Working to avoid working

Today was supposed to be the day I started scanning in June's completed strips, or at least inking some more June strips. Yeah, that's tedious, so screw that. LET'S BE CREATIVE!

The upside is that I got these two bite-sized paintings completed. The one on the left makes me happy. The one on the right leaves me merely content.

The Magical Mystery Tour

Oh yes, I am veeeerrrry tempted to finish Precocious: The Musical week with a Sunday tribute to the Beatles. How indulgent can one get? LET'S FIND OUT!

It's been a lot of fun drawing my musical strips, citing favorites such as R.E.M., The B-52's (twice!), Talking Heads, Radiohead and Peter Gabriel. Provided you the know the music (I only chose the hits, don't worry), the strips are pretty darn funny too. Only Saturday's is truly a "you have to know this" strip. The rest... you have NO EXCUSE FOR NOT KNOWING THAT! The fault is yours! KNOW BETTER MUSIC!

I loves attention!

Someone out there reviewed Precocious! How cool is that? I'm still amazed anyone comes to the site without me paying them to do so. (Even Rhode Island sent a representative today!)

Since I don't have anything creative to show today (a combo of working on the actual comic and lack of motivation due to grim family stuff) I'll use today's post as a reply to the review. Don't worry, gentle reviewer, it's mostly agreeing and explanation.

I suggest you all go read the review. I will provide some quotes to give you context. Here we go. (Many the quote option doesn't differentiate it much. Time for mark up!)

"The comic started out in about 2008 on a date I for the life of me cannot discern because the author decided not to put dates."

Precocious was launched January 1, 2009, with the full Gender Wars arc completed. They have the 2008 copyright, since that's when they were created, but they weren't published until 2009. I wanted to storm out of the gate fully-formed, or at least as formed as I could be at that stage. It's still in the news items on the front page. ;-)

I intentionally kept from dating the strips. For one, the intro stuff takes place in the summer and the strip launched in winter. I didn't want it to be any more confusing than it already was. Plus, the intro arcs were created for the archives. They are meant to be read in one sitting. Considering the second intro arc came 50 strips into the regular run, the lack of dating lets me rearrange the archive to make it all flow together smoothly.

"Anyhow, What I find curious is how Paulsen decided to use Funny animals to portray the protagonists of this gag-a-day/story (Don't think He's quite decided yet.), but it was probably becuase he felt like it. though he may have a hard time keeping the furry-haters from beating him up."

Oh man, you had to say "funny animals," didn't you? I just learned what that term meant last week, and now it can get me in trouble!

I went with the cute cuddly animal forms because I like them! When I read comics, I favor the "furry" ones (ok, many are "funny animals") because I enjoy the aesthetics. I think they're cuter than humans - and much more pleasing to the eye when an artist is starting out. We all know what humans look like, so a shaky cartoon style of humans just looks wrong. We've seen cartoon animals in so many forms, we naturally accept them much easier.

For me, the Precocious kids are technically "funny animals" - I concede it. They call themselves "people" and never mention species at all. They have hands and feet, not paws. They're cartoons. The only real animal quality they acknowledge is the presence of their tails. (How could they not?) That doesn't make me one of those fur-scared cartoonists by any means. As mentioned, I like furry comics, I welcome the furry and I'm happy to classify Precocious as furry. If that leads me to fursecution (I really love that word) then so be it. If the presence of an animal tail in an otherwise standard newspaper-style strip is enough to drive someone into a rage, then the problem isn't on my end. Like/hate something for its quality, not on account of who *might* also like/hate it.

"Problems with the strip would include the format. I mean, is it gag-a-day like a serilized newspaper (Which judging from the strip style is how it's supposed to feel) or story and arc based with the occasional filler."

You got me here. I do follow the newspaper comic format, and then I indulge in webcomic freedom. One premise often explodes into a meandering story that can span weeks. As a creator, I like to set the scene and let the characters take over - and they're as pompous and verbose as I am!

In the long (long) run, however, this should even out. The bulk of the archives will be story arcs for the first year, since I like to introduce characters as part of a larger story and the strip is still new. I think this is more rewarding for new readers when they hit the archives - and at this stage the readership is still actively growing. Despite my promise, I'm not changing my format yet. April is *another* long story. (It introduces a new classmate, naturally.) Another epic story is planned for the summer - still in its early stages, so who knows how long it'll go - but I've made a vow to make May gag-a-day! The ideal Precocious format, which I hope to establish for year two (I plan ahead) is to keep any stories between one and two weeks, like the dessert violence and Max's birthday stories, and up the one-strip gag percentage.

Having long stories is a bad idea for a real newspaper cartoon, but an online newspaper-style cartoon has the full archive - and any needed context - just a click away. I'd like to think online webcomic readers are a more dedicated bunch anyway.

"I'd personally complain as a fellow artist about his the eyes take up 90% of the characters' faces(Since, you know, ordinary people have FOREHEADS), it's probably a stylistic choice considering it's more cartoony than something meant to be anatomically correct."

Yeah, it's a personal choice. When I sat out to learn cartooning in 2004, I had an image in my mind of the characters I wanted to draw - and the Precocious kids are right in line with it. I like my kids to be cartoony and less realistic. I've turned against foreheads so much I stopped drawing eyebrows!

"The Kids are a bit... i dunno, Their personalities seem fine but they seem to be... Exaggerated versions of what they're supposed to be."

Would you believe this was intentional? And by "intentional" I mean in the same way a new skier says "I'm going wipe out!" and then does.

I refer to the initial Gender Wars arc as the "pilot episode" of Precocious - because it has the same format and pitfalls any TV pilot would have. This is THE first impression - you have to introduce your characters, summarize them, establish themes and move on in the limited time you have. The lazy way to do it is have them walk in, monologue about who they are, and push on - which is what I ended up doing. They most definitely are portrayed as exaggerations early on - although I do want to point out that smart 9- and 10-year-olds who latch onto an identity naturally exaggerate it. (I'm not sure Suzette will ever change.)

I lay down the characterizations and premises a bit strong early because once they're set, they're set. I have the rest of the strip's run to make the characters all nuanced and awesome!

So there's my reply. A bunch of "yup, you're right" stretched into a monster wall of text. It's my way!

In a day marked by bad news, it was incredibly uplifting to see that someone out there cared enough about my strip to write something that well thought-out. I really needed that today.

Hope you all forgive me for the self-indulgent post. It's Friday, so I assume you're all out partying anyway.

He who has the coolest stuff wins

This is a selfish post in which I dance around and brag. Read on at your own risk.



My DeviantArt Precocious mug came in! The quality is highly excellent, so I suggest going out and buying Precocious stuff for yourself, you friends and you family. (My flower paintings are also in there, if you want prints of those.) I make, like, two cents profit each time. Woah, my visit back to DeviantArt also revealed that I had some watchers! Wow! Now... now I have performance anxiety.

Also up for bragging: Check out the nifty 3D print paperweight my brother made me for Chrispmas! As I have no desk space, it sits on display with all my other treasures. Unfortunately, those luscious bottle, just like me, are mostly-to-completely empty inside. I just can't bear to throw them out, since it would reveal my liquor collection was down to rarely-usable stuff and bum wine bottles added as a joke. I miss my croranges. (Grand Marnier + cranberry juice.) *sigh*


Also up for bragging is my brand new GOD OF ALL MONITORS! With the transition to my laptop, which is twice as fast and ten times as reliable as my old desktop, my computer situation has significantly improved. I am now able to have GIANT photoshop files open for DAYS at a time - and do tons of other photoshop projects on top of that. Woo!

You can also get a sexy look into my workspace. The light table in the background has turned into a movable drawing table, so I'm there a lot. That and the new monitor are both birthday gifts to myself, and both are so far huge successes. Do I know me or what? That would be The Pre-History of the Far Side which is functioning as a mouse pad. (Gee, guess why I had *that* out.) My addiction to caffeine-free diet Pepsi is on certainly on display, making the "COKE!" graffiti in the first pic even more absurd. (You had to be there.) On the walls we have posters and clippings for my music loves, including REM, The B-52's, Natalie Merchant, Bjork, Tori Amos and... Kurt Vonnegut? So it goes. The painting is a self-portrait my father made when he was in high school. I'm not actually sentimental at all - rather, I hung it there to get it out of the way while I waited for idiot bro to take it. Anyway, my art would be hanging above the scanner.

Alright, I'm rambled so much even I'm bored with myself, and talking about myself is my favorite thing, so you must be in excruciating agony. Good, you should feel bad because MY STUFF IS COOLER THAN YOURS! (Note: that is not a challenge. Please don't burst my bubble.)

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.

The power of negative thinking!

Today I woke up with the plan to keep with the publicizing effort going. So far I've put the strip on a few lists... and hoped for divine intervention! I have to keep submitting the strip to portal sites, start socializing on message boards and - this is the scariest - write to web cartoonists I adore and see if I can get some advice/assistance. I feel like such a tool doing that, and I have no clue what to say. I'd likely send the email equivalent of "Duuuurrrrrrrrrr," and make a fool of myself.

Suddenly, playing around with color isn't so bad! That's just tedious. Tedious > Awkward!

After my bold declaration of not making Sunday strips, with the bold edit of not having a strip for THIS Sunday... I will have the strip ready for Sunday after all. Having lost complete control of myself, I went ahead an colorized Monday's strip as well. Color strips *do* look spiffy! Also, they mean strip creation takes twice as long. Also, if I colorize strips, I have to save each original in the hi-res form in case I'm ever cool enough to justify a published collection. Also, color strips make publishing costs go way up. Also, I am not getting paid for this. See, if that last issue is taken care of, all the others go away.

Kick off your boots, come sit a spell...

"...Listen to me worry, come and listen well."

So I haven't been able to get much done for myself here so far. See, I am here to help out my grandparents and *not* myself. Usually, there is lots of nap taking and down time, meaning I can get some stuff done for me in addition to doing my duty. This time...

Since my grandfather got sick, he has not once come down to see me when I visited. My interaction with him has always been taking him his food and checking in occasionally. (He usually only had enough strength for a minute or two of conversation anyway.) For *this* visit, dude has been up and about! He's come downstairs for every single meal! That's awesome!

It's also quite sobering. All his life, he's been very good at making it seem like everything's fine with him, whether he knew what was going on or not. He'd pretend to know about topics when he didn't. When his hearing began to fade, he'd say just enough to make you think he knew what was going on. Now that he has Alzheimer's, his old habits can still fool you. So maybe he was able to throw me off previously when I was just visiting for a minute or two. Now that he's up and about (relatively) I can see him when the guard comes down. He plays along, but gets tripped up. Seeing what was supposed to be an invincible man show weakness really can get to you.

Side story: When I got here, I met his hospice nurse as she left. She was very sweet and everyone loves her. Her name starts with an A. When I visited granddad later, I complimented him on how healthy he looked. He explained he was squeaky clean from his bath. I remarked that I'd briefly met his caretaker and that she seemed sweet. Then I turned to him and said something along the lines of, "Oh shoot, I've already forgotten her name. I hate when that happens!" Classy, Chrispy.

On the other end of the spectrum is my grandmother, who is wickedly smart and one of the most interesting people anyone could ever know. We've been talking quite a lot - politics, social issues and ye olde family tales - with the conversations going for hours. It's very enriching...but time consuming! She's *also* feeling better, so extra rest time is no longer required. In true elderly bliss, she tripped yesterday - and managed to do the old "break into a job while regaining one's balance" thing. This is a HUGE DEAL when one is 83 and has a bad knee. Everyone's energized!

Is it just a precious moment when things are bright - or is it the presence of hospice? They only come twice a week, but they take care of the difficult tasks. Without the strain, both grandparents are doing better. It's lovely and wonderful that I still have time to connect with her and just be there for him - BUT HOW AM I TO GET ANY DAMN ART DONE!?

Eh, I'll trade my productivity for their vitality any day.

(opening lines cribbed from Natalie Merchant)

Unrestrained creativity

"I don't get it. Why are you so upset? Is there something wrong?"

Unfocused art is such a dangerous thing. To fit my whimsy, I brought all sorts of art supplies to DC. The hope is if I stall somewhere, something else fun can happen.

What *should* be happening... Little did I know, but my sketchbook was almost complete. It should have been done by now. Instead, sketching has been minimal because I can't find a good place to sit and draw. (Sitting at the computer is the worst thing for my back, yet here I am!) I should be sketching out more comics, but the lack of a proper drawing area tossed that out the window. I brought Bristol board for drawing, but... Oh, you get it. What's left? PAINTING! I started two new paintings. Lord, do they suck! I'll have to paint over them. Well, crud.

So what do I do? Watch a bunch of sports I don't care about and abuse the fuck out of some poor sap's wi-fi. Go me! OK, so I am here to help out and not here to enjoy a private art vacation. I could cover it all if I was more awesome, though!

"Hello In There" Part II: Crying not mandatory

(This is a follow up to the below post, so unless you like to Pulp Fictionalize everything, I suggest reading that post before this one.)

Would you believe that last post was an intro? I *barely* broached the point I was going to make. RAMBLING VERBOSITY IS WHY I AM SO POPULAR!

The real story here is that I'm taking action to de-rut myself and try that strange thing that people do... moving forward. I'm going to stop actively sucking! To contradict myself immediately, I will continue with this post.

Big changes have come to my schedule. I finally got permission to cut my work hours back dramatically. Sad to say, it had been suffocating me. It's not that the work was hard or overly challenge...it was just there. Always. And it was early. I worked there over two years and my body never adjusted to a 9am starting time. Every day was a miserable scramble arrive somewhat close to 9am, followed by half-awake drudgery. Around 11, my body would *actually* wake up, and I'd suddenly want to conquer the planet and do something productive. That means exercise or drawing, not translating a formatted Word document into a clumsy web page. Unattended inspiration has a way of turning on its master. When stimulation fails to come, inspiration turn into fatigue. At the end of the day, regardless of how much I actually did, I was exhausted. My energy didn't start returning until midnight, when I had to sleep. DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE?

Is that last paragraph dickishly whiny? Oh, you betcha! Hey, I knew long ago what I needed to be happy and I took efforts to set my life up so I could succeed. I know I have too much stubbornness to change and fit a normal mode. I *am* too selfish, and I'm running with it!

When I took my job, it was part of the long-term plan. I needed to raise money to support myself in grad school, I wanted to learn web design skills *and* the place was wonderfully flexible with hours! Work was great to me and I hope I did enough to make my presence worthwhile. Problem is, when I went full-time, it took up way more than an extra 20 hours a week. It became my life. I became what my 15-year-old self vowed never to become!

So now I have "free time" - a term that is a filthy liar! This is the time for me to do all the soul- and future-enriching tasks that I need to survive. I'm working less but busier than ever. Oh, and since I'm now working according to my natural sleep schedule, I'm now awesome for all my waking hours. (I remain a pathetic create when asleep.) Yeehaw!

So what was the point of all this rambling? I was bored and work (and later at home) and the blog had been neglected. ENJOY MY SOUL!

* * *

Oh, and I did locate the glorious copper hair. It is a flower among weeds, you see. If you spray a weed with herbicide, it's the flower five feet away that dies. Flowers are precious and delicate. Weed, having not been subject to eugenics, retain the hearty strength that flowers sacrificed for likability. On my face, about half a centimeter from the offending white-ish hair, is a beautiful copper hair half the size of those around it. Quality take time to grow, while garbage is available immediately. (That seriously needs to be my motto as an artist, no?)