Radiant Comics

Today I got two new sets of dice for my collection. Yes, I have a dice collection. They’re mostly Chessex brand dice but I have some others thrown in. I don’t collect them as historical objects or even to game with them (though I used to game with some of them). These days I collect them as art objects.

I originally bought some of these colorful dice back in the early 1990s at a store in Manhattan called The Compleat Strategist. At that time I was working in the Marvel Comics Bullpen and a bunch of us had gotten into playing the collectable card game Magic: The Gathering. We’d walk over to The Strategist at lunchtime to buy some packs of cards and browse around.

The Compleat Strategist was a gaming store that had a lot of different games packed into their relatively small store. Since lots of games use dice they had a selection of dice up by the front register. Though the Chessex dice I get online these days come in packs of twelve I remember the dice at The Strategist being loose. They had a rack of them with the various colors and styles being in separate boxes. I could pick out one, six, or ten of any style of six sided dice and buy some. The D&D style three, six, eight, ten, and twenty sided dice came in sets.

At that same time I started to get more into photography. I got it in my head to make some photos of collections of small and colorful objects. This bought the dice to mind. Over about a year’s time I bought about fifty individual dice. Mostly I bought them in my favorite colors. Anywhere from two to ten of a given design. I used the dice in my still life photos but nothing ever really became of those pictures. I kept the dice though and every now and then I’d take them out and look at them.

My dice collection was stagnant until around 2011. That’s when I pulled them off the shelf for my nephew and I to play with. We had a good time. I find dice to be fun little objects. We played games and arranged them into shapes based on colors and amounts of dice. That got me more interested in them and I started getting new ones every now and again.

I began keeping the dice out next to my chair in a plastic container. That way I could absentmindedly pick them up and play with them. I used to arrange them on the arm of my chair until I got rid of that chair because it got old and worn out. The next chair wasn’t nearly as good for arranging dice.

After a long time of the dice laying fallow because I got rid of a chair I eventually started putting the dice on the back of my hand. I’d reach down into the container, pull out eight dice, and arrange them four by four in between my three largest fingers on the back of my left hand. I’d make color compositions with the dice. It became a relaxing art exercise.

I started buying new sets of dice because of their colors so that I’d have more choices for my color compositions. I found out that it’s best to keep my dice colors even in number too. If there were twelve of one color in the box but only four of another then it was hard to find the four. So I kept six of each at hand.

Over the years I got more and more dice. I think have over three hundred dice these days. I had to adapt my system for them once again. Now I have smaller box inside the bigger box of dice. I keep three of each color in the smaller box and the rest go in the bigger box underneath. This way everything is even and I can find each color easily.

Somewhere along the way of my collecting dice Instagram was invented. I joined it and would post pictures of my art. I don’t have a ton of followers and mostly nobody cared but I still kept it up. I was always looking for things to post. I had developed my back of the hand dice color compositions to pass the time as I watched TV at night but it didn’t occur to me for about six months to take a photo of the dice. Then one day it did and I started posting them on Instagram.

I post one dice photo a day. I take a lot more than that as I sit and watch TV but only one gets posted. I still don’t have a lot of people looking at my Instagram but those that do seem to like the dice photos more than anything else I’ve ever posted. I’ve had friends tell me they find the dice photos very peaceful and calming.

A set of twelve dice costs anywhere from 8 to 13 dollars. Not the most expensive thing in the world but if can add up. Last year, in 2021, I decided to get one set a month but I’m not sure if I actually did. In the beginning of the year I got two and sometimes three sets a month but then I fell off. I only got a couple of sets from August to December. Maybe it was twelve sets overall but I’m not even sure. I had enough to make plenty of color compositions out of so there was no hurry.

I didn’t get any new dice in January 2022 but now that it’s February I went crazy and got three new sets. I don’t know why except that I had some credit card points so the $36 worth of dice onto cost me $10. That’s not so bad. All three sets are what Chessex calls Nebula Dice and are a mixture of two colors and transparent plastic. They look cool plus they also glow in the dark.

These days I’ve got solid dice, speckled dice, transparent dice, frosted dice, translucent dice, marbled dice, and probably a few other styles I’m forgetting. They make for some cool color compositions and fun photos. It’s certainly easier to share the photos than when I was shooting still lives back in 1992. That’s a good thing.

As I write this it’s the last day of January in the year 2022. I mention that because I’ve been using Zoom, the video app, to both teach and socialize since the beginning of Covid back in March of 2020. That’s a long time ago and I think it is overdue that I write about my general set-up for that since it will eventually be lost to time. I like writing about the little things in everyday life that get lost to time. Mundane stuff gets more interesting as time passes and it becomes an exotic part of the forgotten past.

First of all I use my laptop for talking over zoom. It’s a ten year old Mac PowerBook. It’s from 2012 and is running Catalina OS. It’s so old that I can’t upgrade the OS anymore. I’ll have to get a new one eventually but I just bought a new Mac Mini last September so I can’t get a new laptop anytime soon.

I use the laptop because it’s more comfortable to work and chat from my drawing table than my desktop computer. My drawing table has a window behind it and my desktop computer faces a wall. I’l rather look out the window than at the wall.

I don’t place the laptop directly on the surface of the drawing table. The table has a cutting mat over its entire surface and I find the heat from the laptop warps the cutting mat. So I put a piece of wood (pine) about the size of the laptop on top of the drawing table and then put the laptop on the wood. That takes care of any warping.

My lighting is a little complicated and I developed it over time. If I’m on Zoom during the daytime the light coming through the window takes care of everything but it’s not always daylight. I already have two lamps clamped to my drawing table. My main light is a combo fluorescent ring and bulb lamp and the second is a fluorescent ring lamp (with a magnifier but that doesn’t come into play).

The combo lamp is on my left and I use it but I point it away from myself. I use it for indirect light on one side. The magnifier ring lamp is on my right and I point that one at myself. So I’m always lit from two sides. One directly and one indirectly.

The third light is a big LED tube light that’s on my ceiling. I used to turn this one off because it’s too bright and gives me a weird halo effect on screen. After a few weeks with it off I decided I needed it on to see well but wanted to block some of the halo lighting. I got an 11×17 inch piece of cardboard, tied a piece of string on the 11 inch side of it, and hung it from the end of the tube light closest to me. The cardboard manages to block most of the direct light and keeps the halo away.

I’ve written about my speakers woes before (http://radiantcomics.com/speaking-about-speakers/) so I’ll keep it short. I have a triangular Bluetooth speaker that I used for a good long while before the Bluetooth gave up the ghost. But it does have an eighth inch jack on it too. So now it’s a wired speaker. I pug it right into the headphone jack on the laptop. By the way I put flags of yellow tape on the speaker wire so I can see it. After a couple times of accidentally walking into the wire that was my solution.

Back in 2014 (I looked it up. I wouldn’t have guessed it was so long ago) I bought a USB Blue Yeti microphone. It’s terrific. I’ve been using it for making my YouTube videos since then and I really like it. It picks up nice rich sound. I plug it in, it works well, and I don’t have to think about it. All my equipment should be as good as my Blue Yeti.

When teaching I usually have a graphics tablet hooked up to my laptop but I haven’t been fond of either of them that I’ve used. Back when I knew I’d have to be teaching on Zoom I bought a cheap ($65) Wacom tablet. It’s only about 4×5 inches and comes with a pen. It never worked to my satisfaction.

When I bought my new Mac Mini my old Wacom tablet (2004) would not work with it. Since a new one would cost about $600 I decided to try a cheaper $85 Huion tablet. I stuck with it for a few months on my Mac Mini before not being able to stand it. I replaced it with a Wacom I had from 2008 (http://radiantcomics.com/an-old-cintiq-is-new-again/) and moved the Huoin over to the laptop. It’s better than the 4×5 Wacom but still not great. I end up using the laptop touchpad the most.

I also set up a second monitor to my laptop when I teach. It’s actually an old 20 inch flat screen TV. I got it from my sister when she upgraded her TV. It’s not the best screen ever but it gets the job done. I usually move my Zoom windows over to that screen so they’re not in the way when I’m sharing my screen to show the students how to do something.

The last thing I hook up is an ethernet cable. My WiFi is pretty darn good and works about 98% of the time but just for safety I use the hard wire. Just a few feet from my drawing table, on which sits the laptop, is my old backup computer. It’s a Mac tower and it has an ethernet cable hooked up to it. I just have to reach around to the back of the computer, unplug the cable, move the wire a few feet, and plug it into the laptop.

If it was a real chore to move the ethernet cable I probably wouldn’t do it. I also use this same setup for my Friday night YouTube show and I usually don’t bother with the cable then and things go smoothly. I have plugged the cable in during the middle of the YouTube show a few time but that was when my Bluetooth speaker was dying and I thought it could have been bad WiFi messing up my sound.

That’s my Zoom teaching and socializing set-up. Before I go here is one last tip for you. Before staring a class restart your computer. That way any potential problems that need to be fixed with a restart are already taken care of. That ends today’s writing about the mundane things of everyday life. Now get back to your excitement.

I’m in the mood to write another “Friends” walkthrough so here we go. I’m up to Season 6 Episode 2 “The One Where Ross Hugs Rachel”. I watched it as it aired back on September 30, 1999. Let me check my calendar to see what I was doing back then. Looks like on that exact day I was home in my studio working on some animated GIFs that I was doing for the company Uproar. I had forgotten about that freelance job. I was also at Marvel a few days that week and it was a friend’s bachelor party that weekend. Looks like I was having a busy time. But I was home that Thursday to watch “Friends.”

This is the episode right after the gang gets back from Las Vegas where Ross and Rachel drunkenly got married. We start with a coffee shop scene where we learn that Ross never got the annulment that he promised Rachel he’d get for them. He tells this to Phoebe. I think this was the ending scene from last episode.

Now we get a new scene with Phoebe running outside to talk to Ross as he and Rachel are going to a movie. The outside street in front of Central Perk never looked quite right to me. There is something off about it visually. Next is a Phoebe putting Rachel in a cab gag that’s amusing. Ross explains to Phoebe that he doesn’t want three divorces. I like that they came up with the three divorce thing for Ross. It’s almost always amusing. Ross in distress is funny to me.

Rachel finally comes back in the cab and Phoebe plays dumb and sends her off again. Good stuff. I like this goofy gag. Here comes the theme song.

The next scene is Chandler and Monica on the couch. Last episode they decided to move in together. They are concerned with telling their respective roommates that they are going to be shacking up. Chandler is moving out on Joey and Rachel has to move out from Monica’s. Big changes!

Joey shows up and they tell him. Joey is stunned and almost runs out. He doesn’t want Chandler to go. Some funny and touching stuff.

Back to the coffee shop as Monica is looking for Rachel but tells Phoebe and Ross instead. Hugs all around. Lots of annulment jokes from Phoebe but then she spends a scene trying to reassure him.

Monica is at the apartment waiting for Rachel. She finally shows up after having a bad day at work. A funny bad day at work. Monica tells her but Rachel doesn’t get that she’s supposed to move out. That becomes the joke. Then a Three’s Company joke!

We’re back at Central Perk and Ross is explaining his three marriages to a couple of random women that Phoebe called over. Even one of the women can figure out that he’s still in love with Rachel. This is a funny scene top to bottom.

Back to the apartment as Monica and Chandler try to figure out how to tell Rachel that she’s moving out. Chandler leaves so Monica can straighten things out. We get out third “Monica is pregnant” joke of the episode. Everyone keeps guessing that instead of moving in together.

Rachel takes the news really well and then Monica is upset about that. Meanwhile Joey and Chandler are splitting things up back at their apartment. Joey is remembering the good times and feeling nostalgic as Monica walks in. She is upset that Rachel didn’t cry. All Joey’s friendship combo nicknames for he and Chandler are amusing.

Now we get a scene with Ross and his lawyer about getting an annulment. His lawyer is Ron Glass from “Barney Miller.” A veteran comedic actor. It’s always good to see him show up in something.
He can’t believe Ross got married again. Ross wants to get this done without Rachel knowing since he told her it was already taken care of. Of course he can’t. Overall this is a funny scene. Panicked three divorce Ross is always funny.

Here we go with Rachel and Monica back a their apartment as Monica tries to make things so sad that Rachel will cry. Rachel is calm and cool. Monica is flipping out in a very funny way. She’s giving us the crazy eyes. Monica finally breaks and tells Rachel that she wants Rachel to be upset. Rachel explains that she doesn’t quite believe it. Monica explains that it is going to happen and the tears finally flow.

We get a scene with Phoebe and Ross in the hall. Phoebe explains to Ross that she thinks he’s totally in love with Rachel. Ross tries to dissuade her but he can’t. Ross walks in on Rachel crying and he clearly cares about her a lot. The credits roll with Ross giving Rachel a hug and we see his face as he realizes that he does love her. Hence the title of this episode.

Now we get an end scene with Joey talking to Phoebe at Central Perk. Since everyone else got married or almost got married he’s wondering if he and Phoebe should hook up. Phoebe has a funny long winded Phoebe answer.

Now it’s time to check the website to see what was cut out of this episode for syndication and HD. One of Monica’s funny lines said to Chandler was cut out. A whole beginning park of a Central Perk scene with Phoebe making fun of Ross. That was a good scene. Another small part of that conversation. A single line from Phoebe in the “Ross and the three girls on the couch” scene. It wasn’t a very good line anyway. Wow, they cut out nearly the whole scene with Chandler and Joey dividing things up. They cut out the first half of that scene, left in a couple of lines, and then cut out the second half of the scene too. I liked that scene.

That’s it. That’s what they cut out. Now I’m going to check what rating I gave this episode years ago when I rated them all in iTunes. Right now I’d give it a four out of five stars. I enjoyed this one a lot. Wow, I gave it two stars back in 2013. That’s a big swing. It went from below average to above average for me. Mood might really have a lot to do with rating things now mightn’t it?

I made two color ink drawings recently. One I like and the other I like less. Trying to figure out why I’m a little disappointed with one is not always easy.

First off one of the lessons I learned a long time ago is not to tell people, in general, if I don’t like a particular piece of mine. That’s because they might like it and me telling them that I don’t like it could make them feel foolish. You don’t want to make anyone who likes your art feel foolish for liking it. It’s a bad feeling for them to walk away with.

I will talk about what I like or don’t like about a piece with my friends who are also artists. Talking about each other’s work is part of being fellow artists and we’ve all done it enough, know the score, and won’t walk away feeling foolish. So I’m going to talk to you like you’re a fellow artist.

The first drawing is called “Toledo Troop” and it’s a drawing I used for one of my “Painted Lady” faux comic book covers. With these color ink drawings I’ve been recycling drawings from the past as I’ve tried to develop the style. As I look at it now, two weeks after I finished it, I’m a little more forgiving than I was two weeks ago. Maybe it’s not so disappointing.

I think this was the first color ink drawing that I made with borders on all four sides. The second drawing “Risk Whistle” only has a border on the bottom and is open on the other three sides. This is how I’ve made most of my color ink drawings. “Toledo Troop” also has a background pattern unlike the others I’ve done. At first I really didn’t think the background came out well. Now, on second glance, it looks okay. Not great, but solid.

Right before I drew “Toledo Troop” I bought some new colors of ink. I had around 24 colors that I bought in 2021 but then at the very end of the year I bought eight new colors and added them into the set. A lot of the new colors were dark and I used a few of the new dark colors in this drawing. One too many? Maybe. With the dark colors and background this drawing gets a bit dense.

With “Risk Whistle” I started with a drawing I made for another faux comic book cover. I can’t remember the name but I think it was a “Painted Lady.” I’ll have to check. The one thing I changed from the initial drawing is that the top of her head was originally cut off by a border. I rounded off her hair so that I only had a border on the bottom.

“Toledo Troop” has at least two dark inks that I can see. A dark red and a dark blue. There may also be a dark purple in there too but I’m looking at it form a distance right now and can’t tell for sure. Red and blue stand apart from each other even if they are the two darkest colors.

“Risk Whistle” has two dark colors but they’re dark red and a reddish brown. These two color blend together. Especially when they’re next to each other. This makes the two drawings different as one has its darkest darks fighting each other and the second has its darkest darks working in harmony. Two different moods.

“Risk Whistle” also has a lot more air in it. The lack of borders and lack of background let a lot more of the white of the paper show through giving it a lighter feeling. Even with all the brush strokes outside the figure it doesn’t look heavy. The figure is a little bit pulled back from the viewer and is not as close up as “Toledo Troop” so that makes it look lighter too.

I think the point of view may also have something to do with the airiness of “Risk Whistle” compared to “Toledo Troop.” The former is on the same eye lever as us but the latter is taller than us and looking down. She is the more dominating presence.

The lack of borders and the pulled back point of view left more room in “Risk Whistle” to make those color brush strokes that cut across her body. They add action to the painting. Most of the brush strokes in both drawings follow the contours of the drawing but not these ones. They cut through things. There wasn’t room for that in “Toledo Troop.”

One thing that I should have done while making “Toledo Troop” but didn’t was to tape the edges. For a lot of my drawings in which I have borders I’ll run a piece of removable tape along the border to mask out the white are on the very edges of the paper. That way I can put down a brush stroke without stopping it at the border and keep going with the ink over the tape. At the end I pull up the tape and have a clean border.

I didn’t tape my borders for “Toledo Troop” and I can see when I made the background I had to stop my hand as I reached border so as not to go into the white area at the edge. I don’t know if this matters to anyone else but to me they make two different gestures. One with a sudden stop and one that continues in out in my imagination. I’ve been taping my edges so often lately that not taping them looks funny to me.

One final thought about these ink drawings is that now I want to figure out a way to use this style for some sort of purpose. I’m thinking about illustrating a book in this style. The main problem is that I’m not much of an illustrator. I’m used to making up my own scenes and such for my paintings and drawings so that using someone else’s imagery is forcing to me. But I think this would make a nice style for an illustration. We’ll have to see.

Back in September I get a new computer. I replaced my old 2008 Mac Pro Tower with a new M1 MacMini. Of course this meant I had to change a lot of stuff around which I wrote about here: (Mac Mini Time) and here: (Getting the Mac Mini Going) .

This week I write about the final thing I got going and why. The why is easy. It’s because my 12×12 inch Wacom tablet was way too old to work with my new Mac Mini. I bought that tablet sometime in the early 2000s and it was just barely compatible with the last operating system I could run on my old tower. I had to jump through some hoops to get it to work with the 2008 tower. There was no way it was going to run on the 2021 M1 MacMini.

I priced out a new Wacom Tablet and ever the screen-less variety, that I used, was pricey. I think it was about $600 to replace my tablet with something similar from Wacom. I didn’t have that kind of money so I decided to try another brand. I settled on a 10×6 inch Huion Inspiroy Q62OM that cost about $75. I figured there was no way it was going to be as good as my Wacom but since I had $75 and not $600 I thought I’d give it a try.

I’ve been working on the Huion for the last five months and here is my report. The thing is twitchy as hell. It’s not hard to set up and when it works it works well but it doesn’t always work. It turns itself off. A Wacom is always on. You pick up the pen and go to work. The Huion comes with an app to set up the tablet but the app also has to be open for the table to run. At least sometimes it does.

I can turn on the computer and everything is fine but then I go back to it later in the day and the tablet doesn’t work. That’s when I have to open the app and the tablet runs again. An hour later the tablet might stop and I look and see the app is no longer open so I have to launch it. I have no idea why this is all happening.

The Huion is also bad at the edges of the screen. If I move the curser down to the bottom of my screen, where my Dock is, the cursor gets stuck. It ceases to move. I have to grab my mouse to click on anything in the dock. The Huion is not terrible but it makes me think about it too much.

I have one other Wacom tablet. That’s the Wacom Cintiq 12X that I bought for a whole lot of money back in 2008 and never used as much as I though I would. It’s the smallest tablet, that is also a screen, that Wacom ever made. And it’s really too small. It’s been hooked up to my backup computer (yet another 2008 MacPro Tower) for years now since I preferred to use the bigger 12×12 inch Wacom tablet every day even if it didn’t have a screen.

After five months of using the 10×6 inch Huion I decided to see if the 2008 Wacom Cintiq would run on my new M1 Mac Mini. I knew I would have to find the correct connectors since the Cintiq was old. I did some research on the internet, looked through the dozen or so monitor adaptors I already had, and decided that I need a VGA to USB3/Thunderbold adaptor. I ordered one.

Once I got the adaptor I thought I made a mistake. I couldn’t hook up the adaptor to the Cintiq. It turned out that the Cintiq was hooked up to my backup Tower via a DVI to DVI cable. I needed the DVI to VGA cable that the Cintiq also came with. I suppose I could have bought a DVI to USB3 cable but somehow I didn’t. Luckily I keep all my old cables so I had the right one. Cintiq to DVI to VGA to USB3.

Then I had to rearrange my whole computer cable setup to hook up the Cintiq. I have a ten port USB hub, a six port USB hub, and two dual slot hard drive docks on the table behind my monitor and keyboard. I had to fit all the Cintiq wires in there too. The Cintiq has a small 6x4x2 inch box that comes with it. The power cable, USB Cable, DVI Cable, and the cable that goes to the actual Cintiq all plug into it. That’s four more cables for one thing.

I found a two foot piece of 1×6 pine that I put two wood blocks under to make a shelf. The Cintiq box went under the shelf and all the other stuff, that was already there, went on top. It took some doing but, all things considered, it came out fine. Everything was arranged neatly.

I was happy to find out that the Wacom drivers still worked with my new Mac Mini and my old Cintiq. The screen on the Cintiq is still way too small to be effective but using it just like my old one that had no screen works okay. Even after using it for just an hour it’s a lot more pleasurable to use than the Huion. It’s more responsive to the touch of the pen and I can us it all the way to the edge of the screen. My dock is now within reach of my tablet.

One more thing I tried was to hook up the Huion to my laptop. I teach classes remotely on my laptop. When we first all went remote I got a $60 4×5 inch Wacom tablet. It ended up not being very good. I abandoned it after a couple of months and have been working exclusively with the touch pad ever since. That’s a little clumsy.

Though I only tested it for a few minutes the Huion worked well with the laptop. Everything went smoothly and I could go all the way to the edge and reach the dock. I think that will make it easier to teach this semester. That leaves me with a lot of things to hook up to my laptop before class. A microphone, a speaker, a second monitor, and Ethernet cable, and now a Huion tablet. I better start five minutes earlier.