Stick Around If You Enjoy Disaster

So. Here we are again.

The difference between yesterday and today is that today we have a blank page and I have to start all over again.

Wait.

That's not different at all. that's how yesterday started too.

That's how it always starts.

The greatest idea in the world! It's brilliant! Quick! Quick! Write it down before you...

[The Blank Page]

Well. Maybe. It could..

well.

stop intimidating me!

Once I'm passed that point we get into the next few stages of aggravation:

The false start.

The, no, maybe it would work better if I just moved this word here or here.

The delete key or the angrily scratching out and ripping the page out and throwing it at the cat.

Staring blankly into space.

Then at a point it happens. It comes out. Sometimes I'm not even aware it's happening. The words flow. The long Tetris piece falls from the sky and suddenly the blockage is cleared. It makes sense.

Then the distractions:

The cat decides now is the time to sit on the keyboard.

The library is closing, it is 12 after all and I've been sitting there for 5 hours.

The phone call.

The annoying phone call.

The Low Battery. Are you kidding me? Really MacBook? 4 Hours my ass!

The distractingly cute girl. Why is she dressed like that? Why is she coming over here! Wow! Green eyes! Where's my sketchbook...

Invariably we've come to my biggest distraction (No, not cleavage!), Drawing. Suddenly (again suddenly Kev?), focus becomes a problem. There's a pencil in my hand. Or a pen. Or a stylus. Or whatever is closest. Yes, it's most likely a drawing of a girl or maybe it's not. Maybe I don't know what it is. Not yet anyway.

Finally I get back to writing. It's finished. Do I proofread it? Yeah, it's me, I need to. But I can't simply proofread. I can't see the comma splices or the spelling errors. I can only see that there's a problem with the flow. This sentence is first but would work better last. The opening topic is a much stronger ENDING topic. Isn't that going to cause the entire thing to be rewritten? Probably. Sigh...

Now do I let someone else read it? No! They're going to hate it because I'm terrible! Or more likely they're going to say something like:

"Hey, Kev, where are you going with this?" or "Uhm are you missing some words in this sentence?"

Well it made sense in my head! (Honestly, I'm not sure how THAT'S possible!)

So, there you go. A horrifying insight into my brain's writing process.

I initially intended to write this about my perchance for overusing music lyrics (mostly by the incomparable Steven Page), such as the title of this post which might invariably make it to the title of everything. For now.

I think I'm going to switch to a WordPress blog, it has a better iPhone interface.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Hey Kev, just write something.

So, here we are again. Hi, how are you, it's been awhile.

This is not exactly the way I'd like to use this, however this is the way I will have to use this.

I'm not exactly fond of writing stories like, "here's what happened to me in the cereal isle: savings." So many people are better at that stuff than me.

What I have found myself doing is creating lists of things. "Top Things That I Think Are Awesome And Here's Why" and so on. In fact, I have several "lists" already written up and ready to go. There's some pretty funny bits, too. The problem I'm finding with the list formula is that well, it's incredibly formulaic and, well, lazy. That doesn't mean that there wont be lists, it's just if the only thing I can think of writing is 12 different types of lists, I'm in trouble.

No, if I'm going to do this and make it interesting for me, I need to keep it, well, interesting. How..? I don't know. I'm working that out.

I'd love to transfer some ideas or things over from my notebooks. I run into problems here. The stuff in my notebooks is usually written very quickly with little regard to spelling or grammar (isn't that always the case, Kev? Haha. yes....).

The problem I have is maintaining the innocence of the stories. Not compromising the simple charm by endlessly re-writing. In the notebook they exist as something. I worry about the translation. I worry that I won't be able to do it without destroying them.

I have a bad habit of spending so much time on everything I write - no really, everything - Twitter, emails, texts, stories, etc. I spend far too much time trying to make the flow work, the words work, the joke work, everything work, that I'll sometimes psych myself out and give up all together.

I'll get to the point where I don't think the whatever it is isn't any good because I'M not very good. Then it goes back in the box for retooling. There it either gets forgotten or it stays in the back of my head trying to dynamite it's way out back.

So, what exactly am I saying by this? I don't know exactly. I'm not making any promises, except that I am trying.

Trying to do what...?

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

...

Maybe it's time for me to start posting some of these short stories out of my little notebook. Maybe...

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Designing a Better Wonder Woman.

So the challenge was put before me by my friend Matt, In light of the new Wonder Woman redesign, let's do an artistic exercise where WE design our own "New" Wonder Woman.

Pants? WTF?

I'll say this, about the Jim Lee's new design: It's not the best Jim Lee Design, but it's not bad. Not at all. Personally I would've liked Mister George Perez or Mister Phil Jimenez (best Wonder Woman artists. Period.) or Adam Hughes to design the new costume.

I have a lot of problems drawing Wonder Woman. I think it's because my art style tends to go for a more rounded youthful girl type drawing, perfect for Supergirl, Power Girl, Star Spangled Kid, Gwen Stacy and other characters that aren't Blonde Teenagers. Wonder Woman, is, well she's Wonder Woman, so she can't look like a little kid, and too many angles makes her look manish, so there's a fine line that needs to be reached and I don't always feel I hit it.

My problem with designing a new Wonder Woman is, well I already think she has HAD the perfect costume, and that's her white 70's Mod Outfit. Except the "Perfect" costume that I seem to recall, doesn't actually exist! It's like a combination of multiple costumes:

The next problem I come across is that Donna Troy, Wonder Woman's sister, clone, whatever she is now.. has had TWO OF THE BEST COSTUMES EVER. EVER:

So all of this combined with the fact that I'm about to put my art on display with far superior artists, gives me a slight sense of "why even try," however, I'm still going to try. So here we have 3 work in progress sketches from my sketchbook (Moleskin!) and one work in progress sketch from Sketchbook Pro for Mac (That Means it's digital!). Hopefully sometime tonight or tomorrow I'll have a finished honest to goodness something to show (although, true art is never finished, it's just done). Yeah, yeah, just finish the damn drawings already Kevin..

My Top Five LEAST favorite Disney Characters:

1. Zombie Spider-Man
2. Any Auxiliary Character from Goof Troop not featured in A Goofy Movie.
3. Brand Spankin' New Doug
4. Whoever cancelled "Abadazad"
5. Terk

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

My Top Five Favorite Disney Chracters:

1. Walt Disney
2. Spider-Man
3. Donald Duck
4. Mister Bernard
5. Flik

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

what happened to this?

Yeah, I know, I'm not very good at this. I'm like 3 weeks overdue. I'm working on it! I've got some ideas...

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

I'm trying, really.

I actually am working on an honest-to-goodness actual "blog." Well I'm trying to anyway, it's hard to focus, especially with all the pretty things on Tumblr I have to look at. (Who knew that there were so many strange looking skinny girls?)

Actually I have 4 in the works. Blog ideas, that is. Are any of them anything worthwhile? Probably not, but I'm still cracking away at them. One day I'll get around to finishing my series of in depth examinations of all the Disney Movies. (2 out of 50 is pretty good, right?).


yeah, yeah, kevie, why don't you stop talking about it and just do it already then?

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Awesome.

Have I mentioned that Disney/Pixar is making a live action John Carter of Mars? Or that it's directed by Andrew Stanton (a Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, Wall-E)? Or that the script is by Michael Chabon? Or that it's starring Willem Dafoe? Or that the music is by Michael Giacchino? No? oh, well, I think it'll be pretty good.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

FIND ME:

I'm all over the internet, and because of my unfortunate similar shared namesakes (The Amazing OTHER Kevin Peterson, the artist or my Cricket playing counterpart) I'm not quite as easily "googled" as others. So:

http://www.facebook.com/kevin.m.peterson
http://kevinmpeterson.blogspot.com
https://twitter.com/KevinPeterson
http://kevinpeterson.tumblr.com
http://kevinmpeterson.deviantart.com
http://www.myspace.com/kevinmpeterson
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinpeterson18


and my "Fan page" http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kevin-Michael-Peterson/295412012759?ref=ts

Today: May 8th.

Today is a day that at one point was actually an important day. A day that meant a great deal to me. Now today is just simply a day.

Alright fine.

So, here we are. It's come to this. Due to the demands of two people (one especially pushy!!) I'm going to update this regularly now. Not that I haven't tried to start blogging on a regular basis... I have dozens of half-written blogs, all ridiculously outdated (did you know Obama is President, now?) and another 50 or so ideas written in my idea notebook (iPhone), one day I'll get around to them. The problem I have is that I'm a notoriously self-concious writer, I never like anything I write and I'm never quite "finished" with it. The only things I actually finish writing and turn in are assignments for grades and even then those assignments are never done, they're ripped from my hands! After which I spend the weeks or days or hours waiting for my paper (which I've convinced myself is a failure) to return.. only to look at the high final grade perplexed and confused, convinced that it must be some sort of mistake.

One of the reasons I've latched on to Twitter is that it's so much easier to get all my blog ideas out of the way without having to worry about actually writing sufficient content (it is called micro-blogging after all) the downside being any idea larger than 140 characters is truncated or abandoned in an attempt to not bog down my feed (or my poor followers, they already suffer enough by following me).

I labour so much over everything I write, not just school work but texts, Twitter Posts, Status Updates trying to make everything "work." 9 times out of 10, if you see me on my phone, I'm generally trying to make the same damn Pocahontas joke work despite the fact that nobody is going to understand it besides me. So, anyway, where was I going with this?

OH, yes.

So, this is what should have been about my fantastic Geology class and my AMAZING field trip to Cave Of The Winds, down in Manitou Springs, Colorado, but I forgot my camera cord so therefore I have no pictures and therefore no visual aid to go along with my blah-blah-blah. So, this is what you get.

So what I'm going to need to actually keep up with this, is constant nagging, so (you know who you are) keep pushing me! I can't promise it'll always be good (or that it will ever be good...) but it's a start. Give me topics! If you have a stupid animation or comic question you need answering, ask away. It'll give me incentive to keep going. ALSO, help get me to start doing more art and I'll throw that up here too.

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