it's kind of a comic

So I've been taking advantage of my break from deadlined strips that no one cares about to work on my non-deadlined strips that no one cares about. These panels are from a story that's been written for over a year now and it's just waiting for me to draw it. I actually started this one as a fully painted comic (presented in IC) but I may have to re-think that plan or else it'll take me for frickin' ever!!. Maybe I'll go all digital with my new tablet instead. Still trying to get a good feel for that, though.

but this one goes to eleven

Did some more jamming with Chris and Jeff this weekend.
For those of you that don't know, I've been playing viola on and off since grade school (mostly "off," lately. I used to be quite good, i guess, but now I'm mostly just reallllly rusty.) Chris and Jeff are both musicians (I don't know if they have anything from their band up on the web but here're some tracks that Jeff did on his own) and they've let me play along and basically drag the two of them down on a couple of occasions now.

Fortunately for posterity's sake (or maybe unfortunately), Chris has had his recording equipment running for these noise-jam sessions. This here is an older one that I've had up on my webspace for a little while - I think I may have even directed a couple of you to this one already. Fair warning: it's long and dissonant and without discernible structure. Listen at your own risk.

And speaking of which, here is another nasty little gem that Chris and I recorded, a cappella (w/ overdubs), one drunken night. This one is definitely NOT work safe and the jury's still out on whether it's safe anywhere else.

Anyway, you've been warned.

popcan and the most boringest tangents in the world, ever

If you could draw anything, anything in the world, would it be a pop can? Well, I did.

I just couldn't leave well enough alone at that. I had to go and throw a bunch of rambling text in there. Wheeee...

This sketchblog thing is sure off to a good start.

sketchblog

Because Fabricari demanded it. Mostly Banal is temporarily turned into a sketchblog. A new sketch every few days or so, maybe even a little comic here and there (but probably not the autobio/diary/journal stuff for a little bit.) 'til I can pull it together.

Enjoy what you have wrought, Fabricari, enjoy...

I guess I'm on vacation

So, as i mentioned last week, I draw most of my "Mostly Banal" strips at work during break time. We're allowed two ten minute breaks and a twenty minute lunch by OSHA regulations. As a result of my cartooning preoccupation, though, my breaks were becoming a little - shall we say - extended. Well, somebody finally noticed.

My break times become a bit more restricted now and I haven't been able to compensate at home. Until I can work out some alternate drawing timetable, I can't keep up with the three-a-week schedule. If I can't do that then I don't see a point in these diary strips - as I see it they only work as a concept by regularity and accumulation. So Mostly Banal is going on haitus for a little while.

I'll, uh... see you when I get back. Whenever that is...

Your Guide to Finer Living:Spinach and Black Bean Quesadillas

I meant to post some more on the other books I got at the sale, but - whadya know - no time.
Maybe later - I did get some interesting books.

Book Sale Book: A Cavalcade of Clowns

A Cavalcade of Clowns
Illustrations by Bill Yenne with text by Laurence Senelick.




I passed on this book several times before picking it up. It's just so ugly. But there's something that really drew me in.




It purports to be a children's book (as far as I can tell), covering famous clowns throughout history. The text conveys an obvious affection for the art of the harlequin and the research seems genuine (though I am no clown expert). But, of course, it's the art that called me back.





That a book is made for children is often used as an excuse for bad artwork, it seems, but this book appears to go out of it's way to be ugly. The design is clumsy, the rendering is flat and amateurish and the colors...





But i think that's what got me. the clashing primaries, the intricate linework that recedes behind walls of flat color, and the mishmash of similar shades vying for the same attention on the page. At first I thought it was the "train-wreck" quality of the design that got me, now I'm not so sure. After all the exaggerated figures and two-by-four to the face color schemes have a certain fitting echo to the garish caricature of humanity that' s represented in the best of clowns.





Visual subtext or just bad design, there's still something to be learned from a book like this. Either way it's made a place in my collection (and maybe burned some images into my retina).

You can find some wierd stuff at a used book sale...

goin' to the booksale

The anual AAUW used book sale was this past weekend. I look forward to this every year. People donate books throughout the year and they are resold at deeply discounted prices. The second to last day is half price day (half off the already low "used book" price) and the last day is bag day, where you fill a grocery bag with books and pay only five dollars for the lot of them. Seriously, FIVE DOLLARS for a bag full of books!

Every sale in the past four years I've found something comics related that was worth buying. That's not an easy task in this town, and this year it took the combined vetting skills of myself, Rachelle, and Shannon too, to find something like that (Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe collected Volumes one through seven for four bucks! - a good find). Maybe in the next few days I can share some scans from some of the other books I bought there too.

apologia

I usually draw these strips on my breaks at work. Today we had our big year-end inventory, so no time to draw. I'll probably just do two strips this week. We'll see...

arachnophobia

The amateur's dilemma

Your Guide to Finer Living: Dinnertime

It's been so long since I've done a "Your Guide to Finer Living" comic that I'm probably the only one who remembers them.

Biting off more than I can chew

Originally I had some text to go with this comic but it was all annoying whiny stuff so I plopped it in the "title" tag. I think the image can stand enough on it's own with out the detailed specifics of the text.

Rated PG for Cartoon Violence

Watchin' cartoons with Chris and Lauren.

With this one I wanted to what would happen if I extended the comic for one panel past what would be the punchline.

Not much, huh?

(BTW: Sophie's favorite seemed to be this one)

Tymothi Godek Presents:Copout Comics Volume One

This is not the comic I wanted for today. I found myself unable to draw the "real" comic - it just came out looking like crap - so I dashed this one off instead. When in doubt, do a comic about how you can't do a comic.

Yeah, this is pretty much the caliber of conversation we have at work...

A Room with a View...

Well, I spent way too much time on this. I was trying some digital effects that I'm not sure played out well. I think I'm proudest of the fact that I drew this entirely at work, from memory, and it still looks like my actual kitchen.

here's the original:


and for fun, the digital sketch version:

(click on these to see them larger)

Adventures Into Digital(ly created) Comics

Just playing around with my new toy. It's my very first Wacomic, so be kind.

Happy Belated Golden Birthday, Rachelle!

Everybody wish my beautiful wife a happy birthday today! She and the daughter she's given me are the two best things that have ever happened to me. I'm sure glad she was born.

I hope I can help to make your day special, Rachelle. I love you very much.

umm... Baby Steps

To tell you the truth, all these animals are starting to get us down

On Manners

Snacktime

I WIN!

This year for my birthday I decided to have a big slice of bitter humor with a tall cool glass of in poor taste. Dead at 27 is a rock and roll legend that some date back to Robert Johnson and his deal at the crossroads. That's actually a small part of a much larger story I've been collecting notes on the past few years (and, in all honesty, will probably never be written - ah, well). This gag has been kind of distilled from that.

Anyway, happy birthday to me.

Rejected Garage Sale ads

That's right. We are having a Garage Sale today. It's goying on RIGHT NOW!!! And don't be scared off by what I said above. I was just kidding, haha! All of our crap stuff quality merchandise is TOP NOTCH!! If you're in the area then come on down and feel free to give me some money!

a small mystery

And happy birthday to Shannon!

Everybody's a comedian...

Did I say that I wouldn't be inking things here for a while?
Well, well... I do say things like that.

Like Good Humorexcept neither "good," nor really "humor"

At work, they give us popsicles when it gets really hot.

Nice of them...

Because I haven't done a Sophie post in a while...

Back to just pencils again. I had fun playing with the brush for Futureman, but I didn't really like the inks (with a Micron brushpen) on the last post and there's a certain unfinished charm to the pencil work that fits the "sketch-blog" idea. This is probably how most of these posts will be, for a while.

File Under: It Really Happened

Mom and Dad were in town for a visit this weekend. Dad told me the story. (Dad, you kind of had to see this one coming, huh?)

(Author's note: While the dialogue depicted is accurate as far as my knowledge allows, the role portrayed by "answering machine" in this mystery-play was actually meted out in real-life by "phone with voice-message service," I believe. Dad remains as Dad.)

The FUTUREMAN Saga: EpilogueAll's Well That Ends Well

(Hey, Chris! The story starts here.)



(to previous strip)

Music for this strip: Half Japanese's Bone Head record.

Well, that's it for the FUTUREMAN saga. Hope you enjoyed it. Will this truly be the end of Futureman? No one can tell for sure. The Future is Futuristical is, of course, a joint project open to anyone. Feel free to use any of these characters, as I have made liberal use of other's. Everyone should do at least one Futuristical strip. Even you! Just let TedPrior know when you've done one.

Back to my boring old present-day life next, I guess. I've got a backlog of journal-type strips to draw after this two week futuristical detour.

FUTUREMAN:The Power of Positive Thinking

(Hey, Chris! The story starts here.)



(to previous strip---to next strip)

Actually, the Future is starting to look not so Futuristical in this one.

Music is Jane's Addiction, Ritual De Lo Habitual. Hank Rollins goes on and on about how great a live band they were and how that spirit was never captured on record, but I never saw them live so this is all I got.

Happy Birthday Chris!

FUTUREMAN IV: A New Hope(oh wait, is this part three...?)

(Hey, Chris! The story starts here.)



(to previous strip---to next strip)

Maybe I should change the name of this blog to The Future is so Futuristical.

Or The Sort-of-Continuing, Not-so-Adventurous Adventures of Futureman, or whoever.

I'm almost done with this.

Music for today's strip? The soft whirr of refrigerated vending machines and the harsh buzz of fluorescent lights 'cause I inked up the thing in the breakroom at work. Funfunfun.

Hey! I also have a guest strip up at Fabricari.com today. Fabricari is a thrice-weekly cyberpunk webcomic By Steve Harrison and Adam White. Steve is an excellent artist who gets a great clean line that I am absolutely envious of. He's also an all-around good guy, in my experience. I've never met Adam (of course, I've never really met Steve either.) Go check 'em out.

The Future is so Futuristical:The Special FUTUREMAN Origin Special

(Hey, Chris! The story starts here.)




You guessed it. A continuation of the last strip. The music for this one is Sonic Youth's Sister, for the mildly Phil-Dickian vibe.

(to previous strip---to next strip)

FUTUREMAN!

Another Future is so Futuristical post, loosely following my last one.

(to previous strip --- to next strip)

Music for this strip? Yo La Tengo's ELECTR-O-PURA 'cause it's got that kind of wistfully sad, futuristic vibe with just the right hint of anarchy to it. Tom Courtenay and Blue Line Swinger are especially excellent tracks off that one.

In the Future, Dinosaurs are the new black.

(to next strip)

Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics fame graciously granted me permission for this The Future is so Futuristical strip. For those of you who don't know, Ryan uses this very same comic-template with a new script (almost) everyday for his Dinosaur Comics webcomic. He's been doing it for going on four years now. It's amazing the narrative variety he gets out of the same six panels every time. For his efforts he's received many accolades including the recent Web Cartoonist's Choice Award for outstanding writing. Go read his comic and if you like it you can buy the book.

Thanks, Ryan, for letting me rip off your comic for a one-note gag!

And this strip follows ideas from this one by Jessica McLeod.

Junior High Redux

This cartoon was supposed to have gone up yesterday but the server where I host my images was down (or some other unfortunate instance out of my control). So it's up today. Whoopie.

The future is still obsessed with the past

Another one from the future. This one takes place immediately following the last strip. So, really it's even more in the future. And still totally futuristical.

Behold... THE FUTURE!

So this is an installment in a little group-jam called "The Future is so Futuristical" started on LiveJournal by a mister TedPrior.
The deal is you draw a comic about the future and post it (anywhere, according to Ryan Estrada). That's it. Easy as pie.

Mine is a continuation of this entry and then this one too.

Mister TedPrior has a good chunk of 'em archived here. Now go do your own!

Not in my backyard...

The other day-a true story

So take a close look at this comic and then tell me again that space=time. Sure the first and last tiers of panels are fairly conventional comic narrative, but the middle three tiers each represent simultaneous events. Reading right to left, here, is the same as left to right or reading the panels in a random order. All the panels are necessary for a completion of the main theme but sequence (within the tier) is arbitrary. There is some space/time relation only between the separate tiers as the sequence does go top/middle/bottom. But space=time seems to be too limiting an equation for describing the process of reading comics narrative. Why is that still so commonly used as shorthand?

But seriously, though. Cloud Cult really does KICK ASS!!!! Get yourself a copy of Advice From the Happy Hippopotamus. I cannot recommend this album enough!

The Last Few Weeks: Birthdays, Parties, and Rain

Yay! Calamity!

Go read What Happened?, my CALAMITY! story.

And then read the rest of them too. I particularly enjoyed The Inevitable Fore-Knowledge of Death by Jon Morris, End of the Scone Age by Brodie Brockie, and Turpentine by my buddy Neal von Flue (who has a song to go with his comic).