I am not Commander Riker

Growing the beard does nothing to improve my life, appearance or the general quality of all things surrounding me - yet I keep growing one anyway!

Why? First, because I am profoundly lazy. As I am decidedly non-wolfman, my beard doesn't grow with any aggressive speed. There's not much beard change from day to day, so it's very easy to shrug my shoulders and say, "Meh, I'll tackle it tomorrow." As time went on, the beard procrastination time grew longer and longer - until I actually had a REAL. FRIGGIN. BEARD. That was unexpected.

Compounding my laziness is my bathroom's plumbing. For some reason, the water in the sink takes a long time to heat up. So every morning, when I would plan to shave, I would stumble over to the sink, turn it on, wait a minute, give up and return to bed for a few more precious minutes of sleep. I decided to go with the crazy beard thing in Savannah. It makes me look like a proper art student! I even grew to like having a moderate amount of facial hair.

But the thing about hair is that it grows, and nice beards look nice for a limited time. Sure, I could buy a beard trimmer and just use that - but implies I am committed to having a beard. Even though I've rocked facial hair for most of the past year, I still don't consider myself a bearded dude. All cartoon Chrispys drawn by me are clean-shaven! No, my beard will only exist as a sign of laziness and insanity! I'll let it grow until it become truly hideous, shave it off and start the cycle anew.

A few weeks ago, the time to shave came. Like a true lazy person, I shrugged it off and said I'd do it the next day. There was only one problem: THE HOCKEY PLAYOFFS STARTED THAT DAY!

It's a tradition in hockey to grow a playoff beard while your team is in the playoffs, and I was going to partake in that tradition this year. If I shaved after the playoffs started, that would jinx my team. But... but I REALLY needed to shave!

Well, seeing as my team is the Washington Capitals, who are known for choking in the playoffs year after year, I figured that problem would take care of itself. And if they succeeded, DUDE, MY TEAM IS WINNING! A crazy "I'm homeless and unstable" beard is TOTALLY worth that! Sure enough, the Caps knocked out their first round opponent with relative ease. Go beard!

And then round two began. Loss. Loss. Loss. The Caps are still alive, but things are as bleak as they could be. You know what, guys? You don't need my beard's help any more. Shortly after the game ended today in heartbreaking fashion, I walked to the bathroom and grabbed my razor. I am done with you, playoff beard!

Despite my massive jinxing of my team, I will continue to root for the Caps to pull the miracle. They don't need my beard to succeed - THE MAGIC WAS IN THEM THE WHOLE TIME!

(Yeah, they're gonna get swept and it's all my fault.)

Buying in bulk makes you feel like a pro

Tuesday's strip used up the last template in my current pack, so that means it's time to bust out the big bad box of Bristol board! Behold: 300 strip templates just waiting for me to taint them with my ink!

It's silly, but every time I exhaust these packs of 100 it brings mini-celebration. I've outlived another pack! I've rocked the world 100 more times! There was once a day when I bought these templates in packs of 14 each. Now I look at the blocks of 100 and shrug it off as if it was nothing. I know I can conquer these things, and I know I can make that conquering worthwhile. (You are not allowed to disagree!)

And now, it is time to crack one of these packs open and defile the first victim. Woohoo!

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!

Curse you, cartoon animals!

(I'm gonna *try* to get this blog going again, but I make no promises about regular updates yet!)

When I first conceived of what would become Precocious, my characters were all human. They stayed human in my mind in all the years between inception and when I decided to give the strip a go. Then, suddenly, CRITTERS! What made me change?

First, I'd always had an affinity for what I called "philosophizing animal" strips. I thought that adapting animal forms would add a level of cuteness to the strip that would help me out.

Second, and I'm not sure I should admit this, it was a practical choice to get my cartooning earlier. Let the record show I was/am a rather inept cartoonist. I've never had a natural talent for it and I'm only where I am now because passion overrode the shame of poor drawing skills. The thing about cartoon animals - the human eye is WAY more tolerant of them. Think of all the cartoon mice you've seen - they all look completely different from each other, but we readily accept them as mice. Anthropomorphic animals aren't real and we are more likely to accept the artist's vision. When it comes to drawing humans, we all know what humans look like. Looking at humans drawn by an artist with a shaky, unformed style (like me!) draws the eye right to all the inaccuracies and errors. It takes the reader out of the moment and doesn't create a pleasant reading experience. By going with cartoon animals, I was able to launch the strip much earlier in my stylistic development that if I had chosen humans.

Finally, I chose animal forms because it create a separation from real life. It let me craft my own world, with its own rules, in which my characters could play. My goal was to create something universal; something that could be read decades down the road and still be understood. By keeping my universe to itself, I could avoid taking easy shots at topical humor that might not be remembered in the eyes of history. It was a good idea at the time, but it's gotten me into a heap of trouble in practice.

First of all, I clearly haven't avoided topical humor and real life references completely. Ignoring reality completely is a great way to limit one's storytelling potential. So here I am, having my cake and eating it too - praying no one thinks too hard about things. "But if everyone here is an animal, does that mean those famous people being referenced are animals too?" AAAARRRGGGHHH! I fully intend to never address it, but is sweeping it under the rug really an acceptable solution? It *has* to be.

Cheap as it is, I have to go with the "it's just a comic strip" excuse. If I think the gag is good, I invoke the rule of funny and go with it. It's sloppy, but freeing. If I *didn't* rely on this principle, I would be paralyzed. While, ideally, I ably handle both, I'll always focus on humor more than continuity.

Using animal characters just makes things worse for me when it comes to these issues. Sure, I can say over and over they are merely meant to be cutified humans and are thus treated as humans - or point out my choice of dog/cat depiction was mostly an attempted ship-sinking visual cue on character compatibility - but I put that issue out there and I have to deal with the consequences. "Dogs can't eat chocolate!" "They are eating pork! Did they murder an anthro pig?" "Why won't you introduce some bunnies to the strip?" "Why can't a dog marry a cat?"

*head explodes*

For me, the animal thing was just another twist on standard comic surreality. The main characters almost never change their outfits! No one ages, yet they (sometimes) retain memories of past years' events! Little details constantly shift around to best fit the joke! If we can accept that (and, yes, some of us can't) then we should be able to gloss over the animal thing. After all, aside from two regrettable strips acknowledging that they have tails, have they EVER mentioned anything about being animals?

I hope this doesn't sound too much like complaining. It's more of me rambling to get my thoughts out. The reason people ASK these questions is because people CARE about the comic - and that is the most important thing. I will gladly frustrate readers with my animal creations, and suffer the consequences, if it means I have readers! It's also my fault for playing both hard and loose with continuity. Some elements of the strip are locked into place. Others, which I don't deem as important, can change from day to day. That's lazy cartooning on my part, and I apologize for it.

The motivation behind the creation of this essay comes from my struggles with Monday's strip. In this arc, I am taking the kids to the "city." I've never given the city a name, but for all intents and purposes it's Washington DC. I'm struggling with how much reality to allow into a highly fictional comic. Do I include the highly-recognizable monuments? Do I make lots of DC references? Do I name drop the museums they might visit? Every time I add in a real-world reference, I open myself up to the "so... how does this jive with animals?" scrutiny.

I wish I had a good solution, but right now I'm set to cruise forward with a "don't think too hard" message - which kinda conflicts with a comic that (in theory) praises intelligence and intellectual curiosity, doesn't it? I fail. :-(

Happy Valentine's Day!

It might not be the best in quality, but I decided to whip up a little image to honor this romantic day. There's an upside to everything, right? Enjoy!

I'm running out of family!

My grandfather passed away last night, and I'm having a hard time figuring out what to write here.

Unlike with the shock of losing my grandmother, this one was a long time in coming. He had been given weeks to live over three years ago, but had defied the odds for so long that I had become convinced he would outlive us all. In truth, he had left us long ago, as advanced Alzheimer's had destroyed his mind. I hope you none of you ever have to go through the pain that is seeing Alzheimer's erase a loved one. It's devastating.

As many of you know, I had spent most of the last few years living with my grandparents and helping care for my grandfather. I only moved on to SCAD when my little brother moved in and the family hired a full-time nurse for him. Being with my grandparents had been my life for so long, it's hard to conceive that chapter of my life is over now that they're gone. Their house had become my home, and without them... I don't know where I belong.

Because I used up all my allowed absences when my grandmother passed, I will be unable to drive up to Virginia and attend the funeral. Because there's such a small break between quarters, I doubt I'll be seeing family then as well. Because of all the make-up work I've accrued, I don't have time to pout and worry anyway. I have to accept it and keep on working.

I hope this is the last depressing post I have to make for a while. I want to get back to sharing progress on the comic and my painting - and I should have some work to show you soon. Just give me a few days to center myself, ok?

Sara J. Paulsen 4/5/25 - 1/7/11

It's been nearly two weeks now and it still doesn't seem real. As many of you know, my grandmother and I had a special bond. For all my life, she was my biggest cheerleader and always there when I needed someone. She meant so much to me, and I'm having a hard time imagining life without her.

When my grandfather came down with Alzheimer's and her health began to decline, I put my own life on hold to move in with them and help out. I spent the next two years cycling back and forth between Winchester and Falls Church and it was never a burden. I enjoyed spending time with grandma and we always had wonderful conversations. Even with a weakening heart, she would do everything to ensure my grandfather got the best care. I was happy to be able to take on some tasks and keep her stress level down.

It was only when my younger brother, Greg, moved in with them, and they got my grandfather a full-time caretaker, did I feel safe in moving on. My grandmother wanted nothing more than for me to finish my education, and she was thrilled when I got into SCAD for graduate school. I would never have made that jump if it wasn't for her encouragement and insistence.

When I got the news that her heart was giving out, I was stunned. Just the day before we had been planning on what to do when she got out of the hospital. I was blessed to be able to have one last conversation with her over the phone before she passed. Even though I was stuck in Georgia, it was my way of being with her. Grandma got to do what so many pray for: She left this earth on her own terms. She knew she didn't want to lose her quality of life and she made to call to have no heroics. She died peacefully, surrounded by family.

Since then, it has been a whirlwind. I had to drop everything and return home to be with my family and help out the best I can. With my aunt sick (and now in the hospital) and my mother running back and forth, juggling estate planning and running a business, I had to step up and help where I could. Time for doing anything else just doesn't exist right now. I apologize to you all for giving you this notification so late. Once I got up to Virginia, time lost all meaning and I let a lot of things slide on my end.

The funeral is this Saturday, and after that I have to somehow gather my belongings, trek back down to Savannah and do my damnedest to get back to work. It's going to be a near-impossible struggle, but I will try. Grandma wanted nothing more than to see me thrive, and I will do my best to honor her wishes.

The first bit of progress!

Before you get all excited: I did not actually do all these today. I *finished* work I had previously started. Even better, these are re-dos of work I had already done, so it's bonus work and no real progress has been made. Still, I'm happy to show it off! Feedback is greatly appreciated, as I will be turning these into finished pencils and at least one into a final inked page.

This assignment was the "fun" one of our Visual Storytelling class! We were tasked with designing two covers and we were allowed to use our own projects! I think everyone put extra oomph into their work for this one, because it was the first project that was fully theirs. I intend to oomph it up as well! You may not care about the backstories to the images, but I'm giving them to you anyway! (Click the images for a bigger version.)



I think every creative person has one massive epic tale in their head, and mine is Maquette. The story is a rumination on power, as it follows the leaders of a rapidly-modernizing (fantasy) society as they deal with a prophecy that claims the end of the world is at hand. The story gets its title because of the odd situation of the society. It exists in the only fertile area on an otherwise inhospitable planet. With a tradition of written history only going back a few generations, it's as if Maquette sprang out of the ground fully formed. To top it off, their holy scriptures contains a disputed note that may indicate the great saints used their massive power to create their own model society. Is that what Maquette is?

Anyway, I've put way too much time into this idea. As it sits now, I have 44 "episodes" outlined, with room to grow even further. For this project, I settled on episode 36, which centers around my favorite character, Annelise Ellen Rose. She's a ruthless bitch who will not let anything get between her and her goals, and this is a prime example. At this point in the story she has basically come back from the dead thanks to fortunate plot devices. (And magic!) She's been battered and bruised, has been robbed of most of her possessions and just found out she's the most wanted person in Maquette after her role in the so-called Witches Guild was outed. Being the badass she is, her reaction is to storm into the local police station and dare them to try and arrest her. That's where the cover scene comes in.

The changes between this cover and the original I drew are minimal. I increased the figure to break the border of the masthead, and cleaned up the way I drew the gears. I remain not the greatest at anatomy and figure drawing, so I'm not that satisfied with Annelise's depiction, but I'm slowly learning. Oh yeah, and for those not in the biz, the X's in the background indicate that area is black. Using them saves my finger some wear and tear at this stage.

While cover #1 was supposed to have a central figure, cover #2 was anything goes. For this one I decided to present my take on the whole superhero thing. (You might be surprised at this, but superheros are BIG in sequential art!) I give to you: The Utopians!

The story here is that we have a world in which supers are known to exist and they pop up here and there, with some time periods having flare ups in super activity. One of those flares took place in the mid-late 1970's, which peaked when a group of villains did a legion of doom sort of thing. The world cried out for saving, and, lo and behold, the Utopians appeared in a burst of clever marketing. Their promotional material made the claim that they were the 12 strongest supers to ever exist, and they certainly did wonders with cleaning up the villain mess - although people rarely saw Utopians in action. Supervillains were defeated. Organized crime was quashed. The Utopians were doing a great job... but that's about when they started killing politicians for corruption. Very quickly they went from saviors to holding the western world hostage. They were too strong and they weren't afraid to make examples out of people who crossed them. Eventually, a deal was struck and, for a great (and undisclosed) price, the Utopians agreed to go away forever. What followed was a dark age for supers, as either few existed or most kept their abilities secret out of fear of reaction from a snake-bitten public. Now, in the present, we focus on a man who is trying to bring back the superhero group with a cast of mildly-powered supers. Can he be successful, or will the legacy of The Utopians prove too much? (And did the Utopians *really* go away forever?)

For this cover, I wanted to show a splattering of the Utopian illustrated trading cards that were distributed. I went so far as to design each card on a separate page, so I knew what I could plug in when I arranged the falling pattern just right. I'm actually quite pleased with how this is coming out. The only big mistake is that I put in Hazel's card twice. One of the tiny cards should be a generic Utopian logo. There are a few tweaks to be made, like with spacing in the logo and tightening of some card designs, but I like where this is going.

Did you actually read through all that? If so, kudos to you! What do you think of my almost-progress? What should I change before it's too late?

I'm so excited! I'm so scared!!!

Look! Look! A page of sketches! It's not much, but it's more Precocious stuff than I've drawn in a loooong time.

What does this mean? It means I can do some light drawing and not DIE. What does THAT mean? It means nothing until I can prove that I can handle the drawing load that all my grad school make up work entails. That is where I'm scared. I'm already 5 days behind in my plan to catch up, and I'm not entirely certain I can handle this yet. Whatever. All I can do is try!

I'm starting out my road to recovery with simple stuff, like sketchbook work and Precocious. (Yes, compared to grad school, Precocious drawing is super easy.) If I get my concepts thumbnailed and ready to go, then I can ease into the big stuff next week. Doing the math, I need to average a page a day. That seems crazy right now, but each day I hope I can draw a little more. For now, I need to get myself disciplined and DO SOME RESEARCH! What I'm saying is... my holiday season is over. Chrispmas is cancelled. It's time to work.

So, yeah. Excited to be drawing again. Scared to death that.... *ahem* THERE'S NO TIME! THERE'S NEVER ANY TIME!

(Oh yeah... like the photo? It was taken by my NEW MACBOOK PRO! It's so shiny and awesome, I don't know what to do with it!)

The past and the future

The quarter has ended, and the plan was to get this blog going again once the first quarter at SCAD ended. Yeah, I had so many glorious plans. Work ahead! Copper Road! Do commissions! Study comics! TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

And then I blew out my finger.

I still have no idea why it happened. I'm a sequential artist! When *haven't* I drawn for hours and hours on end? Did I just draw wrong one day? All I know is that my finger ballooned up to three times its size around midterms, made me delirious with pain and ended up sending me to the emergency room. They took a x-ray, found nothing, decided to throw my finger in a splint, give me anti-inflammatory drugs and send me to a specialist. By the time I got my appointment with the specialist, the swelling had gone down but the finger remained sensitive. The specialist gave me steroids and said we'll wait and see. The finger got slightly better, but was still gimpy enough that I couldn't do my classwork. I'm falling further and further behind. I'm starting to panic. I go back to the specialist for an answer. His expert diagnosis: "I have no idea." God. Dammit.

It's been well over a month now, and my finger remains damaged for no good reason. I had to take an incomplete in all my classes, with the assumption my finger would clear up so I could do the work before the break was over. I've had to scale back Precocious' drawing over and over, and now it looks like I'm going on a guest strip hiatus until I heal. If I ever heal. How did these wonderful SCAD times end up going so wrong? Bah! Bah, I say!

So that's the horrible past - what's the horrible future? I... I'm not really sure.

I've shut my finger down completely, meaning no drawing for at least another week. I hope and pray that stretch of time will be enough for healing, as I have that scary pile of make-up work to do and time is running out! Once I resume activity, the obvious blog solution will be to post my make-up work here as I do it. You can finally see my attempts to be a FOR REALS sequential artist! The only downside is blogging here could cause lots of double-posting to Facebook if I also set up a "critique me and help me get better" work folder there. This could all be avoided if the blog-facebook posting thingy was at all reliable! Bah again! We'll see...

When I start drawing again, I also have a pile of Precocious work to do. I have a long-overdue painting to finish. I have some Precocious art to do. I have to design some prints for a donation drive. I also have to actually DO Precocious comics at some point. *cough* That stuff should mostly be bloggable.

So, yeah... The blog will resume activity soon - somehow! (Just not for another week or so, due to the shutdown finger thing.) I'll have such a massive pile of work to do for the next TWO YEARS that I should have no shortage of things to share. I just need to get in the habit of SHARING my art, not hiding it from the world because IT IS NEVER GOOD ENOUGH. This should be less of a conflict as I improve my skills. In theory. Crud, I hope so.

When blogging resumes, I'll put an announcement up on the Precocious site. Until then, live in a state of anxious limbo. LIKE ME!

(Damn you, finger!)