By the way, my Dad's in town this week so I have a REAL excuse for not posting as often. ZING!
Monday, March 30, 2009
Doodles, Part 4 -- A Story! (Kind Of)
Okay, I'm back again. Here's another set of doodles.
By the way, my Dad's in town this week so I have a REAL excuse for not posting as often. ZING!
By the way, my Dad's in town this week so I have a REAL excuse for not posting as often. ZING!
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Doodles, Part 3 -- Getting Sticky
While looking around the web for Inkscape tutorials, I found a page that teaches how to draw your own liitle stick-figure dudes in Rich Burlew's "Order of the Stick" style. I played around with the style on paper, and said to myself, "MAN! This is a great way to say a lot with very few lines!"
Soon, I decided to try it out in a comic. This was the result:
As you can probably tell, I had already begun to think of this style as a viable one to use for a comic series. Doing this comic was my way of talking myself into it.
I actually doodle a LOT at work. I pass them around to my buddies and the patient, supportive people kindly take them and laugh at them. I started to think -- why not draw pictures of them, too, and not just of Angie, myself and Jena (whom we'll meet soon enough)? Hmm. I wondered.
Then, my wife expressed a little bit of envy that I draw stupid cartoons of my friends at work but not of her. The next step to take was clear, and you can see that I had already decided on it by the end of that last comic. Naturally, this one followed:
There are some in-jokes here, as is to be expected. The big boots are worn, in real life, by both Kim "Killenburg" Hillenburg and Allison "Yucky" Gross, but only during the winter. Leaky Pete there often makes "i'm pretty!" jokes, and they're great fun. Tony really wears that ankh -- in fact, he's the one I mentioned back in this post! I poke fun at Jena a lot because she is a truly sweet, funny, kind and admirable individual. And my wife has big boobs.
This series stretches out for 7 more strips, with an eighth one that I pencilled and began inking today. So...pack a lunch.
Soon, I decided to try it out in a comic. This was the result:
As you can probably tell, I had already begun to think of this style as a viable one to use for a comic series. Doing this comic was my way of talking myself into it.
I actually doodle a LOT at work. I pass them around to my buddies and the patient, supportive people kindly take them and laugh at them. I started to think -- why not draw pictures of them, too, and not just of Angie, myself and Jena (whom we'll meet soon enough)? Hmm. I wondered.
Then, my wife expressed a little bit of envy that I draw stupid cartoons of my friends at work but not of her. The next step to take was clear, and you can see that I had already decided on it by the end of that last comic. Naturally, this one followed:
There are some in-jokes here, as is to be expected. The big boots are worn, in real life, by both Kim "Killenburg" Hillenburg and Allison "Yucky" Gross, but only during the winter. Leaky Pete there often makes "i'm pretty!" jokes, and they're great fun. Tony really wears that ankh -- in fact, he's the one I mentioned back in this post! I poke fun at Jena a lot because she is a truly sweet, funny, kind and admirable individual. And my wife has big boobs.This series stretches out for 7 more strips, with an eighth one that I pencilled and began inking today. So...pack a lunch.
Doodles, Part 2 -- The First "Angie & Andrew" Comics
Angie is the aforementioned Anjiko-Z. She is my homey, my "work spouse" (well, she gives me candy, anyway), and one of my best friends. Naturally, I drew doodles about us engaging in moronic misadventures together.
By the way, I once asked my wife if she were bothered by my close friendship with Angie. In response, my wife paused a moment, scowled in confusion and said, "Umm...No. She's just your friend. I like Angie."
My wife is cool.
By the way, I once asked my wife if she were bothered by my close friendship with Angie. In response, my wife paused a moment, scowled in confusion and said, "Umm...No. She's just your friend. I like Angie."
My wife is cool.
Doodles, Part 1 -- The LCBs
Now let's move back a bit, to last November. I had a trainee with me at work (a great guy named Armando, aka "El Pionono", who moved to Texas and whom I miss very much), so I was able to let him take some calls while I listened...and doodled.
I produced these three cartoons. They are in English. Enjoy them.
I produced these three cartoons. They are in English. Enjoy them.
What Have I DONE?!
Seriously, now -- if I haven't been bloggeratin', what have I been up to? Where has all my stupid been going? Surely I haven't just bottled it all away, letting it fester inside me and turn into goof-mulch? Worse still, I haven't gone greyface and given it all up -- ?!
*gasp*
No, no, mah bruthas and sistahs. No.
I have been drawing cartoons.
They are terrible cartoons. The art is amateurish at best, and in a style totally ripped off from Rich Burlew at worst (except I don't try a fifth as hard as he does). The lettering is pooptacular (it's a word -- well, is is now). The inking looks like a third grader did it with his eyes closed and a bucket on his hand.
My co-workers, however (Goddess bless 'em) are kind and supportive people and they tell me that they enjoy the cartoons, and since I don't think they're all lying to me nor could they all possibly be suffering the same hallucination, perhaps there is a speck of truth mixed in with their patient compassion.
The cartoons are about my co-workers, though, so they're biased, each and every damn one. They just want to see more, more, more of themsleves rendered as badly-drawn stick-ish figures engaging in stupid SF adventures, is what it is.
I'm still gonna show 'em to ya.
Here's one to start with -- I drew it as a farewell gift (of dubious value, but a gift nonetheless) to my buddy Mike before he transferred to another state. He was kind enough to put it on his blog, and you can go look at it if you click here. It's from before I started ripping off Burlew and it's chock-freaking-full of in-jokes, so you probably won't think it's funny; don't worry, though, because you're right: It isn't.
Incidentally, I don't give a rat's poxy ass about college basketball, and "March Madness" can CENSORED my CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED with a CENSORED at Howard Johnson's.
EVERYBODY RHUMBA!
*gasp*
No, no, mah bruthas and sistahs. No.
I have been drawing cartoons.
They are terrible cartoons. The art is amateurish at best, and in a style totally ripped off from Rich Burlew at worst (except I don't try a fifth as hard as he does). The lettering is pooptacular (it's a word -- well, is is now). The inking looks like a third grader did it with his eyes closed and a bucket on his hand.
My co-workers, however (Goddess bless 'em) are kind and supportive people and they tell me that they enjoy the cartoons, and since I don't think they're all lying to me nor could they all possibly be suffering the same hallucination, perhaps there is a speck of truth mixed in with their patient compassion.
The cartoons are about my co-workers, though, so they're biased, each and every damn one. They just want to see more, more, more of themsleves rendered as badly-drawn stick-ish figures engaging in stupid SF adventures, is what it is.
I'm still gonna show 'em to ya.
Here's one to start with -- I drew it as a farewell gift (of dubious value, but a gift nonetheless) to my buddy Mike before he transferred to another state. He was kind enough to put it on his blog, and you can go look at it if you click here. It's from before I started ripping off Burlew and it's chock-freaking-full of in-jokes, so you probably won't think it's funny; don't worry, though, because you're right: It isn't.
Incidentally, I don't give a rat's poxy ass about college basketball, and "March Madness" can CENSORED my CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED with a CENSORED at Howard Johnson's.
EVERYBODY RHUMBA!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Once More, I Am Mighty!
Well, folks...I just played Encounter Critical.
Kyle and John, my two best friends from high school, came over and rolled up some characters. Neither one could resist the lure of the mutations chart, so we ended up with Routh, a human psi witch with lowered luck and a Barnabus, a blind, cursed robodroid warrior. After priming some minis for John to paint as we played, I ran "The Curse Of Count Obonos", an excellent module by Jeff Rients.
Oh, man.
I started things off with some embellishments of my own. I placed a wrecked damnation van in the center of town, and right away they decided they wanted it. They went into the tavern to ask if anyone claimed ownership to it, but none of the locals could say it was theirs.
Then Kildar walked in.
Kildar was a character played by a high school friend of ours, back in the day. Arrogant, lascivious, annoying as hell and a 50th-level demigod paladin or...something...I dunno. we all hated Kildar. We all wanted to bump off Kildar. We never got to bump off Kildar.
Until today. Sure, on Vanth he was just a 2nd-level Planetary Ape warrior, but it felt good to include him as a purely juvenile gesture. He ended up getting robo-kicked in the monkeynuts, after which a Lesser Feat roll was made to snap his neck.
Off to a good start.
Pretty soon Lady Bella showed up, offering the quest as detailed in the module. The player accepted the quest for 1000 GC and repairs for the robodroid (Kildar actually put some hurt on him). They then dawdled around playing in the van, wherein they found three skeletons: one an elf in chainmail and the others human, one in a jumpsuit and the other in a leopardskin bikini. No wounds were apparent on the skeletons, but further examination of the van gave a clue as to the cause of their deaths when Kyle's character opened a door and found a four-eyed, needle-toothed skull which began to wail horribly, eye sockets blinking rapidly and causing 2d6 damage to him. Yikes! I made that up on the spot. They were taking too long with the van so Bella told them that if they'd just get going, she'd have the van fixed up, too.
They left so fast...
The trip to the wreck was uneventful because I wanted to get them to the adventure site. Plus, the notion of a dungeon crawl through a crashed spaceship really seemed to tickle them, so I headed straight for the action.
John declared that Barnabus, his PC, would try to hack the disabled lock on the airlock at location F. He rolled a 01 on his Machine Friend roll, so I ruled that he was able to reprogram every door on the ship. Not only did that reward him for good thinking and good luck, but it eliminated a lot of futzing later on.
They actually made fairly quick work inside the ship, hitting up and getting the goodies from rooms 10, 12, 13 and 14. Luck was with them in the Prismatic Crocagator fight; I painstakingly sought 4d8 from my pile, rolled them for the monster's hit points...
...and got a total of 6. One mighty strike from Barnabus (using a bastard sword claimed from Kildar) slew the beast, and it also allowed the robodroid to level up. ZING!
They found the idol soon after, and a bad LUC roll caused Routh to mistakenly grab Volutina's representation upon the generous Impervium funbag; he'd made a good Seduce roll ahead of time, to explain to the idol what they were doing, though, so he escaped becoming a jackaltoad. When asked if they should haed back or keep exploring, John simply said, "Mission accomplished" and they got the hell out.
I threw in a quick encounter with some bandits, really just as an excuse for Kyle's character to level up, which he did. They got some GCs and Lynrd Skynrd 8-tracks, as well as some ammo for their new rocket pistol. Then my mission was accomplished, and they got back to the castle.
I didn't linger long on the epilogue. Suffice to say that they accepted the hands of the other two daughters, and soon found out about their tendencies, so they snuck off to get their van and get lost. First, though, Routh talked Lady Bella into joining them, which she did. The End, For Now.
THAT FELT SO GOOD.
In fact, what with the casual miniatures painting, the delightfuly warm weather, the invite for the sexy female NPC to join up and the occasional boob jokes...
...I felt young again.
Kyle and John, my two best friends from high school, came over and rolled up some characters. Neither one could resist the lure of the mutations chart, so we ended up with Routh, a human psi witch with lowered luck and a Barnabus, a blind, cursed robodroid warrior. After priming some minis for John to paint as we played, I ran "The Curse Of Count Obonos", an excellent module by Jeff Rients.
Oh, man.
I started things off with some embellishments of my own. I placed a wrecked damnation van in the center of town, and right away they decided they wanted it. They went into the tavern to ask if anyone claimed ownership to it, but none of the locals could say it was theirs.
Then Kildar walked in.
Kildar was a character played by a high school friend of ours, back in the day. Arrogant, lascivious, annoying as hell and a 50th-level demigod paladin or...something...I dunno. we all hated Kildar. We all wanted to bump off Kildar. We never got to bump off Kildar.
Until today. Sure, on Vanth he was just a 2nd-level Planetary Ape warrior, but it felt good to include him as a purely juvenile gesture. He ended up getting robo-kicked in the monkeynuts, after which a Lesser Feat roll was made to snap his neck.
Off to a good start.
Pretty soon Lady Bella showed up, offering the quest as detailed in the module. The player accepted the quest for 1000 GC and repairs for the robodroid (Kildar actually put some hurt on him). They then dawdled around playing in the van, wherein they found three skeletons: one an elf in chainmail and the others human, one in a jumpsuit and the other in a leopardskin bikini. No wounds were apparent on the skeletons, but further examination of the van gave a clue as to the cause of their deaths when Kyle's character opened a door and found a four-eyed, needle-toothed skull which began to wail horribly, eye sockets blinking rapidly and causing 2d6 damage to him. Yikes! I made that up on the spot. They were taking too long with the van so Bella told them that if they'd just get going, she'd have the van fixed up, too.
They left so fast...
The trip to the wreck was uneventful because I wanted to get them to the adventure site. Plus, the notion of a dungeon crawl through a crashed spaceship really seemed to tickle them, so I headed straight for the action.
John declared that Barnabus, his PC, would try to hack the disabled lock on the airlock at location F. He rolled a 01 on his Machine Friend roll, so I ruled that he was able to reprogram every door on the ship. Not only did that reward him for good thinking and good luck, but it eliminated a lot of futzing later on.
They actually made fairly quick work inside the ship, hitting up and getting the goodies from rooms 10, 12, 13 and 14. Luck was with them in the Prismatic Crocagator fight; I painstakingly sought 4d8 from my pile, rolled them for the monster's hit points...
...and got a total of 6. One mighty strike from Barnabus (using a bastard sword claimed from Kildar) slew the beast, and it also allowed the robodroid to level up. ZING!
They found the idol soon after, and a bad LUC roll caused Routh to mistakenly grab Volutina's representation upon the generous Impervium funbag; he'd made a good Seduce roll ahead of time, to explain to the idol what they were doing, though, so he escaped becoming a jackaltoad. When asked if they should haed back or keep exploring, John simply said, "Mission accomplished" and they got the hell out.
I threw in a quick encounter with some bandits, really just as an excuse for Kyle's character to level up, which he did. They got some GCs and Lynrd Skynrd 8-tracks, as well as some ammo for their new rocket pistol. Then my mission was accomplished, and they got back to the castle.
I didn't linger long on the epilogue. Suffice to say that they accepted the hands of the other two daughters, and soon found out about their tendencies, so they snuck off to get their van and get lost. First, though, Routh talked Lady Bella into joining them, which she did. The End, For Now.
THAT FELT SO GOOD.
In fact, what with the casual miniatures painting, the delightfuly warm weather, the invite for the sexy female NPC to join up and the occasional boob jokes...
...I felt young again.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
....So.
What the hell, right?
Well, here it is. I 'm kind of honked off about gaming right now, actually; specifically, about my lack of it. I just don't get to game. From 1 January 2009 to 17 March 2009, I have engaged in no more than 3 short gaming sessions, totalling about 15 hours of time. Hey, kids -- let's do some math!
The year is 76 days old. Let's divide that by 7 and call it 10.85...okay, 11 weeks. Let's assume that I work 5 days a week, so that's 76 days minus 55 = 21 days off. 21 days equals 504 hours. Let's assume that I sleep for 7 of those hours each day, leaving me with about 17 hours a day. 17 hours times 21 days is 357 hours not spent at work. Of those 357 hours, 15 of them have been spent in the enjoyment of the hobby that I love the most in the whole goddamn world.
15/357 = 0.0420168067.
Percentage of free time this year spent enjoying the hobby that I love the most in the whole goddamn world: 4%.
Okay, now -- why? What else am I doing? Not having players show up, for one. Not having time to host a game, is another. There are ways around it, but in practice that's pretty dang hard to achieve. I work Saturdays, now, so I really only have Sundays available for gaming, and I like to include my wife in such stuff. She works 3 Sundays a month.
I cannot tell you how much this pisses me off. Not that she has to work -- but rather, how little time I can devote to playing, and how little of it can actually get bloody USED.
The worst part is when I see all the other gaming blogs out there, people talking about how they played this and they got together with the friends and played that. And I'm sitting here like a fucking chump with my dice bags and my notes and my rulebooks and my eternal enthusiasm and I can't help but stop all of a sudden and feel like Robespierre shopping the Stetson catalog.
Let's make it even more pathetic, shall we? Consider this: I'm still really, really, REALLY enthused about the hobby. I take a gamebook with me to work every day; I brush up on rules. I even make occasional stabs at adventure notes. But that's slowly stopping, because I start working on something and then I think, "What's the point?! Ain't gonna happen."
Julia Roberts is really unattractive.
I've really wanted to run Fading Suns lately. I'd love to do something with Savage Worlds. Now and then I think about a Star Wars game and my leg starts jiggling like a happy puppy's. And then I think...
"...oh, yeah."
THAT'S why you haven't heard from me. That's why there hasn't been a blog entry, that's why there haven't been any posts on The RPG Site, that's why there haven't been any comments on my homies' blogs. I'm a pissed-off gamer, all dressed up and nowhere to fucking go.
Tomorrow I have the day off. Two of my high school buddies are supposed to come over and play Encounter Critical. We'll see if that pans out.
Thanks to jake and Jason, who posted comments on my last entry. jake, you nailed it when you said " just curious about how much you roll compared to thinking wishing hoping blogging hahaha" -- got it right on the nose.
Well, here it is. I 'm kind of honked off about gaming right now, actually; specifically, about my lack of it. I just don't get to game. From 1 January 2009 to 17 March 2009, I have engaged in no more than 3 short gaming sessions, totalling about 15 hours of time. Hey, kids -- let's do some math!
The year is 76 days old. Let's divide that by 7 and call it 10.85...okay, 11 weeks. Let's assume that I work 5 days a week, so that's 76 days minus 55 = 21 days off. 21 days equals 504 hours. Let's assume that I sleep for 7 of those hours each day, leaving me with about 17 hours a day. 17 hours times 21 days is 357 hours not spent at work. Of those 357 hours, 15 of them have been spent in the enjoyment of the hobby that I love the most in the whole goddamn world.
15/357 = 0.0420168067.
Percentage of free time this year spent enjoying the hobby that I love the most in the whole goddamn world: 4%.
Okay, now -- why? What else am I doing? Not having players show up, for one. Not having time to host a game, is another. There are ways around it, but in practice that's pretty dang hard to achieve. I work Saturdays, now, so I really only have Sundays available for gaming, and I like to include my wife in such stuff. She works 3 Sundays a month.
I cannot tell you how much this pisses me off. Not that she has to work -- but rather, how little time I can devote to playing, and how little of it can actually get bloody USED.
The worst part is when I see all the other gaming blogs out there, people talking about how they played this and they got together with the friends and played that. And I'm sitting here like a fucking chump with my dice bags and my notes and my rulebooks and my eternal enthusiasm and I can't help but stop all of a sudden and feel like Robespierre shopping the Stetson catalog.
Let's make it even more pathetic, shall we? Consider this: I'm still really, really, REALLY enthused about the hobby. I take a gamebook with me to work every day; I brush up on rules. I even make occasional stabs at adventure notes. But that's slowly stopping, because I start working on something and then I think, "What's the point?! Ain't gonna happen."
Julia Roberts is really unattractive.
I've really wanted to run Fading Suns lately. I'd love to do something with Savage Worlds. Now and then I think about a Star Wars game and my leg starts jiggling like a happy puppy's. And then I think...
"...oh, yeah."
THAT'S why you haven't heard from me. That's why there hasn't been a blog entry, that's why there haven't been any posts on The RPG Site, that's why there haven't been any comments on my homies' blogs. I'm a pissed-off gamer, all dressed up and nowhere to fucking go.
Tomorrow I have the day off. Two of my high school buddies are supposed to come over and play Encounter Critical. We'll see if that pans out.
Thanks to jake and Jason, who posted comments on my last entry. jake, you nailed it when you said " just curious about how much you roll compared to thinking wishing hoping blogging hahaha" -- got it right on the nose.
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