New Copper Road! 4/14/12

Hey, I finished some work early today! That gave me a window in which I could make the latest Copper Road! Of course, I then got distracted, went out with friends and took a business call before actually making the darn thing, resulting in me finishing the day behind in my work - but the important part is THERE'S A NEW COPPER ROAD! YAY! It features our favorite doom-spouting oracle. What's not to like? Vote here to see it!

Ranking the Ponisodes!

Because I want to. That's why.

Edited to rank the latest episode. Also, dudes, this did not take a lot of time to do. I went through the list of shows, copied and pasted into tiers and did some rearranging. Easy.

Roughly in order from favorite to most-hated.

Celestia Tier:
Party of One
Green Isn't Your Color
Suited For Success
Lesson Zero
A Dog and Pony Show
The Last Roundup
Hearts and Hooves Day
Sweet and Elite
Secrets of My Excess
Winter Wrap Up

20% Cooler Tier:
Dragonshy
Swarm of the Century
Sonic Rainboom

The Return of Harmony Part 2
Applebuck Season
The Return of Harmony Part 1
Hearth's Warming Eve
Owl's Well That Ends Well

Meh Tier:
The Cutie Pox
The Ticket Master
Luna Eclipsed
A Bird in the Hoof
Family Appreciation Day
Baby Cakes
The Best Night Ever

Call of the Cutie
Fall Weather Friends
Friendship is Magic Part 1
Griffon the Brush Off
Boast Busters

Bleh Tier:
Bridle Gossip

Look Before You Sleep
Sisterhooves Social

Over a Barrel
The Show Stoppers
May the Best Pet Win!

A Friend in Deed
Feeling Pinkie Keen
The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 600

The. Worst. Possible. Thing. Tier:
Stare Master
Friendship is Magic Part 2
Read it and Weep
The Cutie Mark Chronicles
The Mysterious Mare Do Well

Best writer: Meghan McCarthy wrote 7 episodes - 6 of which are in my top 11. (I'll forgive her for the unremarkable Call of the Cutie episode, as she's also the only writer to create a GOOD Cutie Mark Crusader episode.)

Best pony: Rarity. As if you had any doubt.

My opinions > Your opinions.

In other news, I can't sleep and my hand hurts too much for drawing. What else could I have done? (Oh, right. More scripting.)

O hai!

I suppose I should make it official. If you haven't figured it out via the posts below, I'm taking a break from the blog until I get home from DC. (Late next week.) It's been a nice break so far, where I could focus more on the family (and relaxing) than sketching. Comic production is still going strong! Don't worry, everyone! I'll be back sharing sketches and art before you know it!

Productive Procrastination

I'm doing my best to build up the comic buffer, so that I might waste it away doing fun things! What you see here is a logjam forming as I keep procrastinating when it comes to scanning the comics and finishing them. Eh, I'll just scan and upload 10 comics at once. It sounds more impressive that way!

Time sneaks up on you

Time is a nasty monster. No matter how fast you run, it always pursues! You can't outrun it. You can't out maneuver it. It will get you! The only way to survive is build a lead and keep your pace. For a daily comic, that means HAVING A BUFFER!

I came to DC, a place that's not so conducive to working, with a four-day buffer. That's the biggest buffer I've had in a while... and it's disappearing at the speed of time! I gave myself a few days to settle in, but now it's time to take on the next set of strips - especially since Sunday's strip is MASSIVE and will take as much time to do as this entire week of dailies. (Stupid Sundays.)

Bigger problem than a massive Sunday? No script! Can't start catching up if I don't have scripts from which to make comics.

Good news! I finally got the script done! It only took half a week to formulate! That means no more time for pouty writer's block. Time to get some strips in production! Aww, man, that means I have to work now! I miss you, procrastination!

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!

Consider my media mixed!

Instead of doing real work today, I played around with a set of watercolor pencils. It's drawing and painting combined into some grotesque chimera! Or maybe it's just how I use it. Me and watercolors haven't hung out since high school, and even then we didn't click. They're delicate and require time and patience. Screw that, I'm hanging with acrylics! We go wild, dry off and GO WILD AGAIN in the time it takes for me to impulsively ruin a watercolor by painting on a still-wet surface.

Ahh, but this was a fun bit of playtime on a day when nothing else would be done. Gotta pack up the painting for a return home tomorrow, had to throw out the India ink because it was too old and empty (just like me?) and the only tech pen I had available was a surprisingly useful 1 pointer. I got a lot of work out of that bugger during this trip!

Anyway, art is done for the evening. It's time to get my stuff together and prepare for REVOLUTIONIZING MY VOTE INCENTIVES tomorrow.

This is a sketch

This is a blog post. This is a sketch blog! This is the daily obligation.

Today was a travel and social day, so no time to be an art hero. Sorry!

A fine art interlude

While waiting for the ink to dry on some strips, I whipped out my sketchbook to try and draw today's blog entry. I intended to do Precocious stuff, but nothing was flowing. I felt like painting! But painting has a lot of prep and clean up! Forget it!

So I turned to colored pencil. I had been reminded of their existence because I spilled them earlier. It was kinda fun to just scribble away in the sketchbook, with no consequences. There was also something therapeutic about it. (I keep my pencils in a used up spiced pumpkin Yankee candle jar, so they smell great!)

The scan cut out all the lights (it's a preset that works great for comics and not so great for the rest) but you can still see what went on there. I had a fun time improvising, and I needed to get it out of my system.

Now, can I FINISH the inking I started?

So cute an innocent

Doesn't that face make you want to cause it pain? No? Just me? Crud, I need counseling. Oh well, good comics don't come from stable minds...

The swiss army knife of comic strips!

It's 26 strips in 1! Whenever I turn over a template, I do it by making all comic layers visible and merging them - getting a mess like you see here. I dunno why I get such a kick out the results, but I do. (click the image for the full-sized jumble.)

Up to no good

Well, my inking plans for today stopped at one eighth of a strip so far (damn you, double-sized Sundays), but I did get some fun sketching done. Enjoy this classic scene of (insert adult here) discovering the destruction (insert child/children here) has created. Always a good time for all!

I got nothin'

Sometimes it happens: I can do a bunch of work and still have nothing to show on the blog. Today I've drawn up future vote incentives, inked a handful to strips and worked on some non-blog stuff. I'd like to continue that stuff, so I am going to cop out for Sunday.

Enjoy, suckers!

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!)

This is the high point of my week

I know it's lame, but having a sketch worth of scanning - even if it's nothing special - is progress this week. Not only have I been unproductive, but any work I've done is related to the comic. Can't share that. D'oh!

On the comic front, I'm finally knocking out the remaining Sundays for April. The last one needs inking, scanning and coloring, but I could be finished today if I have initiative. I have not had initiative all week.

What I've Learned from Google Analytics

1. "Precocious" is harder to spell than I thought
2. "Knowledge is a Weapon" is easier to spell, and gets the same results
3. I can plaster my name over EVERYTHING, and people will still Google "Paulson" >:-[
4. Furries like me! (I like you too!)
5. Non-furries are highly indifferent to me! (Don't fursecute my kids, you bigots!)
6. One bigger comic linking to me will triple my traffic. An ad blitz gets me plus 10%, maybe.
7. Having a day with a minimal ad push, however, causes traffic to plummet
8. Only one bigger comic has featured me, but links pages do bring in a newbie or so a day
9. Installing Analytics on low-traffic sites can crush the soul (Hello to the other 10 people who read this!)
10. No one clicks on my Twitter links. I CLICK ON (most of) YOURS, PEOPLE!
11. I totally fail at the StumbleUpon social game. Some get thousands of hits from it. I get one a day.
12. The only page that gets less hits than my artist bio is the page about my friends. Ouch for all of us.
13. I should totally be doing a gag-a-day comic about hot chicks playing video games in manga format with cell shading
14. One noscript plugin can render a reader invisible to Analytics, so I can safely assume thousands of people are doing that, right?

I was going to do a painting update, but I put it off until I'm further along with both paintings. I made it to the computer anyway to look up lyrics for the new Decemberists album, which is awesome. Midnight passed during this, so I just *had* to open Analytics...

Anyway, today's blogging will be far improved once the paintings make it on later.

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Marilee!

After working my butt off yesterday, daddy's tired. Rather than share something interesting and dynamic, I'll show off the latest early-stage painting.

This is Marilee Ruth Bishop, another of the Maquette ladies. She is not merry. This painting doesn't really do her justice yet, as it makes her look like she's about 10 years older than she is. Also, she looks like she's made of ice. Part of that's because I've only played with a limited palette so far, and part is due to a poor-qualify photo.

I took a risk with this one in painting the window shape, and I'm not sure it'll work. Marilee is first seen through a window, staring coldly. She's not actually *at* the window like this - it's the audience looking in at her - but painting a tiny figure in the background would be sacrificing quality for accuracy no one cares about. Going forward, I want to stylize the painting more and more. Maybe I'll blend the figure into the window frame, making her look like a ghostly figure. (Which is a good fit for the character, really.) I dunno what exactly I'll do, but I need to activate the space. The "patiently waiting in line" look just doesn't bring the mysteriousness as it should.

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...

Fight the Power!

Man, I totally lost track of time today. I got caught up in a non-art project and that's a whole day...wasted? I don't even know anymore. Anyway, this is a joke sketch I drew of angry black(ish) cat that would ruin all things in the world should be in be in-canon. I mean, what would her name even be... Foxy Kitty? THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!

This is my angry face

I was thinking about cracking open a bottle of wine all evening. I didn't, but clearly I must be mentally drunk. MIND OVER MATTER, PEOPLE!

I should have taken my sleeping pill an hour ago. If I was a livejournal douchebag, I would predict my mood would be set to "sluggish" tomorrow morning. Look, folks, I've already fucked around on Facebook, my webcam and a blog tonight - any further douchebaggery would be lethal. Oh well, the world will have to do without my self-absorbed postings about which commercial jingles anger me.