Introduce yourself

[bencosta]

Dear reader,

Please do not leave this empty. Introduce yourself.

[Mephistopheles]

Name: Nathaniel

An aspiring [sequential] illustrator and writer. Spends the grand majority of his time bullshitting but occasionally pretends to write poetry and fiction as well as draw.

Enjoys watching movies, listening to music, zoning-out, reading random nothings.

Interests included but are not limited to: Sequential Illustration, Art, History, Psychology, Religion, Mythology, Entertainment, Music, the Sciences, Animation, Film

Favorites (copied and pasted from other sources):
Favorite Music--
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Modest Mouse, Bluedawn (포른새벽), envy, Sigur Rós, Songs: Ohia, Primus, Yoko Kanno, Paavoharju, Radiohead

Favorite Movies--
Children of Men, 2001: a Space Odyssey, Little Miss Sunshine, an American Tail, the Fountain, There Will Be Blood, Once Upon a Time in China II, the Thief and the Cobbler, the Host, Jin-Roh: the Wolf Brigade, Throne of Blood, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Iron Giant, the Darjeeling Limited, Wall*E, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Ikiru, Fearless, Hero, the Host, Amélie, No Country for Old Men, The Battle of Algiers, Grave of the Fireflies, AKIRA, the End of Evangelion, the Incredibles, Ratatouille, Princess Mononoke, Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman, Empire of the Sun, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Favorite TV Shows--
Avatar: the Last Airbender, Mushishi, Futurama, South Park, Seinfeld, Scrubs, Batman: the Animated Series, Oz, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Jack, Samurai Champloo, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Planet Earth

Favorite Books--
the Tanakh,
the Gospel,
the Qur'an,
the Epic of Gilgamesh,
the Dao de Jing,
All the various mythologies and collections of the world.
Whinesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.
Love + Sex with Robots by David Levy.
the Hellboy series by Mike Mignola.
1984 by George Orwell.
The Lakota Way by Joseph M. Marshall III.
Shôgun by James Clavell

[Pom]

Name: Tom
Blurb: Student in-between British 6th Form College & University - taking a gap year to southern China to teach English, before going to Uni to do Chinese cultural, historical and language studies. There's a theme! Other activities include visiting Italy to get my Roman & Etruscan fixes, wishing I had the money/time to go to Greece to get my Classical & Homeric Greek fixes, and reading altogether too many books around these themes.
Hobbies: Reading! Also language study (Spanish for 6 years, Japanese for 4, Mandarin Chinese for just 1), watching foreign cinema, Shaolin gong fu (for 5 years now), writing for fun, and gaming. Probably far too much of the latter.

Just a few of my favourites in various things;
Films: Bonbon el perro, Infernal Affairs III, Withnail and I, Full Metal Jacket, Kikujiro.
Books: James Clavell's Shôgun, Moorcock's Hawkmoon series, Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind.
TV: Mushishi, Life on Mars, Spaced.

[bencosta]

Whoa, that's awesome. When are you teaching over in China? And what province/city?

[Pom]

I was supposed to leave a week today, but the new visa system, brought in this year for the Olympics, is proving a challenge. Once I do get there, though, I'll be teaching in Kunming, Yunnan, the city I visited last year (and made contact with the school I'll be working at) for a language immersion course or some such. It's a beautiful province, and its mention in page 3 of Shi Long Pang did nothing but further interest me in the webcomic!

[bencosta]

Very cool. I'm sure you'll have a great time. I'd totally be interested in seeing some pictures of the Yunnan countryside if you ever get a chance to take some.

Well, here's a little bit about me in relation to comics. This is a questionnaire that was floating around a little while ago.


PART ONE: COMICS PERSONALITY TYPE

Name: Ben Costa

Age: 24

Sign: Taurus

Introverted or extroverted?
Introverted, oftentimes to a fault.

What are your top 5 procrastination tools?
Internet, gaming, reading, watching…I really wish I could game more.

What gets your juices flowing?
Reading something good. A doodle. Or an idea.


PART TWO: COMICS CONSUMER

What kind of comics do you like to read?
Lots of kinds. Really, all kinds. Most recently I’ve been trying to read as much Dungeon as I can.

What kind of comics do you dislike?
Superhero comics just aren’t doing it for me anymore. I’ve tried to read some of my brother’s new stuff and I can barely get through an issue before I just get bored. Although, I just reread an old Ultimate Spiderman trade and liked it.

When were you first introduced to comics?
My brother was really into comics in the early 90s and so it rubbed off, I guess. Enough trips to the comic book store and that'll happen.

What were some of your first comics?
I’m pretty sure my very first comic was issue 33 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They go back in time. It was completely different from the cartoon, and it took me a few years to eventually warm up to it. Then I really got into Ghost Rider for some reason, although I didn’t understand half of what was going on.

What is your favorite animated movie?
Disney’s Robin Hood is pretty great.

What is your favorite anime series?
I like Ranma 1/2. I do.


PART THREE: COMICS CREATOR

What kind of comics do you make?
Gee, I’d like to think I could pull off some kind of range in tone and genre. With Shi Long Pang, I’ve sort of been stuck in serious action mode for several months. Before that I thought I was mired in talking heads. But I can’t wait to end this war flashback and move on to comic misunderstandings and gong fu hilarity for a bit.

When did you first start making comics?
I made some Spiderman comics in 2nd or 3rd grade, also starring Wolverine, Venom and uh…Shaquille O’Neal. I’m sorry. And in my second grade yearbook I said that I wanted to be a cartoonist; but there was a big gap in between those early years and me actually making comics again, which, in terms of writing, was at the end of high school. But I didn’t start drawing my own until a year or so after that.

What are your favorite comic artists right now?
Right now…Joann Sfar, Christophe Blain, Bryan Lee O’Malley. And forever…Stan Sakai.

[strop]

Ranma 1/2. I lol'd at that. Awesome.

I don't even know what format to use. I'll try to keep it at least readable.

Name: Strop. Otherwise known as Strawpony.
Location: Australia
Occupation: Ninja. Okay okay, I'll stick to real life stuff. Part-time ninja. Actually that's more of a hobby. I'm a medical student on the cusp of entering the terrifying world of being a doctor. As to whether that would be terrifying for you or terrifying for me, shall remain to be seen should you ever find yourself a patient of mine.
Hobbies: Writing (lots of stuff), music (I play, write, and sometimes work professionally), martial-arts and breakdance and parkour, drawing and animating.
How did I end up here? I used to run a livejournal and I think Ben added me as a friend? Or was it the other way around. Either way I noticed he was doing Shi Long Pang and because I'm interested in martial arts esp. Shaolin and its history, I was instantly hooked.
Favorite stuff: I really need to get out more to get a good list going but yeah. Medical student. No life. I guess "things that get my brain going" will do. I prefer things that are esoteric or edgy (but don't try too hard to do either), non-generic and things that portray rather than recreate.

I also like really really spicy food.

Now, uh, what else...seeing as we're on a webcomics forum. Yeah, I'd like to get into sequential medium. I'm developing a project I've had in mind for about a year now, but various logistical and stylistic features are still rough around the edges. I'm also writing a novel but outside of NaNoWriMo I don't seem to do much work on it xD Getting a Wacom Intuos3 has ruined my life and will probably ruin my study as drawing has been a lifelong love, even though it probably remains one of the least developed of my skills (with the exception of breakdance lol).

Anything to add to that...I tend to draw anthropomorphic characters because I find them more fun and more engaging than human characters. Some of you might join the dots and go "oh noes, a furry" but let's disregard the politics of that for a bit.

...okay, I guess it's inevitable, so I'm going to have to explain where I'm coming from. I used to participate marginally in the furry community because of the common interest, but various factors have resulted in my doing away with it. First was lack of time. Second, endless iterations of metacritical discussion on furry sociology, while interesting the first time, started to get boring for me. Third, let's just say that the perceived directions of the fandom disagreed with me. I'm not going to comment on how true the preconception that the majority of material generated from the community is "juvenile, vaguely (or blatantly) erotic and sometimes downright creepy" except to say that this combination of features tend to be endemic to a demographic common to furries and non-furries alike: pubertal teens and disinhibited individuals who wish to "exert their right to freedom of expression". Additionally, this appears to be a significant online issue because the majority of furry community activity appears to be online. But yeah. By the time I noticed that almost every conversation I had with purportedly furry people included the mutual sentiment "it's nice to be able to talk to people about something other than furry", the writing was on the wall.

On DeviantART there are these stickers going around where you can, should you draw anthropomorphic characters, choose to align yourself (or malign yourself) by declaring either "I am a furry artist, deal with it <3" or "I'm not a furry, I just draw them, so screw you for thinking I'm a furry because omg I am, liek, so not." Furthermore some react to the cutesy punnilicious habits (an unequivocal feature of the community) that have become associated with various labels and assert that they draw "anthro art", not "furry". Bah, whatever!

I don't like certain features of politics (others are inevitable since where there are people, there is politics), and I prefer to bridge divisions, not reinforce them (one of the areas in which I diverge from community trends). I guess all I'll say on that matter is that the proof is in the pudding. I'll let you make your own judgments on whether the stuff I draw and write is worthwhile, and hopefully what I hope to communicate is clear. Because to me, art in any form, at a broad level, is about modulating communication and I'm happy to share a thought and feeling with anybody else who'd do the same.

[bencosta]

I think you were among the first people I added as a friend on livejournal after doing a search for people with interests in martial arts, shaolin kung fu, etc.

Anthro characters certainly can be more engaging. I think they have the capacity to shift on a scale in tone more easily than humans, given their innate cuteness and/or otherness along with their ability to readily assume human characteristics. They can pull off a variety of emotions and the reader won't have trouble swallowing it if it's done right. That's one of the reasons I love Usagi Yojimbo so much, and also Bone (although he's not an animal, but it's the same idea). Also, on a baser level, there is a definite appeal for me to the disarming cuteness of a bunny cutting off other funny animals' heads with a katana.

[strop]

I think you were among the first people I added as a friend on livejournal after doing a search for people with interests in martial arts, shaolin kung fu, etc.

I'm honored really, seeing as how I think what you're doing is epic awesome

...but usagi Yojimbo is just badassssssss xD

Tell you what, despite my fondness of anthropomorphic characters (and animals), I actually get weirded out by the combination of animal bodies and human behaviors, one of the most recent examples of which would be (forgive me) Beverly Hills Chihuahua. I mean, as awesome as Finding Nemo was, I just couldn't...get...comfortable! The same applied to Cars, come to think of it.

[Bacter]

Name: Benjamin Holmes
College student (senior, double major biotechnology, computer science)
Aspiration: The act of inhaling
What I want to do: Work on a malaria vaccine

I... forget how I found the link to this comic, not because of an interest in the basic ingredients, Chinese history and such. I mean I think they are very interesting and I am glad to eat them when served on a dish (the dish in this analogy is the webcomic), but I am just a webcomics enthusiast.

This comic has gone from "never heard of it" to one of my favorites in the time it took me to get caught up. I'm glad I got ahold of this one (sort of) early on! At least I hope there is a long way to go!