Hey folks.

I've had a creative block for a while. I can draw things, but I am kind of at a loss for good ideas to draw. I will now do something I don't usually do.

Okay, people. I need help. I need ideas. Gimme some suggestions, and I'll draw what I can. I am now open for requests as well as suggetions.

Some guidelines:
1) I won't do copyrighted characters often, if at all. (Don't ask for Wolverine sodomizing Pikachu, cuz that won't happen.)

2)I am not really into man on man action. If you can make it appealing to me, I might try a drawing or two, but I am hopelessly hetero. (Don't ask for Wolverine sodomizing Pikachu, cuz that won't happen.)

3)Anybody who's read my journal before knows where I stand on the cub porn issue. 'Nuff said.

Have at it people. I need to revitalize my creative spirit.

I've been thinking for a while about the concept of intellectual property and copyright law. The conclusion I've come to about it is this: Intellectual property is different for the most part from copyrighted materials. Intellectual property is covered under the axiom, "You can't patent an idea." Copyright laws are pretty much in place to keep people from profiting from the work of others. This means, that if a piece of work is the intellectual property of someone, they can copyright it only if they are responsible for its creation. Selling your material to someone else to copyright once the idea becomes a real thing in the real world is screwing yourself. The RIAA and MPAA are bullshit. They are in place to enforce copyright law. Copyright law, again, is in place to keep others from profiting from your efforts as a creator. When you share files, movies, music, what have you, you aren't profiting from the work of others. The idea I'm trying to get across here, is this: Copyright law is done for as are intellectual property rights, unless something is done about the legislation governing these. I think some work needs to be done to establish an overlap between copyright and intellectual property laws. I think if you didn't create something, I'm looking at you record and movie label execs, then it isn't yours. At the most, they should be allowed to rent the copyrights from the holders of the intellectual property rights for a limited engagement. People no longer need to sell their rights to studio heads just to have a short shot at fame. You can record and mix an album in your house and market your tunes over the internet. You can sue people for the amount they make from your efforts if they copy them and sell them but the same goes for sharing. You can sue people for their profits from your effort. If they make nothing, then guess what, dumbass? You get NO MONEY!

I'm all for retaining personal rights to material you create, but the fact is this: If you distribute your work to people who can copy it, you should really expect them to. If you want fame, the price is: You will lose money through sharing. It's been happening since recordable media made it into people's homes back in the 70s. Get used to it. Suck it up and create stuff people want and eventually they will pay for it. For now, when it comes to music, we're just making our money back for all the $20 albums we've purchased over the years for one or two songs. Once we get all our wasted money back, we might be willing to spend a few bucks for the good shit.

Sorry... Felt I had to weigh in. This was hanging on my head for a while.

I grew up in the near south suburbs of Chicago. I spent my entire life, up until I was 26, living in the U.S. and with a brief exception when I was in the army, in the Chicago area. When I was 26 I met a woman from Montreal on the web and moved here to live with her, where I've lived, pretty much, since.

Let me start by saying, Montreal is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. It's a lovely city full of festivals and gorgeous people. They love their food and festivals and music. The type of social divisions that we have in the states (I speak from my Chicago experiences mostly) such as skaters dislike the hip-hop crowd, clean types dislike the grunge crowd, the drug-friendly is looked down on by everyone... etc. Think of high school and the rifts that tend to linger beyond that and also the rampant racism that exists pretty much everywhere in the U.S. That doesn't really happen here. You'll see a group of friends walking down te street and there'll be one stereotypical hip-hop guy hanging with a skater a jock and a clean boy or nerd. And they're all friends. Blows my mind every time I see it.

Now we come to the problem: Montreal is in Quebec.

How to describe Quebec... Quebec is like Texas, except the majority of people here are of French national origin at some point and speak Quebecoise which is a dialect of French. Quebec, like any place that is run by "french" people, thinks it is more important than anything around it and there is a government agenda to breed, force or drive all English speaking people out of the province. They want to secede from Canada and be their own country, despite the fact that they are corrupt as hell and have proven again and again that they can't run a province, let alone a country without the help of the federal government.

To the end of promoting the French Language agenda, they have outlawed any and all contest from outside of Quebec. They have also outlawed any financial stabilization from outside as well (Anyone who's ever gotten a secured credit card to try to fix their credit knows what this is. They don't do secured credit in Quebec and QUebec residents can't get them from outside the province.) and there is a 90 minute a week minimum in Quebec of instruction in French in the english schools. After the basics, i.e., this is a sentence, this is a noun, this is a verb, there is no mandatory grammar instruction for students in the English schools, in English.

Anyway, back to the focus of my rant: Contests. It is against the law for someone, even a U.S. citizen, like me, who lives in Quebec to win anything from outside of the province. This means, companies like ThinkGeek who take t-shirt submissions in the terms of a contest can't or won't allow me to participate in their submission program, because the Quebec government wants to fool all the backwater French hicks in the province into thinking that French is the international language of business and commerce so they can oust the anglophones (english speakers, for those of you who don't live in Quebec) and have an All French Provincial Circle Jerk™ and find out that they can't live and function in an English Speaking world with no English Speakers.

Thus endeth my rant.


P.S: This is one of the reasons I haven't started selling my shirts yet. It's not about me obeying the retarded law, it's about ThinkGeek being aware of it. I'm sure they'd do my ideas if it wasn't illegal.

The initial stage approval judges decided for whatever reasons that both the Insomnia designs were unacceptable. The well thought out and sensitive form letter they sent me intimated that they were probably poorly designed. I am working now to find out if their 90 day waiting period (before I can submit them somewhere else) applies for early stage rejections or if I can start farming them around again.

Help a starving artist. Don't shop at threadless.

I've submitted the first two designs for judging for the threadless line. I'll know in 4-8 business days whether or not they're accepted and will go to the vote.

I'll post more info then. The ones I've submitted are my two insomnia dealies. The colors are a bit different from what you see here, but the ideas carry pretty well.

If you've been watching me lately, you've seen and read a lot of flap about getting my designs made into t-shirts. I found a site with a wicked contest that may pay me what I think my designs are worth.

http://www.threadless.com/

If you guys have heard anything bad about them, please let me know. Otherwise, I'm submitting some of my designs there on Monday.

The deal: If I submit my stuff to threadless.com's contest, I may need your support to vote it in and make it win. Are you guys up to it?

I am, for the first time, completely open to commission work.

Sketch (up to two characters): $5 and up, depending on complexity (Each additional character, within reason, an extra $5)

Ink (up to two characters): $15 and up, again, depending on complexity (Each additional character, within reason, an additional $5-10, depending on complexity)

Digital Greyscale (up to two characters): $20 and up, complexity pending (Each extra character $10)

Digital Full Colour (you guessed it, up to two characters): $25 and up, based on complexity (Each additional character $15)

I don't like giant group images, but will consider it, as long as you realize that there is an associated cost.

I am tired and happy it's done. I'm not a scrooge, but I celebrate the real holiday that has real business being in the beginning of real winter. As long as I've been an adult, I've been pagan, which means, I know the true meaning of Christmas, and that is: "We need a holiday we can put near the Winter Solstice to occlude it from the eyes of the (largely) pagan community (this was christianity took over the western world entirely) and give them a reason to believe that we know the date that Christ was born, when in actuality, we can't even pin down the exact year."

In light of that fact, I celebrate the solstice and have a good bit of wind down time before I have to worry about New Year's, or I would if people didn't expect me to be a Christian just because I'm white and from the western hemisphere. It is expected that I show all that great ol' Yule-tide Cheer, despite the fact that I resent the existence of the holiday and the expectations placed on me by the commercialised masses, where you are either tearing your hair out to get presents for people you don't know or never see, or you are a grinch, scrooge, humbug or some other child-like expletive of joy.

Anyway, good riddance. I hope the Solstice found you all well, and if you are christian, I hope you had a good Christmas, Jews, happy Chanukah... etc, ad nauseum.

Oh and BTW, you want it commissions? I got it commissions. Hit me up and we'll talk.

...cuz you creep into my bed about every week.

mc chris is my new bizarre obsession.

Everyone needs to be down with nerdcore.

Do it now.

mc chris, MC Frontalot, MC Hawking, Optimus Rhyme.

I'm serious. Go get it now.

Turn off your damn computer and leave your house and go purchase these albums. Wait... Buy them on your computer. I doubt you'd find them in a music store.

Oh and for any interested people, I have a new blogspot thing, inspired by Gabe over at Penny Arcade.

You can find exclusive and other art posts here:

http://artbypyromancy.blogspot.com/

I made a little headway on page thirteen of Friday XIII yesterday, but the rest won't be around for a bit. Too much life intruding. We'll pick up where we left off on Monday. This week's a write-off.

For a day or two while I did some heavy work on a paying gig, or at least something that will probably see print. All that seems to be about done for the moment. I'll be picking Friday back up tomorrow.


Now... Pyro needy sleep.

Woo.

I was on Scott Kurtz's ( http://www.pvponline.com/ ) podcast last night briefly. It can be heard here: http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TS-3947.mp3 (You'll have to be signed up to talk shoe to make that happen.)

They were talking about heroes and battlestar galactica and apparently I've put too much thought into the latter because I made a brief comment about where I think the series is headed and Kurtz said, "Pyromancy, you're blowing my mind. I'm muting you. Thanks for calling." And my limelight time was over. It's kinda bizarre, when you think about it.

I got booted from a geekshow for outgeeking the resident geeks.

Anyway, yeah. I'm briefly a little more famous.

... There's a member I stopped watching today because I can't take the whiney bitching every time there's anything not perfect in her(?) life and horrible english. I dunno where she(?)'s from but I can't take it anymore.

If you base the majority of your income off of commissions and contest winnings, you really can't complain that you don't have cash.

Thanks folks. I didn't think there were enough people still watching to actually break 500. A thank you pic is in the planning.

DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA. Furries can't be a community because one in every three furries is an asshole. Look to your left; look to your right. If you can't see an asshole, guess what?

This whole mature cub art issue was bullshit. The admins showed a marked lack of character and forethought when they boned the issue so hard after not being able to resolve the situation themselves. It should never have gone public. When you're gonna paint your house, you don't poll the neighborhood, because there's always one asshat in the bunch who's gonna suggest green and magenta. The cub thing was bad enough, and by the way, if looking at depictions of the very young gets your wang dang a-doodlin', then guess what? You are, by psychological definition, a pedophile. It doesn't matter what the context is. It doesn't matter the legality of the imagery. In your heart and mind it turns you on to be attracted to little kids and even if you never act on it, it's still there.

Now that that's done with, the other reason that furries can't be a community: They don't try. When people in a community are in crisis, they pull together and resolve the crisis. Otherwise, Canada would'a got awfully full when G.W. "Dipshiticus" Bush got elected. When you are a part of a community, you and the community are indivisible. I started coming here because I found a place where a lot of my favorite artists were gathered together. It was a veritable treasure trove of the cute and cuddly, the sexy and hot and the horny and funny. I was happy. Then the cub thing happened and half the artists I'd followed here packed up and moved off due to the cub thing. Again, marked lack of character and forethought. How do things get better if you run away at the first sign of trouble. The admins have proven that they won't fix the pedo issue unless someone rides their asses. Now all the people who might have, left.

I say again: DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA. Furries can't be a community because one in every three furries is an asshole. Now this asshole isn't going anywhere, but I don't get joy from FA like I did when I first signed up and I am looking for other venues where there isn't an undercurrent of hostility. Maybe there'll even be some sort of "community" there.

... would any of you buy them?

Just curious. I am planning on eventually making the "_____" makes me "______" images as t-shirts, almost completely unaltered. I've tried inking them and they lose something if they aren't sketchy. Would you be willing to buy them? Are there any suggestions (beyond cafe press) for how best to make them into shirts. If you want I can post a t-shirt I did at home so you'd have an idea of what they'd look like finished.

I have forgotten. This is week (insert number here, I've lost count) of irregular sleep. I don't remember what it feels like to sleep with any regular pattern.

Honk if you love elevated seratonin levels!

...I intend to eventually make a few folios available for anyone interested, but I have not as yet, created or sold any. Anyone who knows how/has done it before (Making and selling folios. I don't need to know if you've done it.) or know anyone who has, I need to know so I can best handle this. I want to give any interested parties the best value for it but I don't want to lose my ass in the endeavor either.

Thanks for any help you might give.

Star Wars or Star Trek?

The Beatles or Elvis?

Pepsi or Coke?

Picard or Kirk?

Episodes IV, V, VI or episodes I, II, III?

DC or Marvel?

Batman or Superman?

Spiderman or Wolverine?

Goth Girls or Barbie Girls?

Werewolves or Vampires?

PC or Mac?

A Perfect Circle or Tool?

Evolution or Intelligent Design?

Love or Money?

Zelda or Mario?

Once you answer these, I'll know all the important stuff. The rest is just details.

300 pageviews.

WHEE!

Drinks for everyone!

Back from Toronto. Lovely city.

I know I've got a few things on the burner, currently, but I am having an out of town experience with my wife and daughter and it's sorely needed. When I get back I will finish up the colours on some stuff and post some new things. For anyone who lives in the Toronto area, I am somewhere near you but don't ask me where: I'm kinda lost, myself.

Things will get back to reasonably normal soon.

I got rejected by a publisher of adult content today. I wish for them to remain nameless at this point. Most people would feel bad about this, but, as I told the person who rejected me, the fact that I didn't receive a form letter means that I was considered. It's nice. I'm just gonna keep on tryin'.

Anyone who knows how to contact Jeremy Bernal, please give me a hand.

Thanks a lot!