A Much Needed Return to Leisure

A Much Needed Return to Leisure

Motherfucker this semester is finally done these ivy league wannabes can suck my nonexistent nutsack

Well, this  certainly was a trying semester, but I’m sure this will all be worth it when I finally become a professional whatever the hell it is I’m trying to become. Seriously, there’s a need for what I want to accomplish in the LIS field but there isn’t a proper name or even niche for it. There are other people already addressing the realities and need for librarian well-bein in the field, but sometimes it sucks being part of an early movement.

I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to the end of this semester. Coursework and the internship ate up so much of my waking hours. Between wanting to work on a game for Unpub and work on online things in general, I felt creatively stalled.

But I did find pockets of time to do some creative things, even if they remain unfinished. Some from years ago, in fact.

Panel 1 - Johnny leans back in a giant vat of some sort. The text box reads, Nothing like a hot soak after a long day of being poked and prodded, huh, John-Boy? Say, what's that string? -- Panel 2 - Johnny pulls up a large tea bag from the water. -- Panel 3 - Johnny is now using the tea bag as a pillow.

For some reason, I wanted that “comment to come” note to stand out from the non-repro blue pencil for this rough draft of a comic. By the way, anyone remember when non-repro blue pencils actually *were* non-repro? Damned improvements in scanning technology. Now I have to fiddle with curves and… wait, I haven’t drawn in blue pencil since… *looks at comic again* Damn, I must have had a really bad day at work if I had to revisit the Stincorp project.

If I haven’t mentioned it, Stincorp is an *old* project that started in 2010 out as a webcomic. It followed the adventures of a test subject named Johnny Maroon who tests weird experiments at the Stincorp megacorporation, while also doing occasional counterespionage missions for the same company (it pays more… mostly hazard pay, but…). It’s gone through a few hiatuses, a few reboots, and is now possibly undergoing yet another reboot. Not as a webcomic, though.

A rough sketch of a stylized Wheel of Fortune tarot card. The lower half of an angel's head is visible in the stars above the top half of a skull is visible from the bottom. In the center is a woman wearing a gown tied to the wheel. Text on the image reads, Can I get off this wheel of fortune, Can I get off and be on my way, Can I please make my own decisions, Can I already have my say.

Despite all my busyness this semester, I always found time for tarot. Daily draws help me put feelings into perspective, and sometimes even predict a thing or two (though not always with clarity; that’s just the nature of the cards). I have plans to create my own tarot deck.

But you know something I probably will never do but keep entertaining? A music album based on the tarot. I have no musical skills, but I keep seeing album covers and hearing lyrics in my mind. This very rough piece is a sample. While it may never become actual album art or a song, I still want to finish it. I was going to do it all on paper, but then I realized that I have the power of Ctrl+Z.

I seriously need to get used to drawing on paper again.

The Inklenook YouTube banner.

You know those little Inklenook shorts I showed a while back? The YouTube channel is now live. Only three videos so far, of course, because these actually take some time to “animate”. And I got my first country restriction alert while uploading the third one. Geez, YouTube, do you not want the world to know the joys of Howard Jones and his inspiring anthem?

I’m taking the Noble Knight route and making musically-inspired shorts. I never would have thought that watching a guy cosplay in Spirit Halloween costumes would lead to this, but here we are. I’ve even made a (private) playlist of tracks that may be used in future shorts.

I’m still trying to figure out where to use this one:

 

Yes, I want to use this song precisely for that one part, because I want the comments section to blow up with variants of “Wait, what—?!”