Lackadaisy Flimflam

Yet More Answer Pile

Sorry things have been quiet here lately.  Busy behind the scenes, though.  Meanwhile, here’s some responses.  More yacking after the break.

—————————————————-

Q.  is viktor popping up anytime soon?
Q.  viktor where that hunk des dayz?

A.  He’s about.  He’ll appear in the next series of pages, a little bit.

——————————————————

Q.  batman-girl asked you:
i love lackadaisy so much! any idea on when more off the comic will be put on the website?

A.  Thank you! 
Soon, if all goes as planned.  I really need the holiday time off from work to finish what I’m presently working on, though (which is an extra large update that I’ll either post in big chunks or as a page-a-day sort of thing).  Sorry again for the long delay.

——————————————————

Q.  My question is this: I am applying for some art scholarships soon to which I must sumbit a portfolio of some of my best art-I’m flooding with ideas! But every time I put pecil to paper the drawing never has the same charisma or effect as it does inside the crevices of my mind. It comes out placid and awkward. How do YOU go about begining your rough drafts? How do you tweak your mistakes? I know it all comes down to practice…but I feel like I’m missing some piece of hepful info…

A.  That’s kind of a vague issue to try to diagnose, so I apologize in advance if I come up short on useful things to say.  Also, to be honest, my art seldom comes out on paper exactly the way it looks in my head too; and I’m often not terribly satisfied with my final result, but providing myself as many opportunities to get it right as I can tends to yield better results, at least.  These things include…

— Accepting that the original mental image for a piece - while it might have inspired the art - is not necessarily the most effective approach.  Don’t forgo all the logistics of formulating a piece of art in a frustrated attempt to recreate precisely what was in your head.  If you’re a little more open minded about it, you might stumble on something better.

— Start with thumbnail sketches to work out composition and character poses, and take advantage of the quick and dirty nature of thumbnailing to experiment with different arrangements, perspectives, canvas shapes and such.

— Gather visual references.  Once the contents of the image are decided upon, do some research.  Look at pictures of the things you’re trying to draw.  This is helpful, of course, if you aren’t quite sure of proportions, certain details and the like, but it can be surprisingly helpful or inspiring even if you are familiar with your subject matter.  There’s nothing admirable about forswearing visual resources and guessing your way along because some misguided asshole individual suggested to you at some point that looking at references constitutes cheating.

— Don’t get too attached to drawings or even to something you’ve started painting.  Stop, recalculate and rework parts if you have to.  If the piece is fundamentally failing to achieve what you want, throw it away or move on to something else.  You can return to it later with a fresh perspective, or you leave it behind and write it off as a learning experience.

— Tweak it along the way.  Once you’re almost done, tweak some more.  Tweak the crap out of it.  Digital media is fantastically useful for this sort of thing - scanning a piece in progress and zooming in to improve the details, zooming out to get a better look at the overall effect, flipping the canvas around to make sure your figures and faces aren’t skewed, rescaling to fix proportions that are slightly off, checking your contrast, and so forth.  Even if you’re working traditionally, digital tools can still be very useful -  experimenting with adjustments without ruining the tangible piece, pre-planning color palettes, adjusting saturation levels for web display or in preparation for making prints, for instance.

Good luck with your scholarship applications!

——————————————————

Q.  How did Rocky come to learn to play the violin? He doesn’t seem to be the sort to sit for hours patiently learning just for the sake of it

A.  He had some informal tutelage from his mother as a child, but did most of his serious learning at certain points in his existence when he was spending unhealthy amounts of time by himself.

——————————————————

Q.  spontaneousscintillation asked you:
What’s the most annoying question that anyone’s ever sent you besides this one? (Yes, I know this question is incredibly annoying)

A.  I don’t know.  Questions aren’t really annoying - I’m generally just flattered and grateful anyone’s interested enough to ask them in the first place.
Receiving the same question 5 or 6 times in a row, slightly rephrased, by an anonymous user is kind of uncool, though.  I have a couple thousand questions in my backlog right now, and while I’d like to answer everything in a timely fashion, I can’t.  Piling more on top out of impatience or an effort to fool me into thinking multiple people are just dying for a response to the same specific question doesn’t help matters.  Please don’t do that, person who does that.

——————————————————

Q.  What was Rocky’s attitude towards school? I’m sure the school (schools?) had no patience for him, but there seem to be small references to an interest in science and he uses ‘big’ words, for want of a better term

A.  Sitting at a desk for six hours out of the day definitely never agreed with him, but he’s got a flair for the dramatic (hence the inordinately large words) and a fairly robust intellectual curiosity.  I suppose the trouble is that all of the information he absorbs is invariably filtered through the unrealistic, bizarro distortion lens of his perception.  He’s an autodidact, but he’s doin’ it wrong.

——————————————————

Q.  Are you ever intensely jealous of your own erstwhile writing/drawing abilities, looking back on them? I often find, reading something I wrote long ago, a surge of self-doubt and perverse envy, thinking, “Why can’t I do that now?”/”Can I still write like this?” —heartbeat, nervousness, looking for areas that show a dire need for improvement to relieve myself—

A.  It’s a mix.  Sometimes I look back and feel like, although I might have made gradual technical improvements, I seem to have lost some distinguishing style and any sense of spontaneity along the way.  Most of the time, though, I look back and cringe and wonder what ever possessed me to put embarrassing older work on the internet with my name affixed to it. 
Anxiety all around!  It seems to be an effective defense against complacency, though, so I’ll take it.

——————————————————

Q.  readthisironically asked you:
Do you have any idea when the second edition of Lackadaisy will be aviable for purchase, there fore, completed. I’m very invested in buying them both.

A.  Thanks very much for your interest.  I wish I had a good answer for this, but I’ve made estimates in the past, they’ve been wrong, and I’ve only succeeded in disappointing myself and others.  I figure I should stop shooting myself in the foot like that.  A lot of variables are involved, and I’m not sure when Volume 2 will be done and ready for purchase.  It will be done, though (barring unforeseen freak accidents resulting in the loss of my arms and/or head).

——————————————————

Q.  momoinwonderland asked you:
So, my name’s Melissa, & I’m a big fan of your comic & I just had a question that’s been bugging me. I was wondering if Mordecai was at all based on Claude Stengel from The Fountainhead. I was reading bits of my copy earlier & it sort of hit me how similar they are, right down to the glasses. So, given the time period of The Fountainhead, I thought it might be possible there was a connection between the two characters. Am I anywhere close to right? haha.

A.  He wasn’t based on the character, no, at least not conscientiously.  I imagine if any of my characters would feel at home in an Ayn Rand novel, though, it’d be Mordecai.

——————————————————

Q.  Do you know of any Speakeasies that made it through the 20’s and to modern times?

A.  Well, the end of Prohibition made speakeasies more or less obsolete (except perhaps where they persisted as illegal gambling halls and whatnot, or in places where people continued making illicit moonshine).  Certainly plenty of the restaurants, homes, hotels and backalley dives that once harbored speakeasies are still in existence, though..  Some such places are home to modern, legal bars and taverns, such as the 21 Club in New York.  Here’s a long list of Chicago bars that were once speakeasies too.

——————————————————

Q.  Will you be San Diego Comic Con next year?

A.  Probably not.  I’m in self-imposed exile from conventions until I finish my Volume 2 book.

——————————————————

Q.  hello Tracy, I just wanted to say I love your comic so much it is fantastic! I would liken your characters to Mickey mouse and Co (not furries) but I thinkyour characters have so much more detail and exoressive life. I was wondering is there a deeper significance to the rocky character card? Where he is hiding the sad mask behind his back. Does that show that he acts the way he does sometimes so the other side of him won’t show through to others or even to himself(if he even has one)

A.  Thank you.  That’s very kind.  I won’t say much about the art in the interest of allowing it to speak for itself, but your questions are more or less an apt interpretation unto themselves.

——————————————————

Q.  Does freckle have some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder? The way he aggressively fixed things in Dysphoria suggest so. And if so what caused this? I apologize if I’m jumping to conclusions and that my question is not as genuinely sophisticated as your answers are.

A.  Freckle’s aggressive Mr. Fix-it routine may have been a manifestation of some sort of psychological distress, but I wouldn’t say he exhibits many obsessive-compulsive tendencies.  Repressive-explosive probably describes him better (although I doubt that’s DSM terminology).

No need to apologize for anything, either.  Your question is perfectly legitimate, and I am a person who spends her time drawing cats with guns - sophistication really isn’t a factor. ;)

——————————————————

Q.  Are serafine and nico actual biological siblings because I was looking at your realistic people drawing and noticed she is black or at least a part yet he doesn’t seem to look like it? I absolutely love your work wow you are the best!:-)

A.  They’re half-siblings at the very least. Probably.  They aren’t entirely sure of the schematics.  That they’ve always had each other for company has been the only reliable factor along the way, so “brother and sister” is what they’re selling.

——————————————————

Q.  amandadownum asked you:
Rocky has a fiddle and a marked lack of sense—has he ever thought of challenging the Devil to a duel?

A.  Well, if we’re talking kazoos and not fiddles, then yes.  …Also, swap out the words “the Devil” with “Alfie Pankiewicz, age 5”.

——————————————————

Q.  Will you ever revamp the character page? Even a little bit?

A.  Yes, I will. 

——————————————————

Q.  katrka asked you:
Just thought it might amuse you that me and a friend were speculating on the idea of Mordecai in a romantic relationship. We decided that if it ever happened, he’d not only schedule out all gestures of physical affection (‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T WANT TO HUG TODAY? NOW MY CHARTS AREN’T SYMMETRICAL!’), he’d be constantly buying ‘proper’ clothes for them and pointing out flaws in everything they do, because HE’D want to know if he were making mistakes. So basically, Mordecai is not romantic.

A.  A sound conclusion.

——————————————————

Q.  Hello! I hope I’m not bothering. Imagine the following situation: Somebody draws fanart of one of your characters and posts it on tumblr. This person would like to let you know they did, without really daring, for fear of seeming too bold, annoying, or just plain stupid. What would you suggest them to do?

A.  By all means, just tell me.  You can submit it if you like (I think I finally fixed my submit button here), leave a note in my ask box with a link, or email me.  Regrettably, I do often lag behind in responding to messages, but I haven’t bitten anyone yet and it’s always a pleasure and honor to see someone else’s rendition of one of my creations.

——————————————————

Q.  is it weird that i find mitzi kinda ugly?

A.  No.

——————————————————

Q.  Since this latest comic update is going to be so huge, are you going to take a break after you’re done with it? With all the work that you put into the comic, along with side material, this tumblr blog, and your job, it seems like you might be in need of a break. I’m sure your fans wouldn’t mind, considering all you do for us.

A.  Probably not.  Well, not exactly.  What I’ll most likely do is break from intense focus on the comic itself for a week or two in order to do some Lackadaisy playing card or character page artwork, and maybe a little mini comic or two for this blog.  Then I’ll resume work on comic pages.  Doing some related illustrations or paintings in-between canon updates helps replenish my brain.

——————————————————

Q.  Hi! Huge fan. :D I just had one question: any chance of a showdown between Mordecai and Freckle in the future?

A.  Thanks!  Odds they will cross paths are good odds.

——————————————————

Q.  Miss Tracy, I’m sure you get this a lot, but have you heard anything regarding Tessa Stone? Most of her fans have gotten worried about her, and I was curious to know if you heard anything about her.

A.  I feel bad that people are worried, but I don’t have any special insider information.  Sorry.  Even if I did, though, it’s really not my place to talk about her.  It’s for her to decide if and when she wants to tell the internet how or what she’s doing.  All I know is that my publisher was in contact with her at some point over the summer and publicly stated that she seemed fine, and her sister more recently indicated on her DA page that she was doing fine. 

——————————————————

Q.  Is it strange that every time I think about what you look like, I only see you as a lackadaisy cat (closely resembling Ivy…or one of her girl-friends)? What do you really look like as a human :D?

A.  It suppose it’s not that strange since the bulk of representational material I put forth publicly is Lackadaisy related. 
There’s a photo of me on the Wikipedia entry for Lackadaisy.  I’m pretty sure I look more primate than cat, though.

——————————————————

Q.  hoothoo asked you:
You probably get this a lot, but do you have a certain soundtrack or playlist you listen to whilst working on your comic? I’m very curious as to what you listen to =w=/

A.  My musical tastes are kind of all over the place.  In an effort not to be obnoxious about listing it all, though, here’s the abridged version of things I listen to while working, starting with the stuff peripherally related to Lackadaisy’s theme.

Modern Throwbacks encompassing some stylistic aspects of music from the 20’s, 30’s or 40’s:
Squirrel Nut Zippers, Diablo Swing Orchestra, Brian Setzer Orchestra, Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Music from the New Orleans Bingo! Show, Preservation Hall Jazz Orchestra, Royal Crown Revue, Parov Stelar, Patrick and Eugene, Koop, and anything from the Paul Reeves Quirky Vintage album.  Someone here recently linked me to Caravan Palace too, which I am finding I quite like (thank you, Anonymous).

Some of the genuine old stuff I mix in among the modern music in my playlists:
King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Cab Calloway, Bix Biederbeck, Edith Piaff, Bessie Smith, Joe Venuti, Django Reinhardt, Whispering Jack Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, Scott Joplin. Gene Austin, Eddie Cantor, Louis Armstrong, Cole Porter, Annette Hanshaw, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington

Other stuff:
Tom Waits, Gogol Bordello, That Handsome Devil, Them Crooked Vultures, Norah Jones, Katie Herzig, Steeleye Span, Murder By Death, The Kinks, The Shins, Arcade Fire, Elbow, Loreena McKennitt, Boy Least Likely To, Simon and Garfunkel, Beck, Janelle Monae, Man Man, Flogging Molly, ELO, Cake, Tim Minchin, Flight of the Conchords, The Beatles, and…right.  Aborting ceaseless list now.