Copper Road! Bonus Comics! More!

It's a special holiday-themed Copper Road for you! Vote here to get in on the cheer and sing along! We'll finish Ursula's story in early January, by the way, but for now enjoy the beautiful color of the holiday's that one kind soul bought for you!

In other news, the big bonus bar on the main page has been filled! 15 bonus comics will be coming your way! These are all double-sized and tell a story. You'll have lots of fun with them. I'm not sure how I'll present them yet. Run two stories at once on the main page? Put them all in one giant update? Spread out their release by using them as vote incentives, then post them as whole elsewhere? I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, and I will listen to your feedback if you have it.

Since I didn't let myself start on the comics until the bar was filled, it'll be a while before your reward is ready. So, hey, if there's a delay, why not keep this party going? The bonus bar now seeks to become a new color! If you all can fill it up, via purchasing Precocious goodies or through happy donations, this bonus arc will come to you in vivid color!

You may have more time than expected too, if my dental hell continues. First it was a toothache, then it was soreness and slow healing of the tooth extraction, then it was my jaw flipping out due to favoring one side of my mouth for so long and now I'm on day four of a brutal and debilitating sinus headache that is freaking me out. (I don't get these normally, and the timing us just too uncanny for me to think it's a random event. Sigh, back to the doc I go...) All in all, while I've kept Precocious going, I've lost a full month of work for my other projects - yes, including the new cast page. I'm not happy about it, but it happened and all I can do is fight on.  As you've probably noticed, this week's streaming was canceled, as sitting up and leaning forward while talking make up the "things that cause pain" trifecta in my current state.  I still hope to recover before my Christmas Eve art giveaway steams, but I really don't know at this point. If I can't stream, I will find other ways to be Santa Chrisp - so keep watching the front page news section for updates!

I will get better. I will get my work done. I won't let you all down. Just cut me some slack until I can get healthy.

The past and the future

The quarter has ended, and the plan was to get this blog going again once the first quarter at SCAD ended. Yeah, I had so many glorious plans. Work ahead! Copper Road! Do commissions! Study comics! TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

And then I blew out my finger.

I still have no idea why it happened. I'm a sequential artist! When *haven't* I drawn for hours and hours on end? Did I just draw wrong one day? All I know is that my finger ballooned up to three times its size around midterms, made me delirious with pain and ended up sending me to the emergency room. They took a x-ray, found nothing, decided to throw my finger in a splint, give me anti-inflammatory drugs and send me to a specialist. By the time I got my appointment with the specialist, the swelling had gone down but the finger remained sensitive. The specialist gave me steroids and said we'll wait and see. The finger got slightly better, but was still gimpy enough that I couldn't do my classwork. I'm falling further and further behind. I'm starting to panic. I go back to the specialist for an answer. His expert diagnosis: "I have no idea." God. Dammit.

It's been well over a month now, and my finger remains damaged for no good reason. I had to take an incomplete in all my classes, with the assumption my finger would clear up so I could do the work before the break was over. I've had to scale back Precocious' drawing over and over, and now it looks like I'm going on a guest strip hiatus until I heal. If I ever heal. How did these wonderful SCAD times end up going so wrong? Bah! Bah, I say!

So that's the horrible past - what's the horrible future? I... I'm not really sure.

I've shut my finger down completely, meaning no drawing for at least another week. I hope and pray that stretch of time will be enough for healing, as I have that scary pile of make-up work to do and time is running out! Once I resume activity, the obvious blog solution will be to post my make-up work here as I do it. You can finally see my attempts to be a FOR REALS sequential artist! The only downside is blogging here could cause lots of double-posting to Facebook if I also set up a "critique me and help me get better" work folder there. This could all be avoided if the blog-facebook posting thingy was at all reliable! Bah again! We'll see...

When I start drawing again, I also have a pile of Precocious work to do. I have a long-overdue painting to finish. I have some Precocious art to do. I have to design some prints for a donation drive. I also have to actually DO Precocious comics at some point. *cough* That stuff should mostly be bloggable.

So, yeah... The blog will resume activity soon - somehow! (Just not for another week or so, due to the shutdown finger thing.) I'll have such a massive pile of work to do for the next TWO YEARS that I should have no shortage of things to share. I just need to get in the habit of SHARING my art, not hiding it from the world because IT IS NEVER GOOD ENOUGH. This should be less of a conflict as I improve my skills. In theory. Crud, I hope so.

When blogging resumes, I'll put an announcement up on the Precocious site. Until then, live in a state of anxious limbo. LIKE ME!

(Damn you, finger!)

There's no time for swirly colors!

I have a comic to do, dammit! Oh, whatevs. THE ARTIST'S SOUL MUST BE SATISFIED!

I tried a new trick with this painting: I turned to twitter for inspiration! Twitter IGNORED MY PLEAS! Go to hell, everyone on twitter! New painting idea: Everyone on Twitter sucks! I'm all alone in a vast uncaring universe because people are too infatuated with themselves to lend a hand! Wait, that's stupid and cliche. New new painting idea: I'm paranoid and whiny because I don't get enough attention. All I can do is thrive on my own and make everyone else look the fool for not acknowledging my supremely obvious awesomeness! Vengeance shall be mine!

Well. vengeance shall be mine in a bit. A good friend is coming to visit this weekend and that means I need to get the comic far enough ahead that I don't have to worry about it. That means I have to get my Sunday strip knocked out TODAY. Ack! At least it should be relatively simple. It's only three panels! Bonus: It contains a joke I've been trying to fit in for over a year! Yay!

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.

Decidedly unsexy work

I apologize for the lack of sexy sharing recently. I've been all about the work, so play is pushed aside. I'd love to fill a gallery with flashy stuff, but first I have to construct the building!

Today was about the website. Maintaining a website is like being a janitor or sportscaster. You work is meant to be taken for granted. If someone notices you, it's because you've screwed up. Thus, I can spend all day doing minor updates and it looks (and feels) like I did nothing. This is stuff that needs to be done, though, because otherwise people would start to NOTICE I'm lagging behind.

I wanted to ink today. I wanted to finish a bunch of strips! I didn't, because FIRST I have to set myself up for the next week of updates. I need my comics scanned and ready to go.

Doing this gruntwork just saps the energy from a person, too. I have the artist arrogance - I SHOULD CREATE! Doing this tedium means I can't be making amazing art! I am denying the world my gift! Yeah, well, unless a shockingly-gifted and selfless altruist magically appears, I've got to do it all myself. Cherry on top: By getting one task out of the way, you clear the path to see.. a bigger task waiting for you!

I drive myself nuts for a reason, though. I am trying to work as hard as I can in this inopportune time so that I can rock harder when things lighten up. I can bitch and moan all I want - it's healthy purging - but as long I'm keeping productive, even if it's unsexy production, then I'm doing it right.

Strictly Business

Today's sketch is of our two Precocious parents in who work in the soulless business environment. Well, the ones who make it funny. Jacob's dad might qualify as he's a patent attorney, but he's so *sincere* - Sincerity isn't funny!

Gene Et and Sydney Oven both give away their secret hobbies here, with the World of Warcraft wastebasket (no, I didn't bother looking up the logo for reference) and Pokeball decal. I love their looks, as if they know they'll be outed as big children at any second!

I really botched the original sketch, but decided I'd run with it. It's the spirit of business! "Fuck it; let's look busy!" It gave me an excuse to mess around in Photoshop and fix all the major proportion errors. I did a great fix job, so that makes the effort worthwhile.

My mind's on business because comic promotion warps the brain hard. I'm becoming accustomed to fighting and clawing for any attention. If I sit back and relax, down go the stats! Now, I don't really mind, since overall Precocious is doing great, but the mindset remains. Gotta be aggressive to move up, because the internet is a vast ocean of indifference, insanity and unrestrained malice. You have to be bold to get attention of the feed worthwhile folks who somehow ended up online, and it's ever more difficult with comics because you never can be sure who makes up your audience. It's never one set group, but a cross-section. Try doing targetted advertising for that! Gah!

That fight is still fun, though. It's not life and death, and I enjoy a challenge where the outcome is measure by how greatly I succeed. A fight without a loser is a wonderful luxury, and I'm glad to have this as my fun obsession.

With all the responsibility in real life, my fantasies turn to the ultimate luxury of being passive and having life come to me. I'm so used to scrambling for any attention that unsolicited niceness is a joyful shock. Being invited over to dinner on by birthday by Dana; finding an unsolicited endorsement of Precocious at the Belfry; learning that people were voting for my site every day - these are the things I cherish right now. It's fun to be selfish sometimes.

I'll be the grown-up. I'll be productive. I'll earn my spot in humanity. It's about time I face some adversity in otherwise blessed life. Still, I'm not going through life without a metaphorical pokeball decal on my metaphorical briefcase! That's how I do metaphorical business!

Edit: Despite the perfect timing of the pokeball metaphor, I had no idea the new Pokemon game was released today when I made the post. Looks like the universe is either being kind or fucking with me. I'm not buying it quite yet, but it sure looks shiny.

Desperate times call for busywork

Just as cowardice caused me to work on the gruntwork that is coloring, a sad and stressful day caused me to make the swatches graphic I needed to make for coloring. Colorizing strips requires actual effort, but making swatches is mindless busywork. Oh well, this will help in the future. The colors will change, I'm sure, but that just means I update the swatches. As long as it was a swatch at the time, no color is ever incorrect!

Life in grayscale

Today the goal was the colorize the next four strips (they go live starting Monday) and possibly get the other two for next week done as well. If not the next two, I could work on some promo pics for the website. I had plans!

Today I woke up feeling great - for the first time all week. I even had a dream of minor complexity! In the past week of fatigue, my brain couldn't muster anything memorable in the few moments of unconsciousness I achieved. The dream was fairly uneventful, and most of it was promptly forgotten in the way all dreams are, but at least I had one.

The part I remember involved my family moving into a new house. The neighborhood was newly built, with not all houses completed and grass just beginning to cover the dirt. After waking, I got the impression that it was in Georgia - possibly based on the few memories I have of the house Dana's family had down there. The family and some friends were gathered in the family room watching some program, which later turned into a ridiculous Lost/Battlestar Galactica/sit-com mash up. There was a crisis: Food. Some of us had eaten earlier in the dream (I was one, and I think we ate in a mall food court) and some were starving. Well, this being a new house, we had very little to offer. The best I could find was some crappy frozen pizza, and I felt bad about preparing it. Instead of making the pizza for the few who were hungry, I asked the group if they would be ready to eat a slice or two if I had pizza delivered. Everyone was noncommital, so I decided to go ahead and order pizza. Only problem: I was new in town and didn't know the number to call. No one else did either, so the result is one minor thing turning into a the most boring clusterfuck ever. It was not a great dream, but there was something that I overlooked initially: My dad was there.

Shortly after my dad died, I had a dream in which I was sitting with him in the back of a theater. He told me that if I ever needed him, he would be there for me. Since then, in times of stress and worry, he would show up in me dream. It was always very casual - just everyday normalcy, He was just there in boring family scenes. Only after waking would I realize that is not normal. When he appears in my dreams, it means something is wrong - even if I haven't realized it yet.

After this dream, I just shrugged it off. The dream was SO inane, I was content to let it go. I did not learn my lesson. I was feeling good! I was energized and refreshed! I spent the first hour of waking calm and relaxed, content to compose whimsical stories in my head for the fun of it.

And then I got a phone call telling me my grandmother (mom's side) had a stroke. Mom came home, packed a bag and drove to the hospital to be by her mother's side. I had to stay here to take care of the animals. While typing this post I got the update call. It wasn't a stroke! It was a seizure brought on by two-to-eight malignant and inoperable brain tumors! Whoopee! If she survives this episode, she'll start hospice. They're not sure if it will be days, weeks or months right now, but an MRI later could tell us more. For those keeping score at home, that would be two grandparents on hospice and two with scary chronic health problems.

This is the second time in recent months that I woke up and declared to myself that it would be a good day. First time my cat died. This time the only grandparent we WEREN'T worrying about almost died - with the "almost" still in doubt, mind you. I know all of this is coincidence, but DAMN. If I was just a tad more egocentric, I'd believe I was the center of a universe that was extremely displeased with me.

Anyway, I'm trying to keep moving on with Precocious stuff. I finished inking the next four strips and sketched out the cast picture seen above. I may or may not use that for the website, but no matter what I won't be coloring it today. I scanned it and prepared it for coloring, but my efforts will be going to working on the strips. Whenever I color, I set up a layer of the gray I use to filter out leftover pencil marks when scanning. It gives me a background that shows any artifacts left behind. Since I wasn't going to color today, I just saved it with that background. I figure it fits the mood.

Postpartum Depression

After one day of the most depressing glory basking ever, I am back at work on strips and thinking about the future. It's been hard, since I'm still very much suffering from the letdown.

It's well documented that my deadly sin is pride, and one aspect of that is my desire to always appear perfect. Putting out anything except the best gives me the dagger-dancing-in-the-stomach feeling. It's why I gave up on cartooning so many times over my life. Obviously, I got over myself enough to put my strip, in all its rookie glory, out there for everyone to see - but I'm feeling some narcissistic aftershocks right now.

I have no idea if anything I've made is funny. Being so close to the craft, all I can see are the technical back stories to each strip. Pride can quickly turn to disappointment if I start to dwell. Rationally, I realize cartooning is a process with its own standard and logic. Only time, practice and research will bring improvement. Emotionally, the perfectionist in me screams every time a face doesn't convey the expression I need or the dialog is not arranged/written in a way to preserve the proper timing for a joke. I am way too close to the work, so I need someone unattached to give me proper feedback. Too bad only those obligated to read the strip have done so at this point. *Sigh*

Ahh, but that's why we have pilot episodes. They show potential, even when the craft is still shaky. I do believe I have the makings of something good, even if I'm a few life lessons short of producing such work. Re-reading the pilot, what can I change to improve myself?

The big thing for me is LETTING GO of the details. I want to show I have the entire world planned and mapped, but there's no reason to bog down strips with it. My goal was to use the inevitable clunkiness of the pilot to get across basic information so I never have to reference it again. Of course, when new strips deal with those specific elements I have to re-introduce them anyway. D'oh. I should focus on telling a good story and let the details be inferred. It's hard for me, since I am so detail-oriented. My characters, having been created by me, tend to speak in my voice. They are rambling bores!

Another weakness with writing caused by my personality is the tendency to write as if the works will be spoken. The dialog in a comic strip is READ, so the snappy timing that makes a strip funny in my head is lost in translation. Yes, there are little touches a cartoonist can add to indicate how dialog should be read, but I am so weak on penmenship that legibility is still my main focus.

Character-wise, I have a lot of changes that need to be made. Proportions are still wildly inconsistant, and I don't see that settling down for a long time. Only repitition will cure that. Until then, I am going to keep misjuding the height of my characters and be forced to stretch them so their feet don't appear in-panel. A lot of strips got ruined when I tried to expand or shrink characters to fit, making them look very rough and wrong.

Character details also need to be reevaluated. Roddy was the first, and most significant, change, but I can see many tweaks that need to be made. Both Tiffany and Suzette suffer for "too many quirks" syndrome, which can look awful if not handled correctly. I'm not sure what needs to be done to clean that mess up at this point. My handling of short-sleeve shirts is still abysmal, and every character sporting one suffers for it. As simple as it should be, managing the strips on Jacob's shirts thwarted me time and again. I should also begin thinking about the medium shading that appears on Bud, Tiffany, Suzette, Max, etc. By the end of the pilot, I learned to use tech pens of smaller width to make the lines, because the equal weight caused conflicts with outlines. Another approach might be in adopting standard shading swatches and dropping them in via Photoshop. As that requires spending some money, I'll put it off for now.

The task now is to sit back and DO THE STRIPS, even if I know they are somewhat weak. The best instruction for cartooning is experience. I can talk a great cartooning game with my knowledge of the medium, but that means nothing if I never develop my skill through execution.

My pride wants me to go into hiding again; to let a few more storylines build up before I start trying to get publicity. I can't do that. I just have to press forward and hope my archive shows progress and potential. I need people to care about me and about the strip. Without help from others, all the feedback I get is from my personal demons. Those guys are assholes. It's sad and needy to talk like this, but if I'm the only person emotionally invested in this project, that's a good sign that the project is a failure. At this point I'll take the moral support from those obligated to be kind to me. Something. Anything. I understand that my mom saying I'm cool does not make it so, but I could *so* use a placebo effect right now.

The copyright info is in Franklin Gothic again!

That means I'm home! (It's Impact or Rockwell when I'm on the road.)

There will be little unwinding here in the immediate future, unfortunately. After a month of being converted to an animal/idiot/both sanctuary, my studio needs to be set up anew - a daunting task for someone as mentally drained as I.

Let's do the rundown. Moron brother has entered his 922nd consecutive day of being "sick" when asked to do work, so my grand welcome home came in lots of heavy lifting with garbage and a trip to Costco for the heavy lifting of garbage-to-be. Moron brother apparently lost one of the packages containing an order from Amazon.com, so I might have to fight the system to replace the lost goods in my future. Moron brother's definition of cleaning is, "move stuff from one surface to another surface around the corner," so you can guess what my room is like right now. Moron brother was also force to move back home, so all this stuff is strew about, adding much to the ambiance here. Moron brother's irresponsibility with my mother's credit card has forced our family to cancel Christmas to deal with the debts he's accumulated. Man, life SUCKS over here. I wonder if there's one common element that is causing all this dysfunction...

Tonight my plan is simple: Focus my stress into an eating disorder (the fat, unsexy one), break out the alcohol my brother hasn't consumed yet (he consumed a bottle of whiskey and tequila, both purchased by me, while here), and devote my life to TV on DVD. I have many options! I watched Lost season 1 while in DC, and season 4 was in the packages waiting for me, so I could continue and watch the new three seasons back to back to back. Black Friday was good to me in that I got all of Battlestar Galactica on DVD for half price, so I could start on that again. I have the first three discs of The Wire season 2 from Netflix FINALLY! The system failed me and sent the last discs first, so only now do I get to watch in order. Mom bought me the John Adams series on DVD as a gift, so that's there as well. Basically, I'm set for a piece of performance art wherein I will be playing the role of a shut-in.

As for the SKETCH, which has been ignored so far, I was feeling really sick last night and couldn't stop drawing... happy characters? Ok, whatevs. Most of drawings, being done through fever and fatigue, were crap and incomplete - but the Jacob one was close enough that I could fix the major errors (proportions) with Photoshop. The book is my joke on his corny smile. Anyone worth their salt should get the reference. If you don't, WHY DIDN'T YOU COME OF AGE IN THE 90'S LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!?!?!

Update edit: Amazon had agreed to replace my lost package. Yay! I eschewed DVDs for DVR and I'm watcing the Survivor finale/reunion. (Any non-Matty, non-Susie winner is fine by me. Sugar totally should have won, though.) I think I will go Wire after this, since Netflix must miss me by now! The goal is to drink myself into submission and stay up as late as possible so I sleep through the workers tomorrow. (Re-edit: Yes, I realize drinking myself into a stupor is not conducive to watching the ultra-complex The Wire, but I AM A GENIUS! My brain may be smart even when addled by CLASSY LIQUEURS! Or... I could watch the braindead Heroes episode I missed while in DC.

Awkward moments; treasured memories

I wrap up my current stretch in DC as a complete wreck. Stress has taken its toll on me. I've got zits. I've gained weight. I am low on sleep. I might be getting sick. I desperately need a shave. I'm awesome!

That's not to say this hasn't been a positive expirience. I'm glad I could help, as little as I could, and I *did* get some art done while here. After some recharging, I'll come back again to get things right this time. I'm starting to get selfish over here - hiding away in my cave and eating at odd hours - and that's fairly useless outside of moral support. When I get my energy back, I'll do what I should be doing now. I'm going to get my grandmother to tell more stories and just give her a partner in conversation. I'll have a better grasp on what I need for art, so my studio will be better prepared. (Needed: More paint and a mechanical pencil sharpener!) I'll do more around the house, even if I'm clumsy at chores. My grandmother has a 50-year head start and learning the ins and outs of this place - and things must be done properly - so I fumble around like an idiot most of the time. Next time I'm here, I might even cook a decent meal. I'm 0-for-2 so far. (The thing about cooking for an Alzheimer's patient is that he eats with ZERO politeness.)

Anyway, I need a recharge. I need to turn my sarcastic awesome back into actual awesome.

Cranial Concrete

What a way to start November, huh? My mind has been so blank these past few days I couldn't even put up FILLER in good conscience. This has been highly frustrating.

Me and productivity rarely coincide as is, thanks to my brain being wired in an amazingly specific way to negate all my best qualities. Oh, and I'm also hardwired to struggle mightily with any alternate (er, normal, that is) life paths. Basically, I'm wired to fail. Pure force of will alone is how I made it as far as I have. (Have I made it anywhere?) Problem is, I have to actively fight to keep myself even mildly useful - which leaves me vulnerable when life gets fuckly bad. Recent events have worn me down to nothing, which is quite frustrating.

My house is a construction site, which is detrimental in several ways. The constant banging has brutalized my sleep pattern, which is never good for anyone. The lack of a kitchen means I am living out of a microwave now, which sucks. Having the only working appliances as well as the utility stuff nearby means constant invasion of my personal space. (Let's face it, I'm borderline agoraphobic, so this stuff is a big deal.) I cannot get peace here and the constant invasion of people and sounds is starting to severely affect me.

This blog is very useful because the post-a-day goal forces me to have visual proof that I did something positive. Recently, I've been focusing on my writing. I want to create a thorough outline of Maquette so that, if I die unexpectedly, there will be enough there for someone else to take my story and complete it for me. (Note: I am not planning on dying anytime in the next millennium, but I need *something* to force me to put stories that exist entirely in my brain down in real form.) By working on painting in addition to the writing, I had something to show off!

Well, the environment and creative block finally set in with painting. Without something to show, I am just this delusional wistful artist wasting his life on a project no one will ever care about. To make matters worse: My crappy painting skills extend to drawing. For years I would sketch for hours a day. As of late, sitting down to draw feels absolutely foreign. I'm going to chalk it up to the environment finally getting to me, because if my brain was imploding for good that would be far too depressing.

Anyway, the goal of this post was to apologize. I'm not apologizing for my lack of posting her as much as I am apologizing for being a crappy person in this past month. While I've struggled to create, I've increasingly isolated myself. To all my friends I've ignored in that time, I'm really sorry. I've been a wretch and you are so awesome that I'd hate to bring you down with me. Here's to hoping this whiny dirge has been enough blather to get the frustrations out of my brain.

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!

The black cat is always a good sign

A note about fate: Fuck it!

I am not one who believes in fate. When a person makes a decision, it inevitably whittles down the possible outcomes. This choose-your-own-adventure path is not fate. I am also not one who believes in self-determination or making one's own luck. One only controls so much destiny, as each person's whittled outcomes tend to smash into the whittled outcomes of others. And, thus, chaos flows from logic and order. Welcome to the universe!

Let's recap: I vowed to work through the pain, only to receive my comeuppance with the death of my beloved cat. (While I use the word "comeuppance" and curse the universe, I know it's not fate - it's rather a horrible coincidence that supremely sucks. It's just far more to fun to rant against the universe than to coldly shrug things off.) Now I am a mess and I do try to keep my promise and work through the pain. The universe again chooses to reward my attempts at success by kicking me in the balls.

It's football time! I adore the sport, and losing myself in the games and fantasy football provides a nice distraction. Of course, the teams I love are blown out. The teams I admire are brutalized. The teams I hate all thrive. The obnoxious fans online make all sports sites I visit disgusting with their spiteful gloating. So much for *that* bit of escapism.

Back in reality, I am the typical wretch - the one shown in the movie when the sad violin music is playing. Peri always clawed at the basement door when she wanted to come back inside. She trained me well, and I jump to attention whenever I hear that sound. I did hear the sound, and I did jump to attention. Like a true wretch, I even went to the door despite knowing no cat would be there.

Turns out that sound I heard was a bird hitting the glass and dying. Now I ask you...ISN'T THIS GETTING A BIT OVER THE TOP? Can't I get some good karma thrown my way?

So today I took my mom to the hospital. She was diagnosed with ulcers, brought on by the stress that comes from the Paulsen life. I can whine all I want, but my troubles are nothing compared to the ruthless savagery dealt out to her from the universe. This speaks to her strength over mine. My upcoming root canal (part 2: revenge of pain!) is nothing in comparison.

A note about ambition: Fuck it!

As previously mentioned, I am ready to resort to talking head syndrome. Until I learn to letter with more discretion, draw my characters smaller in the panels or learn to use nibs of different sizes in my drawing, I am not going to bother with backgrounds in the comic. Right now the focus needs to be on getting the stuff done, and cutting corners is fine by me.

The scene I am working on originally had Dionne offering Bud and Jacob milk and cookies as they sat to chat. This is far too difficult to draw, so they will now be just standing around. Besides, most of the snack scene ended up being cut from the final script anyway. My vow is now to make drawing the strip as easy as possible. FUCK MY AMBITION! NO ONE HAS TO KNOW!

A note about productivity: Fuck it!

I'm trying. Man, I'm trying. I've tried drawing out strips, but I'm not up to the task of trying to ink what I have right now. I tried scripting more strips for Precocious, but the little I've written has been WAY TOO BITTER for what is to be the second strip once the first arc is done and strip begins regular updating. I've already nixed my original holiday storyline due to massive blasphemy. It's just not marketable to drive consumers into a blind rage right away.

I turned to my sketchbook next, with horrible results. Man, I wish art was like a real profession - that training would allow me to turn it on and off and work during set hours. The only good sketch I did was of Sydney Oven sitting on a couch looking annoyed. Everything else: utter crap!

A note about logic: Fuck it!

And, finally, I decided on a whim to try and draw Roddy in ink. While it is something I need to work out in time, as the first regular update arc is all about Roddy, there are far more pressing needs. Also curious about the decision: I am frighteningly low on India ink. By wasting it on the black cat, I am now forced to leave my house to purchase art supplies! SCANDALOUS! At least the ink Roddy turned out OK.

A note about brevity: Fuck it!

Dionne by the Dozen

Alright, so I made a vow to change how I work. I said I wanted to start channeling misery into productivity, as normally it just shuts me down. The universe decided to call my bluff and KILLED MY FUCKING CAT! Listen, universe, you wretched and cruel shitsmack, I was talking about overcoming the low feelings that come from isolation when friends abandon me and things like that. Death in the family is NOT COOL! Turning life's lemons into lemonade is one thing, but when life loads that lemon into a bazooka and shoots it through your goddamn chest THAT MAKES THINGS A BIT HARDER FOR COPING!

But I'm going to try. Today has been marked by a strange numbness. Maybe it's an emotional hangover. I've been muted today, and if I didn't keep catching myself it could have spent the last 14 hours laying in bed and staring blankly at the ceiling. But I did catch myself, and I tried to work.

I have two more comics sketched out; they need to be inked, but it's progress. The strips also mark the introduction of Dionne, the hard-to-draw cheetah mix. I'm getting better at consistency with regular Dionne, but *this* Dionne is wearing a girly, poofy pageant outfit that is an absolute BITCH to draw. I lucked out with the last strip, as it was so dialog-heavy I could hide her behind a word bubble in the only panel in which she appeared. The next three, however, feature her prancing around and being expressive and stuff. Why do I do this to myself? PRACTICE IS NEEDED!

What you see above (click the image to see it at its full size) is distilled from four full pages of Dionne sketches done over the past day. I played with a lot of things: Shoulder poofs or not? Black hands/feet or not? Does she wear a bow; and, if so, where would it be located? Aside from the shoulder decision (no, I want to show shoulder spots!) I am still not certain. Black extremities are easier to ink, so I'll likely go there as a cop-out. As for the bow, I'd love to put one on her back - but I don't see any panel in the upcoming strips where her pose would make it visible. In the end, I am ready to (once again) toss out visual complexity - in this case, having the kids sit on a couch and eat cookies - in favor of three characters standing in front of a plain white background. If that's what it takes to get them done, then that's what will happen. GO MEDIOCRITY!