We just finished watching The Divince Code! Now we're conspiracy theorists with poor taste! God help us!

Actually, it was kind of fun to watch, now that the hype and horror have died down and we don't have to think about it on those terms.

Of course I'm not interested in reading the book or in anybody associated with it. I mean, meh.

So, I ordered a Sandisk MicroSDHC 4gig card for my phone. It was stupid cheap at $4.76. Needless to say, it didn't work in the phone.

So I thought I should go ahead and reformat it.

My laptop flat out did not like the card and refused to acknowledge its existence. So I moved on to plugging it into the Mac.

The Mac promptly saw the card and said "What the fuck?" It then asked me if I'd like to initialize the card, as that would be necessary for accessing it. I said, "Why, yes I would."

Now, the nice thing about the Mac drive initialization applet is that it tells you all sorts of nifty things about your storage devices before you press any buttons.

Guess how much space is apparently on the card, according the initialization applet.

2 terabytes.

Let me write that again as a level 2 header:

2 terabytes

I'm beginning to suspect it's broken. Or borked. Or something like that.

I just heard, for the first time, an advertisement on the radio in which a local company called their new sale a "Bail Out!" claiming that they're helping the economy by saving consumers hundreds of dollars worth of money.

Anybody else encounter this language in advertising yet?

I just watched the first two episodes of Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show. It's pussinboots' fault.

It's more fun if you have to Google it first.

OK, so I just story-boarded six pages of the script, and except for a couple of long paragraphs that needed editing, it all fit beautifully!

The pacing of "... in Stitches" works pretty dang well, too. Fast and clippy but not disjointed. I'm sort of aiming for screwball here. People were able to understand it even without the characters penciled in or otherwise specially identified, which is usually a good sign.

Now I just have to decide my production method. Should I draw all six panels on one sheet of paper? Should it be done on a letter sized sheet, or should I spring for tabloid or larger? Or should I draw each panel separately?

I'm leaning toward giving each panel its own sheet of paper. It'll keep the quality up and I can mat them together for shows. But it'll slow down my process, because I'll have to scan each panel separately as well.

The kids names will be Molly Wolliker and Thommy Tinkerton. I think.

Do they sound like names that have been used together before?

I've picked the name of the comic, and now I just have to see if the domain is available.

More later.

Before I settle down to wrapping up today's graphic design work, I've got some names in my head for this new comic:

Stitches (right out, already used by a yaoi furry comic)

Stuffings
All New Material
Stuffed
Get Stuffed
Funny Beeswax
Stuffed Beeswax
Glad rags (used by a 1920's comic, but OK)
Gutters & Glad rags
Funny Stitches
Get Stitched (just getting it out of my system)
Cross Stitched
Cross Stitching
Unstitched
Sewn in Stitches

I don't think I quite like any of these.

Part of the idea is again, go for something silly or cute or old timey, but that also carries a vaguely political double meaning.


Finally, here's something unrelated that's just creepy:

http://inventorspot.com/articles/creepy_stuffed_animals_feature_your_childs_face_17461

While I was in the kitchen, Terra started desperately meowing at me. Oh, it was so important! And when I looked down, I saw that her food dish was empty and her water was low. So I poured her some more water and went to get her food.

When I came back with the food, she let out another desperate yowl. Ah, she was so in need!

Then I scooped the food out of the bag and poured it into the bowl with rattle. She looked at it. Then she looked back up at me.

"Rrrr?" she said.

"Yep, there you go!" I said.

"Rrr?" she repeated. "Rr."

I got the distinct impression that she wasn't disappointed by the fact that the food wasn't wet or moving, or that the water wasn't Kitty Chardonnay. She was clearly complaining that she had nothing more to legitimately complain about. "B-but, you filled my dish!" she muttered. "I could burn the building down."

She ate a few scraps, "rrr?"-ed once more, and now she's off somewhere in the apartment, nursing her lumbago.

Apparently, she's something like 126 cat years old.

click to view larger image



*Note: I'm not calling the strip "Character Interaction" even though that really is the theme of the whole thing. I was just naming this one file as an example.


Also, I like how the character names roll: Winston, Moe, Tillie, Otto & Reg

Of all the characters, this guy here is the one most likely to be revised before I start production:



But the bandaid on the nose stays!

Even though they're looking fairly well done, I don't consider these character designs to be anywhere near final. In fact, I imagine I'll be tweaking them quite a bit over the course of the comic's run itself.

One thing that I can already tell will be giving me trouble is Otto's boots. I like 'em a lot, but I only really know how to draw them one way right now and they hike a third of the way up his body. Not very flexible. I need to find a similarly built character with similar boots in somebody else's comic and see how they handle that. It seems very likely the tops of the boots are going to shrink a bit.

I'm also not sure about Reg's legs. They're too realistic for a stuffed animal, let a lone a cartoon character. On the other hand, I know I can draw them well from any angle and in any pose.

So, even though I've got a premise and I'm starting to name the characters, I still don't have a name for the comic. I suppose that will come in time.

Here's another character for that comic I'm working on:



She's about eight inches tall. Based on a stuffed animal I once had (as are the others).

If you're working at home, like me, and feeling depressed about a variety of things, and letting today's politics get to you, there is a simple solution.

You have to be able to work while watching a movie, of course. If you can, and this movie is one you've seen a lot, then I've got a suggestion:

Watch Sneakers.


I'm done with work and ready to go to the B.S. of Comics now.

I'm not very good at staying at home to work on transcription projects. Illustration and coding are a bit easier, because I can get really wrapped up in them. But boring old layout and typesetting, and particularly transcription is quite agonizing.

What I need to do is remember to start these projects on my laptop instead of on my desktop. The laptop has an older version of Adobe CS on it, so it's easier to go from it to my desktop later. Then I can take the laptop down to the Black Drop and enjoy some company while I plug away at the grueling stuff.

Better yet, I really need to just turn down these jobs in the future. Sure I can do them easy, but they actually take up more time than the truly creative stuff, because they're just so freakin' tedious! And I really don't do tedious well unless I'm truly driven by a vision or something.

The thing is, I can't be too choosy right now about what jobs I take, as I just need the work.

Anyway, I'm lonely, bored, and feel like fucking off or something. In a couple hours I will be walking downtown regardless.

Occasionally (like once every five or so years), I'll dream that I'm a girl or a woman. Three of those dreams involved looking into a mirror and seeing myself as such, and my reaction to it. Almost always, the change of gender is part of the dream. Once, it was one of those really embarrassing dreams where you've gone to school in your underwear, only on top of that, I found myself sitting on a bench telling one of my old friends why I had gotten the operation.

Usually these dreams are weird, enlightening or kind of fun, though one was disturbing to the extreme and I only tell it when I'm expected to tell something embarrassing. It doesn't go in print. I do sort of feel like I'm expected be socially embarrassed about these dreams, but they're just dreams. I'm ultimately comfortable with where they are coming from, and more and more with how I present myself to the world (which is to say, honestly). Anyway, most of my friends would probably be just as amused and interested in them as I am. But as you can tell by my extra long introduction, I'm not really sure about that.

People really do like to read between the lines of all sorts of things and ascribe motives to people that are often completely opposite of the truth. They do this for politics, sex, and just about every other minute social interaction in between. And frankly, I'm really tired of it.

However, when I dream something very clearly, with amazingly strong visual detail, I often take that as a challenge to remember it and draw it. I can usually get pretty close, I think. As an artist, I've got to share this! Also, this whole train of thought as spawned an idea for a story.

Anyway, last night I dreamt that I had shaved the evening before, and when I got up in the morning, I saw this in the mirror:



I have to say, I was nonplussed. In both the traditional and in my sense of the word. While I've been curious what it would be like to pass as a girl, that image represents one of the phenotypes I find least sexy to me (pretty, but not my type or what I admire). Also, I was still clearly a guy and definitely married to the extremely sexy woman I call my wife. I thought this new situation would cause problems, but Julie didn't seem to care or even notice. Which kind of made me feel worse. But I also somehow knew this would happen, hence that expression.

Anyway, thinking about how and why my brain came up with this situation and visualized it so strongly got me to thinking about dreams and their apparent purposes.

( story idea behind a cut )

This month, What's Up! magazine published a review of Sir Reginold Cosgrove and His Nighttime Singers first CD! The CD, which has six songs on it, was supposed to be named after the band, "Sir Reginold Cosgrove and His Nighttime Singers." Unfortunately, the reviewer, Brian Fannin, did not understand this and instead read the name that had been stamped on the inside cover and the CD itself "Sir Reginold Cosgrove III."

Which is how most fans will likely read it, and I personally like it better. Now we can make Beatles-like jokes about how we were so ahead of our time that our third album was published first!

He also read "Reginold" as "Reginald" and it got printed that way, but that's what we get for being obscure and difficult. Also, it's something I'm used to with the last name "Sodt." Anyway, I'm fixing his spelling errors in my quoting of his review.

Anyway, the review is positively glowing! There really isn't a single word in it (OK, maybe one sentence, though*) that cannot be used somewhere as acclaim for selling the band and the record! Also, Bayside Recording get's major props, too. And Chip definitely deserves it.

Here's my favorite bit:

Flash back to the 50's and 60's when rock was young, and rockabilly was emerging into the scene. It's this snapshot in time that we find Sir Reginold Cosgrove II by Sir Reginold Cosgrove and His Nighttime Singers.

Full of toe tapping 'approved' dance music, it can best be described as wholesome rock 'n' roll. ... Clarity in the production work, and the overall mix puts it a leap ahead. The guitar is spanky with surf shimmer. Drums are crisp and evenly mixed. The bass tone is exceptional as it growls and rolls through the tracks.

By the way. The band laid down the tracks for the EP and the full length album in just two days. And the EP took basically one afternoon to tweak, mix and master. Each song had an average of two takes to work with, usually three but sometimes one.

I understand that this is unusually quick for bands like Sir Reg.

Also, as much of an old horse as it is now in the middle of a flagging music scene, What's Up! magazine really is the heart of Bellingham's music. Getting any kind of review in that magazine is really the first real step toward building the kind of draw a band and a venue might crave.

In short... HOT FUCKING SHIT, MAN!!!


* He says it won't make it into his favorites, but that's OK. As much as we'd like the music to be for everybody, it's still a matter of what moves you, and everybody moves to something different.