So in addition to redesigning my LiveJournal layout, I also redesigned my blog layout to match! And I have redone my little profile comic that sits in my profile on LJ, but you can see it here too.

Now everything is much more the same style. I’m also sort of boggled by how much nicer my art is in just a year and a half. Much cuter!

I also draw a goldfish for queenofhalves in exchange for her generous donation to help the tornado recovery in the South.

Thanks, queenofhalves!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

So this weekend, Rina and I will be at MoCCA Fest and it will be glorious!

If you stop by, you can find us here:

That is Table G10! Just like the Countries participating in the GAB.

Rina is going to have an all-new Velia, Dear book. I am going to have my new Tarot Deck, plus two new minis and assorted not-new minis. And I will be doing Tarot readings, too!

Please stop by! I will be happy to see you!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

First off, I just want to direct you all over to see what furiosity has got herself up to. She is starting a Tumblr dedicated to Awesome Female Characters, and she is looking for suggestions from TV, Books, Comics, and Video Games. You should go and recommend, and peruse the lists just because reading them is kinda cool.

Secondly, this is my exciting new! I got a box today, and it was full of this thing that I have been working on since September.

That’s right!  This is my first-ever Tarot deck. It’s fairly faithful to the Rider-Waite imagery, but with my own take on the designs. It looks so nice and I’m so excited!

Here are some more pictures:

This was such a fun project and I am so gratified to have finished it.  Even if I don’t make any money off of it, I am extremely satisfied and proud that I was able to complete a whole deck and get them printed.  The cards, by the way, are store quality with a glossy coating and 3.5″ x 4.75″ They come shrink-wrapped and I will be putting together a small instructional pamphlet for people who don’t know how to read Tarot already. Here is an illustration of the size:

They will be premiering at MoCCA for $25, and after MoCCA (April 9 & 10), I’ll be selling them online for $25 plus S/H.

EEEEEE so excited!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Rina and I haven’t had a Draw Nite in a few weeks, and we finally had one again last night!

Apart from having really good Chinese takeout and Sazeracs, and chatting a lot about drawing and writing, we drew this:

Poor Toto!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

This weekend, I spent some time sorting and packing up books that have been living at my parents’, so they can take the trek from Connecticut to my apartment that actually has space for books in Queens.

While doing this, I found a diary from 1984. Let’s just get this straight. In 1984, I was 6 years old.

There were only two pages in the entire diary filled out. I scanned them in so you could see.

Those are the only pages I filled in the entire book. Draw what conclusions you will.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Last night, I went to the MTA’s public hearing on the new fare increases that they wish to levy specifically on regular commuters and the disabled.

If you’re not from New York, it bears explaining that New York has an awesome transit system. It’s open 24 hours a day. But in the past couple years, there have been a lot of service cuts, resulting in lost jobs, less accessibility for the disabled, and overcrowded subways. The fare also increased from a flat $2 to $2.25 per ride.

Recently, the state cut promised MTA funding, which is pretty screwy. But the MTA’s response, rather than applying for federal stimulus funds, like several other cities have done recently, is that they’ve decided to increase the monthly fare for commuters by eleven percent, and institute a service cap of 90 rides. That means that anyone who works two jobs, goes to school, or has to use transit as part of their working day (like social services folks who pay house visits) would be plum out of luck. They proposed an “alternative” by which the increase would be seventeen percent and the fares would stay unlimited. Neither is tenable, and it punishes the people who use the subway most and who are most dependent on the subway– city-dwelling commuters who can’t afford to keep cars, or choose not to keep cars.

In addition to this, the city wants to raise the fare for our service bus system, “Access-A-Ride,” a special system for elderly and disabled people that will pick them up at home and drop them off where they need to go. It’s intended to make sure that everyone can get to their doctors, and to prevent people from being forced to become shut-ins. The problem is that the people affected by this are people who more often than not are on a fixed income and have to figure their bus fare into their income very carefully already.

Being at the hearing was incredibly depressing. The room was only about a third full, and many of the people who spoke said that they had been coming to hearings like this for six years, and every time they come, the crowd gets smaller and smaller as it becomes more and more apparent that the MTA board does not give a shit about anything anyone has to say. On top of that, the number of older people and disabled people who came out to speak about how they are afraid that raising the Access-A-Ride fares will cut them off from living a normal life, or even from seeing their doctors, was downright heartbreaking.

I scribbled down some of the most interesting moments of the meeting, of people getting up to speak to the board.

(Transcription: “Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is dynamism. peace is generosity. It is a right and it is a duty.” -Father Óscar Romero)

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Last night, Rina came over to play! And by play, I mean draw.

When I was a little kid, my favorite game would be to sit with my friends and both draw the same thing at the same time.

None of my friends liked this game. They would usually get bored after the first one. I have a sketchbook from when I was a kid, where I used to have “theme pages.” There was a clown page and a cheerleader page and some other pages, but those are the ones I remember. I would ask my friends to add their doodles of clowns or cheerleaders or whatever to the appropriate page. Some of them humored me. Some of them didn’t even go that far.

But tonight, Rina came over and we drew things!

Rina has been doing this neato series of comic versions of tweets, and she worked on some of those. Then I did some, too, but mostly, I drew pictures of Rina drawing! And here I will reveal the secret, centuries-old process by which her comic tweets are made! It has been passed down for generations and protected by a secret order of sworn guardians.

Rina is freaking awesome, y’all. It’s so cool to be able to draw with someone who has so much talent and skill and is willing to talk about her art and pass on advice and knowledge so openly. Plus, she is just generally fabulous. Go check out our comic tweets on her blog!

Here they are!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

So by now I am sure most of you have seen the Horrible Lady Gaga Comic with the hideous cover that looks like they just taught someone about vector art or maybe Photoshop filters, and the even worse art inside that defies every anatomical rule possible (and not in a fun way!)

So, you know, I was looking at it and in spite of all my people looking like blobs of play-doh, I said, hey! I can do that! So here it is: Lady Gaga Origins Pt 1.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.