The comic marathon

I know I said I didn't want to make this kind of post, but with this task dominating my life of late I have no other options for today.

I woke up this morning with 10 pages laid out and ready for sketching... so why not try to sketch ALL OF THEM in one day? Heck, why stop there? I'll ink them too! 10 pages? How hard can it be? (Note: During my recent workathons, the best I'd done before was taking four pages to ink in a day.)

So here I am, 12 hours after my insane resolution. How did it go? Seven pages have been sketched and inked. I don't think I've ever had a day this productive!

What finally did me in for the day was my blasted finger, who finally started to protest around hour eight. You might think it's bad that an injury incurred in 2010 is still causing me trouble, but I am THRILLED! I haven't been able to draw for this many hours since before the injury! (If one counts the motions of inking as drawing.) I'm sure I'll pay for all this effort tomorrow, but for tonight I can celebrate!

Oh, and it means the rest of June is now covered, aside from coloring. (Which can be partially outsourced, so woohoo!)

"Commiepingo" takes on new meaning...

Holy cow, guys, check this out! Precocious has been Russianized!

What's the most striking about this discovery is that it's been done really, really well. Everything's been translated, down to t-shirts, mugs and background writing. When I use puns, there's a note in Russian on the comic explaining it. The guy doing the translation is excellent! Good job, Nox!

I know, I know. Technically, this is stealing my content. That should be a no-no. But... but they put in so much effort to do this. Almost all of Precocious' strips have been translated at this point, and that's a huge number! Someone had to care enough about the strip to put in that phenomenal amount of work.

On one hand, it's not fair that I don't get a chance to profit off my work. On the other hand, it's not like those who need to read the strip in Russian would ever be readers without this. Maybe I can make them show my Project Wonderful ads or something...

Back for more, eh?

As anticipated, the bold mouse found his way back into the house. As he did not anticipate, I AM THE GREAT MOUSE HUNTER!

Your folly came in your boldness mouse! I was reacquainted with him as he walked up next to me, having climbed to the top of the mini fridge to investigate some hot dog buns. I moved even close - so close I could have easily reached out and grabbed him - and he calmly backed off. No running; just a "Eh, I suppose I should move" thing.

Ok, fine! I had a bag of stale tortilla chips I was going to throw out, so the trap was ready. Hot dog buns and tortilla bag got switched. Five minutes went by. Mr. Bold came right back to investigate, hopped in the bag and became my captive again!

Just like before, he did NOT take it well - throwing himself against the sides of the bag, trying to jump out and doing his best to gnaw through the thing. No animal with that lust for freedom would make a good pet, so I had to release him again. Obviously, the wood pile wasn't going to keep him away, so I had to trek him out further! This time I went all the way to the edge of the property before setting him free. If he wants back to my house, he'll have to run a long ways to get there.

(He'll probably be back anyway.)

I should have some actual Precocious stuff to show you tomorrow, but tonight I felt my tale of aggressive vermin was fun enough for sharing. *I* think it's entertaining...

The quest to make money

Hey, look, I'm working on commissions! Maybe one day I will earn more than I spend! Maybe.

I got busy portraiting today after I got approval of my proposal sketch. I have been approved to go wild, and I WILL! It's actually been quite a while since I worked on portraits, so I'm easing back into it. Good linework down? Sweet! Take a break and savor the victory!

Tomorrow is going to be interesting on the commission front, as that Bob Marley mural project is looking more and more likely to happen. I'm meeting with the owner to see if we can reach an agreement over cost. (Let's see if I can screw that up with my demands!) Murals require cash up front for concept development. GIMMIE! Payday aside, the mural thing will be cool because it's a new challenge. I'll have to do some research on how one actually muralizes things...

Fun for the whole family!

I was raised on newspaper comics, and I strive to make a newspaper-worthy comic. I'm talking figurative newspaper here, as currently most newspapers are in sad decline and no longer worth the trouble. Whatever, it's the TONE I want to capture, and the delivery method can change. Oh, and it has.

I've signed on with two groups, both in the family-friendly comic vein, and I am greatly enjoying this current goody goody mentality.

First, as mentioned in the last post, is Kidjutsu, a site created to being comics to kids. When I was a kid, I spent my library time hunting down old Peanuts collections instead of blindly sticking with Judy Blume. I'll always claim I learned most of my vocabulary from reading Calvin and Hobbes. Comics are vital in getting kids to love reading, and Kidjutsu aims at providing kids a one-stop resource with tons of comic volumes to choose from.

Precocious will eventually join that line-up once I do some redrawing and reformatting. Finally, my tendency to create long story arcs pays off! I have issues - and they're not all mental!

The second site I'm pimping out is Family Webcomics, which does exactly what you think it does. It's very thorough in classifying and listing family-friendly comics, making it an excellent resource for parents. Precocious joined the list and I hope to be an active contributor there as well. It is my hope that when I am up against the wall, judged while a gun is held to my temple, I can point out I was a FAMILY-FRIENDLY guy. That could save my life! I'll admit that my family love might work more for a liberal family, but that's due to intelligence and being, you know, interesting. If a conservative mother is going to faint the second she reads the word "sucks" in her kid's comics, I can't really do anything about that. It's not like I could do or say anything to do more damage to her children than her anyway.

On the Family Webcomics forums, the creator, Mirz, put out a request for homepage splash art. This is something I can do! Here is my contribution to the cause:



Of course I had to feature my strip's giant Et family - with so many kids I can't fit them all in a square composition. I sorta felt bad about leaving Frida and Michelangelo out, so I started work in a second sketch:



This sketch hit a wall when I realized what a pain it would be to make it clear the object the family is viewing in the foreground is a monitor. But I did include all the children! Minor victory!

Sew it goes.

Today's painting mission was aborted when I discovered I had somehow mortally wounded Etruscan Blues. (Man, those guys can't catch a break!) At some point I managed to stab the painting with something, causing a nice big tear. (If you click on the image to see the larger version, you can spot it on the right of the lower right eye-thingy.) Well shoot, that makes things difficult. So it goes. (Hey, you can see my Vonnegut collection in this photo!)

Can this painting be saved, or will it become so meta it falls into obscurity, damaged and incomplete? Maybe I can sew up the wound. Maybe it'll still work. A scar reaching across the most visible eye form in the painting? POETIC! I could stitch it up, paint over the back of the painting to seal it - red paint, of course, so it can seep through a bit - and, hell, PAINT THE WHOLE BACK with something Roman. That way, when held up to a back light, it gets OPPRESSIVELY LITERARY! Or not. Who knows.

The mass of paintings in the picture is to show the different fates of the recent work. Dana's painting is finished, and it is marvelous! Everything went right with that one, and it is both large and in charge. Kickass! Andrew's painting, meanwhile, got stabbed. Oops.

(The flower paintings are there to fill space in the composition, which is fairly symbolic of their nature as well when you think about it...)

The Paulsen Wildlife Sanctuary

BEES!



Such is life in plague-a-day land! So far we've dealt with the biblical onslaught of terrors such as cute vermin, construction workers, my brother and bees. What's next for God's wrath? My bet is ambitious raccoons making their home inside our walls.



Check it out: Exterminator dude found the queen! Her she is next to a minion for comparison. We've hit the colony with biological weapons, destroyed their infrastructure and paraded their dead leader about for our own amusement. HOW AMERICAN IS THAT? USA! USA! USA!



Exterminator dude said we had the largest nest he'd ever seen. This is not to be confused with the last times yellow jackets made a bold real-estate venture into our neighborhood. What does that say about my family that we ignore these problems until hundreds of bees begin to rain down upon us, coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE! We watched them zoom around all summer thinking, "Hey, cool! It's nature!" What could possibly go wrong?

I tried to sneak up next to the action and take some close-ups, but that venture was thwarted after my unrestrained hair became a net for buzzing bastards. It's the hip new accessory people! After getting my buddies to tag along, I backed down before disaster could strike.

Covering myself in bees for attempted bad photography = cute.
Getting stung repeatedly by bees for bad photography = stupid.

"Finishing" the latest paintings

The goal today was to get the paintings done. Goals are supposed to be met. Well, fuck that.



I got one completed! The current title for this is "The War Wife" - meant to evoke the Asian bride some soldiers bring home. Yeah, I'm still clinging onto the theme of temptations through time.



Despite encouragement from others, I am not satisfied with how this one is going yet. The theme was sort of the "edgy" chick you spot across the coffee house and can't help but fantasize about. Is she entirely self-centered and tragically hipster, or is wonderfully wild and exuberant?

The question now is...where to go with it? I am totally lost with the idea of a background. Maybe if I look at it fresh tomorrow something will click on in my brain. Who knows.

It's like those Star Wars DVDs...

It's the same old material but NEWLY RESTORED for HIGHER QUALITY! I took my webcam-shot sketches and gave them the proper scanner treatment. Just be glad I'm not Photoshopping Hayden freakin' Christensen as a ghost in the background.



Recycled material can be very enriching if done right. A good director's commentary or extra production notes can make a rehash a great thing! What I'm saying here is... I got nothin' new to say about this particular sketch.



I did the best I could to shorten Tiffany's legs with Photoshop. It's still not enough, but a moral victory.



I really should salvage this sketch and turn it into a t-shirt design in the future. The caption will be the "Unrestrained Creativity" title I used for the post. Photoshop was handy for making the paint look better. That's something that will be much easier to do with India ink. And a brush. Fuck, I need to learn how to ink with a brush!



This is also a potential t-shirt design. Heck, if I actually succeed with this damn comic strip, it would make a great first book title!



This sketch is still crap. Ahh well, I tried.

Oh, and I'm not scanning the bear sketch. Fuck that bear!

Fox Confessor Brings the ROCK! ROCK! ROCK! Er... alt-country.

Before I left for DC, I purchased Neko Case's album "Fox Confessor Brings The Flood" as well as the New Pornographers (featuring Neko Case) album "Challengers" *plus* their single "Letter From an Occupant." (Bonus: Neko was born in my home town, meaning for one year of my life we might have passed each other on the street. Also, on 9/11 I realized I had been in an airport before so it was very personal to me.) I got one good night of listening and love before I left. Guess what songs keep going through my head as I relax here without any music! (For those not in the know, I normally listen to music as I sleep. Here in DC I filled the void by turning the TV to ESPN. It's just not the same.)

As I near my return to Funchester (today!) the distraction has intensified. I needed my rockin' redhead fix! After pulling a Chibi cat and zoning out while providing "moral support" as my aunt and I ran annoying-but-needed errands, the songs were playing in my head so loud it was hard not to sing along - much less listen to what my aunt was saying. When I got home, I rolled the dice, hijacked the wi-fi again and pulled up YouTube to locate those cravable songs.

Once free for the night, I got to play them over and over as I sketched my own foxy redhead, Autumn, doing her best to emulate Neko's style.

Enjoy the songs with me!







(Edit: Changed the post title to a New Pornographers reference instead of a Charlotte Gainsbourg reference because she has nothing to do with this post other than writing a song with an appropriate title. I was tempted to go for a direct "New Pornographer" reference, but a dude who draws a strip about children just shouldn't go down that path. Just for fun: Had I wanted to go down that path and take a further detour into the badlands, Gainsbourg famously performed a song called "Lemon Incest" with her father. Imagine the possibilities!)

(Edit-again-because-I-can't-freakin'-sleep: Fuck it! I'm going with the Fox/Neko reference for a post title and then tossing it into a drunken blender. I'm not drunk. The blender is. I'm just stupid. Don't ask any more questions.)