   Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
My grandmother died last night. This wasn't a shock or a surprise. Her health has been on the decline, and she's been in hospice for the last month. She lived a long life, and in her final days she was surrounded by her three adult children.
My grandma was a kind woman. She wasn't perfect, but I always felt loved in her presence. She was a retired kindergarten teacher, and was still working when I was a kid. I have so many happy memories sitting at her kitchen table, and I'm going to carry those with me for the rest of my life. She was also proof that anyone who claims that you get more conservative as you get older is full of shit, because she certainly didn't.
I think it's interesting how the body processes grief sometimes. I don't know that I'll cry, but over the past month, knowing this was coming, I've felt a tension in my gut. Now that she's passed, instead of relief that tension is replaced by a sense of emptiness. That something is missing that should still be there. Something has been taken away, and I feel it.
Of course, as I wrote that, I immediately started crying... so I guess my body processes grief in pretty ordinary ways too.
I wanted to come up with something profound linking this to Beltane, which we sit in the middle of right now, but it just seemed hackneyed. Like I was trying to dig out some greater significance when the truth is death comes whenever it wants. The only predictable thing about it is that it's the end of all of our journeys. I hope that when I pass I'm so lucky to have lived such a long life with people that I love around me in my final days.
For the record, I will be fine. I just needed to get these words out while they were still in my head. I don't have some rousing conclusion or deep insight to tack on here at the end, just that gut feeling that something is missing.
Because it is.
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Can you say Awkward?
My dad brought me to my first convention, and wants to come with me to conventions again. In all honesty my dad really is the “Cool Dad” for fellow geeks, so I guess I may never understand.
MY DAD’S -DEAD-!! *sob* *sob* …okay, he seriously is, but it was years ago.
I think Anime would have confused him, but he liked Star Trek.
Mom took my brother and I to a couple of Conventions back when we couldn’t drive ourselves. She found them weird, but accepted she had weird kids. Enough stuff around she didn’t get bored.
I had my dad *staff* my convention.
Wow I don’t really want to talk about my dad cause I have a variety things to say about him. He’s accepted my geekiness now but growing he was a prick about it. He had his own interests mainly airplanes(having a private pilot’s license and all) and deer hunting. Plus he’s done lot in the last 10 years to break my family apart.
Wow, Trae, looking at this comic and Sarah’s model sheet, I’m very impressed at your ability to get so much expression out of a stick figure.
It’s the way I’ve designed her eyes. The smaller eyes and the eyebrows give her a lot more flexibility in expressions. Sarah is an expressive, extroverted character — so I needed her to have a range. Contrast that with Ruth — Ruth is always in a state of calm, even when stressed out. She’s much more introverted, so she emotes quietly. Because of that, her eyes never really change. In fact, she almost never smiles.
I do think about these things when I design the characters. 🙂
I’m probably going to be unconsciously examining the other characters’ eyebrows from now on… 😀
Early characters who I wanted to do more with their eyes are like Lynn, Veronica and Megan — where the brow is integrated. Awesome Roy was the first to get separate eyebrows (to go with his dot eyes).
Scrappy and Barnes both have eyebrows, but you can’t always see Barnes’s because of his hair. Random other characters, like Marcus, do too — I just can’t remember off the top of my head.
Between my wife and I, we have 5 kids. We’ve been taking 4 of them to conventions for the past 5 years. We’re also on staff for our local con and have roped a couple of them onto staff, as well.