ginatopia | An Illustration Blog

Uninspiration

by Gina | Feb 21, 2023 | Blog | 0 Comments

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As usual, I may have overestimated my abilities to… do things. I’m still reading Red, White and Royal Blue, and the book club is next wednesday. If I can crank those two out within the next week, I’ll be alright.

My brain just sort of… gave up this week. On Friday, even thinking about working on things made me want to nap. And when I get like that, it’s usually an indication that I’m sort of burnt out on creating, and it’s actually more productive to let my brain rest a bit. So over the weekend, I just decided not to do anything creative. Not draw. Not write. Not even be inspired. No thoughts, only vibes.

[Spoilers for Ant Man And The Wasp: Quantamania]

Saturday I went and saw Ant Man 3 and it was… not good? I mean it wasn’t like, offensively bad. But there were so many script issues – like, Janet, pleASE JUST TELL THEM WHAT’S GOING ON. Every time they asked a valid question of her, she’d just stare longingly into nothing and say “we don’t have time.” Girl, we are LITERALLY IN THE QUANTUM REALM, it is TOO LATE FOR THAT. Also the scene cuts were super jarring. Enough that I, an idiot, noticed. It wasn’t until later on when I was reading a discussion thread about it that I learned that’s an indication of poor editing. So, I guess the editing was bad.
Good things? Um… I stan Jonathan Majors. Jentorra made me want to work out more. Always good to see William Jackson Harper. Loved the ants. And omg LOKIIIIIIIII! My love.

Uhhhh and that’s about all for the highlights. It turned out that it was very easy to stay uninspired while watching that movie. It gets 1 out of 5 ants.

BOOKS

by Gina | Feb 2, 2023 | Blog | 0 Comments

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Have I mentioned that I actually have a New Year Resolution? No? Well let me tell you: my resolution is to read all the books that I’ve been supposed to read. Books that were gifted to me, books that I own but never opened, books that I started to read, enjoyed reading, then simply… forgot to read ever again? There’s a sad amount of those. I’ve done pretty well so far and finished 3.5 books by February 2nd. For me, that’s pretty darn good. I finished The Fifth Season (the first book of The Broken Earth series) into the New Year, then immediately finished the last two. I also joined a new book club, where we read The Stroke of Winter. I had mixed feelings on it – the characters were flat but overall it was a nice, cozy read.

I have a P L A N for my readings coming up, and it goes in order:

Red, White and Royal Blue (Casey McQuiston) – is next because it was gifted to me by one of my best friends and I’m tired of getting yelled at for not reading it yet. (Also it seems v. v. cute.)
The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Le Guin) – as a fantasy enthusiast, it’s frankly messed up that I haven’t read any Ursula Le Guin, so we’re going to remedy that asap. I want to read a fantasy here because the next couple will need to be romances:
Welcome to Temptation (Jennifer Crusie) – My new book club book needs to be read by February 28th. Romance isn’t typically my go-to, but it’s a LOT of people’s go-to. I find value in reading many different genres, and Crusie is one of my favorite romance authors.
Untamed (Glennon Doyle) – a book gifted to me by a sweet friend. She said this book helped her a LOT in her life struggles, and I feel like an ass for not reading it yet. So this one needs to be up in the queue.
The Blood King (Gail Martin) – back to fantasy (ope there goes gravity) Another book gifted to me (man, I have good friends.) This is book #2 that I COULDN’T FIND FOR YEARS and I finally have it and I need to finish it.
The Killing Moon (N.K. Jemisin) – Jemisin… may be my favorite fantasy author atm? I adored her writing style in The Broken Earth trilogy and I would like more please, thank you. The other ones I want to get to quickly but I’m also very anxious to get back into her fascinating worlds written in lovely prose.

So this is a pretty good mixture of genres, and a good mixture of books that other people want me to read vs. books I want to read. (That sounds like there is no overlap, but this venn diagram is pretty much a circle. I DO want to read them all.) So I guess these are the goals for February? Considering I read 3.5 books in January, I’d say this goal is… challenging. I don’t totally expect to hit, but hey – we can dream.

Writing and also kitchenware

by Gina | Jan 31, 2023 | Blog | 0 Comments

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I discovered a new method of outlining my story: DIGITAL STICKY NOTES. There’s a website called miro.com that I’ve been using, though I’m sure there’s tons of other similar ones. Because my ambition – however futile – is to make an episodic series of comics, I wanted an easy way to outline my “season.” I tried doing it in a simple word doc, but it became a bit too cumbersome to scroll up and down through the document. And because I’ve never done the Sticky Note Method before, digital made sense so I can edit and play around with what system I like best without wasting paper/time.

Below is a very blurry example of my system:

So normally on the left I’d have my “ideas” sticky notes, where I plop random scenes that I know I want in there at some point, but have no where to put them. I forgot to add that to this fake example I made, and I don’t feel like reuploading the image, so please feel free to use your MiNd’S eYe. Anyway, my “ideas” section keeps the thoughts alive without me having to worry about changing my wholeass story to make them work. As far as the actual episode: each sticky note is it’s own scene, and the colored tabs are the characters in each scene. I also have different shapes for settings, random story notes, stuff like that. Then, of course, that’s just one “episode” – I’ll have a whole line of them for each season.

This process is subject to change, but it hasn’t failed me yet! “Yet” as in, the two days I’ve been doing this.

My goal is to get the season outline done by Friday – or at least the first draft of it. Once the story is in place, I’ll start the script writing. I keep going back and forth on tone – do I want it to be like a Network TV kind of sitcom? Or maybe more like FX style sitcoms? I’m kind of thinking the latter – something like Always Sunny or What We Do In The Shadows. I also love Community. Basically, I want it Weird and Dark and filled to the brim with Kind Of Shitty People. That’s the goal.

So: what I should be focused on is outlining my season storyline for my comic.

What I’m actually focused on: REPLACING EVERY PART OF MY KITCHEN. I’ve been reading about how terrible plastic utensils and nonstick cookware is. Guess what our kitchen is entirely made up of? And look, it’s probably fine to keep it as is. But we’ve also had this stuff forever, a lot of it doesn’t work as well as it once did. It’s time. And yet… the amount of money it would cost to replace everything is… upsetting. So we’re going to start with a few things:

-A stainless steel pan
-A cast iron pan
-A stainless steel stock pot
-Metal utensils

We have a few nonstick stuff that we can just keep and replace eventually, but overall I think it’s a good start. Also: I would like a salad spinner. And so, I’m going to Bed, Bath and Beyond today to spend most of my coins. Then I’ll go home, and spend the rest of my coins on stainless steel stuff that I need to order online. And then hopefully this hyperfixation can end and I can get back to the important thing: my made up story about ghosts.

hello!

by Gina | Jan 18, 2023 | Blog | 0 Comments

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ginatopia is an online brand that will be housing all the stuff I, Ms. Gina Topia, is working on. I’ve had this domain for probably close to 7 years and for the new year, I’ve decided to revamp it. This website feels kind of like an old, shitty house filled with rats and ghosts. I’ve decided to gut this house, and now I’m in the middle of the empty, unfinished space staring at it, wondering what I should do with it.

So… let me brainstorm what I want to do with this place. The thing is, I always have lots of projects that never get finished. I’m kind of hoping that if I use this as some sort of ~*hub*~, and am able to see the things I’m working on get Actually Published, it may inspire me to keep going.

Things I will post, if my executive dysfunction allows:
Writing excerpts for my projects. Prologues, deleted scenes, stuff like that.
Art – sketches, finalized pieces
Blog posts – Little updates on my life.

And that’s basically it! Just a place for me to output the stuffs in my head that won’t break my brain the way social media does.

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Uninspiration

BOOKS

Writing and also kitchenware

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BOOKS

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