Following from that old thing, here is the sort of material people have been asking me for lately. You may be better off not reading the text!

mitz opportunity
Somewhere in 2015 I had to make a 80×80 pixel icon to accompany my comic strip’s link on some outdated web-comic list that nobody has looked at in years. To justify the icon’s existence and permit it to be used on almost any other website, I subsequently increased the icon to 100×100 pixels. Later I added a useless animation to it for approximately no reason. And later I made the ears wiggle in an insufferable manner. Who does that mitz think it is?
I drew the initial 6 frames in paint shop pro version 6 circa 1999, as separate images. It worked for this but felt inefficient.

boxed botUnfortunately it inspired wimpod, whose creature also turned into one of these.
I tried to make edits in photoshop after I had already assembled it, and that is a terrible program to edit gifs in because there is no way to look at the next frame and also activate the next frame for editing without moving the mouse and clicking on two different things every time. Rubbish!
I hear that the newest photoshop has a less stupid animation mode. However, it is also subscription only, which means you pay for it until you die and never really own your copy of the software, and adope can arbitrarily cut you off from it whenever and for whatever reason it feels like. It probably won’t but it could.


aki-breaky bugsome months later this came along, for AtlasImperial of another suspicious character, a moth-oid named Aki. This required independent moving parts so I tried using my recently installed Clip Studio, which has a powerful animation mode. Unfortunately, it has absolutely no animation specific keyboard shortcuts and will only paste as new layers, but cannot merge layers at ALL in animation mode because [no reason], and it is very stupid and inconvenient for maintaining crucial consistency; for example, though the feet move, there will often be a foot part that is supposed to be the same between multiple frames, but if I change it in one place, I cannot copy the changed part and update other frames with it, which means I must meticulously redraw the edit several times, which requires manually mouse clicking the previous frame to check and then manually mouse clicking back to where I was and then moving the cursor to the part I was drawing at since there is no single button command for switching the active frame. Also! Clip Stupido cannot save transparent gifs, even though it handles transparency and in fact refuses to NOT erase into transparent on single layer images that are supposed to have a solid background color. I assure you what I just said makes makes sense and is very annoying. I had to implement the transparency in photoshop, to all 48 frames, which was a total nightmare. And then I had to do that a few more times when I changed something else. There are 48 frames even though the most complex part, the moving foot, only has 8 frames, since other things move out of synch with it. 48 was the lowest number at which it matched up with the other movements.

I’ve Fallen and Icon Get Up
Nonethless I did these, for Trevor-Fox and also Tachisalopex. They are plainly quite busy so I will try not to say too much.

pip my ride

for Pippy Batstocking. I got the impression that this is just as much attention to the feet as was called for. I thought: I have this clip stupido figured out, I will do the next thing people ask for in that also. I made sure all the moving parts linked up. It was not as bad but it was still a bad idea!

infern verminFor roshiyu: a rat wizard person plays around with a little blue fireball FOREVER.
As soon as I learned the details of the task I realized I needed better software to be able to pull it off, and found aseprite shortly thereafter. I gave up on making this work as transparent. Aseprite handles it better, but eh website, furra finity, cuts of user avatars at the intuitive size of 55 kilobytes, and this would blatantly go over, since gifs are stupid. Thankfully I discovered that I like colors better anyway.

murid murderer
For mightyrat, also in aseprite. Showing a friendly creature named Twitch the Plague Rat, jumping and then toe-exhibiting, all while clutching a mysterious, presumably lethal beverage in such a way that suggests it may be tossed at somebody whose company is not desirable.

the fox in our stars
A fox person with magical powers meditates in a space-sort of location.
I have a lot to say about this one, and so I shan’t.

microsurgeonFor plaguerattus, a rat person that is rat-sized despite wearing clothing and having human characteristics, and consequently uses a ex-acto knife as a weapon, and also lives a life of such peril as to require a weapon, which apparently sees a great deal of usage. Or maybe this is from back when I had one and stored it in my bag without putting a cap on it, because I think they just didn’t MAKE caps for the things then, and I reached into the bag expecting to grab something else, and for months afterward had intense anxiety about reaching into ANY bag for ANY reason, even after an airline worker ordered me to dispose of it. Don’t tell anybody that my authentic staff-spinning reference material was Cheetara from Thundercats.


the good, the bad, and the bowtieA rather large pixel animation commission for Lizzy MajP Ampharos. A stupid yellow lizard thing which I must confess looked mildly less punchable than this before I got a hold of it. That thing is FAR prouder of itself than it has any right to be, even without the bowtie. And there could easily BE no bowtie since I forgot to draw it tied in place. Yet it lingers.
Why larger, I do not know. I was able to keep this under control a bit better than the non-animated large pixel drawings, but those were still twice the size of this one. I was not asked to include a background, and I should not have included one that inadvertently mimicked the shape and color of the ears. There are enough inexcusable ears on this page without me implying more of them.


rodentia brush yer hair?
for Akvo, in which a rat person endures a hairrowing ordeal. People do love their rat folk. I do not know why people want ME to draw their rat folk, but I like those better than bears or otters.
This suddenly looks under-animated to me; the pieces do not have an extra settling frame after the abrupt turns, but the amount of things TO animate here is higher than usual, and I tend to give more than I need to, so I must have felt haggard up if I did not.
The fur trim on the jacket and the pink hair especially were difficult to get looking right, and I had to paste them into Clip Stupido to work on, and then paste back into aseprite. Clippo’s animation mode is terrible but its drawing mode is great. Aseprite’s animation mode is great and its drawing is terrible. It does not use pressure sensitivity in tablet pens and is inexplicably slow and lagful even though I tend to work on pictures that are lower in color depth and one-fiftieth the resolution that I work on in other software. Is there a program that accommodates bitmap drawing AND animation well? Probably, and it most of a certainly does something else more important disgracefully for no reason, like it will have passwords instead of saving, or you can only use shades of beige or you have to guess a magical gnome’s name in order to access the full version.

deflotter
For Jazz Otter, of a rather exhausted air-filled creature. I doubt I could sleep so peacefully knowing that there were scissors in the world.
Twitter seemed to like this, which makes sense: nothing is happening, I did not draw it especially well nor especially enjoy doing do. I did like making the movements, though there were not many, and in fact I had to un-do some of the excessive movements that I added. But it is all good for something: several relatively influential people that I think are complete garbage but who my situation render inescapable, who would never ever directly acknowledge me in a coherent medium where they could tell that it was me who had made these things, have “like”d or retwutted some of them, so even though I still feel like a drimpy sub-human pudding being that will never reach a substantial audience with the work that is meaningful to me, I can at least feel like I “beat” some irritating forklogans in an incredibly petty and stupid way that is exactly what we both deserve.

Second-Hand Dork And finally this one last week-ish, for kingodin, of Jordan Deere, a one-eyed creature with the unfortunate addictive habit of brandishing bow ties. I get the impression Kingodin has seen some of my other icon animations.
I think it has more and better movement than most of the others, though it has no shading. Truthfully, getting the lines solid and smoothed out is most of the work. However, most of the recognition, apparently, is in the shading (as well as most of what I charge, like an idiot, like a usual). Or perhaps people object to cigar-smoking. Or perhaps they object to inaccurately-drawn cigar-smoking: I realized after I made this that real cigar smoke goes everywhere and takes its time leaving, quite the opposite. People should be GLAD I sent it off so fast. Although smoke can look elegant. Perhaps people wish the rest of it looked as elegant as the smoke!

So what have I learned through all this? That I can always learn nothing in a new way. My shoe is off, my foot is cold, I have a bird I like to hold. My hat is old, my teeth are gold, and now my story is all told.

Last week I said you would “see if I don’t” have some sort of ordering thing set up this week, and that is the only reason I am forcing out this incomplete update now, so that I see it before you do.

A specific thing that occurred during the armory show was one person was interested in buying something but declined to do so on that occasion, asking me “your website has a store, right?” What I should have said was “no,” or possibly “no, but give me your email address and we can sort this out.” Instead of that, I said something that I do not recall but it was not “no” and I believed I could make something superficially resembling a store in a short period. I really could not, and partway through realized I would have great difficulty meeting orders on a set and consistent schedule and consequently would prefer to not have people automatically charged by an automated system, which they seem to all consistently do. Meanwhile if that person came to this website they would have just seen mopey rubbish. Further, of all the potential options with the same capabilities I could have gone with for the “store” I have not finished, I chose the one which does THIS at checkout:

Apart from the British train tickets that I was alluding to but apparently failed to mention deep amidst the last time I went off on this sort of business behavior, literally i cannot remember ever buying ANYTHING off the internet that prompted me for MR or MRS. Why does this have to strike NOW on MY website, and reveal itself so late? In fact selecting one is optional, but it being there at all implies first that it is not optional, and also that I am demanding it. I look like a total hippogriff. Really, truly, as if I would go out of my way to force this on people, BEFORE I inverted the color scheme and inserted some garish graphics and inappropriate text? On merchandise that costs less than a pizza?
Barnaborf Squank, I present to you now, Crapt’n Ecoli’s Underpee Adventures*.
Hey, that’s MISTER Barnaborf to you.
*I am not actually selling prints of that.
Also, non-married women may apparently not purchase prints.

Oh EYE see how it is.

Thank to anyone who visited my hallway extravablandza at the city wide open studio armory weekend. For those unaware, I was holding an intensive two-day research project in which I set out to determine if people like free candy, occasionally taking breaks to pick up art prints that mysteriously would not stick to crumbly bare plaster walls. The results may choc you.

I do not know “art people,” I do not have a lot of understanding of how to use big spaces or how to enlist help to seem organized or “legitimate,” so the attention I got a from a few visitors, who really seemed to CARE that I was there, even though I am a terrible carpenter, am not in touch with my heritage, and am trying to amuse rather than shock or guilt or whatever, that means a lot to me, even if I barely cover my expenses. The genuine interactions with real people are more important than the money (though money is more important than plenty of things), or having to get 150 pounds of nonsense up and down two flights of stairs and in and out of a building with no doors in convenient places. That makes me think, perhaps this IS going SOMEWHERE not 100% disastrous, or potentially could if I became able to do more of the things I said I could not do.

And YES, I do sell art prints! Alas I do not have an order form up and running as of yet but I will make that my project for this week if not tomorrow and you see if I don’t. Any objects in the awkward art page section can theoretically be printed and sent anywhere but you will have to contact me directly such as at [email protected]

Also if you took pictures of my paintings and walked off without taking a card, writing in the guestbook, making eye contact or in any way acknowledging I existed, as if this is “found art” that nobody made and you are great for discovering, or alternatively like I am a goon for daring to show silly nonsense in your serious art converted squatter mansion, then you won’t see this message so I do not need to say what I hypothetically think of that, which is good because I am usually exaggerating when I have thoughts like that.

I probably did not make as many sales as last year, but I was definitely more organized; compare the size and shape of my post-show tape ball from this year with last year’s.

Hilary Branske is dead. It is very relevant to me, and also to this website! Some of what follows is roundabout and redundant, but I had difficulty organizing my thoughts on the matter, so watch out. Also, it is roundabout.

I knew Hilary since 1999. She was the closest thing to an “idol” that I had at a crucial point in my life, and unlike the others that came before and later, she was and remained a friend. I liked knowing that even though we were not currently conversing, she was always possible to reach out to, and would have a unique and sincere thing to say. Outside my immediate family, I have not known, that I was able to stay in contact with to any degree, anybody longer than Hilary, and she had a profound impact on me as a consequence. Every year I remembered her birthday. I could not even reliably predict my mother’s birthday until fairly recently. Which I assure you is not a slight against my or anybody else’s mother.

I never was much able to keep up with ANYbody over facebook, where our primary contact was after a certain period, and I wish sincerely that I had worked harder at making that possible, with Hilary and the people I knew through her; this here would be a more informed piece, and less fixated on what I assume is a fairly narrow aspect of Hilary’s personality, and I might have fewer regrets overall, but nonetheless what I DID experience was very important to me. Most of what I know goes back quite a while, back to when I insisted on calling myself “roneldo,” which I assure you is not something I would ever like to be called again, but Hilary was welcome to call me that. I also took turns at being volcabbage, transfestunerix and eels macinstrudel when I knew Hilary, but she was always Hilary, with one L, from New Lenox with one N.

There were online nicknames like “spam,” (a hilarious word in the mid-90s) “Krunk” (which predates and is dissimilar to the contemporary conception of “crunk”) and “Annie Lennox” with (two Ns) but she was not hiding from or afraid of anybody.

Hilary had a a way of thinking about things, and of speaking, and a gift for functionally absurd statements that I had up to that point not seen from anybody else. For example, an instruction page for creating a soft drink called “Froofy” directed readers foremost to “Find and capture a wild santa claus.” Yes whatever it looks stupid HERE, but I didn’t realize that sort of statement EXISTED. I could not fathom it.
And Hilary had refreshing sort of darkness, a dissatisfaction with the insincere, commercialized happy face put on by the dominant culture. I had never known anybody who openly criticized the religion-based social conventions I had always struggled with. She also always wrote little messages on pictures, that you could only see by hovering your mouse cursor over them. There would be a picture of a largely incidental person holding up a piece of cheese and the hidden text would say “this cheese is on sale.” So stupid, and yet to me that was just perfect. I still do that. I might be the last person on the internet who does. And those are often the best part of my pages! Of course having said that, the one on the next picture is lame so this is a bad time to start looking for them.”

I didn’t know anybody else who watched Conan O’Brien’s program either (I possibly learned of her existence via her old website about the topic) so that might speak more to my not knowing many people, but what is important is that I shared interest with Hilary that I was not able to share with others who were not on the internet. And in those days, a lot of people were not on the internet!

I wanted to have a website because of Hilary’s websites, The Spam Headwound, primarily, with such a ludicrous title that very much appealed to the me of the period, across its various urls, nlenx.com/spam, twne.com/spam, spam.towne.net, and gigglebounce.com. There was also lincolnway.com, which she registered specifically to annoy the Lincoln Way high school she had attended, after having been punished for other students loading her relatively outrageous personal website on school computers. As best I can figure out. I still use html code that I copied and eventually memorized off of her pages more than half my life ago. Most of the old, admittedly nonsensical pages are still acknowledged at the gigglebounce vault but some do not work quite properly, and many are simply not there at all! The archive.org version unfortunately got confused by the netscape-style frames and only has a single page saved multiple times, with none of the frame data. But I will always remember.

Also: from june 25 1999, this watery screenshot of the site not displaying correctly in America Online, from a thankfully brief period during which I thought it was a good idea to save my screenshots as jpegs.

In fact, my oldest “normal” website entries here are ripped directly from the source of gigglebounce.com during a period when Hilary granted myself and a few others the ability to place updates on the website, and it appears that the earliest dated one has a picture of Hilary in it, which I had quite forgotten about. Likewise I cannot remember how long that version of gigglebounce lasted, but I, plainly, kept going, without much considering why I did. Records indicate I may even have been the last person doing so. This does not get me money or recognition, but I like making these things, and Hilary got me started. But I am here to talk about the GOOD things she did.

I didn’t know art people growing up, or until quite after I was mostly grown. Between those points I apparently found something of a muse in Hilary’s uncompromising distinctness. I did not develop my technical skill much but I think the ideas are more important, even if they are very stupid. Hilary helped me want to be stupid in a new way.

I believe this was her livejournal avatar, derived from an inexplicable default mouse cursor in certain versions of windows, fighting the Yellow Ant from the computer game Simant, which I must have made a big deal about at some point. Neither is being considerate of the environment.

I still use phrases that Hilary used, probably only once, that I thought were funny, such as “thank you for your time and consideration in these matters” “yes, very much so, “mein augen” and “laeta bovis.” One of the characters that I draw is even named “laeta,” based on that, if not pronounced the same way. I still think the name “Gretchen” is funny. It seemed to be a recurring element, quite apart from that picture I just showed. For example, there was a page titled “temporary gretchen fix” with just a picture of notebook paper from what looked to be a high school writing assignment, with a teacher-written criticism of “inappropriate sentences.” I apparently transcribed it, because it was hard to read, and still have THAT, though the original image seems to be lost.

1. Aegis – protection, sponsorship
Gretchen was happy Lincoln-way was the Aegis for the Nazi dance.
2. Amazon – A female warrior
Gretchen was proud to be an Amazon.
3. Aurora – The dawn or similar luminousity
Gretchen took many pictures of the aurora borealis.
4. Odyssey – Extended journey
Gretchen packed some digestive bisquits for her odyssey
5. Paean – Song of thanksgiving
Peetah sang a paean about the Spanish Inquisition.
6. Palladium – Safeguard
Gretchen kept a statue of a Palladium next to her bed.
7. Plutocrat – A wealthy person
Bill Gates is a plutocrat and Gretchen isn’t.
8. Siren – A bewitching or irresistable women, fascinating
Gretchen acted as a siren by luring the small children to the fire.
9. Valhalla – hall of feasting heroes
Gretchen was not invited to the Valhalla.
10. Ambrosial – fragrant
Peetah could smell the Ambrosial children boiling.
And now it will have to be a permanent Gretchen fix.

Gretchen was also the name of the lion tamer in “The Spam Story,” which I also cannot now locate. Although I learned that as of 2007 Hilary had been a vegetarian for a year, which is almost as impressive as convincing lions to do your bidding.

I started writing this without even realizing that my facebook name IS Gretchen. That is how deeply ingrained Hilary’s influence is. And I used gretchen as a sound effect in a completely unrelated long-standing unreleased project of mine. Certainly I would have liked to be influenced by the later, responsible Hilary who examined patents in her spare time and achieved a G-13 pay scale according to federalpay.org and perhaps have made something more of myself.

Although threatening people’s sparkle dots amidst serious (ninjas notwithstanding) results for your life as a Washington DC national government employee is Hilary Classic on a grander scale.

She had ferrets as pets; I believe this is based on a photograph of one, and the wood sprite that I opened this site entry with.
we never talked as much as I wanted to afterward. I never showed her much of my artwork but she was always supportive when I did. Again, I didn’t have many people to show it to, and was slow to develop what skill I had. In a very rare gesture, in December of 2007, I mailed a pencil drawing strikingly similar to the one near the top of this entry, that I made of/based on Hilary to her home address, and several times afterward, without my having mentioned it, she claimed to still have the dumb thing, having put it in a frame, even, and I wish I could have sent something better, later! I made up one of my crummy holiday cards more recently, and included some tiny bizarre drawings whose inspiration I can no longer recall, but never got around to sending it. And maybe I should hold on to it, since it is the only physical space souvenir I have that is Hilary-related (also, I eh lost it again). She had mentioned across a few years having a box that she meant to send to me but could never get around to it. I wish I had asked what was in the box!

I keep showing these things. On Hilary’s website there was a “webcam” page, but the image only updated once a week or so, and generally showed a staged viewpoint. I saved a bunch of them, I wish I had saved more! Maybe it makes me seem like a creep, but in fact the more I have worried about coming across as creepy, the fewer friends I have had.

Right, just what I was saying.

I believe at one point three other people named Timmy, Lars and Jose also had similar webcameras featured on the page, plus the webcam of the not-yet published icon to misogynists who didn’t realize he was kidding Maddox, hotlinked off his own website, until I think he specifically disabled that on his end.

before I had my run-in with the Shipyard Brewing Company, Hilary had viewed and commented on the original version of the troublesome article, and I had meant to ask if she had for some reason preserved the pictures I deleted in a paranoid panic after the cease and desist letter, as if other people did that. Parts of that experience made me question if my work had any real value, but anything I did that Hilary liked was something I had done right. She was also the first person to sign my orenthal, even though it was a ripoff of her elf.

From 2000 to 2002, maybe, Hilary ran a message forum “The Blabby Board,” and I can honestly say that was my most positive and probably longest consistent internet message board experience. It was not without complicated points and eventually ceased operation, but I had always wanted to have something like that again.
The last time we were both available for what could be considered a conversation, which sadly was in April 2016, I mentioned some of the screwy things that have been in MY life and the sort of people I dealt with since the two of us had been regularly acquainted. And Hilary LAUGHED (in a typing sort of way). She didn’t get worried and declare in seriousness that I should give up and get away from everything, or get bothered and set to justifying every other parties’ actions, like I am a puzzlewit with no empathy. She knew why I complained the way I did. Sometimes life is just frustrating and ridiculous, and you want to share that with somebody who sees it for what it is. With Hilary, I momentarily went from being the only person who had a problem to one of an uncommon few who did not.

We were “planning” to make a video game together. I do not know when; one of us was always too busy. It was already eating me inside that I had not done real work on it beyond sketches and descriptions of circumstances, just for myself, but now I need to, for both of us. Right? If that helps me get it done, sure. I pledge to give it a much better gretchen sound effect.

I was always looking forward to a hypothetical point in the future when we could exchange ideas freely. I wish I could asked about more of the circumstances that inspired the strange things she wrote about. I did not realize how much time had passed until I started writing all this. 1999 to 2003 seemed like a huge expanse of time, then 2003 to 2007 was another, and suddenly I misplaced a whole decade without noticing. I wanted to resume what we had. Or more likely, start over entirely. Hilary always lived in an interesting way, and fixating on what had already occurred was unnecessary.

We never met, unfortunately. We came tantalizingly close, but to be brief, for once, since it hurts just a scrap too much, a meeting was not feasible. I was quite sad, in fact sadder than I expected to be. But I imagined there would be plenty of opportunities to arrange a proper meeting. I ought to have tried to arrange a visit earlier but for many years I was not very mobile. Was this a form of love, perhaps? I think it was, and I wish that I had expressed it. I did not think I was worthy, perhaps. I certainly was somewhat to highly jealous of any more forward or proximal person that she seemed to hold in favor at any point across a longer span of time than is usual. I loved dumb old science fox but do I care who he likes now? Probably, a little bit, but I am not going out of my way to find out. Not far at all. I am glad that I was able to tell him how I felt so that he could do something to no longer deserve it.
Hilary would have been the first person that I really developed that for. “crushes” I might have had momentarily in grade school were based on nothing more than me seeing tv shows and thinking I was supposed to do that.

Hilary was engaging, mentally, and I think I wanted to look like her. I still want to look like her. Not like a… but to be elegant without making a forced show of it.

Could I pull that off? Absolutely not. Yes, otay, this is from 2007. I don’t feel like I am entitled to show pictures that I only saw years after they were taken or uploaded, by people who might not necessarily have any clue who I am. I barely have any clue who I am so it is not like I could introduce myself.

Alright, here is one from 2015 taken by Hilary’s close companion Bobbert Hyman, don’t tell. Yes, I would very much like to meet the person in this photograph. Also, I consider little bowls of rice and beans to be people, but I would also like to meet the person eating the other person.

I have had such a mental connection with somebody, or thought I had, perhaps nine times, and as I became older it seemed more like love. And love is good, supposedly. This was a very difficult thing to write, especially so soon after the last one, (aw BEANS look at the line I ended that with, I had no idea) but I suppose this is preferable to my being indifferent and not wishing to write anything. In fact this was more difficult to write, in a way, because while I have more regrets about my father’s final years than I can list, I believe that he forgave me for my role in that, and I knew where I stood with him, and I was able to get some degree of closure. And also he was 65, not 34. Hilary liked a few things I did, but did she like me, as a person? When she laughed at my tragic adventures in fuzzyland, was she really laughing at ME? When she said I made her terrible day ten times better, did she mean ten times better at being terrible? I will quite possibly never know. I even just said I wanted to look like her, for beets freeps. That might have been deemed a hilarious notion. But I would take it, if she wanted to give it.

Oh well that’s just rude!

This is a great original idea. You see, some people are WHITE, and they’re STUFFY and UPTIGHT, but now there are people who are BLACK and they wear BASEBALL HATS and they listen to MUSIC. In fact I don’t think we’ve ever had a political candidate who wore ugly red hats in public and said stupid garbage to get attention that didn’t become president while this show was in production and invalidate its already played out premise that being an obnoxious moron who SHAKES THINGS UP solves every- or anything.

In fact there was even a feature film in 1998 called Bulworth about a politician who started rapping and dressing like he couldn’t afford clothing, but of course he was white and does not count. And likewise our president now is not a black man. We did have a black man as president but not a loud moron who said things like “I’m dropping a V-BOMB on this budget!” but having to explain that he did not literally mean using explosives after seeing how many WHITE people got freaked out, ooh!

However, there was a Chris Rock film in which a black man became president and declared that “the roof is on fire!” and then had to clarify that the roof was not literally on fire while white people got panicked and looked old. What is funny, if not the clips deliberately chosen to represent these things, is that Chris Rock himself is one of the less-moronic 1990s comedians to star in feature films but has to pretend to be one in order to be allowed to star in films. And apparently to write and produce them, even.