Just finished 6 pages for an anthology comic produced for the Kids of Widney High. It's gonna be a pretty awesome and strange book and has a number of people more talented at the comics making than I. Nevertheless, here's a sample (W/o words):
Still working on the Wreck of the ol 97, here's a bit of page 2:
I've learned on page 3 that I can REALLY draw tressles.
I've been brewing Kombucha Tea, It's awesome to know in the back of cabinets in the dark corners of my house, is cloth-covered jars of slimy pale organisms brewing away night and day in order to make me a healthy drink.
Here's a version of the song I wrote a while back:
I'd like either a recording studio or to take a class in audio engineering. I can never quite get them to sound like I hear it. Either way it's out of the way now.
Sorry I've not posted much lately, I've been working quite a bit. I should have some comics done soon, for a couple anthologies.
Thanks to all of you who've sent me birthday wishes. I've been thinking about legacy and heirlooms and this story seems fitting because it seeps with the ravages that old families do.
Unfortunately, I couldn't get a decent picture of the ceiling, which is the Rebel force approaching the Death Star in the battle of Endor (you can see a sliver of Endor in the above pic).
Back to school time means back to sports time as well and we have 6 games of softball and soccer to get our kids to today, as well as snack bar duty. Jeezy creezy.
It's wa-ay rough, and I'll catch shit if the guys heard I uploaded it, but we spent a decent part of the day recording and here's a rough cut of some new HangDog:
It needs some fantastic mandolin (by robbie) and a guitar lick he's got worked out, but for a rough, it's pretty decent.
We've moved into our new house. Well "new" house is a misnomer, as it was built by my great grandfather and being worked on by us for the last year or so. Everything is unsettled and messy and I'm stuck with dial-up for the next 4 days... DIAL-UP. ugh...
But yesterday a group of us walked to our farmers market and bought the place out of fresh vegetables and fruit, then strolled back in the breeze, in the shade of the trees, seeing more friends along the way and Coopers Hawks, and admiring the finely manicured yards with our hands all sticky with fresh strawberries. Not a bad way to spend a Thursday afternoon. My life may currently be an OCD nightmare and I may be as broke as the 10 commandments, but I'm rich enough with good friends and enough change for a pack of strawberries.
I wrote this for another site, a small, quick and probably too easy to snark at review of the brilliant new vehicle for DC comics online, "motion comics" which most people would call "crappy animation", in the vein of "Haunted Man" (anyone else remember "Haunted Man" webcomics?)
The Watchmen is poised to be the biggest comic book movie yet, and the advertising is in full tilt, most notably in this week’s Entertainment Weekly magazine, which is a mag known to be very comics friendly, for it’s regular reviews of new comics, news on creators etc.
This week EW have exclusive rights to advertising The Watchmen Motion comics, which are available through iTunes. So is the headline here: “major film studio, major comics publisher, major digital media supplier and major magazine ALL work together on putting out a hypercomic”?
Uh no. No it’s not.
The first problem is, well it’s not a comic. Or even a hypercomic. It’s a comic who’s artwork has been broken up into tiny chunks and animated, it’s been dissected and pulled out of focus or pushed far into the background. sections of drawings are dragged along the picture plane, to facilitate animation. Pieces of hair are magic wanded out and made to sway in the wind. Broken glass which, in the source material, hang in the air as if caught in a photograph are animated to exit the frame, pink slivers smoothly expanding out of the scene and taking all the energy with them.
So if it’s not a comic, or hypercomic, then maybe at least it’s an animation? Well, in the sense of a dictionary definition yes, it moves. But even here it fails, due to it’s source material. Each scene, cut apart and stitched back together with movement only serve to remind you that it was re-purposed material. You want to pause the thing, to see how well it was drawn. You want to take time out of the temporal mandate that animation serves and pour over the drawings. You want exactly the kind of freedom that visual narratives alone can provide.
In making it an animation they’ve served to make you wish you were reading a comic.
It also suffers all of the usual pains you would expect, a brooding soundtrack with celery-crunching foley sounds, word bubbles with tails that follow the character around the scene, voice actors that read exactly what you’re already taking the time to read, except for when they forget words.
All in all the headline should most likely be, “Major comics publisher and friends take enjoyable and brilliant comic book and ruin it using frankenstein’s methods: Will soon expect you to pay for it”
Man, I got classes to teach today. I love this day. Nothing like teaching kids how to make things and draw stuff...Even if it's about 40 kids in 5 hours. It's my personal belief that because of the art they wont be Nazis when they're older. (Course, it didn't help Hitler, so there's an argument either way.. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JO-MO!) ____________________________________
Manx2, we're almost done with our new house. They installed the frickin' fantastic tile mural my wife painted yesterday, now we need some grout and to install the appliances and we're pretty much ready to move in. Pictures of it will be forthcoming. Seriously though? My kitchen is gonna be the GREATEST LOOKING kitchen of all time. I have no idea if we'll be able to cook or not, but it'll be a great place to hang out.
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ManDeuxTWAH, I 've started about 3 comics in the last 6 months and finished none of them. For a while I was talking to some dudes (SteveTym&Grant) about making some new really experimental work, and possibly a new site to go with it. Each of us kinda went off to make some work first, and I imagine that everyone but myself has some great looking stuff lined up.
I've been thinking even more broad lately. Eventually we'll come up against the wall of having to host this stuff somewhere or at least have an easy to find directory for this stuff. So I was entertaining using my old webcomic domain hypercomics.net to make a sort of uber-hypercomics site, part commentary, part directory, part showcase. Take Fleen, and smash it to bits with Full Story, then matt it all down with some Infinite Canvas, run by an artist's collective bent on making and promoting the strangest webcomics stuff you can find.
I dunno, really the domain is just sitting there. I should do something with it.
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Uh-oh gotta go, my son just put on Jesus Christ Super Star.
A while back I was ustreaming while working on tiles, some of you maybe be interested in seeing how they turned out:
These are for our kitchen backsplash, one of a set of tiles that sort of pick up on personal themes and inside jokes in our family. Although m wife has done the lion's share of designs i did a few more:
That last one is a jab at The Jerk, just for kicks. Here's the lot of them, including my wife's brilliant work:
I sent this over to Nich to see if it's HangDog material. Steve and Grant, feel free to input as well if you think there's something worth working on:
Here's the lyrics/tabs:
(Am)in the straight swath path that a bullet makes (Em)Casey steps up and taps the plate (Dm)and mutters "this is your brain on the the war on drugs" (E7)and hits it out of the park, sweeps it under the rug
and later at the fight, in his ring side seat dreaming of the bed in his hotel suite he'll think back to a time when it was all so blue and he was the kind of kid his father could lay into
(Am, C+f, E7, Am)
and they say the high way blues made mona lisa smile but the fact is her face was versatile and we read our own truth into her red lips and secretly wish she'd sink a thousand ships
for all the trails laid in the transit of the sea have lead to a complication in the bourgeoisie and a desperate need to avoid the rocks and invite the queen to the witness box
now the lobsterbacks stand ready, rank and file a boy passing out in the heat every once in a while not to worry though there's plenty more they come three for a dozen at the bargain store
their chinese boots are blacker then an empty well and connected to the legs that marched over the oyster shell lay waste to the trunk and you can count the rings while you keep one steady hand on the apron strings
one day ill bite my fingernails to the bone and wake up washed out and alone to a sun brighter than the previous day and step into a new passion play
centered around a to do list in a 10 round clip and a sense of duty sharp as a buggy whip its a steady blip on the radar screen the course is set, and its all too obscene
its a good day to take out the people you admire and lead their boat across a lake of greek fire. we see the shinng path ahead and dream like Casey of our soft clean bed
its a sleight of hand, and dirty card trick it's brings you low and bleeds you like a tick and in the evenings beating Casey will join in cause he's the kinda man who needs to win
Thanks to you al for all the good responses on the the Scout mural, it really was a great and fun job for us.
Some of you may remember redeyedjohnny, the repository for music collaborations by fabricari, rteacher and I. Well, it's warming back up over there, with some collaboration that Steve started the ball rolling on, so I urge you all to check it out! Also Grant went and made a real-type website for the stuff we've done so far. He's been posting our previous collabs, and is gonna post more soon. Grant got it up on comixtalk and Steve went and got our new song posted on Patrick Costello's site, to boot. What have I been doing? Well, nothing as usual. It pays to have motivated friends!
I figure I also oughta hip you to Grant's new record. He's got it available for Free Download today, and it includes some very spiffy versions of our Red Eyed Johnny stuff. Get it and dig it!
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