Alice, revisited (unfortunately on graphing paper)

I was supposed to be goofing around with scratch paper, but then this happened.  I really like how she turned out, and I think my stylization is really finding itself.

Anyway, this is Alice, the hero of my Big Narrative Project Thing, looking remarkably badass.  Yes, that is a Spinal Tap t-shirt she’s wearing; she’s a biracial Jewish engineer with (ambiguously dyed) red hair and (ambiguously contact lensed) green eyes, so why WOULDN’t she be a metalhead, too?  The glowing stuff emanating from her gloves is not magic, but technological in origin.  The quotation that I wrote in on the side is from the story itself, and it really nicely sums up her character very nicely without giving away any of the plot.

 

For those who missed 2013, here’s the important stuff

First of all, I’d like to apologize for not having my demo reel up yet.  I’m at home for the holidays right now, and whenever I have had the time to work on it, it’s been either too noisy to record or other family members have been sleeping.  So, it’s not ready yet, tragically.  But it will be soon!  Anyway, here’s my super-condensed 2013 year in review.  If I’d had more time to prepare, I’d have written something more comprehensive, but that’s life for you.

• Once again, everyone expecting the world to end, society to collapse, or disco to return to the mainstream have been proven wrong.
• On the downside, we now have only one year left for the invention of self-tying shoes and hoverboards that we were promised in Back to the Future 2.
• Netflix has started a campaign of kicking the television industry in the pants, and it is awesome.
• A low of stuff went on in the music world, but the only development I care about is KT Tunstall’s Invisible Empire, because it was beautiful and nearly made me cry.
• Lots of great movies came out. Well, I thought they were great, anyway. Other moviegoers might think otherwise, but there’s a reason why I’m a happier person than they are.
• In the video game world, Microsoft committed PR seppuku, and Sony’s been cheerfully cashing in on Microsoft’s pieces of metaphorical pie. Nintendo, meanwhile, has entered a new state of not-giving-a-damn Nirvana, and is doing very well for itself.
• Much new Internet memes. So funny. Wow.
• I got back together with my lovely girlfriend, have actually become surprisingly good at self-taught drawing, and got an A on my thesis on cultural integration in the 19th century Congo. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

Houston, Tranquility Base here. The blog has landed.

Before I post anything else, I thought I might as well post a short intro.  I’d hate to start things off with a bare blog.  So, here are five things about me that you might want to know.

• I grew up in Germany, Japan, and England before returning to the US at age 13.  So, yeah, I’m a DoD Brat (like a Military Brat, but my parents were civilians).  Third culture kid, and so on.  I prefer to take a global view of things, overall.
• When it comes to art/entertainment (I don’t believe that there is any meaningful difference between the two), I tend to like just about everything.  If I’m not bored or outright offended by something, I generally don’t think it’s worthwhile to have any strong negative opinions on it.
• Sir Terry Pratchett is, in my humble opinion, the greatest writer who has ever lived.
• I study history, and I write a lot on the subject.  The closest thing I have to a specialization is in what the late Douglas Adams called ‘the fundamental interconnectedness of all things:’ the often surprising ways that different parts of the world have influenced each other throughout history.
• I am neither a cat nor a dog person.  I like them both, but for very different reasons.