503. Wild West Commercial Fishing Graphic Design / Multi-Media Package (Completed in Early May of 2010)

Blurb for the Multi-Media Collection Above:
Wild West Commercial Fishing Graphic Design Multi-Media Package. Wild West Commercial Fishing Logos / Graphic Design Package. Graphic Design Packets Can Include: (1) logo(s) "brands" and (2) other associated logo elements (3) personalized fonts (4) letterheads (5) banners (6) optimized website graphics (7) business cards (8) cartoons (9) posters (10) bumper stickers (11) t-shirts (12) posters (13) gamut of products from the "cafepress / zazzle / printfection" portal (14) complete website design (15) short film.... Logo features Rocky the Rockfish with his cowboy hat and gun in a holster, hitching a ride from Mr. SeaHorse. Jules requests wordings as this: "locally caught seafood" and "Mission Bay, San Diego, CA" accompanied with simple images of SPINY lobster (NO CLAWS like the east coast lobster!), fish, and crab (rock crab of course, continuing the "rock theme" here).

I don't believe in "love," but I am aware in being "addicted" to someone--a person--at multiple levels and multiple scales--and that is most certainly a truthy-ism. From visceral to emotional to super-conscious, over various disparate landscapes, over short and long periods of time. From two little fuzzy reptiles under the bed sheets to the adventures of cavefolk in the boonies of Mexico to the satirical commentary of everyday life of science and fishing and politics "culture of the masses" of America. And for such compatibility to occur over all these complex layers of strings enables a complex, growing, symphonic relationship, I would perceive it to be a whole symphony of inner and outer instruments that would enable the stability and growth of such a relationship.

(Though it has taken me a couple of days too long) Being heathily addicted to someone has driven me to produce beautiful things. For example, this near-complete graphic design multi-media package for Jules (except a film at the moment)... as an act of reciprocation for housing and good food and friendship and a few fancy dinners at Cass Street and Emerald Bay (fine seafood! the most expensive restaurant I've been to) and the least I can do when Jules swept me away to the Bahia de Los Angeles after a hideous Winter Quarter 2010 that destroyed my health and morale and nearly overall outlook to life. I literally was "frozen" after that barbaric quarter and the best possible thing anyone could have done for me was TAKE ME AWAY FROM MY LIFE and ALL FAMILIAR LANDSCAPES. Implant me in a novel environment and play with me exploring the world like a little kid all over again.... Anyhoo, the best part about this graphic design multi-media package is that it's a first professional package I have done, and I can showcase this to others who need this done (except next time I get paid and probably no bartering).

There was quite a bit of frustrating "trial and error" that was involved with the design of the Wild West Commercial Fishing Logo. To start me off, Jules suggested that I watch Blazing Saddles (with Mel Brooks, 1969) which seems to be a cult film among the fishing community. I held onto that film for about a year; it was sitting in the car. And finally I returned the film to Jules in February of 2010 and said I can't watch the film alone. I will have to watch the film with you. Ironically, I never watched that film until AFTER I finished the final designs of logos. And I can see how Jules and several fishermen can relate to this film: a humorous wild west comedy film about the interactions with the wild west characters, and African-American "slaves" at the time with the boundaries of "uncivilized civilization."

Blazing Saddles was refreshingly absurd. I began to notice that since Hollywood had no access to special effects, the quality of acting from the characters was refreshingly superb (and parly improvisational, you could tell!) and I walked away from the film thinking that I could EASILY make a film like that today, in 2010 (with digital film and final cut pro). But I have to transport myself back in time and think about how film technology has evolved through time. Back then, people had to manually cut and paste slides and strips, which was fairly messy... so given the time and technology, the film was of course, great quality. I walked away from the film also feeling like any form of moral attachment to a film about the insanity of interactions between the Wild West and Civilization was a very sophisticated person. And so yes, I have Jules by my side, eh? Yay, Jules Citizen Scientist. Lucky me.

I recall that my first drawings came about in April or May of 2009. I think at that time, our relationship was fresh and that I was experiencing hesitancies in my art. I drew the rockfish and the seahorse as Jules requested (independent from the Blazing Saddles movie), but the first iteration rock fish was a bit too chunky and the seahorse didn't exactly look like a seahorse (at least to Jules). Jules suggested that I move the mouth to the end of the snout, that the seahorse have "poofier hair" like a "mohawk" kind of look that I imposed, and that the little fins on the seahorse' back had little "motion lines" to make the fins look more like fins. I remember Jules pointing me in certain directions with images in local papers like the San Diego Ocean Magazine. I also remember negotiating with Jules about what information to place on a t-shirt and logo, and we settled with "Wild West Commercial Fishing" "Locally Caught Seafood" "Mission Bay San Diego CA." At one point we were thinking of words "fresh" and "sustainable" but I think those words have so much rhetoric and baggage (especially with the enviro community) that it might repulse certain people. But "local" is a very attractive word, and I think it will work just fine. After the second round iteration, which took me 2-3 days of cranking out variations of the logo into headers and banners and t-shirts and sticker and poster forms... Jules and I thought we had a winning logo. Jules showed my work to about 5-6 of his buddies around October of 2009 and two of them mistakened the cowboy hat as a "big nose," as Jules and I were both frustrated with TWO of these strange remarks that were not apparent to us. So, by that point, I was super frustrated and didn't want to look at the work for a while, though Jules proposed a simple solution. Placing a sea star (maybe with a smiley face) on cowboy hat. My interest in finishing the logo project re-sparked in April as I became addicted to drawing bazillions of Biologically Incorrect cartoons and was in the "Cartoon Mode." Jules lured me in and made me forget all my past work. He said over the phone, "It's so simple. All you have to do is add a starfish on the hat and a squiggly line to show the hat in motion." Ya ya, so simple at the core, but I would have to re-modify every variation of this logo such that it's suitable for headers and banners and stickers and t-shirts and pins, etcetera... Shxt!

But just this past Saturday, I woke up with a confident, blazing work ethic (largely derived from the epic trip to the Bahia de Los Angeles) and was able to unravel the tangled knot and modify all the parts and pieces and variations. And then on Sunday I went to Kinkos (FedexOffice) to print out about 15 sheets as color prints on regular size paper and, and I was lucky that two of the Kinkos employees had difficulties black-and-white poster printing the Wild West Logo, and they ended up giving me three posters (two correct and one mess up) for free (which was about a $17 value). It was super cool--just in the last two days having this Wild West artwork laying around, I attracted the attention of three different people--mostly commentary-based conversations, and one guy for "It's Clickable" was more like a salesman, and he ended up trying to recruit me to sell products, which is not very... enticing to me.... I told Jules that he was going to win over the girlz with his logo because they're going to "cooo all over you" about how cute your Rocky the Rockfish and Seahorse are....

Also on Sunday afternoon, I spent time decorating Jules house--living room and office--and ended up taking pictures of him and the Wild West Poster, which kind of looked like a movie poster (so cool!). Jules was all cross-bug eyed too, just like the rockfish and the seahorse! And finally of course, this prompted Jules' ultimate commentary: "I have lived this long--for fifty years--and my life has amounted to this: a bug-eyed fish, a bug-eyed sea horse, and a Chinese Bunny Rabbit." (referring to the great Mr. Bun, a stuffed bunny rabbit I rescued from Kmart a day before our trip to the Bahia de Los Angeles). "Well," I said. "You asked for it. You said you never wanted to grow up. You are 5.0 years old." And then Jules said, "Well then, that makes you 2.8 years old." We then established a new metric for age. I think it's nonlinear... or we just shift the decimal points....

To think of the insanity of scientific consensus... I just endured three or four rounds of artistic consensus with Jules. The most important issue is that I ENDURED... and that I FINISHED MY PROJECT (or finished a crucial phase of my project), as Michel Gondry greatly emphasizes, "to start... and to FINISH your project, no matter how much you like or don't like your project." Unfinished projects will eat your brain alive... as I know. Creativity and creative projects is a SYMBOL of on-going commitment--continuous renewal--to an evolving relationship. When people commit to "wedding rings," it's a sign of laziness. Rings are usually made of metal and they rust slowly. But mostly, you wear them every day and they are static, unchanging in the human lifespan. It takes much effort to evolve a relationship before the grand "wedding" event, but after that the only thing left that can happen is stagnancy. But when I am making a sincere effort to tell stories with cartoons, with artwork, with poetic words... I am working every single day to perceive change in myself, in others, in my environment, and grasp and document and harness this change, whether gradual or sudden. Creative storytellling is a renewed commitment to your relationships classified as "addictions" (whether familial or acquired) but also is a commitment of relationship with yourself and your interactions with all other elements within you, and around you. Hence, my wedding rings take in the form of stories and artwork. They take the form of my two kids--Terra the Biogeek and Buz the Geobum. Chronic evolutions, eh? Ya.

And of course, this work is a symbol of attachment to Jules. As people would use the term "boyfriend," (which has horrible baggage in this country, it has more so a meaning of territorial ownership rather than mutual relationship) I describe Jules as "my rock" in a fragmented, ephemeral society of non-commital citizens. A rock of evolving stability in a universe of flakes. A rock rooted to himself and to the land, the ocean. And I'm lucky I found him... it's easy to root onto Jules. I'm his little epiphyte, yay! And since then... it's been nothing but TRANSFORMATION in my life!

In addition, back in April of 2009, I started designing a website for Jules through Blogger as well as a Picasaweb album of photographs of our ocean adventures--boat rides and the like. Both Picasaweb Albums and Websites are works of progress, but heck, I've got a solid start. I started the Picasaweb Album entitled "Whatever's Left of the Wild West" (I have a poem with such a title) at http://www.picasaweb.com/wildwestfishing and it contains a MATRIX of folders of with themes of specific elements of the ocean environment, which is evolving (Whatever's Left of the Wild West Profile Shots, Pieces of the Wild West AquaTechnological Puzzle, Mission Bay Catch of the Day, ByCatch: Because the Ocean is a Goodie Grab Bag, Bait: Because Everything Eats Everything Else, Physical Elements of the Pacific Coast Environment, Freeriders of the Wild West Commercial Fishing Boat, Biological Elements of the Pacific Ocean Environment, Human Elements of the Pacific Ocean Environment, Wild West Seafood Meals and Munchies, Graphic and Multi-Media Design, and a Couple of Hidden Folders). It's funny to think I look back at this folder and I'm frustrated that I shot everything in JPEG now that I know how to shoot and edit in RAW format. I have so much to work on in terms of PHOTOGRAPHY! I met a San Diegan photographer Art Wager (http://www.artwagerphoto.com) and showed him some of this portfolio. He was impressed by the originality of the photographs, but he was overall concerned with the quality since they were small images--the sizes of the photographs were not acceptable to be submitted for stock imagery. But nevertheless, what a confidence boost, and I'm about to resubmit a portfolio to Istockphoto in a few!

As for the website, I bought a domain http://www.wildwestfishing.net on April 28, 2009 and I guess we both forgot to renew it on time and now the dang domain is up for bid minimum $70 bucks. Just two days ago, I purchased http://www.wildwestfish.com and http://www.wildwestfish.net from Google Apps and GoDaddy / Enom ($10 bucks each) and they both point toward the Blogger Site... http://www.wild-west-fishing.blogspot.com. At first, Jules and I were irked at changing the domain name, but then we realized the value of shifting "fishing" to "fish" because most "wild west fishing" websites were sport fishing, and Jules is involved in commercial fishing. He provides "wild west fish" not "wild west fishing experiences." Plus "wild caught fish" and "wild fish" are buzz words in the food industries, scientific world, and especially the enviros.... so there are certain advantages to shortening the domain name. Over time, it became apparent on how to best organize such a website--see the sketch below:


Folders include: (1) Main Page with Mission / Summary Statement (eventual video?) (2) Longer Page on About Wild West Commercial Fishing (3) Ocean Products, local, sustainably caught seafood (4) Final Products, tips for seafood meals and munchies (5) Photoessays of Wild West Commercial Fishing (hence Picasaweb) (6) Quoteology and Short Stories of Ocean Adventures (7) Wild West T-shirts and Such, through Zazzle, most likely (8) Local Resources of San Diego, referred businesses (9) Jules in the News (news articles on fishing) (10) Contact Wild West Fishing. Quite a bit of information to include in a website! I completely recommend Google Apps and Blogger for websites because Google invented the search engine most people use, and so somehow Google products climb up in the rankings much faster than any of the other websites....

Perhaps I completed a First Phase of a Milestone of Artwork affiliated with Jules.... I look at what I have completed and have come to realize that if anyone comes to me for the design of a boring corporate logo... that won't be possible. There's too much personality and sincerity in this neck of the ocean's woods.

To Do List of What Remains to Be Done
**Start an Istockphoto Collection of Wild West Fishing (shooting RAW images)
**Complete the "Matrix" of the http://www.wildwestfish.net Website
**Create a Google Docs Survey Request for Certain Fish, Certain Times of the Year
**Upload T-shirt Designs on Zazzle and/or Cafepress
**Print up a Run of T-shirts Locally
**Develop a small advertisement for Jules for the Ocean Magazine
**Vinyl or Laminated Print for Fisherman's Market or Farmer's Market Eventually?!
**Continue developing a script for World's Funniest Catch

489. Graphic Design / Logos for Biologically Incorrect PR http://www.biologicallyincorrect.com

Wow, wow, WOW! You know what?!! This is very, very big news. I am just starting a new website entitled Biologically Incorrect PR at http://www.biologicallyincorrect.com. I was meditating over the quarter on how I needed two different websites, one website devoted to Quantity, which is this blog http://www.biologicallyincorrect.org. It's awesome for staying up-to-date, but many jewels and gems of my work can be quickly buried and difficult to find. So now, it's all about establishing a website that features The Best of the Best.... the Quality of La Victoria Salsa or Vickle the Pickle or Vic or Stokastika or whatever.... And that is what it is... http://www.biologicallyincorrect.com! And FINALLY, during Christmas Break, I have FREE TIME, and I am able to pursue my dreams with *somewhat* minimal interruption.... Well yes, my family has been pretty big time-suckers the last few days... but that is legitimate. My aunt and cousin asked me yesterday, "When do you go back to school?" And I answered non-chalantly, "It doesn't matter. I get more work done during Christmas Break than during the quarter." And my cousin commented, "Gee, that's sad." WELL, IT'S TRUE! As I told Dr. Freudenberg the first time I entered his office, "THE QUARTER SYSTEM IS ONE LONG DISTRACTION FROM TRAIN OF THOUGHT!" True, true, true.... So here I am, during Christmas Break, working my xss off... oh, but it's fun!

I started working on the logos about a week ago, up in Santa Barbara. I had been recuperating from a week-long adrenaline rush in order to write a STAGE script for UCSB's STAGE competition. I was skipping a lot of steps, and so I had to back-track and figure out where I was.... Like the basics... NEW WEBSITE!

Below is the blurb I wrote alongside the Stokastika Picasaweb Album above:
The more I realized that no one in the world was going to lift a finger for me, the more I decided to lift a finger for myself. Over the course of Fall Quarter 2009, I came to realize that "The Mountain's Last Flower" (novella) was the first time I was "doing something right," in concern of expressing my inner universe and acquiring compatibility within the outer universe, the outer universe being more specifically the venues of media, ranging from book publishing to film production to the *gxd forbid* self deprecating promotion of public relations. Hence PR stands for (1) press (2) productions (3) public relations (my father added "press release" to the list). You truly have to be a multi-media-package-deal storyteller in order to survive... and this is my first attempt to performing this experiment "right." And "right things" of "great quality over quantity" deserve brand-spanking new websites, such as http://www.biologicallyincorrect.com (quality) over http://www.biologicallyincorrect.org (quantity, daily-weekly blogging).

Designs for Biologically Incorrect PR. Bird in a Cage. Vic's graphic design style has settled to: (1) median (2) daub (3) liquify (4) doubling (5) invert (6) gaussian blur (7) posterize/poster edges (with my thin-point sharpie). It's relieving to know that my "style" and "techniques" are stabilizing and becoming quite consistent... in a non-boring way.... Crafting the designs must have taken about a day... with some additional modifications... the "R" in "PR" was a little bit thick in some of the designs, so I had to modify a slough of images contingent upon that "R." I have come to realize that doing art is MEDITATIVE by default... my brain has be clear of clutter, clear of words, clear of stress and deadlines in order to go into MEDITATIVE TRANCE MODE. Doing art is SOOO easy for my brain.... Whereas writing does take some major brainpower (though ironically, one word is a couple of kilobites in a word doc and one image is a few megabites... strange....) I can work on a film for 3 days straight with 6 hours of sleep totall, but if I write for 6 hours straight, I by DEFAULT need 8 hours of sleep... strange....

It may seem that I am being "redundant," but I strongly feel that the "Squirrel Tries to Get Bird Out of the Cage" is THEEE theme of my life, so transferring the image to Biologically Incorrect PR is a no brainer. I have a few other images that I feel strongly represent who I am, but can be misinterpreted as extremely "enviro" and "new agey" and honestly I don't want to be affiliated with those stereotypes.... At the end of the day, I want to be known as a great storyteller and a die-hard thinker. That-is-all!

482. Poem "Chamise: An Apparent Diagnosis" Coupled with Primitive Artwork "The Biological Basis of Perception"

PDF file for the poem "Chamise: An Apparent Diagnosis" is found here: http://sites.google.com/site/stokastika2/chamiseapparentdiagnosis.pdf.

Blurb for the above collection of art and poem: "The Biological Basis of Perception" ::: Ancient Art Coupling with Poem "Chamise: An Apparent Diagnosis" Sketch Images Made in Fall of 2007. Featuring floaters, snakes, petal waves, the flowery wormhole, and burned imprints of inner nerve networks in the eyelids. The nose included as well. And no, I have never done mushrooms, nor any other hallucinogen. My brain is already mildly hallucinatory already, to my fortune or misfortune! "I am more drunk when I am not drinking at all" "If you find me at a bar, I'm probably the only one drinking coffee in the room."

Today I am in Riverside. Yesterday was Mike Davis' course in "landscapes and writing." Riverside used to be my "forbidden territory." My "land of failure." But through Mike's course, my once forsaken history is starting to return to me, in very slow, discrete digestible chunks. Earlier I jogged up Two Trees in the Box Springs Mountains. It has been over a half of a year since I trail-ran this area, and two very crisp ideas came to me. One of them was this old ideas of all this "biological crud" floating in my eyes that ultimately bias my sense of reality, besides the physics of light travel rendering all of reality to be "relative" and "apparent."

To think I had an idea back in 2005, then partially materialized in the fall of 2007, and then fully manifested as a blog containing a poem and a small set of images is just daunting. What in the hxll has happened all in between? Anyway. It doesn't matter. It's done for now. Off to Mike and Barry and Bubsy and Jules for feedback!

469. Graphic Illustration / Cartoon Entitled "The Roots of Creativity"

"The Roots of Creativity" Biologically Incorrect Cartoon Featuring Terra, Buz, the Fishies and the Birdies. Without a black frame.

"The Roots of Creativity" Biologically Incorrect Cartoon Featuring Terra, Buz, the Fishies and the Birdies. With a black frame.

"The Roots of Creativity" Biologically Incorrect Cartoon Featuring Terra, Buz, the Fishies and the Birdies. With a black frame and titles, captions.

The Adventures of Terra and Buz continue and live on!

Throughout the summer, while writing "The Mountain's Last Flower," I had recurring thoughts and visions about other subject matters I couldn't even touch... because it wasn't along the lines of my (rather depressing) train of thought for advancing the tragic story. I had this vision above a few dozen times for sure, and I had sketched it out on pieces of paper perhaps at least three times or so. And then a certain event occurred this past Monday in which I was tardy for Jules and the initiative of his zen meditation of lobster-baiting-and-fishing, and I left San Diego feeling sooo wretched about myself and my priorities and my very bad habit of having a difficult time to break myself from my work to a point that I disappoint other people... including Jules and my sister Jen Jen.

And I still feel horrid to this day, but this horrible feeling ultimately wanted to be expressed in positively reinforcing warmth about the continued, adventurous relationship of Terra and Buz. The image series above emerged quite rapidly and clearly when drawing into the weee hours of the night at a Kinkos near by Sunland, which finally closed at 11pm, and I finally peetered into Santa Barbara after several sleeping pitstops. Sigh! I hope Jules likes the images!

With these images, I intended the resulting image to be a little scrappy with its pencil sketches. It adds a home-madeness effect to the images!

463. The Making of "The Mountain's Last Flower" ::: A Tragic, Precautionary Tale (Novella, Major Project Summer 2009) IMAGE JUSTIFICATIONS

Since I was four years old, I had a knack for decorating my father's office, which is a professor's office. It then became some sort of hobby. It's kind of fun, I think I am making some kind of official profession now... decorating professors' offices with my cartoons and artwork!!! Environmental Media = Decorating Professors' Offices!

Yesterday, when I placed all my imagery from "The Mountain's Last Flower" (MLF) up on Blogger, I felt a strange, foreign void, as if I felt violated. At this moment in time, I think that void came from the notion that here I have been working... for three months on and off (one-point-five-months straight) on designing images and crafting MLF in writing... and then suddenly I just post all this hard work... FOR FREE... on blogger. Am I insane?! Well, according to the economic system, I am insane. I work very hard and get no pay. According to my soul, I am reviving it and patching it up. I am achieving internal As I told Shannon, when I croak, do I want to be in debt in money, or in debt in my soul? (Just to let you know, I like to use the word "soul" in the Plato Way--holistic, higher state of consciousness--not the Christian Way--your soul leaves your body and it goes to Heaven or Hxll) So, I decided to work on patching up my soul.... I think most people don't go to their cremation or mummification or bone box feeling like they did their soul any servicing. Welcome to most of America. Welcome to most of this world! But at least it's legal for me to be in monetary debt during schooling... so GO FOR IT! Replenish my soul! Whatever!

In order to avoid this sense of violation, I decided to establish a rule system. When my work is in the peer review process amidst my family and friends and colleagues around UCSB and the vicinity (and my hero-ine writers via snail mail), I will have my files up and easily accessible on the blog. But as soon as I send my work to literary agents and editors, then I will have to take my final draft down... but can still have rough-object items up... at no terrible cost!

The other realization I made is that it's actually "hard" to give people this story. I like to give people presents... but usually "happy" presents. But then again, this story is sad... sad, sad story... but my friend Shannon said, "I like sad stories... because they are real." Oh. Well, that makes one or two humans on this planet who like to confront reality. And it is a sad story about the death of a not-go-good-paradigm, so in a certain way, it's a happy story because it's a shocking celebration of the death of some form of denial ideology of scientists--thinking they can separate themselves from the system and deny they are "a part of the process"!

A BRIEF TIMELINE OF THE MOUNTAIN'S LAST FLOWER. Down the rabbithole of my summer... I guess you can say....

Early June: post writing "Catch Share," I was exposed to Duke and Dog, the concept flew to my head in a drive up to UCSB from San Diego; shared with my dad and Barry
Mid June: Barry Spacks provides advice and challenges me to writing a poet's story, develop compassion for my main character Heisen the Scientist
Mid July: Ray's Memorial, initializing and finalizing most of the illustrations of the story (1.5 weeks of solid 12-hour-per-day-work)
Mid August: Stall in work effort, first few pages reviewed by Hector, wrote first ten pages by the time of the AAAS Pacific Division Conference, powerpoint presentation received third place in science education division
Mid September: Amidst the chaos and inspiraton of Roadtrip Nation, I hunkered down and hid in Sebastopol to finish writing MLF within a little over a week, at least 6 hours a day of writing. It was brutal, but I was surrounded by the support and friendship and family of Jeri Lyn and Steve and Chris Lods and the small, charming town of Sebastopol!
Now (October): I realize finishing the story is just the beginning of the battle in terms of the writing and paperwork and discussion to follow....

Artist Techniques: Overall very primitie in the scope of complex machines... except for Photoshop. (1) white paper (2) fine point sharpie for sketching outlines (3) some pencil (4) scanner (5) photoshopping (for contrast, coloring in, adding further layers), also known as "microsurgery" on my characters (e.g. moving their eyes and noses and ears and mouthes around)

Major Influences of Art (for this project): Blue Bison (http://www.bluebison.net/), Jeri lyn Dillin (http://www.dillindesign.com/), Michel Gondry (http://www.michelgondry.com/).

Overall Artistic Strategies:

Evolutionary brainwashing in terms of the CUTENESS proportions ::: big head and big eyes, small nose, small body, kind of big feet... the "alien baby" look... I am exceptionally vulnerable since I am a female (fortunately or unfortunately) ... oooh! cutie! cutie! cutie! I just wanna hug and snuggle bunny you!

Irreducible Complexity (Objective Minimalism):
In an obvious way, my artwork (illustration, cartoons) is "minimalist," (simplest possible, identifiable representation of reality) going along the lines of "artfully simplify, but nothing simpler." Another way of stating this technique is "irreducible complexity," simplifying a system to a point if one element is eliminated from the design, then the whole image or system falls apart, like some defunct, overheated, unraveling protein (or a flagellum of a single cell missing a major part).

Now a silly aside issue arises, since "irreducible complexity" applies to my artistic style, does this mean that my work relates to "intelligent design"? Intelligent Design theory states that there is evidence showing some intelligent being or god or whatever has designed reality and irreducible complexity is their staple concept. Honestly, I feel that irreducible complexity is a constructionist concept that belongs to evolutionary theory. It's just that evolutionary theory in America is "competition-oriented" in its mentality whereas other cultures are "cooperation-oriented" in which irreducible complexity most rightfully fits.

Why do I resort to minimalism, in which my dad feels it's "objective" and "universal"? Uh... well... my dad is the most biased human being on this planet... he's my DAD... but other than that... I resort to minimalism because I'M A GRADUATE STUDENT. I HAVE NO BUDGET. I HAVE TIME ISSUES. I HAVE RESOURCES ISSUES. I HAVE EFFICIENCY ISSUES. I don't have time to place anatomical details on the skin of Heisen the Scientist. I can only draw lines that embody his gestalt. In an idealist universe, I would have the manpower of Pixar Studios to animate MLF but... honestly... that's a long shot. When I write fiction, my mind has reached this state of alternate reality... and apparently, it takes a lot of manpower to manifest this form of reality into major motion pictures! Sigh. So, here I am, my brain... paper... pencil... photoshop... and a computer that's currently valued at $400. The Condition of GraduateStudentism is Making the Most of What You've Got! I'll also do my social networking, Roadtrip Nation Part; I intend to meet folks from Pixar and Dreamworks....

Initial Responses of My Artwork: Overall, very positive reviews!

In short, having a bitter, reclusive old geezer as the main character is a very difficult task indeed. But ironically, I already had about three professors tell me, based on the images of Heisen the Scientist, "Hey, that kind of looks like me!" Maybe it's a sign that I invented the universal (or stereotypical) professor cartoon! My father told me that the Scientist in the image seems a little bit "too appealing, too charming," based on my writing description of him, but just a tad. My friend Chris Lods from Sebastopol told me "Your images are unique. They have 'you' written all over them. Most artists mimic other people's work, but your style is your own deal, your own original identity." That's probably the nicest compliment I received from an artist. Barry Spacks looked at my images back in July and he admired the "consistency" of characters across the images. He also stated that my landscape drawing had a Japanese style to it... (whatever works!). Barry had fun with the images, trying to make funny tag lines for each cartoon, as if he were entering captions for The New Yorker weekly contest! A nice guy at the Santa Rosa Kinkos told me that he really enjoyed the "minimalism" of the drawings because most books have complex, multi-layered graphics, and oftentimes even cluttery and unaesthetic.

Another issue that was brought up to me (largely from my cousin-aunt Jeri Lyn) is that the whimsical lightness of my cartoons do not match very well with the darkness and heaviness of my writing style. Granted my artwork contrasts my writing style, but all the better?! Because my writing can be too dark? What? Do people want my stories to be complimented with evil demon goth images? It ruins it. Two extreme opposites can balance a story... potentially.... Strangely enough, I have received this input largely from females, and it seems that most males reading my story actually enjoy the accompaniment of whimsical pictures with my stories.

I am sure I will be getting more feedback on the illustration. Will add more commentary to this blog, soon enough!

462. The Making of "The Mountain's Last Flower" ::: A Tragic, Precautionary Tale (Novella, Major Project Summer 2009) IMAGE PORTFOLIO

The Making of "The Mountain's Last Flower" Images that Made the Final Cut

The Making of "The Mountain's Last Flower" Images that Did Not Make the Final Cut

The Making of The Mountain's Last Flower: Rough Draft Images

Crafting a novella is a lot of work! It was about three months from the origins of the idea to the final completion (one month's of 8-hour-per-day work, with interruptions in between)! The least I can do is share the "behind the scenes" of the design of the illustrated novella, "The Mountain's Last Flower," which ended up being my predominant summer project. It takes several revisions in artwork (graphic design, illustration, cartoonwork) and writing in order to finally have enough confidence to share my work with the world! Please see the NEXT BLOG (463) in order to review a commentary of the artistic design process and initial feedback!

413. Biologically Incorrect Banner Formation (Back in February of 2009)

FINAL CAPTION ON PICASAWEB:
It was the "sacred week" before the AAAS science conference in February of 2009. The metabolism of my mind was at about 120 miles per hour [It was tripping all over itself in the fourth dimension of biological speed]. It was one of those moments where I felt like I had five days left to live and was wondering how to spend it. Instead of directly working on research, I decided to vamp up the veneer of my blog and first-encounter-human- social-transaction component of conferences. First on the list was reconstructing my once hideous Blogger-devised "Biologically Incorrect Banner--" which was white, arial font overlaid with a cropped pale-yellow sunflower image... to what is now... below [ABOVE]. It took me six hours to make this collaged banner, and I remember staying up very late, crashing at my office at Bren to engage in this project. My reward was to take time to show the banner to Larry Zims, UCSB's Media Arts Technology (MAT) biologist-website design guru at a random Java Jones late-night chat. [He seemed impressed--his first comment was that creating the banner must have taken a LONG time! He would be the one to know... and appreciate!]

403. Mike Dillin Appreciation Day: Victoria's Designed Business Card for Mike's Birthday!!!

Vic's Birthday Present to cousin Mike. A new business card design! FRONT.

Vic's Birthday Present to cousin Mike. A new business card design! BACK.

Today, March 29, 2009, is my cousin Mike Dillin's birthday! About TWO YEARS AGO, Mike asked me to create a business card for him. Today, I am fulfilling this task, in honor of his birthday. In one way, I feel ashamed that it took me this long to do something. To fulfill a task. I am in immense backlog, as you can see. Yet in a certain way, I am glad I waited because I garnered several skills that allowed me to create the business card above, which I would have not been able to create otherwise. I also admit that Mike showed me about a month ago a business card that someone else made for him. I became very jealous and competitive, and I decided to outdo the existing card in quality. I only act egotistically when it comes to artistic creativity! Though the card I designed is very colorful and Mike thinks I'm a Bollywood type, I sincerely hope he likes it! *Ah!* He's a critic, but I don't mind. I know it's out of TLC.

NOTE that regular size business cards are 2 inches by 3.5 inches.