
Quick sketch from Goldman, with the relevant tendons photoshoped in with blue. It says foot muscles, but that was just the title of the section; the blue itself is are tendons in different states of flex.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis

Quick sketch from Goldman, with the relevant tendons photoshoped in with blue. It says foot muscles, but that was just the title of the section; the blue itself is are tendons in different states of flex.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur

A wise man once said, "Fools try to win with tactics battles the wise avoid with strategy, but true experts win with logistics only the wars that they cannot avert with policy." I think I'll give that line to Jeremiah, though in the series narrative she probably got it from her mentor, "The Last General", General Weiss I think it was.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Our late cat Gabby, who appears to have constructed for himself a crude fort of stone.

Late, tired, bed - but I feel like things are getting back on track, with Nano and Drawing Every Day up to date.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur

Woohoo! I have successfully written 50,000 words in the month of April, completing my 38th writing challenge (counting November Nanowrimos, April/July Camp Nanos, and Script Frenzy).

This was a pretty rough Nanowrimo, given the prepwork that I had to do ahead of Clockwork Alchemy.

But, I did it, and learned so much about my story and the overall arc of the series as well. So, huzzah!

So, I am really churning with the edits on this one, but here's a segment which is relatively coherent:
The trim, egg-headed man emerged from Air Force One like royalty, the crowds of military personnel actually cheering him as he descended. At his heels, a lantern-jawed, white-haired man followed, grinning broadly, waving awkwardly at troops that seemed to like him even more.
Both kept smiling as they strode towards Jeremiah, but their body language …
“Oh, my,” Jeremiah said. “They hate each other, don’t they?”
“Now, that,” Marcus said, “is an understatement.”
The pair stopped twenty meters from Jeremiah, on one side of a rough ring of Secret Service agents that made Jeremiah feel like she’d just entered a gladiatorial arena; she wondered what the agents thought they would do if the Scarab decided to go all apocalyptic on them.
“So,” the President said. “You’re … Commander Willstone, correct?”
“Sir, yes sir,” Jeremiah clicked her heels, watching, without appearing to watch, a larger group of dignitaries forming up just outside the ring of Secret Service agents. “I am Senior Expeditionary Commander Jeremiah Willstone, and I am at America’s service, sir.”
“Are you?” the President said. “I hear that you gave our security detail some trouble.”
“I heard that too,” the challenger said. “I notice you refused to be disarmed.”
Jeremiah nodded; her blunderblast remained slung over her back.
“My people use nonlethal weapons,” Jeremiah said, “even this impressive blunderblast, which I will demonstrate later. From a security perspective, however, consider it just show: I’m the weapon. If I had wanted to blow up your plane, I would just have pointed at it.”
The President shifted, just slightly, but the challenger grinned.
“Will you demonstrate that for us later?” he asked.
“Er—yes,” Jeremiah said. “Of course, sir—”
“Not on my plane,” the President said.
“Ah!” Jeremiah said. “No, of course not, sir. I’ll use our psychic’s car instead—”
“Commander!” the Owl said. “I just got—you’re kidding. Tell me you’re kidding—”
Jeremiah Willstone and the Watchtower of Destiny
Oh my. I hope they manage to convince each other to work together without blowing anything up.
Nevertheless ... viiictory!
Onward.
-the Centaur

Less than 3000 words to go on Camp Nanowrimo. This was a challenge, but we're close to the end now.

I think I was behind for essentially the entire month this time:

Note to self: don't try launching an anthology, launching a Kickstarter, serving as guest of honor at a con, and running a business all at the same time as doing a Nanowrimo project to write 50,000 words in a month.
Still, almost there ...
-the Centaur
Pictured: Sunshine through a really cool tree in Alum Rock Park, and some scary yet hopeful graphs. Yes, that was 8,000 words this last Sunday. That was a day.

Outta time, and my notebook wasn't even on me. So you get a quick Photoshop sketch. Real drawing resumes once Camp Nano is over.
Still, drawing every day.
-the Centaur

Staying on target. Wrote 8,000 words yesterday, only ~5000 words left to go for tomorrow. Gonna try to put a bit more of a dent in that before I crash tonight.
One cool thing happened today: I figured out EXACTLY WHY a certain mysterious plot event happens.
Now I just need to figure out PRECISELY WHO is responsible for it ...
-the Centaur

Our call for papers is still open at https://embodied-ai.org/#call-for-papers through May 4th! We're particularly interested in two-page abstracts on the theme of the workshop:
Submissions are accepted through May 4th AOE (Anywhere on Earth) at https://openreview.net/group?id=thecvf.com/CVPR/2024/Workshop/EAI#tab-recent-activity ...
-the Centaur

Even more feet. Now back on track for drawing every day.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur

The drawing I should have posted yesterday. Gonna keep up that average rate no matter what.
Drawing every day, with occasional catch-ups.
-the Centaur

Still trying to get ahead on WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY. Lots of progress today though, on multiple levels: a lot of words written, and some very good ideas for both this book and the overall series, based on some background reading about computation and technology based on closed timelike curves, from the computer scientist Hans Moravec and the physicist David Deutsch. Nevertheless ...

This is not the worst I've been behind, but it's in the top three, and it ain't pleasant.

Back to it. I want to push it a little bit more today if I can.
-the Centaur

Huzzah! The Neurodiversiverse Kickstarter is 2/3 funded! This is fantastic news and we're still at roughly the halfway point in the campaign. Even better, we were selected as a "Project We Love" by Kickstarter:

Please check it out, back and share!
-the Centaur

Drawing every day. Counting this as one day behind until I get caught up.
-the Centaur

Okay, technically, this is Photoshoppery, and not a drawing, but it is my art, and it is 2:41am, and I would like to simultaneously announce that if we make $20K on our Kickstarter, we're definitely doing a sequel anthology, and also to announce that I'm very behind on Camp Nano, so I am going to bed.

One thing to note on this (which is composed of our existing art, plus public domain NASA images) is that it can take a variety of different layered images to create the above effect. I cut the original cover artwork into three different pieces to create the original backdrop, and added two more (with 50% opacity erasure of the edges to make the starfields blur together). The stars needed a similar treatment (that's two copies of the binary stars, tilted to make the swooshies work well, which themselves also had to be faded). The cover itself had some filters applied to make the art look like something, but a nonspecific something.
Lots of techniques. Real drawing resumes tomorrow - two of them, to keep up drawing every day.
-the Centaur

Well, not as far behind as I've ever been, but, still, not good progress on Camp Nano this month.

Quite a hill to climb, or, in this case, build.
Onward!
-the Centaur

Focusing on WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY, so here's a quick sketch. It started out as a rando, but I think it evolved into one of the "big three" characters from f@nu fiku---I think this was The Warrior.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur

Woohoo! The Neurodiversiverse Kickstarter is 50% of the way to our funding goal! We've added reward tiers for the enamel pins (not that we forgot to in the first go-round or anything) and will announce our stretch goals shortly.

Very exciting! Please check out the campaign at neurodiversiverse.com , which links through to the Kickstarter for the duration!
-the Centaur

Interestingly, not the same as the previous drawing (see below) - another drawing from the same page, which seems like it might be on the opposite side of the foot, as the tarsals are laid out differently.

Drawing every day.
-the Centaur

Way behind on word count, please enjoy this picture of sushi at One Flew South in the Atlanta airport.

Lots of work to do, not much time left to do it.
-the Centaur
P.S. Oh good grief! This blogpost is having trouble uploading its images, so I'm rabbit-holing on trying to post a simple update, instead of typing words! AAA! Turns out the problem was the wi-fi in this Barnes and Noble Cafe, which allows me to download gobs and gobs of images, but chokes when uploading even relatively small files. I have seen this before at internet cafes and I can't quite tell why that is happening.

Hey folks, this is a reminder that we still have a Kickstarter going for The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters! While the campaign is running, you can reach it at neurodiversiverse.com or by searching on Kickstarter. This hopeful, empowering anthology explores neurodiverse encounters with aliens, and we'd love your help paying our authors more money (and, if we reach stretch goals, doing an audiobook or even a sequel)!

Please check us out, like, back and share!
-the Centaur