So I did another thing. More info in a blog post at my site.

The folks at gmbinder.com are kinda brilliant. They've built a website that makes it easy for any old schmo like me build a PDF with all the formatting of a Wizards of the Coast Official 5e Dungeons & Dragons manual.

You enter simple markdown into one window, the website interperets the markdown, and uses CSS to spit the content back out in a second window with all the formatting done for you. No need to learn about different fonts or spacing or... whatever.

I've seen a couple different incarnations of this kind of thing, but GMBinder seems to be the best of them - at least that I've been able to find. And it's 100% free - at least currently.

So when I first came across one of their competitors, the idea occured to me: "This would be a great way to promote dragonbones.net and my illustration services. I'll make a short "D&D Book" that is filled with my art and talks about how to hire me to create the art for your D&D book!" It's kinda meta, and I think folks would like that. I've never heard of it being done before, and the name of the game when selling anything is 'stand out from the crowd'. So if I do this right, I can stand out from the crowd while demonstrating just how perfectly I fit in with the crowd.

Oh shut it, Westley - it makes sense to me, and that's what matters.

Anyway - if any of you would like to have a look, you can find it here.

The cover is just a rough sketch, but all the art in it is my work, and I'm already working on a revision which will expand the book, provide more samples, etc. But with that said, I would love any and all criticisms / feedback / reviews / etc. Please - beat it up. :)

So this picture is from... ahem... a while ago. I was a big fan of the shirt (thanks to Jill "xtingu" Knapp for that!) and I went to look up a precise translation online. Google had nothing for me at the time.

Then I looked it up again a few years after that - still nothing.

I just did a Google Search again after stumbling on the image for the first time in a while and the top half a page or so is all a series of links to direct translations of this specific phrase. That just seems impressive to me.

These are the things I think about sometimes. I think I may need a hobby.

So a friend sent me a link to The Toolbox Fallacy (the video above).

He sent it saying: "If you're pushing yourself to do Inktoberfest, I figure there's a chance that you aren't where you wanted to be with your art, by this point in your life.

The following 7 minute vid is a potentially impactful one, about how too many of us wait too long and have too many excuses for not taking more action sooner, toward becoming who we want to be."

First, I thought it was very nice of him to try to give me a gentle prod in the right direction.

The tl;dr of the video is "Don't wait until you have the right tools or environment or... whatever. Just do the thing that you love to do." In my case - make art.

I learned something, but it's not what you might think it would be.

I've been aware of what this person calls the Toolbox Fallacy for many years. For me, it's pretty much never about "I have to have X to make Y." In fact, to the contrary, I've spent a non insubstancial amount of time cheerleading others to 'just get started' with whatever they have on hand. Or, at worst, finding something (anything) to 'make it happen'.

It's true that I'm not where I want to be with my art. To grossly oversimplify, where I would like to be is: "Making a significant portion of my income (or possibly all of it) via the sale of art I've enjoyed making."

The reason I'm pushing myself to do Inktober (think NaNoWriMo but art using ink) is because I want to break from my normal digital production. I'm using Inktober to force myself into a 90 degree turn. Okay, so it's maybe more like a 45 degree turn. The point is that it's a different medium, there's a timer running, and it's an intense 'workout' of sorts that I don't normally do. Something like using (as I recently mentioned to Lindsay Harris-Friel ) a reduced color pallet to force yourself to think differently. These sorts of workouts often lead me to some of my best breakthroughs.

"Okay, okay. We get it. You've told us what you didn't learn. Can you get to what you did learn already?"

Fine. Be that way. I'll get to it.

Essentially, I learned two things watching that video:

1. I'm giving folx the wrong impression about the art side of my life. I suspect this is primarilly because right now the majority of the art I'm doing is hidden from most of the world. I'm doing this on purpose (to create a 'big reveal' when our game Conquest! goes live. Still, I need to find a way to share more of what I'm doing. Part of this feels like a social media thing, and I need to do some thinking about it. More to come.
2. It's probably time for a change. I've been doing effectively the same thing with my illustration for... well, probably about 4 decades now. Sure, I've gotten better at the thing I do, but if it hasn't brought me to where I want to be after four frickin decades then maybe I need to change the process / model / product. I'm pretty attached to the (art) process and the product, so maybe it's time to focus on the model. I've spent a lot of time working on character drawings, saying "See what I made? Don't you want me to draw your D&D character for $0.50?!" Just like the guy on the street corner who's asking for a buck, most folks just mumble some excuse and scurry away. The two people a year who actually drop a buck in my offered cap aren't enough to pay the bills. So I need to figure out something to get more work coming in the front door. Here again, I need to do some thinking about this, and I'll post more when I've figured something out.

Stay tuned, True Believers.

A quick (and terrible) collection of the images I've done for Inktober so far.

Top row is the 'standard' Inktober themes. Day 1 was "ring" and Day 9 was 'swing'.

Bottom row is the 'whimsical' list starting with Day 1 "fairy" and Day 8 'sorcery'. I haven't finished Day 9 for the whimsical list. (I'm posting this 10/8 so I'm a day ahead on the 'normal list'.)

"I traveled far and wide
And laid this head in many ports
I was guided by a compass
I saw beauty to the north
I drew the tales of many lives
And wore the faces of my own
I had these memories all around me
So I wouldn't be alone"

From Rose Tattoo by the Dropkick Murphys

So it looks like I may get a new P/T job to supplement my job at TomTom. It’s still a bit of a long shot, but my buddy Brad said there might be an option where he works. We were talking about it last night, and I said that I would love to get some hours there if they would be understanding about my weird “it would have to be on rainy days” thing.

He apparently had some turmoil there this morning including the firing of a beloved coworker. They were already understaffed. They normally have paid interns, but those positions had been frozen until recently which threw them out of the school seasonal hiring schedule.

So we will see. I’m hopeful. I could use the extra hours and the extra money. What’s more, the position, while not anything like any ‘illustration’ gig I would ever think of, does have the word illustrator in the title, so it might be a bit of a resume builder. What’s even more, I know that I will learn a lot - which is enough to be enticing all by itself. I’ve been so stagnant in recent years when it comes to learning anything. I feel like my brain is turning to mush.

Anyway - this all has me looking at my resume and touching it up / adding the TomTom relevant information. That, in turn, had me wandering down my work history in my head. I’ve long thought I need to better document the jobs I’ve done in my past. It’s a pretty broad spectrum and it would be nice to reference them.

Keep your fingers crossed for me and the potential new side gig!

[ x - posted this to my DW account ]

This episode was based on a single tweet - details here.

A discussion developed in response to a friend's post about the security of entries here on OPW. I worked through my current understanding of the Key/Lock system here on a comment thread, and thought I would repost it here, publicly, for reference. Tom, if 1. You see this 2. it's accurate and 3. you are so inclined, feel free to copy and/or link to this post for reference. I'm happy to edit this post if that proves easier.

* * * * *

Let's assume I lock ALL of my posts with stop light colors. I would do that because I don't want Google or John Q. Public to be able to read what I write here. If I DID want that, I could just make the post "Public" and all the world could see them. At least that's my current understanding.

But I don't. I lock them all for the purposes of this scenario.

Posts that are pretty friendly to everyone get a Green Lock. I create that here: https://onepostwonder.com/friends# under the _New lock_ link. Posts that are only for close friends get an Yellow Lock, and of course, posts that show my Deep Dark Secrets and are thus only for my singnificant other get a Red Lock.

Then, I can give each person the correlating keys to the locks I want them to be able to open. I would do that for my imaginary friend Jane Doe here: https://onepostwonder.com/users/ImaginaryFriendJaneDoe and clicking on the _Give keys_ link under her her profile info.

This system allows for really accurate filtering, and kudos to Tom for using it. As I see it, the only 'down side' is that it could theoretically get pretty complicated over time if you had a lot of situational locks that you wanted to create. So while I don't use the system I described above, my system isn't far off.

* * * * *

Side thought: I just realized that I have no idea if/how 'hidden' response comments are to posts. ie - if I have access to my imaginary friend Jane Doe's entries, do I get to see responses by people I have no access to?

My gut reaction is yes, that I _can_ see those responses, but I'll have to double check.

I had the good fortune to have brunch with the lovely Miss Knapp this morning. As is often the case after spending time with creative people, this has me on a bit of a high and feeling very creative / inspired / wanting to be productive.

So that’s the mood I was in when I hopped in my car and started heading back down to Maryland.

All of that is backstory to explain where I got the idea to create a Knappucino’s for Illustrators.

So here’s some thoughts I’m working through to see if this would be a worthwhile venture:

1. Would it be worth it for me? What’s my objective here? I mean, the arts are generally not a side hack you want to start if you’re looking to get paid. You either go all in, or you go home. There just isn’t room for ‘half way’. But maybe money isn’t the point. It’s certainly not what triggered the idea. The idea was feedback from the audience to the artists. Much like the original Knappucino’s wasn’t so local unknowns could get paid, but rather that they could try things out with an attentive audience who cared about such things. It’s a different starting point than most gallery showings I’ve come across.
2. Do artists want feedback? I know that I want feedback, but maybe I’m an oddball? Maybe it’s more of an illustrator thing. Since we tend to be more mercenary about our work than fine artists, the audience opinion matters more. Or at least, their feedback should. 
3. Do I want to invest this kind of time and effort? I know that Jill put a lot into the original. Perhaps much of this was emotional effort (I don’t want to presume to speak for her) but I have a pretty simple live right now. Chop wood, carry water. Repeat. More possessions and more activities create more stress. This is something I have to pay attention to.
4. Would I want to do this as a ‘pop up’ concept? A long time ago, I came up with an idea (I wasn’t the first) to do pop up galleries utilizing unused strip mall space. Getting folks to come through would potentially lead to business for the mall property owners, and it would provide me with free (too much to hope for?) space for the shows. This seems like an obvious extension to that idea. Would that just be making things overly complicated though?
5. How would it work? Simple is obviously the name of the game. At least to start with. So here’s my rough idea:

5a. I would try to control the flow of the audience through the space. Nothing super rigid, but creating a ‘direction of travel’ will help with some of the other elements we’ll find below.

5b. No artist’s statement. Start with the art.

5c. At the end of each artist’s section, there are printed forms for the audience to fill out. The forms are crazy simple: 3 questions to direct the flow of the feedback (see also: the Start with This episode dealing with Feedback - https://beta.prx.org/stories/273387) AND a space for people to write in their email address if they want to join the artist’s email list.

5d. Rinse, repeat for each artist in the show. (Initial shows would be kept to something like 3 or 4 at most - because KISS.)

Anywho - that’s what my brain is chewing on right now. Oh, that and the charity illustration I’m doing. Speaking of which - I should really get back to that now.

I know - most of you probably left that particular platform a long time ago. I was still poking my head in pretty regularly, and as it happens, I was on it today. I was checking out the pluthera of goodbye posts from others who were swearing that they would remain until Google kicked them out and barred the doors.

Then I hit refresh on my browser and got the screen above.

Well, it had plenty of problems, but I am genuinely sorry to see it go. I did pull all of my posts and upload them to MeWe, but it's not the same. What's more, some of the content (some images, etc) didn't translate over. So I'm cleaning up old posts that don't make sense anymore.

But with that said, I was a little surprised to see that I was on Google Plus for 8 years, and that ain't nuthin.

For any who are curious: mewe.com/i/mattlichtenwalner