Dave McNair. “Tale of Woe: The death of the VQR’s Kevin Morrissey.” The Hook.

Were it not for the feeble health of my wife, and sudden departure of [my adoptive son] Louis, I should remain here at least a year, and do earnest missionary work in behalf of Spiritualism. I am stopping in an excellent family, Victor B. Post’s; the spirits have named them’Peace and Harmony.’ These, with many other dear friends, entreat me to remain another year; but duty calls me home. ” I must tell you, by the way, that I have formed the acquaintance of Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham; met her in the lunatic asylum, Stockton, California. She is the matron; End her brilliant, solid intellect, boundless benevolence, and deep comprehension of principles, charmed me. During several evenings, she read from unpublished volumes she is preparing, -read me select passages from Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass,’ and several European poets. She told me she delivered the first lecture upon Spiritualism ever given in California. She spoke highly of you, Mary F. Davis, and others of her sex laboring for woman and the great interests of reform. And, only think, – little, anxious, jealous souls, hardly worthy to unloose her shoe-latches, have tried to traduce this great, noble woman. Blessings upon her! I’m proud I ever clasped her hand, a prelude to abiding friendship.

Joseph O Barrett. The Spiritual Pilgrim: a Biography of James M. Peebles. 3rd ed. (Boston: William White and Company. Banner of Light Office, 158 Washington Street, 1872), 81.

…with the majority of them, the very fact of their being sailors, argues a certain recklessness and sensualism of character, ignorance, and depravity; consider that they are generally friendless and alone in the world; or if they have friends and relatives, they are almost constantly beyond the reach of their good influences… consider that by their very vocation they are shunned by the better classes of people, and cut off from all access to respectable and improving society…

There are classes of men in the world, who bear the same relation to society at large, that the wheels do to a coach: and are just as indispensable. But however easy and delectable the springs upon which the insiders pleasantly vibrate: however sumptuous the hammer-cloth, and glossy the door-panels; yet, for all this, the wheels must still revolve in dusty, or muddy revolutions. No contrivance, no sagacity can lift them out of the mire; for upon something the coach must be bottomed; on something the insiders must roll.

Now, sailors form one of these wheels: they go and come round the globe; they are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks; of fruits and wines and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors, opera-singers, armies, merchants, tourists, and scholars to their destination: they are a bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are the primum mobile of all commerce; and, in short, were they to emigrate in a body to man the navies of the moon, almost every thing would stop here on earth except its revolution on its axis, and the orators in the American Congress.

And yet, what are sailors? What in your heart do you think of that fellow staggering along the dock? Do you not give him a wide berth, shun him, and account him but little above the brutes that perish? Will you throw open your parlors to him; invite him to dinner? or give him a season ticket to your pew in church?–No. You will do no such thing; but at a distance, you will perhaps subscribe a dollar or two for the building of a hospital, to accommodate sailors already broken down; or for the distribution of excellent books among tars who can not read. And the very mode and manner in which such charities are made, bespeak, more than words, the low estimation in which sailors are held. It is useless to gainsay it; they are deemed almost the refuse and offscourings of the earth; and the romantic view of them is principally had through romances.

But can sailors, one of the wheels of this world, be wholly lifted up from the mire? There seems not much chance for it, in the old systems and programmes of the future, however well-intentioned and sincere; for with such systems, the thought of lifting them up seems almost as hopeless as that of growing the grape in Nova Zembla…

To which Walt Whitman effectively answered:

I am for those who believe in loose delights—I share
the midnight orgies of young men,
I dance with the dancers, and drink with the drink-
ers,
The echoes ring with our indecent calls,
I take for my love some prostitute—I pick out some
low person for my dearest friend,
He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate—he shall be one
condemned by others for deeds done;
I will play a part no longer—Why should I exile
myself from my companions?
O you shunned persons! I at least do not shun you,
I come forthwith in your midst—I will be your poet,
I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

And:

Then falter not, O book! fulfil your destiny!
You, not a reminiscence of the land alone,
You too, as a lone bark, cleaving the ether—purpos’d I
know not whither—yet ever full of faith,
Consort to every ship that sails—sail you!
Bear forth to them, folded, my love —(Dear mariners!
for you I fold it here, in every leaf;)
Speed on, my Book! spread your white sails, my little
bark, athwart the imperious waves!
Chant on—sail on—bear o’er the boundless blue, from
me, to every shore,
This song for mariners and all their ships.

Brendan Fitzgerald. “VQR editor Ted Genoways retains lawyer as lit mag pushes toward deadline.” Charlottesville News and Arts, #22.32, 08/10/2010 – 08/16/2010.

UPDATE: According to the Chronicle of Education: “After the suicide, the staff members … were told they would be putting together the upcoming fall issue on their own, without Mr. Genoways, who is on leave on a Guggenheim fellowship. But this week, people close to the Review said, Mr. Genoways submitted to the review’s design company a completely different version of the fall issue — with a different cover — than the one staff members had been working on. Now, say people close to the review, the staff members are threatening to take their names off the masthead.”

I don’t know what all this says about the leading lights of Whitman scholarship, but it seems to me that at the very least they are happy to embrace a calculating control freak, as long as he brings in the big Guggenheims.

Perhaps the most promising SVG filters for animation are the lighting and shadow filters. The drop-shadow effect is obviously desirable, and needs no further discussion, except to point out that the offset and the softness of an SVG drop-shadow can be easily changed by replacing numerical values in the SVG code.

More surprising possibilities come from the Diffuse Light and Specular Light filters. These can add a compelling “half a dimension” to flat cartoon characters. And like Drop Shadow, these two effects can be manipulated by changing a few numerical parameters. This is explored in the following Diffuse Light SVG graphic and Specular Light SVG graphic.

Both the demos mentioned above involve SVG vectors, but the effect on bitmaps is similar. In fact, this bitmap was exported from an SVG file which applied the Diffuse Light filter to a transparent PNG of my Walt Whitman Animated character. Not shown is the even more impressive result that comes from adding a Specular Light and Drop Shadow to the same file.

The new body is based upon the G3 Nude avatar. I painted most of the clothing directly on the skin.

The cuffs on the shirt and pants are the Rolled-Up Sleeves from the G3 CloneCloth kit.

The Lower body mesh was resculpted using ZBrush; I improved the abdomen and thighs. The lower pants legs are accessories created from iClone primitives.

The forearms are based upon Superhero Gloves, resculpted in ZBrush.

The beard, hair, and shirt collar were created in Organica.

I extensively experimented with ZBrush to customize the head. I succeeded, technically, but failed, artistically. The previous head, customized using iClone native’s tools, was far superior to anything I could reshape in ZBrush, so I reused it.

The moral of that story is: I believe you can create ANY human likeness inside iClone, as long as you supplement the head with accessories. You don’t need any fancy tool such as ZBrush, Max, Maya, Mudbox, or Hexagon.

The only thing to add is that the color wheel is your friend. I rebalanced the color scheme to include more cool colors to complement the warm.