Intro…dundundundunnnnn

Hey everyone. I finally found time to post an introduction on Hyperspeed Comics.

My name is Pat. It’s very nice to meet you.

Unlike the other two posters, I don’t go to Uarts, I’m not an aspiring artist, and I’m not in my first year of college!

What I can tell you though is that I’m in my fourth year of college at Penn State Brandywine, studying IST (computers and shit yo). While I’m not the most technical person, I do enjoy interacting and working with others, which apparently a void that most IST majors have trouble filling. As for choosing IST, I figured it was just something that I could do well at and had some interest in. I had toyed around with the idea of a more writing-based major, as writing is something else I enjoy, and if I ever get around to looking into it, there is a theater nearby that offers film classes which I would consider taking in my free time, if anything for my own enjoyment.

I’m not sure exactly what Sean and Lily will be posting, probabily about life, art, and dungeons and dragons perhaps? Seeing as my intrests fall in the film and video game spectrum, though recently I think I’m going to get back into reading. I will probably just talk about that stuff.

I became much more interested in movies during my second year of college, and my opinion of them has been in constant fluctuation since then. At first, I tried to argue why most movies are garbage (though some of those movies I was justified in, I believe). Then I started to enjoy movies for different reasons;  like how they are shot or the effectiveness of the scenes. Now, I think I’ve transcended into a person who can look at movies for their merits and come to a rational decision about why I like them, or who would like them. Though to be honest, if a movie really is shitty enough, I have no problems complaining a great deal about it.

I don’t really stick to any one particular genre, but if I had to pick my favorites, I suppose Horror, drama, and comedy are my favorites in that order, and I know those are all extremely broad.

As for video games, I think since I was very young I’ve been a fan of console gaming, and I still continue that to this day. Generally I play RPGs, Actiony-Platformy games, and FPS games. Again, that is broad, but I think it’s fine for the time being. A general overview is all I wanted to give here.

I suppose that is good enough for now. I saw Youth in Revolt earlier, and I did think it was great. I would totally recommend it. I can talk about it in more detail later after I get done watching Daybreakers later. I don’t have high hopes for it, but I’ve been surprised before.

Also, seeing as Sean and Lily both posted some of their art in their posts, I think I should do the same.

Doesn’t the sheer brilliance of it just make you weep? Fear not kids, you don’t need art school to draw at as high a caliber as I do.

-Pat

O hai

Oh dear Gandhi, introductions. I’m not good with introductions…I’ll give it a go anyways.

Greetings. My name is Lily. Sean asked me to join his blog so heeerreee I goooo…
I’m awkward, childish, and shy. I’ve never done a blog before. I am not that great at writing. In fact, I prefer drawing than writing. I don’t remember street names very well. I like aliens. I also like prehistoric animals. I can usually identify them if I see a picture of one. (Gorgonops are awesome).

I am currently an art student attending University of the Arts in Philadelphia. It is foundation year, which means we start with the basics. Circles…squares…triangles. Basics. It seems my friends and I are all praying next year will be better. I’m hoping to major in illustration, maybe minor in animation (mmmmaybe). One day I hope I can have my own small business creating comics and merchandise for said comics.

As for what I will blog about…uh. I suppose my life. And I will try to get them in some art form since this is “Hyperspeed Comics”.

Live long and prosper.
Here’s a silly drawing. My sister’s cat Zoe will wait months for a mouse to come out from under the stove.

Waiting game.

Map-Makin’

I’ve been on winter break from college for a few days now, and it’s basically been: stay up ’til 7 AM, sleep until 2, maybe eat and then work on Dungeons & Dragons stuff on and off the rest of the day (with movie distractions).  Back at school I’m running a game as DM for a group of friends that I’ve gotten together (though we have yet to begin).  Throughout today I came up with the above map using Photoshop, though that one has the civilization and campaign groups of layers turned off (roads and towns, key places etc.).  I made the map for in-game reference, so that I can easily keep track of where in the kingdom the PCs are as well as where they’re going.  With Photoshop’s layers I can turn on and off different features of the map; I could turn off all the geographical info if I wanted and only see cities and towns, or turn off just bodies of water or trees etc.  Maybe it’s not completely necessary, but it really makes me feel more organized, and the more organized I feel the more smoothly the game will go.

I learned the other day that Photoshop is fucking EXCELLENT for creating maps for D&D, since you can lay a grid over any image and have your lines snap to that grid.  I’m so fucking pleased with this discovery.  Instead of whipping out potentially hard-to-keep-track-of graph paper I can just keep maps in organized folders on my laptop.  I don’t need to rummage through a binder! I can also overlay higher-up floor levels onto the floors below them, so I can keep things consistent floor-to-floor, something that I’ve had to do on paper in the past.  Which is a real bitch.  Photoshop is really, in a way, the map-making software I’ve Googled for on more than one occasion, with no real luck.

My plan is to get enough D&D stuff finished so that we can start playing sometime in late January, maybe the beginning of February.  The campaign will (at first) revolve around finding creatures for a retired explorer, who saw them years earlier during his travels and now wants the opportunity to study them.  Doing this, the PCs will stay within the confines of the kingdom for a while (unless they want to leave for some reason, in which case I guess I’ll be improvising), but they’ll be jumping all around it.  I plan on expanding it (also real easy in Photoshop), but right now that’s not a priority.  It might even grow to a world map of sorts, eventually.

My group is full of newbies, which is fine because I don’t have much experience running games.  Yet I’m pretty sure I have the most experience playing out of the seven of us.  It will work out, I think, as long as I can keep up with providing things to do.  That’s really my goal over this break, to get a lot of things done so I don’t find myself ever scrambling to keep up with the players.  I intend to make at least rough diagrams of each location to help me visualize them, so that I can give a good spoken description of each one.  Below is my diagram in Photoshop of the Unruly Mule, the local tavern that I want to introduce, with top and bottom floors overlapping, and the grid I used turned on.  The name of the tavern is an inside joke, the tavern’s cousin being the “Crazy Ass” from a previous campaign.

So yeah.

Shogun + Seven Blows, Exhumed!

So the other day, my brother and I attended this thing at the International House in Philly.  It was this double-feature thing being shown by this movie organization called Exhumed Films.  They’re like this grass-roots organization that, well, basically just likes to show movies to people.  From what we saw at the last showing, the movies dance the border between funny-bad and fucking awesome.

The night consisted of the two movies Shogun Assassin and Seven Blows of the Dragon. The first, Shogun Assassin, was really, really awesome.  It was one of those kinds of wandering warrior movies.  The protagonist is an ex-samurai who becomes a “Shogun-Assassin” after his wife is killed instead of himself by the Shogun.  He vows revenge on the shogun, and sets off with his toddler son down “the path to hell”.  Sweet, right?  He kills tons of ninjas throughout the movie, listening for them in the silence, at times reaching for his sword, then hearing nothing.  The movie has its funny moments too, though for the most part it’s just really awesome, which I’m going to stop saying about the movie because it’ll sound like I don’t know anything.  It didn’t really feel like the ending wrapped up the plot enough, but I guess that leaves it open for a sequel or something?  I feel like I don’t know what the full deal is with the movie, but whatever, it kicked ass.

The second movie, Seven Blows of the Dragon, while a similarly-styled ninja-ish kung-fuish kind of movie, it wasn’t as fucking awesome.  It was more confusing, actually.  It opens with narration explaining this outside settlement of guys who oppose oppressive officials.  They’re like, chaotic good…though the movie says they follow strict codes, and that’s lawful good, so I guess they’re in-between.  Anyway, they need help taking out this guy called “Golden Spear,” at least I think so.  They decide to go with this one guy, (I forget), and his bodyguard, Young Dragon.  They go through all this stuff to get them and by the end everyone ends up fighting one another, people die, etc.  It was confusing, yet inspiring.  It gave me some ideas for an upcoming D&D game I’ll be running with some friends.  Lycanthrope monk?  Maybe so.

Back in October, Exhumed Films held this 24-Hour Horrorthon thing, which was, yeah, a 24-hour horror movie event.  That’s where I saw Creepshow, referenced previously.  There were movies of all kinds, some scarier than others, some good and some fucking hilariously terrible.  In short, we loved it.  There’s another double-feature coming up in February (Road Games / Patrick), and we’ll probably be going to that, too.

Cool,

Awesome!  Hey there, I’m Sean.  I’m trying to be sincere here.  I find that when I write in blogs and such, I lose a lot of genuineness and tend to put up some kind of front.  I had some blogs that I wrote in before, but I think I always used some kind of non-genuine language when I did it.  Maybe I should record myself talking first and then transcribe what I say.  I dunno though.

I think I can partly attribute any fronts to my writing talent.  Writing seems to come naturally to me.  It’s probably easy for me to get lost behind a wall of nice-sounding prose.  Maybe I’m also just thinking about all this too much but again I dunno.

What I know about me, aside from being good at writing, is that I swear a lot.  Sometimes in conversation without even realizing it.  So if I’m swearing, I’m probably writing like how I talk.  I think that’ll be one of my only goals.

But yeah, I’m an artist.  I’m currently attending the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, making useless things for classes that are irrelevant to what I plan to major in.  So it still feels a little bit like I’m in high school, what with the irrelevancy.  Next year will be better I think, when I’ve declared my major, and have to take figure-drawing or anatomy classes or something.  I’ll actually be putting school time into something I would otherwise need to find time to do on my own.  I plan on majoring in Illustration, so I can learn to do comics like a professional.  They teach the business at UArts, too.  UArts is actually one of the top schools for illustration, so I hear.  I’m lucky.

I don’t wanna do too much text.  This blog is called “Hyperspeed Comics”.  I do wanna do some comics.  So, some art?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creepshow

I did that at the speed of fucking light! FUCK YEAH! Actually that wasn’t that quick.  I’m still getting used to doing things in digitals.  Also it’s kinda bad.  But wuh.  It’s short and it fits into the post.  I like that.

So yeah, that’s that for now, I guess.