Happy July Mythopoeians! 

Before writing these monthly blog posts I usually take a couple of days to figure out the topic. This month's topic coalesces around themes of fate and chance. I was prepared to go with the title "Disclaiming Fate" but that was before I disclaimed fate by pressing shuffle on my music and low and behold... good ole' Bob Dylan with words most prophetic.
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So - what's been going on with us this month? Work, as usual! The ongoing pandemic has slowed us down slightly when it comes to logistical issues - it took Vince over a month to get a package I sent to him to fulfill our latest Kickstarter. Business aside, much of our creative work has been centered around the philosophically inane tabletop games. 

Dice. Ever think about them? Prevalent in almost every culture in some way. A source of entertainment and vice. A tool of chance and excitement. But why? 

Roleplaying games presuppose agency among participants in elaborate games of make-believe. We come up with skins other than our own to enact, imagining for a moment that we are someone or something else, living experiences beyond the mundane of the everyday. It's an intoxicating subject for us personally because it strikes to the core of our being. My favorite activity on the playground was the sandbox. Alas, games of athletics and skill have always eluded me but games of imagination? Fictional symbols and hierarchies? I've always been 'good' at those. 

Within the framework of play in an imaginary space there exists a push and pull dynamic between the shared collaborative world of the participants and the individual shards they inhabit. Though the rules of  may change, the commonality among these game systems is a resolution mechanic to determine the uncertain.

If you've ever played Dungeons and Dragons, you'll recognize the formula: D20+ Skill Modifier vs. Difficulty Challenge. Simpler, more collaborative story games, like the excellent Microscope by Ben Robbins, prescribe players assign a karmic "light" or "dark" tone to scenes, indicating to the participants of the direction therein. 

With either system, the purpose is the same: to disclaim agency in favor of fate. When the dice roll, we know not where they will land. When we say a scene must end "light" or "dark," we scribe down the future as predetermined, even if the details remain unseen. 

Yet, we play these games to find out what happens. There are no indicators of score, or even competition really. You can make your character better, you can do what you want - so why allow for the possibility of failure, or even death? 

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One way I've tried to frame this thought is through the lens of constraints and possibilities. Perhaps that's just a fancy way of saying fate vs. free will, but I'm not sure. 

We all live with the reality of inevitability. We are born into circumstances we cannot control, shaped by environments difficult to escape. Life constrains us in ways subtle and obtuse. Yet, within that framework, we all have the agency to calculate, prepare, fight, and control. The possibilities are endless, even if the loops conform around the edge of inevitability. 

We all die the same. The universe, as far as we know, is not unique.

But what if we were unbounded? What would immortality look like? Devoid of the constraints of fate, would we see patterns all the same? Or would the infinite canvas of possibility paralyze? What is something without circumstance, subject to the whims of only itself? Is that the holy? Does it remain such if the self defines?

Me, personally, I like rolling them dice every once in a while. It's fun! And you never know what'll happen until you do. 

​Ray ​

​I can see the whole history of the human race,
It's carved right there, on your face - 

Ahoy Mythopoeians!

Another month, anothertragedy. The United States burns as injustice and unrest swirl together in a volatile cocktail all too predictable. The divisions sowed in our deep rooted righteousness propagate into fury and indignation producing hate so despised.

Alas, alas...

Black and White. Order and Chaos. Conscious and Unconscious. War and Peace. A divide is the easiest and most recognizable of the patterns of the symbolic we filter our understanding from whence all others derive. So goes my yibber yabber as I selfishly seek to understand why.

Four years ago, Vince gifted me The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. I, being the pompous and selfish git that I am, did not open the book until this month. It was assigned as reading in the 11th grade, but I was one of those kids who relied on summation to enrich analysis in a process known as bullshit. So, for the longest time I dismissed the book, the gift, thinking that I already understood the contents therein. 

How wrong I was. Campbell's work is presented as a mix of story guide, academic analysis, and self-help book, all culminating in a experience that touches on the religious, universal; simple, and profound. It's one of those books whose meaning grows deeper the more I learn - about myself, my craft, and the world around me. Writing is the process of rewriting, as understanding is the process reexamining, and -- I write about this stuff a lot, don't I? 

So yeah, I've been thinking a lot about symbols lately with a definite slant towards the simple ones. In terms of creative output, it's been a great month. We've wandered the endless expanse of the Wastes, searched for treasure in the depths of a trash bin, and transcribed the rules that govern a universe. 

All of which seems somewhat trivial as the world around us burns.

Will we ever know peace? Realize the dreams of a better tomorrow? Is paradise an idea we can only conceptualize, to be imagined but never realized, cursed by our own selfish relativity? And what happens when we can climb no higher, when our hands breach the vault of heaven itself?   

I suppose we live to find out. 
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Ray ​

Hey Folks! 

We recently put up artist submissions over on our email: submissions@mythopoeia.us. We went through all of the regular comic channels, which to us looked like /r/comicbookcollabs, Deviant Art, the Facebook group Connecting Comic Book Artists and Writers, and the old stomping grounds of Digital Webbing! 

Looking for artists is always a fun experience for us. We love looking through portfolios and seeing what kind of new talent is out there. That said, thought I'd explore a little what we think makes a good portfolio and what should be included when looking for art jobs. 

So all of this is just from our experience over the years and our preferences. There's not a single format for these things. Okay? Alright. Here we go.
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The instructions are always the first test to any job postings. Oftentimes employers will ask you to format your email in a specific way and to only send samples to a specific email. Make sure you follow the instructions to the letter. 

For our submissions, we will only look at the email: submissions@mythopoeia.us. If you send us a direct message or send your portfolio to other emails we will ignore them for the most part. Don't do that. Sometimes we'll ask to give the email a specific title. This is a test to make sure you follow the instructions.

​For any sort of job or formal application, make sure to always read the instructions carefully. 

Your submission should consist of a short cover letter and a clear link to a professional portfolio. Your portfolio should be easy to navigate and contain all of the samples you'd like to show on one page.

Oftentimes, we'll get multiple links to individual art. While we still look at those portfolios, it leaves a bad first impression. We go through hundreds of portfolios every time we post. The easier you make it for us to go through them, the more favorable our opinion is. 

Chances are if you send multiple links we'll only click on one of them, and oftentimes we don't click on the first one.  The only way to make sure we see what you want us to see is by sending one link, clearly indicated in a cover letter or as an attachment. 

Introduce yourself and how you found the job posting and why you think you would be good for the job. No need to go crazy here - maybe 200 words maximum. Still, it's nice getting a feel for who we're talking to and is much preferred over just a blank email with an attachment.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, don't write an entire essay. Like in life and dating, if you make it known you want something really bad it can come off as desperate. 

We can tell within ten seconds whether or not a portfolio is going to make it to the next round. That's why we recommend keeping your portfolio simple and clean and to make your best samples the most prominent.  Although separate from the technical aspects of art, if you show strong design skills in the layout of your portfolio it shows strong visible sensibilities which is always a plus.

At the end of the day it's about the art. If you have the goods, the above is sometimes optional but still an indication of professionalism. Make sure you have a varied portfolio that shows different aspects and techniques. For comic sequentials, here's what we think is important:

• Framing
• Expressions
• Anatomy
• Movement
• Background 
• Perspective

If you're looking to work in comics, we highly suggest having work that covers the technical know-how above. We recommend having between 5-8 piece in your portfolio. Anything more than that probably won't get a look. And although we're not artists ourselves, we usually can tell when there is a technical deficiency in work. 

A common mistake we see is relying two much on one character / two character composition in the form of pinups or covers. Those are great, but make sure if you want to work in sequentials to show you can frame and draw perspective too. It doesn't necessarily have to be a sequential page, but we need to see that in your work. 

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Thank you everyone who submitted! We love seeing artists work and wish we had time to respond each and every one of you. Hope this was useful to somebody. Keep working on honing that craft!

Ray

For educational purposes, for this post I'd like to focus in and do a deep dive on one of the best episodes of Avatar and, in my opinion, a turning for the entire series:

 "The Blue Spirit"
written by  
Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.

Read the story breakdown here. ​
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If you found this useful and would like to try the exercise yourself, I've written out my methodology below as an assignment: 
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Story Breakdown Assignment

Writing can mostly be broken down into three phases: reading, writing, and reflection. We read to be inspired, write to practice the craft, and reflect both consciously and subconsciously to deepen our ideas and understanding. 

This exercise will combine all three in an active analysis assignment. Watch an episode of television that you love and break it down using the following methodology:
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1. Outline - As you’re watching, reconstruct the outline of an episode scene by scene. Make sure to write it down!
2. Storylines - Once you have the outline written out, take a highlighter and highlight each distinct storyline contained within each scene of the episode with a different color. 
3. Premise - Now that you can visually see the different storylines, summarize each one in 1-2 sentences at the top of the document. 
4. Stakes - Below the premises, further break the story down into INTERNAL, EXTERNAL, and PHILOSOPHICAL stakes.  The external are all the action bits, the internal is the subtext motivating your characters, and the philosophical explores abstract values (I like to phrase the philosophical as a VS. statement or a question).
5. Notes - After you’ve done all of the above, write down your stream of consciousness notes / other things you noticed while working on the assignment. Things that were interesting to you for your future self! 

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Hope you found this useful.  

​Happy writing everyone!

​Ray 

Happy May Mythopoeians!
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The weather is warmer, the people are restless, and our world is slowly but surely reopening. That is incredibly worrying, given that our closest historical analogue, the Spanish Flu of 1918, saw three waves of infection, with the largest coming in the fall of 1918 after the initial social distancing implemented in March 1918 was eased just in time for the summer. Sound familiar? 

The truth is that as a whole, humans in 2020 are dealing with this latest plague tremendously well, at least from a historical context. It certainly doesn't feel that way, but as of today 253,381 people have died from COVID19 around the world. If this were 1918, the number would probably be much higher. Modern technology has allowed us to share information about the virus and its spread in unprecedented ways. That of course has its own slew of problems which we are also seeing played out through information warfare between China and the USA and the future of privacy looking rather cyberpunk. 

Which brings me to today's topic... the News of the Day. I don't know about you, but after two months of vigorously absorbing almost any and all news about the virus, I'm just fatigued. That's despite the number of infections going up and only a few indicators that things have gotten better since March. We are an impatient species, but the virus has no use for the social anxiety that's resulted in us being forced to stay inside. It moves and spreads and kills regardless. Consuming news is a choice... one that we make on a daily basis. The news is a form of story that reports the truth, but is not in and of itself the truth. 

Finding the truth requires a lot of thought. Asking where the news is coming from, the facts being reported, and cross checking with other sources to see if others are corroborating what's being said. Many of the loudest demagogues will purport this same process of critical thinking.... only to willfully or complicity spread their ignorance to others.

Chinese history is said to be one of unification and dissolution. We come together, we fall apart, same as it ever was. same as it ever will be. I was reading Ram V and Sumit Kumar's excellent These Savage Shores recently, and came across a similar sentiment expressed in its depiction of colonial India. Ancient lands, long shattered, forever one. 

The advent of the digital age has allowed us to see this same cycle of unification, dissolution, and unification in quicker and quicker cycles as information is shared, authority is decentralized, and truth is shattered into a thousand narrow shards. Pessimistically, it seems  people draw comfort these days in uniting under the ugliest common denominator. All of which we experience is through a human lens that, limited to just one lifetime, yearns to seek progress, change, blame, and fault, all under the auspices of  an egocentric worldview -- surely, we have sacrificed these past few months.  Surely there is a reason, a plot, a blame! 

Nope. Disease knows no borders, holds no grudges. It enters and kills and cannot be seen with mortal senses. Just because you, Ray, are tired of hearing about it doesn't mean it's not still happening. I write this to remind myself heading into this summer of tentative easing, while I wait and fear when the next domino will fall.

Ray