Fumbling through August

I'll get to the image above (and note how you can get one of you) in a minute. First, here comes the promised update on things:

My move was a disaster. I made it to Virginia. The stuff I crammed into my car made it to Virginia. Everything else? Not so much. It doesn't look like I'll be able to get anyone down there to pick up the rest of the stuff - the most important of which is my drafting table! - until the very end of this month. Lack of a proper work space in VA is gonna cause some delays with side projects, but I'll figure out a way to get the comics done. A new arc should still be popping up when the guest week is over.

Speaking of, GUEST WEEK IS COMING! I have lined up fancy comics for every day next week, plus extra comics and art that will be appearing as vote incentives each day. I'm very excited about this. I love seeing how other artists handle my crew, and it's fun to share the cartooning love of these talents!

Now to that art stuff above! September is an important month for me. I will be expanding the illustration side of my work, and that means picking out new angles and practicing them.  One approach is to try cute portrait stuff. I've had a lot of fun doing the character portraits at furry cons, but why stop there? Let's human up this place!  It's been a while since I did stylized portraits, and I want to tackle it again.  I let myself be a test subject and played with a few degrees of cartoony. I can also attempt some fine art twists. The goal here is to see what works best and give the people what they want. The name is there because I got jealous of all the cool furry badges I saw at cons. I don't have a character, so I just put myself on the dang badge! THAT'S HOW I ROLL!

Want to be a test subject for this new approach? Email me a picture of you or a loved one, and I'll chose a few to practice with! (Sticking with the headshot drawings for the free stuff, so don't send full-body shots.)

I'll have more art/promo/commissions news for you in a week or so.  For now, send me some photos and start checking out the sketch blog for the results! (Update: The first one has been posted!)

SpiderForest Comic of the Week!

But first... some self-promotion! Aside from the obligatory begging to pre-order the Precocious book and snag one of the last commission spots, I did a guest comic for Ginger's Bread, so go over and witness the Precocious kids assaulting that comic's universe. (They can do that now. No comic is safe.)

And now on to the fun stuff! This week's comic is Footloose, a silly and sweet romp about fighting, faeries and whatever they feel like it being about! There's lots in the archives to chew on, plus some more comics on the site to enjoy. There's a lot to choose from!

Is there a Troper in the house?

Is it desperate and classless to do this? Does it matter? Eh.

I love TV Tropes so very much, and you should to. Yes, it eats up your time in 10-hour chunks, but you will love every minute of those chunks. Never before has reading about the details of a show you've never watched or cared about been so engrossing!

What makes that site so entertaining is the dedicated Tropers, who both know their way around tropes and have the will to share their knowledge with the world. They are a special breed, worth their weight in gold, and I'm hoping I have a few of them out there. (Or, if not that, a few do-gooders willing to learn the way of the Troper.)

I would love to see Precocious' presence on TV Tropes rise. It's both good for my massive ego and good for bringing in traffic. Even if I can't bring in much action through this post, I hope I've at least ruined a few good people's schedules by sucking them into the tropeverse.  The more people who get sucked in, the more likely I'll eventually create a Troper army!  Go, my pretties! Destroy your lives to my benefit!

Jacob shirts!

There's a new shirt up in the store! All you Team Jacob supporters better run and get one, because it'll only be there for a limited time?

Why limited? Because Cafepress is cheap and evil, only allowing me to have one design per product at a time. I can pay to get the ability to sell multiple designs, but considering my store sells about one item every two months, that hardly seems worth it.

So what I will do is swap the new Jacob designs around in the economy shirt slot. Get the one you want before it rotates out!




If you think those Team Jacob freaks are getting smug, why not grab the Blame Jacob shirt when it rotates in? Maybe one day you will meet someone wearing the Team Jacob shirt and get into a brawl! That'll be awesome!



Finally, since someone requested it, here's a Jacob "I like me" shirt. Wearing this shirt will guarantee hugs from everyone.

The Sycophant - growing the brand?

So I just registered thesycophant.com. Suddenly the title of my blog means so much more! You know what this also means? I HAVE TO JUSTIFY MY PURCHASE! If I'm buying a domain like this, I'd better put it to good use. Cartooning side project? Oh, imagine the possibilities...

I've long since claimed my next project will be The Haters Club, a name which began as in-joke in my old social circle. I love that title. It's fun. It sets the tone for my humor right away. It's... common enough to be used by a few websites.

Well, then, I just registered a viable alternative... which is *also* based on an in-joke from that blissful time of my life. The Sycophant may not bring the hate as much, but it does make for a great title anyway - and I adore the implications that come from that word as well! Plus, when you google "The Sycophant," it seems I'm the first one to claim the title for his project. (Not counting some lame myspace account that somehow outranks me in Google's eyes.)

Now... what could The Sycophant be? It's prime for an observational journal comic, which is something I've wanted to try for a while now. It could signify a title character who bumbles through live in awe of everything around him. (Probably because he lacks viable talent and skill on his own.) I could take the name and use it to justify a site of nothing but fan art for people I admire! Yeah, that's not happening. Fan art is fun now and then, but making it your thing is the same thing as wasting all your artistic talent!

For now, the domain is set to forward you to the blog. (As I post this, the forwarding setting hadn't gone through yet, so those testing it out right away might not get the right result.) It'll probably redirect here for a while, as I've got a lot on my plate already - and there's also the problem of me not knowing the first thing about how to properly use a domain. Hosting? Servers? Site email? No clue how those things work at the moment. But one day, man. One day...

Oh, and I also registered chrisp.co, but I don't feel a need to justify that. That sucker was meant for me!

A great idea, for more capable hands...

So last quarter I took a painting course at SCAD. It was a class of 15 senior painting majors - and me, a SEQA major whose painting experience peaked at painting 102. It was... brutal. My classmates had no desire to welcome anyone new, especially an evil outsider. My professor, while kind, was frustrated to have to deal with someone with so little painting experience. And, of course, I met this challenge with a full-on melt down due to this coinciding with the loss of my grandparents.

Come midterms, I had to show work I knew was weak and, boy, did they let me have it. It wasn't just pointing out that the work was bad, but they treated me as hopelessly ignorant. I wasn't a real painter. To them, I was someone coming into their territory with the arrogance that I could do their job better without any training. They were out for blood.

My reaction to this critique? A big ol' SCREW YOU to everyone involved! You know what? Cartoonists aren't inferior beings! They have every right to be displayed on gallery walls, and I was going to make sure that happened! Not only was I glorifying myself to taunt them, but I designed my series to allow me to use (the horror) store-bought canvasses I already had on hand. (In this class, if you didn't shell out the crazy money and spend all those hours of effort with construction and gesso, you weren't a real painter.) Any questions were hand waved by me claiming it was part of the concept - and concept is king in the art world!

As malicious as my motives were, this isn't a bad idea at all. It would be fun to be the painter who set out to paint portraits of webcomics' best and brightest. I was thrilled to be able to paint portraits of cartoonists I know and admire!

There was only one problem: I was still in a major funk. The reason I've held off from sharing these paintings until now is because, frankly, they aren't strong enough. I care about the people in these pictures and I wanted to do the best for them, so anything short of perfect would not do! I'd really like to see what I could accomplish with a redo and a mind with more clarity. Maybe, one day, this webcartoonist project could be resurrected and become something after all.

If you think I'm doing the typical self-loathing artist shtick here, then consider this merely the pendulum swinging back. For the second half of my painting class, I pretended I was nothing but gung-ho about this series. I put on my best BS face and enthusiastically explained how every mistake and bit of awkwardness was actually deliberate execution of my concept. For my critique, I put a smile on my face and talked boldly - even going to the point where I replaced my proposed sixth portrait with a tiny "to be continued" sign that was meant to mimic the end of a comic issue. (Note the arrangement of the portraits loosely resembles a comic book page.) While they frowned upon the fact the "to be continued" piece was clearly done the morning of - it might not have even been dry when I hung it - they bought my reasoning! Even though it was clear to everyone that I wasn't very good that quarter, my "conviction" salvaged my grade.

And, you know what, I do have conviction about this project. It SHOULD Be awesome. I just needs a better painter behind it. (And maybe, one day, that better painter could be me.)

Since you're dying to know, here are my subjects:

Top-left: Isabel Marks of Namir Deiter

Top-right: Jimmy Misanthrope of Agents of the Endtimes

Mid-left: Sarah 'Pickles' Dill of Distillum

Mid-right: Yeah, that's me. It was the prof's idea and I went with it.

Bottom: Irene Pitcairn of The Elves of LlueGarnok

Much love to all of them for allowing me to paint them. Much apologies to them for coming up a bit short. YOU WILL BE AVENGED!

Shameless self-promotion!

This is not my official blog o' the day, although I wish I could cop out like that. ;-) This is me attention whoring to the fullest, with images for you to share on your websites if the linking page on Precocious is not enough. I'm shameless, so I take all the good attention you can give me!

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...