Chapter LX: Armless Boy I

Image of the Day: Adventures of Armless Boy I

This is the digital version of the very first Adventures of Armless Boy strip created over two years ago. As you can see, it is kind of wierd...Armless Boy has the ability to fly through the air and eat your head. I'll explain it by saying that this is actually a dream sequence, in which Armless Boy acts out what he wishes he could do to all the annoying people in the world. Unlike the villain in this strip, Armless Boy can indulge his violent tendencies in the dream world, and is a nice guy in real life.

There is a bit of symmetry in the story progression, in terms of dialogue, etc. The gouts of blood in the last panel are meant to evoke the red hibiscus in the first.

This design was heavily influenced by the shape of 8.5 x 11 paper, but I'm going to start making them natively in Illustrator, so that will no longer be the case.

Chapter LIX: Self-Portrait à la MySpace

1. Beanie: preserves careful arrangement of bangs
2. Bangs: carefully arranged
3. Wierd expression + head tilt = individuality
4. Black tee-shirt with off-center graphic: angst
5. Low-rise jeans: distressed, like my soul
6. Cheap digital camera: I enjoy taking "photographs"
7. "Drug Use is Life Abuse" wristband from 6th grade: straight edge, "vintage"
8. Mirror: in bathroom of single family, detached housing (Suburbia)
9. Emo glasses: $5 on eBay
10. Artifact that would have been removed if I knew how to do anything in Photoshop besides fiddle with the contrast.

In other news, I flipped a coin last night to decide whether or not to buy a Speedo. It landed on heads.

Chapter LVIII: Armless Boy

Image of the Day: Armless Boy III






















This is the third Adventures of Armless Boy strip I've made, and the first one to be digitally remastered, as it were. It is also the only one to address homosexuality. I don't know how I ever lived without Adobe Illustrator.. The hand-drafted version took like an hour, but it was the work of a four-minute long instant in Illustrator--with cleaner results.

Unexpectedly, I've actually taken some flak for this strip. Apparently, the joke may not be immediately obvious. Comments?

Chapter LVII: III.

III.
charlie
How many moons have passed by
To become another streetlamp?

Once I bowed to an orb of light
Mistaking the glow for a goddess.


(Faculty Offices East Courtyard @ 2 AM)
----

In other news, I have killed the screaming popup ads; they were being caused by the tag-board code. I know you all weep for the tag-board, but "sometimes...for the greater good...sacrifices must be made." Like Jews.

It's a good thing you've all watched Prince of Egypt twenty times, or else I would seem really racist, huh?

Chapter LVI: Static Motion

Image of the Day: Miró/Calder Imitation (Ink, then Photoshop)

I'm captivated by this drawing, but I don't know why. Something about how the composition is perfectly balanced, yet at the same time retains an ineffable sense of movement.

Or maybe I just can't accept the fact that it is utterly nonrepresentational, and my brain is subconsciously searching for meaning. What is it supposed to be? A dog? A man on a bicycle? Leaves on a plant? A stylized time-lapse image of an oar moving through the air and into the water? Or something deeper...a symbol, perhaps? Of what?

As the artist, I should be the most qualified to answer that question (if anyone is). But I can't. I made it several months ago, and I don't remember what I was thinking at the time, except that it was inspired by a Calder mobile.

I think it's least meaningful thing I've ever made, but at the same time the most formally ideal, in terms of composition, color, line, etc. Very strange.

Chapter LIV: Number Fifty-Four

Number Fifty-Four (Charlie Fan, 11/18/2001)

here it comes,
the steady rock that knows nothing.
let me be mute as the red cliffs,
silent as the pebbles on a sandy beach,
quiet as moonrocks.
because i have secrets,
a world of knowledge pressed and
engrained within my brows...
so heavy and
burdened that
i close my eyes,
clamp my mouth shut...
and become nameless as the rocks.

(found images + Photoshop)

Chapter LIII: A Rose By Any Other Name

would smell as sweet, Juliet informs us in Act II. But a blog by any other name? That remains to be seen. Effective next Wednesday (July 26), the blog URL will be changed to tryptox.blogspot.com, from the current tryptofantasmic. This modification is win-win because it is easier for me to type, and easier for you to remember. The correct pronunciation of the new name is TRIP-TOE-EX, not TRIP-TOCKS, as some uncultured swine might have you believe.

Along the same vein, I've finished changing the passwords to all my various Internet personas: facebook, myspace, partypoker, crazypenguinsex.com, etc... Yes, that was a joke; I don't actually have a myspace.

Anyways, until a few days ago, my main password was the cumbersome 'salamandostron,' which is a fictional mountain in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Circa 2000, when I set up my first password (to hotmail.com) these were my favorite books, and it was a natural choice.

The problem with 'salamandastron' is that it's long and somtimes hard to get on the first try since password fields are all ************** and you can't tell if you've screwed up*. This can be a pain if you're trying to get into one of those sites that lock you out for an hour if you don't get the password right on the first two tries, ie my.calpoly.edu.

Also, some sites (flickr.com) limit your password to 10 characters, so it ends up being 'salamandas' but their devious password field lets you type more than that, so you have to realize what site you're at and what the character limit is, if there is one.

Finally, many sites (turnitin.com, collegeboard.com) require that your password include a non-alphabetic character, which means the password ends up being 'salamandastron1', or, if the previous restriction also applies, 'salamandast1'.

All of this, combined with my crappy memory, was a recipe for disaster that I have finally rectified. The new password is 8 characters long, well within the min/max character restrictions of all passworded sites, and incorporates a number to cover that contingency as well; basically, now I can use the same password for everything, no matter what the requirements are. Out of nostalgia, it still contains a reference to Redwall.

Image of the Day: the original US edition softbound cover

*When I was in second grade, I watched my cousin type his password to something, and triumphantly declared that I knew his password. When he asked me what it was, I told him it was six of the little star thingies. That's the day I learned that password fields are sneaky like that.

Chapter LII: Blograffitti

Image of the Day: Digital Ink Splats (Illustrator, then Photoshop)
In its Help section, Blogger.com describes several excellent ways to increase traffic to your blog.

Most of them are obvious, such as "Write quality content."
Some are more subtle, such as activating the "Email this post" feature.
And a few of them are utterly pathetic. Seriously, bumper stickers with your blog URL? What kind of loser would actually do that? Car bumpers should be reserved for political activism ("KerryEdwards'04") or deep, thought-provoking Star Wars jokes ("That's no moon, that's YO MOMMA'S ASS").

But then I realized that I do some stupid things to promote my blog too. For example, when I set my blog as the homepage on all the browsers in the Library's second-floor computer lab. Fifteen minutes ago.

I am quite literally the only person in the room; I guess no one needs the computer lab on the last day of the quarter. The freedom of being all alone...If I wanted, I could take off all my clothes and dance around naked, then pile up all the keyboards and sacrifice them to the God of the Harvest. I could holler Broadway show-tunes at the top of my lungs (naked), and no one would tell me to shut the fuck up... Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I'll love ya, tomorrow! You're aaalways a day awaaaay!

On the other hand, I could have a freak aneurysm, and no one would be around to call an ambulance.

But I digress. What I was going to say was that I think building site traffic is only half the battle--page hits are one thing, but getting people to stay and read (and heaven forbid, comment) is something else altogether. Every blogger who uses a site tracker service will notice the columns of data indicating hundreds of daily page hits, but an average visit time of less than 5 seconds. People are arriving, but not absorbing.

Thus, the new plan is to put the Image of the Day at the top of each blog entry, thus drawing the prospective reader into the text with an intriguing picture. Hopefully this way, I don't have to write as much "quality content." Or print bumper stickers. Oh yeah, the blog URL will be changing to tryptox.blogspot.com as of next Monday, for ease of remembering. [Reference: the current URL is tryptofantasmic.blogspot.com]

About the Image of the Day...I'm illustrating some of my brother's poems for my Art 181 (Digital Imaging and Design) final project. The relevant passage in this case is "The line between sanity and release is an inkblot tendril." He's been obsessed with inkblots/Rorshach tests for a long time, and I've inherited some of that.

Chapter LI: Vodka Checkers

Drunken text:
i palyed cheackers with my roomate a few mintues ago. he has one of tohose glass boards with th shot gllass pieces that you pit liquirds in to drinky drink from. we uvsed vodka. but not allll vokda. also some orange sjucce and sprte. like a third and athird andathirdandathird or something. i'm not the fcukign chem major. dont remmeber how ti worked. theres 12 pieces. each one gets some ackleehol and smome oranj joooos, and some spirrte. and oyu mix it all up tastylike. buble bublle bblbub oh yeah, earlier i pltyed him nmormal checkesrs, with normal piaces, and i WON, an d i playted with one less piecee than him. and it was aweom.e so i was like, pssshhh, bring it on foolio, you is sucky at the checkrrs, i traoucennece your ass anyaday, drunk or wahtever. so we play and halfeay through, the fucker triplejumps me. one two thre.e FUUKCKKKCKCKKK. cheater sippity sip all the way down, yum. then i lose cauz he take forever to fucking move afdn i cant think.anymore. vodak shots to the head, brains squish squash pish posh mish mash fish fash oh, i got some mroe fishes in the deep blue sea, joi to you and me not fair. =9 also, i knock ovr the rest of the peices. heeheeheheheheee..hm. sleep oh im soryy i havent bloged. busy. skool. jsut watn to sit in the corner and do corsswordpuzzle.s im good at crsoswords. suckat life. delete soryry. jst jmp ovremepleaez d f d