When a friend recently suggested a deck of playing cards featuring major players in the “gender wars,” I knew I wanted a set. I tried to find other ways to make it happen – photographs? Filters? AI art generator? – but decided the most expedient option was to just do it myself. Which isn’t particularly expedient, as a deck requires 54 designs (if you include 2 Jokers).
I generally suck at caricatures, but decided my limited skills would have to be adequate. I Can Do Hard Things, just not perfectly.
This is probably my most successful caricature so far. Do not expect this level of resemblance throughout the deck.
Working furiously, this week I made the first suit, Hearts. Red suits (hearts and diamonds) will be more-or-less gender critical, and black suits (clubs and spades) will be more-or-less transactivist. If this sounds like inside baseball, it is; that’s why my friend suggested a deck in the first place. I’ve turned into a gender nerd, and “civilians” have no idea whom I’m referring to when I gossip. Edutainment!
I want to crowdfund for this project, but as I don’t trust any major crowdfunding platforms, I just set up some PayPal pre-order buttons. Yes I know PayPal sucks too, all online payment platforms suck, and cryptocurrency is still too volatile.
I don’t want to promote $150 Drawings right now because I really need to focus on another project, so please don’t order any. Nonetheless, I have done a few recently:
“Goat Rodeo” for Pam“Ladybug Hound” for Jason“World’s Most Adorable TERF” for myself (and Elaine Miller and JK Rowling)“Santa Mechanic” for Doug
What is this other project I need to focus on? A new comic book, Agents of H.A.G., starring Menopausal Woman and Sidekick:
So please don’t distract me. I have some weird starting-a-new-project anxiety and am procrastinating too much already.
the DisenchanterBan HammerThird Wavethe TERFinatorBaby TERFWhite Feminist
I’m exploring custom lenticular prints of loops from ApocalypseAnimated.com. I still don’t have them in hand; the first tests arrive in hand next week. Here’s a preview video from the printer of the design below:
Four Horsemen
But I’m so excited I’m already setting up designs for 6 more, to make a set of 7 lenticular prints (7 seems to be the most fetishized number in the Book of Revelation). Because I want to look at them adjacent to each other, I’m posting them here!
One on the ThroneThe Number of the BeastWoman and DragonTemple SmokeAbaddon FireWhore of BabylonTree of Life
These loops are all 8 frames (except the Throne and Temple Smoke) because the more frames interlaced into a lenticular, the blurrier it gets. I really won’t know how or whether these designs will work until they’re interlaced, printed, and sealed under a ridged piece of plastic called a lens. Also there are 8 here, not 7, so one of them will eventually be excluded.
I’ve revived my temporarily-abandoned Apocalypse project, which now lives at apocalypseanimated.com. Instead of a movie, I’m illustrating the Book of Revelation with animated gif loops, in the tradition of Medieval and post-Medieval Apocalypses. Except instead of being hand-lettered and painted on parchment, it’s all digital. Still, the gif is the 21st Century’s equivalent of the woodcut, as I discussed 6 years ago:
…the advent of the printing press led to the explosion of a unique kind of illustration: the wood-cut. Since…the internet is in many ways analogous to the printing press, I saw a parallel in its own new kind of illustration: the animated gif.
I am currently up to Chapter 8, out of 22 chapters total. Here are some of my favorites so far:
Revelation 1:11 “What thou seest, write in a book….”Revelation 4:2 “…behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. 3 And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.”Revelation 6:13 “And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.”Revelation 7:3 “Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.”Revelation 8:4 “And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.”Revelation 8:7 “The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.”Revelation 8:11 “And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”
Ultimately I’d like the whole thing to be available for download as an eBook. Some of the gifs are heavy, weighing in at over 4MB, although many are under 2. With up to 17 gifs per page (each chapter is one page), that can make it unwieldy to download on-the-fly in a phone’s browser. That said, it looks freaking great on phones, thanks to the “dynamic” WordPress template I was willing to wrestle with. As an eBook it could be downloaded in a single package and viewed at will on any device. But get this – there aren’t any eBook publishing programs that support animated gifs in this way! A few e-Readers support animated gifs, so such an eBook is at least possible, but it will take some custom coding for it to happen. Meanwhile, if you have a proper Internet connection, view the work-in-progress at apocalypseanimated.com/.
MysticSymbolic has a long way to go, but continues to improve! We now have a rudimentary mandala generator, a Randomize Colors button, and an easier-to-remember work-in-progress URL: mystic-symbolic.art
Though primarily a collaboration between me and outstanding code genius Atul Varma, we now have a “team” including Dave Weaver of Webaissance, and my old pal Maneesh Yadav, who will hopefully dial in the colors. I’ve always scorned work-culture ideas like “team” and “meetings,” but I must say these are making the project better.
Speaking of colors, I am amazed at how well purely random RGB colors are working. I assumed unrestricted random palettes would be 90% horrible, but in fact they are 50% tolerable, and sometimes quite lovely. All the color combos below were generated randomly.
