Sartorialism and Being a Grownup

Those who know me have probably noticed that in the last year or two I have taken great efforts towards learning how to dress like a grownup. I added a lot of button-up shirts to my wardrobe, bought a few vests, brushed off my old suits, and began scouring thrift stores in earnest. The reasons for this are manifold: I work in a hat store, which suggests a different sort of dress code. I wanted to look more professional among my academic colleagues. I also got a little bit older, go figure.

This interest in dressing well has manifested in a growing collection of clothing that I own and a dwindling collection of clothing I am confident wearing. As I learn "the rules" of dressing well, I begin to realize that none of my secondhand shirts fit "properly", and that my busted old oxfords are laughable, and that my pants don't fit right. I follow a growing number of fashion blogs, pick up books on the subject, and train my eye to pick out nice garments, but I feel more constrained and uncertain about my clothing than ever, and without an Extreme Makeover sized budget for a brand new wardrobe, I am helpless to remedy the problem.

I guess it goes to show that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I've learned just enough to understand what is wrong, but not enough to fix things. Like a true neurotic, I have found a way to twist my passion for dressing well into a way to stoke my self hatred and make me consistently late to everything.

But let's get back to the instigation for this situation: I suspect that the age factor is the most telling. I turned 26 on the 4th, which puts me squarely in the "late 20's". This has heaped a mountain of insecurity and fear on my shoulders. The pressure to "be a grownup" is greater than ever before. The ugliest part is that I feel like I've been here before, several times. I've gotten tired of everytime some miserable aspect of life rears its head, somebody well-intentioned chimes "Welcome to being a grownup". How many layers are there to this? I fully suspect that as I'm dying someone will welcome me to the world of being a grownup.

And then again comes the backlash. In addition to sartorial blogs, I've been paying attention to a little site called The Art of Manliness. This site is aimed at regaining the finer aspects of masculinity that have been lost to our culture. While this site struggles to maintain a balanced hand in regards to, well... being a man without being an asshole, and it also manages to dispense some handy information, it from time to time features an article on lifestyle choices. The classic example is how men these days need to quit whining and "man up." That entire preceding paragraph would get a "quit whining and man up" response from the AoM collective voice.
So let's bring it all together. I am entering into probably the 6th of 7th layer of the crisis that's apparently just being and adult. I have yet to figure out a damn bit of what I am doing and have successfully managed to dig myself deeper and deeper into a dark hole (deep enough to bury a full grown man in, I would say). I don't have a good job, haven't finished this secondary degree, don't own a house, have a wife, kids, plans for the future, can't pay my bills, NONE of it--but I try to be a snappy dresser.

The funny thing is, to people who aren't in on the whole scoop, it might look convincing. I wear a tie sometimes, in proper context, instead of ironic tshirts and hoodies. I own a pair of goddamned oxfords. Plus: hats. Taking pride and interest in one's clothing is supposed to be a mark of a mature person, so I guess maybe I have a start. To me though, my interest in maintaining my wardrobe and collecting new pieces for it is identical to my interest in collecting new Transformers to add to my collection. So are both of these manly, or childish? I feel like I'm just a major fuckup wearing grownup clothes and trying to fit in. I'm going to stick with it because I want to sharpen my skills as a nice dresser, but it's not going to get my bills paid or satisfy my crushing disappointment with the "grownup" world.

This post was prompted by a couple of things, one of them being the AoM podcast on "Modern Immaturity", another was this little, "A Softer World" style sentence that popped almost fully formed into my head tonight, and that is what I will leave you with:

I will die before I forget the lessons I learned in childhood. Unfortunately those lessons are what's killing me.

New year and new crap

5 days ago we started a new decade. Yesterday I turned 26. Last night my stereo got stolen. Tonight I'm writing in this blog.
I let a whole semester get by without making or posting any comics. Like every semester, it was "stressful" and "hectic" and "demeaning", but moreso than usual on account of several mistakes on my part and poorly managed time. I know that I never used to have time to draw, I must have used to make time, and I need to get back into that. I have multiple projects waiting in the wings, in addition to working at the hat store, working on this film project and hopefully getting my report written so I can wrap up this master's degree. I notice more and more that I have trouble staying focused. I started this post about an hour ago and have gotten up to to fiddle with other things about 20 times. So I wanna get back on the ball. I want to have things to work on that I am excited about. I want to get things done.
So I'm coming back to this blog to, well, blog. There are things I want to blag about that are too long for twitter sometimes. If I look at this thing enough maybe I'll post some drawings? Maybe soon.

A new thing

Actlab vid-ay-o

(I worked 14 hours in a hat store yesterday)

Dumbchuck

Donut-Man on the move

Been trying to get this pose right for quite some time now. As an unconventional superhero, Donut-Man doesn't quite fit with your typical heroic poses, so I've been hard pressed to come up with good promotional images for the man, but I think him hurtling over a wall or the ledge of a building (he is NOT breakdancing) is pretty appropriate. I scanned this in HUGE but I've been reducing my pictures to 72 DPI/PPI for the web as per the directions of the Webcomics Weekly guys, now when you click on that link you can actually see it at a reasonable size. I have never understood why the hell when you click on a link to an image file on blogger the internet browser can't resize it. ANYWAY, so I'm working on DM and ST, hope to have the website soon, over and out.

Transistions

So I've taken a pretty long break since the end of the semester. Mostly I've just turned my brain off for that time period, but lately I have been trying to make some steps toward getting a website and some comics up. As a gesture, I put some ink on paper and came up with this: a ridiculous conversation between my comic avatar meeting his own new characters. Robot-tree the journal comic is on break right now, as I'm trying to decide whether the new project will work in the paper, and if not, whether I can manage producing Skiptown consistently and Robot-tree strips on the side. Eesh.

So what's up with Skiptown? It's a more plot-based strip which tells the story of post college graduates stuck in the college town they don't have a real place in anymore. Ally returns as a character alongside Joel, who has be retooled since his days in my OU comics. I'm rather attached to James and Porkbucket as characters, so I think they'll find their way in there as well, as well as some new characters. I'm still doing a lot of the planning and plotting for the strip, so I can't say when I'll actually get around to drawing strips. I also have to conjure up a website before then, ahh.


I'm thinking that the 4 panel layout is a bit much. You'll notice that Robot-tree varied in its dimensions wildly, which was unwise for anything designed for print, so I'm trying to fit Skiptown into a template. I think the size above is good, but I think forcing myself to work in 3 or 4 identically sized frames is unwise.

The last couple Daily Cartoons

So my editor didn't bother to tell me when he quit needing cartoons for the semester, so I kind of quit drawing them.. Here's my feeble attempts to continue the bumper nuts plot line and a total non sequitur:

IRON MONGAAAARRRR

I've been trying to improve my black and white shading techniques, so I've been setting up action figures in front of strong light. Here's Iron Monger!



I can tell that I messed up his legs (they're complicated!) but I like how I managed to get some things right on accident, like having the left edge of his body be a field of black. I wish I had put his hand over his chest with a halo of light around it, but I'll just have to remember for next time.

rooftop ahoy! Donut-Man 11

Okay, I have been doing my homework! I've picked up Eisner's Sequential Art and The Best of the Spirit. Did it make any difference? I dunno, I actually was extremely basic with the panels today, but I did use a first person POV for the bottom row, which was Eisner influenced. Hopefully I'll start messing with more stuff in the future.

Oh and also this:

Social action

2.
1.

In a weird bit of synchronicity, J-Ro has resurrected the topic of Bumper Nuts the same week i decided to address them. Apparently they are trying to outlaw them in Florida, which is both noble and a ridiculous waste of legislature. Let's not get the government involved people, let's make this a grassroots thing.

Donut-Man 10 Director's Cut

I had some troubles with this one. I've realized that in a comic defined by shadows and noir aesthetics, I don't know how to shade. The version below is the one I sent into the paper. I decided to go back and add some shading and backgrounds to the page, arguably making it better but still far from perfect. I need to get in some more practice and work on my shading fundamentals.

And when I'm really upset I watch Transformers and drink until I can't feel the stupidity anymore

Today's strip, as well as yesterday's, is about anxiety, which is serious! But I need to joke about it sometimes. I'm no harder on myself and my foibles than J-Ro is in his absurd, very-much-what-I-base-mine-off-of, journal comic. But I digress. Comic-Donovan is in all ways a more exaggerated caricature of myself, and thus his eccentricities take on more intense, "wacky" proportions. Let's watch as he gets the help he needs, or does something really funny we can all laugh at.


Also, a couple art things. I've starting using the hunt quill for everything. This is good and bad. Good because I can get the flowing thick and fat lines I could never master with the brush pen. Bad (maybe) because it makes my work way sketchier and wilder, and (definitely) because it bleeds through the printer paper I draw these on so I'm going to need to buy better stock. Also, you can sort of only make downstrokes otherwise it sticks. This makes things that change direction like Donovan's nose and hair...wisp?... especially difficult. Also, I'm using a hella-ton of ink.

Laughin' at myself and edited Donut-Man

So I picked up a copy of the paper and was shocked to discover that I had made more mistakes in Friday's DM than I thought! I scanned the inks on the printer at the Daily office, which always provides a much rougher, dirtier image than I'm used to and I can't figure out the right way to change the dern settings. So while I was working on it and moving portions around and erasing with full white, the background was actually a dull gray. For some reason I couldn't see this on my crappy, 6-year old laptop monitor but it was noticeable to show up in print. First of all, wow the printers used for the Daily Texan handle grays well, and second, damn! It's hella ugly. Anyway, I went back and edited the image a bit and I've ensured scientifically that the white background is all white this time, so here you go.
The Robot-Tree for the day looks at my own crippling internet addiction. This arc is going to be serious, folks. Serious.*

*Not actually very serious.


And the final item of business is some totally myspaced pictures of mah new head hair!


Fauxhawktastic! Haha, I'm so vain and glorious.

Donut-Man page 9

Get it? Glaze? Ham? Glazed-ha oh forget it, the punchline really didn't work in this one. I tried messing with the formatting at the urge of others, but i think I goofed in putting the title at the right side of the top. Not smart.

I really like the art of this page, but not the writing or the formatting. But HEY I finished it in 3 hours, ON CAMPUS. The whole thing! I'm lucky my ink bottle didn't bust in my bag, hmm. Expect a somewhat refinished version of this up soon, I think.

Hair raising

Hair puns are harder to come up with than you might think.