Does everyone have this thing about their art that, no matter how hard they try to avoid or overcome it, they just can't seem to shake?

For me, it's that I draw one of my hands on the wrong way. I usually correct it, so there's probably no examples in my gallery or scrapbook, but I never seem to notice that I put the thumb on the wrong side of the hand until after I've finished the drawing. This must happen from, like, anywhere between a half and two-thirds of the things I draw, and no matter how much I try to be aware of it, I only ever notice it after I'm done or after someone points it out to me.

It's especially likely if I have the hand posed in a complex way, like in a fist, or facing in a certain direction, or when one hand is facing a different way than the other. Often it's the first hand that I draw. It's a really annoying habit, and I have to try my best to cull it as quickly as I can.

What are some things that keep popping up in your own artwork that you know you need to stop?

Well, people aren't quite ready to move on about Scott Pilgrim, so I guess I'll press on with it, as well.

First, let's look at the facts. It's a film starring Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the two romantic leads, buffeted by a cast of hip young stars like Kieran Culkin and Jason Shwartzmann. It seems to be a rallying point around which the indie filmgoing public decries the failure of American cinema in this day and age, rationalizing why it's failing and eagerly awaiting "the DVD sales".

To be frank, I'm sick to death of it, and the movie's only been out for three weeks. I lost interest in Scott Pilgrim after Volume 4 came out, as you probably know, but it seems like everyone else has just been winding up for this being the next media sensation. Now that that hasn't happened, they're expelling this pent-up energy with incredulity and rage against the ignorant public.

As someone trying his best to stand outside all this ballyhoo, this all just leads me to wonder if this movie would have worked better if it was an animated film.

There's a couple reasons for this. Besides the fact that I think animation generally kicks ass, one of the things about Scott Pilgrim that appealed to me, and I'm sure most of its fans, was its art style. The bold, thick lines defining the characters in big, abstract swoops and tones; volume was secondary to expression and direction. Reading it, it practically looked animated. This could make for an interesting 3D-animated film, but I think the style, with its liberal use of perspective and volumes, would do better in 2D.

You all may scoff, arguing that this isn't a children's story and no one has an interest in animated films these days, especially a traditionally-animated one like I'd be most likely to fantasize about, but again, let's look at the facts.

Disney and Pixar films these days have budgets ranging between $80 million and $200 million. It could be argued that animation doesn't come cheap, but I'd argue that you're looking at the wrong animation. The big mainstream animated flicks from Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks might grab all the headlines, but independent productions are becoming of greater interest these days. Films like The Triplets of Belleville, Persepolis and The Secret of Kells, and even productions like Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline show that people are recognizing animation from wherever it comes. Films like Triplets of Belleville and Persepolis are also showing that animation can still be of interest to adults, despite Disney's best efforts to make them seem like "kid's stuff".

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World had a comparable budget to Pixar films like Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc., but it was in live-action. 3D animation is expensive to produce, despite it being hailed as "easier" and "more appealing". The reason for this is that nothing in a 3D film can be easily faked. Every tic and quirk about a 3D animated character can't be left in the hands of the actor playing him, it all has to be made by the animators, and the slightest oversight is going to be noticed on the big screen. Also, to render everything from the stitching in Woody's shirt to the big fiery explosions in How to Train Your Dragon, they need thousands of computers to crunch the numbers that make those effects work. None of this can be glossed over if you want your movie to really be successful.

A live-action film is different. If you want to, you can shoot it at a real place, and you probably won't need hundreds of computers to make it look right, maybe just some lights and a talented DOP. If you want a particular character to do something, you tell just one person (the actor) instead of hundreds or so (the animators). Lots of digital correction is often used in live-action films, but it's not strictly necessary. With 3D animated films, a big budget is a necessary investment. With live-action films, it's a stylistic decision. Most of Scott Pilgrim's budget was probably spent on digital colour correction, bombastic effects, and licensing music.

2D films can go either way. The Princess and the Frog had a budget of $105 million, mainly because Disney had to rebuild its whole 2D department to make the film, and Disney's budgets tend to be quite bloated anyway. 2D animation is still much in the hands of the smaller studios at the moment, though, and a film like The Secret of Kells, which was a beautiful film, was made on a budget of €6,500,000, which is just over $8,000,000. It didn't get much distribution in North America, but it did get a surprise Oscar nomination. Maybe its budget was low because it was only 75 minutes long, but seriously? How much do 15 more minutes cost?

Maybe The Secret of Kells was too much of a low-key production, you might say. It was made in Ireland, Belgium and France, perhaps they just work for less money, and they probably made the whole thing in Adobe Flash. Okay then, how about this movie:

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Budget? $19 million. Another example, Howl's Moving Castle, cost $34 million, and it was longer than Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. This makes me really confused; these films are spectacular, so why can't they make films like this in America on similar budgets? More demanding unions? Do people in other countries just work harder? Is cocaine added into the budget of American films, what?

The fact remains that an animated Scott Pilgrim film COULD be made on a budget smaller than the film we ended up with. It seems more suited to its effects-heavy presentation. In a live-action movie, putting the effects behind, in front of, or next to all the actors and sets is an entire extra set of work to do. You really have to fight reality to do that kind of thing. Those effects are just naturally part of the animation process; you don't have to replace Michael Cera with a picture-perfect computer version of him just before he gets thrown into a building, the animated Scott Pilgrim just gets thrown into a building! Easy-peasey! They wouldn't have to throw more money at the movie just to fake it. More clever implementations of video game references could be placed in if the film was animated as well; it could switch from the hand-drawn style to Paul Robertson's awesome pixel-animated style. Hell, this way the entire movie could be an elaborate video game or comic reference, instead of just having a jarring little thing pop up every so often to remind us. Hell, Nelvana could have done the animation, and it would be a Canadian production of a Canadian comic book!

I don't know why it wasn't animated. Maybe Edgar Wright just can't direct animation. Maybe Universal just wasn't set up for an animated feature. Maybe they thought no one would see it if it was animated (and no one saw it anyway, so that was kind of a moot point. The people that were hyped up about Scott Pilgrim in general would have seen it regardless). Maybe they thought it would look ridiculous, because a movie with a super-powered vegan needs absolute verisimilitude. It's pretty hard to know for sure, but let me ask you something. Let's say you saw these two posters next to each other on the wall of your local movie theatre:

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Which movie would YOU rather see?

Well, after all the video game tie-ins, TV spots, and hoopla surrounding Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, what finally happened? It's opened to glowing reviews, and subsequently tanked at the box office. It opened at #5, raking in $11 million or so. It dropped to #10 the next week, bringing in $5 million.

I can say that I'm relatively surprised. I thought, given what a bang-up critical reception it's gotten for its unapologetic visual style and reference-laden humour (though they disliked the plot and Michael Cera, much as I expected) and how feverishly advertised it's been, it would have at least opened in #2 or #3. Instead, The Expendables opens at #1, which suggests that moviegoers really wanted to go see geriatric action stars fantasize that its the '80s again. I was enthusiastic about the idea when I first heard about it, but I can safely say my interest dwindled as its release date neared.

Normally this wouldn't bother me, especially of a movie I had a fairly lukewarm opinion of, but the film has cost around $90 million to make. Those big "PWOMP!"s that appeared whenever someone punched someone else didn't come cheap. Similarly budgeted movies, like M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Straw-erm, Airbender, get to make THEIR budgets back, but not this? Most summer movies are an affront to the filmgoing public, and when a sincere effort like Scott Pilgrim comes around and is soundly ignored, that leaves us with just one question:

What in the hell happened? It probably ties in with why I dreaded this film's release from its inception. It looked as though no expense was spared for this movie, and ultimately, it was a movie about a kid from Toronto trying to keep his girlfriend by throwing himself into video-game land. This is a plot that works better in a bright orange comic book you spot on the shelf and take home to read, it doesn't communicate itself quite as effectively on a bright red poster as you walk into the movies. It's not that you can't make movies about this kind of thing, but there's certain indelible facts about how movies work that the premise has to adapt to. Comic books are a forgiving medium, like it is with most books, in that we can grasp much of what it's about while we hold it in our hands, flip through it, read the back, etc.

With a movie, we only have reviews, which probably wouldn't have helped because Scott Pilgrim's core audience would have gone to see it anyway, and we have the marketing campaign. Most of the trailers and TV spots for the film have had the same breakneck pace and loud visual style that the film supposedly has (I didn't see it, so I'm going on what everyone else says about it), but it can't communicate the premise effectively. As you no-doubt know, most comic book-to-film adaptations, their marketing practically writes itself. Put Spider-Man on a poster, and not much has to be said. Many comic books, even lesser-known ones like Watchmen, have really iconic designs, and really simple premises that, in Watchmen's case, unfold into complex, engaging plots. No one ever said that something that starts simple has to stay simple.

Scott Pilgrim's premise is "This ordinary Toronto kid doesn't have any superpowers, but he's going to beat up seven people to win the woman he loves, and there will be loads of video game references." You can't write that all on a poster, and instead we get this red poster with Scott going "BYOWWWW!" on his Rickenbacker, and a tagline "An Epic of Epic Epicness". What's that supposed to mean? Maybe most average filmgoers find the overuse of the terms "Epic" and "Awesome" as tedious as I do; it's like this generation's "Tubular" and "Radical".

Some things are lost in the transition to film, as well, and their omissions can be obvious. One of the things most appealing about Scott Pilgrim as a comic was its bombastic art style, where the characters were simply drawn with bold, dark lines, simple shapes, and bright, expressive faces with huge eyes and mouths. You portray these characters as people in a costume designer's idea of hip indie fashion, you're going to lose something. This might have worked well as an animated film, but (pardon me while I wipe away a tear,) who wants to pay for an animated film these days?

Points could also be said about the comic's light humour being dumbed down and so forth, but the fact is that no one's really going to be made aware of that by the poster. All they can see is they're not sure what to make of this movie, and who can blame them?

Other people have suggested their own theories about Scott Pilgrim's earnings. One person thinks this movie was made for an incredibly specific audience, and one that was apparently far smaller than Universal Pictures thought. Word to the wise, Hollywood: not every comic book buff is the Wachowshi Brothers. This article posits a few reasons: it's difficult to figure out what it is ("Is it a comedy or action? Is Scott a hero, or a geek?"), it's just another comic book movie during a fad that's brought us Jonah Hex and Wanted, Michael Cera is in it, to the rather odd reason that, since it's being released on the tail-end of a recession, a movie about a 23-year old slacker who plays in a band and doesn't really have a job isn't something people want to see. That one's a particular head-scrather; I'm a 23-year-old Canadian slacker, and I don't resent him and want to avoid his movie. I would have found it identifiable if he wasn't collecting 1UPs and punching people so hard in the face that it makes the camera shake.

For contrast, let's examine another movie based on a niche-appeal comic book, April's Kick-Ass. It managed to create a bright and vivid visual style with costumes and lighting, rather than the Robert Rodriguez-style digital effects Edgar Wright stuffed Scott Pilgrim with. As a result, it was a third of Scott's budget (and I'm sure a healthy chunk of it went to Red Mist's tricked-out Mustang). Also, I went to go see it. I didn't particularly want to, but I saw the hero on the cover, in his weird green superhero suit, and I had to see how the movie was going to explain itself. I'm sure a lot of people thought the same thing.

I didn't really like what I saw. The premise that quickly developed I guess sounded noble enough: "You don't need superpowers to do good." Though the actual premise that occurred was "You can be a costumed crime fighter if you have a healthy disregard for your own safety." Kick-Ass's experiment quickly goes south until he's saved by Hit-Girl, an incredibly violent child who says "cunt", plays with butterfly knives, and wantonly stabs people. There's also Nicholas Cage doing an Adam West-style Batman impression. Nicholas Cage was the Michael Cera of this picture, and though this character ends up getting burned to death, I didn't get much pleasure out of it.

Besides its main plot, a lot of the extraneous parts of the film rubbed me the wrong way. One of the early scenes shows the main character masturbating, I guess to show the simplicity of his life. I did not need to see this. Later, the main villain shoots an innocent kid dressed as Kick-Ass in the head. This wasn't funny.

I didn't like what I saw that much, but the point is that I SAW IT. A lot of analysts think Kick-Ass was a box-office disappointment, but at least it made money. Matthew Vaughn, the same guy that directed Stardust (a movie that, weirdly, was better than the book), made a bombastic and colourful film on a fraction of its budget because of practical effects, and it was somehow self-financed by Vaughn.

Edgar Wright, being the unapologetic British kook behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, brought his unique brand of crazy to Scott Pilgrim to create... well, a bombastic and colourful film with bizarre colour correction and computer effects that made a weak story and a weak cast seem interesting. It can't float a weak premise, though, and this might be a lesson that Scott Pilgrim has taught everybody: premise is EVERYTHING.

Quite a few people, after seeing this balls-to-the-walls experiment collapse, think this is bad news for the status of filmmaking. I'm optimistic, though, because other original films have done remarkably this year. Avatar and Inception are two fantastically ambitious and original (well... in that they're not a sequel) films from ambitious and original filmmakers that have made a killing at the box office. With Michael Bay successfully repressed for at least another season, and M. Night Shyamalan left as a standing joke, the filmgoing public want challenging, original stories. Hopefully this will give smaller, more unknown films a chance, but if Scott Pilgrim seems to suggest otherwise, I remind you that a "small" film doesn't have a $90 million budget.

This film is destined for cult status. It was such an ambitious, foolhardy project, that critics just melted at the sight of it. It's a film that may join the ranks of V for Vendetta and The Crow as a film that just didn't quite fit in the theatres, but fits in the hearts of movie and comic fans. Scott Pilgrim itself, even when it had just started, already had cult status, in that it was a little Canadian comic book that wanted to flout convention and just have a lot of fun, and in a rare and somewhat odd display, a mainstream film director wanted in on the party. Hopefully that won't change, and filmmakers will want to make film because they look fun to do, they just won't assume the movie's going to haul in Dark Knight-like numbers. Make sure the premise can hold up your ambition.

As for me, now that I'm not being bombarded with so much hype about this flick, I might actually pop in and see it, so that I can just see the movie and not make the hundreds and hundreds of people and things telling me that I should see it happy.

Oh, and my friend and I played the Scott Pilgrim game on PS3. It's alright, but it controls a little sloppy.

I first found out about Scott Pilgrim around 2005 or so, around the time Scott Pilgrim Vol. 2 was all set to come out. There was a story about it in The Coast, essentially my local version of the Village Voice, because Scott Pilgrim was connected to my home province of Nova Scotia in some way: Bryan Lee O'Malley, the author, is from London, Ontario, but had drawn the first couple of volumes of his series in Mount Uniacke, a small town in Nova Scotia (Buck 65 is also from there, if anyone cares.)

In the first two volumes, I was immediately drawn to it. Scott was a wonderfully identifiable character, basically like any 23-year-old Canadian slacker trying to make his way. He meets an extraordinary girl named Ramona Flowers, awkwardly but charmingly goes steady her, and then he finds himself thrust into an unexpected video game quest to defeat her seven evil end bosse-erm, evil ex-boyfriends.

The first three volumes were great. The setting was realistic and believable, and the way it integrated so many video game in-jokes, like Scott's rival band with music-based superpowers Crash 'n the Boys, people exploding into a couple of bucks in spare change and such, and all the crazy action scenes, felt like they weren't really part of Scott's universe. They were presented in a tongue-in-cheek way, and many of the characters reacted to it like they weren't sure what the hell was going on, but that it wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility. I liked how Scott is completely mystified by the 1-UP he gets in Volume 3.

It was populated with so many likable side characters, as well, making Toronto seem more like Toronto than some video game iteration of it, even with the in-jokes and bombastic violence. There was Stephen Stills, the lead of Scott's band, the type of guy whom everyone says his names in hushed tones. There's Hollie, the sassy lady who works at No Account Video, and seems like a female Quentin Tarantino. Even some of the ex-boyfriends, like Todd Ingram, the superpowered vegan, have a kind of goofy charm to them. It was a delight following these people around. They felt like comic book people, not comic book characters, if you follow me.

So when Volume 4 came out, I couldn't wait for the library to stock it, so I rushed right out to Strange Adventures to get it. It sat on myself for a month or so, since it came out in the middle of my first NaNoWriMo, and I couldn't spare time for it. Finally, around December, I read it.

I read the first five pages, rendered in splashy colour and with a parody of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 logo bearing the title, and I began to worry.

I kept going a bit into the first chapter, where Scott walks in on Knives Chau, Scott's own beguiled ex, making out with a girl.

I set the book down immediately. One of my favourite series has become "quirky". I couldn't believe it; maybe I was just tired after having won NaNoWriMo, and I had just gone a little mad. I picked it up again the following summer, reading a bit into the first chapter. No, it was still "quirky". I haven't touched it since.

Around the time this came out, they announced the Scott Pilgrim movie, starring Michael Cera. Michael Cera, the 21st-century epitome of comedy blandness. The kid that was funny as George Michael Bluth, and kind of just stuck with it. The guy that thinks wearing a headband or having long hair is the same as having a different personality.

Though Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame, were involved, I already wasn't looking forward to this film. Wright and Pegg's involvement isn't as optimistic a sign as it looks: I think they do better with British humour, and besides, Simon Pegg didn't automatically make Run Fatboy Run funny.

Then they showed the first picture of the cast. My heart sank.

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Then the first trailer came out, where some guy throws Scott into the top of a tower, action words appear in the air when anyone does a slow-motion punch, and some guy prattles on about a cleaning lady joke. The movie's visual style looks like Robert Rodriguez threw up his Skittles. The joke with the 1-UP is shown, except Scott just grabs the 1-UP like he expected it. Knives Chau, who in the comics was a vindictive, spiteful stalker and was actually cool, is now just annoying and whiny, and also kinda stupid. The ocean floor opened up and my heart sank further.

Accompanying this monumental release is a video game on the PlayStation Network, that combines many of my favourite things: beat-em-up action, Ubisoft Montreal, 4-player co-op, and *probertson, creator of still one of the most awesome things in the world, Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006:

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The man is a mad genius when it comes to pixelated graphics, massive video game explosions, twisted enemy designs, and insane violence. The Scott Pilgrim game is probably the closest mankind will ever get to PBCBSF'06 being a real game, which is sad to think about.

I confess that the video game is the most appealing thing I'm seeing out of this circus. There could still be problems, though, and it's the same problems that Scott Pilgrim suffers from. Paul Robertson, like Bryan Lee O'Malley, was cool because he came out of nowhere, and surprised us all. His works weren't products, they were creations, and damn incredible ones at that. Now that it's being extensively marketed, all of it might be tied down to each other. P. Robertson might be able to stay on this side of edgy (Australian animators are good at that), but it sounds like O'Malley wants a ticket on the Hollywood train:

Those changes included a move to Los Angeles, where O'Malley says he's bought a house and is writing a screenplay.

"I'm a big sellout," he jokes, adding that he's exploring many options while enjoying life in Tinseltown.

It's a far cry from where O'Malley was just a few years ago. After leaving in Toronto in 2005, he says he and his wife moved to Mount Uniacke, N.S., where they bought "the cheapest house in the world." In 2007, they moved to North Carolina where his wife is from. Heading to L.A. seemed like the next logical step in his burgeoning career.

-"Scott Pilgrim" author eyes 'media empire',
Metro News, July 19 2010

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I suppose I can't blame his enthusiasm, or even that he wanted to stop "slumming it" in my neck of the woods (hell, I certainly do); most Toronto boys pretty much go native when they go to the States. But there's some things he seems aware of: he points out in the article that Cera has been "typecast" lately, but also that "this is completely different for him, I think." Really, because from what I saw, it was George Michael wearing t-shirts with cool logos on them, occasionally punching a guy in slow motion.

I don't even want to know what happened to Vol. 5 and 6 of Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5 which has a foil-printed cover, and Vol. 6, the "epic conclusion that draws everything together." All this hoopla over it leads me to ask: if Ramona had seven evil ex-boyfriends, and Scott breaks up with her, will he become an evil ex-boyfriend later? Or are they just going to date for years and get married? Unless one of those things happens in Vol. 6, I don't think this is all that "concluded".

Even disregarding the commercial aspects of this, the movie in and of itself still has a problem. Since it's just one movie, and the comic book series is six volumes (and 5 and 6 were written "with the movie in mind"). Another movie that had to deal with this was M. Night Shyamalan's latest cinematic blight, The Last Airbender. It stuffed the entirety of one season of the TV show into just a smidge over two hours, which resulted in disastrous pacing, a cast with no personality, and a plot that felt like it was checking boxes off a list. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a smidge UNDER two hours, and though it doesn't have as much to cram in, it's still something I'm weary of, especially since the movie insists on distracting itself with special effects and crummy visual gags.

One movie that I'm persistently reminded of during all this is 2008′s Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Michael Cera was actually kind of likable and funny in it, and it has genuinely funny writing. Besides that, though, see if the plot follows a similar vein: Nick breaks up with a girl named Tris, and he has a hard time accepting it. He has a chance encounter with another girl, Norah, and they hit it off. Tris, in response, goes through a comical downward spiral. Much of the plot consists of the characters traversing various locations in New York City, and it eventually ends with the two leads finding each other, and they share romance. The plot basically reads like Scott Pilgrim, with no evil ex-boyfriends plot, and a couple of story elements tweaked (Tris breaks up with Nick and can't accept it, rather than Scott breaking up with Knives and can't accept it, it's New York instead of New York: Canadian Version, etc). Nick and Norah feels more like the Scott Pilgrim movie, with its down-to-earth story about young romance, and its emphasis on music. Even its goofier moments embody what I like about Scott Pilgrim, which Scott Pilgrim seems lacking in.

What's strange is that this series has drawn Hollywood's attention after only one volume. A lot of great comics and stories are out there, but what is it that catches the eye of American movie executives after only one volume? One might say chance, but I think there's something about the sort of media that grabs Hollywood by the nuts this quickly, though I'm not sure what. Maybe it's that it makes such a sensation, despite it not really having come from anywhere. Maybe it's that kind of "pizzazz" that attracts them, that they know would probably have instant appeal and adaptability. But that's just a guess.

With all this in mind, thoughts of this work being the next new thing, reaping fame, fortune, and cultural acclaim at the slight expense of stripping it of everything that made it appealing to begin with, and Bryan Lee O'Malley going along with this march, how do I cope? I read some Bryan Lee O'Malley, of course!

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This is Lost at Sea, one of Bryan Lee O'Malley's earlier works. It's an honest and vulnerable story that can be challenging, comforting, and even difficult at times, so it probably won't be made into a movie or a beat-em-up game. It's about a girl named Raleigh, who thinks she has no soul because her mother sold it to a cat. She deals with this fairly well, along with the other difficulties in her life: her best friend had moved away, her parents had divorced, her boyfriend is simply a face on the Internet. She goes back to Vancouver with three people from her high school that she barely knows, partly out of necessity, but maybe for a more complex reason.

The art style is simple and understated, it reminds me of an adolescent and less cartoonish Calvin and Hobbes. It has humour as well, but it's a subtle sort of humour, more designed to put a little grin on your face than make you burst out laughing. Raleigh seems like sort of a wet rag at first, even kind of a bitch, but we find out that she is deeply introspective, rapt in her own confused thoughts. These three strangers help her work out her problems, and though it seems like none of them are solved, and even the characters don't know what's been accomplished, it feels like a much greater thing has happened from their efforts.

It doesn't have loud fight scenes, it doesn't have popcultural references, its inking isn't bold and in-your-face, its characters make more non-sequitars and complaints than wisecracks, whole pages go by where nothing really happens, and it's one of my favourite books. I named one of the girl characters in one of my novels Raleigh after the book's main character; she came to mean a lot to me, soulless or not. I've read the book so much, the binding is starting to fall apart; I hope I can get another copy soon. If you go out and see the Scott Pilgrim movie, pick this up on your way home from it. If enough people buy it, maybe it will catch Hollywood's eye, and they'll find themselves stymied by a work like this. What a wonderful thing that would be to imagine.

You know, it's remarkable how fast three years can swish by. I remember back in 2007, fresh out of art college, I had bought myself a new iMac to replace my Dell Inspiron laptop that got me through school, then had a catastrophic electrical failure (screw you, Dell. ) It was the midrange model, one of the first Aluminum ones, it was about $1600. I wanted a Macbook Pro at the time, but they weren't up to the specs that I needed to work in animation.

Now it's 2010, and my iMac is sitting over there, getting formatted and reinstalling its operating system, while I write this journal to pass the time. I sold this computer for about a thousand bucks on eBay, using that money to buy my next computer, a little MacBook Pro. I qualified for an education discount (or, to be more accurate, my brother did), and I took advantage. All the important data from it, my animation projects and drawings and a few applications, has been moved to my new computer.

This is the low-end 13" MacBook Pro, but the specs on it are identical. It has the same size hard drive, same processor, same video memory (though integrated this time, not discreet). My old computer, though, it had a 21" screen and weighs twenty pounds. I didn't mind at first, since I mainly worked at my desk, but a year or two since I had it, I started to notice how annoying it was that I couldn't take my computer anywhere. I kept feeling like I was moored to my desk, and it was starting to get uncomfortable. It gets really still and quiet here during the day, when no one else is here, and it makes me want to nap instead of work. I hope I can go somewhere a bit more lively and really get something accomplished.

I was trying to compensate for this desktop limitation. I'd carry my computer around the house, putting it in a different room, one that's sunnier and warmer than my bedroom, but it was still annoying that I had to shut down the entire computer whenever I wanted to move it, since it has no battery. I tried carrying it around whenever I went to someone else's house or to a public writing event of some kind (I even tried carrying it in a suitcase once, which was embarrassing), and it shows. The iMac has a slight nick or two, from being carried around more than it was used to.

By the third year of ownership, this was really starting to get to me. The new MacBooks were a great windfall, and it was an even greater one that one fell in my price range. I wanted to get as far to the other extreme of portability as I could from my iMac, one reason the 13" appealed to me. Everyone else already has 15" laptops (and my Dell was a 15-incher), and the 17" laptop is the peak of excess. Plus, the specs being exactly alike makes me feel already right at home.

My old computer took me to a lot of places in the three years that I've had it, but I'm glad to see the back of it. My prospects have changed since I've had it; I'm more enthusiastic about writing than I was in 2007, and writing while anchored to a desk is a bit trying for me. Writing is not really something you have to do on a big tank of a computer, and even if I stick to the animation gig, this thing can still do the work.

This new computer, though, marks a rather precarious direction today. My dad, old stoic that he is, read something in a book about "enabling", i.e. holding back someone by helping them (a right-wing idea if I ever heard one), and seems to have got it in his head that letting me keep living in his house is "enabling" me to be lazy and complacent. I haven't worked in some time, such is the caveat of being an animator on the east coast, and he thinks I'm doing it on purpose because, hell, I have food and shelter, what do I need a job for? He seems to think that homelessness and starvation is the only thing that's going to stir me into action and get a job, like it's something I'm supposed to get at the supermarket, and I'm just buying chips and Pepsi instead. He says he's "trying to help me reach my potential," but the technique of the double-standard seems to elude him a bit.

Frankly, I don't need something as dramatic as homelessness to feel constricted by my situation. Being broke, muscled out of work by people that can't count, and living with people that aggressively don't understand me is a perfectly dire place to find myself as it is. My folks have always been pretty practical and superficial, and when they see me with a roof over my head, they must think I'm on top of the world. They don't see me busting my ass to try and find a job, because what I do doesn't involve swinging a hammer, building something, or doing anything else that involves highly visible labour. Sitting at my computer, to them, always looks like goofing off, never mind that pretty much ALL MY CAREER CHOICES involve sitting in front of it. They're not even here for two-thirds of the day, so it's really aggravating that my dad is threatening to kick me out of the house based on the assumption that I'm sitting at home wanking. I can't even practically argue my productivity, because he doesn't get what I do. He probably will only stop considering kicking me out once I've found a job, built up my RRSP, and moved out-of-province.

Anyways, all in all, this new computer will definitely help in a new direction. I feel less constricted by it, and when my "supporters" are constrictive enough, any slack on the leash is welcome.

This is probably as groundbreaking as noticing that the sky is blue, but lately I've been noticing that a lot of submissions by DeviantArt artists, especially popular ones, are really, really gushed over.

This really gets on my chips, because many of these pieces, particularly ones by someone like `Exileden or *bleedman, basically anyone Fancy Llama or higher, would deserve more pointed public commentary than just spazzing over it. Most of the comments I see on their pieces run the gamut from "OMFG BEAUTIFUL AS ALWAYZ LOL" (implying complacency) to "DAMN ITS LIKE AN ORGASM FOR MY EYES O_O", and none of that means anything. It's copy-pasted sucking up. It's like if the Mona Lisa was submitted as a Deviation tomorrow, all anyone would say about it is "ITS SO PRITTY". Occasionally they will point out one thing about it, so that we know that they posted this comment on the right drawing. "HER SMILE IS SO CUTE!"

I'm not sure why this is the only thing people can think of saying. Does the artist's popularity and visibility in the DeviantArt community affect it? Do those people think they're celebrities, and they want to admonish praise and adulation every time they wipe their nose? That's the reason I don't watch TV, and now I'd have to cope with it here? Why do people flip out over celebrities, anyway? Is it like the closest thing America has to bowing to royalty? Do we think we're impressing them, or want them to know how important they are to society?

Another thing about many of these artists is that they rarely try anything different. The ones that actually have some stylistic flexibility aren't as popular. What would happen if any of these artists suddenly decided "Hell with it, I'm drawing something different"? Would their droves of admirers simply be confused and react negatively? Or would they find the artist infallible, and simply repeat their usual adorations? Do these popular artists stick with one style because they enjoy it, or for legions of fans? It's nice to see their priorities are straight, I guess.

I suppose it might be weird to find this irritating, since this is the internet, populated mainly by teenage girls and people that liked the Transformers 2 movie. But this is DeviantArt, dammit! It's meant to be a global platform for people to show their art, find other art, and share their thoughts and experiences about it. It's not as childish as SheezyArt, not as particular as FurAffinity, it's a website where all art lives, and the people that use it should know that! I know we have a bit more class and dignity than a Facebook status.

I know this, because artists that are really good but not that popular, like ~Childofdune, the comments left on their pieces actually relates to the piece itself. This might be because these aren't the kind of profiles stumbled across by people that liked Twilight, but people that appreciate a damn fine drawing when they see it, and want to legitimately discuss it. They might gush, but only a little, and only enough to express how much they enjoyed it. There's also usually less ^.^'s in it.

The Daily Deviations are another example. They are pieces of some considerable appeal, and it's not just enough to rave on it, they want to point out things they like (or, pardon me while I wipe away a tear, didn't like) about it. Something is actually talked about with the art! Something besides how pretty it is!

So on these other pieces, where nothing's discussed except that it's a pretty picture, does that mean that those drawings lack any substance? The insubstantial attracts the insubstantial? I would certainly hope not, but I wouldn't put it past most drawings. You have to be more than "pretty" to get a Daily Deviation.

Speaking of Facebook, *evana was an example of a Deviant migrating to Facebook, and most of her sketches and drawings are posted there. This presents the unique opportunity that people can just click the "Like" button if they really don't have anything to say, and the comments actually have some substance. Granted, Facebook isn't a platform that encourages detailed critique, like DeviantArt, and the comments left on her updates do tend towards having lots of "omfgs" and "O_O's" in them, but at least there's actual commentary in these comments.

It's bizarre that DeviantArt gives you a great big comment box under the submissions, and people use them for two or three-word comments, and Facebook has a one-line text box, and people actually say things with it. I'm not sure what Evana's motive for favouring Facebook over DeviantArt is, maybe she just uses it for her more complex pieces, or it provides her with more flexibility of what she can post, but it amuses me to think that maybe it was done so that people would give more of a crap about her work.

Anyways, rant over, the internet still isn't any different. Bye!