January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day here in the U.S. The Comic Creators for Freedom drive will be starting the drive on Monday, January 9th through Friday, January 20th.

Comic Creators for Freedom is a charity where webcomic creators from all over the world are working together on a single drawing which will be available as a downloadable wallpaper for readers who donate to the fund raising drive! Donations will be split between Love 146 and Gracehaven. The two charities that fight against human trafficking and support victims.

This is my contribution that will be apart of a much larger image of other comic female characters in an epic snowball fight.

This was my coloring application for a comic called “Ninjeel”, being published by and © Daisies and Shit Productions.

Finally, a “me” version of a My Little Pony.

Using the same color scheme as the fursona “me”, here we have a unicorn pony. Because without magic, there is no way in hell I could keep all these projects going (and even then, many keep lagging). The cutie mark is a candle burning at both ends; which was suggested to me by several people. Seems to fit.

Yes! My Little Pony! … well, in my perception of how they would look human, anyway. I know a lot of people will white-wash the characters when they do this. I basically took their pony coat color, and adjust a few settings to approximate a human flesh color.

I didn’t assume any pony’s race We are mostly given their personality and that they all live in Ponyville. Well, TECHNICALLY except for Rainbow Dash I think still living in Clowdsdale, and Twilight Sparkle from Canterlot (I think). Still, aside from the obvious differences of Pegasus, Unicorns, and land ponies (which you could probably designate as different races, outside of the different species in Equestria), there is nothing to properly correlate Pony “races” to human “races”…. Not without resorting to stereotypes and assumption.

Why bring this up? I feel it is important to think about when doing conversions such as this, and I believe it is an interesting discussion point. Also if you consider Furries (as in Fans of Furries, aka Anthropomorphic Humanoid Animals); when they make avatars of themselves as animals, how do they choose their color scheme? As I said, an interesting discussion point.

The hardest ones to do were Rarity and Rainbow Dash. I didn’t want to make Rarity totally white, so I tinted her a bit. Rainbow Dash was the hardest because there is no skin tone close to Blue. I probably could have given her darker skin, but I kinda pictured her this color with freckles. Pinkie Pie and Apple Jack just needed to be adjusted a little bit away from  pink and orange.

As far as Twilight Sparkle, I always imagined her being of a darker skin. Could be because I know a Furry with a purple avatar, of whom they are also of dark skin…. actually, I think I know a few dark skinned Furries that use purple a lot in their avatars in some fashion. Thus the correlation could come in. Also the fact that purple is a darker color, when matching a skin tone, it also seem best suited. This is confirmed with many other humanifcations of the ponies and other versions of human Twilight Sparkle.

I actually based this posing from a screen shot from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic show opening. Other creative choices were obviously their clothing. I tried to mostly go off of their personalities for these, and I think I mostly like what I picked. I also put Fluttershy in bare feet because of her affinity with nature, and it seemed to fit well.

Ialso decided to make Pinkie Pie a tad chubby. There are a couple reasons: (1) She is known to eat lots of sweets and pastries. (2) Pinkie Pie reminds me of a couple of people I know that have a little extra.

Rarity is very concerned with her image, so I can’t see her letting herself gain much more weight. Rainbow Dash is obviously athletic. Fluttershy seems like she would be a small, mousy type of body type, to match her character (I might have drawn her too tall). Apple Jack is a hard worker, I can’t see her getting pudgy. Twilight Sparkle may be the only other I could see gaining a bit of weight, but she seems very disciplined and magic probably burns a lot of calories.

Hmmm… I think I read too much into fictional characters for now. So I’ll stop.

Computers

• Prep Brother’s old computer to connect with TV (O/S and Driver troubles)
• Prep MY old computer as a Data Storage or Back-Up Computer (O/S and Driver troubles)
• Prep Brother’s old laptop to be main laptop (O/S and Driver troubles)
• Prep MY old laptop (Toshiba) to sell to a friend (O/S and Driver troubles)
• Sell my old netbook computer.
• Upgrade main computer to Windows 7 – possibly needs new Motherboard/CPU

Living Areas

• Clean up living room (depends on fixing computers)
• Throw away collected boxes and assorted packing scraps
• Sort through last moving boxes, reorganize, store.
• Clean up bedroom.
• Clean up Desk/Working Space

Assorted Offline

• Organize physical photos into photo boxes.
• Throw all receipts for 2010 into a box.
• Sort through receipts for 2011.
• Get rid of my Saturn
• Tires, Alignment, Balancing, Front Bumper, Brakes? for my Mazda

Conventions

• Anime Detour
• Penguicon
• MCBA SpringCon
• CONvergence
• Dallas STRIP?
• MCBA FallCon
• Midwest FurFest?
• Build “Beacon Tower” con table attraction.

Assorted Online

• Upgrade The Shifter Archive
• Update The Shifter Archive
• Recreate The Webcomic Beacon website into new theme.
• New podcast idea (done by myself).
• Other new podcast idea (sparked by another).
• Make a “Fes Works Guest Art Day”?

Assorted Comics

• Make sequel Jenny Everywhere LEGO Brick comic.
• Work on Print Version of P.S.I.

Ongoing Projects

• Update P.S.I. Regularly
• Color Ardra Regularly
• Update The Webcomic Beacon regularly

MAJOR GOALS for 2011

• Print (at least) the first part of PSI.
• Improve The Webcomic Beacon in it’s online standing/reputation/recognition.
• Print the first story of Ardra (requires re-coloring)
• Make a costume for Halloween.
• Go to three new places for camping this summer.
• Somehow make money off of my web projects to make it worth it, or cut them and/or cut going to conventions.

This list will be adjusted through the year.

Here is Octobriana and Jenny Everywhere. Octobriana is a sort of a revolutionary. A russian sexual liberator of sorts as well. Her actual creation as a fiction character is a tad wonky, but you can read about that on the Wikipedia entry for Octobriana. She is, as it stands now, a sort of open-source, Public Domain character. Kinda like Jenny Everywhere, which was designed specifically to be an open source character. She’s a bit of an adventurer herself, but with a much different approach (in most cases with her), than your typical gritty hero. I suppose the art speaks for what I mean to say about the two.

Speaking of which, August 13th is Jenny Everywhere Day! As of 2010, it is her 9th birthday. There are two ways to look at how Jenny Everywhere came to be. One is the original idea presentation, and Two, the first comic she appeared in after she was fully developed. The community involved decided to go with when she was first presented, as she still is mostly representative of that first inception. The first celebration was in 2009, for her 8th birthday.

The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

Octobriana Fan Blog | Jenny Everywhere Archive | Jenny Everywhere Day Birthday Art

This was my first real field experience with my camera; though I took a bunch of backyard shots at my parents, which I may also upload, but this is the first real dive. There are a few shots with a 70-300mm zoom/macro lens, but I found the other to work much better for the range I was in.

I ended up trimming down the pictures I would normally post here. Picking more of the better shots. I also have a couple of alternate shots of the same scene because I kinda liked both. Still learning aperture and f-stop settings.

On this trip, I also went for a canoe ride, that lasted 2.5 hours (paddling the whole way). … Didn’t put enough sun block on my legs, and got burned up! No fun! Anyway, lots of pictures of flowers, bees, and butterflies! Posted these up on Flickr instead of this site.

I’ve known him for near all of my life and even lived with him practically all through his. I was the older brother by two years, and maybe I treated him too much like a little brother. Even though he graduated college before me, and securing a real salary job (related to his degree even). We’ve practically been inseparable.

Even the name “Fes” I use today, dates back to when we were children. We played “journalist” and wrote newspapers under the monikers “Jimmy Fes and Jonny Fes”. We were known as “The Brothers, Fes” for a bit by my parents. Many years later, I took the name on as my internet identity, even though Brian was more often nicknamed “Fes” by my dad…. at least I think I’m remembering all of that right.

When I had my first real, long-term girlfriend, Heidi, he hated her because she “stole [his] David”. In time We became a trio of trouble, even after  Heidi and I broke up. Brian and I shared a few friends, and we also had our own. I regret not being able to know many of his friends, as trying to contact them has been difficult. With his passing, Heidi has been deeply affected. Even after we’ve moved farther from each other, Brian was still one of her best friends.

Brian had a knack for writing stories in notebooks ever since he was a kid. He designed several video game ideas, and once had desires to program them. While I did get started on web programming before him, he took off on learning several different kinds of computer languages. We were kinda like that. I would start something, he’d follow, but only learn faster and do better. Even when I would start playing a certain video game. I may get bored with the game, but he’d blast right through it, and even beat the game while I watched.

We used to record music from video games when we were kids. With the advent of the internet, we would find all sorts of communities dedicated to video game music. This eventually lead to him “tracking” his own music, often inspired by classic video game stylings. He’s made several tunes, and I’ve even used some of his later samples for a webcomic podcast I do.

Brian and I did lots of things together. We’ve even been roommates practically the whole time we’ve moved out from our parents. Though we fought a lot, as brothers do, we still had great times together. be it playing video games, watching movies, going camping, or just hanging out.

Brian wasn’t a very social person, but there were a few things he shared with me that he didn’t share with more than a few other people. However, there were things that he didn’t share, but I at least knew a bit about. He had been suffering from depression for several years. From what I could tell, it was fairly internalized. He had recently started cutting himself off from the rest of his family. Part of which, I’m certain, was to make it easier for both them, and himself, for what was to come.

Though he was loved by our large family, several friends, and his brother… in an act of desperation, choose to end his suffering while I was at work… after some short sorting, it was obvious he had been planning for a long time, and even wanted to make the aftermath easier on everyone.

…. He was found on Saturday morning, March 27th, 2010, by myself….

Upon helping to set up his final service, I’ve had too hard of a time finding pictures of him. If there is anything that everyone can take from this experience, it is this: TAKE MORE PICTURES, before you no longer have the chance to. TAKE. MORE. PICTURES.

He will be missed and loved by all his family and friends… and especially his brother… who thought he could protect him from anything, and always be there for him.  I may never know all the answers, and it will take some time to more easily move forward; but the pain will always be there… and I would never want to forget.

Link to: Pictures (coming soon)

1. Earn more on existing projects (via ads or merch).
2. Increase the audience of my projects (this helps #1).
3. Cut back on the number of projects I am doing.
4. Sell myself for assorted services, such as coloring, podcast production, or site creation.

Now I know I’ve mentioned dropping The Webcomic Beacon as a project a couple of times. For now I’ve decided to cut at least one Sunday a month, to give me more time for other things. The podcast alone can take me 5-7 hours alone, for any given episode, for everything involved. People needn’t worry about The Beacon for now. I’ve committed to several shows, of this format, through May 2010.

My comic, PSI, is something that keeps me sane. So I always plan to keep doing that… at least until I can tie off all the loose plot ends, and bring everything full circle, essentially completing what I’m dubbing “Act 2″ of PSI. Other small projects may pop up. I have 3 short comic (less than 10 pages), sorta planned, and a couple other longer comics I’m still generating ideas for… but these will likely need to wait.

In the mean time, to avoid getting a 2nd job, and thus, severely affecting my web projects, I’ve decided to sell myself. I get paid less than $11/hr plus benefits for my night job. I figure I’ll start selling myself at a rate of $10/hr for almost any job I can do from home. I’m likely selling myself short, as I’ve been told, but I want to see how this goes. If this goes really well (and I mean REALLY well), I may need to increase my rates for demand… but that’s a big if.

Jobs I’d be able to do (but not limited to):
Comic coloring; Podcast recording and production; or WordPress webcomic website conversion/creation (using Webcomic+Inkblot).

Commissions could be a possibility too, but that may have to be per piece, as my drawing skills are not swift enough for a timed wage. Coloring is something that can vary depending on how you want it colored (I can try a few samples for you). Podcasting recording and production will likely take a total of 2.5-3 times the length of the actual podcast length (i.e. A 30 minute podcast could take me a hour and a half, from recording to full master… or just 1.5 to 2 times, if just a quick master).

For the WordPress site creation, it entirely depends on how many comics you have, and even if you are converting from a different webcomic WordPress publishing tool.  I can help design and create the website for you, on my computer. We can set up a WordPress wherever you have space with access to a database, and I can create the theme, and set all of the comic images in places to work as they should, in order, etc. This would likely take a lot of time to do, but I know my way well enough around WordPress and Webcomic+Inkblot, to set someone up with something they can use.

You can see my website work here: PSI, Ardra, Hidden Disguises, Between Failures.

This is Becky Beacon. She’s The Webcomic Beacon podcast’s “cover girl”. You can find more art with here on The Webcomic Beacon’s art page.