| Msn? |
[Jun. 19th, 2008|11:32 pm] |
The other morning my brother and I were battling over MSN messenger with the handwriting mode thing, doodling and sketching things back and forth and such, its pretty fun. Its now probably my favourite form of communication, other than holographic keychains and those weird picture things with those hundreds of tiny ridges that change when you move it around. Those things...they're just like...wow. Just, wow...
Anyway, eventually my brother demanded I try and draw the most realistic owl I can draw on MSN...
SIGH!
Unfortunately, I don't know many other people with graphics tablets, MSN and the will to DO BATTLE with me. ANOTHER SIGH! I could give my address out online and invite people to BATTLE ME but that would surely be foolish. If not for the many potential weirdos out there (not you obviously,) for the fact that anyone else would most likely show me up as the terribly sub-mediocre artist I am...
A THIRD SIGH!
In other news SIGUR ROS have released their new catchily named album "Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust" and it's free to stream in all it's initially-dissapointing-but-will-probably-win-me-around-after-a-few-more-listens-y glory!
GO LISTEN!
 |
|
|
| Haaaands! |
[Jun. 17th, 2008|06:28 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | hands, sketch | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  hopeful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Dawn Chorus - Boards of Canada | ] |
In a probably quite vain attempt to use this blog more and, y'know, practice, I'm going to be putting sketches and what not here at least every other day from now on.
GETSETGO!
 |
|
|
| Illness and insomnia hoorah! |
[Jun. 17th, 2008|02:14 am] |
I don't seem to remember much about this last week since its all just been one huge blur. And I don't mean the kind blur that's all 'WOOSH!' and 'OHMYGODHASITALREADYBEENAWEEKHOLYCRAP?!' Instead, it's been an agonisingly slow blur where the days sort of ooze lethargically, one unidentifiable day into another.
I had a cold, I think, just as summer starts to get into the swing of things. It was probably the worst cold I've ever had. Headaches, horrid tickly cough, runny nose, all the usual nasty stuff, except that I'd never felt so weak in all my life. I'd try standing but my knees would fly all over the place while my feet wouldn't budge an inch. Terrifying! And it was made worse by the fact that I was all alone in the flat since everyone else has gone home for the summer! I decided to hole up on the sofa with duvets, pillows, pyjamas and painkillers. I did think about making a den behind the sofa. I had done so before and it was quite comfortable in there, I called it Xanadu, but unfortunately there would be nowhere to store my hot mugs of tea safely. I did not ressurect Xanadu that day. Some other time perhaps...
Multiple partially full bottles of expired milk which somehow hadn't quite reached any further than the counter beside the refridgerator began to bulge as creamy lumps massed clearly at the bottom of the weak yellow liquid and as the unidentifiable gases rose to the top. I remember thinking about how I once used to put that in my tea.
I tried closing the blinds to try and hold back the suns heat. It didn't work so I became nocturnal. I woke up each day after the sun had passed behind the BT office block across the street at about 5pm and went to sleep at 6.30am as the sun began to peak around the student appartment building across the other side of the BT car park. After about the fifth day I got worried about how I was going to re-adjust to normal waking hours after the cold. In some delirous brainwave I decided not to go to sleep that morning and stay up until early the next night so I would sleep until a reasonable time the next next morning! I stayed awake. Fell asleep, lost track of when I was, and didn't sleep again for another 36 hours. I don't know why. My life began to feel like Fight Club. Except with less AWESOMENESS.
I remeber at 8.30pm the sun briefly appears reflecting off the windows of the BT building and into my eyes on the sofa. I remember squinting and then wanting to watch Clint Eastwood. I remembered I didn't have any Leone western films at hand so I watched Back to the Future part III instead. I remember coming too around the part where Marty McFly uses the metal chestplate trick from A Fistful of Dollars, cheering, then going back to sleep. I remember running out of milk for my tea and actually contemplating, at great length, using some of that warm putrid chunky piss liquid standing over there on the counter before I stumbled into a convenience store where the man behind the counter asked about it being a good night or not. I remember taking hold of some milk and paying the man while saying something about making tea and also about an increased chance of pancakes. I remember absent mindedly eating a tin of tuna while consulting a student cook book for potential tuna recipies and then eventually making pancakes anyway. I remember talking like Sean Connery while preparing, cooking and eating the pancakes for the reason of that the Scottish accent has a trustworthy warmth to it and I wanted my pancakes to trust me. I remember the exact moment I told myself outloud to stop talking to myself because I was going mad. I remember I then told myself I'd just invented a sort of meta-insanity.
I don't remember going to bed, but I remember waking up at a reasonable time, a slight dry tickle in the back of my throat and the realisation of how I'd just lost a week. It really was like waking from a dream. A terrible, messy but pretty interesting dream.
The really interesting thing was that out of it all I had drawn a good few Dreamleak strips which I'm pleased to say has what I think is the best looking artwork I've done so far!
I just hope I can maybe still draw like it now!
Oh, and that old milk has gone now I'm pleased to say. It was hard jiggling it out the bottle neck into the toilet today, I had watched them congeal and grow all week. It was like flushing my children away in some entirely hideously deranged way... |
|
|
| Shopping? |
[Jan. 13th, 2008|04:36 am] |
Today I ventured out on my once fortnightly-ish forage to the local Morrison's supermarket, in hopes of finding supplies for my on-going epic quest of 'not being dead.' For some reason I actually enjoy doing this bi-weekly pilgrimage. I live pretty much in the centre of the city, in amongst all those disgustingly artificial student types, that don't really deserve, nor care about, the privilege of higher education, so by going to the supermarket I actually get to see real people. Today, highlights included seeing a couple of elderly women contemplating a cucumber for at least 5 minutes before wandering off without it, a giant heavy-set skinhead, who didn't seem to have a neck, sheepishly glancing over his shoulder as he checked prices for Barbie bubblebath and a young mother having her trolley escorted bravely by a 6 year old baguette wielding knight. It always seems that whenever I go shopping there I come away slightly more wealthier. For inspiration and ideas for characters or stories to work into scripts anyway. Not money, oh GOD no! |
|
|
| Todays Strip 30th November |
[Nov. 30th, 2007|10:18 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | webhost down! | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | FLAT | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  cold | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Pink Floyd - Obscured by Clouds | ] |
Hello, if you're here right now you're probably wondering where todays strip is? My webhost has sort of gone and lost all the FTP passwords or something or other so I can't update anything on the site. But I can still post it here until I can update properly!
 |
|
|
| Love it! |
[Nov. 23rd, 2007|04:55 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Space | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | enthralled | ] |
Hey Greg! I just wanted to say how much i love your comic!
It's weird because i don't really know what sort of humor it is??? There are no real punchlines or jokes to speak of but i can't help smiling after each page!
Thanks for the great comic and keep it up!!!
-jaggged pillow x |
|
|
| LIES! |
[Nov. 22nd, 2007|12:18 am] |
That last post was full of lies!
Well, one lie.
Turns out I did post a strip this Tuesday and I will probably post one this Friday aswell.
This is a direct result of me having what I can only describe as a wonderful nervous breakdown.
Having earlier in the day learnt about a few certain 'mistruths' about my course I began to re-evaluate my direction in life. I did this by collapsing in the corridor in my flat and proceeding to scoot around on my back on the smooth and cooling laminate wooden floor with my guitar for a good hour or so while playing Blackbird, screaming the lyrics. Sometimes in bad German. One of my flatmates then jammed his door open with an amp and proceeded to play and sing various death metal songs in the style of Morrisey. I enjoyed this immensely. After a while we both vowed on starting up a busking duo where we'd repeatedly play Blackbird while singing Morrisey and The Smiths lyrics over the top. We'd call ourselves 'The Smorriseys' or something. We'd be great.
Anyway, the point of why I'm boring you with this information is because after nothing but practically screaming while running around on my back for an hour or two, I felt so peaceful and calm and I just felt the need to dreamleak. So I did.
Fab.
Also: Checking the site stats again, since one month ago when it hit 1018 visitors it's somehow shot up by a couple of thousand to just over 3000! Blimey! |
|
|
| Busy busy busy! |
[Nov. 18th, 2007|04:15 pm] |
Hello you.
As I've already mentioned I've decided to only update once a week instead of twice. I know you're probably completely and utterly devastated and distraught by this shocking news. I know I am. The truth is that I don't want Dreamleak to come before my real life work. Uni is very busy, what with a documentary and short fiction piece to be submitted before christmas and many various jobs on other films all over the place, it's just all a bit much in such short a time.
I guess it doesn't seem much only having to update twice a week, but I take ages to make a strip (I still struggle to draw anything in under at least seven and a half attempts) and my concentration runs off somewhere every few minutes.
For example: Last night I sat down to start drawing the next strip but ended up learning how to play Blackbird, Here Comes the Sun and The Two of Us on the guitar, of which I hadn't even so much as picked up for almost a year.
I have no idea how it happened, but I'm very glad it did because now I can woo friends and various stray animals in the streets by playing them some of my favouritestest songs of all times.
Next week I'm going to pick up my violin and learn to play Elenor Rigby! And then steal my flatmates electric guitar and use my bow to play EVERY SIGOR ROS SONG IN EXISTANCE!
That'd be great. |
|
|
| 1018! |
[Oct. 21st, 2007|08:17 pm] |
I was just checking out the website stats when I realised there has now been 1018 unique visitors! Thats 18 more than 1000!!!
Hoorah!
Thanks to everyone who has visited and especially thanks to those dozen or so of people who have been kind enough to stick around! Just a few more hundred regulars and I'd perhaps be able to set a forum that probably won't look embaressingly empty!
That'd be nice.
In other news: I also found this rather snazzy feature with the stats where it shows a map and dots where everyone who has been to the site lives!
So now one of my favourite pastimes is to look at this map and imagine what the people who visit look like, in terribly outrageous (possibly slightly racist) stereotypes relative to my preconceptions of what the media has told me about their cultures and customs. As far as it probably is from the truth, I still find it amusing.
Here's one I really like:
FRESH! |
|
|
| 'The next episode of Heroes' |
[Oct. 11th, 2007|05:09 pm] |
Yes there you have it. The first reference to contemporary culture in the strip.
I feel dirty.
There's nothing wrong with it really. I think Heroes is great and so do millions of other people around the world and including such a reference means readers can identify with the main character and in some way relate to her concerns of missing the next episode.
My problem with these such references is that it's cheap. It's easy to just spout out something about something that was on TV last night and readers will all nod in agreement and say "oh yeah that is so true." And then they think to themselves, "Boy I can really relate to this because it is something that I am aware of and it is current to me and millions of other people around the world. It is almost as if I feel a part of some big club. I feel accepted, wanted even, which is a status in society that all humans, such as myself, inherently strive for in life. F**kin' yeah!"
But then not everyone watches Heroes so not everyone will get it. And sooner or later it will end its run and eventually dissipate into the past and then my strip will lose its 'nowness' and will also fade away. I know I'm probably making a big thing about this small insignificant reference, but then I started Dreamleak with the idea of creating something universal and timeless. Something not subjected to the alienating barriers of pop culture. With this small reference I feel I may have slightly compromised the value of the strip and myself as a writer.
Crapsacks. |
|
|
| 14th August 2007: The house by the burn. |
[Aug. 14th, 2007|04:12 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | fact! | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  curious | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Well it's certainly not Death Cab! (Gods and Monsters - I Am Kloot ) | ] |
This strip took the exactly the same amount of time to complete as it does to listen to all 6 Death Cab For Cutie albums.
FACT! |
|
|
| New styles |
[Jul. 20th, 2007|03:49 am] |
Trying out a new style of layout today with seperated panels instead of one big one and smaller ones inside. I'm not too sure about it to be honest. It sort of blends in too much with the background and doesn't have as much of a presence on the screen.
What do you think?
Also today, I actually went and changed the main Dreamleak page a bit. It was noting major, just a nice gradient background at the bottom of the page and a background to the news box. Not much you might think, but it's certainly an accomplishment for me. Apart from being able to hit buttons and things in a paniced state with Macromedia Dreamweaver I have no real knowledge of making websites. I think I'm picking it up quite well though.
One thing about this update however is that none of the archived pages will be changed. Since I update everything manually it would mean I'd have to go and change every single page. Apart from the fact I can't really be bothered I kind of like the idea that in (hopefully) years to come when some new visitor is reading their way through the archives they can actually see how the site has gradually changed. One of my pet peeves when reading through the archives of a new webcomic is when the artist comments on how they've revamped the whole site and made it look all better but you never get to see what the old style was like. So hopefully you'll never have to suffer the same mild aggrevation with Dreamleak. |
|
|
| Hello there. |
[Jul. 17th, 2007|10:39 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | first post! | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Bend to Squares - Death Cab For Cutie | ] |
Here be the slightly official Dreamleak community! Hurrah!
If there's news or anything concerning Dreamleak then it'll be posted right here.
FRESH!
Also, this is a completely open community so feel free to post away to your hearts content.
T'ra for now!
 |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
dreamleak
thoughtful
sick
tired