Libby’s Scribb1es

'Sup, Dudes!?

What about you? Do you ever like to imagine what materials feel like?

I do. I think materials are something that we don't think about a whole lot in general. Like, what are the materials of the thing you're reading this on right now? If you're reading it on a phone, there might be some glass, plastic, and/or metal involved. There's also probably whatever liquid crystals are (beyond the obvious of being crystals that are liquid). It's probably similar if it's a computer. On the flip side, if you're reading this in a book someday, what kind of paper is it? Is it whatever paper a print-on-demand service, like Amazon, uses, which Brian only has limited say over? Or, is it super nice paper in some fancy edition that Brian hasn't even imagined making yet? Before you could read it, this comic was pencil on a sheet of bristol paper. Then, Brian scanned it in, turned the pencils blue, and printed it out on a new sheet of bristol paper, which he then inked over…Is that the true material of this comic? What about the fact it was then scanned in again, to create a file that could become what you see on a website, or what tells a printer hundreds or thousands of miles away to recreate the comic?

On top of all of that, what do these materials feel like to you? What does the thing you're sitting/standing/lying on feel like? According to Siobhán, shirts feel like shit. I only agree with her when it comes to the middle section, but you do you, Siobhán!

Something else that's neat about materials is how they can just fade away into the background, so that the focus is on the task at hand. Like, if it's good enough, you should be focused on just using whatever thing it is that the material makes up. It's pretty interesting, but I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this…

Oh! Brian finally finished reading the first book about Avatar Kyoshi the other day—Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee. He says it was pretty great! He was so engaged in the final stages of the story that he forgot to fall asleep until 7am! (Okay, his sleep's just fucked-up, so that wasn't really because of the book…) It's amazing how just some little black symbols scribbled onto a white surface can give you goosebumps and set your imagination on fire, don't you think? Sure, it doesn't always happen (you're probably reading an example of that right now), but it's still cool that it can happen. It's also wicked how sometimes it can be something like ink staining paper, but other times it's just electrical patterns, telling a screen to either turn lights on or off. Regardless of the specific method, it's cool how people have figured out so many ways to do this (not all people, though, because most people are dumbasses). Don't tell Anna Log I said that, though…She looks unjustifiably mad enough as it is!

Okay, go take stock of all the cool materials in your life…Maybe acquire some new materials in the form of books from Starry Knight Studios! At some point, probably early next month, there should be a new one in the form of a Polarnoids volume 2! That's because the 200th Polarnoids comic was released last Sunday, so now it's time to collect up the last hundred comics and stain some paper with them!