George's Tumblog

dresdencodak:

doggedlyjo:

dresdencodak:

Fair enough. I assume you mean when I started Dresden Codak? I’ll break down the honest-to-goodness process of the early comics:

1. Draw comics in mechanical pencil on the back of my statistics homework (never turned in) and then ink on top of that with a micron pen.
2. Sneak into the Honors College study room (from which I was expelled for poor grades) and use their scanner.
3. Use a mouse and a bootleg copy of Photoshop 7 to color the pages.
4. Upload it to my site, which at the time was flat HTML that I’d written from scratch.

And that’s it!

reblogging this for the reminder that grades and a college degree are by no means the be-all end-all of life. 

There’s some truth to this. I’d like to share some further biographical information:

I’m a college dropout. In 2006 I left school after a little over four years because I kept changing majors (physics, anthropology, computer science, then art) and it had reached a point to where it was difficult for me to afford to keep going to school (I was paying my own way with various jobs).

The reason I had kept changing majors was because I was terrified that I’d picked the “wrong” career, with most of those academic decisions based around what careers seemed prestigious. I wanted to be an engineer because I liked the idea of being an engineer, then a programmer because I liked the idea of being a programmer, but I was never happy doing any of these things, and it showed. I’d always been groomed to be a good student, and for most of my career I was good at doing what I was told.

I’d always been creative, doing little projects on the side. I wrote a sci-fi novel when I was 19 (never shared it), some poems in physics class, and even some fake news stories about Popeye before I was kicked off the university paper. I also made films with friends for many years. I was told these were “good hobbies,” that once I became a respected and financially stable engineer/programmer/scientist, that I could then do what made me happy on the side. A nervous breakdown during my college career, however, made it clear that “waiting to be happy” was a psychologically unstable strategy. I couldn’t wait for someone else to grant me permission to do what I wanted with my life.

So, in 2005, during a statistics class that I would eventually fail, I started drawing Dresden Codak. I hadn’t seriously drawn in many years, but it’s something you don’t totally lose. They were pretty bad drawings, but I didn’t care. I enjoyed it and decided that doing what I really liked to do now was better than hoping I could do it later. I wasn’t looking for a career at the time, I just realized how much I loved making comics and knew that I should do whatever I could to keep making them. It took about a year for me to decided that being a cartoonist was what I really wanted. I changed my major to art briefly, but eventually accepted that paying for a degree wasn’t something that was going to help me at that point.

After that, in 2006, I took a chance and dropped out. I worked an office job full time during the day while drawing Dresden Codak full time at night. I slept about 3 hours a night, but it didn’t matter. I was doing what I wanted, and it kept me going. Then, toward the end of 2007 I found out, through Topatoco, that I had enough readers to justify selling some merchandise. To my genuine surprise, as soon as we put the store up, I was making more money than my office job (which I promptly quit). From there I packed up, moved out of Alabama and never looked back.

Dresden Codak has been my full-time job ever since. It’s let me travel the country and meet amazing people while making a pretty comfortable living, but most importantly I get to do what I enjoy more than anything else. Ever since, I make all of my life decisions based on maximizing what I really want to do, and so far it’s served me well.

Don’t interpret this as an anti-education/college story or anything like that. I just think often we expect success if we do X, Y and Z, when in reality such a thing can’t be reliably handed to you by an authority. Start doing what you want to do now, because life’s far too short to wait around to be happy.

newjerseykannushi:

pewpuupalace:

dimension13:

jesuslizardjournal:

amberosine:

sirqtip:

vonbaghager:

alizabug:

neon-casket:

bookofmirrors:

Most of you probably know this is one of the Angel’s from Hellboy. But did you know that this is actually a more accurate protrayel of what angels are apparently supposed to look like according to The Bible? Although, and correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I remember they had 6 wings, covered with eyes on the wings. And had two eyes on their face, but used 2 wings to cover their face at all times, because if a mortal ever saw their face they would die. Angels from the bible are fucking terrifying honestly. :P 

boring personal tidbit/rambling: When I was a kid I used compulsive behaviors to control my extreme anxiety. I was also raised Southern Pentecostal which focuses a lot on Old Testament scripture. We were told about what angels really looked like in Sunday School when I was 6 or so. The bible mentions multiple faces, being covered in eyeballs, constant singing, lion heads, etc. This spawned an extreme fear of angels and they became the butt of my anxieties (“If I open and close this door 10 times I won’t see an angel”). I use to pray to never see an angel, and I had recurring nightmares that my sister locked me in a room with cement angel statues that came to life and approached me while screaming. Then they would skin me and sacrifice me.

If you think about it, angels are kind of horrifying. Besides being described as beasts and monsters, they’re practically brainless drones. Heavenly angels are only one step removed from demons. The only difference is demons fell from heaven because they chose to follow Lucifer… who was an angel (angel of music and one of god’s favorites). So they are these eyeball covered animal mashed up monsters who were only created to worship for eternity (part of humanities creation was so that something would choose to love god, not just worship him because they were created to). Angels fall into a lot of new age and conspiracy beliefs too which my church believed and taught. We were taught that the supernatural realms went in the order of Heaven, Hell, then Earth. So when the angels fell from heaven with Lucifer, some fell through hell and landed on Earth. We were taught they intermarried with early humans and created giants (Goliath’s origins) and taught witch craft to women (make-up, sluttiness, etc.) Imagine learning all of that nonsense as a 5 year old kid.

HEY!! haha, this is EXACTLY the concept amy & I are messing around with in the angel project. Angels are such creepy and interesting beings when you examine the source material. We’re also playing with the fact that technically, angels have made their only moral choice, and so experience morality only in theory, which is fun
our designs for our angel characters are based on the non-humanoid or vaguely humanoid “canon” angels, which can be anything from a ball of wings covered in eyes to a huge, living wheel to animals on fire

I love it when people actually know Angels are not winged bishies that sparkle and love mankind. They’re abominations, they’re alien, they’re beyond us. They’re creatures that biology as we know it does not apply to. Often they do not love mankind, they love God and God alone.

Really, Neon Genesis Evangeleon had a better idea of what Angels should really look and behave like (mindlessly subservient and driven towards their goal) than any other work of fiction I’ve seen so far. Though I’ve heard some tidbits from Supernatural at least, which has angels taking on human form but describing just what they look like when they’re not wearing their skin.

Just a little side note: the entire concept of the phrase “One-Winged Angel” (from Final Fantasy 7) was based on a phrase in the Bible concerning seraphim. It reads, “Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet, and with two they hovered aloft.” This is much more evident in the form of Safer (?) Sephiroth, who has six white wings and one black wing, thus making him a one-winged angel. The description of angels posted above seems to match that near perfectly.

The angel that visited Mary first said “Do not be afraid”

Supposedly, somewhere in a work of text, Christ is described as a gored sheep with many heads and many horns and maybe many nimbuses/halos as well.

The Abrahamic religions were fucking metal, man. 

Aren’t Archangels also supposed to be on fire all the time and have flaming swords or something? I think I once heard of something like this.

I’ve tried looking some of this stuff up, but i’ve never had much luck. I’ really love to see more info on more “accurate” angels…

Righty-o, I used to be something of a freak when it came to angelogy back in middle/high school, I guess you can chalk it up to that ol’ eighth grader syndrome but angels are split into different ranks with their appearance becoming more alien and bizzare the higher up you go. From bottom to top we have…

The Third Sphere:

Angels: Basic messengers to humankind.

Archangels: Superiors to angels. There seems to be a differentiation between archangels and “Archangels” who are senior named angels that can belong to a different rank, i.e Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, etc.

Principalities/Rulers: They wear crowns or wield scepters. They oversee groups of people and inspire things like art and science.

Second Sphere:

Powers/Authorities: Warrior angels, they oversee the distribution of power among the rulers of man.

Virtues: They oversee the movement of the cosmos. 

Dominions: The angels who are Lords among angels and preside over nations. They look much like the everyday thought of angels but orbs of light above their heads. 

First Sphere: 

Thrones/Orphanim: Living symbols of justice and authority. They appear as a beryl-coloured wheel-within-a-wheel, their rims covered with hundreds of eyes.

Cherubim: Cherubim have four faces: one of each a man, an ox, a lion, and an eagle. They have four conjoined wings covered with eyes, a lion’s body figure, and they have ox’s feet. They guard the way to the Tree of Life and God’s Throne.

Seraphim: The caretakers of God’s Throne. The name Seraphim means “the burning ones.” The Seraphim have six wings. Two wings cover their face, two cover their body, and two cover their feet.

(Source: necronosferatusxanctus)

colchrishadfield:

Berlin at night. Amazingly, I think the light bulbs still show the East/West division from orbit.