Waffle

I was going to write something here about Leontien van Moorsel's gold medal in the woman's cycling time trial event (as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, which beats CNN.com's US-centered coverage hands down):

Three days after a horrific crash in the women's road race, Leontien Zijlaard-Van Moorsel of the Netherlands came back to win her first gold of the Athens Games in the road time trial today, easily defending her title in her favourite event.

The triple gold medallist in the Sydney Games was racing with bruises over most of her body but still finished first over the 24-kilometre coastal course in 31 minutes 11.53 seconds.

Heroic, huh?

But then I read about the games' organisers' link policy, and that sort of took the will to write about the Olympics at all out of me:

For your protection and ours we have established a procedure for parties wishing to introduce a link to the ATHENS 2004 website on their site. By introducing a link to the ATHENS 2004 official Website on your site you are agreeing to comply with the ATHENS 2004 Website General Terms and Conditions. In order to place a link embedded in copy interested parties should:

a) Use the term ATHENS 2004 only, and no other term as the text referent

b) Not associate the link with any image, esp. the ATHENS 2004 Emblem (see paragraph below)

c) Send a request letter to the Internet Department stating:

Short description of site
Reason for linking
Unique URL containing the link (if no unique URL than just the main URL)
Publishing period
Contact point (e-mail address)

Once the request has been mailed, interested parties can proceed to include the link and will only receive a response if ATHENS 2004 does not accept the link. All requests should be sent to:

The Internet Department
Iolkou 8 and Filikis Eterias str.
GR-142 34 N. Ionia, Athens
Tel: +30 210 2004 000
Fax: +30 210 2004 800
e-mail: (All information submitted using this e-mail address is governed by the ATHENS 2004 Privacy Policy)
terms@athens2004.gr

The above policy applies for links embedded in copy only and not to links using the official ATHENS 2004 Emblem.

Wankers.

BTW, I heard about it from Branko who read it at Retecool. I like their suggestions for alternative link images.

I colored three pages of Courtly Manners 2 today, bringing the total to 5. This takes me about 2 hours a page including cleanup, so I was a little too optimistic yestarday.
I'm now re-reading Geir's script for it. Here's his description of that first page I posted back in March:

P1.

Panel 1
Idyllic setting. Out in the forest, in a green clearing between the trees,
where sun rays filer down between the branches, surrounded by fluttering
butterflies, multicoloured birds and cute little fluffy animals.. Kel, rocking
a napping Fay. (Well, actually Fay rests in a hammock held up and rocked by
two animated tree-creatures while Kel leans back against the trunk of a tree,
munching strawberries and reading her favourite book of errant knights and
derring ladies. There must be SOME advantages to being a greenery-affinated
faery witch!)
Text: None, but Kel’s expression says it all: “Ahhh…. Peace at last!”
Panel 2
Kel starts mightily a mighty POOF! explodes just in front of her nose. The
tree-beings start too, snapping back and forth as if in storm.

Panel 3

Kel, quirking one eyebrow in surprise while the other is linear angered as she
reads a golden scroll dripping sparkling star-dust all over the place.

In the background, Fay (we see only the hammock) lets out an enormous WAAAAH!
The tree-beings now have reverted to be only trees.
Kel: “What the…”
Panel 4
Kel turns as Kra, enthusiastic as always, storms onto the scene. She is waving
a rolled-up scroll, identical to the one Kel is holding. Background solid
lettering WAAAAAAAAAH!
Kra: “Kel! Guess what I got in the poofst!”

Sorry, Geir, for not including any butterflies and cute bunnies. I,ehm, forgot. I'll put in some sheep later on if you want.

How should this be published? Not that I'll begin publishing it until it's at least halfway done and there's a good chance of me getting to the end in time, without interruptions. Right now, I'm leaning to publishing it as a free comic on Webcomicsnation, financed by either ads or donations. It has to be financed in some way otherwise I can't afford to put time into it (except one or two days every few months when I'm a bit depressed and suffering from writer's block), but I'd like it to be free so I can draw more of an audience. That part of my online work has suffered a bit in the past two years. Because WCN is free to me as a Modern Tales artist, I may be able to draw a modest profit from some sort of ad-based scheme, although I know it's a long shot.
In any case, I will have to start thinking about the business side long before I start publishing the work itself. It's boring but it has to be done.

Just to feel like I've accomplished something today, I've colored in the first two episodes of the sequel to Courtly Manners, which have been lurking in a folder for a long, long time (here's where the blog starts coming in handy as a memory aide: I posted about this project before on March 8, 2004, and the art was months old then). The flat colors and simple gradients look nice too.

I can color a page of this comic in about an hour this way, and it only takes as long as that because the inking in the original art isn't too good. I must have been looking for a sort of line that I couldn't get, or maybe I was tired or in a hurry. I'm inking much better lately.

I think one contributing factor to the writer's block is that part of me is itching to do something new, not to be locked into one extremely long story and a magazine strip project that has also been going on for three years. Courtly Manners isn't it, but it's still a welcome break from the routine.

Dyson's Creek is, by its own admission, stylistically derivative of Scary Go Round (which I don't think I have to link to again). At times, it gets eerily close. The few strips that I've read are pretty funny though.

Creator Ned Hugar stays close to his own life experiences, meaning we get a queer arts student angle which sets it apart from its main example. One to watch.

What if you held Olympic Games and no one came?

In the Olympic tennis stadium, Venus Williams' grunts echoed loudly off several thousand empty seats.

There were so few people at the gymnastics preliminaries that it looked like a high school meet.

Across Athens, on the opening weekend of the Olympics, the scene was the same: Wrestlers grappled in front of only a few hundred fans, archers had the old Olympic stadium nearly to themselves and softball was played before a backdrop of empty stands.

"I watched it on TV and when you looked in the background, you were like, `Wow, it's the Olympics and nobody is there,"' former gymnast Bart Conner said.

Athens organizers, in their rush to finish building some of the sparkling new venues, apparently didn't work as hard trying to fill them. And Greeks are proving to be selective about what they'll pay money to watch, despite ticket prices of as little as $11 a seat for some preliminary competitions.

That's led to some embarrassing scenes, such as Sunday when Williams played in front of only about 500 fans on center court in the Olympic tennis complex. It was so quiet that the first shout of "Come on, Venus!" from the stands -- a constant cry when she plays at big tournaments -- came in the next-to-last game of the match.

At gymnastics, huge sections of seats had no one in them while the women competed, a fact Greek state television duly noted.

"This must be the first time there is an Olympic gymnastics event that didn't have a full arena," a commentator said.

I'm completely blocked when it comes to writing Floor or anything else for that matter. It doesn't show in ROCR because I have both the momentum (or inertia) of a long story that I know inside out and a huge amount of already-written dialogue for this particular sequence. I can develop ROCR on the basis of that.
But the moment I start trying to turn my attention to Floor, my brain turns to mush and insists on being distracted by anything that looks even remotely shiny. If nothing shiny is available, I find something dull to distract me instead.
I'm already late for the editorial deadline for the script, and it's only the fact that the head editor's on holiday and has left a big gap in the schedule to deal with everyone else's holidays that I'm being spared from having editorial wrath rain down on me. I've called in reinforcements from a writer who's helped me out before, but I'm holding out against hope that I will break out of this.

Writers in the audience: What's your writer's block cure?

I liked this panel from the ROCR page for Monday, August 23 so much that I made it into a promo image. It's not the best graphic design I've done for these promos, but I'm not good at that (and don't enjoy it) anyway, and the picture is strong enough to carry the graphic on its own.
And just for once, I had space to put my name in!

Looks like the dominant theme for the day has been to plug stuff. Let me finish off with one more:

Irrational Fears, August's Modern Tales Longplay comic, is worth the price of a Modern Tales subscription all by itself. It's by Ursula Vernon, and features a chupacabra representation of herself battling monsters, aided by a dust bunny. It has the same dry humor that makes her fantastic Graphic Smash feature Digger such a joy, and best of all: it's all in color! She's pretty damned good at that too! A must-read.

Shaenon Garritty, Modern Tales Longplay's editor, decribes it as follows:

Ursula Vernon is one of my favorite new webcartoonists. Her fantasy epic Digger, about a resourceful wombat lost in a distant land of Hindu gods, shadow children, and library rats, is frequently and rightly cited as one of the highlights of the Modern Tales sister site Graphic Smash. She also does illustration work for novels and RPGs. All in all, she's pretty amazing.

Which is why I'm tickled six shades of pink by the opportunity to publish "Irrational Fears," a full-length, full-color story which just happens to be Vernon's first completed comic. Thrill as a subconscious chupacabra descends into the depths under the bed to confront our greatest irrational fears! Go, on, thrill! I promise you'll enjoy it.

So that's me, and one of webcomics' coolest cartoonists recommending the work of another one of webcomics' coolest cartoonists. You can't go wrong with this. And if you sign up for this comic, you get to finally read ROCR's archives as well.

(more...)

In the Reinder Dijkhuis Forum recently:

• Rob nitpicks spelling and speculates about the Grimborgsman
• Rob comments on old-guy humor
• Bo forwards that English Court Jester newspost
• In the Nitpick thread, people are now discussing the Grimborg, Sinn Fae, and the eventual return of Tamlin to the story. Oh, and there is more speculation about the Grimborgsman.

Speaking of desirable things:
Exactly a month from now, on September 14, it'll be my birthday. I'll turn 33, so I'll probably be a bit sad. Oh, how I long for the days when my head was full of black hair and birthdays were the occasion to make up long, improbable wish lists that my mom would have to trudge halfway through town to even begin complying with!

Well I can't bring my hair back and after looking at pictures from those days I'm not sure that I want to. But I can bring back the joy of wish lists, thanks to Amazon! See my wishlist and if you're feeling kindly disposed to me for bringing you ROCR 3 times a week (or if you're a long lost friend who happens to be reading this after a google search), why not send me an item from it? It will make me less sad.