Something happened between the time I announced I would start another Project 365 for this year and this entry. It's called Google+, and for the first month of beta testing it was the most exciting of the social networks. Now the honeymoon is over and Google management are at war with many of the users over usernames, but for during the month of July I managed to post 72 photos in 31 days. Because G+ was still exciting, I posted to Picasa via the interface in G+ (the Photos tab). But naturally, of course, I stopped. Oh well...

Since I haven't been able to sustain enough interest in taking pictures to do Project 365 before fizzling out at or before the one-month mark, I've decided to build up to it. Next month, I'll post at least one new photo and one new drawing a day. My goal is to do one of each without taking one day off this September. And of course I'll be making it tougher for myself because I'm still editing my novel. In less than one week, then, I'll begin.

Here goes...

FAWM Classics: The song that spawned a new February Album Writing Month subgenre: Casiopunk! Also the only song from FAWM 2009 that I won't be rerecording. If it sucks, so what? Casiopunk is punk.

2009-02-09 @ 04:46am
tags: casiopunk casiocore punk

After helping create Mokey Rock out of Burr Settles' typo, I decided to deliberately invent a new genre for FAWM: Casiopunk. Basically, it's punk rock guitar over a Casiotone beat. Anthony Bitetti was the first to rise to my challenge. Of course, as the creator of Casiopunk, I had to do something of my own. I have the VL1 Casio VL-Tone emulator (the VL-Tone was used in Trio's song "Da Da Da"), and I have a guitar.

Problem is, my amp sucks, I can't get the VST plugins to work right, and I still can't play worth beans. But I had a solution right at hand: first, TuxGuitar; second, the Casio WK-200 I got for Christmas. So after I recorded the Casiotone beat from the VL1 emulator (Rock 2, because Rock 1 is too closely associated with "Da Da Da"), I composed the simple arrangement of three power chords in TuxGuitar using the MIDI Distortion Guitar instrument, and then played it through the WK-200 and recorded it on the computer. I used Reaper for the recording and mixing. Even so, this was the quickest recording I've ever done. Helps that it's simple. Short too, like punk rock songs are supposed to be.

I wanted my vocal delivery to be as punk as possible. So I didn't care too much about keeping the beat, and I snarled/ranted rather than sang. I deliberately left all the microphone noise in.

Did I mention that I played only three power chords?

And so here's my contribution to a genre I invented here. Enjoy. ;)

(Note 7/12/11: I won't bother to provide the lyrics this time. If you can't make out what I'm ranting, there's something wrong with your ears.)

I used to have a blog on Photoblog which I used strictly for Project 365, in which you take and post a photograph a day for an entire year. Because, of course, I procrastinated, I ended up losing my Photoblog account. I had a good excuse, though: I was preoccupied with my NaNoWriMo novels, especially the long Chaos Angel Spanner, which I'm now posting in daily installments and not semiweekly a chapter at a time.

Well, if I can post one sixth or seventh of a chapter a day, it should be even easier for me to snap and post one picture every day. And so I'm making another attempt to pull off a Project 365 starting July 1. And where will I post the pictures? Right here.

Let's see if I can handle Spanner, JulNoWriMo, 50 Songs in 90 Days, and Project 365 at the same time...

Yes, I'm going to take part in both of them this year.

Last year's JulNoWriMo project was the first volume of Chaos Angel Spanner, which I've been working on in some form (usually seinen manga) since 1992. For this year's edition, I'm going to finish book 2, which was my project for NaNoWriMo 2010. If I don't actually finish it after, say, 50,000 words, there's always AugNoWriMo.

Last year, I didn't do 50 Songs in 90 Days at all, because I was too busy furiously writing Spanner during JulNo and AugNo. I intend to change this. For one thing, I'm actually going to write songs to put in Spanner Book 2. For another, I intend to actually record 50 songs. Since that's 16-17 songs a month, and my usual FAWM output is 38 songs, that really should be no problem as long as I pace my novel writing those first two months. Also, I need to practice my instruments and singing more...

I'm now posting daily installments of the new revised edition of Spanner on my project blog (note: contains NSFW material and snarky political incorrectness). I'll be posting my songs here: not just my fifty for 50/90, but rerecorded versions of earlier songs as well. Also, pictures, whenever I get them drawn.

50/90 starts on July 4. JulNo starts, of course, on July 1. This time, I'm ready for both. And I'll have pictures, too.

It's been so long since I posted here that I haven't been able to get into my account. So here's another test entry, just to make it clear, if only to myself, that this is still my blog.

Assuming this posts successfully, I'll make a big announcement next entry. Oh, and I'll still post pictures here. And songs.

Here goes...

Song #1 for FAWM 2011, and the only song of the three I ended up recording.

One day, when my mother saw all the gum on the sidewalk in front of the local shopping mall, she said this. My muse latched onto it and turned it into a song.

Here it is. Woo-hoo.

Genre Tags: pop, mock-bubblegum, silly

Lyrics:
It's all over the sidewalk and all over the street
It's underneath the shoes of everybody you meet
We're walking on a world that's made of gum, woo-hoo,
It gets all over everything and hides the concrete
It covers everything and then gets stuck on your feet
Until the whole wide world has turned to gum.

We chew it all the time
And spit it on the ground
We step on top of it
So much that it astounds

It's growing over parking lots and picking up tires
It's climbing up the poles and now it's covering wires
If you can't see it now, you're really dumb, boo-hoo,
It's sticking to the animals and sticking to trees
It hits the ground at zero and a hundred degrees
It's gum all the way down to kingdom come, woo-hoo.

(future keyboard solo goes here, once I figure out how to operate said keyboard...)

We chew it all the time
And spit it on the street
Why should we be surprised
When it's all that meets our feet?

It's out of control, it's taking over the world
Spit out of the mouths of every boy and girl
'Cause everybody wants some chewing fun, woo-hoo,
We chew it all up and we spit it all out
It sticks all over everything within and without
It's all because the world is made of gum, woo-hoo,
Just like my mama said, it's made of gum, woo-hoo,
You know the whole wide world is made of gum.

Woo-hoo, woo-hoo.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.

 

 

Over the past decade, I've struggled to get the eyes to look right. I developed my comics style of drawing eyes from all the various "how to draw manga" books I've learned from (above all, in the How to Draw Manga series itself, Mikio Kawanishi) and my favorite mangaka (mainly Hayao Miyazaki, Takeshi Obata, and CLAMP). I think I've developed a good technique. But I haven't yet perfected it. So I've got one more entry left in this review before I consider myself done (enough) reviewing the eyes.

I've decided to resume the drawing self-instruction I abandoned for NaNoWriMo back in 2006, and do it publicly. Right now I'm reviewing the skills I've developed and improved over the last decade. This is day one.

Earlier this month, I changed the way I draw my characters' ears. I could show you how I used to do it, but the stuff I drew earlier (particularly before 2005) tends to make me cringe. I drew these sketches to practice the new method.

My next challenge: change the way I draw eyes. I'm good enough with the outlines, but I'm still lacking on the iris/pupil area. I'll post the resulting sketches tomorrow.

My Internet service went out while I was in mid-tweet. As I was waiting for it to reset (it took a while, of course), my most important character (Shira, the main character of my in-the-works-since-1992 manga project Spanner) all but forced me to draw her in a rapid and inspired sketch. It's the first character sketch I've drawn since I all but abandoned drawing comics for novel writing during the 2006 edition of NaNoWriMo. Earlier this month, I decided to pick up the pencil again.

I've decided to resume my drawing self-instruction. I'll still writing novels (and songs too), of course. But I've become so frustrated with my (non)progress that I've made a new determination: to master my comics drawing skills and start writing and drawing my comics no matter what. If I can actually persist at this, I may be able to start posting the first few installments of Spanner this year.

As I practice my drawing skills and improve them, I'll post my progress here. That means: there will be pictures. A lot more of them. And I'll be drawing them. You'll be able to see my improvement.

In fact, I'll set myself a goal: post Spanner #1 by the end of this year. If you want to cheer me on, do so.

(Note: As this is a rapid sketch, I didn't bother to either ink or colorize Shira. That would have taken a lot of time. Just so you know: colorized, she will be cinnamon-skinned and copper-haired, the way I began to envision her in 1996...)