Comic update: I’m working on the last scene of #12 rn. Then I need to do speech bubbles and stuff, but … yeah we’re getting close HRRRHRNGGG. Check back. It’ll be 150+ pages or something 🥰
Now, is everybody tucked up nice and warm and ready for a true story? Okay, here goes.
FELT CUTE MIGHT SANITISE RIGHT NOW In the real actual world, I have a friend-of-a-friend who has started at a place (stop me if this gets too specific …) (okay now I feel old, anyway … separate issue). With me so far?
So this human is doing a course requiring arty stuff now and then, and we got talking about 3D graphics when they started the course, and I was like “Yeahhhh … I’m a bit of a 3D hobbyist. Ahem”.
Anyway, one of their projects has meant they’ve needed to get hold of characters from different sources including one CGI/3D (non-AI) character if possible – and they messaged me and asked if I would maaaaybe design a quick character for them, okay? So me being me, I completely got into it and designed this totally custom 3D character and sent them crazy high quality renders and they’re like uhhh whaaaaaat?!!?!!
And now I have to play it down and pretend I don’t have many, many years of experience developing and rendering in 3D …
Anyway, I just thought it was funny. And although I’m sure it’s pretty common for people to help out their friends/relations with their courses, in this case I can’t exactly explain why I’m so SUSPICIOUSLY good at making stuff in 3d, so I’m sharing it here to get it off my chest hehe.
Pictured octopus guy is completely irrelevant, and not the character I designed for them obviously but when I made that jelly dude for OHB 8, I grabbed the crab legs and octopus head from the Poser library and shoved a gun and a bow tie on them and bam! That 3d character was made from parts and took 5 minutes (if that), imagine a character that took 5 days of actual custom sculpting effort! Mwa-ha-haaaa!
YES NEXT LITHIUM COMIC OUT IN A WEEK OR SO. I WILL BLOG THE FREAKING HECK OUT OF IT JUST GETTIN READY AAARGHHHH
Wait…what? In this “real life” you speak of you have a [EDITED] that you help while it learns to create life?
….and what if he/she turns out to be one of your fans? And is reading this?
Auntie Sindy??
Yeaahhhh … I did wonder about that. But I think we’re okay on the numbers, there must be tens of millions of students getting helped out by friends/relatives/xxxxx right now, so the pool is big. Actually hold on that detail does narrow it down doesn’t it. Ahem, brb …
Okay, we’re good. The world is a very big place, there’s almost zero chance of them being a fan of my comics, and even then almost no chance of them joining the dots here. Probably 😬
I mean this could be a friend-of-a-friend at Utah University or Budapest, it could be De Montford or Amsterdam or Edinburgh or Sao Paolo … the number of creative courses and students out there is absolutely vast. And the number requiring 3D characters in the last few months? These days? Still pretty massive; think of all the gaming design and concept art and media studies and visual FX and fine art curation courses out there; tens of thousands of students scraping together 3D graphics right now. Still many thousands being helped on the side … thousands who have some decent content coming their way.
But thanks for pointing that out, haha! I’m hoping we’re okay. Judging by the stats from Analytics as well as all the feedback forms I’ve had back the last few years; my fanbase is also heavily weighted towards the thirties-to-fifties age group, very few are early twenties. Okay I’m still trying to convince myself not to take this blog down … ahem … it’ll be fine it’ll be fine.
Oh god no! I never wanted you to get worried about anything! I was just joking. Why would you care? You’re doing great work and you should be proud.
….i was more amazed that anyone still has a “friend of a friend”
Hehe yeah it’s a strange one, I’ve accrued quite a few … um … friends of friends the last 10 years or so. I mean it’s a compliment, but I kinda need to start saying ‘no’ tbh.
This is so funny and scaring at the same time. Makes life interesting. “Ooops, I just exposed myself to some serious scrutiny”. I’d say: Take it down, you got it out of your chest now, so no need to tempt Hybris and nemesis. I know that goddess very well, and she, she is a bitch! She will whip you and tie you to her hidden X in the cellar, rape you and make you …. wait … what’s not o like after all?
Hmmm…. great everyone focuses on Sindys personal consequences here. But what’s about the rest of world?
Let me enlighten you here: you gave one of your “typical” models DIRECTLY to a “source of creativity” (young students) which now puts it into the public. Let me guess…it had boobs. Had it? Yeah. I guess it had… .
You know how today’s kids are. Easy to influence and no clue whatsoever!
BUT: they spread good ideas like lightspeed.
You know we had gothic, renaissance and other cultural epoch. Now the risk is high, we are going into an epoch of boobs. Boobism if you will. Okay. I can live with that if the world gets all nippled. Fine!
But don’t forget where this all started!
And before we all go nuts, let’s come down! Take a deep breath and ask ourselves… why do you mix this 2 worlds? Why would you do that?
I mean…great first instinct to cover your tracks:
This tactic is called “smoke candle”…
But you should really think about different identities, different IDs, bank accounts (what…no…that’s Jason Bourne). Or have a red button on your phone called “devcon5” that starts a script replacing this forum with a “cat enthusiast website” (that’s Russian hackers, I think). Or always carry a smoke grenade in case you have to disappear quickly (…that’s counterstrike…?!).
Okay. Now I got it: why not work on another comic? Like…you know…spy stories. So you can easily ask questions like, “If one has to disappear quickly, how would one do that? Oh… no, no…I’m writing a book.” So you get the “vibes”…just “in case”.
Or go with, “I’m not me, I’m my brother.”
Or …have your “coming out”…”breaking news”! Could you do the Tom-Cruise-Mission-Impossible-take-mask-off thing? Please! That’s so cool… .
At least have a backpack next to the door, in case you…”feel the urge to go hiking”…somewhere “of grid”.
Mmmhhh….do you speak any Farsi/Persian or Arabic?
BTW: I was never here! (…thought this only works with speaking, not writing…hmm…)
OH GOD OH GOD MY BURNER PHONE IS ON FIRE the Deep State is after ME, TEAMS OF HELICOPTERS ARE CRASHING THROUGH MY BATHRooMM DooRrr WHYY OH WHY DIDN’T I KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT EARRGHHHH!!!!
woah woah woah there hold on you assume this character has boobs, well HAH! For the first time ever, I actually designed a non-boobsy character! Yes, I CAN do it. This is growth. (BRB playing with boobies …)
Sniff…I’m so proud! That’s…that’s huge! They grow up so fast…sniff.
Also: new comic soon! YEAHHH!
YEAHOOO!!
A new Lithium next week! WAAHOOO!! I’m gonna be on that like nipples on boobies!! (Nipples=yum!) As Skylar would say, YAAYY!!
YAAAYAYAYA!!!
When I was a student internet was new and having a digital camera was exciting. As one does i immediately started taking pictures of my junk and making videos of the same. At that time I was chatting with a Swedish woman who just came out of a divorce and who was starting to rediscover her sexuality, naturally I was more than glad to help.
I had quite the collection of files we sent to eachother.
Years later, long after I moved out of there, an old housemate told me that another housemate once found a CD which contained these for mentioned files. He watched them, not only that; he watched them with his girlfriend. After watching them alone, and with his girlfriend he talked about it with our housemate, who in turn told me about it.
I’m guessing I was supposed to feel some kind of embarrassment, but felt none; I felt sorry for the housemate.
Of all the things that happened in this chain of events (going through someone’s private stuff, watching someone’s private videos, sharing these videos with someone I publicly disliked and then chuckling about it with a third), me knocking one out on video for someone I cared about was the least shameful.
My mother raised me with one simple rule: no matter what you do, don’t be ashamed of who you see in the mirror in the evening.
And you know what?
I apologize for nothing, the undiscovered life is a life not worth living.
(A quote from Demitri Martin (no relation) in his fantastic show “if i”, go watch it!)
You are doing great work, amassing a community of thousands of fans who love your work. Apologize for nothing.
Definitely, getting free from shame is an extremely excellent thing indeed 👍
Wow that kicked things off didn’t it! You’ll have to put whatever it was that you made into a story at some point, just so that we your true fans can enjoy another of your fabulous creations. Really excited to see that the next instalment is happening soon. Keep up the world saving work, love M.