Ok, so it took me two weeks, (and one day,) but the latest issue is finally up. It's a double parter too and we finally get to find out what type of animal Alex is.
It would have gone up last night, but for the fact that it was the birthday of an old housemate of mine. I sent him a text to wish him happy birthday as he now lives up north, only to find out he was actually back for the weekend, so drinks were in order. After an evening of drinking, I got home after 1am, slightly worse for wear and decided it was probably best if I didn't work on the comic in that state.
My last post was one of my philosophical ones, albeit with a slightly negative slant, which was brought on by a bad case of the blues, which itself was brought on by my current situation.
Anyway, I'm feeling slightly better and doing the comic had a lot to do with that as I find it really satisfying to complete a strip and see it go up online.
I'm definitely going to carry on with the comic, because there are so many benefits to it: a sense of pride that I get from completing a strip as well as from being proud of sticking with it, the peace I get while drawing it and many others. Really the only downside to drawing the strip is that during inking, my elbows seize up and I have to take regular breaks to unlock them, but it's a small price to pay.
Otherwise, I'm still busy at work and trying to reassemble some form of social life in the wake of my returning to singledom. I'm going back to my martial arts class this week, (missed that for a couple of weeks too,) I've started to lose weight again and generally things are looking like they have an upward vector, even if the gradient isn't too taxing just yet.
Umm... I guess that's it for now. Enjoy the double issue (unless you're Sam, in which case you won't be reading it, but you will be reading this. Hi Sam.).
Bye.
Monday 30 July 2007
Friday 27 July 2007
Existence - the real Heaven and Hell?
I'm feeling a bit philosophical today, as I often am and I got reading some articles about the Matrix and some of the philosophy and metaphorical elements to it.
Now say what you like about the Matrix trilogy, but when the first film came out it was a sensation - no question. The effects, the choreography of the fight scenes, the plot... it all added up to a blockbuster. Thing is, if you are a half way intelligent person, it really made you think. If you were a halfway intelligent person with a curious personality or an interest in philosophy, it not only made you think, it made you puzzle over it for some time. What a way to bring philosophy to the masses!
I believe that subjective experience is all we have and that all of the subjective experiences and the associated emotional and rational responses we had to those experiences form our personalities to the greater extent. The word for this is Weltanschaaung, a German word that basically means the 'world view', or the summation of your life's experiences. This is distinctly different, but at the same time, intertwined with memory. Your Weltanschaaung is obviously held in your memory, but it's not just 'memories' in the traditional sense. It is your memories of everything that has happened to you and your responses to those incidents. It is the starting point for any new experience - your brain first refers to your Weltanschaaung to see if you have encountered something like this before and if so, how you responded as a point of reference.
It has been said that the only constant is change. People tend to think of themselves as unchanging - that I am me, no matter what happens to me. If I were to lose an arm, I would still be me. Obviously this has to do with the seperation of body and mind, but there is an argument to be made that the two are intrinsically linked - if the body dies, so does the mind and vice versa.
However, people do change, both physically and in their personalities. Tastes change in food, clothes, friends etc. Every ten years you effectively grow a new skeletal system, due to cell replacement. Every month your topmost layer of skin in completely replaced. You form new opinions based on new information. You may have a discussion with someone and come to ally yourself with a point of view they have, in which case do you assimilate a part of their personality? If this is the case, and we are creatures of flux, how can we define ourselves as constant, individual personalities?
The power of the mind is awesome, in the literal sense of the word and can affect a person's day to day experience of the world. People with cognitive disfunctions will experience the world in a much different way from someone without those disfunctions.
There is a culture, (and I'm sorry but I cannot remember which,) that believes that Heaven and Hell are real, but exist only in the minds of everyone. They believe that you pass through Heaven and Hell several times per day and that these concepts of Heaven and Hell are not places, but states of being - joy and misery. Everyone has the power to decide to be happy or unhappy - to let things get to you or to let things go, but it's not always easy to do so.
Strangely, I've never really done much thinking on the concept of Heaven, but I have thought a lot about Hell - again in more abstract terms than thinking of it as an actual place to be transported to after death.
My thinking is along the same lines as above - that it is a state of being that can be influenced by outside events but ultimately exists only in the mind of the individual.
However, I did think about what I would do if I were given the task of creating a human Hell. For me, Hell would not be about fire and brimstone or sulpherous boiling lakes. It would not contain demons engaging in painful tortures.
My Hell would be about frustration. To me, frustration is a far more insidious feeling than pain. Pain can be ignored or treated and is always transient at best. Pain will break people, but frustration is what sends them mad.
My Hell would be a place whereby the average person would be set upon by desirable enticements, (which could be a range of things, from money and possesions, to small amounts of power, to love...) designed to foster longing, only to be thwarted by other societal issues. My Hell would be a place where there was a great disparity between those in power and those without, but that those in power would knowingly foster hope in those without, whilst being safe and comfortable in the knowledge that 99% of people would never achieve what they hope for. This would be achieved by allowing people certain, small rewards which are completely negligable, token gestures to those in power, but which to those without represent the possibility of becoming one of the elite and therefore fosters hope.
Hope is the key to my Hell because without it, people would give up. If there is truly no hope left in a situation then people have no choice but to give up, but if even the tiniest glimmer of hope exists, they will work and fight and die in order to achieve the unachievable.
So, in short, my Hell would be somewhere where you work for things that are either ultimately trivial, or at best, transient whilst being constantly frustrated by your lack of any real power to change things, but being spurred on by the hope that one day you will be able to. Sound like anywhere you know?
Taking all that into consideration, I can honestly say that the last month of my life has been Hell.
Now say what you like about the Matrix trilogy, but when the first film came out it was a sensation - no question. The effects, the choreography of the fight scenes, the plot... it all added up to a blockbuster. Thing is, if you are a half way intelligent person, it really made you think. If you were a halfway intelligent person with a curious personality or an interest in philosophy, it not only made you think, it made you puzzle over it for some time. What a way to bring philosophy to the masses!
I believe that subjective experience is all we have and that all of the subjective experiences and the associated emotional and rational responses we had to those experiences form our personalities to the greater extent. The word for this is Weltanschaaung, a German word that basically means the 'world view', or the summation of your life's experiences. This is distinctly different, but at the same time, intertwined with memory. Your Weltanschaaung is obviously held in your memory, but it's not just 'memories' in the traditional sense. It is your memories of everything that has happened to you and your responses to those incidents. It is the starting point for any new experience - your brain first refers to your Weltanschaaung to see if you have encountered something like this before and if so, how you responded as a point of reference.
It has been said that the only constant is change. People tend to think of themselves as unchanging - that I am me, no matter what happens to me. If I were to lose an arm, I would still be me. Obviously this has to do with the seperation of body and mind, but there is an argument to be made that the two are intrinsically linked - if the body dies, so does the mind and vice versa.
However, people do change, both physically and in their personalities. Tastes change in food, clothes, friends etc. Every ten years you effectively grow a new skeletal system, due to cell replacement. Every month your topmost layer of skin in completely replaced. You form new opinions based on new information. You may have a discussion with someone and come to ally yourself with a point of view they have, in which case do you assimilate a part of their personality? If this is the case, and we are creatures of flux, how can we define ourselves as constant, individual personalities?
The power of the mind is awesome, in the literal sense of the word and can affect a person's day to day experience of the world. People with cognitive disfunctions will experience the world in a much different way from someone without those disfunctions.
There is a culture, (and I'm sorry but I cannot remember which,) that believes that Heaven and Hell are real, but exist only in the minds of everyone. They believe that you pass through Heaven and Hell several times per day and that these concepts of Heaven and Hell are not places, but states of being - joy and misery. Everyone has the power to decide to be happy or unhappy - to let things get to you or to let things go, but it's not always easy to do so.
Strangely, I've never really done much thinking on the concept of Heaven, but I have thought a lot about Hell - again in more abstract terms than thinking of it as an actual place to be transported to after death.
My thinking is along the same lines as above - that it is a state of being that can be influenced by outside events but ultimately exists only in the mind of the individual.
However, I did think about what I would do if I were given the task of creating a human Hell. For me, Hell would not be about fire and brimstone or sulpherous boiling lakes. It would not contain demons engaging in painful tortures.
My Hell would be about frustration. To me, frustration is a far more insidious feeling than pain. Pain can be ignored or treated and is always transient at best. Pain will break people, but frustration is what sends them mad.
My Hell would be a place whereby the average person would be set upon by desirable enticements, (which could be a range of things, from money and possesions, to small amounts of power, to love...) designed to foster longing, only to be thwarted by other societal issues. My Hell would be a place where there was a great disparity between those in power and those without, but that those in power would knowingly foster hope in those without, whilst being safe and comfortable in the knowledge that 99% of people would never achieve what they hope for. This would be achieved by allowing people certain, small rewards which are completely negligable, token gestures to those in power, but which to those without represent the possibility of becoming one of the elite and therefore fosters hope.
Hope is the key to my Hell because without it, people would give up. If there is truly no hope left in a situation then people have no choice but to give up, but if even the tiniest glimmer of hope exists, they will work and fight and die in order to achieve the unachievable.
So, in short, my Hell would be somewhere where you work for things that are either ultimately trivial, or at best, transient whilst being constantly frustrated by your lack of any real power to change things, but being spurred on by the hope that one day you will be able to. Sound like anywhere you know?
Taking all that into consideration, I can honestly say that the last month of my life has been Hell.
Tuesday 24 July 2007
Where's the damn strip?
Sorry there hasn't been a new episode of Exotic Soup for a couple of weeks - I've been ridiculously busy at work. We've been moving premises and I've been responsible for setting up all the IT for the new site. We've bought all new servers so I've had to plan and set up an IT infrastructure from scratch, which is something I've never done before.
The weekend just gone was my first day off in 3 weeks and I've been working long hours, so it's been difficult to find time. In fact the only reason I got a strip online a couple of weeks ago is because I already had it drawn and scanned so I just needed to upload it. I should've done a strip last weekend but I needed the time just to relax and catch up on some sleep!
In addition to this, my girlfriend and I sadly called it a day last week. She has a new job in a different city and between the distance and both our busy schedules it became apparent that we would not be able to spend much time together - if any, for the next 6 months or so, so we decided to just be friends. As far as break ups go, it was all very amicable and we're still good friends so you could call it easy, but break ups are never easy so this last week has been hard.
I promise I'll have one up for this week and we will finally find out what type of animal Alex is! Stay tuned.
The weekend just gone was my first day off in 3 weeks and I've been working long hours, so it's been difficult to find time. In fact the only reason I got a strip online a couple of weeks ago is because I already had it drawn and scanned so I just needed to upload it. I should've done a strip last weekend but I needed the time just to relax and catch up on some sleep!
In addition to this, my girlfriend and I sadly called it a day last week. She has a new job in a different city and between the distance and both our busy schedules it became apparent that we would not be able to spend much time together - if any, for the next 6 months or so, so we decided to just be friends. As far as break ups go, it was all very amicable and we're still good friends so you could call it easy, but break ups are never easy so this last week has been hard.
I promise I'll have one up for this week and we will finally find out what type of animal Alex is! Stay tuned.
Sunday 1 July 2007
A little dinosaur!
As always there are things I'm happy with about this week's strip and things I think I could have done better. For example, I've just remembered that I ruled one of the panel borders too long and didn't fix it in Photoshop. That's going to bug me now but I'm going to leave it as a reminder to tidy up my work for future.
Drawing a strip is a weird kind of process. I start out with the pencils and sometimes leave things a bit rough if I know what I want to do and sometimes tighten the pencils up so I have a definite line to follow while inking. Then you ink it and almost always it comes out a little different than you expected. Sometimes better, sometimes worse and sometimes just different.
Usually the dialogue will change right up to the point where I write it onto the finished panels. If I think something can be said more succinctly or if a line is the slightest bit ambiguous, I'll reword it.
It's a very organic process, much as I hate to use that amazingly pretentious term, but it fits.
Anyway, I have to thank my Mum for the 'little dinosaur' quote regarding Alex, which if you've read the strip over at web comics nation you'll see I have done.
I was going to do a double issue this week, to celebrate getting to double figures, but time was a factor and also because I already have next week's strip drawn, (actually it was the first strip I drew, but more on that next week,) and it looks like I'm going to be working thte next couple of weekends, (I'll be going to work today for a few hours shortly,) so I can just post the strip without having to worry about it this weekend.
I think that's about it for now, time is against me this week.
Enjoy this week's strip - Ka-spoot!
Drawing a strip is a weird kind of process. I start out with the pencils and sometimes leave things a bit rough if I know what I want to do and sometimes tighten the pencils up so I have a definite line to follow while inking. Then you ink it and almost always it comes out a little different than you expected. Sometimes better, sometimes worse and sometimes just different.
Usually the dialogue will change right up to the point where I write it onto the finished panels. If I think something can be said more succinctly or if a line is the slightest bit ambiguous, I'll reword it.
It's a very organic process, much as I hate to use that amazingly pretentious term, but it fits.
Anyway, I have to thank my Mum for the 'little dinosaur' quote regarding Alex, which if you've read the strip over at web comics nation you'll see I have done.
I was going to do a double issue this week, to celebrate getting to double figures, but time was a factor and also because I already have next week's strip drawn, (actually it was the first strip I drew, but more on that next week,) and it looks like I'm going to be working thte next couple of weekends, (I'll be going to work today for a few hours shortly,) so I can just post the strip without having to worry about it this weekend.
I think that's about it for now, time is against me this week.
Enjoy this week's strip - Ka-spoot!
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