say “Congratulations”?  

Definitely don’t mix those two up.  

But I can only write, “I’m sorry”, “My thoughts are with you”, “My sympathy to you”, and I can only write it so many different ways before it begins to sound redundant, especially in the flood of other things that I’m sure you have received, you who are grieving, you who are hurting, you who are celebrating some enormous achievement.  

So I’d rather wait and say it in person.  In person, I can put some emotion into my voice, even though I don’t normally manage to do so.  And in person, I can hug you—I can hold you, I can clasp your hand.  Any gesture that I make on a card will be strictly written, strictly artificial.  A gesture that I make in person may seem forced, but is at least real.  

It’s why I don’t send cards.  It’s why I don’t call right away, either.  Adding another burden to someone’s list of things that they have to deal with, when they’re dealing with an extreme loss or they’re dealing with an extreme accomplishment—

It’s an expression of sympathy, and I presume they do appreciate that, but at the same time, I’d rather wait and offer it to them on a day when everyone else is not, on a day when they might need it more.

If that makes sense.

alicexz:

Do you ever just, like you’re listening to this great song that you’ve looped about 9000 times and this time you become acutely aware of the 9000 previous times you’ve heard this song and thEN SUDDENLY YOU’RE SO SICK OF IT THAT YOU CANNOT BEAR TO LISTEN FOR ANOTHER SECOND and you scramble to turn it off and just breathe heavily trying to control your sudden flare of murderous hatred

Sometimes, I forget how young other people are.  There’s not that much difference between someone here who’s nineteen, and myself at twenty-three.  We have a lot of similar life experiences, etc.  But even last year, it was weird when I would talk to the students in my “senior seminar” class—meant to help us suss out our lifeview and explain it to fifteen other kids who we had no reason to share with—and realize that they were sheltered from 9/11 for a few years after it happened.  They had never heard of Oz (the HBO show, not the Wizard’s hangout).  They looked at conventions and cosplay like the fetishes of a few obsessive fringe elements, something bizarre and unreal.  

Which is a large part of why I did not relate very well to those kids.  Not those particular things, no; simply that we were so different.  They relied on key similarities that were shared amongst the group in order to explain themselves; I was lost in many of those cases.  And when I tried to rely on things that I was often able to take for granted with people of my own age, I fell through the cracks of our differences.  These gaps could have been bridged with medium-long explanations, but that more or less invalidates the purpose of a class that is meant to make you feel more secure in your own self.  I understand me.  It’s the rest of them that I wasn’t too sure about.

I haven’t cried this much over a book since.  I don’t even remember when.  But so worth it.

The effects were gorgeous.  Flawless?  No, but I am a sucker for a plethora of colours and images.  James Franco/Oz’s entrance to the land of Oz (exploring it post-tornado arrival) was lovely.  The score was wonderful, complementing the film without overpowering it or being underwhelming.  At times, it reminded me of Tim Burton’s recent Alice in Wonderland (no surprise, considering that Danny Elfman was responsible for the music for both, and that both films were Disney-based).  

The costuming and sets were fun—my only complaint would be Mila Kunis’s makeup once she has turned into the Wicked Witch.  It looked a little too unnatural (well, duh, but even for a simple transformation). 

No, my main complaint with Oz was a combination of the story and the acting.  Or perhaps the direction?  Mila Kunis’s character is unbelievably innocent and naive, right up until she is super evil hear her cackle.  James Franco seems to be trying too hard to convince the audience—and the other characters—of what he is saying.  Although this could be a subtle attempt to convey that Oz is not that good at what he does, that seems a little unlikely.  

Michelle Williams’s character (Glinda) is also a little too innocent at times—miles less so than Kunis/Theodora, but nonetheless a complaint.  Sometimes the acting comes off a little flat.  It’s hard to say whether that’s due to a lack of depth in the character, the actor, the direction, or something else entirely.  

The script is pretty good most of the time, although there are a few instances when the writers chose to hit you over the head with exposition.  To quote something said too often, please show, don’t tell.  

Also, I’m guessing it’s super intentional that Oz’s love at the beginning of the movie is about to marry John Gale.  Dorothy Gale will be born in Kansas a short time later.  That seems too pat (that connection is not necessary), but it is the kind of thing that people like to stick into their children’s movies, sooo.

It’s a fun romp if you have a few hours to kill and are feeling mildly forgiving.  There are apparently plans in place for a potential sequel?  Interested to see how that might go.

mingdoyle:

My thoughts on photo-referencing: I don’t do it enough.

Either subconsciously or unthinkingly, over the past few years I’ve made it my mission to draw all my sequential work with no referencing at all. I don’t think this was due to any sort of cockiness, i.e., “I can draw this better than real life, so why bother looking at reference?,” but rather out of a genuine desire to just magically know how to be able to draw anything, always.

Of course that’s a lofty and unrealistic goal, and even now, about 6 years into drawing comics professionally, I still feel like an absolute beginner in most ways. Maybe that’s due to having studied fine arts rather than illustration or comics, and never having formally learned how pesky little things like perspective and pacing worked.

Anyway, the point is that now, I’m finally starting to admit that I may not just be able to come up with everything off the top of my head (though I certainly do try that approach, nine times out of ten). I remember something my friend and great influence Eric Canete said to me several years ago, when I asked him to look over my first set of substantive inked comic pages: “Is this supposed to be the inside of a car? I think it might be, because of the seatbelts, but why don’t you try looking at the inside of a car?”

Oh, ouch! But Eric really did have a great point. Observation is often the best teacher.

To that end, I’ve been using photo reference in about 10-20% of my panels on MARA, which is more than I’ve ever used before. Here’s an example of one of my most extreme instances of photo-referencing so far, from photographs, to thumbnails, to semi-finished inks. There’s my whole process.

Maybe some people still view photo-referencing as cheating, but more and more I view it as a kind of exciting evil. Sure, looking at a photograph isn’t as creatively “pure” as pulling something fully formed from your own mind, but if it helps you grow? Then I suppose I’m for it. I’ve been very preoccupied with bettering my craft and not painting myself into a rut through sheer stubbornness lately, so here you go. My confession. My name is Ming Doyle, and sometimes, I use other pictures to make my own pictures better!

NiBu:  I love having two Map Apps!  First world problems solved!  This is how you do it, first world!  Download more apps until problem solved!

There are days when I go so unacknowledged by people—even if I acknowledge them—that I start to wonder if I’m one of those ghosts in those stories that you read about—who died, but they don’t know it, so they’re going on about their daily lives, and you know, they think there’s something wrong with the other people, but really, it’s because they’re not there, they’re a ghost.

And it doesn’t bother me, and it hasn’t bothered me, and if I say it enough, then it won’t bother me.  Is the thing.