Watercolor funtimes!

Tomorrow is mail day, so today became a full-on commission grind day.

Here's Max the board gamer. Oh man, I would *love* to do a Precocious parody of Clue - but I know that would never work in a strip format. So, all you producers out there, time to pick up Precocious and turn it into an animated series. (While we're at it, someone grab Lauren Faust to redo the character designs. THIS CAN'T FAIL.)

And here's our darling sea turtle. I painted it while watching cartoons. I'm totally an adult, you guys!

Oh, wait. That's true. I have to be an adult now and pack up everything tonight for mailing. Noooooooooo.

Max being Max

Here be sketches for the next watercolor! The idea here is for Max just being all Max-ish and sweet. Well, there were a few ideas and I panicked and ran away from them, mostly because I didn't feel confident in matching those poses to the watercolor paper's format.

For some reason I locked in on Max holding things. We have his dreaded peanut butter delights on the right, and a board game - Murder Mystery (featuring familiar faces on the box?) - on the left. I like the pouty Max on the bottom, but it's probably not right for this project. Sound of Music Max was just me screwing around.

I'll sketch more Max later if needed. Gonna work on cast page stuff for the rest of the night. (No, it won't be ready for a while. It's a LOT of work, guys.)

Awkward Max is awkward

Commissions may be closed for now, but I still have a few left over that need attention! Here's the Max watercolor for your approval.

I'm not sure how active this blog will be the rest of the month, since most of my work is for the book and can't be shared yet, but I hope to have *something* up every few days. Don't lose faith in me, folks!

Thumbs up!

Here are some sketches for another commission, this one featuring Max and his uneasy smile of deception, with bonus thumbs up!

Sing sing sing!

Here's one potential outcome of the dare from today's strip! (#914)

I'm not sure if it'd be funnier if Max was a good singer or a bad one. I'll leave that up to the readers! (I also open this image up to photoshoppers who want to throw in their own lyrics.)

Max Power

Here is the colored version of the Max commission. I hope you guys like this color, because it took me four tries to get something I liked and I'm out of any usable prints. (I can still redo it easy enough if the printer cooperates.)

As usual, the color quality of this one isn't great because all the colors are faint. This is the best photo I could get. My scanner, I remind you, is designed for black and while line art - so it dropped out ALMOST EVERYTHING when I tried to scan it! Scanner, I love you, but you only do one thing well.

Battling midnight

*Phew* barely made it this time. I swear, midnight comes earlier every day! *My* days are from when I wake to when I sleep... but all these deadlines don't agree with me! Ahh, but my heroics pulled it off in the end!

Here is the line art for the Arbiter of Information commission. We have Max in his open, nice guy pose. Now the drawing goes for review, and if it's approved we move on to the coloring stage! For that, I am open to ideas. I have no idea how Max's outfit is colored. In my mind, it was white and gray - but that could be boring. Is that his regular red shirt under the robe, or is it something more color coordinated? Is his staff thingy gold, silver or what? This is why I make multiple copies of the linework. It lets me experiment.

The Arbiter of Information

So here's the sketches for my latest commission, which is about... well, you can guess that. Click the image for a larger version.

Family gets in the way of everything

So I'm back in DC again, on short notice and for a short visit, and I am once again shocked at how much time family eats up! I had sketches to do, dammit!

OK so it was good fun and nice bonding. STILL! I was counting on some down time to catch up. If I owe you an email or some sketches, I apologize. Email will have to wait until tomorrow, and the best I could sketch in the small window I had is seen above. (I will do better tomorrow.)

Today has been full of dark omens and miscues. For one, I have been trying to get in contact with my admissions counselor at SCAD. She called me and the message on the machine was simply "call me back." WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!? Freaking out, I call her back. Get her voice mail. I leave a message and try again a few hours later. Voice mail. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. I cannot reach this woman who is tormenting me with her elusiveness. AM I IN OR NOT!? Argh, gotta get on the road.

When I tried to shut down my computer so I could get on the road, Microsoft decided that would be the time to do 15 farking updates! While it did its thing, I went to talk to my mother (who was there recovering from a major medical miscue that ruined HER day) to kill time. After a while, I went back to find my computer powered off. Ok, so it's done! I pack up and drive to DC, encountering MAJOR ROADWORK - followed by MORE MAJOR ROADWORK with a chaser of MAJOR ROADWORK! One lane roads 4evah!

I get to my grandparents place and the first thing I see is a pot of dead basil. It seems my bro was trying to care for his girlfriend's plants while she was out of the country. He failed. So dead plants. What a welcome!

I get inside and no one seems to be around. This is a house of elders, so I assumed they were taking naps. I head upstairs to see my grandmother and aunt are no where to be seen. I decide to check on my Alzheimer's grandfather only to walk in on him getting a sponge bath from his nurse. Awesome. You know what, I'm going to skip the introduction and go set up my computer.

Power on. Booting up. KABLAMMO! There is gibberish on my screen instead of the welcome screen. AWW FUDGE! I power it down and start it again. "Windows did not start properly, would you like to run the diagnostic?" Sure. By this time, my grandmother and aunt are back from the store, so I go up and visit for a bit with them. I come back down a few minutes later to see a new error message telling me I am completely screwed and the only solution is to do a system restore. I say no. It again says the error cannot be fixed by Microsoft and my computer is ruined forever. GODDAMMITSOMUCH! Those updates blew up my computer!

So I do what any rational person would do. I refuse to listen to Microsoft and try to reboot again. The screen goes black. I wait. It flickers. I wait. It flickers some more. I get worried.

"Now configuring updates 1 of 3"

*facepalm* So either I mistakenly unplugged and packed up my computer before it was done updating, or Microsoft decided to fail miserably and pile on. At least my computer works now, NO THANKS TO THE DAMN UPDATES!

Relieved my computer actually works, I go back upstairs to listen to my aunt talk about her magical trip to Australia. (Jealousy!) Grandma calls down that a friend of the family is coming over. Yay! Then she comes down to announce another friend of the family is coming. Double yay! Also, overwhelming! We socialize for a while. Bro comes home and replaces one of the friends who had to leave. We party well into the evening before breaking up.

Now I have only two hours and change to get everything done by midnight. Bro then extends the invitation to watch Battlestar Galactica with him. Oh hell, I am not turning that down! I love BSG, and bro bonding is nice. (Here is where I learn that my arrival was very inconvenient for him as he's hosting an all-weekend geekfest in my room. Whoops.) I try to sketch during BSG, but nothing I get is great. It's time for his bed, I break away, and here I am.

I am exhausted!

Do a little dance

As promised, and - er- forgotten, here is yet another painting post - with the painting looking very similar to the last version... but more finishedish! It's not totally done yet, but it's very close. Yes, it should be done, but - heh - I just noticed I forgot to paint the bottom border! That's minor, but it means no signature yet. (Glad I caught that now...)

I can't believe I still have the painting around here. I blame the snow. Ever since snowmageddon hit, I've been on a perpetual snow day - even though it barely impacted my normal life. I live like a shut in! My bedroom is my studio! I had no place to go! But, still, it felt like time off, and KNOWING I couldn't leave led to the required stir crazy feelings. Now that the snow is finally clearing, I emerge blinking and confused, wondering where the last 10 days went.

Finishing touches on unfinished touches

Work on the dance commission continues, and it's time to hammer out the final details before the finishing layer. This is always the two steps forward, one step back part of painting, as each new touch requires a new touch-up to fix.

Starting with Dionne, her dress now has texture, a proper nose and lighter hair. I'm not sure I like the dress effects yet, so I may knock 'em all out and try again. The rest looks good and should only need some finishing. For Max, I did as promised and changed the pants to brown. I think it's a good base, but it needs another coat. His tie will be more red in the final, so worry not. I just threw in some burgundy while I had it out to serve as a placeholder.

Once the paint has a chance to dry, and I finish watching this Caps game, I'll return to the good fight and touch-up some more. This painting should be finished this weekend!

Formal fashion

Work on the Dionne/Max commission continues! Look at Max's surprisingly awful suit! Yeah, gotta fix that. I'm thinking changing the pants to brown would do wonders. Dionne is sporting mauve, which looks better on the painting than in this picture, but still needs some accents. (Burgundy?)

Fashion choices aside, things are progressing nicely. The background should be set, which is nice. Lots of places need touching up - some need a couple paint attacks to make right - but it's looking good!

Dancing Now

Haven't checked in with my Dionne/Max commission in a while, so here we go! As you can see, most of the main colors are down and I'm rapidly approaching the "repaint everything" stage where all the blotchiness become pure color bliss. If you would like to picture the final in your mind, I'm looking at making Max's suit a lightened Prussian blue.

I'm really happy with how this is progressing, and hope to get it done soon. It won't be done by the end of the month as I planned, but that was before I took a week off to wait for the projector. (Worth it!)

Now the unsexy work continues. Painting aside, I have to work on next week's comics, get back to writing character bios (I haven't forgotten) and write some of my Shepherd professors for grad school stuff. This is just the immediate stuff! I have business cards and postcards and t-shirts and the Precocious book and... ACK! Let's just savor the niceness of the painting for now, ok?

I have a new toy!

Behold: Yet another artist's tool has been added to my inventory! I can has projector! (Thanks goes to Darc of Code Name: Hunter for the recommendation.) Now I can... project things!

First project: Throwing Max and Dionne up on my wall to start on my next commission project! Turns out I have no idea what I'm doing with this thing, but it was cool to have the device anyway! After doing it the inefficient way - this thing doesn't seem to have a focus, so I have to MOVE THE WALL - I got it all to work. Turns out all I need to do was accidentally knock it on the floor and have it fall apart. Oh, *that's* how it works! (Reading the instruction manual never entered into the equation.)

Actual work on the painting begins tomorrow, I assume. I say assume because today I assumed I'd get Sunday's Precocious done. Then I slept past my alarm. SEVEN HOURS past it. Ye gods! I think that's a record. Well, I have nice long night of consciousness ahead of me in which I can catch up...

Can I have this dance?

Here are some proposal sketches for yet another commission! This time we have Dionne and Max at some formal social event thingy, and aren't they acting cute? Rich people have all the class!

Dionne and Max have an interesting friendship, considering they couldn't be more opposite. I think of it as a common ground friendship common to youth, where friendships are often based on proximity more than anything. It's only when we get older and set in our ways that we become more selective about who we party with. Despite being the embodiments of good and evil, there's plenty of common ground. They're both smart, and in the same smarty class. Both of their families have money, landing both of them in the ritzy Diamond Bluffs. They've probably been put together for as long as both have lived in Gemstone Estates, so why not do something with it! Hey, opposites attract, right?

Actually, let's stop right there. I'm going to sink this ship before it sets sail. When I created these characters, I limited them to doggie or kitty forms. One reason for that was the knowledge that if I added in any more species, people would start identifying them BY species - and I didn't want that. They may have cute animal forms, but they act and are treated like people. That being said, I didn't choose their forms willy nilly. Max and Dionne are both elite animals (wolf and cheetah-ish) because they're the elite kids, for example. Another use of the duels species is that I could determine compatibility. Most pairs are dog-cat for a reason - to stop the shippers! Dogs and cats together = MASS HYSTERIA! They're not supposed to be together IN THAT WAY. Bud and Autumn will never have romantic tension, and neither will Jacob/Tiffany, Dionne/Max or Kaitlyn/Quincy. It is not that kind of comic!

Not that this coding STOPS anyone, but at least I tried!

No takebacks! (Or are there?)

It's time for more experiments with a pen! Once again I'm sketching without a net! If I make a mistake, it's there. Nothing can erase ink! Ink owns all!

Ok, fine, I can still photoshop out some screwups - namely the right Max and Roddy, which were the first two sketches done, of course. It takes time to warm up! That's how it works for all of them. On the right is my first pen attempt, with the follow-up on the left. (It's a left-handed thing.) As you can see, just a bit of practice and I did get better. Go me!

I like these sketches because it's always fun to get into the Precocious supporting cast. Scripting is underway for the next big storyline, and these things give everyone a time to shine. (Bonus: I also FINALLY have next week's strips scripted. I cut that awful close.) Now I'm ready to start churning away at the strips, ideally building up a buffer - but there's a big difference between having the next 14 strips SCRIPTED and having them DONE. Motivation, I chose you!

Please?

Untapped rivalries

I've spent so long playing the us vs them game, that I've only touched upon the underlying personal rivalries. This is a consequence of me still being in introductory mode, and my world building like a mofo.

I can simply state that Autumn hates Max, but that's lazy and cheap. I need to show why, and I need to do it MORE THAN ONCE A YEAR. Hey, when you have a universe as complex as mine, it takes a while to get back to these things! As I've whined about this before, nothing in the future is dependent on this (one sided) rivalry being known or not known, nor do the Bud-Dionne, Jacob-Suzette rivalries have much importance for now. Still, I want to be able to tap that resource should I desire it. Looks like I have to up my storytelling skills!

Supporting cast parade!

Do you know how hard it is to draw a bunch of characters together? (Wait until you see the nightmare that I faced for Sunday's strip.) Oh, I wish I was a simple, talking head comic some days...

Shiny happy people holding hands

Why do I set myself up for this? This Sunday strip is expanding rapidly, now featuring a giant shot of the class - in what should be a full class shot. Oh, SCREW THAT! I have neither the patience nor the skill to draw 15 desks and 13 kids spread among the desks with a few in the center forming a discussion group. WHY DO I SCRIPT THESE THINGS?

So here is my first attempt at a compromise. Forget the damn desks - they pushed them all back so EVERYONE can join in the discussion group. And they sparkle, because in comic visual language, that means EVIL CUTE! (Because Bud and Kaitlyn holding hands isn't enough of a sign that evil reigns.)

Max Power

“Max Zeit — he's the man whose name you'd love to touch...
But, you mustn't touch!
His name sounds good in your ear
But when you say it, you mustn't fear
Because his name can be said by anyone!”

(Yes, this is a filler post. I have the funeral today, damn it! Be glad you get anything at all!)