"Commiepingo" takes on new meaning...

Holy cow, guys, check this out! Precocious has been Russianized!

What's the most striking about this discovery is that it's been done really, really well. Everything's been translated, down to t-shirts, mugs and background writing. When I use puns, there's a note in Russian on the comic explaining it. The guy doing the translation is excellent! Good job, Nox!

I know, I know. Technically, this is stealing my content. That should be a no-no. But... but they put in so much effort to do this. Almost all of Precocious' strips have been translated at this point, and that's a huge number! Someone had to care enough about the strip to put in that phenomenal amount of work.

On one hand, it's not fair that I don't get a chance to profit off my work. On the other hand, it's not like those who need to read the strip in Russian would ever be readers without this. Maybe I can make them show my Project Wonderful ads or something...

Stolen pen therapy

Today was yet another visit to the dentist - I go back AGAIN next week! - in my long progression of fixing my awful mouth. This time a second shot of Novocain (or a similar drug) was needed to keep me from screaming. I react oddly to that stuff. Now I get to wait and see what happens to me. Will I pass out? I hope not. Novocain's given me a case of the snoozes before, but I'm seeing a friend later so that would be inconvenient. Will it fade soon? That second shot means I could have a mush-mouthed dinner. (As or now, my mouth is a dribble glass!) What if it does fade? So far, I haven't taken these drillings well in the pain department. I guess I've become a dental wuss.

The shining light of this whole crusade is the spiffy pens I keep swiping! This time I was a POLITE thief. I told the receptionist I was taking the pen. "Oh... ok." Score! That's three in my collection now! Hey, I think losing a $2 pen after I paid my more-than-$2 bill is a worthwhile trade-off for them.

Using a pen to sketch is akin to doing a crossword puzzle in ink - there are no takebacks! I can't draw my guidelines and circles - I have to nail the sketch on the first try. This is good practice for me, should I ever make it onto the convention scene. Pencil sketches fade away, but ink sketches last! If I can improve my ink drawing, then I can con with increased confidence! It's also plain-old fun to mess around with a quality drawing instrument. I'm a cheapskate, so these high class $2 pens are normally beyond my spending. (It's not like I have a job, here. Money is precious!)

Toss your kid in the air day!

See! I haven't forgotten the wallpaper I owe everyone! (Now *you* stop forgetting to vote for Precocious!) The drawing is inked and ready for coloring. (NOT TODAY.) I still need to think of a good tagline for the image. "Good family values"?

The Model City

So I figured out how to get my blog to post on Facebook. (I think.) Feast on the annoyance, people! Also, feast upon the painting I have completed: The Model City.

Since I know you are lazy, I'm going to bring all the pictures together and show you the evolution of a painting:

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Final (click image for larger version):

I'm quite pleased with the outcome, as it only took two days of working to get it done. (Day being defined as the time from when I wake up to when I pass out. Screw you, midnight! You mean NOTHING to me!) My biggest regret is that my aunt bought a crappy camera that is hardly worth stealing. I've going to use it in DC from now on, as my aunt won't miss her camera while my mother is likely getting angrier by the day over her missing awesome camera. In the end, I can see in person how awesome I am. You get cruddy pictures and have to take it on faith. I have to assume you all understand that I don't actually paint jpeg artifacts into my paintings, although that would be a nice subversive art project...

It was an accident, I swear!

You know, mischievous people and Polaroid cameras make a nice match. Of course, mischievous people with Polaroids tend to document their way into the court system. I'd like to think this shot was taken by Tiffany, who just couldn't resist the call of her parent's camera when they left it unattended. I'd also suspect that a chase occurred soon after this photo was taken.

This tidbit comes from an upcoming strip, which was by far the hardest coloring job yet - if not the hardest one in the whole arc. Trying to capture "surprised person caught by a flash at night while a house burns behind him" is understandably difficult. I hope I did a decent enough job. I also know I never ever want to be a colorist. Hey, it was a rewarding experience and I am content with the results.

The only real negative is my penmanship. Autumn (that's her writing) writes in far neater and stylish cursive than I. Unfortunately, that's like TV writers writing for genius characters. Those geniuses can only be as smart as the writer can write. I'm not saying anything about writers here, but... *cough*

Today's coloring work was also rewarding in that I am now over a week ahead in strips. 14 down; 22 to go.

This is why we have Rule #4

Instead of doing much-needed work on building up the comic buffer today, I went off on a creative tangent... FOR ADVERTISING! It's a creative exercise: How do I translate a horizontal comic into a vertical skyscraper ad? The first one was taking strip#18 and moving around so it worked vertically. It was ok, I guess, but I wanted something more dynamic. Something made to be an ad. Something dynamic. Or, barring that, something with dynamite.

I'll be coloring this sometime (maybe today, maybe not) and putting it into rotation. Hopefully it will compel people to click on the ad, despite a line of "what could go wrong?" or something like that.

In other news, MY NEW TV/MONITOR ARRIVED! Unlike my other HDTV, which I toyed with after I gave the first TV/monitor to my mother, this one is smart enough to function! I get great resolution on a big bright screen! Thank goodness I made the swatch list yesterday, because otherwise I'd be adjusting colors for this in-your-face brightness. My eyes are toast, but I seriously do not care. IT IS A WALL OF BRILLIANT AWESOME! Seriously, if this doesn't entice me to sit down and color like a mad man, then I am beyond hope. The only thing holding me back is the constant urge to do a happy dance. (Of course, I could always check my Project Wonderful stats to depress me. I got majorly spoiled by that three-day traffic spike.)

Edit: Went ahead did the coloring right away, so enjoy the final vision. (It's on the right, if you're an idiot and need that pointed out.)

This is the picture

The post title is a Peter Gabriel song, for those unhip to the awesome.

I've been churning away at the comic in between my online Precocious promotional flailing. The strip I just did was scripted to have Autumn showing her parents Polaroid shots of other characters. Well, I couldn't just make them static shots! I had waaaay too much fun with them, so I had to make more!

This one is a bit cheesy, down to the weaksauce caption, but it was lovely distraction. Also, a snapshot motif would totally make a good Precocious book cover.

Edit: I totally forgot to give Bud his freckles. D'oh.

Objects in future are closer than they appear

It's coming...

Precocious is going to be officially launched by midnight tonight. The full Gender Wars arc will be posted on the site, and regular updating starts on Monday. Tell your friends, especially if they work for major syndicates. (I prefer publishing syndicates, but crime syndicates also have their charm...)

Edit: It's here! It may be four months late in showing up, but I am still very happy to have this burden off my shoulders!

Fate Favors the Adorable!

Since it's easier than webcammming a 3'x3' painting-in-progress, I will use this sketch to share my joy over completing the writing of the OFFICIAL first Precocious storyline! It is surprisingly Suzette-heavy, but I'm fine with that. It's Autumn's first day of school... which means Roddy is on a mission to save her from the other crazies! Spoiler alert: He fails.

The storyline ends with Autumn explaining to her class why she wears her schoolgirl outfit. As should be expected, it involves manipulation, combat and general life-or-death situations. I'm very proud of this. Another thing I'm proud of is having their teacher, Ms. Monster, openly attempt to traumatize Autumn at the first opportunity. I am such a well-adjusted person.

Oh yeah, it looks like I will finally be back in Winchester Sunday evening. It's been so long, I probably won't even recognize my own house. Oh, that's right, I won't! Kitchen renovations have entered the depressing endgame and my fucktard brother moved into my room - with the stinky, stupid, awful dogs - while I was gone! Oh, it will be good to be back. If you want to contact me, I'll be in the county jail after the murder spree.

Anyway, I'm assuming my few friends check this blog every few days so they can see what I'm up to and because they miss having me around... and they don't just skim over things before seeing me so they can claim they read it. I'm feeling isolated and invisible here - and under considerable stress - so I'd like to think someone is out there to see my words and care about where I am. Again: I am such a well-adjusted person.

My genes did WHAT!?

I know I said a Sky post was coming, but I was watching Iron Man.

Let me explain: I started watching the movie yesterday and devoted the time to sketching Ivy. I then stopped watching to the movie to do social things. (As social as I can be, at least.) Sitting down to finish the movie, I decided to continue with the Ivy drawing.

It's not good enough to just draw an adult. One has to also figure out how adults and children look relative to each other. If my relative height experiment happened to involve Ivy discovering some Autumn and Bud made mischief.... Bonus!

Guess who's back... back again...

Mousie's back. Tell your friends!

This time I claim no responsibility in capturing her. She was smart enough to climb the shelf thing behind my desk to get to where I keep my downstairs food - kept there because, in theory, it would keep mice away - but dumb enough to get trapped in an old cereal box. For the record: The box wasn't closed properly because I had moved it aside to be tossed the next time I took out the garbage. I'm not a *complete* slob.

Anyway, I gave her a new habitat this time. The container is more transparent, allowing for enhanced cuteness viewing. It was also supposed to be a harder container for the mouse to chew through. Success was mixed. The structure does make it more difficult for gnawing, but I grabbed the lid with a crack by mistake - giving the mouse one spot in which she can wedge her teeth. Come morning, she had made a tiny hole. I clicked the cracked portion back into place, slowing her down, and stuck a straw through the hole. Now she sometimes swings on the straw. Aww!



So tell me, mousie, was the cereal worth it?

Another question: Is this really the same mouse? It's fun to think of it that way, but what about the evidence...



The picture on the right is of the "first" captured mouse, after my cat had nibbled on it a bit. The picture on the left is from my current captive. Granted, mice do tend to be chewed on at times, so this can't prove anything - but it *does* give me enough of a reason to claim I have a recidivist.

Chrispy 2, Mouse 0

As predicted, my pet mouse returned a few nights ago for more adorable action. This time, she was even more brazen about making this room her home. In addition to the usual scamper-bounce thing, she took up climbing. She would scale the busted ask speaker and run back down. She'd climb a bookcase, jump into a bag and climb back out for more exploring. She'd climb right up next to me and sit on my computer! Should I turn and speak to her, she'd bound back under the bed - but five minutes later she was again forging new frontiers.

As the cycle continued, it was time again for me to catch it! Earlier in the night, I had placed a peanut on the ground beside to see if she'd come up and take it. I turned away to do something else and looked back a minute or two later. The peanut was gone. So I placed a *second* peanut down. Again, she grabbed it so fast I missed her. OK then! My mouse loves her nuts!

It was time for a trap! While Chipotle had failed me so hard earlier, I still had the bag. In went a few peanuts and onto the floor it went. It took a while for the mouse to emerge again, but sure enough she went for the bag. She climbed it, ran around it, went under it - had I been a cat, the tip of my tail would have been twitching like a blender blade with the anticipation. Finally, she jumped in, grabbed her peanut and ran before I could get the bag. Curses!

But the *second* time she got greedy! Mouse - mine! like a good pet owner, I gave her a lovely place to live. I took my box of files (use: holding papers I probably need, but will never look at again) and emptied it to give her a home. She even got a water dish, some food and a cardboard tube for shelter. She enjoyed her new home for about five minutes. Then, just like in all relationships, the bitch went crazy!

A nimble gal, she would climb the sides of the box and crawl around the top, trying to find an escape route. Then, in a non-nimble way, she'd slip and fall. Into the water dish. She's scramble around, making a mess of the good home I gave her, before settling in her tube to hide in shame. Realizing there was no way out, she did the typical mouse thing and tried to gnaw her way through the hard plastic.

As it was 5am at this point (I took my sleeping pill at 1am, but sometimes it just doesn't work) I decided to let my mouse enjoy her home as I slept. By morning (my definition) she had made significant progress in her escape route, but had a long way to go. She had also made a huge mess of things by falling off the wall so many times, and that's when I decided to have mercy - but not before putting her in a clear plastic bottle to take photos! I think I earned a medal of freedom for that act of compassion.

Anyway, so ends the latest saga of the mouse. Check back in a few days, since I'm sure she will return.

Just for fun, I tried another mouse girl sketch. It should be noted that I did not use my mouse photos to help in drawing. This is because I'm a damned fool.

Webcam Supervillains

Ok, so it's not quite a scanner, but I can still capture the bigger drawings in recognizable fashion. That's all I need, baby.

Following the lead of Doctor Oven, here are the other two initial sketches for Autumn and Tiffany's villain identities.




Autumn is... The Scarlet A! Originally, I wanted to turn her mask into an A-shape, but that did not prove feasible when dealing with big cartoon eyes. I also stuck an A on her forehead at first, but decided the "joke" behind two A's appearing on her outfit even though her name implies "The...A" was far too weak. Overall, the joke with this outfit is Autumn's woeful naming ability. Not only does her identity unintentionally label her as an adulterer, but she also named the "Super Villain Union" - or SVU. There's not another well-known SVU, is there? (Something about victims?) Visually, I'm not sure what sort of pizazz to add to her outfit. I was tempted to put her in a catsuit look that all evil chick villains seem to get, but that is for foxy ladies...not fox girls.



Tiffany, the Chaotic Butterfly, has once again confused "evil" with "adorable" - something I tend to do, myself. Originally she was going to have tiny unambitious wings - but, like bows on Dionne's pageant outfit, they would not be visible from standard comic angles.

Do you see the mistake in this drawing? I'll wait while you guess. Or read ahead to the next sentence. Yes, Tiffany is too tall! This is a mistake I do a lot. See, Autumn's dress ends at her knees; so I grow accustomed to drawing girl legs from the knee down. Tiffany's dress goes *beyond* the knees. If I'm not paying attention, I just do the Autumn treatment for Tiffany and give her a second pair of kneecaps. I mean, the girl's an oddball, but it's more brain wiring than Tick-level villainous genetic absurdity. Tiffany's tendency to have her tail wrapped in front of her legs only makes things worse, as I want to leave enough space to keep the legs and feet well defined. Why do all my little touches in characterization undermine my drawing ability?