Hi, I’m Anthony Francis, and I teach robots to learn, particularly deep reinforcement learning for robot navigation as well as the intersection of memory, emotion, and planning for contextual control. …
SO! I love to write, and four of my novels are published – FROST MOON, BLOOD ROCK, LIQUID FIRE, about magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost, and JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE…
So I read a lot and write a lot and occasionally edit what I write and even more rarely, something gets sent to an editor and turned into a publication.…
“Robots in Montreal,” eh? Sounds like the title of a Steven Moffat Doctor Who episode. But it’s really ICRA 2019 – the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, and, yes,…
So, this happened! Our team’s paper on “PRM-RL” – a way to teach robots to navigate their worlds which combines human-designed algorithms that use roadmaps with deep-learned algorithms to control…
SO! There I was, trying to solve the mysteries of the universe, learn about deep learning, and teach myself enough puzzle logic to create credible puzzles for the Cinnamon Frost…
Wow, it’s already here – my flash fiction short story “One Day Your Strength Will Fail” is about to appear in the very first issue of the Bay Area’s new…
Wow. After nearly 21 years, my first published short story, “Sibling Rivalry”, is returning to print. Originally an experiment to try out an idea I wanted to use for a…
Why yes, I’m running a deep learning system on a MacBook Air. Why?
Yep, that’s Python consuming almost 300% of my CPU – guess what, I guess that means this machine has four processing cores, since I saw it hit over 300% –…
(Self-deprecating note: this blogpost is a rough draft of an essay that I’m later planning to refine for the Write to the End site, but I’ve been asked to share…
Let me completely up front about my motivation for writing this post: recently, I came across a paper which was similar to the work in my PhD thesis, but applied…
In many ways, Howard Philips Lovecraft and Jorge Luis Borges are different. Howard Philips Lovecraft wrote dark, atmospheric American horror at the dawn of the twentieth century. Jorge Luis Borges,…
Hey folks, this is a reminder that we still have a Kickstarter going for The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters! While the campaign is running, you can reach it at neurodiversiverse.com or by searching on Kickstarter. This hopeful, empowering anthology explores neurodiverse encounters with aliens, and we'd love your help paying our authors more money (and, if we reach stretch goals, doing an audiobook or even a sequel)!
Okay, technically, this is Photoshoppery, and not a drawing, but it is my art, and it is 2:41am, and I would like to simultaneously announce that if we make $20K on our Kickstarter, we're definitely doing a sequel anthology, and also to announce that I'm very behind on Camp Nano, so I am going to bed.
One thing to note on this (which is composed of our existing art, plus public domain NASA images) is that it can take a variety of different layered images to create the above effect. I cut the original cover artwork into three different pieces to create the original backdrop, and added two more (with 50% opacity erasure of the edges to make the starfields blur together). The stars needed a similar treatment (that's two copies of the binary stars, tilted to make the swooshies work well, which themselves also had to be faded). The cover itself had some filters applied to make the art look like something, but a nonspecific something.
Lots of techniques. Real drawing resumes tomorrow - two of them, to keep up drawing every day.
Focusing on WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY, so here's a quick sketch. It started out as a rando, but I think it evolved into one of the "big three" characters from f@nu fiku---I think this was The Warrior.
Woohoo! The Neurodiversiverse Kickstarter is 50% of the way to our funding goal! We've added reward tiers for the enamel pins (not that we forgot to in the first go-round or anything) and will announce our stretch goals shortly.
Very exciting! Please check out the campaign at neurodiversiverse.com , which links through to the Kickstarter for the duration!
Interestingly, not the same as the previous drawing (see below) - another drawing from the same page, which seems like it might be on the opposite side of the foot, as the tarsals are laid out differently.
Way behind on word count, please enjoy this picture of sushi at One Flew South in the Atlanta airport.
Lots of work to do, not much time left to do it.
-the Centaur
P.S. Oh good grief! This blogpost is having trouble uploading its images, so I'm rabbit-holing on trying to post a simple update, instead of typing words! AAA! Turns out the problem was the wi-fi in this Barnes and Noble Cafe, which allows me to download gobs and gobs of images, but chokes when uploading even relatively small files. I have seen this before at internet cafes and I can't quite tell why that is happening.
Drawn aaalmost completely from memory ... I could see a blurry image of the previous day's drawing through the previous sheet in my notebook ... but this time, with construction lines to help guide me.
I think it turned out far better than the previous effort, even though elements of the previous drawing were more accurate to the original photograph.
You start off drawing what you think you see, then move to drawing what's there. But at some point you should transition beyond that to drawing what will make the viewer see what you saw, which is not necessarily the same as replicating what a camera would have seen in the place of your two eyes.
Mostly flying back from Clockwork Alchemy today (and catching up on wordcount on CITADEL OF GLASS, which I am now thinking is going to be titled THE WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY).
A long day. Regular posts resume tomorrow.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Artwork in the Greenville airport, and a glass of iced tea from One Flew South.
As it says on the tin (well, in the title, and in the word balloon): we went hiking, and now we're heading out for date night. You get a real drawing tomorrow.
Likely out all day today hiking with my wife, so just a quick post for you.
I missed the big dance show at Clockwork Alchemy because I was, frankly, exhausted after the Author Guest of Honor events (and the de-briefing that my co-editor and I had after the con where we tried to figure out what went wrong, what went right, and what to do next). But even then, late late late Saturday night, there were still music acts going - I believe this was Unwoman, who has definitely still got it.
-the Centaur
Pictured: um, I said it, the dance floor at Clockwork Alchemy Saturday night at something like 11:45 pm. In previous years it's been more hopping super late, but now the concerts start earlier at 6:30.
Crashed out after finishing my Camp Nano wordcount for today; full debrief on Clockwork tomorrow. Zzz....
-the Centaur
Pictured: A crow, or perhaps raven, or just a sculptural cartoon average of the two, which is supposed to be a lampholder, instead serving as a book card holder, because his little light was too darn bright.
Woke up at 2:45 am realizing I hadn't drawn today. Same idea as two days ago, informed by the comic-book style from one day ago, but done in a consciously cartoony style that abstracts away the details, like a Bill Holbrook drawing. I like how it turned out, though it isn't a substitute for planning for success.
The drawing at the top took not much longer than the drawing at the bottom left, even though it looks way more like the drawing at the bottom right.
Drawing every day, even if I've forgotten to.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Cinnamon. It took about as long to draw this one
Friday was slow, but Saturday was a pretty damn good day at Clockwork Alchemy. I have wordcount on Camp Nano and a late night event to attend, so I'll give a fuller update tomorrow.
-the Centaur
Pictured: the "Louie", a very nice variant of an Old Fashioned unique to the San Mateo Marriott "Craft / Code" bar, which is going out of business next week as the hotel is closing.
Technically, still a quick sketch, but this shows the difference between drawing in the late evening at a leisurely pace set by the drawing, and drawing at 2am at a pace set by exhaustion.
Literally fell asleep twice trying to finish the blogging today before I got to the drawing, here's as fast a sketch as I could do of Cinnamon, goodnight.
So we had a great first day at Clockwork Alchemy! I got a great Guest of Honor banner for my table, and we had a delightful Tea with the Author Guest of Honor in the con's amazing Tea Room!
My co-editor for The Neurodiversiverse, Liza Olmsted (far left on the picture below), was on an #ownvoices panel, which was very informative! I particularly liked her quote:
The world is so much more beautiful with intersectionality ... everything is so much more nuanced."
Liza Olmsted
"Intersectionality" is a funky word for the simple concept that people aren't a single attribute, like "black" or "women" or "gay" but that each person is a combination of all these things - and discrimination isn't just additive, but can compound in interesting ways. In one famous court case, for example, a court ruled that a group of black women weren't discriminated against because the company had hired a lot of black men (in a factory setting) and a lot of white women (in an office setting) thus improving the percentage of blacks in the factory and women in the office - but the point was, the women were being discriminated against for being black and women at the same time, and the court was essentially arguing you couldn't be one or the other. But, if you acknowledge that people can be more than one thing, you can take their distinctive appearances into account into how you treat them, rather than sweeping it under the rug.
Neurodiversiverse author Clara Ward dropped by and left us a few of her new book, "Be the Sea", which is (as I gathered from discussions) a climatepunk story featuring neurodiverse and nonbinary characters. I worked with Clara before on Doorways to Extra Time and we're excited to have her back for this one!
We hope to see you tomorrow at the con! Next up, Steampunk Vehicles, Bringing Anthologies to Life, and the world premiere reading of "Jeremiah Willstone and the Choir of Demons"!
Clockwork Alchemy is tomorrow, but my wife and I took the evening off to go to our favorite vegan restaurant (and best restaurant in the Bay Area) Millennium.
It's great, but we hung out there so long we closed the place out almost!
Woohoo! We're well on our way, and only a few days in! Like, share and back us, folks, so we can bring this project to life and maybe even reach our stretch goals to do a second anthology!