Facts About the World, Issue 17: Snacks

There's preamble here so if you're inclined: Hello! If not, feel free to scroll down until you see a happy eel, where the zine begins, and enjoy.

Earlier today, it occurred to me that Facts About the World isn't active anywhere at the moment, which presents an issue in terms of archiving it. The CF page might still be up although I don't know if/how long that will last, given that my account is inactive at present. Might just take a break and come back when I'm not being pulled in a million directions at once, but right now there are too many things demanding my time and attention and something needed to give. Making art is great; that side of things is genuinely a joy (except for when it's Bastard, but everything in life has Bastard Moments), I love writing silly things and doing colourful drawings to go with them, but having to maintain a "presence" here, there and bloody everywhere is just more work, eating into what little free time I have, with no reward on an emotional level. If people are keen on their art "Doing numbers" then good for them, but that's nothing to me, oh Vienna.

This blog isn't going to disappear any time soon; it's nice to have somewhere to brain-vomit in peace; although I would like to uncouple it from Google at some juncture, just not clued up enough to know how to do that, and too tired to do the research at the moment.

Now, onto this zine: In the original version, this was the cursed issue 4; it took about three goes to get that one done, and even then there were mistakes that took forever to fix because I was doing it all in a sketchbook. This version's been done with Rebelle, which was meant to make things quicker and easier, but if anything, it probably takes about the same length of time as the original, just for different reasons (i.e. getting down a rabbit hole with different paint effects, colour schemes, more easily fiddle-with-able page layouts and what-have-you.)

This version shows a few teething problems with having not made any zines for a few years, but after the dust has settled, I am at least pleased with how it came out, considering my complete lack of practice and confidence at the time when it was made. Anyway, enough rambling and let's get to it!

(Also, as per usual, if you want to see them in full size and better quality, right-click and select "Open image in new tab"; it's clunky but it circumvents the image compression demons.)

 









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Further rambling

Twa Thousand Corbies

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Going to start this post with an illustration, because of this blog layout, posts lacking images tend to look a bit pants. The art here is by G. Howell-Baker. A while back, I was joking about gathering together as many versions of Twa Corbies as possible, and finally, here we are. This is going to be a continually evolving list, so if you know of a version that needs to be included, or if you've recorded one of your own, then by all means, let me know. You can put a comment here or e-mail me at looksinnocuousnenoughchaps [at] gmail [dot] com. Part two, with versions 50-100 can be found here . Let's begin! 1.  Folly Bridge - My personal favourite, performed completely a capella with some beautiful, eerie harmonies. 2.  Hamish Imlach - A live version, and a very close second favourite. Hamish's distinctive voice works wonders here and we're treated to some elegant sitar as well. 3.  Ayreheart - This one features the lute and a passionate vocal performance, it's qui...
'Ave a gander 'ere

Fridayposting

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It is Friday, continuing the theme of the spooky video games, I'm currently revisiting Still Wakes the Deep and trying to finish up the blog post about that (it's a good job this isn't an audio effort because noone needs to hear yours truly going "Fuckin' 'ell, McLeary!!!" in an incredibly questionable Glaswegian accent whenever the mood so takes me.) Sod's law, I completely forgot to actually get the pictures off of Mariner... it was late at night. For now, it's time to return to the comfy slippers of The Callisto Protocol, not in chronological order and not really with a theme in mind either, just a bit of fun for today. Starting with these artfully arranged Crunchy Creatures, with a bit of an HR Giger kind of vibe. I also appreciate the elegantly flowing mist around here. Hmmm . (This one's off the PS4 version, I redid it on the PS5 but a big cloud of mist was obscuring one of the monsters and we can't have that.) This hexagonal effort...
'Ave a gander 'ere

Some doodles from last night

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I went on a bit of a spree last night, trying out some different brushes in Rebelle 7, trying to work out what approach I might want to take for reviving Facts About the World, and here are some of the resulting doodles. First, a swoonicorn investigating Blarglflorp, the tiniest comet in the cosmos. Ara, done entirely using ink brushes with varying degrees of water. It's been a bit of running joke that their markings are different every time I draw them, and this time is no exception. (They were initially based on a striped dolphin but at this point, it's anyone's guess. Cynosure was a futuristic thing with cyborgs anyway, so what kind of dolphin Ara resembled wasn't exactly a pressing logical concern.) And one from the end of the night, which didn't end up being coloured because I'd been up since 3am again and needed to go to bed.
'Ave a gander 'ere