I have friends today!

I did a few sketches, but my day is devoted to socializing. This is a rare event, so let me have it!

The friendly hermit

Work on the "I hate everyone" painting is continuing - in spite of some people being nice to me! I think it's becoming more of a "this is what I can do" statement than the "so shove it" part of the motive. I still may start mass murdering or supervillaining at any moment, but at least I'll do it with modernist flare!

On the comic front, I'm trying to get a few days ahead. I'm pretty bad at using my free time right now. I've been playing too hard, so free days end up "sleep like the dead" or "walk like a zombie" days. It's Friday, though! While normal people go out and play, I use the silence to get as much work done as I can.

Karma or Weekend?

Man, where did everybody GO? My family, my friends, my readers - seems everyone's gone out of town for the weekend - perfect timing for my FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GIVE ME MONEY push. (Check my fine art site.) I'd like to think this is just a more severe than normal weekend drop-off and not everyone fleeing for the hills once I start passing the collection plate.

Anyway, no special stuff today. I did lots of webdesign earlier and I *may* do some inking tonight - none of which makes for thrilling blogging. Man, I gotta step it up.

The Interactive Precocious Experience

I enjoyed letting people vote on which chick gets featured in a one-off role for a future comic, so let's keep going and narrow it down to one! The first vote eliminated three chicks - will this one settle on a favorite? (click the pic for a larger version.)

Each chick has been drawn in two poses, mirroring two of the three panels in which she'll appear. The redrawing also shows how good I am at drawing each particular chick. (If you care, #4 braid kitty is the easiest to draw and #3 dingo-ish chick is the hardest.) If there's any character tweaking you'd like to see - say you want a change in attire, shading and markings - you can suggest it. I'm not saying I'll make any changes, just that you *can* suggest something.

Yes, I am attention whoring a bit with something like this, but I *do* love getting feedback - even if I have to solicit it! Pay attention to meeeeeeee!

4/19 Update: Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

Adding in Twitter and DeviantArt voting, here's the current tally:

5 votes for #3
3 votes for #6
2 votes for #2
1 vote each for #1 and #4

#5 has developed self-esteem issues.

People can give their opinion up until I start working on the strip, which should be later on this week.

A banner day

So I've decided to aim for quantity over quality, it seems. I know there's a perfect Precocious banner out there, but I'm not sure it can be done using only existing strips. (Planned: A color Sunday with all secondary characters standing around looking dynamic. Humor optional.) Only five of the above banners are new, but I threw 'em all in to make an impressive wall. Deal.

Today was meant to be a Project Wonderful ad blitz, but that seemed to end quickly when everyone else tried one too. Yay for the Monday push! Seriously, Precocious needs one more PW bidder to make bidding competitive. I'd like to one day be able to gain enough from ads to balance out what I'm spending. (And there's a noticeable drop when I stop spending. Gah! Can't we just fast forward to a time when I have a super-solid base of readers?) Anyway, with my ads being outbid and me not willing to spend any more, the solution my brain came up with was to create more ads. Yeah!

I hope I have some interesting sketch stuff to show off later today, but I fear this day will be ALL BUSINESS! Fight! Color! Draw! Win! Grrrrrrr...

What are Friday nights for again?

Friday is a dead day. Friday TV is a barren wasteland. Friday on the internet is when site updates tail off. Even the message boards empty. On Friday, you have to make your own fun. You are EXPECTED to make your own fun. No matter how pathetic you are, you have to have some social thing to do on Friday. It's natural law!

And then there's me, sitting in my mother's basement, cursing Netflix for now moving instantly and leaving me without the comforting space opera - a genre synonymous with lonely Fridays. (TNT's ST:TNG marathons on Fridays were awesome for making me forget I was friendless until my junior year of high school.)

What else could I do? CARTOONING! I finished the Jacob ramble strip and went on to the Max ramble strip before my brain shut down. So. Much. Text. At this point I could have tried to move on and draw something to excite me, but instead I decided to harvest my misery and use it as the fuel to sustain me through MIND-NUMBING TEDIUM!

Yes, friends, I worked on the Precocious website! Coding tedium aside, I *also* had to scan, size and photoshop all the comics. It took a while to figure out the proper method, but I chose not to look back. Yeah, the first strip didn't come out well. Yeah, I never went back and fixed Suzette's yelling in strip #17. Fuck it! If I stopped to think I'd just collapse in a dull heap!

So now I have 23 strips on the site for the viewing pleasure of the person who reads this. Man, I hope they're good enough. I have my doubts.

My hope is that, as the creator, I am just too close to the work. All I can see now are the thousands of errors and failures in the strips. Too many strips fail on comic timing. Other strips lose their impact because I can't quite get facial expressions correct. The lettering is unprofessional. It's sloppy drawing all around. ACK! Should I be feeling *pride* instead?

Granted, a lot of these problems are due to the inevitable pilot problems. At this is the first look into Precocious, I have to forcefully present the premise and the characters in a way that establish an identity immediately. Instead of nuance, I have to introduce personalities in bullet point format. Thus, as each character appears they inevitably monologue. I *have* to get this stuff down and it's up to me to do my best in making it work. The clunkiness is the consequence of creating a pilot. The BEST creators make it look easy... but I won't get there until I have more experience. Even the most skilled creative types need some trial and error to figure out the best use of their immense talents.

Sadly enough, I chose the *worst* time to post what I had on the web. The introduction strips stop at... strip 24, which will likely be posted later today. Starting at 25, the STORY begins to move and the characters are freed to interact without the "THIS IS WHO I AM AND THIS IS WHAT I DO!" shackles restricting them.

Just remember: For many quality TV shows, a clunky pilot is often followed by a CLASSIC second episode. I sincerely hope that the upcoming strips will make the reader forget the choppy pace of the opener. I'm not saying I will magically become an expert cartoonist overnight - only experience can help me fine-tune the drawing and timing - but if I can end this "pilot" arc on a high note, then there will be hope for Precocious yet!