So I'm ruining Tumblr now

With the health stuff, I've been trying to find the most efficient work method. To keep myself moving and whip myself into art-shape, I've been doing warm-up sketches. (I can draw in the sketchbook while resting in bed.) Since I feel bad about not being as interactive as I'd like to be, I've been letting folks suggest silly ideas for the warm-up drawings and dumping the results on my Tumblr.

I'm far more lax in what I draw as silly sketchbook stuff than with my official art pieces. While not my norm, fanart can be fun, and maybe it'll make you all happy. Drop your requests in my Ask box - you don't need an account - and then... wait a loooong time for the sketch to appear? While a sketch a day (don't expect them all to be color) is a good goal, I draw these when I lack the momentum to draw anything else. So, hey, if the Tumblr goes quiet it means I'm knocking out some excellent stuff in more important locations!  I pick what I draw from the requests based upon what inspires me that day, factoring in what I can pull off in the allotted prep time.  I may love a request to draw a larger scene, but it could be weeks before I have time to get it done. Simple stuff, like requests that can be stated in 5 words or less, have a higher chance of being used.

It may not be art card streaming requests, but I hope it's enough to let all you great readers know that I still care, and I still want to listen to your wishes.

Glitter Abuse

In what was supposed to be a fuller focus on commissions in the new year, I ordered a bunch of fun pens, including glitter pens! I've never had use for the before, but I've seen enough of the commission world now to know how fun they can be. This is the first thing I did when they arrived:

This also happened to be the mystery gift I was giving out during my recent "Too hurt to stream" giveaways, and the last art card I was able to complete before things too another turn for the worse. Enjoy your GlittUrsula, Brighttail! (I held off posting this until he got the card in the mail.)

Twitter and FurAffinity people got to see more of my glitter shenanigans. When the new Pokemon starters were announced, I marveled at how Fennekin took over the internet so quickly. The Glitter Pennekin was my stupid response. (Behold: About four minutes of HARD work!)

So I haven't been able to act on many of my fancy ideas for the new year yet, what with the old year doing all it can to destroy my head. One day, my friends. One day...

Chrispmas Giveaway #3

Hello, folks! Are we all recovered from the fun? Wanna blow off some excess energy? Let's do silly things. Together. It's how we bond.

Today is another drawn-while-sick comic, so please enjoy it the best you can and distract yourselves with silliness otherwise. (The progression is kinda interesting. Too pained to think, I broke many comic laws in Tuesday's art, was shaky for Wednesday, started to pull it together as the pills kicked in for Thursday and I'm back to regular skill for Friday and Saturday.)

Anyway, it's contest time again. Since Monday was fully nuts, let's do that stuff again! This time, the goal is to mention a FRUIT in today's comment section! You can be clever (but don't be tried-too-hard clever) or you could simply post "apple" and run away. All fruity posters go on the list! (One entry per person, so listing every fruit ever won't help you.)

But, wait, there's more! I'm using a random number generator to pick out a number between 1 and 1389 (the amount of Precocious updates in the archive) - and a *second* prize is available to the one who guesses closest. All you need to do is add a number to your post. Don't be *too* clever here, as it must be clear to me what your guess is. This is also one entry per person, so if you're chatting in the comments don't toss out extra numbers and confuse me! If there's a tie between two people, the one who posted earliest wins.

If someone hits the number exactly, they win and the contest resets with a new number and a new, smaller prize. (Probably a magnet set.)

As always, there needs to be an email attached to your post so I can contact you if you win. Contest runs from when the comic appears to when the next update happens.

Good luck, folks! Thank you for having fun with me!

Here's your winners list so far:

Monday#1 - Jess
Monday#2 - Emi
Tuesday - Unolup

Flavors of Autumn

UPDATE: The glitch with the store has been fixed. Order away!

First off, for all those who missed out on the pre-order, the first Precocious collection is back in the store! Order your copy today! Second, don't miss the new Copper Road! Third, I'm still looking for guest strips.

And for those heroes that not only pre-ordered, but reserved an artist edition - your time is coming soon! I will be drawing on your books in two weeks! That means it's time to start figuring out what those sketches will be. The breakdown of the sketches is quite amusing. One Bud, one Jacob, one Tiffany, one Casey, TWENTY ONE AUTUMNS. I know she's the cutest, but wow! (My guess going into the pre-order was 10 Autumn, 10 Tiffany, 5 everyone else.) The challenge now is to find 21 unique Autumn scenarios, so let's do it! EDIT: After talking with RCSI, it seems the count they told me was merely, to paraphrase, "what it seemed like as the orders came in." Since the sketches weren't happening until mid-August, they hadn't even bothered to go back and look yet! Oh well, there's still a ton of Autumn requests, but the other story was funnier.

Actual total:
Autumn - 11
Jacob - 3
Bud - 2
Tiffany - 2
Dionne - 1
Max - 1
Roddy - 1
Yvette - 1
Casey - 1
Suzette -1
Anyone - 1

And now back to the original post...

Unless I get a good idea for a Copper Road, my next few days will be for character sketching. I'm in packing limbo right now, with most non-essential stuff boxed up, and the rest still needed for day to day life. I want to be ready to go, but I guess there is no option but to throw all the important things in boxes at the last minute. (Yesterday I cleared out half my kitchen, only to put it right back in place once I got hungry.) Anyway, if you want to help, give me some ideas for the Autumn sketches! What should she be doing? If you're one who ordered the artist edition, you can give me a specific request - although I can't guarantee you'll get it. Look at the above art for examples of what will appear in the books. (The book sketches will also be shaded with blue colored pencils.)

Code Name: Swordplay

The lovely Darc of Code Name: Hunter asked me to do a commission piece of her character, Max, with a sword. I am happy to oblige!

I put off sketches until after my big batch of commissions were done - and they were done today. (I'm now looking for more commissions, btw.) That meant it was sketch time! For some reason I decided to go against all forms of logic in my sketches tonight. Not only did I work in ink - using a fancy new Fude pen - but I tried to up the challenge by drawing Max, a character who is not mine, from memory. I had two monitors in front of me, both with a CN:H page open for various reasons (we were actually skyping as I sketched), and yet it was TOO HARD to look up! I ended up drawing eight pages of Max. These are the only results that are not completely horrific.

Do you know what happens when you try to find sword action via Google image search? ZELDA. So many pictures of Link in action! Well, heck, let's copy that! This one was based off art of Link jumping forward and slashing his sword. While I fudged the stance a bit, the big change was the free arm. Link carries a shield.  Max... apparently he flips the bird?  I believe it was supposed to be a "come closer" hand motion, but that doesn't make that much sense with the pose either.  Man, what does one do with unshielded arms?

And then I wanted to go silly. The original sketch was just Max, upset that he broke his sword AGAIN.  But our conversation had recently touched upon a chicken in the Hunter story.  I wanted to imply Max broke his sword doing something silly... and chicken murder seemed obvious after that!  I'm sorry.

It should be noted that this sketch was originally drawn with extra limbs. Once again, I ran into non-sword arm trouble.  The first attempt, with the arm raised, looked like he was disco dancing.  I also had to excise an extra right leg.  Saddest part:  All those extra limbs were drawn, yet I didn't bother to add his tail.

I gotta say, sketching with that pen is FUN - but it's no very smart when dealing with too many unknown elements.  I'll have to spend more time with sketching before things are solid, but it's a start!

Request week 2!

First of all, thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! (For those who *didn't*, you're now on the enemies list.) Since, despite all my efforts, no one wants to give me a gift, I will give to you instead! It's time for another request week!

Before I jump into the next long-ish arc, I want to play around a bit. Thus, the first week of April will be dictated by you readers! If you want a refresher of how that went last time, click the image above or the link here.

So here are the rules: What I'm looking for are simple ideas or set-ups I can play with. I am not looking for story arc ideas. I am not looking for you to write punchlines for me. This is not an opportunity to make your fanfics into canon. You should be able to get your concept across in seven words or less.

Some examples of good requests would be:
"The stuff inside the clubhouse toy box"
"What happened at Ms. Monster's birthday party?"
"If Precocious was a sitcom"
"You know what's awesome? ROBOTS!"

You can submit ideas as replies to this post on the sketch blog (if you're reading on the Precocious home page, click the post title) or through my email. I'll also start a comment thread over in the Precocious Facebook group.

Submit as many ideas as you'd like! (There's never as much reaction to these things as you'd think.) You never know what'll spawn a good idea in my mind, so quantity can lead to quality. (The sample ideas above are in play too. If you'd like to see one of those, add it to your list.)

Let's have fun with this!

Dedication to the craft

I decided to blog from my phone today on a whim! Maybe because I knew I had little to say and this would give me an excuse. (Edit: This turned out to be a horrible idea, as the Blogger iPhone ap lacks an option to update one's profile if they've since changed their Google password. That is truly some epic failure in ap design, guys. Eh, one duplicate profile later I finally got this thing posted.)

What you see here is some of the process behind the next Copper Road. The scary thing here is my embarrassing lack of prep. I had to draw Xander, who hasn't show up in forever. I had to design a one-shot character. I should have done some research into the setting. All real cartoonists also thumbnail the layouts, because they're kinda vital. What did I do? One page of half-hearted sketches for the new character. GOOD ENOUGH! Time to jump into sketching and wing it! Screw prep work! I'll learn as I go!

And that, children, is why panel one of the next Copper Road contains a major cartooning no no, as a dialog balloon cuts off a guy's head. This could have been prevented with just a little planning. Oh well! I live life dangerously! (Stupidly.) I rarely do extensive prep work on anything I do.

I will never be a real cartoonist at this rate.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Alternate endings!

(click image to embigginate)

Mushroom cloud not your cup of tea? Have a look at the other possible endings to today's strip that were scripted. All are perfectly valid, so choose whatever ending your desire for the fuse tale... and imagine what might have been if you all had donated faster. ;-)

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!

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...

Eeeny Ooony Wah!

This is just a little bit of weirdness I wanted to share.

Every week I set up my Sumdays to send off the colorist (thanks to Matthew of Sometime Alone!) using the same file. This means there's a brief moment when the new strip and old dialog coincide.... sometimes with hilarious results! To me, at least. Shut up!

Now, about that title. If you have not read The Prehistory of the Far Side (REQUIRED READING!) the title makes no sense. The title refers to one of times when the captions of Far Sides got switched in a paper. Instead of a strip where a contractor points out treehouses as if they are infestations, the caption for a strip where slugs worship a salt shaker while chanting nonsense was used. The result was a big WTF for readers and headache for Gary Larson. SO NOW YOU KNOW!

It remains whim time!

Today was recovery from the Super Bowl day, so not much bonus, bloggable progress was to be made - until I returned to whimsy and painted some more FOR THE PEOPLE! It may be chaotic. It may not be going anywhere good. It might accidentally trigger the downfall of humanity. WHO CARES! It's bloggable progress, and it beats having to show you a shot of my desk as I work on this week's Precocious and Copper Road strips. (I am indeed doing that today.)

It's whim time!

I didn't want to show you a barely-changed painting or a shot of my desk with in-progress comics, so I started a new painting JUST FOR YOU!

As is my way, I squirted one color (this time burgundy) and some white onto the palette and went wherever my hands took me. Did it work? I dunno, but it was fun to improv a bit.