Record-huge Intercon needs more games!

Got into Garden of Forking Paths at Intercon. It is full now, so I'm glad I chose it. Planning on Desperadoes Under the Eaves as my second, which looks like it has plenty of spots left. Break a Leg even got a couple in the first round, including the fabulous oakenguy, who is pretty much the perfect player for this kind of game. (Sorry I didn't end up calling it Slaybill!) And congratulations to the GMs whose games filled already, including Jesriah, Devil to Pay, and Cracks in the Orb is close to it!

It turns out that this is the highest number of registered players Intercon has ever had at a whopping 348. That mean the con could use more games in almost every slot. I got an email from lovely con chair laura47 asking if I might be able to run one more thing. I'm not sure I'm up to it, but I will consider. Intercon can't grow unless more people are willing to put up games. If you might just be generous enough to put another thing on the schedule, go to the bid page on the Intercon website and submit something as soon as you can! You will be helping to grow the community if you do!

Lame Swans photography

Had a photo shoot for Lame Swans yesterday, the third we've had so far. I was feeling pretty awful, and I really do not know what I'm doing with these photography jaunts, but fortunately everyone is patient and willing to help me out such that somehow we muddle through. I'm really happy with how the images look; now I just need to lay them out and edit them to my satisfaction to turn them into a comic book.

niobien has really been my muse for this project. Not only is she so pretty, she's a joy to take pictures of. Her face and carriage are so expressive. Also, because she has talent and experience in ballet, an art I've become very interested in recently, she was the perfect person to build this project around. Look at what a supermodel she is.

Gorgeous. I've been extremely lucky with all my models. They have tried hard, been patient with my muddling through, and best of all did a great job acting with their physicality and facial expressions alone.

There's something in my head, though, as I take and look at these pictures. Recently I have been exposed to a number of blogs and resources that highlight issues of objectification of women in comics. It's a thing that eats me, the frequency with which female characters are just incidentally presented in sexually objectifying ways, because of an often underlying, unconscious assumption that female characters are only interesting if they're sexy. My comic book has mostly female characters, so I have a strong desire to create an example of the medium that bucks that convention. When I ask them to pose, I try to let the acting of the moment and the shape of the dancing decide how they hold themselves. There is some concern, of course, for the aesthetics of that posing, but I try to make it about the image rather than the body of the model. Everyone I asked to participate is a good-looking person, and I think that adds to the charm of the visuals, but I want them to come off as pretty people, not pretty objects.

But on the other hand, the dance which is the motif I have chosen to tell my story is about a celebration of the capabilities of the physical. Showcasing the body as it performs ballet is the true visual richness of this graphic novel. I need to do it to achieve the right effect. But I find myself struggling to balance things like inclusion and focus on faces with inclusion and focus on bodies, especially given that the images have to fit in a specific layout. I don't want it to be like I wrote a story about ballet that doesn't actually show any ballet. It's an interesting challenge. I hope I'm up to it.