Dedication to the craft

I decided to blog from my phone today on a whim! Maybe because I knew I had little to say and this would give me an excuse. (Edit: This turned out to be a horrible idea, as the Blogger iPhone ap lacks an option to update one's profile if they've since changed their Google password. That is truly some epic failure in ap design, guys. Eh, one duplicate profile later I finally got this thing posted.)

What you see here is some of the process behind the next Copper Road. The scary thing here is my embarrassing lack of prep. I had to draw Xander, who hasn't show up in forever. I had to design a one-shot character. I should have done some research into the setting. All real cartoonists also thumbnail the layouts, because they're kinda vital. What did I do? One page of half-hearted sketches for the new character. GOOD ENOUGH! Time to jump into sketching and wing it! Screw prep work! I'll learn as I go!

And that, children, is why panel one of the next Copper Road contains a major cartooning no no, as a dialog balloon cuts off a guy's head. This could have been prevented with just a little planning. Oh well! I live life dangerously! (Stupidly.) I rarely do extensive prep work on anything I do.

I will never be a real cartoonist at this rate.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

From bumbling comes success!

Sorry I haven't blogged in a few days. I've been working on donation sketches and I decided not to share them. Those things are special and I want them to be pleasant surprises for my donors. It's for a good cause, but it doesn't give me much to share if that's all I do.

Well, today I nearly finished off the donor sketches! (One request to go, not counting the few requests that haven't come in yet.) With the sketches in a good place, it was time to get back to the big boy commissions!

I've been really stressing over these. Today I had to get the inks down so I could get my watercolor on. Yes, I'm tracing, but there's still no room for error - and I have to make sure the line quality works as well.

You see three Tiffany Suicide Kings drawings because that's my test image. As soon as I started working with them, I found out I was in trouble. My super-expensive watercolor paper is great for watercolors... but not so much for tech pens. The line quality was not good, and that meant going back into the work and trying to correct places - doubling the time needed. This would not do.

Fortunately, I *am* a former printmaking major and I *did* bring my old portfolio with me to Savannah. My old printmaking paper is just fine for watercolors (I hope), and the tooth is much less harsh. So I tore apart my meticulously-constructed setup for tracing the big piece. After clearing my area for space, I measured and tore a new sheet of paper. I once again meticulously constructed a setup for tracing. I turned the light table on... and realized I had constructed the piece upside down. ONE MORE METICULOUSLY-CONSTRUCTED SETUP LATER... The bumbling and crazy was over?

Ha, no. That's when the swarm of insects descended. I was working on a light box on a warm summery night in an apartment in which the windows are full of gaps to the outside. I should have seen that coming. The little guys were numerous, but the biggest worry with them was resisting the urge to smoosh them, which would goo up the piece. Didn't see the big guys coming, though. I was drawing with my biggest, thickest tech pen when the largest of the bug assault smacked me in the face. I jumped. My hand jerked. The piece... was ok? I have no idea how I didn't leave a big black smear across the thing.

After all that, the piece came out looking just fine! I tempted fate all night. I bumbled like an idiot. Thanks to stress, I was so tense that my finger is now KILLING ME even though I only drew a moderate amount today. But it's all ok, because I didn't screw up the final piece!

Yet.

Fighting with the paint demons

When I first thought of today's comic, I immediately went on Twitter and announced I had an idea that was completely unusable due to the effort involved. And then I somehow tried to do it anyway. I'm not sure if that was the best idea.

My inspiration for this strip was to have the characters find themselves depicted as demons in a painting reminiscent of the hell portion of "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch. The catch was, in order for the gag to work, the final panel had to really look like a painting of that style. That meant figuring out the most time-effective way of pulling off something that could pass as a detail of an oil painting.

The first attempt was a 12x12" canvas with acrylic paints. I didn't get far in before I realized the layers of paint needed meant a lot more time going into it than expected - and that I lack the tiny brushes (and skill for detail) to pull this off. Rather than give up, I switched methods. This time I whipped out my watercolor pencils and drew a version of the scene I wanted. It wasn't looking great, but I thought I could fix it - so I brought out the REAL watercolors next and started dumping more layers on it. Eventually, I worried the piece was getting muddy, so I went in and used a black tech pen to sharpen some edges. The result was the piece you see above.

At this point, I was committed. I had put most of one day's work into one panel of one strip for a gag that iffy at best - but I was not about to throw it all away! The brush stroke effect wasn't really there, the composition was too hokey and the background colors weren't deep enough. To fix that, I turned to Photoshop. Right away, I suffered the consequences of leaving the entire piece too light, as every little tweak drained the lighter details away. I tried a few filters to make it look more painting-like, but got mediocre results. The final version ended up with me throwing the watercolor filter in over my original watercolors and adding some shadows. I'm not sure how effective the result is for the final strip, but it's all I could do with the piece I created.

Maybe I should have gone with a throwaway gag about the gallery coffee shop instead...

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!

Look a gift horse in the mouth!

A momentous thing has happened: I may have a colorist! Matthew of Sometime Alone has offered his time to color my Sunday strips until I drive him batty with my corrections and nonsensical swatches. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to not abuse this generous offer. (It's not like I can *pay* the poor lad, as I have no income myself.)

Naturally, the second Sunday strip that pops up on the list is one that can be *very* elaborate, with lots of characters. (These sketches are me fleshing out ideas.) Hmm... what to do? Will this be the strip that drives him mad? LET'S FIND OUT!

Rocky horrified

It only took one sketch before I realized this classic game of dress up was just not suitable for 9 and 10-year-olds! Hot patootie, bless my soul...

Reshuffling chaos

Now that I've changed my story around, I have the suffer the consequences. Tomorrow's strip will be up JUST IN TIME, and Copper Road remains missing. I'm loosely scripted until the middle of next week, but most strips are still in process. The timing of all this couldn't be worse, with my DC trip and all, but I'll try to fight through it.

Anyway, forgive me if all my bonus stuff is on the light side for the next week or two. I have a lot on my plate and the comic comes first.

Last-minute epiphanies

I'm a strange place with the current Precocious storyline. I know where it's going, but I also have MANY paths I can take to get there. There *was* a plan for this week, but I am having second thoughts about it. Originally the school rebellion was going to be cut short in the main strip, with the Copper Roads filling in the gaps. It was then pointed out to me that doing so would only work for THIS week, then the chaos is lost to time. That's no good! Maybe I should move the rebellion back into the main plot.

That, of course, complicates everything. First of all, I NO LONGER HAVE A COPPER ROAD to post! This kinda sucks, as it's already overdue. Second, I have to reorganize the scripts to fit everything together so the Sunday falls on Sunday. Third, I need to think up, script and produce the strips... tomorrow. Damn, I wish I had thought of this change earlier. It's going to be tough for me to make my deadlines, but I'll try.

Oh yeah, and I have to do this WHILE TRAVELING! I've been called into DC, where it's really hard to make comics, AND I have the pressure of working day to day on what might turn out to be a bunch of double strips! Awesome! This is gonna suck! At least the strips should be great.

So in the end, we're gonna lose a Copper Road - but gain a bonus week of Precocious! That's a trade-off worth making, right?

Painting for the people!

It's been a comic work day, but that wouldn't give me anything to show here. Time for a painting break!

Not much progress, but it's something. I tried out a few new colors to see if they meshed, with decidedly mixed results. Time for more outlining? That solves all my problems!

I can haz iPhone?

Oh lawds, what have I done? I now have a phone that is smarter that me! It's so shiny and new and INTIMIDATING! (Doesn't stop me from taking the token smug photo, though!)

Now I've gotta figure out how to USE this darn thing. As I type, I am syncing the phone with iTunes. My speaker station will now have its desired compliment - and it SHOULD charge this one! If that works, then it's on to playing with other features. Hey, I might even look into the phone part of this iPhone sometime too!

Anyone with an iPhone who has ap recommendations or general tutorial stuff, please share in the comments area. I am a complete n00b, so guidance would be appreciated.

The bad, the ugly and the good

How NOT to take a negative review: A Chrispy Story.

I woke up today to find out WebcomicZ had posted a scathing guest review of my strip. It attacked pretty much everything, from the writing to the characters to the whole concept, and often did so in rather impolite ways. Now, I can take some negative - as a person who is generally unfiltered, I'd be a hypocrite if I had thin skin - but some of that review really threw me off. Dude said my naming sucked because I didn't give my fox character a fox-ish last name! A pingo is a mound of dirt and ice in the polar regions. Autumn was formerly a genius in public school who rose above the others and took a cold view towards the flatness around her. So, yeah, totally not apt at all. I think I like that name a bit more than Foxett McFoxfox. He also said giving my main character the last name of Oven was stupid because he wasn't even a chef. One of Bud Oven's characteristics is that, yes, he's an excellent chef. There was an entire intro arc written around how he got his name!

So, bleary-eyed, I went and did something stupid. I knew WebcomicZ had been looking to run a negative review - and that this was the first review to go up since then - and I expressed that I was shocked to be the one targeted. (I know, I know. Not thinking.) I followed it up by saying I reacted in shock and that the dude was entitled to his opinion - but I did this all publicly on Twitter. In stepped some defenders - whose points were all entirely valid, by the way - and suddenly I've caused an incident by complaining. It was a terrible way to react, and the regret level rose when WebcomicZ CHANGED THE REVIEW to something much shorter. The short review cut out all the pettiness and was more direct in why he didn't like it. I'm perfectly fine with it, since the points are fairly justifiable, but the way that review came about left a bad taste in my mouth. WebcomicZ claims he changed it because the author requested it, not knowing of the twitter debacle. Either way, the original is still up there if you check out Precocious' page on WebcomicZ, so I don't feel AS BAD that it was bumped. So now I've been slammed AND I feel horribly guilty about it. Way to go, me!

Some of the things leftover in the review are apt criticisms of Precocious. Having so many characters does break the rules, and I have to be careful in balancing them. Basing my humor on story and character requires the reader to play along and catch up. (This reviewer explicitly said he had no interest in doing that, which would explain the derision. He wasn't playing by my rules and I wasn't writing to his preconceptions.) My love of complexity can be isolating, and I still haven't learn the lessons of keeping it short term. This, however, is something I can control. It's my bad for no doing so.

Other quibbles are standard rookie fare. Precocious is only 6 months old, and sometimes that shows. I was too verbose in the beginning (and certainly still can be) and my writing isn't always crisp. Unfortunately, this is something I've learned only comes with time. You have to train yourself to *think* in comic form, and it's a slow process. He did hit upon a contradiction between my style and format. Story telling is normally reserved for eternal-punchline Mary Worth and not for humor strips, but I go against the grain. Depending on who you are, it's good or bad. I do it because in the webcomic format I can point readers to the start of a story - and the full archive is right there for you. In a newspaper format, storytelling like that would not be wise. I can understand the conflict of people getting to this strip with wrong expectations.

The same goes with the visual style. My characters do share the same general form. This is no different than the first six months of any other strip of this type. As time goes by, the characters will slowly become more distinguished. It's an organic process and I won't lose any sleep over it. Besides, I think it takes some willful ignorance to not be able to tell the characters apart. They may have similar forms, but each has their distinguishing features. I understand new readers getting a bit confused, but to claim the cast page doesn't help distinguish my kids seems to be more a reviewer problem than mine. (I do need to be better about having the kids call each other by name.)

What I don't regret at all is having the kids fail at evil. The reviewer was upset that the kids bogged themselves down with semantics during the water balloon fight, which it exactly what SHOULD HAPPEN with them. The first arc was about these brats playing evil, but not being able to cut it. I think failed evil offers far more storytelling opportunities than having every punchline be "these kids, oh, they're so bad!" What would be the dream, having every panel four just be an explosion? Granted, that *would* be funny - for about a week. After that, it gets stale. Dragging the characters back to earth gives me far more to work with and allows for a far richer strip.

The same rant goes for the "why is this not a comic about geniuses dealing with a normal world?" Because that's not the point! Ozy and Millie did it well enough, and I wish not to tred any more in DC Simpson's footsteps than I already am. The strip is about the foolishness of elitism, be it monetary or intellectual. These kids have twisted the definition of "interesting" to fit only themelves (and those convinient to them), rendering the rest of the world inconsequential. Also, to say the parents have no commentary on the kids' actions is baffling. There was, again, an entire INTRODUCTION arc written that shows the parents are just as cracked as the children.

I'm going to cut the ranting short now before I get out of hand. Also, it's because there's silver lining GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE! My application for SpiderForest was accepted! This means I have a LOT of work ahead of me to clean up my website's code, but when I do - behold the power of a fully armed and operational webcomic! (If they don't kill me for being a techie moron first.) I'm really excited to be a part of Spider Forest and I think it's the next big step in making my comic a little more awesome.

Act casual...

Today is an inking day. Inking is so... permanent! I'm making THE comic! If I screw up, well, sucks for me. Oh yes, and tension does up the chances of screwing up. I gotta relax.

So I took a break! Gotta fulfill my blogging duties anyway. Today's sketch is of another buttoned-up character, Ms. Monster. She dresses frumpy and boring for her class - a "how not to be seen" experiment - all in a sick effort to keep her professional and private lives separate. It's kinda stupid, really. (I should note here that I've stopped the flimsy parallels to link the sketch with the day's theme and I'm on to just talking character.) Anyway, the point is that Bette hates having her worlds collide. (Tiffany seeing both Bette and Ms. Monster is an unfortunate exception.) For Bette to show up to class in short sleeves, something has to go horribly wrong.

So I course I made two Sundays' worth of strips about it! You'll see 'em come June. Consider yourself teased.

APAT-

"You know, all I have to do is paint enough so that the paintings LOOK finished. The Mill people will never notice!"

And so the downward spiral began.



There's a background on the painting now. FINISHED ENOUGH! "But, Chrispy, you never went back and finished the vase, doesn't that--" I SAID I'M FINISHED, DAMMIT!

One bonus of ceasing to give a fuck: I can paint on my own terms!



This gigantic canvas (48" x 30") is my Chrispmas gift to Dana. (Fuck that mirror, I WANT THE WALL SPACE!) This has actually been coming along nicely. Man, I hope this still fits the color scheme of the room. It may be too warm in tone. It also may be too large to fit in my Corolla for transport. It's the thought that counts?

Dear Plastic

My quest for five plastic plant paintings continues. Mill entries have to be done by Friday, so there's no time for dilly dallying! Rather than drive myself nuts trying to finish the fern painting, I chose to push forward with new attempts whenever I hit a mental road block.



As I remembered to bring a camera to DC this time, I can show process! This arrangement was located inside a larger ceramic vase. I had only ever seen the ivy stuff on top! Turns out, it's a perfect arrangement for painting. The above image is what was on the campus when I hit the first "what's next?" panic last night.



This is where the leafy painting currently stands. I sharpened things up and played with outlines, as is my way. The current mental block is due to indecision over what color to use for the background. Figuring out how to treat the vase is also a concern. Eh, fuck it.



On impulse I grabbed some plastic violets and arranged them. On further impulse, I barely paid attention to the placement of flower and leaf. On excessive impulse, I doodled with paint. WILL THIS CRAZED EXPERIMENT SUCCEED? Stay tuned!

Putting my best face forward

So I'm checking Google Analytics for today's hit count and I see my mini ad campaign has tripled my traffic. That's awesome! I just wish I wasn't an idiot.

See that sketch above? Why is it funny? If you're familiar with Precocious, you know Jacob is not likely to sit around in a funk and growl. (The pose was so odd that I really struggled to draw it.) If you're not familiar, the first impression makes you think, "I guess this is the strip's angry character."

So here I am, running ads and bringing in traffic. What is the punchline of the first strip?

"RODDY!"

Because first-time readers know about Roddy being a pest, and that the main cast ignores the outside world. Brilliant. While I appreciate the appropriateness of the visitor influx happening during a storyline about outsiders entering an insular world, have I sacrificed accessibility for metathinking? Man, I hope people stuck around to read the archives.

The weekend strip, the first thing most of the new visitors see, at least featured all eight main kids acting in character. The problem here is that it's more of a catharsis than a punchline. I'm too close to my own work to know if it's a good first impression or not. It better be good, since I don't have a Sunday strip to run. Maybe I should have done that. (Edit: As I found my Sunday templates while locating Bristol Board earlier, I did end up making a Sunday strip. It took until 6am and it's still not colored. Oy.)

What really is making me kick myself, though, is that the candy violence strips will start on Monday. I consider these strips my best work yet, as it's funny and catches the main kids at their best (worst?). Maybe I should have waited.

Maybe I'm just freaking out. The more I read on the Webcomics List forums, and the more I look around Project Wonderful, I realize I know absolutely nothing about being a web cartoonist. I guess that would lead to step three of getting my name out there. I've started promotion. I'm reading the forums more and I've even gotten some posts in. Have I written my cartoon heroes? That was supposed to be the first step, so I could have guidance for my nascent creation. Instead, I play Mr. Antisocial and do it all myself... which naturally leads to a nice pile of rookie mistakes. Everyone stumbles at first, and everyone stumbles HARD, but it's probably wise to have someone around to catch you.

Ahh, if only I wasn't so insane. Then again, it comes with the job, right?

Here's to you, Mr. Background Character

As mentioned before, the upcoming bake sale storyline was initially slated to appear farther down the road. Inspiration striking when it did meant I suddenly introducing parents without first showing their kids. The result was a surprisingly early entry and starring role for Kaitlyn. Ahh, but Kaitlyn's good about these things. Once the storyline is over, she gracefully shows herself out and the comic is allowed to continue with the classroom turf war the same as always.

Kaitlyn's classy exit does open up the door for ANOTHER classmate from the other side to get a debut. To lighten the sudden new character onslaught, I could have had her talking to Roddy. To be accurate to Kaitlyn's relationships, I could have had her talking to Quincy. Instead, little Vincent will get his time to shine... and promptly disappear from the strip for a long time. I believe his debut shall end something like this:

Kaitlyn: Back to obscurity with you, Vincent!
Vincent: Aww, shucks!

So why Vincent? He's the most innocent on the other side; if hopes are to be crushed, he's the fitting victim. Also: Kaitlyn syndrome. It's just weird to use a parent without giving the kid, the far more important character, some face time.

You might notice there's some schlub in the sketch above. It's hard not to notice the guy, seeing as he's the subject of the post title. This dude is Vincent's dad, who doesn't even get a name. He is there to add some dude into scenes where no other dudes are willing to step up. He's a token. He's a background character.

Continuing my horrible blight of hetero-normative behavior, the PTA meeting is dominated by the mommies. Look, I am not Mr. Wonder Artist who is willing or capable to draw a full PTA meeting with a bunch of background characters. The only strip I've done so far WITH any background characters is the Black Friday bonus strip that isn't even on the main Precocious site. The parental speaking roles in the bake sale plot are all moms. In steps... some dude! See, some fathers do care about the PTA! Sky's talking to him! He looks totally out of place, but he is there because FATHERS ARE DEDICATED!


While he doesn't have a name, he does have some background information. Daddy Iddenstein is a single father who is trying his best to be a good parents. Life is hard, man! Not only is he the sole breadwinner, but he's also tasked with parenting a little genius who likely has undiagnosed ADD. (Vincent's more the scrambled-brain type than hyperactive troublemaker, so his crippling mental problem is charmingly benign!) Anyway, that's still not enough to buy him more than one or two panels without dialog. Back to obscurity with you! SOCIETY DOESN'T CARE ABOUT YOUR BROKEN HOME/CHILD!

I had fairly loose goals when designing this dude. He needed to be canine to sire Vincent, COMPATIBLE SPECIES and all, and he shouldn't look too much like Vincent. The first sketch featured the backwards baseball cap, but was too obviously Vincent's dad. I decided to try again. The next sketch turned into a fox by accident, which would explain Vincent's look - but I wanted to go for canine variety. Then I decided to see if I could draw a droopy-eared doggie and still make it look male. (There's a reason I have only one character with such ears, and she's the militant girl power chick.) The result was the above sketch, which I think is quite nifty for a background dude. Only problem, he now looks NOTHING like his son. This is not important if he's just a background character, but it does eliminate the chance for readers to make the connection. It would have been a neat touch. "There was this strange fluffy canine father in the background of one strip, and now there's a similar-looking fluffy canine child talking to Kaitlyn. I get it!" Now... Vincent's dead mommy bust have been one fluffy, stripy bitch. See, it's one thing for the Et family to be varied - such fur pattern variations are common with domestic shorthairs. After doing 15 minutes of Googling, I have decided Vincent is a Keeshond, yet his dad looks like an English Setter/less fluffy breed mix. CANINE GENETICS DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOODNIGHT!

Oh, and those who have been reading this blog since post three or four (which is just me) is wondering if I'm going to follow up with my "rich lives of background characters" indicator that Dionne's mom was going to make an appearances. At the moment, she's been cut. Adding Kaitlyn in meant backgrounds will be omitted to accomodate dialog and the placement of small children. Heck, if I take a chainsaw to the arc and cut out a week - a strip with Sky pulling a "wall of text" to allow me to tie up logistical and conceptual loose ends is only interesting to me - there's a good chance my token dude's strip(s) get axed. I'm not looking into a play-by-play rundown of the story here. I want to get in, make funny jokes, gloss over the plot points and jump to the highly-amusing finish. I SEEM TO BE ENDING EVERY PARAGRAPH IN ALL CAPS!

The potentially-deleted strips also make jokes based on everyone understanding a character's personality. I've been dealing with these folks for years, so I know them. People who only read the comic (which is every reader but me) will only know these folks from the handful of strips in which they appeared. Good cartoonists know not to make these jokes until their strip is well-established. *I* made a joke based on Jacob's dad in the third friggin' strip. Jacob's dad makes his first appearance OVER A HUNDRED STRIPS LATER. Way to go, me! I mean, WAY TO GO, ME!

Accepting the inevitable

I'm not sure why, but my sketching of late has been along the lines of, "now that I have these characters, how many ensemble standards can I cover?" If your project has enough characters, how can you NOT force a Last Supper image upon a fully-suspecting populace?

I believe next on the list is.... Drawing your furry characters as humans! This is not much of a creative challenge for me, as the four main cast members WERE humans when 10-year-old me first drew them and the current versions are fairly faithful adaptations. Really, the only reason I haven't gone down this road yet is that I still hold out hope of somehow finding my sketchbooks from that time period. Farthest back I've found to this point was 8th grade, which was when I abandoned my children in favor of cartoons mocking my classmates and teachers. It's also somewhat painful to draw my characters at their most primitive of incarnations. Oh well, if I don't get any REAL ideas in the immediate future, I'll try that.

Pulling back a bit, my conclusions is that my current art mood is reflecting my internet situation. I can't keep a connection for more than a few minutes at a time, which means I can do my daily updates... and nothing else. You can't browse news or read comics with constant interruptions! Hell, even though blogging in theory just requires me to get to the posting screen and hit the "post" button when the connection returns, sometimes (ALL OF YESTERDAY) the connection gets so screwy the only solution is restarting the computer... and losing the unsaved blog post. The post you see for yesterday is the 4th or 5th attempt. Earlier drafts included the themes of THIS post. (Guess which common character treatment I decided wasn't worth sharing!)

I'm hoping for some stability soon. I *should* be painting. I *should* be working on the NINE WEEKS of Precocious comics I have scripted. Instead, I am bouncing around without focus. When then happens, uninspired rips on The Last Supper happen. No one wins.

Things I've learned from my laptop

No sketches in this post. Sorry. I had made sketches, but I decided they destroyed all that was good and pure in the universe. Don't worry too much, as the sketches themselves were fairly benign. I'm either holding onto the idea for later use, or burying it and rejoicing in artistic purity. Instead, let me share some revelations that caught me by surprise.

The subtle difference between how a monitor is calibrated can have dramatic results. For instance, BUD IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE PINK! He is buff-colored, which is not the same as flesh-colored! Pink implies lack of hair, which would be awkward as Bud's figure clearly includes the cheek fluff bumps. That one degree shift away from the yellow side of things hurts me deeply. He looked appropriate on my desktop monitor! Jacob has a similar fate on my laptop, in which he is more purple than the, uh, smoky cream I imagined for him. This doesn't offend me as much, but I'll still compensate for it when I go back to do coloring.

Another fun factor: The laptop's monitor is in HD! It's more sensitive! When I am getting a strip ready for production, I clean up the excess gray from the scan by selecting and deleting a color range. This leaves the white space in a strip in a strange transparent state, as the gray was deleted and pure white remained. The next step would be doing the same color range thing to delete all but the black. I rarely bothered with this step, as I like the transparency effect when I was lining up strips in my web template. Besides, on my desktop's old monitor, it all came out as white. In HD? Not so much. If viewed from a weird angle on the laptop, I can see all the artifacts that come from when a scanner ignores no-copy blue. This is HORRIFYING! It's good that I see this now, but it means almost all of my online archive isn't CLEAN. Argh.

On the lighter side, being on the laptop has allowed me to start an iTunes experiment. To keep myself in sound, I brought a pile of CDs to DC a while back, which eventually ended up in iTunes. As there's really not enough to make custom playlists, when it comes to music time I just set the library to play at random. The playlist is long enough that it never wraps around, so I've been tracking which songs the random play likes the best. Most popular: "Ride a White Horse" by Goldfrapp and "Joining You" by Alanis Morissette. Those are two of my favorite songs, so yay! Least popular: The unfortunately named, "I am Trying to Break Your Heart" by Wilco. It finally got played last night, and then only because I had left music playing for so long the playlist did eventually wrap around. I don't know why I get such amusement from that, but there you go. I'll also note that random LOVES R.E.M.'s best of CD. Hey, who doesn't?

Finally, updating a website from a different IP has confused Google Analytics. My Falls Church hits have gone from one to five, and the avergage visit lasts 15 minutes! Man, whoever is there must LOVE my strip! Most people only stay for the 10 seconds it takes to read the current strip, but this dude is PERSISTENT.

Henry Darger

For those not in the know, Henry Darger is one of the great outsider artists. He was this possibly-schizo hermit-esque guy who lived a seemingly unspectacular life. Only after his death, when his landlord was cleaning out his apartment, did they discover he had written and illustrated a crazy-brilliant (by reports; I haven't read it) story about saving abused children.

While being an "outsider" artist will get him remembered in history, it is also what restrained him. I have to wonder what he could have created if he was able to properly capitalize on his talent. He was clearly talented, yet untrained in basic things like perspective and anatomy. Maybe it might not have made him so interesting in the eyes of history, but post-mortum fame, recognition and acceptance is sorta lost on a dead man. It's better than nothing, but the man still went through life with no recognition.

Now the the "new" tag has left my comic on The Belfry, a major webcomics list, I am watching my hit count crash to earth. Yesterday, I even lost a subscriber. One of the 30 people reading my strip decided I wasn't worth the effort. It shouldn't hit me that hard, as my strip is not flavored for mass-consumtion - even though I do present it as such in hopes the masses come around - but I needed to get all I could from that "new" tag. Now I have to network. I have to promote myself. I have to advertise. I have to contact other artists for guidence and potential friendship.

I don't know if I can. I fear my brain has gone from "delightfully wacky" to "crippled by insanity." I don't have any strength left in me to go beyond myself, and I don't see any help coming ever in my current situation. All I can do for the moment is lock myself in my room and work on my strip. It's one of the thousands of stories in my head, but it's one that has concrete results. It's the best I can do to Darger things. Every other story will be lost unless I start writing them down. While I don't plan on dying, uh, ever (I can rest when all my enemies are dead, and then only after a lenghthy victory dance) if something should happen, as it stands people will have forgotten me before my body was cold.

Promotion for me is a much slower process than it is for sane people. It's been a month now and I've only done two things to promote the strip. Over time, I will slowly do more. Many, many opportunities will pass me by, but I might eventually grab a few. With some luck, people will stumble upon my site and my readership will grow to the, uh, dozens. That's if I'm actually good.

Precocious is interesting because it's a twisted take on what happens if brilliant children do receive the encouragement and support (both social and parental) they need. A recent strip I drew featured Sky Et lamenting Tiffany's enlightenment taking a rather inconvinient turn. The true potential of the wrong person is a terrible thing to behold. Just imagine what I would be like if I was a functional human being...

Like the Bush administration and natural resources

It took quite a while to make this sketch. Why? I kept shading to make Roddy's fur appropriately dark. See, the all-black Roddy was fun in pencil because I could make him gray and still have the freedom to give him the expressions he deserves. Everyone knew he was meant to be black, so everybody wins! Now, he's been anti-Jolsoned. Part of him is white! If I make his remaining black parts gray, it just looks like gray. He looks like a feline Max, which is inappropriate, creepy and somewhat unintentionally hilarious if you want to make a "difference between dogs and cats" joke.

So now I have blackify Roddy's blackness. And if I go too far in one place, that means I have to darken the rest to make it look right. As I kept going, the thoughts begin to nip at me... I'm wasting my pencil lead! If I run out, I have to buy more! Poor Roddy, of course he's the one I'm drawing when I contemplate if it's worth finishing the drawing just in case I'll face a minor inconvinience like procuring more easily-obtainable lead.

Now, pencil lead is one thing I happen to have a lot of at this point. Thanks to my comic push, I doing far more work than sketching, so those supplies are holding up well. It's every *other* art suply that is freaking me out. Who knew that being an active artist meant buring through supplies so fast? In the past few weeks, I've had to restock on comic templates, India ink, the "no-copy" blue pencil lead and the very precious mechanical pencil erases. There was a point where I thought what I had was an inexhaustable supply. I bought enough for FOUR MONTHS! Well, my intro story was two months of work, the comic has been up almost a month and I am a month ahead in strips. Lookee there!

Unlike some people (such as the guy upstairs who got kicked out of a bar last night because he was too wasted and caused a disturbance - and spent today on the phone happily declaring that everyone he offended should just get over it) I hate spending more money that I'm taking in. This is a problem when one is without a (paying) job. I worked my butt off enough previously to build up some "winter fat" savings I could live off while I was doing my artist thing... but I've been doing that longer than anticipated. I still have plenty of savings to make the purchases I need - which is good, since I continue to make those purchases - but nowadays each purchase comes with feelings of guilt.

Let's not forget the majority of my art supplies were taken from my dead dad's stash. I've had to restock, of course, but the supplies I inherited *did* help me choose my direction as an artist. I have no desire to work with high-end art supplies. For me, the investment does not justify the result unless I know I'll be selling the work. I make due cobbling the together the few supplies I have. If I know my supplies are dwindling, I tend to hold back too much - which means I'm handicapping myself. If left to my own devices, I will do something like switch my last remaining eraser between each pencil I'm using until some merciful soul takes me out to buy more. (Thanks, Andrew!) When I do finally restock, I buy in bulk. Not only does it often bring a discount, but it allows me to toss aside my worry.

The current comic successes are partially due to me feeling free enough to experiment again. There were times when I impulsively grabbed a template and just started drawing. Shockingly enough, those experiments all ended up becoming actual strips, so I get double pride from that! Still, if they had failed, it was OK to put them aside and move on. Feeling secure in resources means such things are learning experiences, as opposed to costly mistakes. It would likely benefit me if I put more of an effort into consuming supplies with reckless abandon (hence the Bush administration joke in the title) because I will learn and grow (here's where the Bush analogy breaks down, as they never learn) - but I'm still cognizant of a future when supplies will dwindle once more, so I guess I'm still a bit too *cough* conservative here.