Gracious Anthracite @anthracite@dragon.style

Is it #introduction time again? Sorta seems to be.

Hi, I'm Peggy, and I run dragon.style. If "paying $20/mo to keep it up, putting off updating it for a year, and occasionally opening the place up for new users" qualifies as "running" it.

I am a trans lady who spends most of her time drawing complicated sci-fi comics and sort of earning a living doing that via Patreon.

Adobe Illustrator has been my main medium since 2000, it's a pretty unusual choice but it works for me.

I used to do burlesque, then pole dance, as a hobby and a way to stay fit. I miss it and should find something similar again.

You may know me from elsewhere as Egypt Urnash.

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Drat. The display name field does not have room to change my name to "Gracious Anthracite, Procurer of Tiny Cakes". I suppose I could edit that but I am really not in the mood for that right now.

It is really amazing how much more high-energy "Hover" becomes when one of the Hideki Naganuma tracks comes on. You're puzting around the city to inoffensive synths, then you pick a mission, and all of a sudden you're zooming along while singing "TAKE ME UP TO HEAVEN ABOVE! TAKE ME UP HIGHER UP HIGHER UP YEEHAW!", and the game's not any faster or slower but it sure *feels* faster.

In celebration of dragon.style being a year old: have an invite code. Good for ten people; pass it to a chill friend.

https://dragon.style/invite/mZQxSWBa

Mastodon is a week or two past two years old: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/10/mastodons-2-year-anniversary/

And dragon.style will be one year old tomorrow.

My dormant account on mastodon.social was apparently created about one month after the initial announcement of the whole project, so I guess that makes me an Early Adopter for this whole thing. I've been enjoying not having to chop my thoughts up into Twitter-sized chunks any more; it's been a pleasant perk in a year that needed little perks badly.

New page of Parallax up on Patreon, along with a few other finished pages that I should get around to putting up for public view, and roughs for the next few pages!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/22046111

Character fragment: City witch with a pigeon familiar. Nobody ever pays attention to pigeons but they are ubiquitous. A useful pair of eyes to watch through.

Watch out for city hawks, though.

Okaaayyyy

It starts off with a bombastic narrator telling me about Previous Shit and I really had no clue if I had accidentally rented the third disc or if it was continuing the 2D one or what and I really just did not care; the fundamental experience Star Wars was trying to evoke was "seeing disconnected episodes of an adventure serial" and I was kind of amused to see that it had now become exactly that.

I really have no idea if I will continue to watch the rest of this disc, never mind the next two in this season or the other five seasons. I might watch the behind-the-scenes extras, though. That feels like the most likely place to learn something from.

Aaagggh "Journey of the Sorcerer" has been stuck in my head all yesterday and this morning ever since I did that little Arthur Dent drawing

Meanwhile, at Scarecrow Video...

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To Cartoon Adaptations

http://egypt.urnash.com/blog/2018/10/12/the-hitch-hikers-guide-to-cartoon-adaptations/

* The spacesuit has invisibility capabilities; when Arthur's not using it for that he has it just display whatever random imagery/video we feel like genlocking in there.

* The spacesuit can recycle his fluids into a substance almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

* Perhaps it is the latest model of the Guide? Compacts into an easy-to-carry box of roughly Gameboy size when not in use. It does NOT have a Genuine People Personality. Nobody wants that when they're floating alone in the void of space.

* Every episode starts cold with Arthur in some tranquil setting, when suddenly, disaster strikes and he is, once again, floating in the cold void of space. He sighs, dons the spacesuit, and begins reciting something similar to the Litany Against Fear centered around the words "Don't Panic". Cue "Journey of the Sorcerer" or some imitation thereof, opening credits; Arthur turns on the Thumb capability of his suit, closeup on his hand making a hitch-hiking gesture as the music climaxes, smash cut to episode title as the music fades.

This morning I got stoned and decided that a galaxy-pattern catsuit under the bathrobe I still hadn't bothered changing out of was a really good fashion choice for the morning. Then Nick said I looked like a far-future Arthur Dent who has truly become a hoopy frood who knows where his towel is. Because really, what is a bathrobe but a towel you can wear? He had it with him *all along*.

When he's not travelling, that spacesuit is *always* with him. It probably converts into a useful backpack or something. Because after what he's survived, there is *no* way Arthur would want to let that thing out of his possession. Ever.

I feel like I barely did anything today. I did some serious prep work for this crazy spread I have planned, but I didn’t actually DRAW anything, so it feels like I did nothing.

I wonder if artists who had to mix their own paints back in the Renaissance era felt the same way after a day they spent on nothing but mixing paint and stretching canvases and other prep work. It’s important, it needs doing, but it doesn’t feel like PROGRESS.

preparing for eye pain http://egypt.urnash.com/blog/2018/10/11/preparing-for-eye-pain/

It has been Made Safe.

Mostly.

This is my reference key so I can remember which colors are going which way. When I want to see the evolving illustration in its FULL HIDEOUS GLORY I just have to alt-drag the B&W versions of the styles over the corresponding flat-color versions, one by one, and I will briefly sear my eyeballs.

The area I'm drawing is *not* hospitable to the main characters, and I want you to feel just as alienated and out-of-place as they do.

Well this set of pattern fills isn't going to be eye-aching to work with in the slightest. Nosirree.

These rectangles are all perfectly horizontal; any curving you see is caused by bugs in your visual cortex.

I am really glad I know ways to use nice solid placeholder gradients instead of trying to draw with this directly.

Oh damn I just found out that Illustrator's perspective mode can do three-point perspective. Which is pretty much exactly what I need for this giant Escher-esque spread.

and i'm not even stoned, just really distractable - I should probably eat, I bet that'll help that, it usually does.