Wow. This is amazing. Chrome actually loosened his grip on this blog site and graciously (though belatedly) allowed me to jot down my own thoughts here. Interesting, because I know for a fact that he was confronted by a very good friend recently about his intellectual and artistic perfectionism, and advised to lighten up a bit, goddam it! and join the neohuman race. Love ya, Mr. Underwood.

That’s a photo of me at the staging platform high above his gallery at Avant Garde, where he’s been assembling some of his new work, which includes 3-dimensional walk-through versions of his comic strips, and a new form he calls ‘microcomics‘, in which he tries to capture an entire mood, idea and even a hint of narrative in a single image.

I happen to appear in many of these new microcomics, for some reason, so I thought I’d stop by and check them out. Hey, I havta tell ya, I could get used to seeing my face the size of a billboard; makes me feel like a movie star. I might even begin angling for an extra five or ten minutes of this fame thing. It sure would be a nice gesture by the new, looser and freer, Chrome Underwood, dontcha think?

The work above is being prepared for the upcoming show at Caerleon, the Ambiguity of Identity, which opens in September. Details to follow.

The old studio was empty. I had arrived at a dead end, creatively speaking, and it was time to move on.

I needed a new base, a new safe house, a new concrete bunker – high in the sky, far from the pain of rl and the frustrations of the virtual world below. After a brief but thorough search, I came upon a straightforward piece of postmodern architecture; dark on the inside, light on the outside, matching the current state of my soul. I rezzed a beat-up old leather couch, hunkered down and began staring at the concrete walls. It felt pretty good. I was safe. I was in a new place, with new possibilities. I soaked in the silence, the solitude, the emptiness. I was getting ready for the next stage of my journey.

I had filled the past few years with a frenzy of activity: creating a pretty decent body of digital paintings; joining forces with several virtual galleries and holding dozens of exhibits; collaborating with other artists on several projects, creating a virtual comic strip series, yada yada yada.. But the part that did me in was the building of a new website to gather all my creative activities under one big tent, including a gallery, the webcomic, this blog and several other sideshows. It felt good, but by the time I was finished, I was finished. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t create. I couldn’t even think. It was time to rest.

Once I was done savoring all those many layers of sweet silence, though, I began to wonder…. if I were to stay here for a while, would I bring anything in to make it feel more like home? An interesting question, since the emptiness seemed so comforting and, after all, what is home but a source of comfort? Since I couldn’t imagine where to begin or whether I even wanted to, I finally decided I would put the question before each of my avatars – my alts – and let them decide whether or what they wanted to hang on the walls or scatter around the floors. What happened next is a fascinating study of the fluidity of the human mind… what I call the liquid self.

to be continued…..

Hey, got a new sidekick… the luscious, and purely organic, Vanilla Titanium. She joined our creative team recently and has already made her debut over at mojozone. She is highly cultured – a former intellectual, in fact, and like many before her she cut her teeth on Kafka, Sartre, Camus and the like, but now prefers to read comic books. She’s a master of traditional woodblock printing, drives a beat up old pickup truck with a big box of Japanese woodcutting tools in the back, and she can rock and mock at the same time, so watch out, boys…

Regarding her striking hairdo, someone asked her today if she could get the Discovery Channel with it. Her response was, well, no, actually, none of the channels she received were terrestrial. hmmm…. that last name, Titanium; she may very well be from another world. Who knows?

Just read an exquisite post by Dusan Writer which captures perfectly the power of imagination and the magic of the metaverse, a tribute to the creator in all of us. It brought to mind a moment which occurred recently while working on a panel for my webcomic. I suddenly realized I was living in a virtual world – a world full of serendipity yet layered with meaning, a universe of the imagination – and that it had become completely ‘natural’ to me. I was no longer in a foreign country; it actually felt like home.

That, I suppose, is one of the greatest things about being an artist…. to be able to spend one’s days marveling at the wonders of creation and then to pass a bit of that magic on to someone else. Nice work if you can get it. Thanks for the reminder, Dusan.

I’ve been dreaming a lot lately, especially while spending a weekend on my boat; I don’t know if it’s the sound of the waves lapping on the hull, or the gentle rocking motion; but once I drift away, anything can happen. It was around sunset that I saw her for the first time… she appeared in a blaze of sunshine and a spray of foaming water….  ahh, but the rest of the story unfolds in living color over at mojozone, in the form of a.. of a dream, like I was sayin… well, you get the idea.

Finally found an art form that allows me to fuse the visual side of my brain with the verbal side: the good old, time-tested comic book. Words and thoughts had begun to appear together in my digital paintings lately, spurred on by the vague notion that I would actually attempt to create a graphic novel at some point in the future, but I hadn’t yet come to grips with the fact that I’d have to master an entirely new and different medium in order to do it… where to begin? Paintings, after all, are still paintings – that is, flat, static, single objects (albeit full of life, if they are good); but reading comics or graphic novels is like watching movies without a projector. You have to make that leap into the fourth dimension: Time.

Then I came upon a community of independent internet comic book artists online at a portal called The Webcomic List, where latest installments are updated daily, and where “internet geeks (can) keep up with their favorite webcomics quickly and easily, without having to check individual sites just to find updates..”, according to the site admin. Among the thousands of comics on display there I discovered some truly unique and creative voices; among them, the webcomic, Encore Seraphine…

While browsing through Seraphine’s archives, I began to realize that there was something different here, something that is very difficult to achieve in the two dimensional world that I work in…. communication on a truly human and personal level; channeled, layer by layer, through the thoughts, feelings and ideas of an avatar in Second Life. This is exactly what I had been attempting to do in my paintings, but here it was far more immediate and direct… and, within a few short hours, I was hooked.

So, last week I began to put together my own webcomic: mojozone, and have already completed two installments – in spite of the fact that I have no idea what the hell I’m doing, or where this thing is headed. But since both my lives have been pretty much built on serendipity, and since that is also the way I paint, I figured I might as well play my strong suit. If it’s still round, it rolls (might even rock); no need to reinvent it. More fun that way anyway.

So, enjoy the new comic; and above all, don’t hesitate to jump in and make comments, suggestions, etc. That, after all, is one of the best things about this new technology; we get to hang out with our new digital friends and share all our crazy ideas. What, after all, could be more fun?

mojozone: reflections of chrome underwood

Photo, above: Camille vamping it up at a display of new comic book art in Second Life

Jumped into machinima big time yesterday, not only overcoming my fear of working in three dimensions, but throwing time, space and sound into the mix. Since we’ve been recording our first original tune in real life this week, Botgirl and I have also begun discussing the music video we’ll be using to introduce it to the world. Since  my digital paintings were to be incorporated in some way, I finally realized I’d have to go in there myself and experiment with the medium hands on, in order to get the full sense of how it should look and feel.

I decided, at least for the sake of experimentation, that I’d put together one of my art cubes using my most recent paintings, and set up a brief shoot with Camille on guitar and myself on drums. Then I downloaded several machinima (screen capture) software programs and began to try them out, one by one. The programs were Camtasia, fraps, and jing… in each case, the free – and, I should also add, limited – versions.

Though I wasn’t able to do some of the more important things, like pan, zoom, select and frame – nor did I get around to editing; this is raw footage – I concentrated mainly on the look and feel of the scene, using lighting and atmosphere, much as I would in my paintings; then I shot the film in HD. I also had to settle for streaming audio on my sim since my software skills are limited in this medium, and I didn’t have any editing software (I’m sure you veteran machinamators out there are chuckling at this). One of the clips, if you care to check it out, can be seen on vimeo. Fyi, this particular clip was shot in fraps.

Looking back on things, I now see that since that day two years ago when I first began to stumble around in here as a brand-spankin’newbie, much of my internal and external landscape has shifted a bit. As a longtime digital artist in rl, I knew I had fallen upon something unusual; but it would take a few years to grasp just how extraordinary it really was.

It was a wonderland for those who had eyes to see it, one with few apparent limitations – an intoxicating brew for an artist. But it would take time and experimentation to gain any real sense of what it would be like to actually push the envelope of creativity, spanning time and space (both virtual and real), leaping tall buildings in a single bound, as it were. The only kryptonite in my new virtual home, it seemed, was something natives referred to as ‘lag.’

Then, a few months ago, Botgirl Questi and I began to explore the idea of collaborating on a creative project of some sort in Second Life and/or Real Life. Initially we focused on creating a comic book or graphic novel together, but the more we talked, the more projects we bumped into, and before long one or two became three or four, and then suddenly we saw that something unique was beginning to emerge.

We found the one thing that would enable us to create a multi-dimensional, multi-personal, multimedia work: a grand piece of fiction we could tease to life and watch unfold through a whole mess a’media. We were going to be singers in a rock and roll band. The band, cherrybomb, was born.

As we see this thing, it will happen on several levels and stretch out over both worlds. The band has already begun rehearsing, as you can see in the photo above, and will record its first original song later this month in the ‘real world.’ There is a music video in the works, a comic book, and at some point perhaps, a live performance or two. You will be able to follow their adventures here on a regular basis, and on Botgirl Lives, where, coincidentally, the new video is waiting.

Like the man said, this place is only limited by your imagination. Let’s see just how far that is.

Photo, above: cherrybomb at their first rehearsal in Second Life; from left to right, Botgirl Questi, bass; Fourworlds Ra, rhythm guitar; Camille Topaz, lead guitar; Chrome Underwood, drums.

Author’s Note: Cherrybomb’s new video is now showing on the Second Best music video channel on vimeo. Check it out.

Some folks say you’re never too old to be a gamer, but hey, imho, there’s a level of hormonal and emotional maturity that you can get to if you’re lucky, where this whole idea of hunting down and killing a horde of headcrab zombies is more likely to induce a few yawns and possibly even a brief episode of REM sleep, rather than evoke a bunch of Hell Yeah, Bro!‘s and a few knuckle-crunching fist bumps.

Some of us, shall we say, prefer more sophisticated pleasures; like “gamics“, for instance; and, near as I can tell, there ain’t no better gamic in town than the classic web comic, Concerned, The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman, by Christopher C. Livingston. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it may be the virtual world’s first post-humanoid masterpiece, albeit in a minor key (but then, everything post-humanoid would have to be in a minor key, wouldn’t it?)

Concerned is actually a parody of the first-person shooter video game Half-Life 2, so you might assume that an older Second Lifer-type like me, a complete pre-nerd non-gamer “just wouldn’t get it.” But, you see, that is the power of a masterpiece… it doesn’t require knowledge of the subject beforehand, or even familiarity with the culture it is set in. It stands alone; it is self-contained; it is beyond genre…. it gives you all you need to get high. Hey, you don’t have to speak French to enjoy Paris, do you?



In addition to the brilliance of its goofy dystopian riff, though, there are a number of interesting aspects to this work which set it apart from other graphic novels. For starters, since Mr. Livingston was not a comic book artist, and couldn’t afford to hire one, he decided to created the image entirely within a virtual world – a very shrewd move, since it is, after all, a virtual send-up of yet another virtual world.

Furthermore, it has lived out its entire existence on the world wide web (remember that?), where, to this day it remains the only way to access it. Unfortunately (for me and many fellow book lovers), it never made it to the printed page, because the original image resolution was simply too low. Finally, it was pretty much created single-handedly by someone who was a mild-mannered administrative assistant for a plumbing company by day, and a mad comic book genius by night. One for the books, I’d say.

The first issue was released on May 1, 2005, with subsequent issues published three times a week, completing its run on November 6, 2006 with a total of 205 issues. It had been put together using Garry’s Mod, a game without a goal; an almost infinitely malleable virtual environment within which users are free to create realistic scenes using their own imagination, highly expressive poseable avatars, and an amazing array of tools and special effects… in short, a poor man’s movie set.

It occurred to me while reading this that tools like Garry’s Mod, available for purchase on the cheap, are already playing an important role in the further “democratization’ of media arts by putting once exotic, esoteric and highly expensive tools into the hands of your average everyday ‘citizen with an idea.’ This will not only apply to the creation of comic books, but also lends itself nicely to the making of machinima films and other cutting-edge media, even 2D digital art. As the author of Concerned himself said in a recent interview,

When I was a kid and wanted to make a movie, I’d have to get all my friends together, get them to agree to what I wanted to do, borrow a camera from someone, maybe use the editing bay at my high school… it took a lot of coordination between all the different elements I’d need just to get something done, and a lot of relying on other people. With machinima, if someone wants to make a movie, they’ve got digital actors. They can download editing software. They can make their own soundtrack, record their own dialogue. You can make a movie, by yourself, on your computer, using tools that are often free to download. And that’s amazing.

Aaah, wish I was 25 again.

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