Portfolio brainstorming

I apologize for clogging the internet with this, but this is the sum of my day! I had to come up with a portfolio of 20 strips to submit for my grad school application, and using the blog's preview function proved to be the best sorting option. As I have nothing else to show, here is what I came up with. These are the 20 strips *I* think sell myself the best. Why, yes, I *am* consumed with crippling self-doubt over my choices! How could I not be?

The first thing I was looking for was quality art. This is where I feel I am at a disadvantage, as the newspaper-style daily strip format tends to be rather simple in design. It's the nature of the beast. Any comic in which I had a chance to show off my artistic chops was automatically in. Next was, of course, humor. Again, my format gets in the way. I tell character driven stories. Many of my strongest strips are dependent on context. Those reviewing my portfolio will not have that context, so the strips I choose must be able to speak for themselves. That means no bake sale or school revolution strips, which is a shame. Those were funny STORIES, not funny standalone strips. The result is that I mined my gag-a-day theme weeks pretty heavily, with a lot of the early introduction strips as well. Finally, I threw in some Copper Roads for variety.

I'm proud of Precocious and I'm proud of these strips. They should be a nice taste, and clearly establish the kind of cartoonist I am. This is what I do, and I do it quite well. As long as there's still a place for classic-style strips in the world, then I should have a place in grad school!

Now comes to the agonizing task of arranging the strips so they flow nicely. Going in numerical order *almost* works, but I want to start with one of my grabber strips, like Rule #4 or Unrestrained Creativity. Ahh, it'll get done. It'd better! I have to submit this stuff tonight! (The numbers by the strips are for quick reference as I upload everything.)

98
107
111
131
139

143
145
162
169
185

191
197
199
200
288

309
312
463

Restrained Creativity

Since this is the most popular design, I pulled out the original and went to work on making it more t-shirt-ish. It's set up now as a one-color print with a gray shirt as background. This would be the cost-effective approach. Is it acceptable? (Click the image for a larger version.)

This is how it all began...

I was taking my second painting class in eight years and totally lost on what to paint, so I pulled out a study done a few years back in advanced drawing. Just painting the figure left a lot of space, so I had to fill it with something... why not improvise?

And so my steady decline into painting began. From that one drawing of Anna (Ana?) I discovered I could do my funky drawing in paint as well. My professors hated it, saying it was dated and derivative, but it was still a springboard into locking onto and refining my own painting voice.

In all other media, I am slow and deliberate worker. I work long hours and dance dangerously close to the edge of disaster with those things. After all, I *never* erase a mark once I make it in drawing - not that I had an eraser that *could* erase it. Painting, however, was something forgiving. Don't like a part, PAINT OVER IT! It was also something I could do relatively quickly. The more I paint, the faster I get. The more I improvise, the more confident I become in my strokes. I'm starting to look at painting as something I DO, not as something I just happen to be doing NOW. Fear my wrath, people, because nothing can stop me now!

Oh yeah, MONEY! Turns out my recent productivity streak means I am constantly running out of supplies. I have two of the giant canvasses left, which means two DC visits until I have to fall back to smaller, more affordable formats. I chew through paint at an alarming rate, and I have to order more the day after I open the box with my latest paint order. If I don't sell anything at the current show I'm in, I'm going to have one costly HOBBY on my hands.

While the latest order of supplies *should* keep me set for a nice long time, it's a reminder that I've got to get more aggressive with showing. This is hard to do when you're constantly shuffling around! I've been telling myself there will be plenty of time to do all the gallery whoring once life settles down - and it's best to use this odd stretch of time to get as much work done as possible so I have ample material to whore when the time comes - but it's very easy to keep sliding this date father and father back. I don't see any chance in the near future, but these nagging thoughts can only stew for so long before action is forced. Step one: Updating the damn fine art website with recent material! Uh... I'll get to that LATER.

The Model City

So I figured out how to get my blog to post on Facebook. (I think.) Feast on the annoyance, people! Also, feast upon the painting I have completed: The Model City.

Since I know you are lazy, I'm going to bring all the pictures together and show you the evolution of a painting:

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Final (click image for larger version):

I'm quite pleased with the outcome, as it only took two days of working to get it done. (Day being defined as the time from when I wake up to when I pass out. Screw you, midnight! You mean NOTHING to me!) My biggest regret is that my aunt bought a crappy camera that is hardly worth stealing. I've going to use it in DC from now on, as my aunt won't miss her camera while my mother is likely getting angrier by the day over her missing awesome camera. In the end, I can see in person how awesome I am. You get cruddy pictures and have to take it on faith. I have to assume you all understand that I don't actually paint jpeg artifacts into my paintings, although that would be a nice subversive art project...

Forgetting the awkward phase in life

I've been mulling over joining Kidjutsu the past few days, and it's given me a kick start on *another* project... redrawing the early strips. Wait! Don't facepalm yet! I'm only aiming at the first 17 strips, which were done months before the rest (save the obviously incongruous strip 11) and really show it. I don't even need to redraw ALL the strips, just the really egregiously bad ones! (I'd also go back and redraw a bad panel here and there... like the last one in 24 and the third in 40.) I've even tried to make the new old strips look a tad unevenly drawn to make the transition smoother. While I'm doing this, if I want to use my AWESOME PRECOCIOUS FONT to re-do the dialog in some to tighten things up and/or upgrade a punchline... Ooh!

I do this not only because of self-loathing artistry, but for the sake of future profit. I want these intro stories to be stand-alone pieces, and readers expect stories to be uniformly drawn. I could also use the confidence boost that comes from improved drawings to create my own Gender Wars books - to sell at future conventions? Ooh!

Setting up in Kidjutsu would also require a format change, as it's set up more for a graphic novel form. This means turning my one row of four panels into a two-by-two affair. I believe all strips that would got into issues would adapt well. If I do that, I'd be doing a lot of re-scanning. And if I re-scan, then I'd make sure this time to save high-resolution versions of my black and white strips, which means I'll have them ready for future publishing in any format! Ooh!

In summary: I have a stone in my hand and I am ready to commit bird genocide.

It's DC; it must be painting

I'm back in DC again, which means access to a nice sturdy easel and giant canvasses. Painting mode: activated!



Painting mode: modified! I have all these unfinished Maquette paintings, representing a series of wall-hitting and general apathy. They are bite-sized compared to what I've been working on, so what's the trouble? Let's see if I can knock 'em out!



Oh, goddammit, can I not paint anymore? I ruined Annelise's hair, and each attempt to fix only made it worse. The hands came out ok, so at least I have that. You know, so she can become real and punch me for giving her hair out of a playing card.



Sebastian is coming along alright. This was formerly a selfish-portrait thing, but the character of Sebastian kinda looks exactly. like. me. So I can make it sexier than I am, claim it's him plus artistic license and throw it in my Maquette series!

The more things change...

There's a thread over on The Webcomic List about how characters have evolved over time. This was my contribution. No matter what is going on, on how crappy everyone looks, once thing is certain: Bud's family is a questionable entity. The two strips were drawn about two years apart.

It's weird to look back at the demo series. (And, yes, I know there's another post out there comparing a past and present strip, making this a doubly-redundant post!) The story revolved around the Pingo's touring the house that they would eventually own, then being taken on a tour of the smarty kid houses. Obviously, this means it touched upon several things the REAL intro strips did. It was never intended for publication, which should be obvious considering how hideously primitive it is.

Then again, I drew way more backgrounds back then. Now, I find it a personal insult if I have to draw a FLOOR. Granted, I needed *something* to distract from the characters. Oh, and it also had about 3 potentially funny jokes in 23 strips. (I gave up before Tiffany got introduced, lucky girl.) It took a long time to get my mind thinking in comic format, and I still make no claims it does it well. But, hey, I AM better at this now than I was when I was just starting out. I can only imagine how awesome the strip will look two years down the road. That's the thought that keeps me going. The present has a chance to suck, but the future is always home to the best-case scenario!

A banner day

So I've decided to aim for quantity over quality, it seems. I know there's a perfect Precocious banner out there, but I'm not sure it can be done using only existing strips. (Planned: A color Sunday with all secondary characters standing around looking dynamic. Humor optional.) Only five of the above banners are new, but I threw 'em all in to make an impressive wall. Deal.

Today was meant to be a Project Wonderful ad blitz, but that seemed to end quickly when everyone else tried one too. Yay for the Monday push! Seriously, Precocious needs one more PW bidder to make bidding competitive. I'd like to one day be able to gain enough from ads to balance out what I'm spending. (And there's a noticeable drop when I stop spending. Gah! Can't we just fast forward to a time when I have a super-solid base of readers?) Anyway, with my ads being outbid and me not willing to spend any more, the solution my brain came up with was to create more ads. Yeah!

I hope I have some interesting sketch stuff to show off later today, but I fear this day will be ALL BUSINESS! Fight! Color! Draw! Win! Grrrrrrr...

Anyone want to buy a mug?

This is purely a product pimping post. I decided to play in my DeviantArt account today and take advantage of their print service. (Link is to your right, people.) A few hi-res comics were tossed in, with various print options added. Let's see if it works! I also threw in my recent flower paintings, one of which was immediately favorited by someone. Sweet!

I'm testing this thing out myself and ordered a beefily-priced mug. Gentlemen, this might work!

(The comic was added as a reminder of what a mug looks like.)

In a row?

Yes, I am recycling a joke I made on Facebook. Yes, this reeks of an "It's Saturday; deal with it," post. But, well, it's *almost* Saturday. Deal with it.

Pictured here are 33 of the 37 Precocious strips making up the next arc. (There are two #72 strips, as I haven't decided which one to go with yet.) They have to be inked and colored, with the first one needing to be done for Monday's update. Oh, so much work. The plan is to ink until Saturday night, then start coloring what I have to get one done by midnight.

Really, I just wanted to get something up for today. The *actual* art post is probably coming after midnight. I intend to hammer out one painting tonight before/after/during inking. Painting as a break beats sitting around in a daze with an aching hand, right?

Chrispy 2, Mouse 0

As predicted, my pet mouse returned a few nights ago for more adorable action. This time, she was even more brazen about making this room her home. In addition to the usual scamper-bounce thing, she took up climbing. She would scale the busted ask speaker and run back down. She'd climb a bookcase, jump into a bag and climb back out for more exploring. She'd climb right up next to me and sit on my computer! Should I turn and speak to her, she'd bound back under the bed - but five minutes later she was again forging new frontiers.

As the cycle continued, it was time again for me to catch it! Earlier in the night, I had placed a peanut on the ground beside to see if she'd come up and take it. I turned away to do something else and looked back a minute or two later. The peanut was gone. So I placed a *second* peanut down. Again, she grabbed it so fast I missed her. OK then! My mouse loves her nuts!

It was time for a trap! While Chipotle had failed me so hard earlier, I still had the bag. In went a few peanuts and onto the floor it went. It took a while for the mouse to emerge again, but sure enough she went for the bag. She climbed it, ran around it, went under it - had I been a cat, the tip of my tail would have been twitching like a blender blade with the anticipation. Finally, she jumped in, grabbed her peanut and ran before I could get the bag. Curses!

But the *second* time she got greedy! Mouse - mine! like a good pet owner, I gave her a lovely place to live. I took my box of files (use: holding papers I probably need, but will never look at again) and emptied it to give her a home. She even got a water dish, some food and a cardboard tube for shelter. She enjoyed her new home for about five minutes. Then, just like in all relationships, the bitch went crazy!

A nimble gal, she would climb the sides of the box and crawl around the top, trying to find an escape route. Then, in a non-nimble way, she'd slip and fall. Into the water dish. She's scramble around, making a mess of the good home I gave her, before settling in her tube to hide in shame. Realizing there was no way out, she did the typical mouse thing and tried to gnaw her way through the hard plastic.

As it was 5am at this point (I took my sleeping pill at 1am, but sometimes it just doesn't work) I decided to let my mouse enjoy her home as I slept. By morning (my definition) she had made significant progress in her escape route, but had a long way to go. She had also made a huge mess of things by falling off the wall so many times, and that's when I decided to have mercy - but not before putting her in a clear plastic bottle to take photos! I think I earned a medal of freedom for that act of compassion.

Anyway, so ends the latest saga of the mouse. Check back in a few days, since I'm sure she will return.

Just for fun, I tried another mouse girl sketch. It should be noted that I did not use my mouse photos to help in drawing. This is because I'm a damned fool.

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!