Inner peace. Outer violence.

Today's sketch idea is courtesy of my brother, who suggested I draw a martial arts scene with Jacob bowing in respect and someone (had to be Suzette) giving him a boot to the head. The final result is... close!

I could use some inner peace right now. I'm slacking hard on inking next week's comics. It'll get done, just not as fast as I'd like. Tonight the goal is to get five pages inked, resulting in three strips total. Tomorrow I color the massive and complex Sunday and then it's smooth sailing for a while. Of course, as soon as one thinks that... BOOT TO THE HEAD!

Destroying more Childhood Memories

Who else could turn paddleboats into a life or death battle? Also, this is the first proof that Sapphire Lake DOES actually involve a lake.

I'm finishing up the sketching of the remaining May strips, and one involves a rather complex composition involving a paddleboat battle with Diamond Bluffs in the background. Considering I can't even handle the perspective of a COUCH, this may have been a bad idea. Oh, the things I do for my art!

Don't throw rocks at a hornet nest

I got it in my head to play around with Precocious bonus art. This drawing may one day become a wallpaper download!

This drawing would make more sense if lined up, but blogger hates things more than 400px and I capitulated. The scene is an angry Suzette angrily chasing everyone. (Tiffany, you are *really* not helping the situation by laughing.) I don't intend to color or arrange this today, but next time I get some inspiration for bonus stuff I'll have something to do.


The first wallpaper idea was to draw the kids in their supervillain costumes. It featured Tiffany with a cigar in her mouth, pulling a Lyndie England pose and pointing at a bound and blindfolded Jacob. Somehow I thought this might not be OK. (Although I still think it's funny.)


Edit: Every time I say I won't do something, I do it anyway. I wanted to test a new coloring technique and the image was still up in Photoshop, so there you go. It didn't take long to do at all, which is good. I also didn't give too much thought to design, so deal with that. I'm still not putting it on the website yet, since it would require building the extras section I promised months ago, so faithful blog readers get a bonus!



Click on that to get the wall paper at 1024x768. Other versions available are 1280x800, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200. (Those with other monitor sizes will have to stretch, dammit!)

A winner is me!

Explanation for those of you not hip to internet memes. (And for the headline.)

Today was a lovely productive day. The much-hyped dessert violence strips have been sketched and are ready for inking. Barring a horrific inking accident, I am happy to say it's some of my best work yet. Yay!

Not content with merely being badass (and too much of a coward to risk a horrific inking accident) I set off on scripting the next back of comics. Time time I am working without a net. As previously mentioned, most of my strips were scripted or outlined long ago, so I live in fear that I may no longer be able to think of new material. After my quasi-success with the Roddy strips, I set out to do more. Once again, the strips ended up filling a need. The five I conjured up all deal with the Precocious parents reacting to my darling children. Gene Et and Harvey Linkletter are set for their Precocious debut, while the Oven parents remain no where to be seen. (That's what the also-much-hyped parents prequel arc is for!) The strips are going to be artistically adventurous and are lovingly amoral. If you want to know what *I* consider funny, allow me to share a deleted line from one of the comics: "It's a real bummer if you're HIV..." Those in the know are laughing right now. Those not are perhaps terrified. Either way, I'm entertained. (The "bummer" line is going to end up the comic's title.)

Edit: If every cloud has a silver lining, the inverse is true. Every bright, sunshiny day causes sunburn and maybe skin cancer. I was so excited that I stayed up all night working. This is going to wreck me for the next week at least, but at least I got some sunshine from it. The result was ten strips, laid out,sketched and ready to ink.

Progress was only halted by three factors:

1) The Australian Open is held in Australia (who knew?) - which means I was watching some very exciting matches live. Watching the plucky underdog chick come so close to the semifinals, only to choke away at least three 40-love leads and several deuceamajigs (technical term) was both inspirational and realistic. And unfortunately engrossing. Watching Andy Roddick play even with a player who spent most of the match debilitated by heatstroke or something until he was forced to retire made me proud to be an American. Let me explain: American athletes are often spunky, deeply flawed and carelessly talented. Time and time again, Americans lose due to a lack of discipline. Why is this a good thing? Because the best (technical) atheletes are built by rigid, dehumanizing training. (Think Chinese gymnast mills.) I'd rather be represented by the boastful clusterfuck that is Bode Miller than "flexibly-aged" He Kexin. America: If we can't beat you, we'll beat ourselves!

2) Finding links to explain the geek references in this post lead me to the TV tropes and idioms site. (Damn you, Andrew. If you hadn't told me about it I never would have investigated!) I knew it was an all-consuming time suck, but it was just so interesting!

3) I ran out of pre-lined strips. It's a simple process to go mark off panels for new strips, but the process of getting up and moving opened me to distraction. By the time plucky underdog's final surge fell short, I was reading all the examples of how Star Trek: Voyager failed in list after list. At this point, I was in the undead state - not able to sleep, but also no remotely able to function properly. One more strip got scripted - which features cynical parenting, educational corruption, alcohol consumption and automotive vandalism - but that was it for me. (I'm running that strip on a Saturday, meaning it'll be the active strip for TWO days!) Since it takes me about four hours to wind down and sleep FROM THE POINT WHEN I DECIDE TO GO TO BED - and that is WITH a sleeping pill, which I did not take this time, involved - I should be falling asleep approximately 10 minutes after my "get the fuck up and take your Focusin" alarm sounds. Yeehaw. Silver lining: I ran out of Focusin and my shrink messed up the script, meaning procuring more is more hassle than Major League Baseball conspiracies are worth.

At least I got to watch some pretty snow falling.

Action Comix

As of this moment, I am three weeks ahead in comic production. As of one hour from now, I will be two weeks and five days ahead in production. As of two hours from now, uh, the same - but closer to three weeks ahead than before!

Tonight sketching begins for the week of dessert-themed violence. Now, drawing action is not my strong suit, but the goal is to make an "artful" comic and that means no cop-out static layouts. (I still say I should make a constrained comic about computer programming, video games and wikipedia-fueled commentary - populated by pixelated anthropomorphic creatures. THE T-SHIRTS I COULD SELL!) Being an artful comic would be easier if my art was, oh, artful - but I'm still a novice, dammit! Every damn strip I am trying SOMETHING new, and that means mixed results. (Bonus: By concentrating on the hard parts, I screw up the easy to draw! The upcoming Suzette strips are disgraceful, I'm sad to say.)

Anyway, these action sketches are nearly as awful as I thought, so optimism prevails! Another positive is that I am under no obligation to draw full bodies on the frame, so there's less chance to botch a complex perspective. Do you realize how SCARY it is to draw Bud from behind and Autumn on her back? Two-dimensional cartoon characters aren't designed to be viewed from crazy angles! It requires skill and, uh, deep voodoo powers to get those looks right.

So... voodoo time?