Decompression time!

Precocious has had three lengthy stories during its run. Group Projects was huge, Party Crashers took a long time, and now the Fall Festival joins them as huge entry. The previous two biggies ended with a quiet week for me to recharge myself, and this one is no different.  This time, the comics have more meat on them than previous recharge weeks. Even if they're all single-panels, I think you'll enjoy them.  Plus, it's less drawing strain, as I promised my doctor I'd cut down. (No real update on the facesplosion front, by the way. Still in pain, but slowing myself down softens it a bit.)

Even with some nuttiness on my end, March is looking pretty cool for Precocious. You shall see!

Belly dancing, take two

Here's Ms. Bard doing her belly dancing thing, this time in different colors! I hope this one is better than the first attempt. The scanner seemed to hate the lighter, subtle purples of the drapery and veil, but that's to be expected.

My work schedule is going to be shuffled yet again. First of all, I have to work around construction that'll be happening in my apartment next week. I doubt the workers will be here for more than a couple days, but for the duration of the project my coloring computer will be under a tarp. That means getting my comic work done this weekend instead of next week.  Next, it's putting the finishing touches on the book, which means some back and forth about design, drawing/scanning a few more pieces of art and writing some copy. (I am SO slow at copy.)  Everything else - commissions and one special project - can be worked on in my studio, so that stuff will be the priority when the workers are here. Yeah, I've been moving pretty slow - but I try to keep moving.

I'm working, I swear!

I'm just not working very *hard* as of late. Chalk it up to unexpected socialization and should-have-expected sleep problems. But I have done lots of stuff today, I swear! I worked on three comics, two paintings and did some Project Wonderful stuff for Sometime Alone. My daily sketching so far consists of nothing but Autumn heads, none of which are worth scanning for display.

I hope to have some painting stuff ready for display tomorrow, as this blog is in need of some good content! (And not just the shilling of shirts.) Chances are I'll have it ready tonight, but there's this danged midnight deadline thing. End of the day, my tush! MIDNIGHT IS WHEN I START TO GET GOING! So why don't I post stuff at 5am when I finish it? Because at that point I'm delusional and think the walls are talking to me. (They are such bores too.) Then again, delusional blogging might be kinda interesting...

Cuteness rules!

This is a cute sketch of Autumn I drew. Nothing more. I just wanted to share it! I should be sharing my painting stuff today, but this is cuter!

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...

Costume change!

Still taking ideas for the Halloween Precocious wallpaper. I'll probably start the fancy sketches tomorrow! For now, let's review what ideas we have (and what my brain did to them.)

- Al's suggestion of making Tiffany dressing up as the scariest thing possible turned into the sketch you see above.

- Daniel, I'm taking your Dr. Ovens idea and splitting it into two: The Doctors Oven dressed as various doctors and the main Precocious cast dressing up as Rocky Horror characters. Both angles could be fun!

- Alan's idea of dressing up the Et swarm is great. Imagine them lined up as Russian nesting dolls or something!

- Darc suggested a take-off of The Simpson's "Treehouse of Horror" episodes, or maybe just having the kids telling scary stories around a campfire. If I can pull it off, that would look great in color!

- Samuel suggested something where Jacob, poor guys, has to wear a lame costume, while everyone else rocked something awesome. As a bonus, this tangent twisted in my mind into a Final Fantasy games theme - which can also be fun to do.

- Odd1 used Halloween as an excuse to get the kids in their supervillain gear. I am ALWAYS down for that!

Anyone else feel inspired? I must confess that I *like* having my week's blog entries planned out. Saves me an 11pm panic attack!

Time out

As hinted at in the last post, I'm going to spend this week in DC focusing on spending time with my family. Precocious will keep going, but I am going to take a break from blogging and skip this week's Copper Road. The next Copper Road should be up next Monday and I'll start blogging again once I have enough free time to work on something to post!

For those not in the know: My grandmother's heart just gave her a hospital trip. My grandfather has advanced Alzheimer's and requires full care, most of which has been handled by my grandmother. My mother is here to help for a few days. My brother gets back tomorrow. On Thursday, my aunt and her partner are coming to visit. There's going to be no free time! I'll barely be able to keep up with the comic. (Tonight and tomorrow are for working ahead!)

Family always comes first.

How do you do that?

Today was a wasted day. Little to no construction meant my usual alarm clock didn't break my sleep cycle in the normal. I HAD TO DESTROY MY SLEEP CYCLE MYSELF! Every time I got up this morning, I ended up back asleep soon after. Didn't get out of bed until 1pm. Go me!

Anyway, no mountains shall be moved and no great feats shall be undertaken. Today I devote myself to catching up on TV and DVDs. Tomorrow, the world?

My offering today is Tiffany joining me in violating many laws of rationality. I destroy my life and body; she stacks blocks in strange ways. Then again, physics could be her friend.

It's Chrispmastime again!

Oh, the pun is pain! I was tempted to save this sketch for the sketchbook postmortem post (probably coming tomorrow) but I needed to kill some time. See, it's hard to watch an insanely complex show with a bajillion characters while a drill constantly runs above your head. I have to wait until they're gone. Also, this gives me a chance to preach about personal theology, so yay!

Technically, this announcement is a week late. Chrispmas runs from December 8th to March 24th. (Or, my mother's birthday to my birthday.) Epic holiday, eh? The idea is to reduce stress by giving folks a large window for gift delivery. Sure you can stress over a gift and do a cheap buy to have something before the 25th, OR you could wait for inspiration to strike and give a great gift when the opportunity presents itself. Similarly, if you're stocking up for a gift-giving blitzkrieg on the 25th, mellow out! Why not give a gift when you have it? In my world, holding onto a gift because it's not close enough to Christmas is a *great* way to ensure the future giftee will acquire the same item for themselves. Whoopsy doopsy!

I like gifts to have a personal flair to them. You find something that is tied to an old in-joke or fills a need you know your friend/relative has. Those gifts are as fun to give as they are to receive! (I still love my Darkwing Duck shirt, Dana!) Problem with that, of course, is that you need a level of familiarity to figure out what the perfect gift shall be. The friends I gift to have been busy and largely unavailable - and my epic stays in DC just makes it worse. It's awful, but I have no idea what to give people for Chrispmas. I just haven't had the face time these past few months that is needed to gague gift need. Thankfully, religion comes to the rescue! Chrispianity: The laziest of all major religions. (Why, most followers have no clue they're Chrispians at all!)

For the record, I make no promises for epic gifting. Little things can bring the most joy! Picking up the tab for a nice meal brings with it good fun and great conversation. (Cooking a fun meal for/with friends can also work.) Grabbing that video game someone talks about wanting by never seems to go buy is kind act of enabling courtesy. Sure, the *best* gifts are ones that fill a need the giftee didn't know they had, but those winners can't come every year like clockwork. For me, I'd much prefer the generic Amazon.com gift card to a forced gift. I hate leaving my house so buying goods online is fun times. Most Chrispians should be of like mind.

Cash is still not an option, however. While the "get it yourself" apathy is nice and Chrispian, the giving part comes in procurement. Even gift cards means the gifter chose a suitable store for the giftee. Cash only works as a gift when it's a gift from a family member to one of a younger generation or when it's a company's holiday bonus.

The noise seems to have died down (for now) so I'm going to stop proselytizing and get back to The Wire.

Hey look! Sketches!

Sadly, it feels like it's been years since I last did a page of sketches that didn't suck out loud. I am seriously out of rhythm here. As fun as painting has been, I've got to get back to the danged comic.

Don't mind me, it's just insanity at work! This is me prepping for the next strip, which kicks off the last batch of clunky stuff before things get enjoyably nutty. It's progress! In theory I'll be finishing *something* this week. In theory. It's easy to make these claims when the house isn't vibrating.

Hey, DC has art museams. Who knew?

We went to see the Richard Avedon exhibition at the Corcoran today. The retrospective featured his photographs relating to power - be it political, social or artistic. Very, uh, powerful. Photos spanned from 1964 to 2004, when his brain exploded. The "final" image was a portrait of Obama from the 2004 Democratic convention. *sigh*

That was all good and stuff, but what really piqued my interest when browsing the gallery brochure was an exhibition of satirical cartoons going back three centuries. Cool! Honoré Daumier's hilarious lithographs from the 1800's was the highlight, but the coolest tidbit came from former Washington Post cartoonist, Clifford Berryman. In 1902, he heard a story about Teddy Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear brought to his hunting grounds in a weakened state to be easy prey. (You know, like how Dick Cheney enjoys shooting tame and injured quail in between blowing the faces off lawyers.) The resulting cartoon made the bear look cute and innocent, to show Teddy's nobility in sportsmanship.



Dude created the teddy bear! I love these little history tidbits! Years later, the teddy model was perfected with the glorious Josh Bear.



(I have no idea if this is *the* Josh Bear or not. It's not like Josh reads this, so he won't complain!)

Anywho, here's a god-awful teddy bear sketch. Honestly, just killing time before dinner here. Woo!

Sock it to me!

As I'm still having a crisis of confidence with my Autumn drawing, she's filling my sketchbook pages. Not so great, but I have been having fun with the new fashion play.

Check out that awesome tie-dye shirt! Groovy, man. Obviously, these are not viable comic outfits. Eh, there's always Halloween!



Edit: Here's some more Autumn sketches that have nothing to do with this post's premise. I just liked my scared sketch and wanted to share.

Where the magic happens

I'm going to try and keep this daily posting trend going as long as I can! (I give this one more day before I fail.) The consequences of the trend: GLORIOUS FILLER!

I don't want to share the actual strips as they are completed, since they'll (hopefully) all be online in a few weeks, so when I'm being productive it means I have no stupid sketches to share.

Therefore, being the attention whore I am, I took photos of my work areas. Think of it this way: When I am rich and famous and awesome, you can all come back and look at the pathetic origins of Precocious. See, people one day might care! I'm sure of it! It's blogger solipsism plus artist arrogance! MY EGO IS OUT OF CONTROL!

Seriously, I spent a half hour earlier today Googling myself. I'm link #5 when searching for "Chris Paulsen" and #1 with "Christopher Paulsen." Woohoo! I'm also pleased that an image search for "Bud Oven" hits this blog as result #1. I'M #1! I'M #1! ROCK ROCK ROCK!

Anyway, on to the magical mystery tour...



My drafting table is located at the foot of my bed. If I was a hard worker, I could say I wake up, slide over and start working. In reality, I sit down to work, grow frustrated, slide over and cry myself to sleep. It's awesome in reverse!

While it normally isn't covered in comics laid out in an attention-whoring manner, the thing is always cluttered. The right side is the "staging area" - with templates, drawing supplies, my trusty ruler, a cutting mat and various knives. (This is an upgrade, as I used to keep my knife on the floor by my feet. No, really.)

I use a mechanical pencil for my drawing. It's whatever brand was offered at Costco. It's not top quality, but I'm used to its feel at this point. If you look at the comics, you can see some were done with red pencil lead and some with a blue. This is my damned if you do, damned if you don't situation...

The red lead is easy to find and I have a setting on my scanner allowing me to filter it out. This makes scanning a breeze! Problem is... the templates are no-copy BLUE, so I'd have to draw out my own templates. Also, the red doesn't erase, which is a BIG problem for someone still in the early stages of comic drawing. I don't even know how to draw my characters WALKING yet. If this last strip - with three characters walking in a line - was done in red, it would likely be an unsalvageable mess.

The blue lead is imported from Japan, since America has no use for STANDARD NO-COPY BLUE in mechanical pencils. I have several traditional no-copy pencils, but the constant sharpening drives me crazy. The problems with the blue is the cost and, uh, my scanner's complete failure to filter out THE UNIVERSAL NO-COPY COLOR! Still, a simple "select color range" in Photoshop easily bypasses that issue; and, most importantly, I can *erase* the blue! Despite all the hoops I must jump through to use it, erasing is enough to keep me a solid blue user now that I have it. I'm sure this story was very interesting to you.

If you look closely, you can see my attempt at drawing the comic in a block format in the pile. This format is the only way to fit the entire strip on my scanner at once. Drawbacks here mostly revolve around tracing errors. For that strip, I made the bottom panels too tall *and* managed to trace the template about one degree crooked. What that means is I spend the same amount of time correcting my shortcut as I would scanning the properly-sized templates twice. Yeehaw.

I also tried to fit two of the block templates on a sheet of Bristol board, only to learn I'm about a half-inch shy of the margins I need. The leftover from the sheet I used became a scratch pad for a few illustrations shared on this blog. If you examine the photo, you can see how my "For Sparky" illustration was made in parts and pieced together in Photoshop later. Only an artist would think this is cool enough to share. For everyone else: Doesn't it suck to learn that the magic is all man-behind-the-curtain lameness?



The light table - a brilliant birthday splurge for myself a while back - is where the lettering takes place. Using lines on the templates I bought as a guide, and splashing in some good ol' math, I came to the conclusion that my comic should have room for 14 lines of dialog space. I checked it out by analyzing an Ozy and Millie book and found... 14 lines of dialog space! Win!

With my standard set, I printed out a sheet with guide lines. Come lettering time, I throw the sheet under the comic, turn on the light table and it keeps my pen from straying. With the printed script at my side, I first do my lettering in pencil to see if it will fit. If it doesn't, I'll try to re-write the dialog or cut some lines on the spot. I do my letting with a .08 technical pen. Never one with any handwriting talent, this is still my weakest area. I can only assume I will gain skill through repetition.

For inking, I use a pen I found in a box of my father's art supplies from the 60's. As I am not an expert, my nib of choice is Hunt Globe 513 EF - which is a very adaptable nib, allowing for good control on thick and thin lines. I had used my dad's for years before I stabbed myself with it and broke it. (It was an accident, I swear!) It took months and several rejects before I found my model again. The company that produced the nibs had long since ceased to exist... as it had been gobbled up by pen giant Speedball. Turns out I can find my nibs hanging on a rack in friggin' Michaels now. It's convenient, but it just doesn't feel as special as it once did.

So there's my low-rent operation as it stands. One day I will have a real studio, with proper lighting. One day I will have a professional scanner, which can filter out the no-copy blue. One day I will have an assistant, whose job will be to create block templates correctly and scan my work so I can focus on being purely creative. (I hope.) One day I will be able to switch between nibs with ease - maybe even switching to using a brush like the pros - allowing me more depth in drawing. One day I'll be over my newbie jitters, with muscle memory and enough skill to produce better quality strips in a fraction of the time. One day, Precocious might actually be a real friggin' strip and not just a silly gleam in my eye.

Man, I hope that day gets here soon.

Continuing my corner cutting campaign

Throwing ambition out the window, I turn to the Precocious script to evaluate my characters' costume changes... to see how I can avoid them! For instance, here is a future strip as scripted:

(Bud is going through his supplies in the Et's backyard.)
Bud: Gotta hurry. Gotta hurry.
Bud: This is very delicate plan and everything must go as planned.
(Bud puts on his combat gear.)
Bud: It is time to enter the fray.
Sky (walking in): You look adorable, Bud!
Bud (fastening his helmet): I KNOW!

I love this strip, but drawing Bud in combat gear fills me with horror. So screw the outfit - the hat is enough! And, hey, if Bud's helmet *accidentally* flies off as he scurries around soon afterward... OH WELL!

Keeping the Full Metal Jacket helmet is vital. It gives me a fun reference, it makes the strip above work and it puts Bud in a hat! Bud having a hat for all occasions is a visual theme I'd like to use as the strip evolves. His Scottish fold ears make him the one character who can actually handle head gear - at least to the point where accepted cartoon wardrobe logic allows the reader to overlook that even Bud's ears couldn't fit in such chapeaus.

There is precedent for my cranial cop-out already: Tiffany's beret shows up for a few gags, then gets left behind. That decision wasn't as deliberate - I merely forgot to draw it on her for one strip, and covered it up by drawing it in her hands after the fact. Eh, the less work the better!

Autumn's costume change can easily be simplified. She'll switch to a t-shirt and pants, making her combat outfit EASIER to draw. Yay!



Edit: Here she is! The poorly-rendered thing she is wearing is a backpack. I've discovered tonight that I can't draw backpacks at all. The thing she's holding is a water balloon with her name on it, which is also poorly-rendered. Damn details.

Dionne originally showed up to fight in a girly outfit, but I can switch that to her standard outfit without the story losing anything. As long as she's still carrying a cumbersome purse, it works!

I haven't planned costume changes for Jacob or Suzette. Maybe I should. White white beaters and plain slacks for all! Fuck it, ALL MY CHARACTERS SHALL BECOME STICK FIGURES! XKCD was right all along!

Anyway, if I am going to make my new "I suck" deadline, I need to be averaging two strips a day. All this doodling is nice, but hardly what I need to do for productivity - especially since I'll be losing a day or two to finish my paintings this week.

In my defense: It's really hard to do anything with the whole root canal thing. My tooth had been acting up big time over the past few days - and it's going to be doubly sore considering my EPIC root canal today. While a glass of wine can help with inking of strips, being wonked out on vicodin is no good for anyone. My life is sabotaging itself!

So, wait, how does the Ducky handle again?

So much life lost to playing Mario Kart...

But, hey, I've almost triple starred everything! I'll get geek cred!

I'd love to post something more, but work is not cooperating. (I have to work at work? I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THAT!) As a filler post, here's a shot of the fearsome foursome made from sketches I drew while watching There Will Be Blood. (A phenomenal movie that made No Country For Old Men - another great film - look like Gigli.)



Ooh...tonight is R.E.M. night! Form of....NEW WAVE MUSIC FANBOY!