Girl in Four Colors

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Fri, 17 May 2013 15:03:54 -0400

Why isn't New Orleans Mother's Day parade shooting a 'national tragedy'?

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:40:17 -0400

Why isn't New Orleans Mother's Day parade shooting a 'national tragedy'?:

“American tragedies don’t occur on the southside of Chicago or the New Orleans 9th Ward. They don’t occur where inner city high school kids shoot into school buses or someone shoots at a 10-year old’s birthday party in New Orleans. Or Gary, Indiana. Or Compton. Or Newport News. These are where the forgotten tragedies happen and the cities are left to persevere on their own.”

"The first time I read ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ I was sitting in 10th grade English class. But there is..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:38:28 -0400

“The first time I read ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ I was sitting in 10th grade English class. But there is one image that stays with me. The description of crops going unharvested even as workers are eager and willing to pick the food. He writes:

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the time, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

He wrote those words more than 70 years ago, yet the conditions he describes still ring true for 50 million Americans living in food insecure households today… . Hungry families do not have enough food… [but] not because of scarcity. Every year 40% of food produced goes uneaten. That’s 20 pounds of food per person per day. And that is the twisted irony of hunger in America today. What Steinbeck called that crime that goes beyond denunciation, landfills brimming with rotting food while 15% of households don’t have enough to eat.”

- Melissa Harris-Perry [x] (via mswyrr)

beanbunny: so-relatable: CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THIS...

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:47:10 -0400

beanbunny:

so-relatable:

CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THIS WAS FORCED UPON US

Sure, let’s go.

I’m your music teacher. I see what’s going on in the public schools — I see that your other teachers really only want you to learn math and reading, because that’s what’s tested under NCLB, and really even then if they could cut it to one of those subjects, they would.

But I’m different. I see that you’re an individual. I want you to understand the world, because you’ll be out in it some day, and I want you to understand the parts of it that aren’t explained by numbers or words. You need to understand how the world feels, how people feel, what they mean when they express themselves, or even what the greater universe at large means when it expresses itself through nature, or sounds, or any number of things too big to list in a Tumblr post.

That is the end goal of arts education.

To get there, from a musical perspective, you need to understand the basics first. You couldn’t read this if you didn’t understand letters, how would you understand that Brahms wrote four symphonies about the pain of not being with the woman he loved if you don’t know what a pitch is? Your music teacher understands better than anyone that learning happens through creation and imitation. The recorders are cheap (so your parents didn’t have to put down a couple thousand on a violin — do your parent’s have that? Mine didn’t) and easy (so that literally everyone in the classroom can master it, even the kids that might have problems in the regular classroom suddenly have a very easy tool that they can be successful with). Also, they sound quite beautiful if you’d quit blowing so hard.

But no, by reblogging this, apparently you’d rather lose the ability to understand art and the world around you. Fine, more for me.

missvoltairine: sometimes i’m all about mad pride but sometimes i just hate mental illness, i hate...

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:36:49 -0400

missvoltairine:

sometimes i’m all about mad pride but sometimes i just hate mental illness, i hate being crazy, i’m miserable and i feel like i make other people miserable even when i don’t mean to and i want to cry all the time.

team-joebama: mediaite: Wayne Brady calls “bullshit” on Bill...

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:25:11 -0400

team-joebama:

mediaite:

Wayne Brady calls “bullshit” on Bill Maher.

I would be happy if anyone beat Maher’s ass in public, but especially so if it were Wayne Brady

and more context from the article:

Maher first explained his desire for Obama to be a “real black president” who “lifts up his shirt so they can see the gun in his pants” during a monologue in 2010. Subsequently, Maher referred to Obama as “your Wayne Brady,” a characterization that put into question the African-American credentials of both Obama and Brady.

“I’ve respected him as a comedian, and what he does on HBO is great,” Brady told Hill. “But when he starts to drag me in, to use me as the cultural linchpin of his not-black-enough argument, that’s bullshit.”

distractedbyshinyobjects: luanna255: Caroline Sharp, aka...

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:22:24 -0400

distractedbyshinyobjects:

luanna255:

Caroline Sharp, aka distractedbyshinyobjects, as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl.

Because you would be a flawless Babsgirl, my dear, and there needed to be at least one fancast for you in the tag.

And hopefully someday you’ll have the chance to show the world how absolutely awesome you would be in this role. ;-)

I can’t even breathe right now…

Girl, you know you’d be perfect. <3

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 23:42:33 -0400

eschergirls: Charlie submitted: “Yawn! What an amazing and...

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:14:21 -0400

eschergirls:

Charlie submitted:

“Yawn! What an amazing and refreshing nap I just had!”

I mean, seriously? Found this gem while looking through comic book previews. Cover for Dynamite’s Red Sonja: Unchained series by Mel Rubi. I honestly don’t know how to properly tag it, since “WTF did I just see” isn’t an option here.

I think it’s time for another caption contest!

And for this contest, I’m happy to announce there will be a prize for the winner courtesy of Girl In Four Colors!!! :D (The artist behind the Escher Girls Centaur Badge.)

The winner will get a free greyscale small sketch commission (normally she charges $15) and can order a print, canvas, etc of it from society6. (That part you’d have to pay for, because it’s an external service, but it’s still 50% off the total price.)

Check out her commissions page here for her regular prices if you’d be interested in commissioning her for other things, or to check out her work to see her style. :)

So that’s pretty cool! :D It’s really awesome for her to be willing to do this. :3 And hopefully will make the contest a bit more fun. The winning caption will be chosen by me and her.

Anyway, onto the caption contest!

What do you think is going on?

TO THE VICTOR GOES… a free commission.

Not to oversell myself, but that’s pretty cool.

sopranomonroe: “I am a Princess. I am brave sometimes, I am...

Sun, 12 May 2013 10:12:00 -0400

sopranomonroe:

“I am a Princess. I am brave sometimes, I am scared sometimes. Sometimes I am brave even when I am scared. I believe in loyalty and trust. I believe loyalty is built on trust. I try to be kind, I try to be generous. I am kind even when others are not so generous. I am a Princess. I think standing up for myself is important. I think standing up for others is more important, but standing with others is most important. I am a Princess. I believe compassion makes me strong. Kindness is power. And family is the tightest bond of all. I have heard I am beautiful, I know I am strong. I am a Princess. Long may I reign.”

Princess Leia, with text from Disney’s “I Am a Princess” campaign. [x]

mercurialblonde: These are from DC Comic’s Superboy comic. I...

Sun, 12 May 2013 10:03:59 -0400

mercurialblonde:

These are from DC Comic’s Superboy comic. I just picked them at random, because I know if I want to talk about how modern comics coloring is dumb as hell—DC Comics are sort of the gold standard for not giving a fuck about the colors in their books. I mean there are a lot of things Marvel does wrong—how they as a company through the years perceive the role of color in comics, is not consistently one of them. Books like X-Force and Hawkeye happen enough that you think there must be someone on staff there who recognizes a company built on a history of bold stand by your colorist moments. But DC—this is pretty standard what I expect to see with DC. They have sort of a house style for coloring, and this is basically it. Sun is red. Jeans are blue. Buildings are building colored(bat books get a little more moody in terms of color but only because they’re trying to live up to a cliche ideal of moody and noir) so on and so forth.

Anyways. This page isn’t colored badly or anything. So I’m not dissing the colorist. As far as I know they are just doing exactly what they are being paid to do. I’m more talking about the aesthetic being presented here and how it works against the other elements at play in the comic.

The First thing, like I said, is that the choices are extremely literal. Jeans are jean colored. Vest is all vest colored. So on and so forth. It’s very boring—particularly when you think about how things change color every second of the day depeneding on light, depending on the color of the things they are next to—color is not an entrenched thing—it’s a wavy thing that is constantly shifting to reflect time around it. One panel superman’s vest could be bright pink, the next it could be blue and orange. Things shift.

But even that—whatever. The thing which is really at play here which is actively making this shit look shittier than it should be—is the lighting effects/gradient filters. Every thing on this page has a fucking gradient on it. Superman’s stupid vest has gradients all through it. Making it look almost metallic in nature. His shirt under his vest looks like a knight’s coat of arms—when I think it’s just a y’know…sweater. By putting gradients all over the clothes you completely rob them of any texture. And the sad thing is if you want to show weird progressions in color on clothes—you can get pretty dynamic and crazy.

Check how Dean White has colored this x-force comic—he’s still presenting gradients—but the color choices of those changes are much bolder and create a much more singular image:

So I’d say that using gradients in this way just exposes your color choices and progressions even more. If you’re not on point with those color choices—you end up with this very bland Superboy looking comic.

But here’s the real problem. Check how the actual linework on those superboy pages looks? There’s crazy textures of ink strokes in the clothes—there’s some really cool dynamic lines on that kids mask—and it is all lost behind the gradients, and the need of the colorist to know better than the artist in terms of how to present light. If you went flats on these pages, and followed the directions of the artist’s linework—shit would kind of look like a comic that a major company put a ton of money in to make. It would look bold and challenging.

Think about Matt Hollingsworth’s work on Hawkeye and how by playing with flats instead of gradients and being on point in his color progressions he is allowing the composition and lineart of Aja to sing and for the most part because of that, the book immedietely went on a lot of top critics lists—almost irrespective of anything Fraction actually wrote in the page.

I mean look at the simplicity of this:

Because of Hollingsworth being willing to lay back in the cut here—Aja can get away with fun page design shit. I mean Chris Ware sees that and is like “duh”. The more shit a colorist puts on a page, the less you will see the lineart—and the less dynamic the composition can be.

When you do colors like the Superboy book up there, you are literaly wasting the reader’s eye’s time on the page by overloading it with mediocre shit, just so you could tell me that oh hey—“Jeans are still blue!” “Flesh color is still flesh color”. Thanks. I totally couldn’t have figure the same thing out if the page were black and white.

Most of my time writing, I talk about the stuff that is done right, and in coloring, I routinely highlight dope shit on that front. But there is I think value in occasionally calling out shit like this. Because I see smaller companies with smaller budges mimicking what DC does because “that’s what sells”—but the truth of the matter is that if you make your books like as bland and boring as DC makes their books—how exactly do you plan to stand out and steal eyes on a cramped shelf space? Especially if you are also telling the same type of played out superhero soap operas as the big two. Hiring a few bold colorists to manage your line for you—is probably the cheapest way to visually win that game. I mean not for nothing, but look at what Mignola has done with his books. He sort of has his in-house colorist in Dave Stewart who maintains cohesion across the line—so you know a mignolaverse book on sight—but he’s also making choices that are different than the ones being made at the big two on colors. There’s some sort of economic formula there in an age where readers are largely ignoring artists and paying attention mostly to the writers. If I were a cynical comic publisher—I’d be putting the bulk of my budget into the hiring top colorists and writers—and then filling the art in with cheap clean lined folk. Why am I even talking about this? I dunno.

Anyways. Gradients are dog drool. Flesh color gradients are theeee worst of the worst.

thehappysorceress: Favourite Movie by TRAVALE

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:42:00 -0400

thehappysorceress:

Favourite Movie by TRAVALE

tompeyer: I punch, therefore I am!

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:09:35 -0400

tompeyer:

I punch, therefore I am!

twentypercentcooler: Remember that time Batman got shot with a...

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:08:26 -0400

twentypercentcooler:

Remember that time Batman got shot with a baby laser that turned him into Baby Batman for a week? If you don’t, I’ve written up the issue in a new column at Cracked! Enjoy!

Han is a very different dude by the time we get to Endor. I...

Sat, 11 May 2013 01:12:01 -0400

Han is a very different dude by the time we get to Endor.

I think we’ve just uncovered the secret to ending sexism.

DIP MEN IN CARBONITE.

Does Han Solo complain about the Friend Zone when he thinks a girl he likes doesn't like him back?

Sat, 11 May 2013 01:03:10 -0400

fuckyeahmelancholy:

NO.

monkeybraincomics: We make comics for fun. <3 They really...

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:09:29 -0400

monkeybraincomics:

We make comics for fun.

<3

They really do. Some of the best books out there right now are monkeybrain books, and if you’re not reading them, shame on you.

And that’s the most frustrating thing about depression. It...

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:59:17 -0400

And that’s the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn’t always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn’t even something — it’s nothing. And you can’t combat nothing. You can’t fill it up. You can’t cover it. It’s just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.
(x)

YEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:09:00 -0400

YEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

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Fri, 10 May 2013 11:05:40 -0400