Art by MeddygonThere is a fine line \ Between genius and madness. \ It is called timing.

June 2004

March 2009

En, better known as Stinky, more recently known as Cancer Cat, did not make it. Her lymphoma was in complete remission: she did not have any sign of cancer in her when we brought her into the vet last week. After her last chemo treatment, she was the best she’d been in a while. Then she stopped eating. She was limp, and didn’t have any balance when jumping off things. She got some IV therapy for dehydration and a bunch more tests. They said she had an infection, but they didn’t know where. They suggested some expensive exploratory surgery, but even then that would guarantee recovery. There wasn’t hope anymore.

I shouldn’t have looked in her eyes as they injected her. The sedatives made her eyes go wide and she stared blankly ahead until it was over. I can’t get it out of my head yet. I shouldn’t have watched.

Like most of my work from near a decade ago, I’m embarrassed of “Chicago Schroe” now. And like most of my recent posts, I’m still going to share it with the Internet.

The art was simple, but inconsistent. The plot was based around my interests and acquaintances. It was terrible. When I got around to attempting a consistent art style, my hard drive failed. All data was lost, including the original flash files. I didn’t care, I just gave up.

The following link has nothing to do with me:Schroe, H.

It links to SDO and has an old post as the company description. Are bots building careers now?

Not every time we sleep do we reach a deep enough state to dream. For weeks my rest has been frequently interrupted and it seemed I’d never dream. After roaming around the house for some time in a half-coherent stupor (a state in which I seem to be able to do little more than care for Jonas and eat), I managed to sleep well in my short rests. It’s as if my body has me sleepwalking consciously during the day so that I may dream when I do sleep.

I dreamt that I was at a convention center for the purposes of an audition. It was for the part of some background character, only a few lines, from a comic or something equally nerdy that was being made into a movie. At the time the dream started, or at least what I recall, I had already finished my audition and was waiting for James to pick me up.

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Characters for some failed RPG given up on by some irc network starring the opers as npcs or something. The only thing I really remember about it was I was a sniper chick. Oh, and the reason I quit the project was because everyone designing it had a raging hard-on for Square and refused to make the game battle system not be based on a Final Fantasy game or Chronotrigger. And they wanted materia and summons. And they were going to summon characters from Square games.

Edit: Added more sketches related to this. All from late 2000, early 2001.

Early 2002, done for a Color Theory assignment. We had to recreate an image using marker and dots and stuff. I once found this being hotlinked to as an example of “Magritte’s early work.” It’s actually pretty terrible and lacks any artistic skill.

Because I’m lazy and don’t like to connect to more than one irc server, I’ve moved the SDO irc idlefest to efnet. irc.efnet.info / #SDO. There’s no nickserv or chanserv or anything, I need to get a bot on there.

A couple of our old characters on WoW, Schoolbus and Underground. UG (along with Ba’s counterpart, Mo) were stolen a long while back after Jorenko and I quit WoW. We didn’t find out until a year or more after the fact when we tried to reactivate our accounts. Mine was fine, his was locked. For 6 months, Blizzard did nothing but tell us to send in some forms, including a notarized declaration of ownership of the account (to that I say, “W. T. F.” After buying new accounts and playing for a few months, we realized why we quit in the first place: it’s not that fun. We can grind in other games for free. Also the social aspect of the game sucks. Anyway, doodles.

Ba, the troll shaman. Fwump. Drawn in December 2004 because I hadn’t drawn much in a while then. Used WoW character as reference. This was somewhere around level 30.

Another image often stolen by tortured suburban teenagers finding random images on the internet and applying meaning where there is none, or applying their own meaning over the artist’s intent. This image shows another god character that was displaced battling internally; her original, non-god soul seeks to remind the new amalgam in charge that she was the first and she will not be brushed aside. This lady was intended to be a bit of a god killer, though born a mortal. Being mortal, she couldn’t properly destroy the souls of gods and they lived in her.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, stuff started from a watercolor of the ice angel. On the right you will find the mutilated image. For some reason, after scanning original a decade ago I plonked it into photoshop and inverted it and possible put it through other tortures (filters) as well. Don’t ask me what’s up with that scarf or hair or whatever, because I seriously do not know. No one knows.
Edit: Hehe, here’s the original pencil sketch (on the left). I know I have more pre-paint planning doodles somewhere . . . probably in storage.

Way back in high school, after making a watercolor painting of the original ice angel (variations of which was posted previously on SDO), I started making up a universe where various gods controlled planets and fought for dominance and such. One god lost her planet (pictured on the right, the zora ripoff), and came to Boe’s (also pictured previously, the white-haired individual) planet to steal it from her. This god’s name is Azula. Imagine my dismay when Avatar had a character many years later with the same name and the same personality I would role play her as.
Previously posted Azula art

As I sit in this gliding rocker at 3 am, having just fed my son a bottle of milk, I’ve come to realise that I’ve done some impossible things.

Years ago, when some of my online friends first met me, I hated people. I couldn’t stand most social contact; I even despised others trying to strike up idle conversation in vain attempts to win friendship. The concept of dating horrified me as well. Spending so much time and money in hopes of finding someone to share your life, or at least the night, with. The whole world seemed to value the quantity of people known rather than the value. I felt stuck; I sought to gain a few good friends rather than an abundance of acquaintances. I wanted more than anything to have a best friend that would never leave my side.
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So at some point, when I was making decent art and didn’t have a job to get in the way of spending 13 hours straight on it, I did commissions. This is Azrael Dregnus, Paladin of Slaughter, done up for an online buddy. This was his D&D 3.5e character for an evil campaign. (The idea was to be running two games, where the players played both the good guys and the bad guys, and eventually they’d meet up.) The outline was done in Illustrator and the coloring and shading in Photoshop.

Progress shots, taken every hour or so: 1 2 3 3.2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Originally created 1 August 2006

Since I haven’t posted much since Jonas’s birth, and no art at all in that time, here’s a piece that I still actually like. It’s half-scribble, half detail because I just didn’t want to work on it more than one day. One of the forum members of the Cork Board made a thread in which he said he’d write about any noun or whatever someone posted. “Ashtray” was suggested, and I decided that I was going to draw something based on that after the story was written. The story had nothing to do with the picture, and the picture had nothing to do with the story. Originally done 15 April 2004.

In baby news, babies are babies. True story. This baby o’ mine is so baby-like. Yup. He’s above his birth weight, finally, and eating like a pig. He’s got a habit of pooting up a diaper, and, five minutes after you change it, he poots up another (usually a big poot followed by a little fart of dirtiness). This by itself doesn’t bother me. He’s a baby, he stinks up his pants: that’s what babies do. No, what bothers me about it is that he’ll fart while I’m holding him and just look up at me, directly at my face. If he could talk, I’m sure he’d be asking for praise. He usually gets it, though. This kid has some killer farts. Loud, stinky farts that any beer-gutted NASCAR fan, or sane new parents, would be proud of.

For those wondering, yes, I am enjoying this mom thing. I do get frustrated at times and cry, but I get over it. I’m happy I had a c-section. Sure, there’s surgery ti recover from now, but it’s not like I have to get back to the fields ASAP to make a living and keep this family going. I have plenty of time to recover, and I didn’t have to put Jorenko through hell for 36 hours of labor or however long Jonas would have made me go through. I was 2-3 cm dilated when they took him out, so things were going smoothly; if only he had been facing the right way.

All the feeding advice we’ve been given is based on averages and on the idea that Jonas’ll be hungry all the damn time. He’s hungry, sure, and he eats, but he’s always too sleepy to ask (cry) for more food. We’ve been waking him for feedings, trying to feed him the recommended amount of “2-3 ounces every 2-3 hours.” Two ounces at a time causes him to spit up too much, so we’re trying a schedule of “1 ounce, 1 hour break, 1 ounce, 2 hour break” repeating, with a longer second break at night for sleepies. So far so good; less spit up.
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Exact details to come later.

C-Section scheduled for 4 pm today.

Edit: The exact details came.
Jonas James Jurack
born 4:37pm 3/2/09
7lb 9.3oz
20 inches

Jonas

Early update today from the laptop. I woke up about a half hour ago unable to continue sleeping through a headache, so I took some painkillers. They kicked in finally, but only mildly, and the alarm’s going to go off soon … oh well. Two more angels and the god figure mentioned before. Metal/Gemstone angel thing and the silk one. I started drawing her in flash when I was in high school and never finished. I don’t have the flash file anymore so I can’t finish unless I start over. God figure lady doesn’t need wings, nor does she need to explain herself to you!

Today’s update is all thirteen episodes of Hatt.
I make no claims of quality, coherence, or … whatever.
No mind-altering drugs were consumed in the making of these comics (my pothead roommates hadn’t moved in yet).
Baby news coming tomorrow afternoon.