Anand's Calling...

Anand Giridharadas’s India Calling is sort of my first foray into readings based on Indian culture, and the country in general. It’s an “intimate portrait” written by Giridharadas regarding his experience as an American-born Indian returning to the country his parents immigrated from before his birth (as well as his sister‘s). He exams the many influences as to why his parents left India, between a somewhat stifling culture and a tumbling economy. And then he relays how many of those grounds for fleeing have evolved and changed over the years. For better or worse is often the question. Nevertheless, it’s at a consequence that some Indians find themselves culturally deprived and economically disadvantaged compared to the transfixed success of others.

So what could be the catalysis to this change within the country? Here’s where Giridharadas also assesses the cultural influences outside of, say, the caste system that once held a cord over India‘s public. Women and men of India are beginning to take control of their lives–their circumstances. And it’s complicated to do so, as the people of India give away many of their old cultural standards for something new, adventurous, and maybe even considered sinfully enticing. Giridharadas explores these changes through seven chapters where individuals he‘s spoken with, concerning the conceptualization of India Calling, share their stories. From fundamentalist, entrepreneurs, spiritual, and love-lost citizens, he categorizes his chapters between Dreams, Ambition, Pride, Anger, Love, and Freedom. And it’s here that I’m going to share quotes and pieces of each chapter to give you guys and idea as to how revealing I found India Calling.

DREAMS

"India was changing when I arrived, and it continued to change dramatically, viscerally, improbably.  The freeze I had sensed as a child seemed to be thawing.  It was partly the enormous physical churn: the quantities of earth being moved, the malls and office towers and gated communities being built, the restaurants opening, the factories pumping out cars, the blue jeans being sewn.  It was the new verticality of the big cities, the slum dwellers in Bombay moving into towering apartments financed by New York investors, the mushrooming of village backwaters into congested satellite cities such as Gurgaon and Navi Mumbai and Electronics City.  It was the villagers who have been moved off their land so that Tata Motors, the once-stagnant company where my father worked, whose lifeless culture had pushed him toward America, could built the world's cheapest car, priced at a little more than $2,000."

Resident Evil Revelations 2 Gameplay ~ Claire

Video games have always been a stress reliever for me. Just about every suppressed aggravation comes out (usually through a stream of Southern dripped curse words) during moments of blasting zombies’ heads all over the damn place. Likewise, a simple rumination on my day with a quiet puzzle game is just as an effective reliever. When I think about it, one genre of gaming educe screaming release, whereas another allows me to play scenarios in my head pertaining to life and how I have to deal with some aspects of it.  Furthermore, video games energize and engage me. They toil around with my imagination, feeding my creative ideas for writing, drawing and conceptualizing character scenes. 

For a moment–a microscopic, tiny moment–I'm transported somewhere else in an existence that is dangerous but never my own. It’s a vicarious way of living, with a slew of possible situations to explore. And while games are not always as mentally stimulating as reading (perhaps it‘s worth the debate); they do generate just enough to often times keep me from reading.  (If you catch my drift.)

So I've always wanted to share my gaming hobby, however casual it actually is. It’s a thrilling, wonderful tool to bring people with shared interest together. Okay. I mean if you love gaming and consider it a hobby. Nonetheless, as I start my gaming channel (or restart, really), I'd like to introduce my first videos encompassing Resident Evil Revelations 2. My favorite character in the series, Claire Redfield, is finally back! She finds herself locked up (once again) in a mysterious and creepy prison–one in which I've decided is a killing jar experiment…. Here’s what I think as I commentary my way through Resident Evil Revelations 2 Episode One: Penal Colony…

The Girl Who Dreamt of Earl Moran

She has a name, and it’s Emiko (although I conceptualized her, her surname escapes me at the moment). Japanese? Absolutely. And she dreamt of posing for famed pin-up artist Earl Moran. Or, at least, that’s what inspired all of this; the blueness and semi-sailor look. Oh, also the binoculars that don't exactly look like such (who ever said I could draw inanimate objects anyway?). I have a book on famous pin-up artists, and I use it whenever I want to draw something but am uninspired by anything. So, I take to that book during dry spells. And considering I've promised myself that I would try to draw a new image once a month for 2015, I landed on Earl Moran's chapter. And since today is the last day of February, I’ll let the process images do most of the talking as I try to post this before midnight. Enjoy and comment below. And the image source is HERE!

The usual penciling process.  Sometimes I hate this part because my OCD really kicks in–knowing that if I don't get it right, it's all done for.  While I'll never be 100% accurate or get my proportions right (who needs them in comic and cartooning?), I do use my handy bathroom mirror to reflect the sketch back.  That way, I'll catch some of the obvious little misalignments.

The inking part, of course.

Copic markers for shading and outline.  I've always done this however way.  So not into light sources.

Ah, the stenciling and scrapping part.

I took another piece of bristol board and painted it blue.  A seafaring blue (whatever that is).  The point was to make her backdrop look something like the side of a boat.  I'm going for a theme here.

Dying to use this particular material; I turned her scooped out parts into a shirt.

More color, more pizazz.  I almost didn't get through this, as I was entranced with catching up with How to Get Away with Murder.  Man!  They gave us two episodes this week and they were soooooo good.  I don't think I even ate yet.

I taped the shirt down, seeing that another layer would be added.  Then glued her down to the backdrop.  Neither were as much of a mess as I anticipated.

All done!  Scanned, revived, retouched a bit.  Since I'm not a computer person, I did what I could.  Anyway, Emiko is happy.  Her usual prickly disposition does not show.  I haven't drew her in a long time and have been thinking about her as of recent.  Here's to my girl.

THANKS FOR COMING ABOARD!

Zazzle This USB Flash Drive

Here I stood, just bought a PS4 and frustrated trying to copy recorded game play onto a USB flash drive that just wouldn't connect. It would save me so much trouble to take game play through the PS4’s DVR and into a flash drive; transfer it to my computer and then edit it from there. However, seeing the USB stick I had wouldn't connect, I decided to go onto Zazzle and create one of my own featuring my drawings. Per usual, I picked a random image and came up with this one…

From 8 to about 36 (I bought the 16GB), Zazzle offers an array of GB sizes (prices rise in accordance with size) and colors for their USB flash drive products.  I chose this pastel pink because it went well with the image.  The drive comes in a nice, clear plastic envelope.

Here is the drive semi-swiveled out.  There’s also a hook piece to attach the drive elsewhere.  Say, like to a lanyard.

I chose a fuller image perspective for the other side to keep “variety” in the piece. After pounding on discounts given by Zazzle, I paid $9.95. As for the shipping, I placed the order on the 24th and received it on the 27th (as a Black Member, standard shipping is free). It came unexpectedly. Unexpectedly fast. 

Give me a couple of days to add USB flash drives to the store. In the meantime, you can visit everything else I have to offer HERE.

Once again, thanks for all the support. Stay strong and motivated, people.  And for all my gamer follows, be on the lookout for my gaming channel.  Sub HERE!

Spotlight: Food for Thought

There are debates as to whether Willie Lynch was an actual person, and to be perfectly honest I lean toward myth by his name alone. Nonetheless, since I read the book anyway, I have to say that The Willie Lynch Letter and The Making of a Slave is a 30-page book consisting of a speech given by a white slave owner from the West Indies. 

Delivered on the bank of the James River in 1712, the purpose of his speech was to coach American slave owners on how to restrain, tame and destroy the minds of African slaves.  Chiefly those newly arriving into slavery. His argument was “[If] You are not only losing valuable stock by hangings, you are having uprisings, slaves are running away, your crops are sometimes left in the fields too long for maximum profit, you suffer occasional fires, your animals are killed," then he has the “foolproof method for controlling your Black slaves.” His speech became a sort of outline for slave owners to generate profit and remove economic blocks.  And this consisted primarily of creating divisions among the slaves themselves, with one via their differences in skin-tone.  Furthermore, Lynch suggested the removal and dehumanizing of the black male as the leading family member.  This, in turn, will "create" lasting acceptance and conformity to life as a slave for men as well as women and children generations and beyond.  

The majority of these "ideas" spun another inner ding concerning Lynch's myth, considering his "methods" were a common practice as is. Nevertheless, “FEAR, DISTRUST, and ENVY” are strategies used to control. And all three were proclaimed by Lynch to keep the Black slave under control for over 300 years.

With the addition of horse breeding analogies to illustrate “Cardinal Principles for Making a Negro," the book also contains small pieces of annotations given by Frederick Douglass and Charles Johnson. However, I believe the truly provocative area comes toward the end of the book, through a contemporary essay titled “Dear Black Americans."

Which I’ll share here:

~ 2. Back to High School - Towel-Style ~

Here we are with the next five pages.  Click HERE for the first five.  Or you can follow the labels at the end of the post.

Obviously I made my pages super busy.  Busy, packed and hectic.  Nevertheless, that's how I saw a lot of manga pages; busy and occupied.  I suppose I was just copying, but to an extreme.  I wish I had the skill to tell an efficient (as well as effective) story without too much fuss.  Maybe if I tried to do this these days I could get it right.

Once again a busy page.  I didn't have an manga screens (though later I started to print pictures on tracing paper and go from there), so I had to do all of my backgrounds and effects by hand.  I used what I had.  That's why I always tell people to just start wherever you are and enjoy the process.  

I love Towel and Clip's teacher in the top left corner.  "Break's over!  Let's go!" he says.  And as always, Towel decides to call him a "patty mouth dog."  I don't know what that is.  Should I ever get the time to write her these days, she would never say something like that.  It's not clever enough.  Nonetheless, here her and Clip continue to peep the new girl.

I remember showing this page to a friend of mine and he made a comment about the top panel character's (if you didn't catch it, her name is Miino) expression.  He was pretty direct in his observation that the character looks as if she's about to do something salacious.  I'll leave that to your imagination.  Nonetheless, what I want to point out is how the teachers always seem to be yelling at Towel.  Even this female teacher on the left is yelling at her to take a seat.

Towel's trying to be friends with the new girl, Miino.  Instead, Miino is more interested in strangling Towel.  The scene transitions over into the gym area where Towel and Clip reunite to discuss the new girl, as well as some of the male students playing ball topless.  Said boys have taken a liking to Miino–naturally.  This makes Towel even more curious as to who this new girl is.

I don't think Japanese female students wear bloomers anymore for gym class.  However, this is another obvious testament to my love of the shojo manga genre.

The bloomers again.  Other than that, here is where I introduced another male character (other than Towel's best friend Cornbread).  I'm cringing here as I revisit this particular page.  Why?  Because while I was shaky, I don't like how I drew this guy at all.  I think my drawings of him will get better.  But yesh!

See you guys in the next post...

Asa or Forrest

After the death of his parents, five-year-old Forrest “Little Tree” Carter found himself adopted by his Cherokee grandmother and part-Cherokee grandfather. His grandparents own a home deep in the hollows of a mountain, and that's where Little Tree follows them to learn the ways of the Cherokee.  Said ways are about living off and respecting nature.  

Honoring one's ancestors and finding encouragement through their stories also takes part in Little Tree's lessons.  Little Tree also learns/experiences the often problematic nature of his heritage, and how it relates to the white man’s view of Native Americans and their history/role in the America. A book with little to no conflict, The Education of Little Tree is mostly a romanticized example of what it meant to be Native American during The Great Depression as well as growing up thoroughly connected with Nature.

Sounds like a bubbly and syrupy summary, right? Well, the truth is that I don't know how to take this novel, after reading the history behind the author and the book itself. And it’s really, truly funny because I was about a quarter away from the end (having not researched a thing about the book/author) before I decided I was tired of feeling like there was an undertone of patronization taking place. It turns out, I was on to something. That niggling feeling wasn't there for no reason.

Here’s what I learned about this book, published in the late 70’s:

1. While the book is (or was upon its initial publication) touted as an autobiography/memoir, the author is not Native American.

2. The author was white, and apparently a ku klux klan member

3. The author was somewhat forceful in his segregation views. Which isn't much of a surprise when you take in Little Tree’s encounter with black people in the book?

And that’s just to name a few nuggets of information I've gathered. If I hadn't plucked the book from the non-fiction section at Barnes & Nobles, I may have been more or less baffled. I jumped into it thinking it was a memoir of a young Native American kid learning some hard and heart-filled lessons surrounding his heritage, but instead I got an illusion. A lie. However, halfway through I started to pick up that something wasn't right, and then, as I said, a quarter away from the end was when I felt like the voice was sort of patronizing.  It was an almost condescending and kiddy-glove approach to illustrating Native American culture. Everything seemed too charming. Too surreal. Too vividly told, yet simple at the same time. And most of all, a touch too stereotypical.

So I don't know where I stand with this book. I liked it enough that from a storytelling standpoint, it won me completely. But I honestly just… don't… know….  There's speculation as to the author's intent (his real name is Asa Earl Carter).  However, I don't have it in me to figure it out.  So I might as well move on.